The Battle of the Marne. George Herbert Perris
to be whirled off to the frontiers and the first scarcely imaginable trial of modern conscript systems. It was a new thing in the world’s history, this sudden tremendous clash of the whole manhood of highly developed nations, armed with the most murderous machinery science could devise, and supported by vast reserves of wealth. It had fallen swiftly upon them, the doom that many learned men had declared to be impossible in the twentieth century; yet its essential nature was crude enough to be immediately understood, and the intelligence of France, though shocked, was not stunned. This million of peasants and workmen, merchants, manufacturers, priests, artists, idlers, and the nation behind them, were unanimous as never before. They knew the issue was not of their making; they knew equally that it could not be refused, but must be fought out, and that it would be a hard fight. The Napoleonic wars were to be eclipsed; and there was now no Little Corporal to flash his genius like a searchlight across Europe. The enemy had no less advantage in prestige than in effectives, preparation, initiative.
Few of the million guessed, as yet, that most of them were marked down for sacrifice. The general opinion was that it would be all over by Christmas, at latest. A four months’ war seemed tragic enough in those first days. With the unwonted agreement, an unwonted gravity spread across the sunny lands from the Channel to the Alps where the crops were ripening. If international idealism lay shattered, national democracy rose well to the trial—never better. No recrimination (even the murderer of Jaurès was set aside), no conspiracy, no guillotine, marked the great revival of the republican spirit. England would at least guard the coasts, and keep the seaways open. France went into the struggle without wavering or doubt.
And so, “Aux armes, Citoyens!”—for these, mark you, are, in very fact, citizen armies, independent, free-thinking, high-spirited fellows, no Emperor’s “cannon-food.” From the smallest hamlet to the boulevards of the great city, every pulse of life is feverishly concentrated upon their gathering and departure. At the barracks the reservists, clad, armed, equipped, are ready to entrain. Crowds of women, whose red eyes belie their brave words, children at their skirts, surround the gates, and run forward with bunches of flowers and tricolor rosettes. The officers carry bouquets at their saddle-bows, the men cap their rifles with roses and ribbons. At the railway station, long lines of goods-vans, with a few passenger carriages; more flowers and little flags; allied colours in front of the engine; a wag chalks up the direction: “Berlin, aller et retour.” The horses and guns are aboard; the men jostle in the open doorways, and exchange cries with the crowd. A stanza of the “Marseillaise” is broken by last adieux, shouts of “Vive la France!” and the curtain falls upon the first memorable act.
Interminable journeys follow, by road and rail, toward the frontiers, then from town to village, and from farm to farm of countrysides more and more deserted and desolate. In the passes of the Vosges, the hills and flats of Lorraine, the woods of the French Ardennes, the men accustom themselves uneasily to the oppressive heat of day and the chill and damp of night; to sore feet and chafed shoulders; to spells of hunger due to late or lost convoys; to the deprivation of accustomed comfort, and the thousand minor ills which in all times have been the ground-stuff of the showy tapestries of war. Superfluous graces of civilised life vanish before the irreconcilable need of economy in every effort. Officers begin to be honoured not for rank or show, but for the solid talents of leadership; pals are chosen, not from effusion of heart, but for assurance of help in emergency.
The mantles of the chasseurs are still blue, the breeches of the infantry red, the uniforms of the artillery and engineers nearly black; but already bright colours tend to disappear, and every other tone to assimilate with the dust of the high roads. By day and night there is but one traffic throughout these northern and eastern departments—files of cavalry, batteries of field-guns, columns of heavy-laden men, convoys of Parisian autobuses and hooded carts, pass incessantly through the silent forests out into the open plains. The civilian population steadily diminishes, even in the larger towns; the gendarmerie keep those who remain under suspicion of espionage. The frontier villagers welcome the marching troops hospitably, until local food supplies are exhausted, and until news comes in from the front of reverses and of foul cruelty to the peasants on the part of the enemy. Only a fortnight has gone by when the national confidence in a speedy victory receives this heavy blow. Bad news gathers and reverberates. It is a little difficult, after years of bloodshed, to recover the fresh sense of these first calamities. Men were then not yet broken to the pains, the abominable spectacles, of war. That their self-offering to the fatherland should win them an honoured grave might well be. But defeat at the outset, the shame of retreat almost before a blow could be struck, this was an incredible, monstrous, intolerable thing.
The incredible, however, generalised itself over all the highways of Lorraine and Belgium. Take any typical scene on the march-routes of August 22 or the following days.1 The roads are black with columns of troops retreating west- and south-ward, more or less broken, linesmen, chasseurs, artillerymen, supply and special services, with their guns, munition wagons, Red Cross detachments, convoys of heavy-laden carts with wounded men sitting on top or clinging behind; and, in the breaks, crowds of panic-stricken peasants, in farm wagons or on foot, old men, women, and children, with bedding, boxes, bird-cages, and other strange belongings. Dismay broods like a palpable cloud over these pitiful processions. There is an incessant jostling. Drivers flog their horses cruelly. Wounded men drop by the wayside and lie there untended, their haggard faces stained with mire and powder, blood oozing through their coats, trickling out into the litter of torn knapsacks and broken arms. The sun blazes inexorably, the air is poisoned with clouds of dust, or drenching showers of rain produce another sort of misery; and ever the long stream of failure and fear flows on, eddying here and there into acute confusion as some half-mad woman sets up a cry: “The Prussians!”
Night follows day: soldiers and country-folk, hungry and exhausted, fall into the corners of any sheltered place they can find—an empty barn, the nave of a village church—for an unsatisfying sleep, or, too sick to sleep, watch the fantastic shadows and fugitive lights dancing upon the walls, mocking their anguished thoughts of the morrow. The batteries and convoys have gone on through the darkness, men rolling from side to side with fatigue on their horses or gun-carriages, as though drunk. With daybreak the greater trek recommences. The enemy has not been idle: in the distance behind rolls the thunder of heavy guns; pillars of smoke and flame rise from burning villages. And as, day after day, a new stage of retirement—increasingly controlled, it is true—is ordered, the question pierces deeper: What is to become of France?
Those who have lived at the centre as well as on the skirts of armed hosts become habituated to one enveloping condition: the rank and file, and even most of the officers, know little or nothing of what is passing outside their own particular spheres. It is in the nature and necessity of military operations, especially at the beginning and in a phase of rapid movement, that it should be so. Perhaps it is also a necessity of the psychology of endurance. Of these republican armies, only a small minority of the men were old soldiers; most of them had all they could do to adapt themselves, day by day and hour by hour, to the new world of violence, squalor, and general unreason in which they were now prisoned. They had to learn to bear fatigue and pain such as they had never known; to overcome the spasm of fear that grips the stoutest heart in unaccustomed emergencies; to thrust the bayonet not into a sandbag, but into soft, quivering flesh, and draw it forth again; to obey men who were incompetent and stupid, as well as born leaders. The German heavy shells, aeroplanes, motor transport, the formidable entrenchments and fields of wire—gradually they recognised these and other elements of the invader’s superiority. Weaklings cried: “We are betrayed. It is 1870 over again.” What could the bravest reply? Letters were few and far between. Newspapers were never so barren. What was Paris doing? What were Russia and England doing? The retreating columns marched with downcast eyes, wrapped in a moody silence.
By what revolt of the spirit did these apparently broken men become, a fortnight later, the heroes of the Marne? The answer must be that they were not broken, but were passing through the sort of experience which, in a virile race, wakens the dull-minded to their utmost effort, blows away the last traces of laxity and false idealism, and, by setting above every other fear the fear of a ruined Fatherland, rallies the whole mass on the elementary ground of defence to the death. Voices, lying voices, had whispered that France was diseased, body and soul, that the Republic would surely die
Many volumes of soldiers’ notes and recollections have been published, and some of them have high literary merit. One of these is
“The battle is lost,” he writes on August 23, “I know not how or why. I have seen nothing. It is a sheer nightmare. We shall be massacred.... Anguish chokes me.... This boiling mass of animality and thought that is my life is about to cease. My bleeding body will be stretched upon the field. I see it. Across the sunny perspective of the future a great curtain falls. I am only twenty-one years old.... What are we waiting for? Why do not our guns fire? I perspire, I am afraid … afraid.”
This mood gradually passes away. A few days later he is trying to explain the change: “One accustoms oneself to danger as to the cruellest privations, or the uncertainty of the morrow. I used to wonder, before the war, how the aged could live in quietude before the immanence of death. Now I understand. For ourselves, the risk of death has become an element of daily existence. One counts with it; it no longer astonishes, and frightens us less. And, besides, every day trains us to courage. The conscious and continuous effort to master oneself succeeds at length. This is the whole of military bravery. One is not born brave; one becomes so.” And this stoicism is softened and spiritualised by a new sense of what the loss of France would mean.
Another notable narrative of this period of the war is
“In the convent parlour, the table is laid with a fine white cloth, decorated with flowers, bottles covered with venerable dust, cakes whose golden crust gladdens the eyes. A brilliant Staff, the Commandant, a few chasseur officers. The Sisters hurry about, carrying dishes. ‘A little more fowl, my dear Commandant,’ says the Brigadier; ‘really, it is delicious. And this wine—Pontet-Canet of ’74, if you please!’ All of us are grateful to the good Sisters, who are such delicate cooks. At dessert, as though embarrassed by an unhappy impression shared by all the guests, the General speaks: ‘Rest tranquil, gentlemen. Our attack to-morrow morning will be overwhelming. Debouching between hills 832 and 725, it will take in flank the German Corps which is stopping our brave 9th, and will determine the victory.”
Hardly has the toast of the morrow’s triumph been drunk than a heavy step is heard outside, the click of spurs, and then a knock on the door. A captain enters, in helmet and breastplate, a bloody bandage across his forehead, dust thick upon his uniform, perspiration rolling down his face. He has ridden from Dinant with news of the defeat, and secret instructions. The Uhlans are near. Nevertheless, the officers go to bed. During the night they are aroused by an increasing clamour of flying peasants outside the convent. There are soldiers among them, wildly crying: “The Prussians are coming,