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The World Decision, a non-fiction book by Robert Herrick |
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Part 2. France - Chapter 6. The New France |
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_ Part Two. France Chapter VI. The New France "This is a return for a new departure!" the Italian poet cried to his people at Quarto when they were still hesitating between the paths of a prudent neutrality and intervention in the world decision. Probably in the poet's thought there was more of concrete ambition for "national aspirations" than of spiritual rebirth. But for the French nation it is the spiritual rebirth alone that has any meaning. No material enlargement of France has ever been seriously contemplated. The acquisition of Alsace can hardly be termed conquest, and whatever hopes of indemnity or other material advantages the French may have permitted themselves to dream of must fade as the financial burden of all Europe mounts ever higher. Even the recovery of Alsace, according to those best able to judge,--in spite of German assertions,--would never have roused France to an aggressive war. Conquest, material growth, is not an active principle in the French character. How often I have heard this thought on French lips,--"We want to be let alone, to be free to live our lives as we think best, to develop our own institutions,--that is what we are fighting for!" For forty years the nation has lived under the fear of invasion, a black cloud always more or less threatening on the frontier, and when the day of mobilization came every Frenchman knew instinctively what it meant--the long-expected fight for national existence. And the hope that sustains the people in their blackest moments is the hope of ending the thing forever. "Our children and our children's children will not have to endure what we suffer. It will be a better world because of our sacrifice." The conquest that France will achieve is the conquest of herself, and the fruits of that she has already attained in a marvelous measure. The reality of a new France is felt to-day by every Frenchman and is aboundingly obvious to the stranger visiting the country he once knew in her soft hours of peace. To be sure, intelligent French people say to you, when you comment on the fact, "But we were always really like this at bottom, serious and moral and courageous, only you did not see the real France." Pardonable pride! The French themselves did not know it. As so often with individual souls, it took the fierce fire of prolonged trial to evoke the true national character, to bring once more to the surface ancient and forgotten racial virtues, to brighten qualities that had become dim in the petty occupations of prosperity. After I had been in France a short time, nothing seemed falser to me than the pessimistic assertions of certain German-Americans and faint-hearted other Americans, that whatever the outcome of the world war France was "done for," "exhausted," "ruined," must sink to the level of a third-rate power, and so forth. Nor can I believe the words of those saddened sympathizers and helpers in the ambulances and hospitals, that "France is proudly bleeding to death." Her wounds have been frightful, and through them is still gushing much of the best blood of the nation. Her bereavement has been enormous, but not irreparable. Once a real peace achieved, the triumph of the cause, and I venture to predict that France will give an astonishing spectacle of rapid recovery, materially and humanly. For the New France is already a fact, not a faith. * * * * * Evidence of this rebirth is naturally difficult to make concrete as with all spiritual quality. It is not merely the solidarity of the nation, the fervent patriotism, the readiness for every sacrifice, which are qualities more or less true of all the warring nations, especially of Germany. It is more than the perpetual Sunday calm along the rue de la Paix, the absence of that parasitic frivolity with which Paris--a small part of Paris--entertained the world. It is not simply that French people have become serious, silent, determined, with set wills to endure and to win--for that moral tenacity may relax after the crisis has passed. It is all these and much more which I shall try to express that has revealed a new France. To start with some prosaic proofs of the new life, I will take the liquor question, a test of social vitality. It is significant to examine how the different belligerent nations have treated this problem, which becomes acute whenever it is necessary to call upon all national reserves in a crisis. Turkey, Italy, and Germany apparently have no liquor problem; at least the war has not called attention to it. Russia, whose peasantry was notoriously cursed with drunkenness, eradicated the evil, ostensibly, by one arbitrary ukase, though, if persistent reports from the eastern war region are true, her great reform has not yet reached her officers. England has played feebly with the question from the beginning when the ravages of drink among the working population--what every visitor to England had known--became painfully evident to the Government in its efforts to mobilize war industries and increase production. Various minor restrictions on the liquor traffic have been imposed, but nothing that has reached to the roots of the matter--probably because of the powerful liquor interest in Parliament as much as from the Englishman's fetish of individual liberty. Although the direct handicap of drunken workmen did not affect France as it did England, the French authorities quickly realized the indirect menace of alcoholism and have taken real measures to combat it. Absinthe has been abolished. For the army--and that includes practically all the younger and abler men--the danger has been minimized by the strict enforcement of regulations as to hours and the non-alcoholic nature of drinks permitted, which are posted conspicuously in all cafes and drinking-places and which are carefully observed, as any one who tries to order liquor in company with a man in uniform will quickly find out! I never saw a soldier or an officer in the least degree under the influence of liquor while I was in France, either at the front or outside the military zone, and very few workingmen. Not content with the control of liquor in the army, the French have seriously attacked the whole problem, which in France centers in the right of the fruit-grower to distill brandy,--an ancient custom that in certain provinces has resulted in great abuses. Legislation against the _bouilleurs de crue_ is one inevitable outcome of the awakened sense of social responsibility in France. Connected with the liquor evil is the birth-rate question, to which since the war the attention of all serious-minded people has been drawn. The French Academy of Sciences has undertaken an elaborate series of investigations into the relations between the birth-rate and the consumption of alcohol, which would seem to show that there is cause and effect between the excessive use of alcohol and a declining birth-rate. This will undoubtedly tend to create a popular sentiment favorable to restrictive liquor legislation, specifically to abolishing the right to distill spirits. But what is of more real significance is the changing sentiment among the French in favor of larger families. Due, no doubt, directly to the necessities of a draining war, it is also an expression of those deeper experiences that trial has brought. The French have always prized family life, and French family life is, perhaps, the best type of the social bond that the world knows. Under the stress of widespread bereavement the French are realizing that the base of the family is not love between the sexes, but the existence of children. They want children, not only to take the place of their men sacrificed, but as symbols of that greater love for the race that the war has evoked. Although the crudity of the "war-bride" method of increasing the population is not evident in France, every working-girl wears the medallion of some "hero" on her breast. Girls say frankly that they want children. The Latin will never accept the German principle of indiscriminate breeding. As in every other aspect of life, the Latin emphasizes the individual, the personal; but an awakened patriotism and pride of race, a deepened sense of the real values of life will lead to a greater devotion to the family ideal. * * * * * To shift to the political life of France, the history of the republic has been tempestuous in the past. There has been a succession of _coups d'etat_, plots, and scandals. One political _cause celebre_ has followed another--the Boulanger, the Dreyfus, and quite lately the Caillaux. The wide publicity which these political scandals have had is due partly to the Latin love of excitement, also to the Latin frankness about washing dirty political linen in public. To the foreigner it has seemed strange that a republic could endure with such abysses of intrigue and personal corruption beneath its political life as have been shown in the Panama and Dreyfus scandals. The Germans probably have been misled by them into considering the French nation wholly despicable and degenerate. But France has not only endured in spite of these rotten spots, but her republicanism has grown stronger. Americans experienced in their own sordid politics should understand how uncharacteristic of the real citizenship of a democracy politicians can be. The real France has never taken with entire seriousness the machinations of "those rats in the Chamber." These "rats" were quite active during the first months of the war. Aside from the incompetence of the first war ministry, which kept the public in ignorance of the danger so completely that the enemy was at Soissons before Paris was aware that the French army was being driven back, and all the blunders of the raid into Alsace, France had its sinister political menace in Joseph Caillaux, who it has been rumored plotted a disgraceful peace with Germany before the battle of the Marne. Caillaux, when his creature, the grafting paymaster-general, was exposed, found it wise to go to South America. An able and on the whole a competent ministry was placed in power. When Caillaux returned last spring, rumors of legislative unrest and plotting against the Joffre-Millerand control of the army began once more. Outwardly it was an attempt of party leaders in the Chamber to gain greater legislative control of the conduct of the war, ostensibly for the improvement of bureaucratic methods, as in the sanitary service, which was notably deficient. But beneath this agitation were the dangerous forces of political France seeking to oust Joffre, and there lay the menace that a political clique might get control of the army. This agitation, however, did not disturb the public. As one Frenchman put it, "If those rats get too active, Gallieni will take them out and shoot them. France is behind the army, and the people will not tolerate legislative interference with it." The political unrest has at last resulted in a new and larger cabinet, admittedly the most representative body that France could have. The danger of political interference has passed without resort to summary methods. It is a triumph of democracy. France will fight the war to an end under constitutional government, a much more difficult task than Germany's. Obviously, as may be seen in England, parliamentary government is a great hindrance to a nation in the abnormal state of war. Free societies have this handicap to contend with when they fight an autocratic machine. To maintain her republican government without scandals throughout the war will be a political triumph for France, indicative of the new spirit that has entered into the nation. The seriousness of the present situation has sobered all men and has suppressed the politicians by the mere weight of responsibility. The New France emerging from the trial of war can profit by this experience to purge her political life of the scandalous elements in it. Italy has closed her Parliament and relapsed temporarily into autocracy. England and France are struggling to maintain popular government as we did through the Civil War. * * * * * Much has been said of the heroic spirit of the French nation under the tragedy of the war. Too much could not be said. The war has evoked patriotism among all the peoples engaged, but with the French there is a peculiar idealistic passion of tenderness for the _patrie_ which impresses every observer who has had the good fortune to see the nation at war. I shall not linger long on these familiar, inspiring aspects of love for country that the war has called forth from all classes. The ideal spirit of French youth has been illustrated in some letters given to the public by the novelist, Henry Bordeaux, called "Two Heroes." They relate the personal experiences of two youths, one twenty, the other twenty-one, whose baptism of fire came in the battle of the Marne. They grew old fast under the ordeal of battle and of responsibility for the lives of their men; their letters home show a loftiness of spirit, a sense of self-forgetfulness, of devotion to the cause, that is sublime, poignant--and typical. In every rank of society the same immense devotion, the same utter renouncement of selfish thought can be felt. A spirit of ideal sacrifice has spread throughout the nation, making France proud, heroic, confident. Such a spirit must be a benediction for generations to come. The common effort, the universal grief, has drawn all French people so close together that social and party differences have disappeared. The French priest has become once more the heroic leader of his people, fighting by their side in the trenches. The scholars, the poets, the artists have all done their part,--the nuns, the aristocrats, the working-people theirs. While England has been harassed with strikes and class recriminations, France has never known in her entire history such absolute social harmony and unity, such universal and concentrated will. This spirit of "sacred union" embraces the women who are doing men's tasks, the rich who are surrendering their good American securities to the Government in exchange for national defense bonds, the poor who are bringing their little hordes of gold to the Bank of France to swell the gold reserve. I wish that every American might stand in the court of the Bank of France and watch that file of women and old men depositing their gold--the only absolute security against want they have! That is faith made evident, and love. * * * * * In looking over the bulky file of French newspapers, illustrated weeklies, and pamphlets on the war, which I brought back with me, I am struck by the fact that the outstanding characteristic of all this comment on the great war from journalist to statesman and publicist is not denunciation of the barbarian. Denunciation plays a singularly small part in the French reaction to their suffering. References to Germans and Germany are usually of a psychological or humorous character, illustrating the grotesque and antipathetic aspects in which the Teuton presents himself to the Latin mind. That part which grieving and denunciation have played in English comment, the gross and apoplectic hate of the German press, is taken by lyrical enthusiasm for heroism. The newspapers, sure pulse of popular appetite, are filled daily with stories of sacrifice, gallantry, heroism. This is the aspect of the sordid bloody war that the French spirit feeds on. It is a fresh manifestation of an old national trait--the love of chivalry. Some day, doubtless, these splendid tales of individual heroism, of soldierly and civilian sacrifice, will be gathered together to make the laurel wreath of the New France. I could fill a volume with those I have read and heard. And I like to think that while Germany went wild over the torpedoing of the Lusitania,--even dared to celebrate it in America,--while the Zeppelin raids arouse her patriotic enthusiasm, the French gloat over the story of the private who crawled out of the trench and hunted for two days without food or water for his wounded officer. The love of the _beau geste_ is an ineradicable trait of French character. It has had a bountiful satisfaction in this war. "We have fought a chivalrous war," General C. exclaimed, pointing to the little figure of Jeanne d'Arc. The same general ordered that the government dole of a franc and a half a day be paid to those Alsatian women whose husbands were fighting in the German army. "They are French women: it is not their fault that their husbands are fighting against France!" And the deathless touch of all, which will be remembered in the world long after the destruction wrought to the cathedral of Rheims, is the picture of French saving German wounded in the burning church--fired by German shells! The _beau geste_, the beautiful act, which ennobles all men, not merely the doer of the deed,--that is what France is giving the world. The image of men who are more than efficient and strong and physically courageous, of men who are filled with a divine spirit of sacrifice and devotion. Truly supermen. Chivalry was a trait of the Old France as it is of the New. It has fallen somewhat into disrepute of late years with the rise of the comfort and efficiency standards. Nowhere else on the broad battlefields of Europe has it revived, to redeem the horror of war, so shiningly as in the New France. * * * * * Another aspect of French character which is both old and new is the quality of humorous "sportsmanship" the French have displayed. When Germany's crack aviator made a daily visit to Paris, dropping bombs, in the afternoon during the early weeks of the war, the Parisians took his arrival as a spectacle and thronged the boulevards to watch him and applaud. When at last he was shot through the head, the French press lamented his loss with genuine appreciation of his nerve and his skill. A young cavalry officer at the front told me this story: One of the younger officers of his regiment, to encourage his men, had offered rewards for German shoulder straps, that is, prisoners. Two simple peasants, misunderstanding his words, proudly brought in a couple of pairs of German ears strung on a string like game. The officer, brooding over the incident, resolved to explain and apologize to the enemy. Putting his handkerchief on the point of his sword, he crawled out of the trench and advanced across the field of death between the lines. Tales from the trenches by the hundreds prove that the French have not lost the sparkle of wit even under the dreary conditions of trench-fighting. When Italy joined the Allies, some soldiers of a front-line trench hoisted the placard,--"Macaroni mit uns!" Again, when boasting placards of German successes in Galicia were displayed, the French _poilus_ retorted,--"You lie. You have taken ten thousand officers and ten millions of troops." When in a German military prison the keepers boasted of their recent successes on the western front, the French prisoners began to sing the _Marseillaise_ to the astonishment of their German guards, "because," as they explained, "we know if you have killed all those French soldiers, you must have lost at least four times as many!" The barbarian misread the Gallic love of wit and laughter. To joke and quip seemed to him beneath the dignity of men. It is, rather, the safety-valve of a highly intelligent people--the outlet for their ironic perceptions of life. The most amusing songs of the war that I have heard were given by the _poilus_ on a little stage near Commercy while the cannon thundered a few miles away. This ability to turn upon himself and see his life in a humorous light is an invaluable quality of the French soldier. So, too, is his love of handicraft which finds many ingenious expressions even in the trenches. The French soldier is always a civilian, with a love of neatly arranged gardens and terraces, and he lays out a _potager_ in the curve of a shell-swept hillside, or a neat flower garden in the crumbled walls of a village house. He makes rings from the aluminum found in German shell-caps, carves the doorposts of his stone dugout, or likenesses of his officers on beam-ends, as I saw in a colonel's quarters in the Bois-le-Pretre. The French soldier remains, even in this bloodiest of wars, always a civilian, a man, capable of laughter and tears, of heroic heights, of chivalrous sacrifices,--with the soul's image of what manhood requires, with the vision of a state of free individual men like himself. * * * * * The New France is inspired with qualities of Old France, qualities which I call Latin, which have emerged into high relief under grief and suffering and effort. It is above all gallant and high-minded. The wounded Frenchman never complains or whimpers. "_C'est la guerre--que voulez-vous!_" To the surgeon who has operated on him,--"_Merci, mon major_." And they lie legless or armless, perhaps with running sores, a smile on the face in answer to the sympathetic word, in long hospital rows.... The fundamental element in this New France is the gravity, the seriousness of it. Of all the warring peoples the French seem to realize most clearly what it all means, what it is for, and the deep import of the decision not merely to them, but to the whole world. They are fighting, not for territory, but for principles. Peace must be not a rearrangement of maps, but of men's ideas, of men's wills. They are the conscious protagonists of a long tradition of ideals that have once more been put in jeopardy. It is the character of this human world of ours which they are struggling to mould, and like actors in a Greek tragedy they are suitably impressed with the gravity of the issue in their hands. The New France has been born in the travail of the monstrous desolation of trench-land that stretches, scabby with shell-holes, leprous with gray wire, pitted with countless graves, scarred with crumbled villages for four hundred miles across the fair fields of _la douce France_. In this savage desert, inhumanly silent except for the shrieking of shells, for now more than a year's time France has struggled with the incarnated spirit of evil, rearing its head again, armed with all the enginery of modern science. The little, dirty-bearded soldiers squat there in their burrows, white-faced, tense, silent, waiting, watching, month after month, or plunge over their walls to give their lives on that death-field outside. They are the simple martyrs of the New France. * * * * * France has learned her German lesson; has reorganized her life to make it tell effectively for her task, has reorganized her inner life, discarding frivolity and waste. She has found herself in the fire. France is not "done for," as my German-American friends so pityingly deem. Bleeding from her terrible wounds, she is stronger today than ever before,--stronger in will, in spirit, in courage, the things that count in the long, long run even in the winning of wars. Technically minded soldiers may judge that "Germany can't be beaten." But the French know in their souls that she can be, that she is beaten today! In this greatest of world's decisions it is the spirit of the Latin that triumphs again--the sanest, suavest, noblest tradition that the earth has ever known, under which men may work out their mysterious destiny. _ |
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