The French soldier, on the other hand, fights under keen excitement.
He is temperamental, imaginative; as he fights he remembers all the bitterness of the past, its wrongs, its cruelties. He sees blood.
There is nothing that will hold him back. The result has made history, is making history to-day.
But he has the reaction of his temperament. Who shall say he is not ent.i.tled to it?
Something of this I mentioned to Monsieur le Commandant as the line filed past.
"It is because it is fighting that gets nowhere," he replied. "If our men, after such an attack, could advance, could do anything but crawl back into holes full of water and mud, you would see them gay and smiling to-day."
After a time I discovered that the same situation holds to a certain extent in all the armies. If his fighting gets him anywhere the soldier is content. The line has made a gain. What matter wet trenches, discomfort, freezing cold? The line has made a gain. It is lack of movement that sends their spirits down, the fearful boredom of the trenches, varied only by the dropping sh.e.l.ls, so that they term themselves, ironically, "Cannon food."
We left the victorious company behind, making their way toward whatever church bedded down with straw, or coach-house or drafty barn was to house them for their rest period.
"They have been fighting waist-deep in water," said the Commandant, "and last night was cold. The British soldier rubs his body with oil and grease before he dresses for the trenches. I hope that before long our men may do this also. It is a great protection."
I have in front of me now a German soldier"s fatigue cap, taken by one of those men from a dead soldier who lay in front of the trench.
It is a pathetic cap, still bearing the crease which showed how he folded it to thrust it into his pocket. When his helmet irked him in the trenches he was allowed to take it
We were out of the town by this time, and started on the road to Ypres. Between Poperinghe and Ypres were numerous small villages with narrow, twisting streets. They were filled with soldiers at rest, with tethered horses being re-shod by army blacksmiths, with small fires in sheltered corners on which an anxious cook had balanced a kettle.
In each town a proclamation had been nailed to a wall and the townspeople stood about it, gaping.
"An inoculation proclamation," explained the Commandant. "There is typhoid here, so the civilians are to be inoculated. They are very much excited about it. It appears to them worse than a bombardment."
We pa.s.sed a file of Spahis, native Algerians who speak Arabic. They come from Tunis and Algeria, and, as may be imagined, they were suffering bitterly from the cold.
They peered at us with bright, black eyes from the encircling folds of the great cloaks with pointed hoods which they had drawn closely about them. They have French officers and interpreters, and during the spring fighting they probably proved very valuable. During the winter they gave me the impression of being out of place and rather forlorn.
Like the Indian troops with the British, they were fighting a new warfare. For gallant charges over dry desert sands had been subst.i.tuted mud and mist and bitter cold, and the stagnation of armies.
Terrible tales have been told of the ferocity of these Arabs, and of the Turcos also. I am inclined to think they are exaggerated. But certainly, met with on a lonely road, these long files of men in their quaint costumes moving silently along with heads lowered against the wind were sombre, impressive and rather alarming.
The car, going furiously, skidded, was pulled sharply round and righted itself. The conversation went on. No one appeared to notice that we had been on the edge of eternity, and it was not for me to mention it. But I made a jerky entry in my notebook:
"Very casual here about human life. Enlarge on this."
The general, who was a Belgian, continued his complaint. It was about the Belgian absentee tax.
The Germans now in control in Belgium had imposed an absentee tax of ten times the normal on all Belgians who had left the country and did not return by the fifteenth of March. The general snorted his rage and disgust.
"But," I said innocently, "I should think it would make very little difference to you. You are not there, so of course you cannot pay it."
"Not there!" he said. "Of course I am not there. But everything I own in the world is there, except this uniform that I have on my back."
"They would confiscate it?" I asked. "Not the uniform, of course; I mean your property."
He broke into a torrent of rapid French. I felt quite sure that he was saying that they would confiscate it; that they would annihilate it, reduce it to its atomic const.i.tuents; take it, acres and buildings and shade trees and vegetable garden, back to Germany. But as his French was of the ninety horse-power variety and mine travels afoot, like Bayard Taylor, and limps at that, I never caught up with him.
Later on, in a calmer moment, I had the thing explained to me.
It appears that the Germans have inst.i.tuted a tax on all the Belgian refugees of ten times the normal tax; the purpose being to bring back into Belgium such refugees as wish to save the remnants of their property. This will mean bringing back people of the better cla.s.s who have property to save. It will mean to the far-seeing German mind a return of the better cla.s.s of Belgians to reorganise things, to put that prostrate country on its feet again, to get the poorer cla.s.ses to work, to make it self-supporting.
"The real purpose, of course," said my informant, "is so that American sympathy, now so potent, will cease for both refugees and interned Belgians. If the factories start, and there is work for them, and the refugees still refuse to return, you can see what it means."
He may be right; I do not think so. I believe that at this moment Germany regards Belgium as a new but integral part of the German Empire, and that she wishes to see this new waste land of hers productive. a.s.suredly Germany has made a serious effort to reorganise and open again some of the great Belgian factories that are now idle.
In one instance that I know of a manufacturer was offered a large guarantee to come back and put his factory into operation again. He refused, although he knew that it spelled ruin. The Germans, unable themselves at this time to put skilled labour in his mill, sent its great machines by railroad back into Germany. I have been told that this has happened in a number of instances. Certainly it sounds entirely probable.
The factory owner in question is in America at the time I am writing this, obtaining credit and new machines against the time of the retirement of the German Army.
From the tax the conversation went on to the finances of Belgium. I learned that the British Government, through the Bank of England, is guaranteeing the payment of the Belgian war indemnity to Germany! The war indemnity is over nineteen million pounds, or approximately ninety-six millions of dollars. Of this the Belgian authorities are instructed to pay over nine million dollars each month.
The Societe Generale de Belgique has been obliged by the German Government to accept the power of issuing notes, on a strict understanding that it must guarantee the note issue on the gold reserve and foreign bill book, which is at present deposited in the Bank of England at London. If the Societe Generale de Belgique had not done so, all notes of the Bank of Belgium would have been declared valueless by Germany.
A very prominent Englishman, married to a Belgian lady, told me a story about this gold reserve which is amusing enough to repeat, and which has a certain appearance of truth.
When the Germans took possession of Brussels, he said, their first move was to send certain officers to the great Brussels Bank, in whose vaults the gold reserve was kept. The word had been sent ahead that they were coming, and demanding that certain high officials of the bank were to be present.
The officials went to the bank, and the German officers presented themselves promptly.
The conversation was brief.
"Take us to the vaults," said one of the German officers.
"To the vaults?" said the princ.i.p.al official of the bank.
"To the vaults," was the curt reply.
"I am not the vault keeper. We shall have to send for him."
The bank official was most courteous, quite bland, indeed. The officer scowled, but there was nothing to do but wait.
The vault keeper was sent for. It took some time to find him.
The bank official commented on the weather, which was, he considered, extremely warm.
At last the vault keeper came. He was quite breathless. But it seemed that, not knowing why he came, he had neglected to bring his keys. The bank official regretted the delay. The officers stamped about.
"It looks like a shower," said the bank official. "Later in the day it may be cooler."
The officers muttered among themselves.
It took the vault keeper a long time to get his keys and return, but at last he arrived. They went down and down, through innumerable doors that must be unlocked before them, through gratings and more steel doors. And at last they stood in the vaults.
The German officers stared about and then turned to the Belgian official.
"The gold!" they said furiously. "Where is the gold?"
"The gold!" said the official, much surprised. "You wished to see the gold? I am sorry. You asked for the vaults and I have shown you the vaults. The gold, of course, is in England."