I found myself in the midst of a new and extraordinary activity of the French and English Armies. Regiments were being rushed up to the centre of the allied forces toward Creil, Montdidier, and Noyon. That was before last Tuesday, when the English troops [Transcriber: original "toops"] were fighting hard at Creil.
This great movement continued for several days, putting to a severe test the French railway system, which is so wonderfully organized that it achieved this mighty transportation of troops with clockwork regularity.
Working to a time table dictated by some great brain which in Headquarters Staff of the French Army, calculated with perfect precision the conditions of a network of lines on which troop trains might be run to a given point. It was an immense victory of organization, and a movement which heartened one observer at least to believe that the German deathblow would again be averted.
I saw regiment after regiment entraining. Men from the Southern Provinces, speaking the patois of the South; men from the Eastern Departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Chalons and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre of France, in garrisons along the Loire. They were all in splendid spirits and utterly undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance.
"It is nothing, my little one," said a dirty, unshaved gentleman with the laughing eyes of a D"Artagnan; "we shall bite their heads off. These brutal bosches are going to put themselves in a guetapens, a veritable deathtrap. We shall have them at last."
Many of them had fought at Longwy and along the heights of the Vosges.
The youngest of them had bristling beards, their blue coats with turned-back flaps were war worn and flanked with the dust of long marches; their red trousers were sloppy and stained, but they had not forgotten how to laugh, and the gallantry of their spirits was a joy to see.
They are very proud, these French soldiers, of fighting side by side with their old foes. The English now, after long centuries of strife, from Edward, the Black Prince, to Wellington, are their brothers-in-arms upon the battlefields, and because I am English they offered me their cigarettes and made me one of them. But I realized even then that the individual is of no account in this inhuman business of war.
It is only ma.s.ses of men that matter, moved by common obedience at the dictation of mysterious far-off powers, and I thanked Heaven that ma.s.ses of men were on the move rapidly in vast numbers and in the right direction to support the French lines which had fallen back from Amiens a few hours before I left that town, and whom I had followed in their retirement, back and back, with the English always strengthening their left, but retiring with them almost to the outskirts of Paris itself.
Only this could save Paris--the rapid strengthening of the allied front by enormous reserves strong enough to hold back the arrow-shaped battering ram of the enemy"s main army.
Undoubtedly the French Headquarters Staff was working heroically and with fine intelligence to save the situation at the very gates of Paris.
The country was being swept absolutely clean of troops in all parts of France, where they had been waiting as reserves.
It was astounding to me to see, after those three days of rushing troop trains and of crowded stations not large enough to contain the regiments, how on Thursday, Friday, and Sat.u.r.day last an air of profound solitude and peace had taken possession of all these routes.
In my long journey through and about France and circling round Paris I found myself wondering sometimes whether all this war had not been a dreadful illusion without reality, and a transformation had taken place, startling in its change, from military turmoil to rural peace.
Dijon was emptied of its troops. The road to Chalons was deserted by all but fugitives. The great armed camp at Chalons itself had been cleared out except for a small garrison. The troops at Tours had gone northward to the French centre. All our English reserves had been rushed up to the front from Havre and Rouen.
There was only one deduction to be drawn from this great, swift movement--the French and English lines had been supported by every available battalion to save Paris from its menace of destruction, to meet the weight of the enemy"s metal by a force strong enough to resist its mighty ma.s.s.
It was still possible that the Germans might be smashed on their left wing, hurled back to the west between Paris and the sea, and cut off from their line of communications. It was undoubtedly this impending peril which scared the enemy"s Headquarters Staff and upset all its calculations. They had not antic.i.p.ated the rapidity of the supporting movement of the allied armies, and at the very gates of Paris they saw themselves balked of their prize, the greatest prize of the war, by the necessity of changing front.
To do them justice, they realized instantly the new order of things, and with quick and marvelous decision did not hesitate to alter the direction of their main force. Instead of proceeding to the west of Paris they swung round steadily to the southeast in order to keep their armies away from the enveloping movement of the French and English and drive their famous wedge-like formation southward for the purpose of dividing the allied forces of the west from the French Army of the East.
The miraculous had happened, and Paris, for a little time at least, is unmolested.
That brings me back to the fighting at Creil and Compiegne, which preceded from last Tuesday until two days later.
The guns were at work at midnight on Tuesday when I pa.s.sed the English Headquarters. This battle had only one purpose so far as the Germans were concerned. It was to keep our British soldiers busy, as well as to hold the front of the French allies on our right, while their debordant movements took place behind this fighting screen.
Once again, as throughout the war, they showed their immense superiority in mitrailleuses, which gives them marvelous mobility and a very deadly advantage. They masked these quick-firers with great skill until they had drawn on the English and French infantry and then spilled lead into their ranks. Once again, also the French were too impetuous, as they have always been, and as they still are, in spite of Gen. Joffre"s severe rebuke.
Careless of quick-firers, which experience should have taught them were masked behind the enemy"s advance posts, they charged with the bayonet, and suffered needlessly heavy losses. One can only admire the gallantry of men who dare to charge on foot against the enemy"s mounted men and who actually put a squadron of them to flight, but one must say again: "C"est magnifique, mais ce n"est pas la guerre."
There have been many incidents of heroism in these last days of fighting. It is, for instance, immensely characteristic of the French spirit that an infantry battalion, having put to flight a detachment of German outposts in the forest of Compiegne, calmly sat down to have a picnic in the woods until, as they sat over their hot soup, laughing at their exploit, they were attacked by a new force and cut to pieces.
But let me describe the new significance of the main German advance.
Their right army has struck down to the southeast of Paris, through Chateau Thiery to La Ferte-sur-Jouarre and beyond. Their centre army is coming hard down from Troyes, in the Department of the Aube, and the army of the left has forced the French to evacuate Rheims and fall back in a southwesterly direction.
It would not be right of me to indicate the present position of the British troops or describe the great scenes at their base, which is now removed to a position which enables our forces to hold the eastern approach to Paris. It is a wonderful sight to pa.s.s the commissariat camp, where, among other munitions of war, is a park of British aeroplanes, which are of vital importance to our work of reconnoissance.
Looking, therefore, at the extraordinary transformation throughout the field of war in France, one thing stands out clear-cut and distinct.
Having been thwarted in their purpose to walk through the western way to Paris by the enormous forces ma.s.sed on their flanks, the Germans have adopted an entirely new plan of campaign and have thrust their armies deep down into the centre of France in order to divide the western armies of the Allies from the army on the eastern frontier. It is a menacing manoeuvre, and it cannot be hidden that the army of Lorraine is in danger of being cut off by the enemy"s armies of the left.
At the same time the German right is swinging round in a southwesterly direction in order to attack the allied forces on the east and south.
Paris is thus left out of account for the time being, but it depends upon the issues of the next few days whether the threatened peril will be averted from it by the immense army now protecting it. I believe the spirit of our own troops and their French comrades is so splendid that with their new strength they will be equal to that formidable attack.
Nothing certainly is being left to chance. For miles all around Paris trenches are being dug in the roads, and little sectional trenches on the broad roads of France, first one on this side of the way, and then one on the other side, so that a motor car traveling along the road has to drive in a series of sharp curves to avoid pitfalls.
There was feverish activity on the west side of the Paris fortifications when I pa.s.sed between St. Germain and St. Denis.
Earthworks are being constantly thrown up between the forts, and the triple curves of the Seine are being intrenched so that thousands of men may take cover there and form a terrific defense against any attack.
Gen. Gallieni, the Military Governor of Paris, is a man of energy and iron resolution, and no doubt under his command Paris, if it has to undergo a siege, (which G.o.d avert!) will defend itself well, now that it has had these precious days of respite.
After wandering along the westerly and southerly roads I started for Paris when thousands and scores of thousands were flying from it. At that time I believed, as all France believed, that in a few hours German sh.e.l.ls would be crashing across the fortifications of the city and that Paris the beautiful would be Paris the infernal. It needed a good deal of resolution on my part to go deliberately to a city from which the population was fleeing, and I confess quite honestly that I had a nasty sensation in the neighborhood of my waistcoat b.u.t.tons at the thought.
Along the road from Tours to Paris there were sixty unbroken miles of people--on my honor, I do not exaggerate, but write the absolute truth.
They were all people who had despaired of breaking through the dense ma.s.ses of their fellow-citizens camped around the railway stations, and had decided to take to the roads as the only way of escape.
The vehicles were taxicabs, for which the rich paid fabulous prices; motor cars which had escaped military requisition, farmers" carts laden with several families and piles of household goods, shop carts drawn by horses already tired to the point of death because of the weight of the people who crowded behind pony traps and governess carts.
Many persons, well dressed and belonging obviously to well-to-do bourgeoisie, were wheeling barrows like costers, but instead of trundling cabbages were pushing forward sleeping babies and little children, who seemed on the first stage to find new amus.e.m.e.nt and excitement in the journey from home; but for the most part they trudged along bravely, carrying their babies and holding the hands of their little ones.
They were of all cla.s.ses, rank and fortune being annihilated by the common tragedy. Elegant women whose beauty is known in Paris salons, whose frivolity, perhaps, in the past was the main purpose of their life, were now on a level with the peasant mothers of the French suburbs and with the midinettes of Montmartre, and their courage did not fail them so quickly.
I looked into many proud, brave faces of these delicate women, walking in high-heeled shoes, all too frail for the hard-dusty roadways. They belonged to the same race and breed as those ladies who defied death with fine disdain upon the scaffold of the guillotine in the great Revolution.
They were leaving Paris now, not because of any fears for themselves--I believe they were fearless--but because they had decided to save the little sons and daughters of soldier fathers.
This great army in retreat was made up of every type familiar in Paris.
Here were women of the gay world, poor creatures whose painted faces had been washed with tears, and whose tight skirts and white stockings were never made for a long march down the highways of France.
Here also were thousands of those poor old ladies who live on a few francs a week in the top attics of the Paris streets, which Balzac knew; they had fled from their poor sanctuaries and some of them were still carrying cats and canaries, as dear to them as their own lives.
There was one young woman who walked with a pet monkey on her shoulder while she carried a bird in a golden cage. Old men, who remembered 1870, gave their arms to old ladies to whom they had made love when the Prussians were at the gates of Paris then.
It was pitiful to see these old people now hobbling along together.
Pitiful, but beautiful also, because of their lasting love.
Young boy students, with ties as black as their hats and rat-tail hair, marched in small companies of comrades, singing brave songs, as though they had no fear in their hearts, and very little food, I think, in their stomachs.
Shopgirls and concierges, city clerks, old aristocrats, young boys and girls, who supported grandfathers and grandmothers and carried new-born babies and gave pick-a-back rides to little brothers and sisters, came along the way of retreat.
Each human being in the vast torrent of life will have an unforgettable story of adventure to tell if life remains. As a novelist I should have been glad to get their narratives along this road for a great story of suffering and strange adventure, but there was no time for that and no excuse.
When I met many of them they were almost beyond the power of words. The hot sun of this September had beaten down upon them--scorching them as in the glow of molten metal. Their tongues clave to their mouths with thirst.
Some of them had that wild look in their eyes which is the first sign of the delirium of thirst and fatigue.