"That must have been pretty constant thundering?"
"Yes, but very soon we did not think of it. In the little bombardments you hear the sh.e.l.ls coming and try to get to shelter, but, in those great days, when it is going on all the time, you can no longer distinguish anything, it is a continual noise, a kind of huge snoring.
Then you are quite calm."
[Sidenote: They do not speak of what they have done or seen.]
These are a few ill.u.s.trations, a few rays of light, such as one still gets sometimes. I do not know if they will become more frequent with the new evolution of the War. They have been rare, and never followed by long expansiveness. Our wounded soldier of the fourth year of the War did not like to speak of what he had done nor of what he had seen. What may be the reasons for his silence? In seeking to interpret them we penetrate a little into the psychology of this taciturn man.
[Sidenote: The soldier plays an impersonal part.]
First, his impressions of the War are no longer fresh and now he would have some difficulty in a.n.a.lyzing them. It is as with ourselves in a new country: at first we have a thousand things to describe in our letters; after that nothing strikes us any longer. This pa.s.sage to a sort of unconsciousness is the easier for the soldier as he plays a more impersonal part in the War; a simple cell in a great organism, a simple wheel in an enormous machine, quite beyond his comprehension in its learned complication. Catastrophes happen to him but no adventures: he may be wounded, he may be killed, nothing else. This is no material for fine stories.
A deeper reason for the silence of the witness, or rather the actor, in the great drama of the War, is a very just realization of the impossibility of conveying any idea of it to those who have never been there. It is so very different from anything they know; so out of proportion to the normal life of human beings.
[Sidenote: The wounded man does not like to think of war.]
To these intellectual motives may be added one of feeling. The wounded soldier does not like to speak of the War because he does not like to think of it: there are too many horrors; he has had to bear too many privations, too much suffering. As soon as he finds himself out of it, he tries to turn his mind away from it as much as possible, and to shake off the impression of it, as the sick man in the morning shakes off his fevered nightmare. Later on, doubtless, when his memories have lost their keen edge, they may attract him again. All he asks for the moment is to forget. One thing especially afflicts his heart and tightens his lips: it is the thought of the comrades he has lost.
Such are the reasons why the later wounded, differing from those at the beginning of the War, shut themselves up in a silence full of gravity.
[Sidenote: The men in hospital are grateful.]
[Sidenote: Infirmities are less felt.]
In spite of this, however, you would have a false idea of the military hospital if you thought of it as a place of mournful desolation.
Doubtless our earlier patients regained their spirits more quickly, having no years of suffering behind them. But the quiet and serious resignation which reigns in the hospital of to-day does not exclude a certain sweetness; the wounded man appreciates the intelligent and devoted care lavished upon him, he congratulates himself and thanks G.o.d for having escaped from mortal peril, for not having fallen to the bottom of the abyss, for remounting now the slope at the summit of which he has a glimpse of the recovery of his strength and activity. If his wound leaves no serious traces, he rejoices to live again as he did before; if it has deprived him of the use of his limbs or of some necessary organ, he consoles himself by the thought that the War is over for him and that soon he will take his place at home. His infirmities, which perhaps will weigh more heavily upon him later, he feels less here, where they are the normal thing and where it is the exception to appear intact.
It is a rest for him not to hear the voice of the cannon. And he likes the moral peace with which the wise kindness of the doctors, the devotion of the nurses, the friendship of the chaplain, surround him; he especially enjoys the many letters he receives from his family, and those which he slowly writes himself, or dictates to an amiable neighbor. Often he has friends and relatives in the neighborhood who come to see him, but what he likes best of all is the visit from his family, his mother, father, wife, his young children.
[Sidenote: A dying man is decorated.]
[Sidenote: A legacy of honor for his family.]
Another joy in the life of our wounded is the announcement and then the presentation of his decoration. Once, however, I saw the Cross of Honor received with no sign of satisfaction at all, but that was because it came too late, and its recipient, one of my friends, a brave officer, was about to receive another recompense in heaven. It was very affecting to see the decoration laid on that already gasping breast, without any consciousness on the part of the poor hero. His mother and wife, at least, before they buried him, could take the glorious emblem to hand down as heirloom and as instruction to his three little ones. It is a n.o.ble idea of the French Government, to give the decorations of soldiers killed by the enemy to their families--their widows, their orphans, or, if they are not married, to their old parents. During these years filled with emotion, few spectacles have impressed me so deeply as the ceremony of "taking arms" in the court of honor of the Invalides, when in this historic monument, built by Louis XIV. and now the tomb of Napoleon, a General of the Third Republic gave the emblem of the brave to women and children dressed in mourning, at the same time as to rough soldiers newly healed of their wounds and ready to return to the front.
[Sidenote: The return to the front.]
[Sidenote: Often impatient to rejoin his comrades.]
Return to the front!... This is the almost invariable ending of the history of our wounded soldier of the fourth year of the War. Return to the front! Never will the heroism required for the acceptance of such a duty be sufficiently admired! After three years of fatigue, privations, of unheard-of dangers, after one or several wounds which brought him within an inch of death, this man who has for long months felt the sweetness, the care, the calm of a comfortable hospital; has had a taste of the charms of family life once more; has little by little turned his thought away from the horrors of war, now he is sent back, to the depot, from which he knows that before long he will be called again to the front! And he submits, resigns himself: what do I say? Often impatient of inaction, of the little rules which annoy his independent temper, he asks to go in advance of the call, to rejoin as a volunteer and without further delay his comrades of Champagne, Lorraine, Flanders or Picardy.
He reenters his regiment as the traveler reenters his own country, and his only sadness is to find that during his absence so many old comrades have fallen, so many newcomers have filled the gaps. But the welcome of the survivors warms his heart.
[Sidenote: He goes into the trenches at night.]
Although it is night--for only at night do they go into the trenches--the sky is ploughed with illuminating fireworks, with projections and projectiles, of various kinds which bursting sow quick flashes of light, and a death often as prompt. In a maze of narrow and complicated paths our friend advances without knowing where and feeling his way: nearer and nearer he approaches to enemies whose sleepless hate growls menacingly below his feet in the ground, around him on the earth, above him in the sky filled with sinister gleams. He goes his way without enthusiasm, but without hesitation, without boasting, but without fear, knowing by long experience what peril he runs, but offering himself calmly to his formidable destiny, ready to answer: "Present!" if G.o.d and his country demand his life.
[Sidenote: There are no heroes in past history so grand.]
What hero in all the centuries of history attains to the grandeur of our hero? Who ever defended, in a war so terrible, a cause so important to the future of the world? Who has striven so hard, suffered so much, so often pa.s.sed through death? To prove himself equal to his high mission, he has had to rid himself of all egoism, renounce lucre and vain honors, sacrifice family joys; many times he has known the worst extremes of weariness, thirst, hunger and cold; he equals and surpa.s.ses in austerity the severest of monks; he practices an obedience and humility that monasteries and Thebaides know nothing of, constantly ready to expose himself, as soon as he receives the order, to a terrible and invisible death. No one ever more completely obeyed the counsels of Christ: "If you will be perfect, leave your father and mother, your wife, forsake your possessions, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Me."
[Sidenote: Humanity has never shown such moral grandeur.]
Those among these brave men who have faith, are conscious of such supernatural life and their letters--admirable collections have been published--reflect a light of authentic saintliness. The others, too, without knowing it, walk in the footsteps of Christ; at the moment of supreme sacrifice He will enlighten them with the brightness of His grace and will admit them, like their believing brothers, into the heaven promised to those who suffer for righteousness. Humanity which has never known horrors like those it is enduring now, has also never shown such moral grandeur, and it is not astonishing that in face of such great crimes and such great virtues, our soul should pause, breathless, incapable of expressing the excess of its emotion.
[Sidenote: The devoted war of the American public for the wounded.]
I cannot speak to the great American public about our wounded, without saying how much we appreciate the fact that it has followed them, with admirable solicitude, all the length of their hard Calvary. Its stretcher-bearers have helped us rescue them at the front, its ambulances have carried them to our hospitals, where they have found its doctors, its nurses to tend their wounds, its offerings of all kinds to a.s.sure their material well-being and their moral comfort. And in after-care it has not been less solicitous: teaching the blind, reeducating the maimed and giving them the costly apparatus which take the place of their lost limbs. When they could not survive, despite efforts of science and devotion, it contributed toward a.s.suring the future of their widows and orphans.
America to-day gives us even her blood; she has from the first given us her gold, given her heart!
Copyright, Catholic World, October, 1918.
The great series of battles, known in general as the Battle of Picardy, formed a prelude to the final acts of the war. A stirring account of these battles is given in the narrative which follows.
THE BATTLE OF PICARDY
J.B.W. GARDINER
[Sidenote: Possibly the decisive battle of the war.]
[Sidenote: Germany will emerge victor or vanquished.]
On March 21st, 1918, Germany opened the great engagement which will probably prove to be the decisive battle of the war. This designation has already, but not altogether correctly, been given to the Battle of the Marne. The Marne did decide that the Germans were not to capture Paris in their first great rush through Belgium and France. It did not only halt the German advance, but threw it back behind the Aisne, thus preventing Germany from winning the war in 1914. But it did not defeat the German army decisively. Nor did it make an ultimate German victory impossible. It left the German army still in the field, its strength practically unimpaired, still capable of strong defense, still with great striking power in attack. It made possible for the future a decisive Allied victory, but it did not achieve it. The German defeat at Verdun, indeed, did more harm to the German army, lessened to a greater extent its power of defense and its strength to attack than did the Marne, because through the French defense and counter-efforts, the German army lost nearly half a million men. But the battle now raging, which for convenience of reference is called the Battle of Picardy (although it embraces Picardy, Artois, and Flanders), will do more than did either the Marne or Verdun. It will place irrevocably and unmistakably upon Germany the laurel of victory or the th.o.r.n.y crown of defeat. It is, therefore, the decisive battle of the war. It is the final struggle of the civilized world against the domination of the beast. It is Germany"s final effort, and, in order that this may be appreciated, it is necessary only to recount the conditions which impelled Germany to take the offensive at this time.
[Sidenote: Germany"s eastern ambitions attained.]
[Sidenote: A peace by compromise would be a German victory.]
The developments in Russia, so entirely favorable to Germany, led many to believe that, having attained so completely their eastern ambitions, the German leaders would rest content with what they had, and, strengthening their lines in the west through reinforcements drawn from the Russian front, remain on the defensive on the western front until a peace could be arranged. With the German talons firmly fixed in the throat of Ukraine; with Poland, Courland, and Lithuania practically annexed, there was a certain element of reason in this contention. It was entirely conceivable that with such strength in the west, Germany could set in motion the machinery of a peace propaganda, and obtain a peace conference which would enable her to work out a programme of concessions in the west for concessions in the east--a peace by compromise which would answer present needs while furnishing all future requirements in case she decided to provoke another war. Thus Germany would end the war with a victory just as truly as if she had won it on the field of battle, and without the terrific loss in man power that an offensive on the western front would entail.
[Sidenote: The Allies refuse a peace by compromise.]
In constructing this theory, however, certain essentials were ignored.
German voraciousness can never be satisfied. It is a bottomless pit which can be filled only by pouring into it the world. When there is nothing more to be had, Germany would perforce rest content. The possession of Russia only whetted her appet.i.te for France and Belgium and the life of England. Moreover, the Allies, having now learned Germany, and having acquired a sense of their own safety and of the future peace of the world, had no thought of permitting Germany to remain in possession of western Russia, of Serbia, and of Rumania, and thereby not only perpetuating but actually aggravating the condition out of which grew the present war. They had, therefore, notified Germany that they would lay down arms only when she was willing to disgorge what she and her allies had swallowed, and had rectified their frontiers in accordance with President Wilson"s fourteen conditions and with Lloyd George"s statement on the same subject.
In other words, Germany was to be permitted to emerge from the war with a profit only through military victory; she would have to defend her conquests. This negatived the idea of a peace through negotiation.
[Sidenote: The German people equally to blame with their government.]
[Sidenote: The letter to Prince Sixtus.]