Wythe Williams

“ Through it all he stands motionless, feet apart, one hand planted on his hip, raising the other to the visor of his hat, peering beneath it straight ahead with unblinking eyes. As the men pass this general without a sword, with no medals, no gold braid, no overcoat—and in old red trousers [Pg 163] —the rain pelting upon him, the look on their faces is one of adoration. It matters not to them that there are no cheering crowds, no crashing bands, no gala atmosphere. The one eye in France that they care about is upon them. ”

“ So while the flames leaped high from the burning city, reddening the sky for miles, while old men prayed, while women wept, while little children whimpered, the sound of martial music was heard down the street near the bridge. The infantry, packed in close formation, the red light from the fire shining on their helmets, were doing the goose step up the main street to the station—the great German army had entered the city of Gerbéviller with the honors of war. ”

“ With all considerations for the statement that the Germans have the greatest fighting machine the world has ever seen, the French army to me seemed invincible from the standpoints of power, intelligence and humanity. This latter quality, judging from the generals in command to the men in the trenches, especially impressed me. I did not and I do not believe that an army with such ideals as the French army can be beaten. ”

“ As for this village, my thoughts continued, this insignificant village of L'Arcouëst, par Ploubazlanec, Côtes du Nord, Brittany—that is the sonorous official address of my tiny hamlet by the sea—why even if it is not in the "zone of military activity," it has all the elements that war brings, from the faded uniforms of blue and red to the black mouths of cannon. It has all the anxiety, all the sorrow, all the hopes and all the prayers. It has all the zeal and all the despair. ”

“ Any one is mistaken who imagines that all Northern France is lost from human view in a dense rolling cloud of battle smoke. At any rate, in the Café d'Or one looked upon life unchanged. True, there were some new clients in the place of old ones. There were a half dozen soldiers in khaki, and we of the American ambulance column, dressed in the same cloth. In a corner sat a young lieutenant in the gorgeous blue of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, drinking vermouth with a grizzled captain of artillery. Other French uniforms dotted the place. ”

“ We were stationed in a city of good size in Northern France, a city famous for its cathedral and its cheese. Just now it was a haven for refugees, and an evacuation center for wounded. The Germans had been there, as the patronne of the café Lion [Pg 131] d'Or narrated at length to every one who would listen; but now the battle lines were some distance away. If the wind came from the right direction when the noise of the city was hushed by military order at nightfall, the haunting boom-boo-o-m of heavy artillery could be faintly heard. No one who has heard that sound ever forgets it. ”

“ Whether General Joseph Joffre is the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, I am unable to even discuss. He is the perfect antithesis of the little Corsican in many ways, and he has tackled a bigger job than Bonaparte ever dreamed of. But the heart of a nation never beat more hopefully than that of the new and united France. ”

“ Ever since, Joffre has given ample evidence of his quality as a master in the art of war, but he has forsaken the code of war known as the Napoleonic strategy which was in brief: "Go where your enemy does not expect you to go." Joffre knows perfectly well that in modern war, over such a vast front, such tactics are impossible; he knows that ninety-nine times out of one hundred your enemy, through his aeroplanes and spies, will know where you are going. ”

“ Unfortunately newspaper correspondents, even Americans, located in the capital of a belligerent power, had officially to think with the authorities, and let the story of the Americans take what place it could find in the jumble of greater and lesser news. True, their story was covered—after a fashion—and the world knew what a real sort of a man the American Ambassador was in the way he protected his people. ”

“ We watch the little girl as she kicks one of the stones loose. Her mother calls to her and she hastily puts it back in position. A tall tree casts a shadow across the center of the mound. Through the top of the tree the rising wind begins to sob, and the rain drops blow into our faces. The mother again calls to the child, who comes back across the road stubbing her toes into the mud.
The chauffeur starts the engine and turns the front of the car so that the headlights are direct on the mound, with its border of stones arranged like toy blocks. ”

“ He knew too that the swollen river Aisne would quite as effectively prevent a German advance. And it did. Joffre did not send reenforcements to Soissons in face of both appeals and public opinion.
Nothing moves him, when he is convinced that he is right. And a general of a combination of armies who doggedly does what he wants to do, whatever any one else thinks about it—who dismisses all opposition with a very quiet wave of the hand, as Joffre does, undoubtedly possesses an overpowering personality. ”

“ The chauffeur has lighted the lamps on the car. We hear the sound of the engine as we hasten through the mud. We are surfeited with devastation, with horror, and with the field of glory. We tell him to hasten toward Meaux where we will take the next train for Paris. He drives us swiftly into the coming night over the hill that looks upon the "Field of Five Thousand Dead." ”

“ He wears a short jacket of the "horizon blue" and no overcoat. He wears the old red trousers of the beginning of the war. His hat, around which you can see the golden band of oak leaves signifying that he is a general, is pulled low over his eyes. Drops of rain are on his grizzled mustache. A leather belt is about his powerful body, but he wears no sword.
Langle de Carry and his officers whirl about quickly at his approach. Every hand is raised in salute. The bulky man touches the visor of his hat in response—then plants both his large ungloved fists upon his hips. ”

“ Joffre is the last man on earth to hold his enemy lightly. No man knows better than he how strong the Germans are. But he will keep up that steady hammering, first at this point—then at that point—then simultaneously all along the line, pressing them back one mile here and two miles there, until the German army is beaten and out of France. That is what has been going on now, although a large scale map is necessary to note just how steadily and how gradually the Germans have been pressed back everywhere by the advancing French wall of steel. ”

“ On a hill commanding a valley stretching away toward the Rhine is a dense pine forest. From its edge I looked far across the frontier of Germany.
In a little clearing a French artillery Major came to meet me and my guide. Then we walked for miles, it seemed, through dense shade over paths thick with needles, until we came upon an artillery encampment. From the conversation between my guide—a Captain of the General Staff—and the artillery Major I learned that we were about to see something new in cannon.
I am always eager to see something new in cannon. ”

“ Then one Sunday morning, when it was considered impossible to keep back the truth much longer, a casual communiqué mentioned the fighting line "on the Somme." The press of the world, which had been deliberately kept in the dark for days, can scarcely be blamed for losing its head a trifle and printing scare headlines unprecedented since news became a commodity.
The greatest of all war fakes, and one that had not the slightest foundation of truth, is the story of the Russian army rushed from Archangel to Scotland, thence through England to France to aid at the battle of the Marne. ”

“ The tourists could not understand our point of view that perhaps, after all, Paris instead of Belgium would produce the biggest story of the war.
I was on one amusing occasion the "horrible example" of the man who would not leave town, in a little sidewalk drama whose stellar rôle was played by one of the best known American actors. On one of the first evenings after mobilization I decided to go to our consulate, then in the Avenue de l'Opera, in order to learn the number of people applying for aid and learn if possible the approximate number of American tourists in Paris. ”

“ I have often wished when traveling in Europe that so many American tourists would not so constantly keep America and Americanism in the foreground of everything they thought and said and did—but on that night in the Cherche Midi I was as blatant and noisy and proud an American as ever there was. ”

“ He told me no names—no details—but he gave me the news appearing in the official communiqués three full days later;—that the British had been forced back at Mons—the French defeated at Charleroi, and that the entire Allied line was retreating. I did not learn where the line was. But as I left the Embassy I realized that France was invaded; I realized that the greatest story in the world was at hand. The fear was upon me, although I failed to grasp it entirely, that this was a story which in its entirety would never be written for a newspaper. ”

“ There was the same swing outward of the arm, the same rigid formality of bringing his hand to the helmet. The pomposity of the salute he may have learned from Porthos, but the dignity, the impressiveness of it, belonged to d'Artagnan.
His soldiers adored him; we could see that as we followed. Their eyes smiled and approved. And the stamp of great admiration was in their faces.
"They would go through hell with him," said my companion. "A good many of them have. He is the favorite of his brigade."
"He ought to be," I replied. "He is d'Artagnan."
"D'Artagnan!" my companion cried. "Why, so he is. ”

“ Twelve hours later I was standing on an old stone jetty that runs out to meet the forty-foot tides on the north coast of Brittany. It was as far away as I could get and still retain an official connection as correspondent with the French army. The tiny hamlet at the end of the jetty has an official name. The name does not matter. There is no railroad, no post office, no telegraph. But the place is known because it was there that Pierre Loti wrote his great story of the Iceland Fisherman. ”

“ It's Friday. Why?" He replied, "Because it is so still. Did you ever see a place where people live that is so completely silent?" "It reminds me of London on Good Friday—everybody gone to church," said another.
We drove on. A block along the main street a soldier in the French uniform of the line lounged in a doorway. His long blue overcoat flapped desolately over his baggy red trousers. His rifle leaned in the corner. We asked if any hotel remained open. He replied, "I don't know. Have you a cigarette?" I drew out a box and he ran to the car, seizing it as a hungry animal snatches food. ”

“ Yes! dimples, for although Sister Julie is small, she is undeniably plump. She has dimples in her cheeks and in her chin—chins I might say. She even has dimples on the knuckles of her hands, after the fashion of babies. Her face is round and rosy. Her voice low and mellow. She looks only about forty of her sixty years—a woman who seems to have taken life as something that is always good. Evil and Germans seem never to have entered her door.
Then I remembered what this woman had done; how all France is talking about her and is proud of her. ”

“ Artillery is entirely impersonal; you know that the gunners do not see you; that they are firing by arithmetic at a certain range; that their shell is not intended for any one in particular. So you walk on, among daisies and buttercups. You calculate the distance between you and the bursting shell. You somehow feel that nothing will harm you. ”

“ I wanted it as a proof of those hard days and sometimes harder nights, when my profession was blotted from my mind—and copy didn't matter—I wanted it because it was my badge when I was an ambulance orderly carrying wounded men, when I came to feel that I was contributing something after all, although a neutral, toward the great sacrifice of the country that sheltered me. I shall keep it always for many things that I saw and heard; but I cherish it most for my recollection of Trevelyan—the Rue Jeanne [Pg 124] d'Arc and those from a locality called Quesnoy-sur-Somme. ”

“ SISTER JULIE, CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOR
A little round apple dumpling sort of woman in nun's costume was bobbing a curtsy to me from the doorway. In excited French she begged me to be seated. For I was "Monsieur l'Américain" who had come to visit Gerbéviller, the little community nestling in the foothills of the Vosges, that has suffered quite as much from Germans as any city, even those in Belgium. It was her "grand pleasure" that I should come to visit her. ”

“ Through that clump of trees sticking up in the mud, are little crosses marking the graves of the dead.
Fifteen thousand of the victorious troops will pass in review to-day before the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies. Down across the field you can hear the distant notes of a bugle. They are taken up by other buglers at various points. Then across the field comes a regimental band. The players have been in the charge too—with rifles instead of musical instruments. This is their first chance to play in months—and play they do. ”

“ On the sidewalk terrasse of a little café a few doors from the American Embassy I was one of a quartet of newspaper men on one of the final afternoons of August, 1914.
War news, thanks to the censor, had lapsed in volume and intensity; but the troubles of refugee Americans still made our cables bulky, and we continued to pass much time at the Embassy or in its vicinity.
A man wabbled wearily down the street on a bicycle. ”