Gaston Riou

“ It will be so easy, when the right moment comes, to befool you. It will be so easy for the wolf to appear in sheep’s clothing; to masquerade as a victim; to pretend that Germany has been invaded; to give to a war of aggression and conquest the sacred aspect of a war of national defence!
“Let us suppose that, through ill-luck, the war ends in a German success. Good-bye, then, to your dreams, to European idealism, to democratic dogmas. Great will be the discomfiture of your Tugendbund. ”

“ It seemed to me that the proud Helvetians of Morgarten and Sempach, these forefathers of democracy and liberty, had emerged from their national Grütli to line the road in our honour, and to give their blessing to the sons of the young republic.
I cannot describe the mad jubilation which surged through our veins. France! France the beloved! France of our blood and our heart. France the eternal, resuscitated by the German aggression, once more become the champion of freedom. France hailed by the neutrals, and by all men who respect the right! ”

“ Having walked out to this battery, I enjoyed the only sight of beauty I had during my campaign.
In the calm air, the smoke plumes of the German shrapnel looked like fireworks. Near by, one of our regiments, spread out like a fan, was advancing through the oats. The men had spent the night in the barracks of the light horse. Further on, in the stubble and the green fields, under a rain of shells, the Alpinists were at work with their rifles, in cheerful mood. In good order they mounted the northern slope of the smiling basin between Dieuze and Vargaville. ”

“ Détry was pelting Durupt with gibes. “Old Aristides the Just, you will never know how to manage men. Georg is like all the Bavarians in our guard—he thinks first of all of his own skin, and next he likes to enjoy himself. Don’t you talk to me about German honour and German virtue. These fellows are very fond of sonorous phrases, but they can’t resist a modest tip!” No doubt Détry was exaggerating a little.
Georg is no longer gay. Closed, alas, his Fort Orff campaign, his campaign of junketings and sensual enjoyments. Now he is to have a taste of real war. ”

“ A semblance of social life declares itself. Broken to pieces a few months ago by the sudden call to arms, flattened out and pulverized by the forces of hunger and tedium, the world that existed before the mobilization begins to reconstitute itself. By a sort of spontaneous generation, the eternal society rises anew from the void, with its groups of leaders and of poets, of traders and of artisans, with its classes of profiteers and of exploited, of originators and of simple executants. ”

“ I run like a madman; I stop when I hear the whistling of the German projectiles I stretch myself at full length on the ground they fall two hundred yards from me and then come nearer. At length I give myself up for lost, I loose my head more and more however I think much of Rive-de-Gier of my dear employers of my dear love also of my brother and sister-in-law and of my dear little niece in fact of every one dear to me and it is with sorrow that I see the shells raning round me I ast myself if I shall ever see again this dear family, this idol which I carry in my heart. ”

“ The sky is blue. A huge cloud, white and shining, rolls towards the north.
Why do I feel so lightsome this morning? Is it possible that I am once more what I was before the war?
If only the end were nearing, the end of the long miseries of winter in the lousy, stinking, and chattering casemate! If an end were nearing to the sterile cackle, the disquisitions on strategy, the disputes, and the lamentations, to all that a discontented crowd exhales, through the empty hours, in the way of physical boredom and of melancholy! ”

“ It is strange. I had forgotten my captivity. I had forgotten the war, the battlefields of Lorraine, Belgium, and Poland. I had forgotten the terrible nights spent upon the bloody field of Kerprich. As I looked at the slender steeple of Hepperg church rising above the morning mist-wreaths, the only visions I had were those of a world at peace. The little yellowing birches on the slopes had transported me to Dully. ”

“ The branches and faded foliage of the oaks, dry and nipped by the frost, rustled in the chill wind; the pine needles, interlaced with gossamer, reddened by many sunsets, whispered and murmured. We were a silent company, Baron von Stengel, Major Langlois, MM. Jeandidier, Cavaillé, Lœbre, Romant, Bouvat, my friend Laloux, and myself. The vastness of the prospect, the silence of the fields, the fading of the light, the shivering of the undergrowth in the twilight, the strange sensation of being suddenly plunged into the heart of winter—all these influences combined to keep us mute. ”

“ Marcel Chabrières had spent the morning at the museum among the tinted marbles of Max Klinger. He was astonished to find that I was already on a friendly footing, almost intimate indeed, with this young German.
Enthusiasm is the bread of youth. Youth loves the impossible, and will accept life only through a passion which colours it with iridescent hues, invests it with a halo, and endows it with heroic lineaments. ”

“ He wields authority so naturally, and is so free from hauteur, that no one dreams of murmuring. He has worked the miracle of uniting in a sentiment of respect for his personality all the inhabitants of this little France of Fort Orff, this miniature of great France, the factious and ungovernable nation, the nation of eternal discontent. He is so obviously straightforward and humane that the most savage of our prisoners would protest if any one, suddenly seized by an evil whimsy, should desire to make this good old man of the great century responsible for our short commons. ”

“ In the icy wind, the white of their stems standing out against the greenish-black of the acacias in the ditch had a somewhat funereal air.
“War,” said von Stengel, “is an essential condition of social life. Without war, the human race would become anæmic, would slip back into barbarism, ignorance, and hebetude. Even though man loves peace, he must also be a great fighter before the Lord, ein Streiter vor dem Herrn. Do not imagine that wars are the work of a few men; the ferment works in the very heart of the race, and when this happens the maintenance of peace becomes impossible. ”

“ Here and there, beside the footpath, a few trees are growing—a young oak, stunted and gnarled, some dwarf poplars, a raspberry bush, a hawthorn. Across the ditch, [136] capping the masonry and hiding the view of the plain, is the grassy covering of the first glacis, thickly set with wild rose-trees reddened with hips and haws, and displaying at intervals the silver and golden tints of beautiful little birches. Beyond the two slopes there is nothing to be seen, nothing but the sky. This morning the blue was of a tender liquid tint. ”

“ There is a circle round each improvized kitchen: some dry and break up the small branches rifled from the trees of the fort; some tend the refractory fire, for the wood will not flame; some agitate the contents of the mess-tins—fragments of stolen meat, choice morsels of vegetable peelings, coffee dregs begged from the kitchen, potatoes pocketed when the dinner was being prepared, edible snails found on the grass on rainy mornings and kept fasting in an old cigar-box, cheese-rind, plum mushrooms, wild chicory. ”

“ The air is filled with the sound of bells. The deep notes of those of Ingolstadt mingle with the brighter chimes of Hepperg, Wegstetten, and Lenting. The cocks are crowing. The crows are flying at a great height, and the harmonious silence is broken from time to time by their croakings. Everything glistens. The sky is superb. The earth rejoices. The soul finds refreshment and delight in the elysian dawn. ”

“ The round coming to call the roll stops sometimes outside the door to listen for a moment to these graceful melodies, so different from the German Choral and the German Lied. But the thick crypts and walls muffle these concerts. The fort is not disturbed by them. Even the nearest casemate will only become aware at intervals, and remotely, of the sound of melody. The long corridors, to which the sun never penetrates, are already as quiet, as mournfully quiet, as they are during the heaviest hours before the dawn. ”

“ Stiff as ever, the Oberleutnant bows to each in turn, to the infantry of the line, to the chasseurs à pied, to the chasseurs alpins, to the artillery, to the engineers, to the hussars. They are tall, handsome fellows, of the same type as the grand old von Stengel. We can hardly believe that we are in Germany. We are sincerely affected, quite free from self-consciousness. The baron speaks to us as friends. At his age, when the events that one can look forward to are numbered, everything seems of importance. ”

“ Love is an easy word to say. We have so often been told that the Germans loved Germany, that they were the true patriots, while we, the French, were nothing but anarchists. Yet, after a year of war, these Gallic “grumblers,” who are always wrangling, who take ideas into their heads, and who hold to these ideas so firmly [310] that you sometimes hear them cry, “Perish countries, so long as principle lives and humanity becomes established”—these ungovernable and intractable “anarchists” remain a single body and soul, exhibit infinite patience, and continue the most formidable warlike efforts. ”

“ The man within us is formed by leisure. Work produces money, money produces leisure, and leisure produces more work—but this last is noble, lofty, and disinterested work, the true work of humanity. With me it is an article of faith that the true work of humanity is the work of leisure. Thank goodness I have now a little leisure and solitude.
My solitude, a very precarious one, is a kitchen. You must not laugh.
Near the door of the huge room is the region of the cooking stoves, encumbered, filled with iron and smoke, under the care of Bouquet, the “chef,” a delicate and gentle lad from Quercy. ”

“ I walked smartly along the broad path which surmounts the escarp. When we arrived at the fort, this path, like the other parapets, was covered with moss and turf; but now, through our continual walking on it, the grass has been worn away. It has become a road.
[131]
Though I am a sociable creature, and delight in company, I find it extraordinarily pleasurable to be alone. I need long hours all to myself. In Paris, at Dully, at Lablachère, I never weary of my workroom, where I see no one before luncheon. The mornings are always too short. ”

“ I had been for a stroll after dinner with Dutrex, Durupt, and Foch. A typical Bavarian day: a moist sky softening the harsh outlines of the landscape; a half light, uncertain and dreamy, as if longing for the rich azure of Piedmont and Provence; a piercing little wind which, even in the sunshine, continues to suggest melting snow and cold, almost a bise, whose very caresses sting. ”

“ He jumps up, runs along the corridors, finds the man, maybe in his casemate, maybe beneath the shade of a poplar, maybe in one of the ditches, explains himself in nigger talk, and, breathless and perspiring, comes back to me with the prize. It can hardly be said that we converse; the difficulties are too great. We look at one another, and we smile. He gives me everything he can; I respond in kind. He works; I work. He serves me; I serve him. I know how to read and write; I can influence the Feldwebel; and I can ask my relatives and friends in France to send me things. ”

“ It is too much for him that a common soldier, a Frenchman, a prisoner, can speak so boldly to him, the great Major, the master. Thunderstruck, half in mind to strike the presumptuous fellow, he suddenly turns on his heel, and, cursing loudly, he flings himself into his Mercédès, spits out a command, and drives in hot haste to Fort Orff, where he issues orders that Brissot is never to accompany the gang again. ”

“ They have an object for action. After the stagnation of the trenches they can assuage their anger in the fury of the assault. But as for us, heavy with wrath, we are confined within thick walls; we can but swing our frozen and idle arms; we are cut off from all news; we are the prey of dreams and of hunger. Outside the screened window, the ditch, the counterscarp, and the grating; outside the grating, a Bavarian bayonet marches to and fro.
What can account for this state of nerves which I am unable to control? The hour for the arrival of the postman has passed. ”

“ Now, being a prisoner of war, and having neither rifle nor bayonet, he devotes himself to the endeavour to sow discouragement among the soldiers who guard us, considering that an army contaminated with discouragement is ripe for defeat.
Durupt is a thoroughly upright man. His everyday judgments and his ordinary actions recall the evangel of ’48 and the solid bourgeois virtues. He belongs to that undistinguished élite which forms the real backbone of every nation, the élite consisting of those who know how to speak the truth and to live for truth. ”

“ Shivering on the cement floor of the casemate during the first night of my imprisonment here, I was continually haunted by the faces of my German friends. They did not smile at me as of old. Their eyes flashed. They glared at me like hawks. They pierced me; they wounded me. I was sad, sick at heart. How difficult it is to endure hatred. ”