Richard Harding Davis

“ Imagine Paris with her bridges, palaces, parks, with the Seine, the Tuileries, the boulevards, the glittering shop-windows conveyed to you only through noise. Only through the shrieks of motor-horns and the shuffling of feet.
The men who have been blinded in battle have lost more than sight. They have been robbed of their independence. They feel they are a burden. It is not only the physical loss they suffer, but the thought that no longer are they of use, that they are a care, that in the scheme of things—even in their own little circles of family and friends—there is for them no place. ”

“ If in Salonika you buy a newspaper from a news-boy, of the persons passing, two will stop; if at an open shop you buy a package of cigarettes, five people will look over your shoulder; if you pay your cab-driver his fare, you block the sidewalk; and if you try to change a hundred-franc note, you cause a riot. In each block there are nearly a half dozen money-changers; they sit in little shops as narrow as a doorway, and in front of them is a show-case filled with all the moneys of the world. It is not alone the sight of your hundred-franc note that enchants the crowd. ”

“ Bordeaux had the good taste to burn down when the architect who designed the Place de la Concorde, in Paris, and the buildings facing it was still alive; and after his designs, or those of his pupils, Bordeaux was rebuilt. So wherever you look you see the best in what is old and the smartest in what is modern.
Certainly when to that city President Poincaré and his cabinet moved the government, they gave it a resting-place that was both dignified and charming. To walk the streets and wharfs is a continual delight. One is never bored. It is like reading a book in which there are no dull pages. ”

“ War has no knowledge of sectors. It is just as hateful in the Vosges as in Flanders, only in the Vosges it masks its hideousness with what is beautiful. In Flanders death hides in a trench of mud like an open grave. In the forest of the Vosges it lurks in a nest of moss, fern, and clean, sweet-smelling pine. ”

“ Of the people who wish to pass they are as unconscious as a Chinaman smoking opium is unconscious of the sightseers from up-town. That they are talking is all that counts. They feel every one else should appreciate that. Because the Allies failed to appreciate it, they gained a reputation for rudeness. A French car, flying the flag of the general, a squad of Tommies under arms, a motor-cyclist carrying despatches could not understand that a conversation on a street crossing was a sacred ceremony. So they shouldered the conversationalists aside or splashed them with mud. ”

“ If you prefer to be haughty and stand, there is no law against that. Should you leave the shed for a stroll, you would gain nothing, for, as it is war-time, at nine o’clock every restaurant and café in Havre closes, and the town is so dark you would probably stroll into the harbor.
So, like emigrants on our own Ellis Island, English and French army and navy officers, despatch bearers, American ambulance drivers, Red Cross nurses, and all the other picturesque travellers of these interesting times, shiver, yawn, and swear from nine o’clock until midnight. ”

“ These days the streets of Paris are filled with soldiers, each of whom has given to France some part of his physical self. That his country may endure, that she may continue to enjoy and teach liberty, he has seen his arm or his leg, or both, blown off, or cut off. But when on the boulevards you meet him walking with crutches or with an empty sleeve pinned beneath his Cross of War, and he thinks your glance is one of pity, he resents it. ”

“ CHAPTER XI HINTS FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO HELP Paris, January, 1916.
At home people who read of some splendid act of courage or self-sacrifice on the part of the Allies, are often moved to exclaim: “I wish I could help! I wish I could do something!”
This is to tell them how easily, at what bargain prices, at what little cost to themselves that wish can be gratified.
In the United States, owing to the war, many have grown suddenly rich; those already wealthy are increasing their fortunes. Here in France the war has robbed every one; the rich are less rich, the poor more destitute. ”

“ CHAPTER II THE MUD TRENCHES OF ARTOIS Amiens, October, 1915.
In England it is “business as usual”; in France it is “war as usual.” The English tradesman can assure his customers that with such an “old-established” firm as his not even war can interfere; but France, with war actually on her soil, has gone further and has accepted war as part of her daily life. She has not merely swallowed, but digested it. It is like the line in Pinero’s play, where one woman says she cannot go to the opera because of her neuralgia. ”

“ From a trench that was all we could see of the war, and that is all millions of fighting men see of it—wet walls of clay as narrow as a grave, an arrow pointing to a hospital, earthen steps leading to a shelter from sudden death, and overhead the rain-soaked sky and perhaps a great bird at which the enemy is shooting snowballs. ”

“ As soon as we elect a new President and a new Congress, who are not necessarily looking for trouble, but who will not crawl under the bed to avoid it, our lost prestige will return.
In the meantime, that France and her Allies succeed should be the hope and prayer of every American. The fight they are waging is for the things the real, unhyphenated American is supposed to hold most high and most dear. ”

“ Of Salonika, a local French author has written: “When one enters the city he is conscious of a cry, continuous and piercing. A cry unique and monotonous, always resembling itself. It is the clamor of Salonika.”
Every one who has visited the East, where every one lives in the streets, knows the sound. It is like the murmur of a stage mob. Imagine, then, that “clamor of Salonika” increased by the rumble and roar over the huge paving-stones of thousands of giant motor-trucks ”

“ As she turned and winged her way back to France you felt no fear for her. She seemed beyond the power of man to harm, something supreme, super-human—a sister to the sun and moon, the princess royal of the air.
After you have been in the trenches it seems so selfish to be feasting and drinking that you have no appetite for dinner.
But after a visit to the defenders of the forests of the Vosges you cannot feel selfish. ”

“ One of the greatest assets of those who live in a seaport city is a view of their harbor. As a rule, that view is hidden from them by zinc sheds on the wharfs and warehouses. But in Salonika the water-front belongs to everybody. To the north it encloses the harbor in a great half-moon that from tip to tip measures three miles. At the western tip of this crescent are tucked away the wharfs for the big steamers, the bonded warehouses, the customs, the goods-sheds. The rest of the water-front is open to the people and to the small sailing vessels. ”

“ The change of sentiment toward us in France is shown in many ways. To retail them would not help matters. But as one hears of them from Americans who, since the war began, have been working in the hospitals, on distributing committees, in the banking-houses, and as diplomats and consuls, that our country is most unpopular is only too evident.
It is the greater pity because the real feeling of our people toward France in this war is one of enthusiastic admiration. Of all the Allies, Americans probably hold for the French the most hearty good-feeling, affection, and good-will. ”

“ A soldier who was an artist in plaster had decorated the entrance to the shaft with an ornamental façade worthy of any public building. Here, secure from the falling walls and explosive shells, the general by telephone directed his attack. The place was as dry, as clean, and as compact as the admiral’s quarters on a ship of war. The switchboard connected with batteries buried from sight in every part of the unburied city, and in an adjoining room a soldier cook was preparing a most appetizing luncheon. ”

“ But until the villagers returned to their homes, or to what remained of their homes, the bloated carcasses of horses blocked the road, the bodies of German soldiers, in death mercifully unlike anything human and as unreal as fallen scarecrows, sprawled in the fields. ”

“ It eats up men, eats up rations, eats up priceless ammunition, and it leads to nowhere, enfilades no position, threatens no one. It is like an ill-mannered boy sticking out his tongue. And as ineffective.
The physical aspect of St. Mihiel is a broad sweep of meadow-land cut in half by the Meuse flooding her banks; and the shattered houses of the Ferme Mont Meuse, which now form the point of the salient. At this place the opposing trenches are only a hundred yards apart, and all of this low ground is commanded by the French guns on the heights of Les Paroches. ”

“ And I expected to see the wake of that great retreat still marked by ruins and devastation.
But I had not sufficiently trusted to the indomitable spirit of the French, in their intolerance of waste, their fierce, yet ordered energy.
To-day the fields are cultivated up to the very butts of the French batteries. They are being put to bed, and tucked in for the long winter sleep. ”

“ It is not the spirit of France and England. One man said to me: “Why can’t you keep the Italian-Americans in America? Over there they earn money, and send millions of it to Italy. When they come here to fight, not only that [Pg 84] money stops, but we have to feed and pay them.”
It did not sound grateful. Nor as though Italy were seriously at war. You do not find France and England, or Germany, grudging the man who returns to fight for his country his rations and pay. And Italy pays her soldiers five cents a day. ”

“ A year ago you could leave the Continent and enter England by showing a passport and a steamer ticket. To-day it is as hard to leave Paris, and no one ever wants to leave Paris, as to get out of jail; as difficult to invade England as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To leave Paris for London you must obtain the permission of the police, the English consul-general, and the American consul-general. ”

“ Long after the war is ended, so long as he lives, men and women of France will honor him, and in their eyes he will read their thanks. But there is one soldier who cannot read their thanks, who is spared the sight of their pity. He is the one who has made all but [Pg 231] the supreme sacrifice. He is the one who is blind. He sits in perpetual darkness. ”

“ CHAPTER IX VERDUN AND ST. MIHIEL Paris, January, 1916.
It is an old saying that the busiest man always seems to have the most leisure. It is another way of complimenting him on his genius for organization. When you visit a real man of affairs you seldom find him surrounded by secretaries, stenographers, and a battery of telephones. As a rule, there is nothing on his desk save a photograph of his wife and a rose in a glass of water. Outside the headquarters of the general there were no gendarmes, no sentries, no panting automobiles, no mud-flecked chasseurs-à-cheval. ”

“ A year ago in the villages the old men stood in disconsolate groups with their hands in their pockets. Now they are briskly at work. They are working in the fields, in the vegetable-gardens, helping the Territorials mend the roads. On every side of them were the evidences of war—in the fields abandoned trenches, barbed-wire entanglements, shelters for fodder and ammunition, hangars for repairing aeroplanes, vast slaughter-houses, [Pg 39] parks of artillery; and on the roads endless lines of lorries, hooded ambulances, marching soldiers. ”

“ On one side of the quay a perfectly modern hotel, on the other a boat unloading fish, and in the street itself, with French automobiles and trolley-cars, men who still are beasts of burden, who know no other way of carrying a bale or a box than upon their shoulders. In Salonika even the trolley-car is not without its contrast. ”

“ When the army of a country is mobilized, it is hard to understand that that country is neutral. You expect to see evidences of her partisanship for one cause or the other. But in Athens, from a shop-window point of view, both the Allies and the Germans are equally supported. There are just as many pictures of the German generals as of Joffre, as many post-cards of the German Emperor as of King George and King Albert. After Paris, it is a shock to see German books, portraits of German statesmen, composers, and musicians. ”

“ Even in Modena, on the boundary-line of Italy, when I was returning to France, and sharing a lonely Christmas with the conductor of the wagon-lit, we were held up by train-robbers, who took our money and then pinned medals on us.
Until we reached Paris we did not know why. It was only later we learned that in the two days’ campaign the poilus was benefited to the sum of many millions of francs.
In Paris and over all France, for every one is suffering through the war, there is some individual or organization at work to relieve that suffering. ”

“ A year ago the only women in London in uniform were the nurses. Now so many are in uniform that to one visitor they presented the most surprising change the war has brought to that city. Those who live in London, to whom the change has come gradually, are probably hardly aware how significant it is. Few people, certainly few men, guessed that so many positions that before the war were open only to men, could be filled quite as acceptably by women. ”