Part 33 (1/2)

There are many chateaux of this kind in Champagne, and in one of them we entered a long, bare room, where a French general stood with some of his officers, and I knew that the old spirit of France and its traditions of chivalry have not died. This general, with a silver star on his breast, seemed to me like one of those n.o.bles who fought in the wars of the sixteenth century under the Duc de Guise.

He is a man of less than fifty years of age, with a black beard and steel-blue eyes, extraordinarily keen and piercing, and a fine poise of the head, which gives him an air of dignity and pride, in spite of the simplicity and charm of his manners. I sat opposite to him at table, and in this old room, with stone walls, he seemed to me like the central figure of some mediaeval painting. Yet there was nothing mediaeval except the touch of chivalry and the faith of France in the character of this general and his officers. Men of modern science and trained in a modern school of thought, their conversation ranged over many subjects both grave and gay, and, listening to them, I saw the secret of Germany's failure to strike France to her knees.

With such men as these in command, with that steel-eyed general on the watch--energy and intellectual force personified in his keen, vivacious face--the old faults of 1870 could not happen so easily again, and Germany counted without this renaissance of France.

These men do not minimize the strength of the German defensive, but there is no fear in their hearts about the final issue of the war, and they are sure of their own position along this front in Champagne.

It was to the first lines of defence along that front that I went in the afternoon with other officers. Our way was through a wood famous in this war because it has been the scene of heavy fighting, ending in its brilliant capture by the French. It has another interest, because it is one of the few places along the front--as far as I know the only place- where troops have not entrenched themselves.

This was an impossibility, because the ground is so moist that water is reached a few feet down. It was necessary to build sh.e.l.l-proof shelters above-ground, and this was done by turning the troops into an army of wood-cutters.

This sylvan life of the French troops here is not without its charm, apart from the marmites which come cras.h.i.+ng through the trees, and shrapnel bullets which whip through the branches. The ground has dried up during recent days, so that the long boarded paths leading to the first lines are no longer the only way of escape from bogs and swamps.

It might have been the scene of ”A Midsummer Night's Dream” as I made my way through thickets all aglint with the first green of the spring's foliage, treading on a carpet of white and yellow flowers and accompanied on my way by b.u.t.terflies and flying beetles.

But a tremendous noise beyond the stage would have spoilt the play.

French batteries were hard at work and their sh.e.l.ls came rus.h.i.+ng like fierce birds above the trees. The sharp ”tang” of the French ”Soixante-quinze” cracked out between the duller thuds of the ”Cent- vingt” and other heavy guns, and there were only brief moments of silence between those violent explosions and the long-drawn sighs of wind as the sh.e.l.ls pa.s.sed overhead and then burst with that final crash which scatters death.

In one of the silences, when the wood was very still and murmurous with humming insects, I heard a voice call. It was not a challenge of ”Qui va la?” or ”Garde a vous,” but the voice of spring. It called ”Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” and mocked at war.

A young officer with me was more interested in the voices of the guns. He knew them all, even when they spoke from the enemy's batteries, and as we walked he said alternately, ”Depart.. Arrive...

Depart... Arrive...” as one of the French sh.e.l.ls left and one of the German sh.e.l.ls arrived.

The enemy's sh.e.l.ls came shattering across the French lines very frequently, and sometimes as I made my way through the trees towards the outer bastions I heard the splintering of wood not far away.

But the soldiers near me seemed quite unconscious of any peril overhead. Some of them were gardening and making little bowers about their huts. Only a few sentinels were at their posts, along the bastions built of logs and clay, behind a fringe of brushwood which screened them from the first line of German trenches outside this boundary of the wood.

”Don't show your head round that corner,” said an officer, touching me on the sleeve, as I caught a glimpse of bare fields and, a thousand yards away, a red-roofed house. There was nothing much to see--although the enemies of France were there with watchful eyes for any movement behind our screen.

”A second is long enough for a shot in the forehead,” said the officer, ”and if I were you I would take that other path. The screen has worn a bit thin just there.”

It was curious. I found it absolutely impossible to realize, without an intellectual effort, that out of the silence of those flat fields death would come instantly if I showed my head. But I did not try the experiment to settle all doubts.

23

In the heart of the wood was a small house, spared by some freak of chance by the German sh.e.l.ls which came dropping on every side of it. Here I took tea with the officers, who used it as their headquarters, and never did tea taste better than on that warm spring day, though it was served with a ladle out of a tin bowl to the music of many guns.

The officers were a cheery set who had become quite accustomed to the menace of death which at any moment might shatter this place and make a wreckage of its peasant furniture. The colonel sat back in a wooden armchair, asking for news about the outer world as though he were a s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner on a desert isle; but every now and then he would listen to the sound of the sh.e.l.ls and say, ”Depart! ...

Arrive!” just like the officer who had walked with me through the wood.

Two of the younger officers sat on the edge of a truckle-bed beneath the portrait of a buxom peasant woman, who was obviously the wife of the late proprietor. Two other officers lounged against the door- posts, entertaining the guests of the day with droll stories of death.

Another came in with the latest communique received by the wireless station outside, and there was a ”Bravo! bravo!” from all of us because it had been a good day for France. They were simple fellows, these men, and they had the manners of fine gentlemen in spite of their mud-stained uniforms and the poverty of the cottage in which they lived. Hardly a day pa.s.sed without one of their comrades being killed or wounded, but some officer came to take his place and his risk, and they made him welcome to the wooden chair and his turn of the truckle-bed. I think in that peasant's hut I saw the whole spirit of the French army in its surrender of self-interest and its good- humoured gallantry.

The guns were still thundering as I drove back from the wood. The driver of the car turned to me for a moment with a smile and pointed a few yards away.

”Did you see that sh.e.l.l burst then? It was pretty close.”