the book

'A Crusader of France'

The Letters of Captain Ferdinand Belmont of the Chasseurs Alpins

August 2,1914—December 28,1915

 

Translated from the French by G. Frederic Lees

With a Foreword by Henry Bordeaux

The War-Time Letters of a French Officer

 

Foreword

A peasant of Savoy heard of the death of the second of his sons, killed in the Vosges, as he was setting forth to the fields for the autumn ploughing. The oxen were yoked in front of the house. The postman handed him the letter bearing the heading of the Prefecture. He went into the house to fetch his spectacles, read in the presence of his wife, who, anxious, had followed him, and in that of the neighbours, who already knew the news, and then, handing the paper to the companion of his life of labour, said simply:

"God found them ready."

He added slowly:

"My poor wife! . . ."

And he went off to his ploughing.

God found them ready. It seems indeed as though these young people were prepared. Among the already voluminous evidence which comes from them—letters, notebooks, disclosures—it is not rare to detect a sort of joyous detachment which raises them from the earth. They feel that they have received a call, and they offer themselves like the daughter of Jephthah, who ran towards her father and was in no way astonished at the sacrifice demanded of her. So, unswervingly, they go forth to war and rise on high, like those trees with smooth, slender boles which, towering in the forest in search of light, seem unattached to the soil, whereas more ancient trunks hold on desperately by multitudinous roots.

Sergeant Leo Latil, of Aix-en-Provence (1890-1915), who was killed in the Champagne offensive, expresses astonishment at the state of sublime peace and often joy in which he finds himself. "Sacrifices will be light indeed," he wrote to his kindred, "if we gain a right glorious victory and more light for souls. . . ." His will, drawn before his departure, ends with this earnest request: "Pray for France, work for France, raise her up!" Long before the war there was being effected in these young men, or at any rate among the flower of them, a simplification of life. Ambition did not tempt them. They were not to be turned aside by an ordinary lot, because they placed above everything else that interior discipline which utilizes contingencies by accepting them, instead of revolting against them, or trying to overcome them. Young Frenchmen who reached the age of twenty in 1890, were the too unconcerned prey of every intellectual ferment. Those of 1900 showed themselves to be more practical, to have a greater leaning toward realities. Those of 1910, like those birds which, detecting the coming storm, stretch out their wings in order to dash into it the better, hardened themselves physically and morally, exercised their muscles and forged, for current use, either athletic stoicism or religious acceptance.

Maurice Ernst (1889-1914), the son of the savant and enthusiastic art critic, Alfred Ernst, on reaching the age to choose a career, deliberately turned towards the provinces—he who was a déraciné, born of an Alsatian father and a Savoyard mother, and educated first at Paris, then at Dijon. Paris did not attract him—that Paris which all the younger novelists represent to us as the great delusion and the cause of so many misled lives. His mother's native province retained him because there he could more easily be himself. "I shall go and settle down at Chambery, or in another town of the same character," he wrote, "because I feel attracted by the life of a provincial barrister—a life which is often not very brilliant, doubtless, but which enables one to remain in daily contact with the veritable element in which our national moral temperament is formed. It is very different to the life, in spite of everything very artificial, which people are almost fatally bound to lead at Paris, or in a very big town." He was especially anxious to live his inner, his religious life profoundly. Is not this a new tendency in quite young men? Pride and ambition, the usual levers of youth, have been transformed into inward discipline and the sense of fellowship. Maurice Ernst, after two years' military service, aspired to the life of an officer, which would enable him to command men, but first of all to govern himself; and it was in this state of mind that the war found him. At peace with himself, he set out, rejoicing that the war, provoked by the enemy, was an opportunity for serving a splendid human cause. His letters from the front to his mother are quite on a level with the great tragedy. He was calm and ready. "I cannot say whether we shall see each other again," he dared to write, so surrounded by death did he feel. "At all events, I am living splendid hours at the present time, even before I have fought. To have the command of sixty men for whom one is responsible unto death, and whose minds are sustained and movements guided by the clearness of an order, is a rare joy. But it is a still greater joy to feel that one may be called upon to die on the first day perhaps. That gives one a feeling of solemn and gentle serenity at the same time which must, if one escapes, leave its mark on one's whole life." His presentiment did not mislead him: he was killed at Ethe, in Belgium, on the morning of August 22, 1914, by a bullet in the head, as he was triumphantly entering the village. From that open, luminous brain, thoughts must have flown straight on high.

The letters of Captain Belmont, which appear in the following pages, reveal, I believe, the most complete example of this jeunesse, precociously ripened long before the war, like a vine exposed to the sun, and for which the war will have been the vintage-time. They will be read for many a long year, as were read and are still the letters composing le Récit d'une sœur, or as the Journal and Correspondence of Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin, for their sincerity, their familiar and provincial flavour, their profound intimacy, their feeling for nature, their religious fervour. But there is something new in their accent. Death straddles over them, as the arch of a bridge over running water. Within the curve a fragment of heaven is reflected and the water shivers.

Under the title of captain we formerly imagined a man of thirty—a man of experience, accustomed to command. Belmont was a captain of twenty-four, who, when war broke out, was a sub-lieutenant of the reserve. Lyons—"the industrial and mystic town," as Alphonse Daudet called it—was his birthplace, but his family, shortly after he was born, settled at Grenoble, where his father is manager of an important bank. The horizon of the Dauphine Alps was the horizon of his childhood, that which trained his eyes, that which he constantly evokes when seeking comparisons for some beautiful vision of autumn or spring. And yet Lyons left upon him that very particular impress with which the ancient city of two rivers marks its inhabitants. The fogs which hang over the Saone and the Rhone compel them, it seems, to live more within themselves. Silence reigns on the streets, sadness and coldness are on people's faces. But, should the bells of Fourvières ring, their features light up, as though these bells were announcing great news. On clear evenings one can distinguish far in the distance the chain of Mont Blanc, and people do not fail to seek for that indistinct sinuous line which floats like lace knotted to the flowers of the sunset. The Lyons section of the Alpine Club is one of the most numerous and most daring. The business-men, manufacturers and clerks of the city who on six days of the week stick close to their somnolent quays and dark offices, swarm on Sunday on the slopes of the Alps, hasten to the mountains as to a lover's meeting-place. Who has written more finely of this than an inhabitant of Lyons, Theodore Camus, in his posthumous book: De la Montagne au Désert?

The mountains, in Ferdinand Belmont's letters, are faithful friends, the recollection of whom he treasures. He loves to recall the ascensions he made with his brother Jean in the Chartreuse Chain, at Belledonne, and on all his beloved summits of the Dauphine Alps. As a connoisseur, he evokes the quality of the air one breathes there, the play of light and shade which follow one on the other, and especially the solitude—the serenity of that solitude. He belonged to one of those numerous families of which one must have been an actual member to know all the joy, animation and expansion a childhood can contain, and all the majesty, equity, divine order and human tenderness a father and mother represent. He who did not wish to regret anything in the course of his moral ascension had a heavy heart when he thought of his home in the country and everybody there: his parents, six brothers and a sister. His eldest brother, Emile, two or three years his senior, died at seventeen from the effects of an attack of scarlatina, contracted when he was eleven. The few notes which this youth left behind show him to have been a precocious emulator of Adèle Kamm, who cultivated pain like a garden, in which she grew the joy of immolation. "Suffering came from day to day," he wrote, when kept to his bed by illness. "I strove hard to accept it, and now I am happy to have suffered." And again: "Of all the ways of serving God, illness is the one which allows the least consolation, but the little one is able to receive is only of greater worth." As soon as he was afflicted he succeeded in ceasing to ask for a return of health, and contented himself with the life of the soul. There can be no doubt that he enabled his brother Ferdinand—surprised to see him so resigned—to penetrate further into this life. Without knowing it, he was preparing him for future trial, and the younger brother in his turn was to experience purification through daily acceptance.

At an early date Ferdinand showed a strong liking for the medical profession. After brilliant studies, he anticipated the call to the army, and at eighteen joined the 14th Infantry Battalion, with which he did his two years service, having no inclination for duty in an army medical corps. He left his battalion a sub-lieutenant of the reserve and took up his abode at Lyons to attend the lectures on medicine. At twenty-one years of age he came out second in the competitive examination for surgical assistants. At twenty-three he was an assistant dresser. And it was from this post that the mobilization took him.

"This somewhat reserved and melancholy, but most Christian, most reflective, and kindly young man," writes to me one of his best friends, the Abbe, now Lieutenant Gonnet, "possessed a most engaging disposition. It seemed as though his gaze ever remained fixed on those who had understood its charm. As regards myself, I feel it ever bent upon me, as on the last occasion I saw him, at Gérardmer, in August, 1915, when he came (himself wounded) to look after me and bring me delicacies, as a mother would have done. He must have been somewhat like that in the case of his men— kindly in the exercise of authority, but knowing how to be master of them, knowing how to elevate their souls to the height his own had risen, at any rate on great occasions. And this will indeed be one of the established facts of this war among the thousand and one forms authority has taken—as though all materials can be used to fashion it, on condition they are supple and tractable in the hands of the Maker. . . . The change which the war seems to me to have brought about in him most clearly is a simplification of the soul and its tendencies. He had attained so great a unity of life and mental absorption that God alone could bring that unity to its natural centre, by attracting it to Him. I did not always know him thus, but inspired with a love for the ideal and great things, and striving a little in his dull life as a student to bring to it that which then seemed to him so difficult to find and which the ordeal of war placed within his reach daily, until the end. He speaks a good deal of that romanticism which attracted so many young men, to whom the war brought natural satisfaction. He hardly confessed it, but I believe that he also had very romantic tendencies. Only he accepted the ordeal with all its tribulations, whereas many others found it severe and wearisome to the flesh, and sought to lighten it."

At the present moment I am endeavouring above all to find the Ferdinand Belmont of pre-war days: the being whom the war was to bring to life again in his letters. I imagine him to have been somewhat uncommunicative, doubtless, but not sad. He was one of those taciturn people who delight in inward joys. The long illness of his eldest brother, his own disposition, a precocious perception of the seriousness of life, led, without making him gloomy, to meditative habits. More luminous are the spots made by the sun in the underwood. The laughter of rather serious young men is all the more cheerful and loud. In the refuges on the Alps and at his home in the country Ferdinand Belmont's laughter must thus have burst forth, surprising and charming. The romanticism of youth arises the more often from the difficulty of finding its balance: the restless mind is dissatisfied with everything, the unappeased heart believes that it is misunderstood. In the case of the twenty-year-old Belmont there is hesitation between contemplation and action. He recognized his vocation at a very early date, walked straight along his path; and yet, on the other hand, was he anxious over the result? He was never so happy as when pausing on his path, regarding nature, and allowing his thoughts to wander. The war was to bestow harmony upon him.

Of his younger brothers, Jean, the nearest in age to himself, was his companion when on excursions. Without ambition, modest, charitable, cheerful and frank, this tall robust youth was an enthusiastic mountaineer. A preparatory pupil at the Grenoble Polytechnic Institute, and momentarily excused from military service at the time of the outbreak of war, he offered his services and was incorporated on August 11 in the 22nd Infantry Regiment. A fortnight later he asked to leave for the front, on the plea that he was in fine training and on account of his physical vigour. He was killed in his first fight, on August 29, 1914, at the Pass of Anozel, near Saint-Dié. The day before he had by chance met his brother Ferdinand, during the retreat. Jean Belmont was devoid of all complexity, was as ingenuous as a child, and totally indifferent to risk. On the point of departure, he said to his mother, quite calmly: "I have nothing to fear. The worst that can happen to me is to be killed, and to die for a noble cause when one is young is a great blessing."

The next brother, Joseph, was more impressionable and earnest. A boarder at Bollengo, in Italy, he was unable to accustom himself to separation from his family. Then, suddenly, he got over his troubles; he had discovered his path in life. At the close of his year's study of philosophy he entered the Issy seminary. When war was declared he was devoting himself at Mens to the care of a holiday colony of little boys. Mobilized in December (1914), he was incorporated in the 55th Infantry Regiment and placed in the firing line in the month of May, with the 173rd Regiment. He went through the severe engagement of Eparges and the Bois de la Gruerie, was promoted corporal, and never ceased to sustain those surrounding him by his good humour and high spirits, although it cost him dear to lead an existence so different from the one he had desired. On July 2 he was killed by a bullet and fell without a cry.

"In one's life at the front," he wrote to his parents, "one must live the present without thinking of the future. To be nearer danger and death is to be nearer God, and therefore why pity us? Put your trust in God! everything happens according to His will, and it is ever for the best. My only duty is to do what I ought to do, whatever it may be and to the end. This life in proximity with death has many beautiful sides to it. I hope to find tranquillity in it, as so many heroes have found, when I am absolutely convinced that death is happiness, suffering a merit, danger and trial a splendid lesson in energy, which will cast glory over my whole life if I know how to render it sufficiently fruitful."

 

Ferdinand survived Joseph Belmont by a few months. A captain, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and mentioned three times in army orders, he was killed on December 28, 1915, at the Hartmannsweilerkopf.

These three brothers, "God found them ready" —as the Savoyard peasant said. At each fresh blow the father of these three young heroes might have repeated those words, as beautiful and as strong as a verse of the Bible, but each time with more bitter sorrow. The first who left did it so simply. The second already belonged to God. But can such a loss as the third—the eldest, the most richly endowed, the most complete, the surest heir of a tradition to be transmitted, the one who inspired no more love than the others, but on whom they counted for that continuance of the family which is man's terrestrial immortality—leave sufficient courage to continue the task begun? Yes indeed, and even a fourth child, Maxime, has filled the vacant place in the army. There are also hearts which sorrow always finds ready, because divine hope inhabits them.

 

This long war, now violent, now less intense, has revealed and especially will reveal many writers, through the tragic scenes presented to the eyes, through the habit of meditation which long hours in the trenches have created or fortified, through the need or the desire to correspond with loved ones at home and give them an accurate idea either of the outer or the inner life. But many among them will not be witnesses of their celebrity, will never know how hearts have thrilled under their action as strings vibrate under the bow. The letters of Ferdinand Belmont reveal that gift of seeing, that art of seizing the essential features of a scene or picture, whilst neglecting or rejecting the useless and the superfluous, that colour at once warm and discreet, the perfection of which makes a Fromentin. "Who can forget, having read Un Eté dans le Sahara, the supple gait of that barefooted Arab woman whom we see coming from the remoteness of the horizon, as in biblical times, bearing an amphora on her shoulder, or that Eastern evening in front of the tent, so full of peace that the very silence can be heard? And yet it is not that—a vision of war—which will be most sought for in this correspondence. No, it is not that which will bring Captain Belmont faithful and transmissible friendships, but indeed the work of moral chasing to which lie incessantly devoted himself. There is in him both a poet and a philosopher—a poet and a philosopher in the manner of a De Vigny, whose thought was tinged with delicate penetration and sorrow—and there is in him above all a believer who succeeds in casting his actions, his strength, his soul into faith, as into a broad-bosomed river which he allows to carry him away. "What matter life and death, provided one believes, is the cry to which he rallies, and which he will make the subject of his reflections, not through intellectual taste but because of his desire to attain moral improvement. Is not one of Mme. de Staëls finest sayings as follows: "The object of life is not happiness but perfection"?—words, however, which hardly apply to him.

This abandonment of his will to the grace of God and the orders of his superior officers was to bring him peace of mind in warfare. Before leaving for the front, during a few days' preparation in the green mountains of Tarentaise, he experienced almost a feeling of revolt or at least surprise at the thought that people were fighting and dying when the sky was so clear and the mountains so beautiful, and he felt the need of picturing to himself what the baptism of fire must be like. A strange fear seized him: the fear that he might not be sufficiently courageous, sufficiently worthy of his command, his post, the great duty entrusted to him. But once there all anxiety disappeared.

Soon there came the departure for the frontier. On the eve of the first engagements he heard his infantrymen singing "the tender and sentimental songs of their native districts," just like the sailors of Pierre Loti in Mon frère Yves, huddled one against the other in the fore of their ship. They were under the influence of the same mental distress, the same nostalgia, but the storm which awaited those young soldiers far exceeded in tragedy the violence of natural elements.

The beginning was terrible, and yet, among the worst vicissitudes, the beauty of the Vosges brought him friendly consolation. Depicting the shades of evening gathering on the devastated ground and ruined villages, he employs, on seeing the shadows creep over the land, which the sun seems "to caress as a shepherd caresses a sick sheep," expressions full of a tenderness quite after the manner of Fromentin.

Even the nearness of the enemy to the outposts does not deter him from tasting the sweetness of those Virgilian nights per arnica silentia lunce—which are disturbed, however, by the shriek of shells and the crash when they burst.

Then, sent still farther away, lost on the intensive plains of Artois, amidst an ocean of men, he is filled with home-sickness. "Where can we find more touching terms— whether in Lamartine dreaming of Meilly, or in Fromentin's Dominique, when he seeks contfort for his wounded heart in thoughts of his native place—than in Belmont's evocation of "the luminous twilights amongst the great oaks?" But here his accent is more poignant; there is no desire to return to his early protected years, no love sickness, but the distress of a man abandoned far from everything he loves and in the neighbourhood of death. This distress, against which Ferdinand Belmont opposes especially his religious faith, and which he eventually conquers, continued for several weeks. It gives the letters dated the end of September and October, 1914, the pathos of interior anguish, of transitory doubt and discouragement. When he struggles against too tender recollections which assail him, he is alone, and no one save the members of his family have received his confidences. He had comrades, but no friends. He experienced the solitude of the heart. But divine help never fails the one who calls for it. We can feel that Belmont gradually cast off his depressing sadness, attained serenity and inner peace, before mounting a step still higher, the step which heroes or saints have taken, the one leading to that complete acceptance which can no longer be reached by human miseries.

"I shall not love thee less; nay, perhaps more, For yielding to thy nature ..."

said Byron's Sardanapalus. Ferdinand Belmont is not diminished in our eyes through having passed through these sloughs of sadness, and perhaps we are glad that, face to face with sacrifice, he experienced these hesitations and looked thus backwards. In this way he is nearer ordinary mortals, who feel such depression too often and turn from those who have never felt it, as one turns from a stranger. Nevertheless, he was too accustomed to observe himself not to mistrust his emotions. Gradually he began to check himself in these evocations, or turned them into a philosophic channel: meditations on the vanity of life and the pettiness of man, blown about like a leaf by the storm.

He felt the attraction and proclaimed the advantage of abandoning himself to destiny, or rather to Providence, but he had not yet reached the state of "wishing for nothing, desiring nothing, wisely accepting whatever happens"—the formula which gradually became the rule of his life and the observance of which was to bring him appeasement and confidence. This detachment was to take place progressively in his soul and by means of faith. He was coming nearer and nearer to a condition of acceptance, the true one, which indistinctly receives from such a heart both sorrow and joy, peace and war. That acceptance began to appear to him as the lever which would facilitate all his acts.

On All Saints' Day, instituted for mourning, he learnt of the death of his brother Jean, no further news of him had been received. His sorrow manifested itself by a eulogy of suffering, which, since it is one of the conditions of life, we ought to love. Have not all great souls glorified it? Can the happiness of one dear to us cause us in this way so much sorrow? Does it not look as though God had wished to take back his brother's pure soul "before it was soiled by the ugliness and darkness of this world?" Death, surrounding him, had begun to enter his soul. One would imagine that he was preparing to receive its visit. He was no longer not only not terrified but not even disquieted by it. Death was the vault under which he had indeed to pass and which to him was a gateway of light. From that moment he lived intimately with it. Henceforth when he speaks of it it is in friendly terms.

When New Year's Day prompted him to look back he wished to abandon himself as best he could to the will of God, to the whirlwind which would lay him down "dead or living in some quiet spot."

After a few weeks' rest at Gérardmer, he came to the conclusion that the "school of comfort" was no good. He felt ashamed to be in a place of safety when other battalions were fighting at the Hartmannsweilerkopf. "He that escheweth not small faults," says the Imitation, "little by little shall slide into greater." And for that reason his desire was that his men, who were descending to a state of mediocrity, after he had seen them so great, should be kept in working order.

Then, in this correspondence, written without studied refinement, there suddenly appears a rhythmical quality reminding one of Chateaubriand —reflections concerning "the silent verities which slumber at the bottom of our souls." Elsewhere he says: "What matter the most formidable shocks of this world, since this world will pass away and passes away each day?" And we call to mind the words of Bossuet on the ephemeral nature of the world.

Ferdinand Belmont soon returned to the life of danger which he preferred to the dull and mediocre life in rest-billets, not perhaps through warlike ardour, although he proved himself on all occasions to be a remarkable leader, at once prudent and bold, but because he could breathe more freely on the elevated plateaus of the soul, where ordinary considerations no longer ruled. Already, however, he had no further need of the proximity of danger to remain on those high and salubrious plateaus. More and more was he getting rid of all worldly ambition. He was seized with the idea that humility was the virtue par excellence—the one which liberates as from all artifice, all complications, all interested motives. At bottom, he envied the simple soldiers who had not to bother their heads over the question whether they were followed; he began to feel that he was not born to command, and was quite sure that at the end of the war he would be able to return to his former life without an effort. But the art of command springs from personal ascendancy, and how is it possible for this personal ascendancy not to shine from such superiority, from such a detachment from his own person? Men are often psychologists without knowing it. They could not tell you the reasons why they are attached to such-and-such a chief, yet they feel their strength mysteriously.

Indifferent to danger, attentive merely to his duty and his soul, Belmont saw the arrival of Easter. It was in a wood, in the rain, that he celebrated the feast of the Resurrection and Hope. And yet it brought him profound peace, as it did to those peasants who, in Tolstoi's Resurrection, came up to each other, saying: "Christ has risen," and by that news, repeated for nearly nineteen hundred years, receive physically an impression of comfort and plenitude.

The work of detachment went on in him more and more. What importance can a few years of life more or less have? Nature itself, whose charm he delighted in so much, whose seasons, colour and diversity he understood so well, became powerless to retain him. In vain did spring multiply its smile and graces around him. He knew the falsehood and vanity of them.

He now surpassed—even to the point of stoicism and disdain of life—Christian humility and acceptance, just as he had surpassed his regret of home, even to the extent of his nostalgia sadness. And similarly he found in faith the strength to resist the metaphysical temptation, as he had resisted the absorption of human tendernesses. One can follow, in Ferdinand Belmont's correspondence, the path which led him to inner perfection. It was a straight and ascending alley which the overhanging branches seemed at times to obstruct, but these had only to be turned aside to perceive once more the invariable direction. No, life was not contemptible and war was not a divine game. For man is not lost in nature, which assumes a meaning only through him, and however short may be the time at his disposal, it is sufficient for him to perceive in himself and outside himself a subordination of effects to causes, an order, a harmony, a God.

This too great philosophic detachment in the case of Ferdinand Belmont was to be purified in the flame of charity and divine love, and this was the last phase of his too brief life.

The months which followed were hard ones for his battalion. At each attack he was astonished to find himself living in the midst of so many dead. He was astonished at it, and already he felt no further joy at the fact. He had seen death so many times, and it appeared to him to be so trifling a thing, especially when it came suddenly, as in the case of his comrade, Lieutenant Capdepont. Never does he make an allusion, in a tone of reproach, to the length or hardships of the war. He attributed to it the mysterious and fatal character accorded it by Joseph de Maistre, whose thoughts in this respect have so often been distorted.

When he heard of the death of his brother Joseph, he consoled his parents (afflicted for the second time) with supreme kindness; but one can divine that all in that family thought on similar lines and turned their sorrow to God, as a sick man his sores to the sun. Beforehand, he tried to console them for his own loss, for already he no longer counted on returning. Just as formerly he thought of the country-house where the family assembled in the holidays, so he thought of the eternal home where there are no more absent ones.

In July, 1915, came the attack on the Lingekoff. When the material work of shattering the enemy's defences was considered to be accomplished, man then entered on the scene. Scientific forces having been let loose, what do they encounter? What determines in the end advance or retreat? Man, always man. The artillery, we are assured, has destroyed everything in the opposing trenches, and yet the last rampart is a human breast. The grandeur of that poor morsel of humanity whom Ferdinand Belmont saw lost amidst the forces of the universe, whom he pitied and loved, whilst considering the vanity of his enterprizes, he now began to recognize. He sings the praises of individual merit in words which will doubtless be often quoted, for some day the testimony of so many obscure heroes must indeed be collected.

Et exultavit humiles. Never will humble folk have better merited glorification than in this war, in which they have carried endurance to its furthest limits. It would seem as though the very stages of the war mark in the case of Ferdinand Belmont the stages of his inner development. After the great offering of the beginning, he was able, in the trenches, to meditate on human condition. The repeated attacks in the Vosges forced, as it were, his mind to send forth thoughts more fully charged with pity, comprehension, humility—thoughts more strained towards death and God. He ceased to deny the importance of will, and repeated almost textually Pasteur's words:, "no effort is ever lost." It is not the result that matters, but the act of the being to obtain it. Our first step towards liberty should be to free ourselves from needs, desires, regrets, doubts—all the chains we ourselves have forged, in order to find ourselves again as we ought to be, not inert, contemplative beings, after the manner of Brahmins, but living creatures, conscious of our relativity and submissive to an acting God.

The preoccupations of the soul were so powerful in the case of Ferdinand Belmont that they seem in his correspondence to assume pre-eminence over the events of the war.

We must read, in his letters, his account of the attack of August 20, and how a leader should assume his responsibilities. He possessed the calmness and character of a leader. His ascendancy over his men came from a friendship they felt he had for them. And how could the most difficult circumstances get the better of him, he who was now always a little above human events?

On August 28, 1915, he left on furlough, and saw his parents and native district for the last time. One can imagine that he knew it; for in the letters which followed his return he shows neither emotion nor regret. He had passed beyond the zone of recollection. The beauty of September days still inspired him with magnificent descriptions, which will be quoted side by side with those of Fromentin and Loti. Who will describe better the splendour of the Vosges, the autumn, the evenings on "the hills clothed in shadow, where the red trees sing among the pines?'' And he cast his thoughts back to the autumn in Dauphiny. Ah! that last autumn; one can imagine that his life was exalted in it like the colours of the woods. He breathed in the beauty of it, felt its caresses like a supreme testimony of the sweetness of the days.

Thus nature ceased to be the impassible Eva of Alfred de Vigny: it became the radiant hymn of permanent creation.

On October 19 he heard that he was decorated with the Legion of Honour. He was made a knight of the order on November 4, in clear, cool weather, in front of his company assembled under the pines of the Malvenwald. Certain that the members of his family would receive a little joy from it, in the midst of their mourning, he related the ceremony in detail. For he was still able to distribute happiness from a distance, though he might no longer be able to receive any which satisfied him. His narrative is worthy of the anthologies: never has the meaning of humble devotion been expressed in language more impregnated with human sympathy and brotherly tenderness. One can foresee in it the ascent of a soul which is nearing the summit. Ferdinand Belmont had only two more months to live, and already he perceived the back of things, the eternal and unique justice.

His men—those Chasseurs whose portrait, at once realistic and sympathetic, he has drawn here and there in his letters, and who knew how to choose the path of divine humility—also wished, on the evening of the ceremony, to consecrate him as a knight, and came to serenade him.

Meanwhile, autumn was drawing to a close, and likewise his life. The valleys of the Vosges continued to delight him with the oncoming of winter. He loved the healthy physical exercise of excursions in his extensive sector. He accustomed himself to the company of the rude winds. The nights were fairy-like. He sings of their beauty like one of the great French poets in prose, and his descriptions of landscape ever conclude with philosophical reflections, as though the sensible forms which made his soul vibrate disappeared after having tuned it like a lyre.

What unknown presentiment, on December 3, impelled him to write a letter home which contains, almost negligently, the expression of his last wishes?

His last letter is dated December 27, and is addressed to his young brother Maxime, who was also soon to leave home. It completes his testament. He bequeathes to his brother the belief which had supported him. He seizes hold of one of Claude Bernard's formulas to introduce it in another domain. Claude Bernard said: "If I knew a truth thoroughly, I should know everything." Ferdinand Belmont declares: "He who has performed, a single minute of his life, an act of sincere faith, or offered up a fervent prayer, has conquered more truth than the most laborious genius."

Goethe, when dying, called for more light—more light. The little captain of mountain infantry, on the eve of death, called for still more faith.

On the 25th, Christmas Day, a 150 m.m. shell fell on his shelter. It was the warning. But was it necessary? On the 28th he was fatally wounded and died towards evening.

II

Ferdinand Belmont's letters came, during seventeen months, almost daily, to revive, console and fortify a family whence four sons in succession had set out. Out of the four, three have not returned. For the third time, and this time near New Year's Day, which, formerly—before the war—was the time for joyous meetings, the family experienced a cessation of news, a period of waiting, anxiety, agony, and certainty. In how many French homes has this not been the case?

And because it has been thus in other French homes, these letters are published. Scruples one can easily understand caused long hesitation. Read and reread, copied and recopied, Ferdinand Belmont's correspondence was known to a small circle of friends. These friends have succeeded in overcoming these very delicate doubts, the strongest of which was inspired by the modesty of the deceased, who was strongly against all seeking for fame or notoriety. They pointed out to the family that a happy action on souls might be exercised by means of this publication, and that this action, beyond a restricted circle, might reach many sorrowful hearts, many uncertain minds, and many whose courage was failing, with the result that these would be raised up, convinced, inspirited, turned into believers and heroes.

Out of the war must come, in fact, a deeper and simpler fellowship. Nothing brings people so close together as a community of sorrow. The women in mourning who meet at the cemetery see black veils—no longer dresses. They have no need to know each others' names to know each other. Their wounded souls call to each other and accept assistance.

Ferdinand Belmont was a born writer. He possessed the gift of expressing his sensibility in front of nature and of transforming his visions of the outer world into inward analyses and meditations. He had feeling for form and ideas. His unlaboured phrases are full of rhythm. I have already placed his work side by side with the Journal and Correspondence of Maurice and Eugenie de Guérin; and I do not believe I am mistaken in affirming that he will be read in the same way, loved, and faithfully placed on that shelf of one's library which is reserved for books one returns to when one has received some deep wound from life and one seeks a discreet confidant who has experienced suffering.

He will especially be read by those who are anxious seekers after religious truth. "If I believed one truth thoroughly, I should believe them all," was his transposition of one of Claude Bernard's dicta. In the immense chain of interrogations which arise at every phenomenon and every movement in life, like those coveys of partridges which rise from the thickets at a horse's step, truths lead towards the Truth. In his Nouvelle Idole, M. de Curel compares the minds which seek for it to the stalks of water-lilies attracted by the light of the sun which reaches them through the liquid mass; they lengthen, stretch themselves out until they reach the surface of the water, where their flowers blossom. But how is it that the unique truth does not re-descend to man? How is it that God is fixed outside our conception and is absent from the inexplicable universe? How is it that, having allowed human relativeness to be foreseen, if not conceived, He avoids man after awakening his desire? Can he exist, if He is not revealed? Revealed, how is it He is not the bread of life which, alone with death, is equally distributed among all? The proximity of death seems to have communicated to Ferdinand Belmont the gift of drawing closer to this present God, this God revealed in function by whoever accomplishes human actions.

He himself had gradually loosened the bonds which held him to the earth, and when God called him, He found him free.

HENRY BORDEAUX.

February-May, 1916

 

 

A Crusader of France

Chapter I : Before the Fight

Annecy, August 4

After our parting at Voreppe on Sunday, I left for Lyons. Perrache railway station presented an uncommon spectacle owing to the bustle, excitement and overcrowding.

To describe the journey as a pleasant trip would be exaggeration; but one must take things as they come, and put up with the means in requisition (thirty-two men in each compartment—horses lengthwise, eight), whereby everybody is crammed in pell-mell without distinction of either rank or class, and with half the men more or less intoxicated. But, after all, everything went off fairly well. I should never have believed that the general mobilization would have been accomplished with so much order and relative rapidity. When one thinks of what that represents as regards movements and traffic and the preparation of trains, which had to be formed at a day's notice, one can really only be amazed at the manner in which the staff of the P.L.M. gets through its work. From this point of view progress has indeed been made since 1870!

Nor should I ever have believed there was such enthusiasm, such unanimous and admirable confidence in all these men, many of whom are married and fathers, and who generously go forth, without a complaint, without a murmur. And all along our way war songs are heard—the Marseillaise and the Chant du Départ; with shouting from one train to another at the crossings or in the stations. The whole way alongside the line women and children cheer and wave their handkerchiefs, while very often weeping.

Seeing such enthusiasm and generosity in those who suffer most from war, one would be very vile if one did not set out heartily when, as in my own case, everything is for the best.

At half past eight we reached Annecy, where they received me with open arms. This morning the reservists, who continue to arrive incessantly, were fitted out with clothes. Here, again, everything went off in splendid order and high spirits. Apart from that, I know nothing of the war, about what has occurred or what will happen. I believe we shall remain here for a few days before the battalion of reserve is ready to go into the field.

Annecy, August 5

To-day, at noon, we accompanied the 11th Battalion to the departure platform—an active battalion brought to an effective of 1,000 men by means of the three classes last liberated.

You cannot conceive the ovation—thoroughly justified nevertheless—which the chasseurs received as they marched, headed by the band, to the railway station, nor the bearing of these gallant fellows half of whom were still, three or four days ago, in their fields or workshops, and who have so rapidly and so courageously equipped themselves that you could hardly distinguish the reservists from the regulars. But, above all, I do not think that I have ever seen anything so touching as that departure in perfect order, without a complaint, without useless swaggering, with the band playing the Chant du Départ, and the officers' wives, admirably courageous, watching the train moving off without giving way, repressing their tears so as not to affect the men uselessly; and the major leaning out of a carriage window with his hand to his beret to give a parting salute to Savoy. And all this done so simply, so courageously, without ostentation or bravado. I do not know what this war holds in reserve for us, but how can we fail to hope much when it opens like this?

As to ourselves, the 51st Battalion, entirely reservists, we shall, I believe, have to leave for Aisne the day after to-morrow, our mission until fresh orders being to defend our sector of the Italian frontier— that is to say, the sector from Petit Saint Bernard to Izeran.

But, in view of Italy's neutrality, it is quite probable that we shall receive the orders. . . . Moreover, we shall not care to remain in those exquisite Alpine valleys, peacefully tasting their delights, when there is good work to be done elsewhere.

Once more, to-day, I had the impression that there was not much merit in my leaving—I who am not yet, thank God, indispensable to anybody—when I see fathers resolutely setting out leaving their wives and children in the hands of God.

If I did not leave you behind, I should set out without the slightest regret.

Macot, August 7

"We left Annecy last night and alighted at Aime, between Moutiers and Bourg-Saint- Maurice. Two companies of the 51st remained at Aime; the other two, including my own, are in quarters three kilometers higher up, at Macot, a most picturesque little Savoyard village, with the houses in rows one above the other on the hill-side, amidst clumps of walnut trees.

This calls to mind many pleasant recollections of former manoeuvres; and here, in this quiet spot, it is almost difficult to believe that such important events are happening on the northern and eastern frontiers.

At any rate everything is going on all right: news of the war is favourable; but the Germans are of inconceivable savagery and brutality. They have indeed merited what is happening to them: the indignant anger and state of defence of all Europe against such infamies; and I sincerely hope that if it is God who permits war, it will be to use it as an instrument of justice. Then . . .

August 8

Here, in the semi-solitude of these mountains, where news reaches us tardily, everybody retains the same calm confidence, the same generous and resolute coolness, and all these fine fellows who were dragged yesterday from their wives' hearths and occupations are preparing in no half-hearted manner and without unprofitable excitement, to defend the honour of the country.

One must live through hours like these to be able to comprehend that "Patrie" is no vain word, to feel in its generous beauty the grandeur of the army, which rises superior to all littleness or routine, and to estimate men at their true value. It is good to be a Frenchman at this hour; it is above all good to see what devotion, energy, sacrifice and honour spring from the depths of this nation which has been reproached so gratuitously abroad with being boastful, needless and frivolous.

This is indeed, at one and the same time, the military servitude and grandeur of which Vigny wrote, and there is no paradox in uniting these two words, apparently so contradictory.

As to what is happening on our frontiers, we receive but tardy echoes. One must be over there, on the rounded tops of the Vosges, or in the armoured turrets of fortresses, to realize to the full the bloody majesty of the drama enacted at this moment.

Are we going to join them, those who are fighting so bravely over there, or shall we be left here in anticipation of a surprise? We are getting ready, and we wait.

However, the situation is charming: a mountainous country with the valley of the Isère, whose waters flow almost towards us. Apart from the empty houses and the military aspect of the village, everything here has its normal appearance. The weather is fine. The verdant slopes, broken up with chequered fields and sparse clumps of trees, rise harmoniously to the sombre pines, and then to the serrated rocky summits flecked with late snows. The villages, hamlets or isolated barns add to this quiet landscape the grey reflection of their slate roofs, and this peaceful existence, within a picturesque framework bathed with limpid light, gives me, after days of wild excitement in the big towns, the impression of a dream. The instruction of the reservists is carried out as methodically and quietly as that of young recruits in barracks, but with this difference —that it proceeds quietly and that we touch lightly on details. Our task is facilitated by the men's admirable willingness.

As regards officers, my company possesses but a lieutenant of reserve and myself, and to command 250 men, when you are hardly accustomed to it, is not a sinecure. Especially would it be no light responsibility to have to lead these in battle. Fortunately, the neighbouring company, the 7th, is commanded by Captain Rousse, who is an excellent officer, a veritable trainer of men, and who assists us liberally with his advice and experience.

Macot, August 10

To find myself here once more, in this very valley of Tarentaise, where I spent so many unforgettable hours, I seem to live over again the days of four years ago, when I came here for the first time with the happy unconcern of the soldier at manoeuvres; and I doubly enjoy the easy existence, at once for the present and for all the delightful past which it awakens.

And yet, what an oppressive mystery enveils the weeks and months which await us! But we are so quickly seized by remembrance, even after long absences, that we live in our former states of mind even when everything differs so completely around us. And personally I am convinced that this will be so until the day when everything is really new; and that until our effective entry on campaign I shall live as I live to-day, without either fear or care as regards the mysterious morrow and only eager to enjoy without mental reservation these luminous days of the Alps.

During the dramatic hours through which the country is passing, how egoistic all this is! How much wiser, more virile and more generous it would be to meditate on the grandeur of the history which is folding itself, to perfect oneself in one's own task and give oneself up entirely to the past, however insignificant it may be, which each has to play in his turn! But what is one to do? To bewail the distress of the ravaged countryside or ruined homes? To waste one's strength in vain speeches concerning events, the fragmentary accounts of which reach us? What is the good of that? Is it necessary to add oneself, with one's frivolous imagination and pusillanimous heart, to reality, the simplicity and grandeur of which are sufficient in themselves?

To live each succeeding minute without desiring anything else, either more or less— to know how to yield to everything which comes—to adapt oneself to every situation, even the most novel or unexpected— and to trouble ourselves no longer over what will perhaps take place or will not come to pass! . . . After all, everything is by the grace of God!— and never has it been more opportune to say so than now, when the events which guide us are so mighty and so formidable that they boundlessly exceed both our desires and our regrets. We are in the hands of God and feel it more than ever; we are so little capable of passing judgment on events! The greatest and most useful lesson of the history of our world is precisely the one which proves to us that we are without discernment for judging the present. The divine lessons of the past ought to enable us to regard the future without emotion. I fancy that war is one of God's great means of teaching a lesson to the nations and moulding their destinies.

We continue to lead the life of chasseurs at manoeuvres. These reservists are fine fellows. Most of them leave behind them families devoid of resources, and yet they set out gallantly. I admire their honest and confident faces, their somewhat dragging step which would advance, despite the inevitable fatigue of these early days of marching, and the quiet good-natured smile with which they speak of the "excursion train for Berlin." France is a mine of resource; she possesses above all marvellous moral and mental faculties, strengthened by the news of early successes—faculties which are never uncombined with this good nature, this spontaneous and somewhat jocular fancy, that picturesque embellishment of the Parisian street-boy who is never lacking in Gallic wit.

I hope, moreover, that we shall have an opportunity of seeing all these fine men at work, and it would indeed be a pity not to take part, in our turn, at the ball.

For the time being we are gradually getting into training under the direction of Captain Rousse. Every morning, about five o'clock, we set out for a march which is progressively lengthened.

Macot, August 12

Is it possible that troops like ours and men like ourselves are at this very moment on the battlefield, in the midst of the thunder and hail of shells and bullets? This appears so improbable, when you are living as we are amidst the quietude and repose of this Alpine valley, that we sometimes ask ourselves if the news which the too rare dispatches bring us at long intervals is not wholly invented.

That is because it is not easy to picture a battlefield, nor to say what figure we should cut on it, what emotions we should experience at the first bullets, nor up to what extent we should be, from the first, masters of our bodies and our weakness.

And yet, already for several days past and even at this hour at which I am quietly writing in front of peaceful summits, they are fighting, and seriously; at this very minute men like myself and like us all are under fire, advance amidst the bullets, and consequently surmount that first impression of physical distress which, for my part, I fear like an act of treason and dishonour.

It is the first contact which must be the critical moment. Once that step has been taken, one ought to progress much better, be another man, an insensible thing hurled by a sort of unconscious force, impossible to define, which has suddenly arisen from the unknown depths of self, and which guides the subjugated machine until the moment it stops, triumphant or shattered.

August 13

I take up again the pencil laid down yesterday. This date, August 13, reminds me that to-day I am twenty-four. When my birthday comes round once more—if it returns at all—I shall have seen a multitude of things and experienced many fresh emotions. Who knows all that may happen within the next year? Shall I still be under arms, or shall I have resumed my medical studies which were so suddenly interrupted? Shall I even still be in this world? It is a curious impression to feel oneself on the threshold of such an unknown as that which awaits us. Here indeed is what ought to satisfy that conceited desire to live one's own life which troubles so many young men and leads them to despise their surroundings and daily routine. Here also is what ought to make those who pretend to subordinate everything to their ambition and degree reflect and humiliate themselves a little.

It is now, it will be above all in a few days, on going into fire, that we shall feel at one and the same time the importance and insignificance of human affairs, the importance of the slightest acts, since through their uniform continuity we form our character; the insignificance of all our works and desires, since it needs but a wind, rising one day, to sweep away like leaves both ourselves and our works.

We would give a good deal, at the present hour, to be able to cast a glance at the coming months; but who knows whether we should then have the courage to face them? God orders things wisely, and if we know how to recognize His will everywhere, of what importance are events? Thenceforth all are of the same value, and it would be true wisdom to pass through them with equable impassibility and unshakable serenity. This would be the sign of true faith, now so rare, the faith of the martyrs and the saints. But weakness is inseparable from man; and it is a singular consolation, that of a God, become man, praying that the cup pass from Him.

Pray for me—I who have only my simple duty to perform, like any other, and who may possess, perhaps for the first time, some merit in doing it.

It is here we realize the abominable action of alcohol on the working-class population of towns and even those of the country. At the medical inspection it is indeed a lamentable spectacle to see these capital fellows of twenty-six or twenty-eight— miners of the Loire or day-labourers from everywhere—with ulcerated stomachs, fatty hearts, or poisoned nerves, and who are manifestly incapable, even when desires and will-powers are adequate, of performing the task now set them. What a scandalous curse that corrupting alcohol is! And what a crime these young men commit—irresponsibly, unfortunately— against their families and descendants, against their country and themselves!

At their age, between twenty-five and thirty, which ought to be the flowering time of the physical and moral being, they are already shattered, almost old men, morally and physically slaves of their vices, socially useless, if not dangerous. Among the dangers which now threaten France, this one is perhaps as redoubtable as the cannon and bayonets of the Germans.

Ah! what need France will have to return to the old beliefs upon which she is established and which support her still at the present hour!

Perhaps this war which is beginning is the sheet-anchor held out by God to this drifting country, in order to bring it back to Him, who loved and protected it so much. That would be the real triumph and victory of to-morrow: Gesta Dei per Francos!

Ten o'clock p.m.! Positively I had once more to interrupt this letter. They came to fetch me because of the confinement of the wife of the Macot postman. Failing a doctor and even a midwife, in a district where children sprout as plentifully as potatoes, I went to give her the slender benefit of my knowledge. It is probable that it will not be over for some time, perhaps not until to-morrow morning. Reveille to- morrow is at three o'clock for a march. This will be training for nights at outposts on campaign, when there will not be much sleep either.

Thus we must bring men into the world on the eve of sending them into the other!

Macot, August 14

I have just spent a rather lively night at the bedside of the postman's wife. Twins were at stake and their birth did not come off quite by itself. Everything, thank God, passed off all right. But I shall remember that night at Macot.

As a result, I was unable to go to bed, and was almost dog-tired on setting out at four a.m., for the manoeuvre, after a night spent in a sweat, wondering how things would end. But the beautiful sun of the Alps quickly put me right. The manoeuvre, in which the entire battalion took part, passed off very well, and having had an afternoon nap, I find I am sufficiently fresh and hearty this evening to admire the effects of light fading over the mountain-tops.

I occupy, in the midst of the village, a simple and natty little room, with pine-wood Venetian shutters, in the house of people who possess a good deal of that distinguished and refined manner which comes as a surprise in a large number of Savoyard villages. Moreover, there is manifest in this interior, combined with a certain comfort, a special taste which shows a family faithful to those traditions of culture and almost aristocracy that you find in a few localities of the district. On the walls of my room figure two engravings of pictures, by Lancret, in wooden frames chosen with excellent taste. You would not find their equal in the villages of Dauphiny, nor in those of the Briançonnais.

From my window I can see the grassy brow which descends from the Rognaix, and where, every evening, glimmer forth, like night-lights, the rare, small lights of sheepfolds and farmsteads. This scrap of landscape, similar to so many others which have already delighted me elsewhere, I shall carry away with me, fixed in my memory, when we leave this serene solitude for the flaming battlefields of Alsace or Belgium.

The Afternoon of August 16

Yesterday, August 15, was a rest day. The whole village was en fête (only the women, naturally, and a few young people), the bells ringing a merry peal. At high mass, which was attended by many chasseurs, captains and leading officers, the Curé preached an excellent sermon, specially prepared for the occasion. Macot Church, like most of the churches in these very devout and fairly wealthy communes of Savoy, is provided with an abundance of ornaments, gilding, pictures and coloured wooden statues. These form a rather happy whole. The church itself, despite its somewhat heavy aspect, common to the architecture of the First Empire, is pretty; it possesses, above all, a character of its own and is in no way commonplace.

The very solemn high mass, with six choir boys, if you please! and all the women wearing the gold-embroidered Tarentaise caps and, over their shoulders, shawls worked with brilliant colours, made a charming scene.

But, alas! everything is passing away. Destructive civilization, with its motor-cars and railways, is spreading everywhere, and already a few dresses which smack of the boulevard form a blemish among these ancient local costumes, so becoming on these robust and rough-hewn women, who retain the hard profile, pure and firmly designed features of their Moorish ancestors.

In the evening, at six o'clock, a special benediction of the Holy Sacrament was given in honour of the troops, and once more the Curé delivered a little patriotic speech. Every one came away contented, and not before having added his note to the admirable cacophony of litanies chanted in chorus by all the men.

Whilst all of us here were celebrating, en famille, the fête of August 15, many of our comrades or friends are receiving their baptism of fire on the frontier.

In spite of everything, we are somewhat ashamed at this present hour to live in such repose and quiet.

What we lack most are letters. Nobody is receiving any. I have had no news of you since my departure. I shall ever remember that small Voreppe railway station—the distress of that parting amidst the bustle and the crowd—that insuperable impression of general dejection and calamity.

But do not let our minds dwell on that. We have too many reasons for hoping, and need all our courage.

Everything is going on all right: we are training, getting ready and waiting.

August 19

No luck! For some days past departure had been in the air. At last, the evening before yesterday, we received an official order to leave about noon to-day; so we made ready. But yesterday evening a telegram came informing us that, because of the mobilization of Italy, the 51st, as covering troops, must remain until further orders at Aime.

So we are still here for I know not how long— fixed in this monotonous valley, useless, forgotten, left behind.

I am well aware that one must not think only of oneself, and that the higher authorities do not come to a decision at the present moment without a reason. But confess that it is humiliating for chasseurs to live this enervating life of independent gentlemen when there is such fine work to be done elsewhere.

Captain Rousse, who commands the Macot detachment, is indignant. A soldier to the bottom of his soul, one who has guarded with the fidelity of a vestal the sacred fire of the true warrior, he champs the bit with more impatience than ever.

One must recognize, however, that, despite his ardent desire to leave, he is the first to set an admirable example of discipline and obedience by restraining himself from protesting and by accepting, notwithstanding his vexation, the inaction to which he is condemned.

It is officers like these—enthusiasts eager to maintain throughout their career the earnestness and ardour of their Saint Cyrian days, as well as to avoid routine and tiresome uniformity—who make the French army what it is.

And that represents a certain virtue, a continuity of attention and effort, in the case of men who recommence, twenty-five or thirty years in succession, the same dull work, and who, like others, have their duties and cares as heads of families.

The country has not changed. How could it? Yet indeed a peculiar impression finally comes home to us almost everywhere — that of the abandonment in which work in the fields, suddenly interrupted through the departure of the workers, has been left, and that also of the emptiness of the villages through which we pass. It is like traversing a desert, a cursed spot desolated by some plague.

There are indeed on the threshold of the houses a few women with downcast air and reddened eyes who, thinking of their absent sons, watch us as we pass, or children who, left to themselves, are full of astonishment and cannot understand what is happening. But not a sign of a man, for the old men show themselves but little; not a sign of a labourer in the fields, where the abundant crops remain ungathered, pillaged by the birds, beaten down by storms, and which will end by rotting on the ground whence they sprang. The harvest remains uncompleted; in the corn-fields the wheat-sheaves, set up like trophies, have begun to wither and grow mouldy.

That—these abandoned fields and villages without men—is the only thing which has modified the usual appearance of the country. But verily the impression this produces is peculiar, and we shall retain it in connection with this epoch.

To-day, which was to have been the day of departure, we are resting. The days are long when unoccupied by professional duties, for there is nothing to read and it is forbidden to move away from quarters. The chasseurs themselves have nothing to do. Some wander about the streets with their hands in their pockets, coming and going without knowing what to do; others, seated in the corner of barns, are writing long, careful, patient letters. Watching them from a distance, absorbed in their task, stopping after each phrase and moving the pen with a circular gesture above the paper before attacking the next, one can easily imagine both the style, at once naive and distorted, and the object at once selfish and generous, of their correspondence.

Others again, with the slowness and ponderousness characteristic of all their movements, read with concentrated attention, spelling each word, the news of four or five days ago which is posted up on the walls of the Mairie. Then, stopping they comment and discuss—talk politics a little; for it is a fact that the more ignorant people are regarding political matters the more they love to talk about them. Off they then move, on the clarion sounding the dinner-hour: one of the best times of the day, since it at least corresponds to a present reality. And soon you will see them seated on trunks of abandoned trees, alongside the houses, on stones, on the wheelbarrows or ploughs in the sheds, with their mess-tins on their knees and their bodies bent very low over the stew, each spoonful of which they swallow noisily, without uttering a word, and with the regularity of a pendulum until it is all eaten. When they have finished their dinner they resume their aimless deambulation in the village, or else go and stretch themselves in the hay where some of them spend hours in a sort of semi-coma, which is neither true sleep nor consciousness, and must resemble the condition of hibernating marmots.

For lack of being more useful to my country in a military way, I am called upon from time to time to act as doctor for the district. Yesterday I was called to the bedside of a poor woman who has been coughing up her lungs for the past six months, and to whom the Curé of Macot asked me to bring my poor abilities, which, under the circumstances, could be manifested only by kind words, everything else being superfluous. This apart from all men or N.C.O.'s of my company, or the neighbouring company who, gradually informed of my civil identity, come timidly, and with manifold circumlocution, to submit their eases to me—cases which they naturally consider are always very delicate and above all very different from ordinary ones. So that I do not despair, if we remain here some time longer, of being able to prepare, practically if not theoretically, for my duties as house-surgeon.

Macot, August 20

At last—at last, a letter has arrived! I have been awaiting something from you for so long that I had almost lost hope of receiving anything. It is, therefore, only as a measure of prudence that correspondence has been momentarily stopped. We have no right to complain about it. Under present circumstances private interests disappear; there is only a single interest, a single cause to which all, without distinction of class, party or opinion, are rallying. France is setting an admirable example at the present time by making a clean sweep of all the differences which have so long divided her. Republicans, royalists, anarchists, socialists exist no longer; there are only Frenchmen, united in the same movement of solidarity and devotion.

I seem to have a vision of the France of tomorrow, purified by sacrifice and aggrandized by ordeal, issuing from the struggle with a halo of fresh prestige and resuming on the world's highway the place of honour she was about to abandon.

"Who knows whether this formidable contest in which all the Powers stand face to face is not the redeeming devastation permitted by God in order to efface the stains which soiled the eldest daughter of the Church? Leaning over the terrifying abyss which has just opened at our feet, we tremble when we think of the extent and range of such events, and especially at the thought of the issue of this unprecedented struggle.

But why let such cares disquiet us? Carried away by the formidable whirlwind, we are like a grain of sand that knows not whence it comes, nor whither this fatality is carrying it. Let us follow its example. Like these leaves which are seized in the vortices of the tempest, let us abandon ourselves, not to fatality, but to God, in whom we move, and who alone knows whither He is guiding us.

In the ever protracted expectation in which I live, I pray, I also, for you, whom I left in disquietude and powerlessness.

Macot, August 22

This time it is indeed the last letter I shall write to you from Macot. We leave to-night at eleven. We know, confidentially, that we are going in an easterly direction, probably towards Besançon.

Thus, in our turn, we are going to enter into the struggle; it is now merely a question of sooner or later. We shall certainly be engaged one day or other in the line of battle; we shall see what a battlefield is like; like all the soldiers of France, we shall fight.

Every one on leaving is satisfied. During these fifteen days' respite we have got into training, and this battalion of reserves, licked into shape through military discipline, is setting off in good form and will, I believe, cut a good figure at the intended moment.

Pray that I may, by the grace of God, do my duty honourably. What He wills will come to pass.

 

 

Chapter II The Vosges

Chambéry

August 23, six o'clock

We have been en route since last night at eleven. Everybody sets off with a glad heart; all the men are singing; and the compartments are decked with flowers. We are to arrive this evening at ...

August 24, en route

On leaving Aime the major received notice of a new direction—that of Gray, an important regulating station where we arrived last night after having crossed the whole of Bresse (asleep within its girdle of woods), under a dazzling sun.

At Gray, a fresh surprise: we were to continue immediately in the direction of Saint- Dié, where we are expected to arrive about 5 a.m. And ever since we have been rolling along. But we are much behind our time-table, since it is ten o'clock, at the time of writing to you, and we are not yet at Epinal.

So now we are in the zone of the armies. How everything has changed since Macot! What traffic in the railway station! What crowds of employees with armlets, troops, wounded, and specialized officers!

This first contact with the realities of war is startling! Yesterday, after Saint-Jean-de- Losne, we met an ambulance train; and this morning we encountered two others. In the short minutes during which we saw them we were able to note that the men were all brave and that their spirits were excellent. They give details regarding the circumstances under which they were wounded and express a wish we may soon avenge them. Yesterday evening we met a convoy of German prisoners.

This morning, at all the small stations through which we have passed, the sidings and platforms are occupied by wagons loaded with an odd collection of objects, such as cordage, screw-jacks, cables, siege material, waiting there to be put into use.

The roads are cut up through the trampling of the horses, and are full of ruts; both artillery and cavalry have left their traces there. The fields, covered with ripe crops, are completely deserted; only children, at great intervals, are to be seen, guarding herds of cows in bits of meadows.

All along the fields the territorials have pitched little camps, with tents or shelters of foliage, for all the world like Indian camps in the virgin forest.

Monday evening, August 24

It is eight o'clock, and we are still rolling along. When I say we are rolling along, that is but a mode of speech; for in reality we are in distress, on a siding, at I cannot say what small station between Epinal and Saint-Die. Night has fallen—a splendid night; and in the harmonious, most verdant country the pine woods which clothe the last projection of the Vosges add a melancholy note. The sky is sown of stars and above the lines of woods which close the horizon a slender crescent moon rises. What serenity! What quietude, broken only at long intervals by the strident whistle of locomotives!

You cannot imagine the extent of the striking and inexpressible novelty of this magnificent night, the splendour of which we cannot help comparing to the horrors which are spread out barely a few leagues from here. In the flower-decked compartments the men are singing, in an undertone, the languishing songs of their native districts. It is at once touching and tragic.

Tuesday, August 25, 10 a.m.

We ended by reaching Saint-Dié this morning, but how late, grand Dieu!

Here reality is more and more striking; the town is full of soldiers, horsemen, artillery, convoys, motorcars. Many of the troops we met have already been in action several times; the men are black, dirty, fatigued, and many of the horses limp. All this is no longer sham warfare.

A short time ago, on arriving, we fired on a German aeroplane which was flying over Saint-Die, but which made off at once, followed by the bullets, which missed it. Another passed a moment afterwards, but too high and too far off to be able to fire at it. It dropped bombs which fell into the fields without doing any harm.

12.30 noon

"We have just removed to three or four kilometres east of Saint-Die, to protect the town against an eventual attack by German cavalry. The cannonade, which ceased about ten o'clock, was resumed a short time since, nearer, in the direction of the Vosges, the wooded barrier of which lies before us, fifteen kilometres away. Every now and then we can even see on the slopes the white balls of smoke which follow by several seconds the detonation, dull like exploding mines.

I hope it is our artillery which is firing. "We ourselves are in reserve behind the first hills which rise to the east of Saint-Dié. The two companies are in the first line of a healthy ridge at an altitude of 2,500 to 3,200 feet. The two other companies, including my own, are massed in the second line on sloping meadows; and here we wait. But, judging by the cannonade, which is becoming more distinct and nearer, like the dull rumbling of a storm, and by the patrols of horsemen or stray, bustling and exhausted foot-soldiers, who come down to Saint-Dié, to revictual, the enemy must be progressing towards us and the day will probably not go by without our having to fight.

4 p.m.

We are still awaiting the attack. Will it be made this evening or to-morrow? Small bodies of troops are passing along the road in disorder, falling back on Saint-Dié. There are all sorts: foot-soldiers, hussars, and sappers, escorted by peasants and bonnet-less women, who carry baskets and cloaks. All these are in flight. The men who pass—dirty and worn out—say that the Germans are at Provenchères, ten kilometres in front of us. It is, therefore, probable we shall spend the night here.

The men of the 22nd who are falling back on Saint-Dié were, a week ago, at Saint- Marie-aux-Mines, in the midst of Alsace. From line to line they are retreating, harassed by the German artillery.

In our present position it is useless to try to know or understand anything. We are drowned in such a mass that we cannot give an account of what is happening in the whole. Thus, to-day, whilst we are falling back where we are, we gained, it appears, a splendid victory at Raon-l'Etape. They must be in pursuit of the Germans over there, for the artillery has begun to roar again, but further off and duller.

5.30.

The marching past of the retreating 22nd continues. All the men are hideous, hirsute, and visibly worn out. They have been fighting for three weeks, and have more often slept in the open air than on hay. However, notwithstanding their fatigue, they are cheerful and courageous. Many of them brandish trophies triumphantly—one a Germatt soldier's hairy knapsack, another a loader, a third a spiked helmet or a foraging-cap.

So now we are on the eve of our first battle. It is difficult to believe that up to the last moment we have had no presentiment. This evening, in the hazy twilight of the Vosges, whence come the echoes of the distant cannonade, there is not a trace of anguish. Faces are serious but resolute; words springing to the lips are perhaps somewhat anxious, but full of animation and sometimes chaff. Gallic blood will come out.

Men sent to Grattin, a small village where we shall take up our quarters to-night, are going to prepare dinner. This evening we are on campaign and I have told my men that we shall mess together.

To know that to-night you and the family are praying for me gives me great confidence.

Friday, August 28

This time we have received our baptism of fire— and a serious one, I assure you.

I believe it was the evening before last I left you. Having passed the day at the hamlet of Dijon, we went down again to Grattin, to sleep. That evening the enemy was not far off; for patrols sent into the woods before Dijon saw German foot-soldiers several times. Captain Rousse's cyclist killed a Uhlan, and brought back his small flag. A patrol, sent out by the 51st, returned with a wounded corporal.

In the evening, at nightfall, the cannonade, which had rumbled all day, suddenly and violently descended on the positions occupied by the main part of the battalion behind Dijon, and for a few moments the uproar was infernal.

A little later infantry fire, very near, crackled forth in the woods on our left. Therefore everything authorized us to anticipate that the next day would not be without novelty.

At night, when bringing back my section to Grattin, we were several times fired at in the darkness, fortunately without being hit. I found out afterwards that a section of my company had taken us for Germans. A mere mistake!

The next day, at dawn, we took up the same positions as the day before and the evening before that. We were immediately joined by our Alpine battery and strengthened by a company of 300 men from the depot at Annecy.

Shortly after dawn, about five o'clock, the cannonade recommenced and made a certain impression. Having stood a copious downpour of shrapnel without damage, we set about taking steps against the enemy, who were certainly not far off. Captain Rousse's company had continued to occupy at Dijon his defensive positions and trenches, prepared two days before. As he had sent the information, collected by his patrols, that an attack on the left was probable at any moment, Captain Deschamps, in command of the 51st, dispatched me immediately with my section to strengthen it, as on the day before. But this time it was more serious.

About 6.30 Captain Rousse received an order to take the offensive—an order he had awaited in vain the day before, when conditions were more advantageous. The road from Dijon immediately enters a pine wood the outskirts of which . . .

Saturday, August 29

I should like to resume my letter at the point I left off, but I am worn out and famished. We have had no distribution during the four days we have been in action. The battalion is broken up, and has partly disappeared; all the men are at the end of their strength, and have hardly been able either to sleep, or to rest, or to eat for the last three days. And in addition to that we are beaten: Saint-Dié is occupied by the Germans. A counter-attack, attempted by us yesterday, though the men were regularly knocked up, partly succeeded, but came to nothing this morning. So, dog- tired, we are retreating, followed by infernal artillery fire, which has claimed not a few victims since yesterday.

I shall wait for another day, when body and mind are in a better state, before resuming the narrative of our first fight, the day before yesterday, when Captain Rousse, under my very eyes, met a uselessly heroic death. Many others also were killed or wounded on that day.

But I will tell you all about that some other day (if that day is to come), when we are no longer under this hellish shell-fire and have once a little quiet and silence. To-day I am hardly capable of telling you anything but this: I should like bread, rest, sleep.

These few lines are written in one of those splendid forests of the Vosges where I halt in order to protect the retreat of the batteries of 75's.

Sunday, August 30

Things are going a little better this morning. The weather is ideal, the country delightful, and it is wretched to see it cut up in this manner by war. But above all, I obtained bread yesterday evening, thanks to the charity of a foot-soldier from whom I begged. Ah! you are no longer proud when you have had nothing to eat for two days.

So things are going better. "We are still in action. The 51st, or at least what remains of it, has the dangerous mission of resisting at all costs, in order to enable the 14th Army Corps to retreat by the Bruyères road. Since this morning we have been deployed as sharpshooters behind the lines of bushes and the outskirts of the pines which clothe the slopes of this valley from La Bolle to Rougiville, that has been swept for three days past by a continuous rain of shells. At the hour at which I write to you (2 p.m.) the shells pass every two or three minutes with a shrill whistle, terminated by a thunder-clap. But you end by getting used to this uproar when you have been walking about in it for close upon five days, and, whilst keeping an eye on the points of the German positions at which our artillery is aiming, I enjoy this magnificent day.

How delightful the forests of the Vosges must be when you come to them as a peaceful visitor!

I was telling you, then, that, last Thursday, our first fight took place in the morning. Two sections of Captain Rousse's company entered the pine wood, one on each side of the road, immediately supported by two other sections including my own. Hardly had the first scouts entered the forest when a furious rifle-firing began, accompanied by cries and savage calls. The captain, who was preceding me, ordered me to advance my section quickly, in the direction which he indicated. But the firing redoubled, came from all sides at the same time, and men began to fall heavily, noiselessly, on to mossy ground. Then the captain, pale and very agitated, stood up in the wood and shouted at the top of his voice: ''Help! Help! With fixed bayonets!'' And immediately, at his first movement to dash forward, he fell backwards.

At that moment I was trying to see the Germans, who were shooting us almost point- blank, and who were invisible, thanks to their greyish uniforms mingling with the wild- raspberry bushes and ferns.

Meanwhile men were falling. Seizing the rifle of one who had fallen by my side, I fired a few shots, whilst sheltering myself as well as possible behind a pine tree or a clod. But very quickly, on looking around me, I saw that there was hardly any one else standing . . .

Then, rather than get killed all by myself, which would doubtless have been more heroic, I fled towards the houses of Dijon, jumped over the barricades and, amidst a continuous whizz of bullets, took refuge in a house.

On looking back once or twice, I recollect having seen Germans quite near, firing in our direction.

Once I thought of barricading myself in a house and firing from the windows when the Germans came. But the village was already completely deserted; one or two chasseurs, who had entered the house with me, said: "A shell has just fallen on the roof," and . . .

"What was one to do alone? In my turn I fled, as best I could, hearing, for four or five hundred metres, the bullets hissing like serpents everywhere, whilst tracing lines in the grass.

How did I reach a wooded hillock where our Alpine battery and machine-gun were? How is it that I was not at least wounded on that day? It is a miracle, for I found out afterwards that four bullets had touched me. One merely grazed my Tyrolese knapsack, another traversed my aluminium water-bottle, a third went right through my knapsack and everything it contained, whilst a fourth even struck the butt of the rifle I had in my hand. I must indeed thank God for having come out of it safe and sound.

For a moment we took up our position again around the Alpine battery. But soon the shells dislodged us from it. A gun had to be abandoned . . .

For our beginning, that was terrible and sad. Several officers—five at least—were left there that morning.

Poor Captain Rousse! I shall ever see him, with his head thrown back and his knees bent, being borne away amidst the bullets by two of his men, who supported him under the arms. Before dying he said to them: "Thank my company for me," and afterwards: "Take orders from Captain Deschamps." He also told his corporal, who was carrying him away, to take his sabre and give it to his son. And he died like a hero—sacrificed, seeing himself sacrificed, flinging himself with despair but bravely into the arms of death.

That surprise among the pines, those rifle-shots, those cries, those shrieks (amidst which I several times clearly distinguished commands in German), that death of the captain—all that I shall never be able to forget.

At Saint-Dié all the houses were closed and the streets deserted. We were ordered to erect barricades and take up positions to defend the streets of the town; and there we waited to resist in the streets, as on the day of Bazeilles.

The weather was terrible. Everybody was dog-tired, silent, driven into corners against the walls, whilst the shells fell on the town.

We waited in that way until noon. Then came an order to evacuate the town and fall back on La Bolle. So we formed ourselves into column again and left the town amidst the rain and the wind. But hardly had we got out when once more we came under the fire of the German artillery. Reinforcements proceeding towards Saint-Dié told us we must return there. After that the battalion broke up into several parts. One, under Captain Deschamps, made a counter-attack from Saint-Dié, whence they were driven with fresh losses; another, to which I was attached, wandered about in disorder until evening, pursued by the big German howitzers.

Since then—that is to say for the past three days —we have been manoeuvring in this little valley which stretches from Saint-Dié to Rougiville, losing ground one day, regaining a little the next, but only to lose it once more, leaving a few men behind daily, and totally lacking in victuals. Consequently the men are at the end of their resources. From the very first day they have seen many of their comrades fall, they are not eating, sleep badly, and . . . But daily we must set out again on campaign, stand the grape-shot and bullets, lose ourselves, disperse, and endeavor to get together again in the evening to find rest-billets.

Only fragments of the 51st Batallion remain. I do not know how many men have been killed or wounded. There are no more captains left; half of the sub-lieutenants are either killed or wounded; and there are stragglers who have not yet found us. In short, this morning, there assembled, to strengthen the barrage of the valley in which we are collaborating, only 180 men and three sub-lieutenants, . . .

To-day, I do not know how the day is going to end. Our mission to hold the valley, in advance of the ways of retreat, at all cost, has up to now been relatively easy to fill. The German patrols have been driven back by our artillery and infantry fire. And at the present time, established on our positions, we are assisting at an artillery duel which will perhaps last until night, and the only object of which appears to be to hold in respect the troops on either side.

Over this pretty valley, encompassed by pine-clad slopes, and in this beautiful cool weather of the end of summer, the shells pass, replying to each other from one end of the valley to the other, and spreading desolation wherever they strike. Columns of smoke—sometimes even real fires—arise where the grape-shot falls. A sawmill has just blazed up with immense tongues of flame before our eyes.

And to-day is Sunday—the day for the opening of the shooting season at Lonnes, where the country must be so beautiful, so quiet, so reposeful.

The day before yesterday, on overtaking a battalion of the 22nd Infantry, I came across Jean, who called out to me. As a soldier he was unrecognizable. We were able to see each other for only two minutes at the roadside. He had just arrived by stages, and did not know what they intended to do with him.

He also told me that he had no news of you since his departure. Nor I either.

When and where shall I now receive your letters, granting that I ever get them? And do you receive mine, those I write to you, like this one, on my knee, in the open air, whenever I have a moment to spare? The last ones I entrusted to folk who were fleeing to Saint-Dié. Was the post office able to get them away before the arrival of the Germans? And this one (already resumed twice), how shall I get it to you amidst our confusion, and far as we are from convoys and any resource?

Moreover, during the past four or five days I have never known where I should sleep at night, nor even if I should still be uninjured.

Ah! war! war! . . .

It will soon be 4 p.m. The artillery stopped a short time since, on their side and on ours; a few rifle-shots are indeed fired from time to time, but perhaps the fight will remain where it is for to-day, and the accomplishment of our mission will have been easy. Unless the Germans are preparing something during this insidious silence.

They are very good at that, as well as at shelling us at nightfall. They then advance as close as possible to our lines and sweep everything before them at random. If, fortunately, that does not often do much damage, it is always impressive, disquieting, and forces the troops to retreat still farther before taking up their quarters.

Pooh! The weather is fine. The day will perhaps end quite calmly. Yesterday evening the sky, towards Saint-Dié, was all ablaze.

Monday evening

We have spent a cruel night at the outposts, on the wet grass, alongside a road strewn with corpses, and near the smoking embers of a burnt-out house.

To-day we have maintained the same positions by organizing them definitely by means of trenches. The men are regularly knocked up.

We occupy the hedge of a pretty pleasure property, elegant and luxurious, which was bombarded yesterday and completely destroyed—shattered from cellar to roof. It is lamentable.

This evening there is a very pure sky, across which pass from time to time German aeroplanes on reconaissance. It is a clear evening, with the shadows of the pines lengthened by the setting sun, and the whole valley seems to be reflected in the pale twilight sky.

It is sad to the point of tears to feel oneself alone at such a job, and amidst such a scene, which by contrast makes the dismal desolation of the district more striking—a district ravaged by shells, and where abandoned bodies form, here and there, black stains on the meadows. What a hideous contrast!

A moment ago, one of my comrades, a sub-lieutenant, was wounded by a shell- splinter. Ah! the 51st Battalion of chasseurs is frittering away!

We have also taken in a wounded German, who came to implore our assistance.

Farewell! War is indeed horrible, and there are times, like this evening, when, in spite of oneself, one is overcome by hideous depression.

And yet the weather is so beautiful, the country so pleasant!

Wednesday, September 2

Things are going better—much better. I speak solely of what concerns me, since I know nothing or almost nothing, of the war, nor even about the remainder of the world.

But, personally, I have obtained since yesterday a little comfort, in which I was in great need from every point of view.

After having remained three days and two nights at the outposts, in the midst of desolation, rubbish and dead bodies, we were at last relieved yesterday morning, in order to rejoin our battalion (or at least what remains of it), and we have had an afternoon's rest, in addition to receiving bread and meat.

We found ourselves again with the 11th Battalion, since we mustered together; and at the orders of the major-general the two battalions have been united. The 51st no longer exists; there is only the 11th, with seven companies, the whole being placed under the command of Major Augerd.

As far as I am concerned, I am delighted with this arrangement. We enter into a well- constituted unity, well in hand—one in which the moral is better and the life more stirring.

I experienced yesterday an impression of profound bliss at being able to rest a little in the sun, to eat, and to sleep at night on a mattress. What comfort!

To-day our new battalion, the 11th, is held in reserve for the division, and up to the present we are at rest, assembled against banks or in the sinuosities of the ground, ready to be sent to the point where they need us.

Thursday, September 3

Come, I have again seen the sun rise this morning. It was devilishly cold when it began to appear, all red, on the misty horizon; now it is already high and dazzling. After a night in the open air, this sun-bath is a beneficent sensation.

Yesterday Major Augerd led four companies in an attack on the Kemberg, a terrible ridge, bristling with pines, on to which the Germans are holding, with machine-guns in trenches, and whence they dominate the whole situation to the west of Saint-Dié. When our troops reached the summit, which crowns this ridge, they encountered a short but very steep slope, and it was at that very moment that the rifles and invisible machine-guns opened fire on them. Twenty men were killed or wounded; a captain was killed, another wounded. Face to face with this hurricane of bullets, the major considered it wise to retreat, in order to avoid the massacre of the whole of his battalion; and from the position we occupied below we saw the companies come back, one by one, and reunite at the bottom of the outskirts of the woods.

So the two last captains of the 11th have fallen! It is, however, a fact common to all corps that the losses in officers are proportionately much higher than those in the rank and file. The best German marksmen, it is said, have received orders to aim at any one with stripes. Anyway, the staff of officers for this big battalion of 1,700 men is now singularly depleted. The result is that the survivors will have to assume important commands; and I was informed yesterday evening that I shall probably have to take command of the 5th Company. Mon Dieu! how shall I manage with the little experience I possess? What a responsibility to lead 250 men on campaign! I pray God to enlighten me concerning duties for which I am insufficiently prepared.

To-day we are organized for resistance at the hamlet of Claingoutte, to the south- east of Saint-Dié, where we were sent yesterday evening with two companies of the 11th to relieve the outposts held by the 30th of the line. We passed the night there— a splendid night illumined by the moon and stars—rolled in our cloaks, on which the dew-drops collected. It was cold. After the final gun-shots of straggling patrols, quietness came—a delusive lull in these parts where the storm of shells rages from morn to night.

At break of day we roused ourselves, bustled about to restore the circulation of our blood, and rolled up our cloaks. Some of the men went off to the shelter of the houses to warm the coffee—the good old "juice" of the trooper; and since dawn we are burrowed in our holes, motionless, crouching in the red earth, among the clover and potatoes. We shall remain here as long as we are left, keeping watch over the ground and, from time to time, sending small patrols into the wood on our left to guard against a surprise. . . .

For the past hour a huge German dirigible, similar in its yellow rotundity to an enormous larva, has been swaying above the valley of Sainte-Marguerite.

Since this morning everything has been confined to an artillery duel. The quantity of artillery ammunition consumed by the Germans is incredible. Whatever may have been said, their famous heavy artillery is not negligible—one must recognize that after having seen a few of these huge crater