ONCE more, and for the last time in this outline story of two thousand years, it must be said we are dealing with merely the history of France, not with that of all Europe.
Until after the dawn of the twentieth century the relations of the Third Republic with its neighbors had continued on the whole highly peaceful. French statesmen were too well aware of their own handicaps and of the terrible consequences of provoking an unsuccessful war, to dare to push home policies which might embroil them with England, the old "natural enemy," or with Germany, her successor in disfavor. There had been, of course, serious friction with the former Power over Egypt, and the open wound caused by Alsace-Lorraine was unhealed; but despite many vaporings in the Paris press, no intelligent foreigner, save possibly in the days of Boulanger's popularity, could charge France with being a menace to the tranquillity of the world. The defensive alliance concluded with Russia in 1893 served to protect the Republic against gross acts of aggression, but it was well understood that this agreement of the Czar (a "marriage of convenience" between two very dissimilar Powers!) was defensive only. It did not authorize the French to pick a quarrel with Germany in order to get back the lost provinces; and in 1904-05, when Russia in turn was at war with Japan, France stood honestly neutral, although giving the Muscovite all the sympathy and aid which international law permitted. It was just as the rumbles of the Dreyfus case were dying away, and the reckoning between Radicals and Clericals was being carried to its inevitable issue, that the storm clouds again began to blow westward from the Rhine, and France had to give anxious thought to her physical safety. The story of the Pan-German conspiracy for the conquest of the world and the establishment of a new and greater Roman Empire, belongs of course to volumes other than this. As is, of course, perfectly well understood to-day, the prosperity, nay the very existence, of France lay straight across the path of a policy worthy of the days of Tiglath-Pileser or Xerxes. Not that the Pan-Germans considered the "degenerate French" as foemen really worthy of their steel. To them France was a nation once powerful, indeed, but now sinking rapidly into absolute decadence and helplessness – a newer Spain, a more extensive Holland. Russia, England, and in the background America, were the Powers that must be dealt with thoroughly, before the new world Empire of Teutonia could spring into being. But upon France the first blow from the great Germanic war-engine was sure to fall. It was an insult to the Hohenzollern Empire that this decrepit neighbor should be accumulating a vast African Empire when the smaller German possessions in the Dark Continent were alike expensive and unpromising. It was also important that either by direct annexation, or by some dictated treaty which made France the Hohenzollern's vassal, the essential control of the French Channel ports (Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk, etc.) should pass to Germany: they would then be essential factors in the much-desired "day" for disposing of the naval power of England.
As for the wealth of France a bleeding, crippling indemnity would alike destroy a commercial rival to the Fatherland, and would save the subjects of William II the costs of the war. Russia was too poor to pay an idemnity. England could hardly be ruined at the first blow. The "woolen stockings" of the French peasant must be shaken of their last silver to relieve the Prussian Junker and Westphalian manufacturer from unwelcome war taxes. Finally there were covetous glances upon the iron mines in French Lorraine and the coal deposits in French Flanders. No scheme of Pan-Germanism failed to include the conquest of France, unless France could accomplish the impossible, deny her past, forget her heroic dead, and become the abject tool, the subject ally of German ambition, openly aiding in the conquest of Britain and Russia and hence allowed to exist by herself for a little longer.
Thus gathered the storm. Up to 1904 relations between France and Britain had been none too friendly. There had been keen regrets in Paris that the blunders of French cabinets in the eighties had permitted the English to become firmly ensconced as the sole"protectors" of Egypt, when a different policy then might easily have led to a joint occupation by France and Britain alike. There had been more friction over the various colonial boundary questions, as region by region the two great nations had parceled out and occupied Africa. But all of the questions had been fairly easy of adjustment between reasonable men, and despite newspaper vaporings, since 1840 there had never been any immediate danger of war between the ancient rivals. In 1904 a truly able French foreign minister, Delcassé, had liquidated nearly all the outstanding questions between the Third Republic and the British Empire. The Entente Cordiale was born: born out of a community of interest in many matters, but accentuated above all things else by the growing fear of the policy of William II.
In 1905 for the first time Germany showed her hand. The Kaiser forced France to submit the question of Morocco (over which she claimed particular rights) to a European conference, and Delcassé resigned the foreign ministry practically at the threat of Germany, that France would suffer if this statesman remained in power. The Algeciras Conference in 1906, however, brought the Teutons little satisfaction. French claims over Morocco were very largely confirmed. In 1911, after minor happenings which produced friction, came the once famous "Agadir incident"; when a German warship was sent to a Morocco port, seemingly for the express purpose of starting a formal quarrel. Peace was maintained, nevertheless, for it was evident that England would sustain France, and the German war preparations had not been completed.
International attention then swung to the Balkans, where it now became fairly evident the next Pan-German diplomatic stroke was likely to fall; but no intelligent Frenchman imagined the first military stroke would descend there also. The whole German scheme of mobilization could not be kept a secret. It would aim its first deadly thrust, not to the east against Russia, but to the west. As Bernhardi, the apostle of Pan-Germanism, bluntly put it in his famous book: "We must square our accounts with France [his italics] if we wish for a free hand in our international policy. . . . France must be so crushed that she can never again come across our path." Confidential reports of 1912 and 1913 from competent French diplomats left the Paris authorities in no uncertainty as to what was brewing, however much the world at large might doubt the possibility of "civilized" men of the twentieth century willfully precipitating a colossal war. And so with increasing anxiety, from 1911 till 1914, France waited.
It was on June 28, 1914, that the Crown Prince of Austria, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was murdered at Serajevo, Bosnia. This was, of course, the deed which gave the Pan-Germans and their fellow conspirators at Vienna their pretext to convulse the world. On July 23, the famous "Serbian Note" was presented by Austria to Serbia, it being well understood that Russia must come to the help of Serbia or abdicate her claims to be a great nation, and that France was bound to fight beside Russia if the latter were attacked. The moment was deliberately chosen as being peculiarly fortunate for embarrassing France, since President Poincaré and Premier Viviani had been on a visit of state to the Czar and were on a battleship in transit across the Baltic and North Seas when the crisis came to its height. How the French diplomats did their valiant uttermost to second the efforts of England to find some peaceful solution, honorable for Russia and satisfactory to the Teutons, general history will forever record.
President Poincaré reached Paris on July 29. On August 1, the case was so desperate that the Cabinet and President ordered the general mobilization of the entire forces of the Republic, and on that same day the Kaiser declared war formally upon the Czar. On August 2, Germany made her notorious demand upon Belgium for permission to march across her into France, under threat of war in case of refusal; and on August 3 she followed this act by declaring war on France, after Viviani had bluntly declined to give promises of neutrality insulting to the dignity of France. On August 4, Britain declared war on Germany, following the tearing-up of the Belgian "scrap of paper." After that the whole issue passed from the diplomats to the generals and the admirals.
France went into the fiery ordeal in 1914 with the eyes of the world upon her more questioningly, perhaps, than on any other of the major combatants, and the issue was not the recovery or loss of provinces, not the exaction or payment of a great indemnity, not the winning or losing of vast glory and prestige, but the stake was very directly her claim to exist as a genuinely free and self- respecting nation. This was perfectly well understood by all classes from Dunkirk to Marseilles, when the little white posters, "Order of General Mobilization," shone pasted on ten thousand village walls. The nation had survived the agony of 1870. It had recovered its wealth. It had partly recovered its prestige abroad. It had developed a great African Empire. But to undergo a second crucifixion at the hands of Prussia within forty-four years would mean a blighting and crippling of the national life, a destruction of all hope for things material and moral, that would end forever the honest happiness of France. It was reported that in Paris, during the hot, tense first week of August, 1914, young men told their parents as they parted – old men told one another as the battalions swung up the street to the crash of the Marseillaise – that England could, indeed, survive a great defeat and still be prosperous, that so could Russia, so could Germany – but not France. The country could rise Phoenix-like once, but hardly twice. And so the youth of the Third Republic went forth to battle not for the nation's victory, but for the nation's life.
How Germans held their western opponents in scorn has been just stated. That was merely part of the colossal self-hypnotism and "mania of grandeur" which was the prime cause of the war. Yet even among the Allies and well-wishers of the Third Republic, there were doubts and queries, courteously expressed, but undeniable. On the day the Prussian legions first dashed against Liège, an English military writer in a prominent London daily proceeded to reassure his readers as to the excellent resources, strategic position, and numbers of the Allies; but then summed up with candor: "All the foregoing is true: but of course the final question turns on the attitude of the French soldier. Will his generals deserve his confidence, and will he deserve the confidence of his generals? If the French infantry man can fight according to his best traditions all will be well."
It cannot be gainsaid that up to the very moment of mobilization there were aspects in French public life which had rejoiced the Pan-Germans and which gave extreme anxiety to the best lovers of the patrie. It is true the forty years of the Third Republic had been a span of abounding material prosperity. Not merely had all the economic losses of the War of 1870 been repaired, but the national wealth had multiplied several times. In 1869 the deposits and payments in the Bank of France had been about $12,500,000,000; in 1911 they had been a little less than $59,000,- 000,000. In 1907 French thrift had accumulated so much capital that at least $7,250,000,000 were invested abroad, and foreign securities were paying in to their French owners at least $400,- 000,000 per annum. In 1869 there had been $142,000,000 on deposit in the French savings banks. In 1911 there had been $1,125,- 000,000. As for the national credit, it was so good that despite the enormous public debt it was possible for the Government to borrow money usually at three per cent or under. All these bald figures were testimony, not merely to a sound economic condition, to a great and diversified industry and commerce, but to a prevailing thrift, sobriety, and intelligence in the masses which were a vast moral asset to any nation.
Nevertheless, set against all that has been said there were too many grounds for forebodings. On the material side was the almost stationary birth-rate. In 1870, France and Germany were nearly even in population. In 1914, France had barely 39,000,- 000; Germany over 65,000,000. In any long-drawn military duel mere numbers would seem to give the Germans sufficient advantage to guarantee victory, unless greater help came from Britain and Russia than pessimists could assume to be possible. But this was only the less serious part of the indictment. Down to the very day of Armageddon political life in France seemed irresponsible, unstable, and frequently sordid and corrupt. Even as in America, it was alleged that the best intelligence of France was not entering political life and was not directing public affairs. Partisan passions had risen to a boiling point which it seemed even the threat of a great public danger could hardly cool. When the Austro-Serbian crisis loomed black in July, 1914, interest therein was at first diverted by a notorious murder trial that was usurping the stage in Paris: the trial of Madame Caillaux (the wife of a former premier ) for shooting M. Calmette, the editor of the Figaro, which had been especially bitter against her husband. The case had been tinctured with the foulest personalities. An impressionable Paris jury had acquitted the handsome defendant. Almost simultaneously Jean Jaurés, the gifted and distinguished leader of the French Socialists, had been openly murdered in order to indicate the extreme hatred of his opponents. These were sorry enough prophecies of the manner in which the nation might go to a new Gethsemane.
But beyond these specific suggestions that the Third Republic was of no sounder stuff than the Second Empire, there hung on the numbing distrust of France that was the pitiful heritage of the disasters in 1870. The world was too ready to remember only Sedan, and to forget Marengo and Austerlitz; likewise to take the Germans at their face value when they said that the French were at best a people of successful café-keepers, dancing- masters, robe-makers, and actresses. What was far worse, there seem to have been not a few Frenchmen who had the same base estimate of their own national qualities. The strength of the foe they knew, the strength of their own souls they knew not. On that 1st of August, 1914, in Berlin and Munich there were huzzas, proud words, boastings, and fierce cries, "Nach Paris!" In Paris and Lyons there were no boastings. The heedless shout of 1870, "À Berlin!" was hushed. But if there be moments that summon forth all the powers which lie in a nation's spiritual being, those moments were in the fervid days of mobilization, when the race of Philip Augustus and Jeanne Darc, of Henry of Navarre and Turenne, of Danton and the Corporal of Lodi girded its loins, claimed its old right of ordeal by battle, and went forth to stand between Western civilization and the new Sennacherib.
And so the hosts joined, through four long years and more. . . . "Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, – and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven." On September 4, 1914, the Germans were close to Paris. The attempts to hold them on the Belgian frontier had failed, and the French armies were bracing themselves for a life-and-death contest to cover the capital. At that moment the following was a letter which a Picard peasant girl wrote to her brother in the army. It is a more instructive document than any official proclamation:
MY DEAR EDWARD: I hear that Charles and Lucien died on August 28th. Eugène is badly wounded. Louis and Jean are dead also. Rose has disappeared.
Our mother weeps. She says that you are strong, and begs you to avenge them.
I hope your officers will not refuse you permission. Jean had the Legion of Honor: succeed him in this.
Of the eleven of us who went to the war, eight are dead. My dear brother, do your duty, whatever is asked of you. God gave you your life, and He has the right to take it back. That is what our mother says.
We embrace you with all our heart and long to see you again.
The Prussians are here. Young Joudon is dead. They have pillaged everything. I have come back from G – – which is destroyed. The brutes!
Now, my dear brother, make the sacrifice of your life. We have hope of seeing you again, for something gives me a presentiment and tells me to hope.
We embrace you in all our hearts. Adieu and au revoir – if God permits.
THY SISTER.
It is for us and for France. Think of your brothers and of grandfather in '70.
. . . And yet in the books it was written that the women of Sparta and their virtues passed from this world more than two thousand years ago. . . .
On September 3, 1914, the Germans had come so close to Paris the Civil Government took its departure for Bordeaux. On September 4, the military situation seemed such that there was a general exodus from the capital by a large part of the population, going southward. On the 5th, the schools of Paris were closed; and the city, where men not yet gray-headed remembered the ordeal of 1870, waited – and listened to the approaching thundering of the guns.
The first battle of the Marne began, properly speaking, on September 6. The story of that battle belongs in the Golden Book of Liberty along with Marathon and Salamis, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and with the battles which made and preserved the American Republic. By the 10th of September the war-machine that had never known defeat since Sadowa had been stayed. Its leaders were retreating to the Aisne. The battle-line was not twelve, but was drifting back to sixty, miles from Paris. In this accomplishment a British army had borne its valiant share, but more than ninety per cent of the host against which the invader smote in vain was of Frenchmen, and their directing spirit was Joseph Joffre, second lieutenant of artillery in the siege of Paris in 1870, generalissimo of the armies of the Republic in 1914. He it was who had given the order, on the eve of the decisive battle: "Any unit which can no longer advance must at all costs hold the ground which has been won, or perish on the spot, rather than retreat." The army of the Third Republic had obeyed alike the spirit and the letter of this order.
The medals to celebrate William of Hohenzollern's triumphal entry into Paris were ready in the Fatherland. The overzealous artists found no employment for their dies. The dinner the All-Highest War-Lord had promised himself in the Luxembourg Palace was uneaten. The degenerate Gauls had won a great battle.
And so the first thrust of the Prussian military engine had been stayed. The war was not to be over in three months as shouting Berlin, Hamburg, and Vienna had gleefully asserted in August. The contest settled down to the long, grueling struggle of endurance that was to last for days, for months, for years.
In the first month of the war the French had buoyed them. selves with the great hope that if only they could resist the initial lunge of the enemy, English and above all Russian help would make victory speedy and sure. Beyond a doubt this aid in the fall of 1914 made all the difference between victory and defeat. But although Russian pressure in the East certainly embarrassed German plans for another drive on Paris in the West, the story of French expectations from Russia was to be one story of hopes deferred, and finally of hopes deferred forever. Industrial inefficiency, sordid financial corruption, downright treason in high places – these were to make the Muscovite "steam roller" a most disappointing auxiliary, despite the brave sacrifice of millions of Slavs upon the Polish battle-fields. The year 1915 was to be one in which the French were to learn how difficult it was to force lines of defenses held by the all-perfected art of Prussian militarism, while England slowly made ready for the struggle. The armies of the Third Republic had to stand almost helpless and see the Russians rolled back out of Poland with hideous losses, while Bulgaria turned traitor to the world's freedom and Serbia was utterly crushed. The victory of the Marne had not been followed by the hoped-for greater triumph. The vast line of trenches still ran across France as a bloody gash from Belfort to the sea. So ended the year 1915, and the Republic uncomplainingly held on.
On February 21, 1916, after Russia had been completely repulsed, the Germans flung themselves upon Verdun, the chief French frontier fortress. The capture of Verdun would probably have gone far toward opening a new road to Paris, no longer by way of Belgium, but straight across Champagne. The Teutonic High Command had made a concentration of artillery unprecedented even in this war of the giants. For two months and more the Germans flung their men into the assault as recklessly as stokers cast fine coal upon the raging furnace. Not once but many times the attack almost succeeded, but the spirit of Jeanne Darc flung out its banner over the defenders. "They shall not pass!" was the answer from the living wall of the poilus, whom Teuton shells could mangle, but Teuton valor could not break.
The offensive against Verdun continued well into the summer, despite terrific losses for the attackers. The Germans had been nominally under the command of the Prussian Crown Prince. To make open confession of defeat would have been a serious blow to the whole prestige of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Then in July, 1916, after many inevitable delays, the newly organized British armies were ready in Picardy and in Flanders. To meet their strokes the Germans with ill grace were forced to discontinue before Verdun. In October, 1916, and in August, 1917, by a few quick, sharp blows the French were to regain almost all that had been lost around this inviolate fortress.
But the English offensive on the Somme in 1916 failed to break the German line. The French had paid out so many thousands of their youth before Verdun that they were unable to assist their allies with all of the expected effort. In the East, Russia showed increasing signs of becoming to her friends like Egypt of old, "a bruised reed on which if a man lean it will go into his hand and pierce it." Roumania, lured on by treacherous promises from the Muscovite, had entered the war only to be betrayed and crushed. So the third winter of struggle came and the trenches were still blazing and smoking across France, and victory was a thing deferred. There was beginning to be a serious shortage of food; there was a still greater shortage of coal. The civil population, even far from the battle-line, was becoming sorely straitened by the complete interruption of all normal life; but still the Republic kept faith and courage.
In 1917 the hearts of all Flanders were thrilled with gladness when their fellow Republicans across the sea took up the gantlet which Prussianism had flung down, and America entered the World War. But the American army seemed pitifully small. The immediate gain from this reinforcement was moral, the consciousness that humanity approved the cause of France; then financial, and naval, in aiding to combat the viper-like submarines which seemed close to throttling the economic life alike of France and of England. The American army for a long time came with agonizing deliberation.
Russia had cast out her czars, but she was herself rapidly dissolving into that chaos which was the direct fruitage of centuries of despotism. From her came not help, but presently sore cries for assistance. On the Western front, the French attempted a gallant offensive to assist their British allies. The strain on French man power was becoming excessive. It was said that this was the last great offensive the Republic could undertake. The attack was entrusted to a clever, and, as it developed, an over- clever, general, Nivelle. The assault on the German lines along the Aisne was made gallantly (April 16), but not without blundering. The key positions of the enemy were not forced. The losses of the attackers were reported as frightful. Nivelle was promptly superseded by the more prudent and capable Pétain, but not until he had undergone a reverse which temporarily impaired the morale of the army of France. The wavering was but for a little while. The traitors (and traitors there were, Bolo and others) were chased down, and presently were treated with Roman justice; but all through the later spring and summer of 1917 the hampering fear seemed to spread that America had entered the war too late. Russia was failing. The English seemed beating vainly against the Flanders front. The dearth of food was increasing. Everywhere pacifists and anti-war Socialists seemed lifting their heads. Flesh and blood were crying out that France could be the battle-ground for the nations no more; that attempts must be made for a "negotiated peace"; that is, a peace in which Germany would be victor in all but name.
American troops were coming to France, but at first only by battalions and regiments. England had made ready too slowly; the United States now seemed making haste very slowly. In October the Austro-German armies inflicted a crushing defeat on Italy, so demoralizing to that kingdom that part of Pétain's sorely strained divisions had to be hastened over the Alps to help hold the line of the Piave covering Venice and Milan. On November 7, the Provisional Government of Russia was overthrown by the ultra-radical Bolsheviki, thus making it fairly certain that not merely would Russia give no further essential aid in the war, but would conclude a separate peace. What wonder if faint-hearts and treasonable propagandists seemed doing their worst among all the foes of Germany, and nowhere more than in France, which had suffered most, been promised most, and yet to which real succor never came?
In November, 1917, on the very morrow of the Italian and Russian débâcles, the Cabinet of the well-intentioned but none too vigorous Premier Painlevé was overthrown. The hour called for a Committee of Public Safety without a guillotine; for a Danton without the September massacre. President Poincaré called as Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, one of the most familiar figures in France. He was seventy-eight years old; one-time Premier already; a master debater; a highly influential figure in the Chambers; but known hitherto not so much as a constructive leader as a merciless, destructive critic, "independent in his radicalism, and following no leader but his own principles." As an editor he had been even more noteworthy than as a parliamentarian. In his Aurore had been published the famous "I accuse" of Zola in the Dreyfus case. Under his strokes ministry after ministry had fallen. "The Tiger," contemporaries called him, alike in hatred and admiration. In days of peace his qualities might sometimes have been questionable: in times of war they were as indispensable as powder and cannon. To this man old in years, perennially young in spirit – it was given under God to be the chief savior of France. When he became premier, Louis Malvy (ex-Minister of the Interior) was under impeachment for betraying national secrets. Clemenceau prosecuted him before the Senate, and in August, 1918, he was sentenced to five years' exile in Spain. A notorious traitor had just been seized: Bolo "Pasha," a Frenchman who had played the adventurer in Egypt. Him Clemenceau caused to be tried for his life, convicted and executed. Behind Bolo was looming a more dangerous figure: ex-Premier Caillaux was being accused of subterranean negotiations with the public enemy. Clemenceau was soon to impeach and imprison him also.
It was November 20, 1917, when the "Tiger" first stood be. fore the Chamber of Deputies to announce his policy. His programme was simply that of unmitigated war: war against the enemies without, war also against the enemies within. "All the accused before courts martial! No more pacifist campaigns, no more German intrigues. Neither treason, nor semi-treason. War – nothing but war! . . .
"We shall not forge a greater France without putting our life into it. . . . Some day [however] from Paris to the humblest village, shouts of triumph will greet our victorious standards, stained with blood and tears and torn by shells – magnificent emblems of our noble dead. That day, the greatest day of our race, after so many others of grandeur, it is in our power to create!"
In the year that followed Clemenceau's assumption of office the furnace of the trials of France was heated seven times hotter. The collapse of Russian resistance enabled the Teutons to shift heavy masses of soldiery from the Eastern front to the Western. Political conditions in England seemed to have prevented that nation from sending to Picardy and Flanders all the replacement troops which military experts said were required. The American reinforcements were still delayed by difficulties of organization and transportation, and of the men first sent a large proportion were for non-combatant service, essential, indeed, but unable to relieve the ceaseless strain along the front lines. So passed this grim "winter of discontent" while Ludendorff, the steely, impersonal brain of the German High Command, made ready his great blow: the blow that he plotted should ruin France and all but ruin England before American aid should change from promise to reality.
In March, 1918, the expected stroke fell. The British army, overwhelmed by concentrated numbers, was flung out of its entrenchments before Saint-Quentin. The direct railroad from Paris to Calais was under Teuton gun-fire. The Picard capital, Amiens, was bombarded daily. For an instant it seemed as if the whole Western front would crumble, and the English be swept back toward the sea, while a great wedge was driven between them and the defenders of Paris. Then, when the saving or breaking of the line was a question of hours, French regiments were flung in to fill the chasm. At Montdidier the Teuton attack was stayed.
But all knew this was only the first fury of the blast. From seventy-five miles away a monster German gun in the Saint Gobain Forest was hurling two-hundred-pound shells upon Paris itself: a "political gun," fired almost at random to create wanton mischief among the non-combatants and shake the nerves of civilians already sorely tried. On Good Friday one of its bolts crashed through the vaulted ceiling of the Church of Saint Gervais scattering wholesale death among the kneeling women and children at the very moment of the elevation of the host. There was no panic in Paris, but there was inevitable seriousness. The German attacks were likely to be soon against the capital itself, and with the consent and coöperation of the Government there was an orderly withdrawal by many of the population.
Yet though the Germans knew it not, their March victory in Picardy was for them one of the costliest struggles of the war. It at last compelled their enemies to place their ill-united armies under a common commander; and Ferdinand Foch, one of Joffre's ablest lieutenants at the Marne, a general with the scientific precision of a great surgeon and the fervent religious faith of a Crusader, was set over the hosts of Britain, America, and Italy, as well as of France: and it was now he who fenced with Ludendorff and not in vain.
During the three months following his appointment the destinies of all free nations and the very life of France were committed to this general, who could never have written his name among the world's greatest captains had not ever behind him stood Clemenceau, invigorator of the courage of the nation. For France was still, after four terrific years, bearing the brunt of the burden on the Western front. More than half of the men who faced Ludendorff in March were Frenchmen, and despite the coming of the Americans and the gradual shift of balance, forty per cent remained Frenchmen down to the victorious end.
In April there issued another hot blast from the foe – again against the British in Flanders. This was the time when Marshal Haig told his fellow Britons that they "fought with their backs to the wall." The Western front once more was rocked and even dented, but again the attack was stayed, and once more there were French divisions, sent to help out their allies, which brought the onslaught to a standstill. Then late in May, leaving the British to recuperate, the Germans flung their thousands on the Aisne front between Reims and Soissons. Gross blunders were committed somewhere by certain subordinate French generals. The Teutons won a great and unexpected advantage. They swept over the Vesle; they took Soissons; they washed their swords again in the Marne. Once more, as in 1914, there was a rush of fugitives away from the invader, old men and women, ox carts with household gear.
In Paris what wonder if there was perhaps trembling with many who had kept the faith before. Four years of grinding agony: and now the Germans were likely to be able not merely to drop occasional shells from a few grotesque, long-range cannon, but able to beat the capital to dust with all their concentrated heavy artillery! What marvel if out of their nooks and corners and hiding-places crawled forth the slimy brood of the Bolshevik- Socialists, of the Boloists, Caillauists, and pacifists, who hissed into the ears of the people, "Make peace! Why go on shedding rivers of blood uselessly? Save Paris! Make peace!" And Frenchmen knew that in Britain and America the professional pacifists, Socialists, and kid-gloved "liberals" were talking louder than ever of that "negotiated peace" which meant the selling-out of France to Teutonia.
On June 4, 1918, came the crucial struggle with the German advance at Château-Thierry. Whether without the aid of American regiments flung into the welter the foe would have been stayed, impartial history "as yet recordeth not." If the American help in those days of wrath was indispensable to the French, what was it but a return with fair interest for that help which Lafayette and other brave young spirits of Bourbon France had carried across the seas to a struggling young Republic one hundred and forty-one years before? On the 5th of June, while the bloody issue still swayed in the balance; while responsible officials were debating another retirement of the Government to Bordeaux; while the managers of the great munition plants were considering how and whither they could withdraw their essential machinery; while the world was asking, "If Paris falls, can the war continue?" – Clemenceau was rising in the Chamber of Deputies to defy the grumbling and the caitiff heckling of the Socialist members.
"I told you at the outset [when I took office] we should pass through difficult and exacting times and cruel hours. These times are coming and the only question is whether we can stand them. [Thanks to the defection of Russia] a million extra German soldiers have been turned against us. For four years our troops have been wearing themselves out. Our front was being held by a line becoming thinner and thinner. To-day these men [of ours] are engaged in battle. They fought, one against five, without sleep for three or four days together. . . . "These men are at this moment fighting the hardest battle of the war with a heroism which I can find no words to express. . . . I know some who have accomplished acts of heroism like those Bretons who were surrounded in a wood all night, and who next day, found means of sending by carrier pigeon a message to say, 'You may come and find us. We shall hold out for half a day yet.' These men make the patrie, they continue it, and prolong it, that patrie without which no reform is possible. They die for an ideal, for a history which is the foremost among all the histories of civilized peoples. . . .
"You have before you a Government which, as I told you, did not enter into power to accept surrender. So long as we are here, the patrie will be defended to the death, and no force will be spared to obtain success. 'We will never yield.' That is the word of command of the Government. We will never yield at any moment. . . .
"The people of France have accomplished its task; and those who have fallen have not fallen in vain, since they have made French history great. It remains for the living to complete the magnificent work of the dead."
Then by an overwhelming vote the Chamber sustained the Government of Clemenceau and confounded the pacifists.
Those were the days when it is said that President Poincaré, on being asked if the capture of the capital meant the end of the war, replied, "We will fight before Paris, in Paris, and behind Paris"; the days when Clemenceau is reported to have said that the war would go to the leader who kept his nerve for fifteen minutes longer than the foe, and that "I intend to keep my nerve." All through these days when certain English and American self- styled "liberals," to their shame, were urging that France give peace to the world by waiving the claims to Alsace-Lorraine, the men of the Third Republic never relaxed their demand that the wrong of 1871 should be undone and that there should be no yielding to Germany in a matter which "bartered, not only the price of victory, but the restoration of right." By the 11th of June it was evident that the Teuton thrust down the Marne was for the time being halted. Other attempts to work nearer Paris from the north met little success. So captains, premiers, and kings waited a long, tense month for Ludendorff to organize his next great onslaught with a million human units; and Foch, whose whole widely published theories favored a war of constant offensive and of hot action, seemed passively waiting the next blow of the sledgehammer.
On July 15 the expected happened. On a sixty-mile front from Château-Thierry eastward almost to the Argonne Forest the Germans attacked. It was again one of those colossal batteringram charges which the Prussian High Command knew how to organize so well. But on the Marne the attackers barely succeeded in throwing a few regiments across in the teeth of an indomitable Franco-American resistance. Farther east they only made slow and painful gains near to Reims. East of Reims they dashed their heads on a wall of fire, and recoiled wholly shaken. By the night of the 17th they had undergone fearful losses and were hardly advanced a foot along the eight and thirty miles which still lay between them and Paris. Had Ludendorff been a truly wise man he would have notified his Emperor that night to negotiate for peace. He had exhausted all the numerical preponderance which the defection of Russia had given him, and he could not hope to organize another more formidable offensive.
On the 18th of July, 1918, Foch launched a Franco-American army upon the flank of the German positions from Château- Thierry northward to Soissons. The possibility of a serious counter-stroke, of using untried American troops for an offensive, of allowing other American troops to replace French veterans in reserve, had never apparently entered into Ludendorff's reckoning. Along a considerable front the German line crumbled. When, near the Aisne and the Vesle, by great efforts it began to stabilize, Foch launched the reorganized English in Picardy (August 8). From that first attack in July for three months and twenty-four days the armies of Foch were on the victorious offensive. The Germans never could venture a counterblow that won even a passing success. When this offensive ended, the war was also ended.
On the night of November 7, 1918, near La Capelle on the road to Saint-Quentin, a German trumpeter approached the French lines and blew for a parley. Behind him were automobiles bearing white flags. They contained the delegates sent by the Government of Germany to sue for an armistice from Marshal Foch, generalissimo of the Powers arranged against Teutonia. They met the French commander in his headquarters in a railroad car at Rethondes at 9 A.M. on the morning of the 8th. Here he read to them the terms on which the enemies of Germany would consent that the bloodshed should cease. To communicate these terms to the German General Staff at Spa, Belgium, required considerable time. The military plight of the Teutons was such, however, that they could not afford to quibble over details. At 5 A.M. (Paris time), November 11, the armistice was signed. At 11 A.M. the cannon which had thundered unceasingly for over four years and three months along the Western front became unwontedly silent.
In Paris and in the smallest commune men, women, and children were dancing in the streets. In the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies the orators in stately phrases were moving the vote that Georges Clemenceau and Ferdinand Foch had "deserved well of the nation." It had been provided in the armistice (among many other things) that the "invaded country" of Alsace-Lorraine should be evacuated within fourteen days.
In Strasbourg, eager women, with eyes streaming with gladness, were sewing red, white, and blue cloth to make the Tricolor.
As the defeated German hosts drew back sullenly from the small remnant of France they had held up to the armistice, they left a gash of utter ruin across Flanders, Picardy, and Champagne which not all the indemnities exacted across many years could restore and repay. No abject capitulation could instantly replace the fruits of the plundered industries, could reawaken the strangled commerce, could call back to their beauty the shattered fragments of the ruined town halls and desolated churches, nor create anew in glorious being the shattered sculptures of Reims. Nor could any human atonement give back unsullied existence to the tens of thousands of young women the prey of the invading soldiery, nor cancel the countless bitter memories of the four years of Assyrian bondage suffered by nigh every city of Northern France. The armistice could do none of those things. Much less could it recall to warm life the 1,400,000 young Frenchmen, lying under the sod of the patrie, who would have been leading happy, normal lives had not a purple-born fugitive in Holland elected to go forth conquering and to conquer.
France had undergone a greater physical stress than any of her major allies. The war had been continually on her soil. Down to the last weeks before the end, the growling of the cannon could be heard in Paris when the northeast winds blew. The Republic had mobilized 6,900,000 men out of a population of only 39,000,000. The direct cost of the war had been over twenty-seven billions of dollars. It would require two years to make the ruined coal and iron mines in any sense available. Not for ten years (ran the report) would they yield as they had done in 1913. Eight hundred million dollars worth of loot had been carried away by the Germans. Six hundred million days of labor (on the one-man basis) were needed to reconstruct the 350,000 ruined houses and farmsteads in the Northern departments. And so through a catalogue of physical losses the world had never known in the most ruthless days of Louis XIV or Napoleon.
As for the time-honored traditions of what had been probably the oldest and most stabilized society in Europe – it had been torn up by the roots. It was a new nation, new in body, new in spirit, which Foch and Clemenceau were giving back to the world.
Yet France was hiding her mourning and carrying her head proudly as 1918 drew to its victorious close. She had come through the sorest ordeal ever laid on any free country in modern times, and had endured it in a manner to make her the spiritual heir to the Athens of Marathon. And she trusted the future, whatever it might contain, for she knew her own strength, and her strength was recognized by all the applauding world.
It cannot be predicted what the inevitable changes of the twentieth century may have in store for France, as apart from the common destinies of Europe and America. Certain it is, those changes will be worthy of the great price at which the victorious Third Republic bought its right to live. The nation will be strong, not merely in its manifest ability to produce great captains and councillors of state, but because by the circumstances of the defeat of Germany it has been proved to every land, that THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE have a power and nobility of soul certain to make them leaders among their fellows. It is, as Marshal Joffre said, when, in the triumphal celebration, they acclaimed him member of the French Academy and praised him as one of the deliverers of the land:
"Not I, it was the poilu!"
On the 11th of November, 1918, when Clemenceau announced the great victory in the Chamber of Deputies, he summed up many hundred years of history in one glowing sentence: " France, yesterday the soldier of God; to-day the soldier of humanity; will always be the soldier of the ideal."