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diff --git a/75745-0.txt b/75745-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fd1433b --- /dev/null +++ b/75745-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5955 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75745 *** + + + + + +ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD + +[Illustration] + + +BOOKS BY EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY + + ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD + MY LORRAINE JOURNAL + DIPLOMATIC DAYS + + HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK + [ESTABLISHED 1817] + + + + +[Illustration: THE RIVER DOLLER AT MASEVAUX] + + + + + ALSACE + IN RUST AND GOLD + + _by_ + EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY + [MRS. NELSON O’SHAUGHNESSY] + AUTHOR OF + _“A Diplomat’s Wife in Mexico” + “My Lorraine Journal” Etc._ + + ILLUSTRATED + + [Illustration] + + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + + ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD + + Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers + Printed in the United States of America + Published March, 1920 + B U + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAP. PAGE + + PREFACE ix + + I. THE JOURNEY THERE 1 + + II. ALL SAINTS’ DAY, NOVEMBER, 1918 13 + + III. FÊTE DES MORTS, NOVEMBER, 1918 23 + + IV. THANN AND OLD THANN 34 + + V. THE BALLON D’ALSACE 43 + + VI. LA POPOTE 55 + + VII. THE HOUSES OF THE CHANOINESSES 65 + + VIII. LUNCHEON AT BITSCHWILLER. THE MISSION IN RESIDENCE AT + ST.-AMARIN. SAINT-ODILE 81 + + IX. THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH 100 + + X. THE VALLEY OF THE THUR 110 + + XI. THE RE-GALLICIZING OF ALSACE 120 + + XII. THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF 131 + + XIII. “LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE FREUNDSTEIN + AND ITS PHANTOMS 140 + + XIV. RETURN TO MASEVAUX 156 + + XV. THE VIGIL OF THE ARMISTICE 159 + + XVI. DIES GLORIÆ 175 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + THE RIVER DOLLER AT MASEVAUX _Frontispiece_ + + THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1918, IN ALSACE _Facing page_ 14 + + PLACE DU MARCHÉ, MASEVAUX, JULY 14, 1918 ” 14 + + THANN AND ITS VINEYARDS ” 34 + + COMMANDANT POULET ” 56 + + THANN. THE CATHEDRAL PORTAL ” 82 + + THANN. LA VIEILLE TOUR ” 114 + + AMERICAN TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY ” 132 + + FRENCH TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FALL OF THE + BASTILE, JULY 14TH ” 132 + + AMERICA AND ALSACE ” 172 + + + + +PREFACE + + +Strangely caught up out of the rut and routine of Paris war-work, not +even choosing my direction (the Fates did that), contributing, however, +the eternal readiness of my soul, which the poet says is all, I was +conveyed, as on a magic carpet, to the blue valleys and the rust and +gold and jasper hills of Alsace, where the color is laid on thick, +thick. There I was one, during many historic days, of the delightful +group of blue-clad, scarred, decorated officers forming the French +Military Mission, which since the autumn of 1914 had administered the +little reconquered triangle of Alsace and planted in it the seed for the +re-Gallicizing of Alsace-Lorraine. It was a bit of French history in the +making, which detached itself quite peculiarly free from the mass of war +happenings, somewhat as a medallion from that against which it is placed. + +My little book shows how humanly and simply the men of the French +Military Mission, accustomed to supreme events, together with a woman +from over the seas, lived through those thirteen historic days preceding +the armistice. It will perhaps be worth the reader’s while—I mean the +nice, bright, perceptive reader’s while—for mostly the throbbing, +high-colored beauty of Alsace is veiled by dusty, argumentative, +statistical pamphlets, so many of which are printed, so few of which are +read. I once saw a great building full of such, and dozens of them were +presented me for my sins, though I had never thought to read another book +on Alsace, much less to write one. I see once again how foolish is the +man or woman who says to the fountain, “I will never more drink of thy +water.” + +In this record there are no polemics and no statistics. I have added +nothing to each day’s happenings, which run along as life is apt to run +along, even in supreme moments, and, Heaven help me, I have concealed +nothing. It is because of all this that perhaps those who, like myself, +have wept much and laughed much in their lives, will not ungladly +accompany me to a corner on the sorrowful and glorious chart of the +autumn of 1918. + + EDITH O’SHAUGHNESSY. + +PARIS, 33 RUE DE L’UNIVERSITÉ, _February, 1919_. + + + + +ALSACE IN RUST AND GOLD + + + + +I + +THE JOURNEY THERE + + +And this is what a woman was thinking, as she walked the platform of +the Gare de l’Est at seven o’clock on a foggy October morning of 1918, +waiting to take the train to the front. + +“Why, when trials and tribulations await us in every land, when every +dearest affection is accompanied by its related grief and every +achievement by the phantom of its early hope—why this illimitable ardor +of the soul, pressing us forward into new combinations?” ... + +A few days before I had learned that Masevaux, the capital of that small +triangle of Alsace, reconquered since the August of 1914, would be my +journey’s term. Looking in the guide-book, I found Masevaux at the very +end—on page four hundred and ninety, to be precise, and the book has +but four hundred and ninety-nine pages in all—and it had seemed far, +far, and the world an immensity, with few corners for the heart. I have +realized since that it was only the chill of the unknown into which I was +to venture, drawn inevitably as steel to the magnet or the needle to the +north, by that very ardor of the soul.... + +I had not slept at all the night before—I never do when I am to take +an early train to pass out into new ways—and the somewhat dispiriting +influences of “that little hour before dawn” were still with me as I +stepped into my compartment and took my seat, while a captain of dragoons +lifted my small leather valise and my not large Japanese straw basket to +the rack. Settling myself, a bit chilly, into the depths of my fur coat, +slipped on over my uniform, I looked out upon the throng of officers and +soldiers, as many Americans as French, perhaps even more. + +Standing near my window was a blue-clad colonel, with many decorations +and a black band on his arm. He was carrying a small bouquet of what +seemed like wild-flowers, and he embraced in farewell a woman in deepest +black who would bear no more children.... + +Then a very young, crape-clad mother, carrying several pasteboard boxes, +with three small children clinging to her skirts, hurried down the +platform to get into a third-class compartment. + +But with it all I was conscious that the blue and khaki war was receding, +its strange deeds, which had seemed cut in such high relief, were even +then blurred against the red background, the background itself fading. +“Eyes look your last, arms take your last embrace” of the world horror, +the world beauty, where sorrow has so often been above sorrow and where +many “chariots have been burned to smoke.” ... + +In the compartment are five French officers with dark rings under their +eyes. I don’t know whether it is wounds or the effects of the _perm_.[1] +Anyway, they almost immediately take attitudes inviting slumber. A young +woman all in purple, whether third or fourth mourning I know not (it’s +well done, though it couldn’t pass unnoticed), sits by one of the windows +and waggles a short-vamped, very-high-heeled, bronze-shoed foot and +rattles a gold vanity-box. From the neighboring compartment came classic +expressions: “Can you beat it?” and “Search me.” My heart salutes the +Stars and Stripes. The whistle blows, and the train starts for the very +end of the guide-book. + +_8.30._—Read the masterly editorial of Jacques Bainville in _L’Action +Française_, “Où est le piège?” (“Where is the snare?”) while going +through the ugliest suburbs in the world, inclosing the most beautiful +city in the world. And more beautiful than ever is Paris in uniform. +Her delicate gray streets are mosaicked in horizon-blue, burnished with +khaki, aglitter with decorations. (Oh, those men of the alert, expectant +step, or those other broken ones dragging themselves along on canes and +crutches!) Who has not seen Paris in uniform knows not her beauty, bright +and terrible as an army in array; enchantment for the eye, bitter-sweet +wine for the soul. And again, who has not seen her violet-nighted, +black-girdled by the river, wearing for gems a rare emerald or ruby or +sapphire light, and silent in her dark, enfolding beauty, knows her not. +So lovers will remember her, and those whose sons are gone. + +_9.30._—Looking out of the window on fields and forests and groves. +White-stemmed, yellow-leaved birches burn like torches in a pale, thin +mist. The plowed fields are black with crows; it would seem to be a good +year for them. We are due at Belfort at 3.35, but a large-paunched, very +loquacious man blocking the corridor—his voice has not ceased since we +started—tells a fellow-passenger that, with the delays caused by the +shifting of troops and material, we’ll be lucky if we get there by seven. + +_10.30._—Rampillon with its beautiful old church, having two rows of +Gothic windows and several medieval towers, seen from a foreground of +smooth tilled fields. Over the green and yellow and brown world stretches +a silver heaven, tarnished with yellowish-gray clouds. + +_Longueville._—Interminable trains of French and American troops cross +one another. The French train has various barometrical indications of +war-weather in chalk. _Guillaume, O là là, là là_; and the favorite and +unrepeatable word —— mingles with _Le plaisir d’aller à Paris_, _O les +belles filles_, _Adieu à jamais, Boches_. + +The cars containing American troops are inarticulate. They haven’t been +at it long enough to express themselves. + +The handsome young officer next me opens conversation by asking me for my +_L’Action Française_. Having previously torn out the article of Jacques +Bainville, and wiped the windows with the rest, I pass it over to him +with a smile. It wasn’t tempting. + +A group of Americans are standing in the corridor. I hear, “I’d like to +burn the Rhine.” And the answer: “I don’t care what you burn, but I don’t +ever want to see the Statue of Liberty from _this_ side again. Me for +home. There’s more in it in one week in the clinic in little old Chicago +than here in a month, in spite of the hunks of material. Leaving some to +die or bandaging men in a hurry that you’ll never see again, and dead +tired all the time. No, siree! No war thrills for me.” And then, all +being devotees of Esculapius, they fall to talking about diseases, civil +as well as military. + +The loquacious party (he hasn’t stopped even to take breath) says to his +companion that he’s going to surprise his wife, who thinks he’s in Paris. +Whatever else she’s enjoying, she must be enjoying the silence, and I do +hope he’ll make a lot of noise when he opens the door. + +The young French officer next me with the _Légion d’Honneur_, _Croix de +Guerre_, four palms and two stars, tells me he is with the Americans at +Langres, which is _camouflé_ these war-days as A.P.O. 714, the ancient +hill-town of the Haute-Marne being the setting for the celebrated +“University” of the A.E.F. + +_11 o’clock, Romilly._—Near here, in the old Abbey of Scellières, was +buried Voltaire, _l’enfant gâté du monde qu’il gâta_ (“spoiled child of +the world that he spoiled”), having been refused ecclesiastical burial in +Paris. And from here he journeyed in his dust to the Panthéon. + +At St.-Mesmin the sun came out, and the dull, plowed fields were suddenly +spread with great covers, as of old-gold velvet, tucked in about the +slender feet of pine forests. + +Now all this pleasant soil of France has many histories, and St.-Mesmin +is where the priest Maximin (you see whence the name) was sent by the +Bishop of Troyes to implore the mercy of Attila in favor of the great +city. For answer the terrible king of the Huns put him to death. Against +the sky is the tower of a twelfth-century church. A collection of objects +in a field that I thought were plows turned out to be cannon. + +_Troyes._—Not a glimpse of the cathedral. Immeasurably long troop-train +fills the station on one side of us. On the other a gorgeous (it’s the +only word for it) American Red Cross train. Pressed against the windows, +lying or sitting, were pale men of my race. I waved and smiled, and +languid hands went up in answer. The box cars on the other side were +filled with blue-clad men. Over the doors were green boughs, on the sides +chalked portraits of the Kaiser, _Dur à croquer_, _Mort à Guillaume_, +etc. And everywhere the once so familiar _On les aura_ is converted +into _Nous les avons_.[2] Through the slits in the top of the cars were +faces of _poilus_ looking out, just as one sees cattle looking out; +then a long line of other box cars with American, khaki-capped heads +also looking out of the slits in the top, while the side doors too were +crowded with sitting, standing, leaning doughboys. Again I waved from my +window, and every cap was lifted. + +There was a young man standing at the door of some sort of a refrigerator +car, and he wore a wonderful goat-skin coat. Being so near my window I +spoke to him, and said: + +“It’s a fine coat you are wearing.” + +“I’ll tell you in the spring,” was the prompt answer. “They’ve just +given them out to us. You try living next to the cold storage.” He then +proceeded to blow into some mottled fingers, after which he pulled a long +tuft of hair from his coat. “I’m molting,” he added, as he held it up, +“and winter’s coming.” + +And he didn’t know whence he had come nor whither he was going. Then +either his train moved or mine did—I couldn’t tell which—and I saw him no +more. + +_Vandœuvres-sur-Barse._—Wood, wood, piled high on every kind of wheeled +thing. Forests from which it had been cut showing sharp and thin, +fringing the gold-brown fields under the luminous noonday heaven. And +here for a moment the green was so delicate and the yellow so tender, +that I had a fleeting illusion of spring as I looked out. + +Then I fell to talking with some young officers of the 131st Artillery +from Texas, but nothing that I remember. They had made no impression on +France, neither did France seem to have made any impression on them. + +_Bar-sur-Aube._—Old houses, old walls, blue hills, a white road leading +over one of them. Strange church tower, with a round, many-windowed top, +and in each window hangs an old bell. A great trainload of American +infantry “going up,” the station, too, flooded with khaki, and another +train passed crowded with _poilus_ evidently _en permission_, making +rather fundamental toilets. + +And around about Bar, as we slipped out, was a silver-vaulted world of +terra-cotta and purple hills, green and brown fields, silver hayricks, +silver sheep grazing near, and warm, brindled cattle, many green-painted +bee-hives, and fruit trees trained against pink walls. Gentle slopes, +later to become the Alps, appeared, and beech forests, like very worn +India shawls, clung to them, and a row of nearby poplars had each its +nimbus of yellow light. + +About this time, having had a hasty cup of tea at six, I began to be +so hungry that the luster went from the landscape and my eyes received +nothing more. I didn’t care whether the talkative man gave his wife a +surprise or not, and the two Americans of the Texan Artillery section had +long since also ceased to interest me, when I heard a “nosy” voice saying: + +“Gosh! I tell you, boys, there’s big money to be made over here after +the war. All you have to do is to hang out the sign, ‘American Dentist,’ +and your waiting-room’ll burst.” I sat down and nearly slept by the +side of the six-foot dozing handsome officer, with the beautiful blue +uniform, and yellow pipings on his trousers and cap, and five service and +three wound stripes, and the number 414 on his collar, besides a lot of +decorations on his breast. + +_1.30, Chaumont._—Sitting in the dining-car, finishing an excellent +lunch. Of course, in common with the rest of the world, I’ve heard a good +deal about Chaumont, but I can say that on the word of honor of an honest +woman the only thing I saw in khaki in that famous station of the A.E.F. +Headquarters was an emaciated Y.M.C.A. man about five feet four inches +high, with an umbrella and a straw basket. + +Of course, I’m familiar with the phrases, “Chaumont has put its +foot down,” “Chaumont won’t have it,” “Everything will be decided at +Chaumont”; and once, entering a Paris restaurant, I heard the words, +“It’s all Chaumont’s fault.” + +Then the fog closed in, a thick, impenetrable fog, and that’s all I know +or ever will know of Chaumont, as I’m going back to Paris _via_ Nancy. So +be it. + +On a nearby new railroad embankment, the figure of a _poilu_—the classic +figure—the coat pinned back from his knees, bayoneted rifle over his +shoulder, loomed up immeasurably large in the fog, while he watched the +labors of a lusty, husky set of German prisoners, the familiar “P.G.”[3] +stamped on their backs. A little farther along was another laughing, +rosy-faced group of four of the same, watched over by one of their own +under-officers. I could only see his field-gray back stamped with his +P.G., but as his men were so unrestrainedly hilarious, there is no reason +to suppose that _he_ was frowning. + +_4 o’clock, Culmont-Chalindrey._—Already three hours late. Fog-enveloped +train of box cars filled with slightly wounded doughboys peering through +the narrow slit at the top, bandaged eyes, noses, the same kind of groups +looking out of the door. Suddenly everything seems dreary. I am tired, +and wonder why, oh! why I came, and if the war is going to last forever +and forever, and it is the hour of the day when those who have not slept +the night before know profound discouragement and the noonday devil has +ceased to walk, flicking his whip. + +_Vitrey._—Station full of Americans and wood—wood—wood, as if every tree +in France had been cut. “Wood by the pound is how you buy it over here, +all the same,” disdainfully remarked the Minnesotan artilleryman serving +in the Texan regiment, as we stood looking out of the window. + +And if the journey down seems long, remember that life, too, is made up +of wearisome and long things—that it is indeed but a pilgrimage, and +mostly through a land more desert than this of Burgundy. + +And in the end this book may justify itself, though of that I know as +little as you. + +At Vitrey there is a detachment of mustard-tinted, khaki-clad, +red-_checchiaed_ Moroccan _tirailleurs_, exceedingly exotic-appearing, +sitting on their accoutrement or leaning against the bare scaffolding +of a new addition to the station. There came into my mind what an unwed +friend told me of a conversation with a dying _tirailleur_, to whom she +was giving a _tisane_ in a long, dim, hospital room at two o’clock in +the morning. He looked at her and said suddenly in his strange French: +“Woman, I know thy look; thou and many like thee have not been embraced +in love. In my village thou wouldst be a grandmother” (I had never +thought of her as old, but the _tirailleur_ knew that, as the men of his +race rated women, she was old—old, and no one would have followed her +to the well.) He continued: “If no man is to enfold thee, why not be as +those of the great white coifs, who have given themselves to Allah? They +have not thy look.” Then he went into delirium and cried out in his own +tongue and picked at his sheet, and when she came that way again he was +dead. + +_6 P.M., Vesoul Station._—Writing by the light that comes in from the +gas-jet. Dim American forms silhouetted in the great station. Partake of +the loneliness that possesses the soul of American youth in France on a +foggy autumn night. One of them said to me to-day, with a curious, dulled +look in his eye, a brooding, neurasthenic eye, “I’m the kind that gets +killed the last day of the war.” + +Then a presence apparent only by the light of his cigarette, a being with +an accent not immediately placeable, half cockney, half Middle-West, +calls out, “Say, does anybody know when we pull into Belfort?” + +It had, all the same, something of confidence-inspiring, so I briskly +chirped up: + +“Oh, in an hour or two or three.” + +“Well, I took the eight-o’clock train from Paris last night.” + +Chorus: “You mean this morning?” + +“I mean last night, and going ever since.” + +“What have you been doing in between times?” + +“Going, going,” he answered, casually, “and as you see, going still!” + +“How did you manage to get on this train?” + +“I don’t know. There I was and here I am, and God knows where my kit is. +I’m a flier, and I’ve got to have my things,” he ended, rather irritably, +and then there was another conversation about “burning the Rhine.” + +After interminable hours—two of them—we came to Lure, and everybody +seemed to be getting out, even the woman in purple, and there was a +fumbling with pocket-lamps and the voice of my country crying, “Where’s +that d—— door, anyway?” + +The young man who started last night came into my compartment as the +train jerked out of the station, and he was a Canadian aviator _en route_ +for the big camp of the Royal Independent Air Corps at Chatenoir. Before +the war he had been a chartered accountant. “But,” he said, “once in the +air, never again can I sit at a desk, crushed in by four walls.” And he +told stories of hair-breadth escapes of himself and his comrades, and of +combats in the air—once he had had his knee broken—and then he suddenly +cried out in a sharp voice: “God! I’m tired! Somebody let me know if we +ever get there,” and flung himself in a corner, and went to sleep, I hope. + +A young American officer standing smoking in the corridor, with whom I +had sat at lunch, turned on his pocket-lamp for an instant during the +ensuing silence, and said, “Do you mind if I come in?” Then, in the pitch +darkness, lighting one cigarette from the other, and very lonely, I +think, he almost immediately began to talk about himself, and his story +might be called the story of the young man who was and wasn’t married. + +Stripped of non-essentials, it was this: He had become engaged at a +“co-ed.” school, as he called it, some years before, and when he was +drafted, in the possible event of his being ordered abroad, the twain +decided to get married instead of waiting a few more years. One Sunday +morning in November they hunted up a clergyman and the knot was tied. +They then had lunch at the station and she took her train and he went +back to his camp. She was an army nurse and he was in the Engineers. + +Now, as inclination alone could have caused them to unite (there wasn’t +the ghost of another reason apparent; they hadn’t even mentioned the +matter to their families), the sequel of the story becomes somewhat +interesting; in fact, quite incomprehensible, let us say, to the Latin; +even I myself was a bit muddled as to the whereforeness of it all. + +Well, to continue. The next time they meet is when Fate, not quite +unmindful of them, sends him as instructor to a camp in the Middle West +on the outskirts of the very town where her people live, and she goes to +spend a three days’ leave with them. + +The not-too-eager and certainly not-over-inventive bridegroom (whatever +combinations may have been in his mind, neither he nor history records) +gets a few hours’ leave and goes to spend Sunday at the home of his bride. + +I begin to breathe. But not at all. Her people, innocent as the new moon +of the marriage, ask a few neighbors in for lunch—to make it pleasant for +them. The bride was to return that very same afternoon to her hospital. +They did walk to the station (under the same umbrella, I hope) and there +they said good-by. + +“It was what you might call a quiet wedding,” I hazarded at this stage, +and it was too dark to see if he caught the point. Please bear in mind +that this was a marriage of inclination; no other explanation, I repeat, +being possible. And the luncheon took place the end of January. + +The next time the situation seems about to clear up is in the golden +month of August, she having been transferred to the military hospital +near the camp to which he, in the meantime, had been transferred as +instructor. It seemed providential and again I breathe, thinking, “Love +will find a way.” Not at all. The bride rings him up the Sabbath morning +after his arrival (Sunday is evidently a bad day for that young man) and +tells him her orders take her to Camp Sill that night. The next day he +gets orders to report for overseas duty, and here we sit in the dark, on +the outskirts of Belfort! He breaks the silence later, with a certain +eagerness in his voice (not, however, for his distant bride, who, I also +gather, still bears her maiden name): “I do hope if we beat them I get +a chance to go into Germany with the troops. I’ve wandered all my life +[he’s between twenty-five and thirty] and sometimes I wonder how I’ll +take to living in one place and bringing up a family.” + +In the dark I wondered, too. + +_Later, much later._—To-morrow, All Saints’ Day, there will be some +crowding of the heavens, and the day after, the Feast of the Dead, all +France will be a-hurrying to her graves. + + + + +II + +ALL SAINTS’ DAY, NOVEMBER, 1918 + + +_Evening._—Masevaux, a town of old fountains and old inns with charming +old signs hanging out, the pebbly Doller running through it under +ancient, balconied houses, and over all hanging faint odors of its +century-old tanneries. A long day, but not too long. + +Punctually at eight-thirty I had descended the flashy stairway of the +“Tonneau d’Or” at Belfort to find the officer sent to meet me finishing +his coffee and reading the morning papers, always comforting these days. + +In a thin fog, we start out of town, passing under the antique high wall +of the castle against the rock of which “The Lion” has been carved. Now +all has been done that it is humanly possible to do with granite and a +lion, but of that more another time—perhaps. I can’t stop now except to +say that the hand that fashioned it fashioned also the Statue of Liberty +in New York harbor. + +We meet, just out of Belfort, a funeral procession—three coffins, two +draped with the Tricolor, one with the Stars and Stripes. Making the +sign of the cross, I commended three souls to Heaven. I always remember, +accompanying a beloved one of my blood to his narrow dwelling, how sweet, +how very sweet, it was to see the gesture of that sign, and the lifted +hats of those we met, saluting him on his last journey. Though I do not +care inordinately how or when or where I lose my flesh, that much I would +like done to me—in passing. + +Nestled in the corner of a broad, sloping field was a cemetery, a new +cemetery, with French and American flags flying from its crowded graves, +and many men were busy digging, and we heard the crunch of shovels in +cold, gravelly earth as we passed, and yet I thought how well, how very +well, the soldier sleeps!... + +We were on the flat road that leads to Cernay, where the Germans have +lain intrenched since the beginning of the war. + +Shifting masses of horizon-blue, velvety in the thin mist, appear, +disappear down white roads, between fields of barbed wire and against +horizons of rusty beeches. In the villages black-robed women and children +and old men are coming out of rose-colored churches or standing by +elaborate, very decorative rose-colored fountains. There is the distant +sound of cannon. It is again the front. + +At Masevaux, I find myself drawing up under some yellowing lindens +in front of the building of the Military Mission—once the German +_Kommandantur_, in turn once the nave of the old church of the Abbey of +Masevaux. I walk over a rich carpet of rustling leaves to the door, and +am shown up the broad, stone stairway of an immaculately kept building. + +Commandant Poulet having been called that morning to St.-Amarin, I am +taken into a charming corner room hung with a wall-paper that might have +been designed by Hansi, where a young, light-haired man with dark rings +under his eyes, who knows both battles and desks, was sitting at a big +table. + +We looked at each other, I must confess, with some curiosity, though +of the politest. I, to see what the Military Mission might be going +to offer, but prepared to be very easily and very much pleased, he, +doubtless, to see what had been “wished on” them for the next week. It +_might_ so easily have been awful, instead of a niceish lady who has +both wept and laughed, and known many lands and many men. He asks me +what I would like to do that morning. Not having the ghost of an idea +what there is to do, I answer, “Everything is interesting,” and give a +somewhat free Gallicization of “beauty lieth in the eye of the beholder.” +This was received approvingly, even hopefully, and he tells me that in +the afternoon I am to attend a ceremony in the military cemetery at +Moosch, in another valley. + +[Illustration: THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1918, IN ALSACE] + +[Illustration: PLACE DU MARCHÉ, MASEVAUX, JULY 14, 1918] + +About this time I begin to remember that it is “La Toussaint,” and +I say that if possible I should like to go to church. This, too, is +encouragingly easy and I am turned over to an officer whose wife and two +children have been in Brussels for four years, he himself a deserter from +the German army. + +When we reached the church, built of _grès rose_, evidently and happily, +from its abundance, the building stone of this colorful corner of the +world, and which can take on the loveliest of _patines_ in even a +generation or two, I find it overflowing with the faithful, many blue men +standing on its pink steps. The curé, followed, I hope, by his flock, was +off on a longish sermon, and for a good half-hour I was washed and blown +about on a sea of mixed metaphor, though it did not seem too long, for +mind and imagination were flinging themselves about reconquered lands and +border peoples, and I only really “came to,” so to speak, when a great +and splendid organ sounded and a deep, harmonious choir of men’s voices +joined it. Then I knew I was indeed on the frontier, where music lingers, +and amorously it would seem, near the last of the mad, Romantic peoples. + +When we passed out there was the noise of guns and everybody was looking +up at little white balls of shrapnel unrolling themselves about some +black specks in the blue, blue sky. It was the familiar firing on German +airplanes. + +Then I was led to this charming old house, which is one of six placed +at right angles, on two sides of the Place du Chapitre. It proved to be +part of the old convent, done over by Kléber when he cultivated the arts +of peace rather than those of war. It belongs to four agreeable sisters, +the Demoiselles Braun, whose brother, also a deserter from the German +ranks, was killed in Champagne. They were rehanging the portraits of +their ancestors.[4] Whereby hangs the tale of two American nurses who, +quartered there some weeks before, had left the water running in the tub +one night, after which the drawing-room ceiling fell in and the paper +peeled in hall and vestibule. Hence the rehanging of the ancestors, at +their own, I mean the sisters’, expense. + +They take me up a beautiful, but very worn, stairway, with a +time-polished oaken balustrade, and I find myself in a paneled room, +looking out on the square shaped like this: + +[Illustration] + +Many motors are drawn up in front of the Mission under the yellowing +lindens. The old red inn of “Les Lions d’Or” is directly opposite, and on +the left of the square at right angles with me are the four other houses +once dwelt in by the _chanoinesses_ when it was decided that each should +have her own establishment. The square is roughly, anciently paved, +with grass growing in between the cobblestones, and Mademoiselle Braun, +who showed me to my room, told me the steps of the old stairway were so +uneven because after the Revolution (during which the Chapter had been +dispersed) the house was long used as a school and they had been worn by +generations of young feet running up and down. + +_At 12.15_—I am conveyed to _la popote_[5] for luncheon. More officers +inspect me—I them also—and then we proceed to the consuming of an +excellent meal, to the very exhilarating accompaniment of the news of the +capitulation of Turkey, and a light, easy touching on other prospective +and pleasant changes. + +Now as, owing to circumstances too long to enter into, I hadn’t eaten +since noon the day before, passing by Chaumont, I did full justice to a +rabbit white as snow, garnished with noodles of the same hue, flooded by +a delicious golden sauce. I only fleetingly remembered that I ordinarily +avoid the little beast as food; for dessert we had a great cake filled +with chocolate and whipped cream, such a one as I had not seen for many +a month and year. A bottle of champagne was opened in joy at the Turkish +news. And we drank to everything and to everybody—even to the health of +the “Sick Man of Europe,” not, however, sicker than several others at +that moment, as some one cheerfully added. It was all very pleasant, and +I felt that everything was for the best in the best of war worlds. + +At 2.30 I start out with Captain Tirman over a smooth road, _camouflé_, +kilometer after kilometer, with screens of wire netting interwoven with +broom and pine branches, for the road runs along the side of hills which +slope down to the valley where the Germans lie intrenched. Everywhere are +shell-holes, new and old. We stopped on a high place and, getting out, +peered through a hole in the screen. Spread out before my eyes was the +rich plain of Alsace, one of the world’s gardens. Something crystal and +shimmering half veiled its loveliness, but its beauty and richness I knew +for the beauty and the richness of a thousand years of blood, and many +men had found it fair and panted for its beauty and died for it. + +In the distance, very white and shining, were the chimneys of Mulhouse, +and a pale-blue line against the horizon was the Black Forest. All the +time there was the sound of cannon, ours and theirs, reverberating +through the hills. I was greatly moved, and started to go higher up in +the field, but Captain Tirman stopped me, saying: “It will be better for +you to get away with your souvenirs than to take them unrecorded with you +to the grave. The Boches shell anything they see; and we haven’t got our +masks, either, in case they send a gas-bomb.” + +The roadsides were planted with cherry trees, scarlet-leaved, the +_kirschbaum_ of Alsace. The hills had great patches of velvety, +rust-colored beeches; dark pines traced black patterns through them, +yellow larches shone here and there like torches; a soft sun was +dispersing the last of the delicate, noonday mists. + +Then we slipped into the valley of the Thur, where lies the ancient town +of Thann. From afar I saw the lacy, gray belfry of its cathedral, pressed +against other heights of velvet rust and burnished gold. Nearby, the hill +of the Engelburg, with its broken, overturned tower like a great ring, a +souvenir of Turenne’s campaign during the Thirty Years’ War, was soft +and lovely, too. The long street was sun-bathed, and filled with the +black-bowed peasants of story-books, and the blue soldiery of the great +war. I wanted to stop by a pink fountain, near the richly carved portal +of the cathedral, but we feared to be late for the ceremony at Moosch and +hurried on. + +At a place called Bitschwiller, however, we were obliged to wait while +an almost endless procession of black-clad old men, women, and children, +and blue-clad soldiers wound across the road, from its pink church to the +distant green and yellow cemetery. + +Furthermore, the Fifteenth New York Infantry—black, black, black—is +quartered at Bitschwiller, and the most exotic sight I have ever seen +were those khaki-clad negroes in that valley, already very high-colored. + +Suddenly against the steep hill, like a picture slightly tilted back, we +came in sight of the square cemetery of Moosch. + +Above and below it was framed by a line of helmeted men in khaki, and +as we neared I saw they were _our_ black troops; the horizon-blue of +a French infantry regiment made the frame at the two sides. High, +high up were a group of white- and black-gowned priests, and red- and +white-gowned acolytes swinging their censers. At the top of the steep +stairway, running down the middle of the black-crossed cemetery, was +a sacerdotal figure, with outstretched arms, exhorting, and around +about the whole were groups of women and children. We left the motor +and walked over to the cemetery, where I found myself standing near +the resting-place of Norman Hall, the first American to die in Alsace. +From the tall, black cross floats the Stars and Stripes, and some one +had planted chrysanthemums thick on his grave. Peace to him. He lies +not far from General Serret, who fell, too, on the nearby sacrificial +Hartmannswillerkopf, where commingled lie fifty thousand who at the word +of command had put out each other’s light. + +After the sermon the negro band of the Fifteenth played some grave and +measured music, the French infantry band then something a little too gay. +As one of the officers said afterward, “_Cela a presque frisé la polka_.” + +Then the “Marseillaise” sounded and “The Star-spangled Banner.” I felt my +veil wet against my eyes and my lips atremble as I thought, a second time +that day, how well, how very well, the soldier sleeps. + +Above the cemetery in a higher contour of eternal hill was a great patch +of yellow and black and rust-colored forest against a clear blue-white +sky, in which tiny black specks were moving eastward. + +We waited to watch the negro troops defile. They appeared very smartly +dressed till the eye got to their feet, and such a collection of ripped, +torn, cut, down-at-the-heel footgear was never seen! They seem to be +a flat-footed race, too. I spoke to a couple of darkies very much _en +repos_, who were leaning against a fence, near the motor, as I got in. + +One answered, with a broad grin, “You an American from America?” + +“Yes.” + +“Well, have you heard dis here war’s about over?” The coalest-black one +then contributes this to the conversation: + +“When peace is signed dis here nigger starts to walk home.” + +“What about the ocean?” + +“I’ll take a swim, lady; the water can’t be no colder and no damper dan +dis here ‘Alice’ land.” + +The mulatto by his side said, “I subscribes,” and became a pale gray at +the bare idea of getting colder or damper. + +Then we see Commandant Poulet, tall, blue-clad, with high decorations +a-shine, coming toward us, and he and many officers are presented to me, +after which I change into his motor, and we start out over a magnificent +military road built since the war. It was begun and completed almost +miraculously, it would seem, in little more than a year, and over it, +safely hidden from German guns, come and go the great military supplies +of the Alsatian front—troops, artillery, munitions, food, ambulances. + +As we mount, mysterious, dissolving twilight views present themselves +near red cherry trees, burn against distant blue hills, yellow larches +illuminate other “hilltops hearsed with pines,” and the beech woods are +a deep, deep purple. Then we plunge into the dimness of the great cedar +forests of the Route Joffre, talking, but not too much, in the large, +enfolding twilight, of the war, and of Alsace of to-day. Commandant +Poulet has been in charge of the Military Mission since Christmas Day of +1914, and I thought, rolling over the broad road, contemporaneous with +his administration, how out of thousands, nay millions of men, his part +during these war years had been to construct and not destroy. He told me +that almost his first official act was to be present at the burial of +Norman Hall on December 26, 1915. + +As we issue from the dark forest we find ourselves on a crest overlooking +many other twilit hills. There is a pale, pale yellow still burning in +the west, and the most timid of evening stars shines above it. Then we +dip into the deep blue valley where Masevaux lies. + +Peasants are hurrying to their villages, and there is a continuous, but +dull, sound of cannon. In the chill of the fallen night we arrive at the +Place du Chapitre, the town dark, dark as we enter it, and no light in +any house. Having seen my pleasant room only in daytime, I proceeded in +hunting for the light to try to turn on a barometer, then by another +door feeling my way along, I fumbled about an arrangement of mandolin +and pipe, then, as a last resort, I sought light from a stuffed owl. +After which I went into the corridor and, re-entering the room, found the +electric button just where it ought to be—by the door. + +A saving hour of solitude before I am fetched for dinner, which was +very pleasant, but I can’t tell about it now, for sleep, dear sleep, is +touching me, and it is two days and a night since it has been near. + + + + +III + +FÊTE DES MORTS, NOVEMBER, 1918 + + +Church again, seemingly in company with the entire population, civil and +military, after which I _flanéd_ in the old streets of Masevaux, word +having been brought that no motor was available for our projected trip to +Dannemarie. Indeed, I had early noticed from my window much mounting in +hot haste, accompanied by the lively sound of two kinds of firing. Some +_coup de main_, I suppose. + +I strolled about under an uncertain sun, occasionally sensible of that +delicate, not unpleasant smell of bark and leather hanging on a windless +air. About me was that world of blue-clad soldiers, black-robed women, +and many children were playing in the pink and gray streets; a group +of little girls were skipping rope to the words _ein_, _zwei_, _drei_, +_quatre_, _cinq_, _six_! + +The post-office of modern Teutonic origin still wears, high up and +indifferently, the Double Eagle, though the more accessible _Kaiserliches +Post-Amt_ has been removed. A little farther down the street is the old +inn of the “Golden Eagle” whose historic sign dates from Napoleonic days, +and which, as was pointed out to me, turns its golden back disdainfully +to the black, double face of the once proud eagle of the post-office. + +And this inn of the “Golden Eagle” hangs its charming sign out on a +corner of the square called “La Halle aux Blés” (the Grain Market), +surrounded by sloping-roofed, roomy houses. In the center is a +rose-colored fountain, with three diminishing rose-shaped basins around +a carved central column. + +And the cobblestoned square with its good fountain and its comfortable +houses—there’s even a stable and a garage on one side—has something +cozy about it, its atmosphere that of a place long used by human +beings for the homelike customs of “the simple life,” which last bears +no resemblance to that occasionally practised at great expense and +inconvenience by those who “need a change” and can afford one. + +American troops passed through the Halle aux Blés on the 30th of May of +this year, again on the 4th of July, and on the 14th, too, always drawing +themselves up at last in the Place du Marché, one end of which is my +Place du Chapitre. There, under the lindens, General Hahn and General +Boissoudy watched them deploy, while gaily attired Alsatian girls grouped +about the fountain acclaimed them, and from every window hung the Stars +and Stripes. + +Then I found myself wandering out on the road to Belfort, past the +high, grassy eminence known as the “Ringelstein,” once crowned by the +proud castle of Duke Mason, founder of Masevaux. Traces of ancient +walls embowered in ivy are still to be seen, and at its base are many +old outbuildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, once +dependencies of the Abbey and the Chapter, and when you are not expecting +it you find old inscriptions and bits of carving plastered into them. +On one high-roofed outhouse was a large crown and three fleurs-de-lis. +Blasted through one end of the great rock of the Ringelstein rims the +railway. And there is a near view of the red and green and yellow roofs +of the houses of the _chanoinesses_ confounding themselves with the +autumn foliage of the trees which embower them. + +I begin to know a little of the early history of Masevaux, enveloped in +legends and many contrary tales—Masevaux, ruled now by abbots, now by +feudal lords, belonging sometimes to the House of Austria, sometimes to +the House of France. + +And the first legend is that of its foundation. How the lord of the +country, by name Mason, a nephew of Saint-Odile, was feasting in his +castle of this same Ringelstein, and the wines of Burgundy and Alsace and +of the Rhine were flowing, and a troubadour was reciting a tale of war +and love, when suddenly Duke Mason cries out: + +“Soul of my soul, misfortune is happening to my son! Night is falling. +Where is he?” And he goes to the window and looks out. Some one answers: + +“Fear not, illustrious father of so dear a child. He has doubtless +tarried with the holy fathers of Moutiers.” But the night gets blacker, +the lords and ladies drop their golden hanaps and the troubadour is still. + +Then Mason, in the grip of deeper presentiment, cries out, “Who loves +me to the succor of my son!” And they seek with torches for the child. +Alas! the white body of Mason’s son, born of a dead, beloved wife, is +found floating upon the little stream, and Mason, pressing what was once +his child to his heart, cries out: “Nothing can ever give me joy again. +I will build a monastery wherein to pass my days until God calls me from +this heavy world.” And that is the origin of Masevaux—Masmunster. The +legend has it, too, that on moonless nights the child returns, weeping, +because he did not live long enough to read all the beautiful stories +inscribed by the gods, the prophets and the wise, concerning the sons +of men. And as I looked up at the great grass- and vine-covered rock +whereon the castle of Mason once rose, the Doller flowing at its base, +the cannon of the great war sounded. Down the white road was disappearing +a battalion of blue-clad men, going toward the black and rust and +yellow of the hills—a red cherry tree between me and them. Then I turned +back into the town and hied me to the _popote_, where some half-dozen +extremely agreeable men were awaiting me, as well as a sustaining repast. + +The American _communiqué_ was immediately and very appreciatively read +out. Our victorious advance was continuing along the Meuse (known as the +“Muse” by the doughboy), the First American Army attacking on the west +bank in liaison with the Fourth French Army on the left. Then we looked +over the Turkish armistice terms, quite satisfyingly comprehensive from +the opening of the Dardanelles to promises on the part of the Turks not +to speak to any of their former friends. + +And we talked of how from the terrace of Versailles, where the German +Empire was proclaimed, the statesmen of the world will watch the twilight +descending upon Walhalla and its gods; and here in Alsace the crash of +falling temples can be heard. + +After lunch I went with Lieutenant Lavallée to see a bit of Alsace from +within, for he was to invite various mayors of villages to go to Paris +for the “Fêtes Alsaciennes,” to be held the middle of November, and also +to select a discreet number of veterans of 1870 and school-children of +1918 to accompany them. + +We went first to Gewenheim, a somewhat war-battered village and, as +we entered it, Lavallée pointed out the iron plate on the sign-post, +indicating the name of the village and the department. Like many others +of the Haut Rhin (Upper Rhine), after 1870 it had been quite simply +turned and marked in German. This proved most convenient and economical, +for all the French Military Mission had to do when they came to Alsace in +1914 was to turn them back as they had been before 1870! + +The mayor’s house, one of the usual dwellings with a small door for +humans and a big door for harvests, had been much damaged. Passing +in through a sagging entrance, we found the mayor, the classic, +horny-fisted, wrinkle-faced mayor of a village, with cobwebs and straw +and other substances adhering to his coat, but possessed of a certain +air of dignity and authority notwithstanding. There was a moment’s +silence after the lieutenant gave him the invitation, pride visibly +wrestling with parsimony, accompanied by the working up and down of a +very prominent Adam’s apple. He accepted finally with a sort of “I am a +man” expression, but there was a quite apparent melting of his being when +he found that it was the State that would defray expenses. Then the wife +of his bosom, who had helped him make and save his money, came in and +showed us some of their “best” shell-holes, and a statue of the Virgin of +Lourdes under a large glass bell which had not a scratch, even, though +everything around had been shattered. + +There was also a lithograph of Henner’s red-headed “Alsatian Girl,” who +hangs in every home and every railway station, and is used for loans +and appeals and calendars and advertisements of complexion washes and +hair-dyes; and she was once a charming creature, before familiarity bred +contempt. + +The worthy couple then fell to a discussion in Alsatian German as to +which of the veterans would be possible candidates for the trip to Paris. +There seemed to be something the matter with every one mentioned. Rudler, +Franzi, was nice and it was a pity that his rheumatism prevented his +getting about, as he had lost his dung-heap, though not his house, in a +recent bombardment and needed distraction. It wasn’t quite clear to me +_how_ you _could_ lose a possession of that kind, but I wasn’t at the +front to ask questions, so I let it pass. + +Handrupp, Hansi’s, eyes were giving him trouble. If he went, a boy would +have to go to lead him about, and, even so, would he be welcome in Paris +if it were known that his daughter, old enough to know better, had run +away with a German? + +First names, it will be noticed, came last, and last names first, a relic +of German order. Another incautious but evidently esteemed veteran, by +name Bauer, Seppi, had fallen from a hayrick last summer and would never +walk again. It was like looking at the back of the web of Fate, and I +found myself wondering with somewhat of exasperation, “for this had a +hero’s death at Gravelotte or Villersexel or Saint-Privat been denied +him, where angels would have awaited his strong, young body to take it +to the heaven of those who die for country?” Suddenly the _dulce et +decora_ of so dying was quite clear to me, and Bauer, Seppi, who fell +from the hayrick last summer, and all his still extant contemporaries, +had the tragic part—as would these men of the great war some forty or +fifty years hence, who were now going about with an astonished yet proud +consciousness that, _ex millibus_, _they_ had been chosen and been spared. + +But as Lavallée very justly remarked, “What would happen to the world +if everybody died young?” I suppose he is right, and I bethought myself +that there are those who must await threescore and ten before the reasons +for their having been born are apparent; the “Tiger,” for instance, and +Moses, and many others. + +We then visited the curé, living at the very end of the village +toward the lines. He was called from the church where he was hearing +confessions, and Lavallée proceeded to ask him which of the schoolboys he +recommended; wideawake ones, without, of course, being obstreperous, were +wanted. Something, disappearing almost as swiftly as it came, passed over +the curé’s face. It was a look of sudden, nearly overwhelming desire to +go himself, and the immediate realization of the impossibility of that or +anything else that meant change. + +On the round center-table was a book, _Deo Ignoto_, and _L’Echo de +Paris_. A little harmonium with manuscript-music on its rack was near +the bed; on the walls were shiny lithographs of three popes, and an +illuminated Lord’s Prayer in German. As the upper rooms of the house +were “unhealthy,” on account of the raids and bombardments, the curé +lived and breathed and had his being downstairs in this one room, with a +rather boisterous yellow dog that kept sniffing at my gaiters. He was a +large man, with a naturally masterful eye, who would have been at home +in many places, occupied with many things, but he had lived, and would +die, Curé of Gewenheim. And he at least owed the Germans a temporary +widening of his activities, for Gewenheim is but three kilometers from +the firing-line. + +Then we crossed the muddy street to the schoolhouse to confer with +the nuns concerning little girls, and were greeted by a dark-eyed, +sparkling-faced Sister, very gifted by nature, who would have graced +any drawing-room. There was something of elegance even in the way she +had the washing of the stairs cease to allow us to pass up, and in the +way she removed piles of coarse linen from the chairs in the room to +which she conducted us. Then another Sister, not so bright, though she +evidently ranked the gifted one, came in, and together they pondered +the names of possible little girls. I had a feeling of being behind the +scenes, and recognized how orderly and reasonable is the working of a +so-often fortuitously appearing Fate, as they decided who should, or +should not, take the journey to Paris. I thought, too, that it would have +been well-nigh intolerable to me, had I been a little girl in Gewenheim, +not to be among those chosen to go. But there was no longing on either +of _their_ faces. Especially the charming one radiated happiness and +content. And how true that nothing can enter the heart that is not +already there! I wondered if I, to whom so much of life is known—its +glories and its miseries—possessed what that graceful woman had found in +the dullest routine of duty imaginable. _She_ knew whither she was bound, +also whence she had come. In comparison, shaking, shifting, uneasy, +appeared the compass of my life.... + +A bottle of quite sour white wine was produced and they watched Lavallée +and myself drink; no escape possible. + +They are of the Sisters of the Divine Providence with their mother-house +at Ribeauville, who have taught in the schools of Alsace for generations. + +After leaving them, we visited the inn, entering into the _Gastzimmer_ +through a tiny antechamber of a shop, where thread and candles and oil +for lamps, socks, and a few other strict essentials were sold. The +black-toothed, thin-haired landlady, Tritter by name, might have been +of any age, but a handsome boy of fifteen or thereabouts, with a bad +cough, calling her “Mother,” gave a possible limit. A good-looking, +high-complexioned girl appeared breathless from a bethumbed back +door, arranging two little curls under her ears. After the greetings, +Lieutenant Lavallée said: + +“Have you had any news of your daughter Odile?” + +“Not since last winter from Colmar,” both mother and sister answer; +“the parcels we sent her, they cost each fifteen francs, have not been +received. She was hungry when she wrote.” + +Then was poured out a confused story concerning the capture of a squad of +Germans with their gun, in the autumn of 1914. A few days after the event +the sisters had been standing in the street in front of their door, when +a German officer came up and said to Odile, the younger: + +“You are wanted for a moment.” She followed him to another officer on +horseback, waiting in a field. They had not seen her since. Then it +appeared that it was the baker’s wife who through jealousy had denounced +the pretty Odile (the rôle of the baker himself was not indicated), but +such an expression of hatred for the baker’s wife, rather than for the +Germans, came over the mother’s visage that I was reminded of faces +in pre-Raphaelite pictures—I mean those on the goat side in Judgment +Day scenes. It was evidently one of those obscure yet ruthless village +tragedies set in the frame of equally ruthless war. + +When we came out we copied an old inscription over the house door of +a man, Louis Vogler by name, who, returning from a campaign, had been +decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1816, and had recorded the fact for +all time over his door, his decoration even being carved in with the rest. + +Evidently a man who, having done a deed, was not content that it +should be writ only in water (or blood), but had it put squarely and +clearly over the door of the house to which he returned; and was he +not justified? For here it is being recorded some hundred years after, +instead of having been carried away on the great river of Napoleonic +deeds. + +Then, through several wet villages, groups of girls with their felt +slippers stuck into their clacking wooden sabots (very comfortable +footgear, it appears) pass groups of blue-clad soldiers, and words are +exchanged. I couldn’t hear, but by the looks accompanying them and the +giggles I judged them to be the eternal words exchanged in all ages +between soldiers and future mothers of the race. And there is a verse, +old as the army, which runs: + + _Le négligent troupier_ + _Qui laisse passer l’heure_ + _Et trop longtemps demeure_ + _Sera puni par son sous-officier._[6] + +Everywhere along the road, through the mist, detachments of blue-clad +men would appear and disappear. I thought with a touch of sadness, an +esthetic sadness, to be sure, that this extreme beauty of dissolving +distances would be lost when the world of blue-clad men would have +disappeared, replaced by men in shabby, nondescript, civilian clothes, or +by _des types à melon ou à tube_—those wearing derby hats or cylinders. + +Near Rodern, between some lines of poplars, a helmeted cavalryman, with +his detachment, rode by on a great black horse. He was bending slightly +forward, his lance in his hand, his eyes looking straight ahead, his +ample, light-blue tunic almost concealing his saddle. He was a pure +French type, pale of face, with black hair, black mustache, slanting +nose, and I knew him for the archetypal Gallic warrior as he has appeared +through the ages, making epics for France. + +At Bourbach-le-Haut, Lieutenant Lavallée was to invite a last mayor +to partake of the trip to Paris, and hunt up some remaining veterans. +Whatever gentle thirst I had had for mayors and veterans being now +quite slaked, I went to the little church, instead of to the _Mairie_. +Through the half-open door came light and chanting sounds. I went in to +find a dim interior, with an ancient arch framing the altar space, in +front of which was a narrow, black coffin. Only some very old bit of +mortality, waxy and shrunken, could lie within. Women, children, and what +may have been veterans were saying the rosary in German—the Sorrowful +Mysteries—and I thought on my dead, and on that dear and holy brother +born into the world on this day long years ago. In Alsace he had desired +and received, dreaming and adolescent, the baptismal waters. + +Sadness invaded me, even as the dreary night was invading the day, and +I would have groaned aloud, but I saw Lieutenant Lavallée standing by +me. Haunted by the mournful chanting, with its mysterious indications, +“_Jetz und in der Stunde unseres Absterbens, Amen_,” I passed out into +falling night and rain; dark masses of mountain loomed up, lighter spaces +were the stretching valleys. Soon we found ourselves on the deep road to +Masevaux, I lonelier than the loneliest of the dark and hurrying clouds. + + + + +IV + +THANN AND OLD THANN + + +_Sunday morning, November 3d._—Awakened at six by heavy firing. After +wondering what could be happening, I remember that life, as far as I +am concerned, is for the moment largely joy, or rather joyous riding, +with a series of agreeable French officers (they certainly are of an +amiability!), in a series of large, powerful military motors, through a +series of beautiful autumnal hills, over a series of the newest and most +wonderful of war roads. + +Enough church-going, however, as will have been noticed, to keep me +mindful that man, and woman, too, is grass, and though it, or rather she, +springs up in the morning, she may be cut down by night, and that this +bending of the hills is by the journeys of her eternity. + +Well, to get to the point, or rather to Thann. We started out early, at +nine, for I was to find a Mass in the cathedral, after which we were to +proceed to Vieux Thann, where war has not spared the church nor left +worshipers. + +Again we took the screened road overhanging the valley. Again we stopped +on an eminence and climbed into a field, and again I was shown the blue +valley, over the tops of some red cherry trees. Nothing detached itself +from gradations of velvety mists and beaming distances, but I knew that +on the grape-planted slopes of an unseen river that other wine of defeat +was being drunk from cups held stiffly to unwilling lips. + +[Illustration: THANN AND ITS VINEYARDS] + +As we dipped down into the valley of the Thur, the belfry of the church +of Thann appeared, so mistily, lacily soft that its form and substance +seemed but as something breathed into the air, at any moment to be +dissolved, against hills that were like brocaded stuffs, whose gold would +be very thick if one turned them wrong side out. My heart was stirred +because of the fairness of the Sabbath world. + +We drew up in front of the gorgeous portal of the cathedral, once a deep +pink, but with time grown paler and softer at all its edges, and whose +boardings and sandbags now partly hide the carved story of the life of +Christ and His Mother. We grope our way in through several swinging +doors, and find the high, Gothic space filled with a misty yellow light +coming in through narrow windows, covered with oiled paper, the precious +stained-glass having been long since removed. + +Little by little the forms of kneeling women and children, and many +soldiers standing, detach themselves from the lovely gloom. The green +vestment of the priest at the altar, on which are six tall, crystal, +wide-branched candelabra, misty like the rest, is the only spot of color, +for the splashes of horizon-blue become nearly white after a strange +fashion of this color in dim light, whether of church or falling night. +In the ancient wrought-iron pulpit the curé was just finishing a sermon +in French, immediately beginning one in German. It appears that as the +_communiqués_ improve, the French sermon gets longer, and the German +shorter, and mercifully neither is long. + +We passed out quickly after the “_Ite, missa est_.” I had been feeling +that Captain B—— might be in a hurry, but when I looked about to see if +he were fidgeting, I found him doing what any _miles gloriosus_ should be +doing from time to time, saying his prayers. + +And this is the story of the building of the church of Thann, and of its +arms, which bear a single pine tree. + +Death found the holy Bishop Théobald in the Umbrian Valley, and, knowing +that his hour had come, he said to his servitor Maternus, who knelt +weeping by his side: + +“Thou knowest I leave no worldly goods, for the poor have needed what +I had. But this sapphire ring, dear memory of her once loved, take it, +thou, that worms may not dwell within it.” And then he entered into +contemplation, saying nothing further of the things of earth. + +When Maternus had made ready to hide his master’s body from the light, +he tried to take the ring from its finger. But with the ring came the +finger, and both were inclosed as in a shining rim. + +Maternus, greatly wondering, hid the precious relic in a hollow place in +his staff and started back to Alsace, begging his bread along the way. +After many delays, having been set upon by wicked men and molested by +prowling animals, he finally arrived in the valley of the Thur. + +Exhausted, he laid himself down to rest, placing against a pine tree the +precious staff. The next morning he was awakened by the ringing of the +Angelus, and when he started to grasp his staff he found that it was as +if grafted on to the great pine, while to left and right were burning two +tall, pale, sapphire flames. + +At this moment the lord of the Engelburg came by, the ruins of whose +great castle are those one sees rising above the town of Thann. He had +perceived the two blue flames from afar and, hastening to find out what +they signified, he recognized Maternus, faithful servitor of his friend +Théobald. + +Maternus then related the death of the saint in the Umbrian plain, +showing him the finger and the ring; whereupon the lord of the Engelburg, +weeping and sighing, cried: + +“Oh! my precious friend Théobald; oh! my dearly loved sister Adelaide, +this is thy betrothal ring, and these two sapphire flames announce thy +union in dear heaven!” (In those days they were quick to see divine +meanings.) + +Now, the so well-loved Adelaide, in her green youth, had been struck by +a bolt from heaven, after which Théobald, for whom the whole round earth +held nothing more of value, had consecrated himself to God. + +The lord of the Engelburg, his gaze fixed upon the luminous finger and +the familiar blue ring, knew soon the too often hidden will of God, and +cried out again: + +“Here I will build a church, and its reliquary shall contain this +precious ring and finger.” + +And so was built the church and monastery of Thann, and about them +grew the town, and during long centuries on the vigil of the feast of +Saint-Théobald, a freshly cut pine tree was placed in front of the +cathedral, flanked by two great wax candles. Nor can any one, even of the +very positive-minded, who look no farther than stones and mortar for all +meanings, give a better reason for the arms of Thann. + +Then we motored on toward Vieux Thann, half destroyed, and evacuated +since 1914, but were obliged to leave the too visible motor on the +outskirts of the village, creeping close along a very high screen of wire +and broom branches that we might not be seen by the enemy. For we were +in the plain of Cernay, now known as the Ochsenfeld, once called the +“Field of Lies,” where the three sons of Louis le Débonnaire routed their +father’s army. Lothair, Louis, and Pépin were their names. But of all +this another time. + +Vieux Thann is a half-demolished, echoing, empty town, with a background +of neglected vineyards on very close-pressing hills. + +Everywhere were signs of German war occupation. The schoolhouse had +been their evacuation hospital, and one of the old inns bore the sign, +“Verband-Station.” The only living things in Vieux Thann were the +fountains, quite lovely in the pink-stoned, gracious Alsatian way, with +their gentle, unhurried streams of crystal water. It all reminded me +vaguely of Pompeii, even in the misty light of a northern Indian summer +sun. + +Above, in the perfect blue, the usual firing on German airplanes was +going on. Long after the black specks had disappeared to the east +the little, round, soft, compact balls of shrapnel were still slowly +unfolding themselves. + +About fifteen hundred feet from us were the battle-lines, where the +French and Germans have faced each other in the “Field of Lies” since +1914. + +One of the battered inns, “Zum Goldenen Lamm,” has its once lovely old +sign still hanging out, but the golden lamb is gone, and only his golden +feet and the green wreath of laurel that once entwined him remain. + +And to what winds had the dwellers of the great village been scattered? +Where had they been received, unwillingly, by strangers, those hosts of +refugees, fleeing from their homes, red with excitement, bright-eyed, +voluble? I’ve seen them, too, after months of treading up another’s +stairs and eating of the salt bread of charity—pale, silent, dispirited, +returning to villages like Vieux Thann, to see their all among disorderly +piles of fallen stones and crumbling mortar.... + +Back to the living city, to an increasing sound of cannon, but the +Sabbath stillness was so deep nothing seemed really to disturb it. + +The cathedral with its single, finely pointed tower was like a needle +everywhere threading up long streets. I had a desire to see it empty, +and as I entered, its perfect proportions gave me a sweet and satisfying +welcome. The red lamp of the sanctuary was now the only spot of color +in the thick yellow gloom, out of which line and proportion gradually +detached themselves. The celebrated choir-stalls had been removed to +Sewen, but above the altar of the Virgin is a Gothic triptych, and the +beautiful pulpit is of fifteenth-century wrought-iron. We groped our +way into a low, vaulted chapel which existed even before the church was +built, passing a tombstone bearing the arms of the house of Ferrette, a +family once all-powerful in these valleys. Over the altar of the chapel +is an ancient statue of Saint-Théobald. He has a long, thin, shaven, +upper-class face, his eyes are bent, and he is looking perhaps as he did +shortly before death found him in the Umbrian Valley. It is the visage of +a man having done with personal things, and a great pity is woven into +the downward curves of the benignant face. + +We drove back to Masevaux, over one of the splendid new war roads, rising +and dipping through forest-covered hills. The brilliant sun shone athwart +each leaf, still dewy and sparkling, and a strong, rich, autumnal smell +exuded from the earth. It reminded Captain Bernard of hunting before the +war, that carefree _chasse d’avant-guerre_, and I thought of Hungarian +castles, and long days in forests, walking through rustling leaves, or +sitting silently in glades with men in green-brown hunting garb, awaiting +the game. In the evening, shining dinner-tables, and talk about the day’s +bag by men in pink hunting-coats and women wearing their best gowns and +all their jewels.... And much that is no more. + +We descended at the _popote_ as the hand of the church clock pointed +to 12.15. Blue-clad officers were standing by the windows reading the +Belfort morning paper just arrived, and the Paris newspapers of the day +before, as I went in. + +The enemy is beating his retreat through the Argonne Forest, to the +sound of the hour of destiny, and there are armistice and abdication +rumors, and indications that they want to _sauver les meubles_, or, as +they would say, seeing they’ve got into a bad business, _retten was zu +retten ist_—_i.e._, German unity, which, saved, means all is saved. But +there are strange dissolvents infiltrating everywhere, scarcely any +substance can resist, and the blood of peoples boiling over, and much +good broth spilling, and too many cooks everywhere. For what man but +wants to try his ’prentice hand at seasoning of the mess? And it was all +talked about to the consuming of Mère Labonne’s especially excellent +Sunday dinner, an example of _la vraie, la délicieuse cuisine française +bourgeoise_. There were _pieds de veau_ that melted in the mouth, and +creamed potatoes, after which a very delicious _hachis_, with some +sort of horseradish sauce, and when I remark that it has also a touch +of garlic, Sérin cries out, “But not at all—it’s only horseradish.” On +my being supported by everybody at the table, he finally says, with an +innocent but somewhat discomfited smile, “It’s true that there must be a +lot for _me_ to notice it.” Then he tells with gusto of a repast in his +dear Toulouse where there was a whole cold pheasant for each guest, and +each pheasant was blanketed with such a thick cream of garlic that the +bird itself could scarcely be seen. “It was exquisite,” he added. “I dare +say; one can even smell it here,” some one cruelly finished. + +Then they spoke of how the French had supported captivity better than the +English, and why. + +“We always talk while eating,” said Bernard, “no matter how scanty or +ignoble the repast. It’s our hour for relaxation.” (Any one lunching or +dining at French officers’ messes will have noticed this.) “But with the +English it is different. They eat silently, and in captivity they easily +get the spleen and fall into melancholy, because the food isn’t served +as they would like, or because they can’t wash or shave or exercise.” + +And I told the story of the brother of a French friend whom I had +recently seen, just back from nearly four years’ captivity, who returned +in such a stout, rosy condition that his sister was ashamed to show him, +and when asked about her _pauvre frère_ would blush. + +We sat long, talking now of books, now of personages, now of local +happenings, Sérin telling of passing that morning through one of the +smaller villages where even the young girls had saluted him with a +military salute as he rode by—and one of the officers said, with a flash, +“_Très délivrées celles-là!_”(“Very delivered, those!”) Then some one +told the story of the man who came down to Masevaux to make a book on +Alsace and, seeing the line of the trenches marked that day in blue on +the commandant’s map, remarked, in a _dégagé_ way, “_Le Rhin, n’est-ce +pas?_” (“The Rhine, I suppose?”) + +“Not yet,” was the quiet answer. + +He then rushed them all off their feet for ten hours, after which, having +got what _he_ wanted, he went back to Paris and wrote his book. And from +what I hear it wasn’t a bad book, either. Though one of the officers said +he knew he could do the same about Prague or Peking, that he’d never +seen, with some books, a good pair of scissors and as much paste as he +wanted. + +All is handled lightly, as only a group of Frenchmen could handle it, +_glissant, n’appuyant jamais_, each bringing his little gift of wit +and culture, enjoying the impersonal with the same pleasure as the +personal, in the French way. Of course, the _communiqués_ are as honey +after four years of bitter herbs, very bitter, even though distilled in +extinguishable hope. + +And I must say that to me lively and untrammeled conversation is the +salt of daily life; and if, as it sometimes happens, one’s own thoughts +are expanded, brightened, and returned to one, it is indeed delectable +above all things, the true salt to be used in quantities (if you can +get it). For, alas! the majority of people have no ideas, when you come +down to it, or, having a few, they are pig-headed and look but into +the converging point of the angle, knowing nothing of the splendor of +diverging lines where self is swallowed up in unself. And there are +the close-headed, whose minds work slowly in a cramped way, or not at +all, and they are forever complaining that they only think of things to +say when they get home and the lights are out. They might just as well +not think of them (one sometimes doubts if they really do) for all the +good they are to their neighbors. And there are those very thin-skinned +ones who immediately get contentious, and think the arrow is meant for +them instead of the universe at large, and one could go on indefinitely +through the list of impenetrable heads, to whom the blow of an ax is as +the brush of a feather, or cushiony heads that once dented, however, +never regain their contours, and many, many others. These all need +material sauces, good, rich sauces to their food, or they would find +it tasteless, not having even a pinch of this other salt to season it +with. And they are mostly those who do not work, but whose fathers +worked—sometimes even their mothers—and _oh, là là_, the subject is +endless, for everybody talks—even those who have nothing to say. + + + + +V + +THE BALLON D’ALSACE + + +_Sunday afternoon._—At two o’clock I started out with Captain Bernard +and Captain Antoni for the great mountain known as the Ballon[7] +d’Alsace, sometimes called, too, “the knot of Europe,” in an especially +high-powered motor (I never know the mark of any of them, distinguishing +a Ford from a Rolls-Royce only by the generally pampered feeling +pervading me when in the latter). + +The Ballon rises like a wall at the very end of the valley of the Doller, +and we passed through many villages, shining pinkly in the prismatic +November afternoon, where there was much going into church for vespers, +of blue- or black-clad figures. The thirteenth century-towered church +of Sewen is on a slight eminence in the heart of the village, and the +cemetery around it was crowded with the faithful, regretting their dead, +or some, perhaps, for one reason or another (What know I?), feeling, +“’Tis better they lie there.” “Live long, but not too long for others,” +is an excellent device. + +The charming lake of Sewen, though far from the village, seen from a +certain angle, reflects the tower of the church and is, they told me, +of Moorish origin. These valleys and hills seem everywhere like open +books concerning the dim, dim youth of the earth; I had a sense of my +transitories, with those lessons written everywhere. And it is autumn, +too. + +We got out at the immense reservoir of Alfelt which dams up dangerous +springtime floods with its giant wall of masonry, for from the “knot of +Europe” loosened waters flow to the North Sea and to the Mediterranean. +Climbing to the top of the rocky elevation, we read on the monument the +date of the inauguration of the reservoir, 1884, and the name, Prince +Hohenlohe Schillingfurst, Statthalter. + +And, looking down, the shining villages through which we had just passed, +Sewen, Oberbruck, Niederbruck, Masevaux, are like beads on the thread of +the lovely valley, lying between the breasts of the hills. + +The mountain-ringed lake of the reservoir reflects the rich coloring +of the hills in which it is set; white-stemmed, yellow-leaved birches, +blood-red cherry trees; rust-colored beeches, larch trees shining like +torches borne by wanderers, on black pine slopes; all is seen twice—once +on the hills and once in the mirror of the lake. + +Then we mount up, up, up, twisting and turning over the magnificent +military road, made like so many others since the war, to become some day +the joy of tourists, when, thousands upon ten thousands, nay, millions +upon millions, they shall come from over ocean and mountain to see what +it all looks like and get the belated thrill. + +Violet hills become black, outlined against a copper-colored band of +western horizon. Captain Bernard points out some English airplanes just +over our heads, tiny, tiny specks hanging in a high waste of heaven, and +I wonder if in one of them sits my friend, the chartered accountant of +the Belfort train, fulfilling his destiny in the air. + +We leave the motor at the highest point of the road, where trees no +longer grow, and start to climb the grassy crest, patterned with great +brown patches of barbed-wire defenses. Captain Bernard’s sharp eyes +soon discerned the _chicanes_, intricate, almost indistinguishable +pathways through the wire, and if one knew them one could get through +without leaving one’s clothes. Breathless, we arrived at the _table +d’orientation_ and find ourselves looking out over what seemed the edge +of the universe. In front of us lay the gorgeous panorama of the Alps +and behind it the wide band of copper-colored sky, with here and there +a burnishing of glaciers by the dipping sun. To our left stretched the +immense and splendid valley of the Rhine, behind it the Black Forest, +clearly yet softly outlined against a paler horizon. One could have +rolled the whole earth like a ball from the feet. I felt as if suddenly +freed from any heaviness of the flesh, and Goethe’s soaring words brushed +against my mind, and beckoned me on—those words he cried after he had +reached the Brocken and was looking down on a cloud-covered Germany. + + _Dem Geier gleich_ + _Der auf schweren Morgenwolken_ + _Mit sanftem Fittig ruhend,_ + _Nach Beute schaut,_ + _Schwebe mein Lied._[8] + +I knew those vast expanses for material out of which a new earth, if +not a new heaven, must be formed, on some eighth day of creation. And +the new earth was to be made out of old and conflicting desires, worn, +yet persistent passions, small, yet greedy thoughts, the whole about as +facile as the weighing of the winds, making one almost feel that He who +worked with new materials those first seven days had the easier part. + +I was filled, too, with a great longing for an improbable wisdom and +strength to be breathed into the men who are to reharness the plunging, +escaping destinies of the nations. Each man that has his hands on the +reins seems like some one clinging to a runaway horse, trying to dominate +a relentless, unreasoning, reckless course. + +Reverberating through the eternal hills was the sound of heavy cannon; +and before my mind came a vision of the great forges wherein they were +formed, men working day and night in hot, dim, noisy spaces—Creusot and +Krupp and Skoda, and all the rest.... + +Some near summit hid the dread Hartmannswillerkopf, the “Verdun” of +Alsace, and one of the officers spoke of that winter of 1916, when its +snow was always pink with blood and black with death—“tens of thousands +sleep there.” I thought of the souls breathed out into that pure, high +ether, like to this, but cold, cold, almost as tenuous as the immortal +stuff commingling with it. + +Then we started to the other edge of the summit, whence we might look +into _l’élégante et douloureuse Lorraine_, for one side of the Ballon +slopes toward Alsace and the other toward Lorraine. + +As we threaded our way carefully through more _chicanes_ of barbed-wire +defenses “that you had to have your nose in before they could be +distinguished,” I discerned on the crag three familiar silhouettes, +outlined against the heavens toward the Lorraine slope. And as things are +rarely in their proper setting nowadays, there on the Ballon d’Alsace +were three dusty Y.M.C.A. men who had come from their _cantine_ at +Belfort. We spoke to them and gave our names, and the brightest one, +Tallant was his name, asked if I were the wife of my husband—and said +he’d been on the Mexican border. + +Then we told them where the _table d’orientation_ was, but forgot to +point out the _chicanes_, and we saw them from a distance entangled in +barbed wire. Their souls were safe, I hope, but heaven help those khaki +clothes! + +And looking down into Lorraine from my splendid height was as if looking +into another world, for its distances were bronze and silver and pale +green. + +Great black spots of shadow cast by wasteful masses of white clouds were +lying heavily over those new and ancient battle-fields. Forever obliged +to protect themselves from some invader, the villages hide rather than +display themselves, and are barely detached from the silvery brown of +the plain, crossed here and there by the bosky lines of the Meuse, or +those of the great canal joining the French river to the Rhine. And each +tiny hill has been an altar or a fortress, often both at once. Over the +majestic, melancholy stretch Romans have passed, the hosts of Attila, +Normans, Germans, Burgundians, Swedes, English, and many others. Now its +white roads sound to the tramp of American armies, are encumbered by +giant quantities of war material brought from over the seas. And of all +who have passed over it, of the most ancient even, much remains. Close +against one another are Roman encampments, feudal castles, the two-sided, +two-faced bastion defenses of Vauban, the great, mined earthworks of +modern times, and now in leafy darknesses are the cement emplacements of +the big guns of the twentieth century. + +But alas! as I turned to go, pulling my gaze from the wide horizon (a +pale, pale pink where it covered the western way to the city that is the +heart of France), I saw on that slope, directly under me, a cruel statue +of Jeanne d’Arc. A stiff yet boneless Pucelle sat astride an equally +stiff yet boneless steed; both seemed about to drop into space, the +mountain falling away from them, and both were of a dreadful superfluity! +However, one isn’t so plagued with horrid modern statues in Alsace as +in other places I have been, for they run rather to fountains and living +waters. At St.-Amarin, for instance, I don’t remember anything later or +more personal than the fiery Gallic cock, “_der spuckende Welschhahn_,” +surmounting a sphere, borne in turn by the column of the 1830 fountain; +and the fountain in the Place du Chapitre at Masevaux, bearing the date +1768, has a single, lovely column, too, on whose top burns a stone flame +in an urn. And the shaft of the fountain of the wine-growers at Thann is +a mass of rich yet noble carving, surmounted by a helmeted figure bearing +a shield on his back. Furthermore, crystal water flows into its six-sided +emblazoned basin. + +I think of the statue of Thiers, _Libérateur du Territoire_, in that +dusty, begonia-planted, iron-railed plot in front of the station at +Nancy, and I could weep. + +But hereabout I haven’t found a single nineteenth-century statesman +in frock-coat and top-hat, done in granite, nor any bronze female +pointing him the way to a dubious heaven, with a long finger and a heavy +palm-branch—and so may it remain. + +Certainly the _très chic chef_ of the Military Mission will be well +punished for _his_ good works in Alsace if they ever raise a statue to +him. For they will make him, too, out of either bronze or marble with a +_plaque de commissaire_ on his frock-coated breast, and heaven knows what +kind of a hat they’ll put on him, or how the fancy will seize them to do +his hair! And the statue won’t be of lapis lazuli, as it should be, nor +of pale sapphire, nor of dull turquoise, nor of any of the lovely blue +stones of the earth, alone fit to perpetuate the beauty of the blue-clad +men who have written France’s greatest epic. Blue-clad men splashed about +fountains at twilight, blue-clad men taking form and substance as they +emerge out of gray mountain mists, blue-clad men weaving their cerulean +patterns through the woof of long-trunked pine forests, blue-clad men +like bits of turquoise embedded in the matrix of white roads, and what +know I besides? + +As I gave a sigh for Art and a prayer for the serried ranks of her +erring devotees, I found myself looking into another splendid valley, +toward Giromagny, near where is a height known as La Planche des Belles +Filles, after a story of the Thirty Years’ War, when men with blue eyes +and very light hair and skin were for a while masters of the domains of +Belfort and Ferrette. After the best manner of invading armies, ’tis +recorded that these Swedes committed many excesses, and dark-eyed girls +lay concealed in the forest, and when they feared their hiding-place had +been discovered they fled to the mountains, but even there they were +pursued by the hosts of fair-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed men, bent +on the most elemental of errands. And again they fled precipitately, +scarcely knowing their direction. When they got to the top they found +themselves on a great ledge of rock and in their distress they tumbled +from the height onto other rocks below, and the blue-eyed, fair-skinned, +fair-haired men from the North knew them not. Hence the “Ledge of the +Beautiful Girls.” + +And then we took a last look at the vast heaping of the Alps; to the +left, the Jungfrau and the Mönsch, to the right, Mont Blanc, the whole +great mass outlined against that persistent dark-red band. The glacier of +the Jungfrau was as if in conflagration; Mont Blanc was soft and roseate, +yet its beauty left me cold. + +Captain Bernard said he had climbed the Ballon many times and only twice +before had he seen the great panorama; but as, alack! to him who does not +want shall be given, except for their gorgeousness, I would have turned +from them indifferently, had not my beloved mother been dwelling almost +in the shadow of Mont Blanc. + +But one[9] has written, as men of genius write of things in times of +peace, of this Ballon d’Alsace. He who brought out from his Gallo-British +mind new things and old has said in one of the most charming of books: +“Then on the left you have all the Germanies, a great sea of confused and +dreaming people, lost in philosophies and creating music, frozen for the +moment under a foreign rigidity, but some day to thaw again and to give a +word to us others. They cannot remain long apart from visions.” I thought +they have, indeed, given a “word.” But when again the “visions”? + +I turned and followed my two blue-clad officers down the Alsatian +slope, over the gray grass, threading neatly through the _chicanes_ of +the brown, barbed-wire defenses, and got into the motor waiting on the +roadway once known as that of the Dukes of Lorraine. + +We were silent as we started down the great mountain. I was again wrapped +in thoughts of the New Day to be created out of old and rotting stuffs, +and of the death of heroes. The hills were velvet-palled against the +deepening crimson band of light. + +Later, a _panne_, and we waited in a violet-valleyed world, illumined +only by white candelabraed torches of strangely luminous larch and birch, +while the prudent yet daring chauffeur changed the tire. + +A great khaki-colored motor passed us, marked with two stars, filled with +khaki-clad men of my race, going up, up, whence we had come. + +Then we stopped at the little restaurant of Alfeld. The lake of many +colors was dark and mysterious. Its high tints had been dipped in +something deep in the hours since last I saw it, though strange blues +and purples and rust colors were still reflected in it, and the light of +a single, very yellow birch had not yet been snuffed. At the restaurant +four glasses of white liqueur were poured for us (one, of course, for +the chauffeur), distilled from raspberries, the odor of the berry very +strong, and long afterward the taste, the _arrière-goût_, remains in the +mouth, as if one had just eaten the fruit. But one of the officers said, +“All the same, it doesn’t equal a good _quetsch_ or _kirsch_ or, above +all, a good _mirabelle_.” + +And then we dipped into the darkening valley of the Doller and through +dim villages found the way to Masevaux and the house on the Place du +Chapitre, where the Demoiselles Braun had tea awaiting us, and there +were stories told that made us laugh. And one was of the renowned 15th +Dragoons, so long quartered there, which, briefly—and humanly—is this: + +At intervals after their departure little dragoons saw the light of +a war-world, and, to be exact, fifty in all saw it. The curé was +broken-hearted at the ravages among his sheep, but he was also a +practical, long-sighted curé, so he wrote, presenting his idea of the +matter before the colonel of the regiment, with the result that from +the savings-box of that same regiment a sum was subtracted to provide +ten years later for the first communion and confirmation clothes of the +fifty! (Would you have thought of it?) Then, casting about in his mind +how he could further improve the general situation, this time not so much +from the temporal point of view as from that of eternity, he decided upon +a pilgrimage—a pilgrimage of reparation to Huppach, where is the shrine +known as that of the Virgin of Klein Einsiedeln, near Sewen, through +which we had just passed. He announced the pilgrimage from the pulpit, +then took the further precaution of rounding up his strayed sheep in +person, and in person conducting them to Huppach to offer up prayers and +tears to the Virgin of Klein Einsiedeln. There were so many of them, +however, and they were mostly so young, that history does not record the +pilgrimage as being entirely without smiles—and God have mercy on us all! + +But the curé was not yet (so to speak) out of the woods, for fate +replaced the Dragoons by another regiment, having, as it happened, a +colonel possessed of a boundless love for his men and who couldn’t do +enough for them (or rather have the inhabitants of Masevaux do enough for +them). + +“The inhabitants of Masevaux are very nice, very nice indeed,” quoth he, +“but the happiness of my men above everything. We left three thousand on +the battlefield last week, and the others need distraction—of a pleasant +sort. My men above everything.” + +So the colonel who loved his men with a boundless love and, furthermore, +was not one to waste time in vain endeavors to portray the eternal +feminine as undesirable, nor to render the chase unpopular, caused dances +to be organized on this very Place du Chapitre, under these very linden +trees, then heavy-scented, and every evening. The curé, foreseeing +trouble, with the aid of Heaven and his own undiscourageable will, had +them suppressed after eight days (eight days is a long time) of wrestling +with leagued powers both civil and military. And again God have mercy on +us all! + +Now the virtuous, I mean the truly virtuous (that is, the untried, +untempted virtuous), mustn’t throw stones at Masevaux nor at this book, +but rather remember that anything could have happened to anybody had +everything been different. And even so, hasn’t a lot happened to many of +you? You know a good deal better than I do just how much. + +To the _popote_ at seven-thirty, and before I’m an hour older I’m going +to tell you about the _popote_. And you’ll wish you had been there +instead of hearing about it—as runs the classic expression, “_Regarder +manger des glaces_,” and I give the translation, “Watch others eat +ice-cream,” partly because I want you all to know just what I mean, and +partly because some one in the United States wrote to my publishers that +_My Lorraine Journal_ was a nice book, but couldn’t they suggest to me +that I write my books either in French or English. + +MRS. O’S.: “But, my dear Mr. Graham” (his name is Graham, and this may be +his chance of immortality), “I couldn’t write one entirely in French to +save my soul, and to save my soul I’d find it impossible when everything +I’m writing about takes place in France not to slip into _la belle +langue_ occasionally.” + +MR. GRAHAM (from a distance): “Occasionally! There you’re at it again. +Occasionally!” (It does get on his nerves.) + +MRS. O’S.: “And there is another saying to the effect that ‘_On ne +peut pas contenter tout le monde et son père_.’ That is to say, dear +Mr. Graham, that you can’t please everybody and your father as well, +and this, of course, mostly applies to young men (are you a son or are +you a father?) trying to win smiles outside family circles—and father +ultimately paying the bills. But as it occurs to me here, there must be +some connection.” + +MR. GRAHAM: “I don’t see it. And while I’m about it, I’d like to tell you +a thing or two concerning those Mexican books of yours. The Spanish was +awful—even _The Yale Review_ and _The Nation_ noticed it.” + +MRS. O’S. (getting a bit nasty): “It’s about all either of them did +notice, especially _The Yale Review_; and nobody loves me on _The +Nation_, but it was entirely the printer’s fault. He received them +immaculate. I turned my face to the wall for three days after a glance at +_A Diplomat’s Wife_. But then you probably don’t remember how perfectly +sweet about these very books _The North American Review_ was (a man with +the most perceptive of souls and a neat flair for the imponderabilities, +named Lawrence Gilman, does _their_ book reviews), also _The New +Republic_, which possesses a man named Alvin Johnson, inexorably sure +about the humanities, separating with a single, infallible gesture the +goats of letters from the sheep (but he still thinks, alas! that all men +are born free and equal). And _The New York Sun_ was kind, kind, and _The +New York Evening Post_, too, and they do say this latter rarely says +anything nice about people till they’re dead and can’t enjoy it, and _The +New York Tribune_, which has the reputation of being very particular +about itself, and _The New York Times_, which never jokes and is known as +a searcher after truth.” + +Mr. Graham, dreadfully bored with me, mumbles something like “this is +what you get when you try to do somebody a good turn.” I couldn’t catch +it all, as he’d doubtless continued farther on his journey through the +great Northwest. He wrote from one of a chain of “Grand Trunk Pacific +Hotels,” and all I can think of to call after him is _Bon voyage_, though +he won’t like it. + +And now back to Masevaux in the valley of the Doller—Masevaux smelling a +bit like nice leather things in expensive shops, with a hint of falling +leaves. + + + + +VI + +LA POPOTE + + +And how shall he who has not dined be strong? And how shall he who is +not girded fight? And how shall he who has not wept laugh? And how shall +he who hath not made a free offering of his life find it? And many other +things occur to me, but enough for the wise of heart. + +And now for _la popote_, which is in what was once the house of the +Oberforster, in a street doubtless always muddy, looking out on the +church, and it is square, of gray stucco, and red brick with a hall +running through the center, like many and many a house. + +The woodwork is everywhere painted brown and the wall-paper, too, +is brown, a lighter, depressing brown. Above the dining-table is a +ponderous, imitation-bronze chandelier, but its cruel light now shines on +blue-clad men who have fought the good fight, agreeable, cultivated men +of the world, and it touches strongly scar and galloon and decoration of +these, selected _ex millibus et ex millibus_, by hidden powers, to return +from battlefield and trench.... + +It’s the Oberforster’s glass that we use; it’s his imitation-bronze +fruit-dish that is now filled with dark, rich grapes of victory. It’s +his imitation-tin and real-glass punch-bowl that is on the table by the +window. On the porcelain stove that heats well, too well (I sit with my +back close to it), is a _dégagé_ marble bibelot, the heads of a man and a +woman in _basso-rilievo_ cut in an obtrusively chance bit of marble, and +it bears the motto, “_Amor condusse noi_.” Perhaps on their honeymoon, +the Oberforster and his bride had made the classic _Italienische Reise_, +and had pressed closely, so closely against each other in the railway +carriage, that the apprehensive fellow-voyagers shut their eyes or sought +another compartment. The Teutonic “will to live” is irresistible, and +when it’s at work there’s nothing to be done except get out of the way. + +Theirs were the lithographs representing beings of the Biedermayer epoch, +theirs the many-tiered machine-turned, walnut sideboard. Theirs was +(I know not how it got into that company of _ersatz_ and imitation) a +beautiful old glass carafe, a shepherd and a sacrificial lamb engraved +upon it (perhaps once a church vessel), but in it was a stopper, half +cork and half tin, with an imitation turquoise in the middle. + +Theirs was a smoking-set of imitation tin whose massive ash-receiver in +the most horrid _art nouveau_ continually mocked the delicate spirals of +smoke. Said the commandant one evening, flicking his cigar-ash into the +dreadful thing: + +“That invasion was almost as bad as this. You could have bought an +ash-receiver like it in every big shop in Paris.” + +“And in every little one,” finished Laferrière. “Thank God the frontier +_is_ closed, even at the price.” + +In the corner between the windows was an upright piano piled with the +best of music, and there was a large and completely uninteresting +turned-wood clock, stopped at 12.25 on August 7th, four years ago. + +And the man that earned and owned it all is dead in a soldier’s grave, +and the woman, Anna by name, weeps somewhere her lost love and the +equally lost gods of her household. _Et c’est la guerre._ + +[Illustration: COMMANDANT POULET] + +As for Madame Labonne’s cooking, she knows her business, and if it +weren’t the obvious duty of those sitting about the table to take the +gifts the gods and Madame Labonne provide, I should feel I were living +much too well. + +She gives us a _gâteau à la crème_ that disappears smoothly, leaving but +an exquisite memory. She has another _gâteau à l’oignon_ (don’t turn +away; it’s perfectly delicious and takes a day to make the onion part), +her _filets_ melt in the mouth, and her _purées_ are the insubstantial +fabric of a dream. When she serves the classic Alsatian dish of +sauerkraut decorated with boiled potatoes and shining pieces of melting +pork, you don’t really need to eat for twenty-four hours, and wouldn’t go +to the _popote_ except for the conversation and the company. Sometimes +the officers, the unwedded ones, think of marrying Madame Labonne—she’s +fat and about sixty and doesn’t try to look young (by her works alone +they shall know her), and the married ones think of trying to introduce +her into their happy homes in some rôle or other. + +And when they move into the rich, shining Alsatian plain, that they +have looked down upon these four long years, she is to take part in the +triumphal procession. + +And this is how we generally find ourselves placed at table. I sit on +the right of Commandant Poulet, who, somewhat as a prince of story, for +these four years has administered with much calm, with great good sense, +with wide understanding, and, above all, with immense tact and kindness, +the not always simple affairs of the delivered ones of the reconquered +triangle. + +Only he can know the difficulties of the French Military Mission, though +all may see the results. It is a land flowing with honey if not with milk +(the busy bee in and out of war-time doth its work, though, it would +seem, not so the cow). + +In full maturity it has been given to Commandant Poulet to see results, +and sometimes I have looked almost in and at a man whose strange lot +during the war years has been constructive work. His first public +appearance was when, as _tout jeune lieutenant remplissant des bouts de +table_, he accompanied President Loubet to St. Petersburg on his 1902 +visit. Since then many honors have been his, and here in Alsace he has +been both Paul and Apollo, for he has reaped where he has planted and God +_has_ given the increase. _Très chic_, in his horizon-blue, with his high +decorations on his breast, _et très homme du monde_. This is what I see +and it seems very fair. Of his personal life what can I know?—except that +it must be as the life of all that walk the earth, disillusion succeeding +illusion, grief tripping up joy; for there is no getting away from the +old verses: + + _Ainsi du mal au bien,_ + _De la joie à la peine_ + _Passe la vie humaine._ + +Somewhere in Lorraine the commandant has a destroyed château. But he can +always dwell in the dwelling of his labors in Alsace. + +Vis-à-vis is his first aide, Captain Tirman, whom I saw on my arrival, +always with deep rings under his eyes, too much in rooms and bending over +desks—_il boit le travail_. Entirely devoted to his chief. He is musical, +too, and sometimes while waiting in the dining-room for the mess to +assemble we find him playing Beethoven or Bach, or more recent and more +compromising Germans, from the piles of the Oberforster’s music on the +Oberforster’s piano. _La musique n’a pas de patrie_—for musical men who +have fought. (But let a zealous _civil_ far from the front hear a strain +of Schumann or Brahms issuing from some window and he runs straightway +to the police.) Captain Tirman wears the Legion of Honor and the _Croix +de Guerre_, and is so pale, I am told, because of the hard campaigns he +has passed through, and wounds and illness. He is always in charge in the +absence of the commandant, but though _être Tirmannisé_ is one of the +gentle jokes of the _popote_, no signs of tyranny were apparent to me. + +Captain Bernard, second aide, is, like the commandant, from Lorraine, and +had prepared himself for the Paris bar. He conducted himself admirably +during the war, Laferrière tells me. Wounded three times, he bears a +great scar—_sa belle cicatrice_, as his comrades proudly call it—on his +forehead (Verdun, August, 1916) and over his heart _la Légion d’Honneur_ +and the _Croix de Guerre_. Always very carefully dressed—_tiré à quatre +épingles_ (pulled out by four pins), as they nearly all are. + +At his right sits Captain Sérin from Toulouse, the only Meridional at the +table. He is very straightforward and uncomplicated, I should judge, as +regards his psychology, with the rather objective eye of the man from the +south. (They don’t dream the way we farther north do.) He sees a joke at +any distance and is the sort, they tell me, who would obey as simply as +he would breathe, without a thought of hesitation, an order unto death. +The sort that when told to bring up reinforcements at a moment when it +seems impossible, quite simply does it, and it only _happens_ to happen +that he is living. He is not tall, but wide of shoulder, holding himself +very straight, and on his breast there are ribbons, too. He is chief of +the Gendarme Service, the first and last provost of Alsace reconquered. + +On the other side of Captain Bernard sits Captain Toussaint, chief of the +Forestry Service of the Masevaux district, clad in bottle-green, with +silver bugles on his collar and the Legion of Honor and other decorations +on his breast, _d’une grande bonté_, his comrades tell me. He is from +the north, from Douai (his brother was killed at the front), tall, slim, +pale-faced, lantern-jawed, everything is in his eyes—in the _regard_, as +some one said of him—and much of his life is passed alone in forests. So +different from Captains Bernard and Lavallée, living in Paris, between +whom he generally sits; and he nearly always comes in late from his +forests for luncheon and dinner. + +“For Toussaint, Creation is represented by the first day when the heavens +were formed, and everything that came afterward had something to do with +forests,” some one said last night, as he was talking rather hotly about +the war-time cutting down of the trees of France, and the influence the +loss of forests had on the life of nations. _Très catholique_, also; +but then these men of the Mission, with all of whom I have entered +tabernacles, are of an extreme reverence. What they “believe” I know not. + +Lieutenant Laferrière sits sometimes by me, sometimes at the end of the +table. He has early gray hair, a fresh complexion, gray-blue eyes with +a certain inwardness of expression, a smiling movement of the lips when +speaking, and, with all his wit, an extreme kindness in human judgments. +Indeed, I am struck by something of softness and patience in the eyes of +each one of these men to whom nothing of war is foreign, who have looked +on all combinations of mortal anguish, and whose eyes at times, too, have +had the red look, the hard, bright look of men who have just killed. + +Laferrière is very cultivated after the way of us dwellers in cities. +He was Doctor of Law at the University of Lille. On the 2d of August, +1914, he closed his books, after which, as under-officer, he had lived +for months that closely packed life of the trenches, “where one was +never physically a moment alone” (hardest of all hardships, I have heard +fastidious men say), then he had been called as jurist to the Mission. +Emotional, but through circumstances or will, how can I know? giving the +effect of having dominated the personal—to what point also I know not. + +Lieutenant Lavallée, but recently come from Paris, sits at another +end. His personality is less striking than some of the others at the +table, though he has _une tête un peu mauresque_, like pictures of the +_Conquistadores_, and is inclined to solemnity of mien. He has a charming +voice, fresh, with warm notes in it, and sometimes of an evening sings +Breton _chansons populaires_. We especially like the one concerning _la +douce Annette_, who spun a fatal love-story with a certain Pierre who +wouldn’t let go her hand. + +There is one, Stroll by name, now absent, but his comrades evidently love +him, for I often hear, “What a pity Stroll isn’t here”; or, “That is +Stroll’s story.” + +Also for a few days _en visite_ like myself is Captain Antoni, born at +Strasbourg, but very French in appearance, a tall, _svelte_, thin-faced +man with a rising and falling inflexion in his voice, who has been +through the whole campaign and wears many decorations. He said last night +that the fighting at Verdun, especially that at Hill 304, was the worst +he had seen. + +At this moment the Verdun sector, which knows the blood of men of many +climes, is moist with that of _my_ countrymen. + +Now this is part of what I see as I sit at table with these men. The +common patriotic effort tends to screen the personal life of each, of +which I know nothing. But I do know that destiny is largely formed by +character and endowments, and, barring the fact that time and chance +happeneth to all, I would be tempted to wager that when such or such a +thing came to such or such a one, _thus_ he received it—gift or blow—thus +he used it, once his own. So unescapable and visible are the sequences of +character. + +Sometimes we play bridge in the evening, pleasant, easy bridge, anybody +taking a card back when once played, and changing his mind about +declarations. As they so truly say, “_Nous jouons pour nous amuser_.” + +And yesterday there appeared on the table the famous _cafetière_ and +Sérin, his face shining with a great light, performed the rites. It was +one of those large, high glass bulbs with a nickel coffee-pot below. Dry +coffee is put into the glass bulb, water into the pot, an alcohol-lamp +beneath, and the whole is hermetically sealed. After which, according to +the mysterious and wonderful laws of nature, the water rises and wets +the coffee; it must rise thrice, giving forth at the same time volcanic +sounds. During the ceremony nothing else is thought of. The officiating +high priest is harried with liturgical suggestions, or unkind remarks +are made about his natural endowments. As that corked spout of the pot, +horrid with potentialities, is turned now toward one, now toward the +other, men who would have given their lives without a thought in the +trenches, get nervous and call to Sérin, “_Dis-donc, tu vas me crever un +œil!_” “Not toward Madame. It would be too terrible,” etc., etc., and +in the end the spout, with all its possibilities, is turned toward the +Oberforster’s made-in-Germany clock. After which one has a delicious cup +of coffee and conversation becomes normal.[10] + +Last night I found they were talking about giving a certificate of +good conduct to one of them who is married, to take home with him to +reassure his wife. A comrade, after a little badinage in the Latin +manner, but very discreet I must say, objects: “But now there won’t be +any _permissions_,” and, doubtfully, “We would have to give him the +certificate for three whole months.” + +Then, like the antiphon of some song, a voice said, “_Trois mois, c’est +long_.” + +Another said, “_Trois mois, c’est très long_.” + +Another, with a sigh, “_C’est trop long_....” And I to smile—within +myself. + +Then a stumbling home on an invisible but strong horizon-blue arm, +through the inky streets, ankle-deep in mud. Sometimes I haven’t known +which one of the various kind arms it was, the electric pocket-lamp only +occasionally making the darkness more manifest. No one to bump into, as +circulation in the streets is forbidden after nine o’clock, on account of +possible espionage. + +And you will say these are pleasant days! + +_Later._—Hunting in the bookcase, I found a small diamond-printed copy +of _Hermann und Dorothea_. As, to the sound of near night-firing, I +turned its smooth old pages, I realized it for one of the most completely +objective works of genius ever born into the world. No thread of its +maker’s identity is woven with it, no color of his personal experience. +I felt but a sense of his complete and serene equilibrium, though the +stream of words, bearing those golden thoughts, was so softly flowing, so +crystal-clear, that it made me remember a line from another of Goethe’s +poems, as subjective as this is objective: + + _Der Geist ist Bräutigam._ + _Wort sei die Braut._ + +In the little preface I found that the poet, in his old age, was wont to +say of _Hermann und Dorothea_ that of his long poems it was almost the +only one that gave him pleasure. I seemed to understand what he meant. By +reason of its complete objectivity, he could have had no consciousness +of that inadequacy familiar to mortals contemplating anything formed +from themselves. No suffering had attended its birth; rather it would +seem to have formed itself spontaneously on the heights out of some +plastic stuff, light and bright as summer air, imperishable as granite. +It did not recall to Goethe (nor does it to one who reads) that night of +personal anguish, that day of emptiness, that hour of longing, nor even +some glimpsing, vistaed moment wherein personal fulfilment held out its +shining, shadowy hand. + +In spite of the sound of cannon and the smarting of my eyes from the +strain of the tiny Gothic print, for a moment within myself an almost +equal feeling of harmony arose, taking a form of Peace, like an antique +statue, free yet restrained, noble yet persuasive; bearing no one’s mark, +nor any signs of workmanship, except that stamped by its own beauty. Then +it vanished, leaving the little book to throb between my hands to the +beat of my own times. Though generations had passed on and other wars +were being fought, and the word “freedom” was again on every lip, as +always, the women, the children, the old, were paying the heaviest tithes +of invasion. Had I not seen like streams of fugitive populations flooding +into Paris that hideous spring of 1918, heard the cries of anguish from +those fleeing before an enemy army? Then also death and birth waited not +on circumstance, and love and hate, fear and hope, hurry and exhaustion, +were at work in strange commingling. I had seen deeds of succor, too, +like unto those of the lovers, proffered in boundless devotion, by +nameless, uncounted men and women, coming from the world’s ends to +minister to its woe. + +A vision of _toux ceux qui ont bu à la coupe amère de cette époque_ +passed before me. Deeply sighing, I at last put out my light, thinking +“war is war,” needing no adjectives, and of the changelessness of the +human heart, however the formulas may be multiplied and renewed; and +forever _Væ victis_! + + + + +VII + +THE HOUSES OF THE CHANOINESSES + +THE COMMANDANT TRACES THE RECONQUERED TRIANGLE ON MY MAP. THE MILITARY +MISSION + + +_Monday, November 4th._—Dreamed of old griefs and awakened with the heavy +taste their memory can even now distil. Raining. The yellow-and-brown +carpet under the lindens of the Place du Chapitre is wet and dull and the +few leaves still on the trees are soft and heavy, the houses damp and +shabby. “The old wounds burn,” even here, where all is new and bright, +and fancy flings itself delicately, amorously, consolingly about the +pleasant happenings of each day.... Fortunately my breakfast is brought +early by a smiling maid, who enters, bringing with her the aroma of fresh +tea and the delicately scented, dark-green, liquid honey of these pine +forests. There is that blessed volatilization of night-grief, and I arise +to another pleasant day, knowing once again, however, that everywhere the +old ghosts find one.... + +The rainy light coming in seems but to darken the oak-paneled room. What +there is of wall-paper is a darkish blue with a narrow frieze of red. The +curtains are stripes of red-and-blue cloth. Even the daytime cover of the +very comfortable eider-downed bed is of the same red-and-blue-striped +stuff. It was because they were the colors of the French uniform that the +young man once living herein, under German rule, chose them. + +But he himself is gone, gone the hope of his house. One of his sisters +was saying to me last night as I tarried for a few minutes in the little +sitting-room, where I had first found them all rehanging the portraits of +their ancestors: + +“The price for peace is so high and terrifying that one can’t yet rejoice +in it. Rather one says to oneself in desolation, ‘and all that was so +precious is gone, that in the end one may sit around deserted fireplaces, +or try to find shelter under bombarded roofs, and be at grips with the +terrible _après-guerre_!’” And of her brother: + +“At least he fell for the cause that is so dear to us;” she added after a +moment’s silence, “it might so easily have been otherwise.” + +I have noticed everywhere a great pride tempering grief over fallen +beloved dead. Even in mothers’ hearts this pride is strong enough to +console. They know why their sons were born, and to many a death of glory +has been as a second birth; he whom they lost is, in some way, laid a +second time, bright, beautiful, complete, in their arms, and _safe_ from +life. And they are blessed who so mourn. + +Sometimes there are further griefs. I knew a mother of twin sons; one +had fallen far away, a gentle, young, musician son, in a fierce, unequal +conflict, whose details she was not spared; the other had been brought +back to her on his twenty-first birthday a sightless stump. I cannot +forget her as she stood, tall, black-veiled, by a pillared door, like an +antique statue of grief, her eyes as dry as marble eyes. And though she, +too, said: + +“At least I know why I bore them, and it was for something more than +myself,” the obsession of a further grief was in her eyes as she added, +“_I must not die first_—and he is so young!” + +Here on the borderland I find there is often an additional reason for +pride, where Fate, which could so easily have willed it otherwise, +sometimes has allowed the beloved to die for the beloved cause, as did +the brother whose room is now mine. And this is his story, or rather +the end of it. Those first four days of August, 1914, he had gone about +the mountain heights and passes with his field-glass continually at his +eyes to see if help were not coming from the hills in the guise of the +_pantalons rouges_. But on the fourth day he was obliged to accompany his +regiment into Germany, where he stayed three months. On hearing of the +battle of the Marne through a French prisoner, he cried, “_Nous avons +eu là une belle victoire!_” (“We have had a great victory!”) and he was +put under arrest. His one idea being to desert, he asked to go into the +lines again, knowing there would be no opportunity, if he remained in +prison, training recruits. His chance came when he was fighting against +the English in the north. His chiefs being killed or wounded, he, as +under-officer, found himself in command of a company of a hundred and +fifty men. With him deserted ninety-seven others. Later, he fell fighting +in the French lines near Tahure. And this (it is perhaps much) is all I +know of him or ever shall; if he were beloved of a woman or had loved +many, I know not. He, the last of his race, took his name with him to the +grave. + +All that surrounds me as I write was his. His the full bookshelves, with +an elaborate set of a _Geschichte der Literatur_, and a _Welt-Geschichte_ +in many volumes, his the books of early boyhood, of travel, the many +old, little books of prayer in tooled and beveled bindings of a +generation or two ago, and the piles of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Two +eighteenth-century maps hang on the walls, one of “Alsatia,” with queer +German names for familiar places, and another of “Gallia,” and there is +an incomparable, white, porcelain stove which heats quickly and gives out +its pleasant heat during long hours. + +On a little corner shelf is an old engraving of the last _chanoinesse_ +of the Chapter of Masevaux, Xavière de Ferrette. She is dressed in full +canonicals, with a large ruched coif and ermine-trimmed mantle; some high +order in a Maltese-cross design is suspended from the broad ribbon worn +across her breast, and in her hands is a richly embossed prayer-book. + +The long face with its immensely high forehead has a full-lipped, very +human mouth, and in the right, upper corner is her sixteen-quartered coat +of arms. + +The story of the Chapter would make good, though long, reading, for, like +many other things in this part of the world, it begins with Charlemagne +and ends with the French Revolution. Of both France seems equally proud, +and certainly _il y en a pour tous les goûts_. + +Women always seem to have had great influence on the life of their times +in Alsace. Not even those with the vote and all the rights, together +with all the privileges of our times, can pretend to half the influence +of certain holy women of the so-called dark ages. They built on hilltops +and in valleys those many citadels of peace whose traces still are to be +seen, where life was free from violence, and, like sweet odors uncorked, +their good deeds have perfumed the ages. Saint-Odile, _Vierge Candide +et Forte_, daughter of Duke Atalric, is patroness of Alsace, and in her +many have sought the feminine ideal of the Alsatian soul; and there are +Saint-Richarde, tried by fire for a guiltless love, wife of Louis the +Fat, and Herrade, Abbess of Hohenburg, author of the famous _Hortus +Deliciarum_, preserved through seven centuries and destroyed in the siege +of Strasbourg in 1870. These are but a few, and the histories of the +secular dwellers in the Rhine Valley, spectacular though they were, seem +often quite colorless contrasted with those of these saints of the Holy +Roman Empire. + +The first monks and pilgrims to come to Alsace were from Ireland (the +last of these before the very end of the world will doubtless also come +from Erin). It would appear that even in those days it could not be said +of the Irish that they were neither hot nor cold, which is probably one +of the reasons “why God loves them.” In the lovely rivered plains and +great forests of the Rhine Valley it was they who built the first chapels +and traced the first paths. It was an Irish monk whom Atalric, hoping for +a son, consulted before the birth of his daughter; but of Saint-Odile +another time. + +The house next the one wherein I dwell was that of the abbess, and now +belongs to Madame Auguste Lauth. + +It, too, has a beautiful stairway, with a time-polished oaken balustrade, +and it contains the great room of noble proportions and lovely panelings +(still heated by the celebrated porcelain stove, fit only for a museum), +where the ladies of the Chapter assembled in their rich toilets and great +coifs to go to the church, reached by a two-storied gallery, which old +prints show as having a most distinguished air, with its sloping roof +pierced with oval windows and its pleasant proportions. But the upper +story and the roof were done away with in the nineteenth century, which +has demolished so much (not always in heat of battle), and it is now but +a long, formless building used for some sort of storehouse connected +with the Koechlin manufactories. And the way the six houses came to be +constructed was this: + +The Abbess Xavière de Ferrette, a woman of resolution and energy, as +one can easily see by the high forehead and long jaw, becoming alarmed +at the increasing expenses of the Chapter and the equally decreasing +revenues, decided on some radical remedies. Through the Middle Ages, down +to her time, the _chanoinesses_ had lived under one roof, and, according +to the holy rule, ate together. But with them fared so many outsiders, +their friends and their friends’ friends, with their domestics, that +they found themselves being literally eaten out of house and home. The +abbess called a solemn meeting wherein they arranged for the building of +separate houses, whose construction was given into the hands of Kléber, +then architect and inspector of the royal buildings at Belfort. Pictures +of Kléber, known rather impersonally to Americans by the Parisian avenue +that bears his name, abound in Alsace, and show a sensitive, artistic +face, with a pleasure-loving mouth above a short chin, and a halo of +light, curly hair. He met an early death in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. +“_Il avait six pieds en tout_,” his contemporaries were wont admiringly +to say of him. + +In these separate houses, with garden attached, each _chanoinesse_ was to +live alone with her _demoiselle_, who at her death would step into her +very comfortable shoes, and the abbess only was to receive guests in the +name of the Chapter. + +The house I lodged in was that of the Chanoinesse von Reutner. These +dames had to make their titles very clear to their earthly mansions, +each having to possess sixteen quarterings evenly balanced, eight on her +father’s side and eight on her mother’s side. Gentlemen were chosen to +give their word on this somewhat elusive subject, and methought ’twas +well they didn’t have to put their hand in the fire at the same time, +for what can be sworn to with certainty of those things which have their +origin on the mysterious borderland of the emotions? However.... + +The _chanoinesses_ belonged mostly to the great families of Alsace, the +Masevaux, the Ferrettes, though the records show many German names like +Furstenburg and Seckingen, or French like Beauffrémont and Fontenoy. + +Sometimes the Abbey and Chapter were under French domination, sometimes +under Austrian, sometimes they would be ceded to noble families like +those of the Counts of Bollwiller and of Fugger, and in many ways their +history had been checkered since their foundation in the eighth century. + +And as for the Thirty Years’ War, they could have told tales of the +Swedish invasion scarcely to be beaten by certain tales of our days. +Indeed, so complicated is the history of those times, every shade and +branch of combatant having fought against every other shade and branch, +in kaleidoscopic changes, that when Turenne, allied with the Spaniards, +revolted against the king, Louis XIV, it was a Swede, Rosen by name, who +helped the Maréchal du Plessis Praslin to conquer him at Réthel. Rosen, +who with his brothers had come originally from Livonia with the armies +of Gustavus Adolphus, then promptly put on his standard a tower falling +on a rose-bush in full bloom, with the device, _Malgré la Tour les Roses +fleuriront_.[11] + +In turning over pages concerning the involved chronicles of this +borderland, I feel once again that history is, of all things, the most +difficult to write, because of having to do with facts, and what more +elusive than facts, eternally subjective? Even this simplest record of +historic days is as different from one that another might have written +about the same things as if it dealt, instead, let us say, with the +genial suggestion of letting the Hottentots and the Zulus have their own +government. It is that fantasy-awakening thing called temperament that +is forever at work with facts, one thing always suggestive of another, +rather than explanatory of itself, and I frankly rejoice that the +“primrose by the river’s brim” _is_ to me something more than a primrose. + +I am now such a long way from the history of the Chapter that there is +scarcely time to get back, and so I will finish quickly by saying that in +the epoch preceding the Revolution it found itself entangled in various +temporal affairs, especially lawsuits with the inhabitants concerning +their convenient but disappearing feudal rights. Otherwise life was +probably not too strenuous for the _chanoinesses_. As nothing escapes the +influence of its hour and age, why should one think the Chapter entirely +escaped those of that light, pervading, charming, inconsequent, rich +thing known as the eighteenth century, where everything seems to have +finished by a song, or a witty quatrain, or by delicious angels holding +up holy-water founts in the shape of lovely shells. + +_To the popote at 12.15._—Its windows look out on the unmistakably plain +timepiece in the church tower, and everybody knows when anybody is late, +and just how late, and there’s a nice little green box on the table +designed for fines, but only intermittently insisted on. + +Commandant Poulet greets me with the words, “At three o’clock to-day +Austria ceases hostilities.” Something cruel and red seemed suddenly +rolled away. + +In a flash I saw that Viennese pre-war world I had known so well, +partaking tranquilly of the pleasant things of life, public events making +little noise, intellectual passion absent—or discouraged, and things +easy, easy—except for those dying of hunger. But that world has been +burned to ashes, and the winds of destiny are about to scatter even them. + +Then, as usual, some one read the American _communiqué_. + +And to the deeds of the First Army must be added those of the National +Guard, for the words Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, New +Mexico, New York, New Jersey, are stamped in fadeless red upon the +villages and banks of the Meuse. + +We talked long, and at two o’clock, as we arose from table, I knew that +those others to the east had already arisen from the bitter meal of +defeat, and after the manner of human hearts were adjusting themselves +to the things that _are_. And perhaps there in Vienna they may not find +it so difficult. They’ve been defeated before and they’re far enough east +to have a touch of fatalism. + +_Later._—Through mist and low-hanging clouds and rain with Captain +Bernard to Sewen, where we visited first the school. Neat rows of sabots +were in the hallway, all alike to _me_, but it appears some spirit in the +feet leads each unmistakably to his or her own pair. A dozen children +only were in the schoolroom, the others ill with grippe. + +The school-teacher, a tall, horizon-blue-clad Frenchman, with kind eyes +and a decoration on his breast, had just finished the dictation. Its +subject was _de la viande_ (concerning meat). Looking at the copy-book of +the nearest little boy, very blue-eyed, I read _de la fiande_, and his +dictation was further embellished by sounds reminiscent of German rule. +“_Chez le bourgé, le tinton, le charcoutier, le boutin, le zocisse_,” but +as I said, that’s their German ear—and little by little it will be done +away with and “French as she is spoke” will take its place. One small boy +who wrote a beautiful, copper-plate hand was stone-deaf, but he had dear, +questioning eyes and something patient in his being. I asked, when we +came out, if nothing could be done for him. But the master said, with a +terrible finality, “His father is an alcoholic.” + +It is evidently not without result that they distil their _quetsch_ +and their _kirsch_, their rose haws and their gentian, and everything +else that has the merest embryo of a fruit or a berry or leaf in these +pleasant valleys; as to which the bright-eyed, Italian-looking curé +initiated us further, as you will see. + +Leaving the school, we went to the church, beautifully familiar to me +against the sky, but completely and, from our point of view, hopelessly +modernized within; though I couldn’t help feeling that for those who come +from dingy farms and dung-heaps the crude splendor of that house of God +must be greatly comforting. + +The old ossuary chapel nearby, with its fifteenth-century vaulting, was +crowded with beautiful things from the church at Thann. The carvings +on the choir stalls, of the most delicate workmanship, were amusing to +boot, nothing human being foreign to the artists that made them. One +figure forming an arm-rest had a swollen cheek bound up in a cloth, and, +furthermore, he evidently had an ache in the center of his being, for +he was doubled up, his hands pressed close to his person in the classic +position of one so suffering. Another showed a man leaning over, with +delicately modeled back, his head in his hands, but _his_ ache was very +manifestly spiritual. Another had a goiter, and monkeys and parrots +abounded, the native fancy of the fifteenth century evidently being out +on a loose snaffle. A celebrated row of musical angels were so delicately +carved, with cymbal and harp and bugle and lyre and flute, that they +would be well placed in some vitrine rather than high on a choir stall +in a dim Gothic church. The celebrated statue in stone of Saint-Théobald +from the column of his fountain at Thann had been brought here for +safety, too, and I fingered it as well as many another thing generally +beyond reach. + +As we came out, the clock in the tower of the church struck three. The +great and disastrous Austrian war-act was finished. + +It was a moment beyond words, and as we walked silently over to the +curé’s house I thought of the cruel, interminable lists of dead and +wounded and missing in the Vienna newspapers that winter of 1915, when +the Russians were flooding Galicia and spilling over the ridges of the +Carpathians. The curé, however, young, with fine, Italian face-bones, +and frayed and spotted cassock, somewhat changed our thoughts by bringing +out various of the thirty-four specimens of distilled liqueurs which are +the pride and playthings of these valleys, explaining to us with snapping +eyes special variations of his distillings. Holding a bottle and a glass +up against the light in his long, thin _primitif_ hands, he poured me +slowly something wrested from the mountain-ash (I had thought I might as +well have a completely new sensation), and I went about the rest of the +afternoon feeling as if a hot stone were lodged in my breast. + +Arrived at Masevaux, we drove to a house on the Place du Chapitre, where +I found another interior of the kind I am now familiar with—that of the +high and comfortable Alsatian bourgeoisie. + +Madame Chagué, large, white-haired, energetic, intelligent, agreeable, +received us flanked by an amiable married daughter and a thin, upstanding +veteran, his ribbon of honor in his buttonhole. But, to be perfectly +frank, the veterans get on my nerves. It’s the picture of what the +gorgeous young heroes of our great war will be one day, _sans_ eyes, +_sans_ teeth, _sans_ hair, _sans_ everything, and _toutes les fins sont +tristes_. + +“Now,” said Madame Chagué when once started and tea had been poured +(accompanied by cakes you don’t get a chance to serve unless you are +_délivré_, and you have to be well delivered, or else never in bondage, +to get the chance to eat them), “the government must proceed with a good +deal of caution as well as consideration. The Alsatians aren’t like +anybody but themselves. They mustn’t lay hands on our little ideas and +ways, ‘_ces Messieurs de l’Administration ont compris cela_’ [with an +appreciative look at Bernard]. We held on all these years, awaiting the +day of deliverance. _Enfin_, for two generations we have looked on the +reconquest of Alsace as the coming of heaven upon earth, as if that once +come to pass, there would be nothing more to desire.” + +She said all these things with an appraising light in her eye; being a +clever old lady, in the four years since she had been “delivered,” she +had doubtless found that life is life—even though there is a great choice +as to whom one wants to live it out with, and how. + +About this time the veteran was encouraged to tell a few of his 1870 +experiences, and I felt as my grandchildren, if I ever have any, will +feel when the veterans of 1918 will tell what they did “single-handed in +the trenches,” or how, “as the only man left of their regiment,” they had +held back the invaders, or how they hid in a barn and let them go by and +then gave the alarm, “and a whole battalion had to surrender,” or what +know I? Politely, but without eagerness, I listened, the 1870 veterans +almost “spoiling the war” for me, with their eternal illustration of +the flatness of not dying on the battlefield. I tried to bring the +conversation back to 1918—leaving a rather long and not very clear +account of how he kept his ancient, beloved, red _képi_ under glass, or +next his heart, or pressed in an album, I rather forget which. I wanted +to hear the story of the famous entry of the _Pantalons Rouges_ into +Masevaux on August 7, 1914, where they have been ever since, though now +changed into this celestial blue, which decorates the earth (as I have +frequently said, and doubtless will again) as never before has it been +decorated by any men of any age or any war. Pictures of “_La Guerre en +Dentelles_,” or gallooned and be-caped and be-frogged officers with +lances or drawn swords on horseback, charging the enemy in the typical +poses of Lasalle, or “_La Vieille Garde_,” or Wellington or Blücher at +Waterloo, or anything else that ever was, are dull beside the strange, +appealing beauty of the blue battalions of the twentieth century. + +I listened to Madame Chagué telling of the glad reception of those who +entered Masevaux on that 7th of August, houses and hearts flung wide +open, how everywhere the upper windows were crowded with women and +children leaning out to see them come over the dark mountains and along +the bright roads. Many left that same night, as they did from Thann and +Bitschwiller and Moosch and all the towns about, marching on to Mulhouse, +which they took only to be driven out, and since then many red-trousered +ghosts walk the otherwise unmystical, industrial streets of Mulhouse. +Three weeks later Mulhouse was again entered, and again, with many +losses, other red pantaloons were driven out, since which the chimneys of +Mulhouse have smoked a German smoke to a German heaven. + +Madame Chagué is very Catholic, too, and bristles at the bare idea of any +government, even the “Tiger’s,” taking liberties with the ancient faith. +They want a bishop of their own, an Alsatian shepherd—“_faut pas nous +bousculer dans nos petites habitudes_”—she kept repeating. I wondered +what the Tiger and all the imitation tigers would say when they come to +learn just how they feel here. There’s the most Gordian of knots awaiting +them, for it appears that the Germans gave three thousand marks a year to +each curé, and the French government, less enamoured of the ministers of +God, doesn’t give any. However, that is only one of a series of knots on +a very long string, and patient and very deft fingers will be needed for +the untying. + +In each of these comfortable houses authentic ancestors look from the +walls, ancestors who knew the Thirty Years’ War, or the Napoleonic +campaigns, or 1870, or ancestors-to-be who have seen the World War. +And all the dwellers of these large-roomed, high-roofed, deep-windowed +houses, having been delivered, in turn deliver themselves of their +sensations, thoughts, emotions, acts, on being delivered. One might, +I dimly foresaw, do to one’s breast what the wedding guest did to his +when he heard the loud bassoon. That I may not seem unkind, I want to +say another last word about the veterans, the so often toothless, bent, +sightless, forgetful veterans. They would be all right in themselves, if +they weren’t so horribly illustrative. They seem to be saying all the +time, “If Mortality doesn’t get you one way, it does another,” till you +think that short agony on the battlefield, and long glory, are greatly +preferable to decay and no glory. And no veteran will keep this my little +book on the table by his bed. He would know, too well, that I am right. + +Later, as I slipped across the cobbly square to my house, and mounted the +broad oaken stairway to my room, a feeling of nostalgia possessed me at +the thought of leaving Alsace, to which but a few short days before I had +seemed so unrelated. This bit of French history in the making, molded by +the men of the grave, kind eyes, whose comradery with one another is so +unfailing and whose courtesy to me is so exquisite, had become dear to +me, and, too, I was looking on something that would never be again. The +web was shifting, other figures were to be woven in it. Fate was to pull +new things as well as old out from its storehouse and proceed with its +endless combinations. Masevaux, capital of Alsace Reconquered, would be +overshadowed by Strasbourg, by Metz, by Colmar, by Mulhouse. But it will +have had again a little day, which is all an individual or a town can +reasonably ask, standing under the changeless stars. + +As I went to the _popote_, low over the houses stretched the Great Bear, +so vast, so splendid, that it seemed almost alone in a heaven growing +misty toward its edges, though Alcor, the Starry Horseman, was twinkling +strangely bright close to Mizar. But the autumnal stars hanging over the +rich-colored hills of Alsace have not the brilliancy of those that I saw +above the gray-white Châlons plain, that late, red October of 1917. + +After dinner Commandant Poulet drew on my map the boundaries of _Alsace +Reconquise_, as it is now, this fourth day of November. But as he drew +I knew he was feeling that it was a fleeting, vanishing thing he was +recording, for he stopped a moment, as a man might stop following a wind +or tracing a line in water. + +Then as we sat, some half-dozen of us, about the dining-table, under the +hard light of the Oberforster’s chandelier, the commandant, flicking his +cigar ash into the Oberforster’s dreadful ash-receiver, told me something +of the history of the Mission, which is briefly this. + +Though French troops entered the valleys of the Doller, the Thur, and +the Largue on the 7th of August, 1914, the French administration of that +little triangle of Alsace Reconquered, as I found it, was organized +only in November of the same year. Its first form was purely military, +the authorities responsible for the civil population being also in +command of the military operations, the final word in all that concerned +Alsace coming from the general in command of the Seventh Army, in whose +sector it was. These were successively Generals de Maud’huy, Villaret, +Debeney, and de Boissaudy. The little triangle was first divided into +two territories only, that of the valley of the Largue, with Dannemarie +as its capital, that of the valley of the Thur with Thann as capital. +Masevaux at that time did not form a distinct territory, but was an +annex, as it were, of Thann, as also was St.-Amarin. + +The officers administering the territories were chosen mostly from the +reserve—men whose former avocations had prepared them for the various +rôles they were to fill in Alsace. They were members of the _Conseil +d’Etat_, of the _Cour des Comptes_, magistrates, _Gardes des Forêts et +des Eaux_, together with many others belonging to technical professions. +The first _Capitaine Administrateur_ was Captain Heurtel, in civil life +_Maître des Requêtes au Conseil d’Etat_. Though seriously wounded at the +very beginning of the war, in December of 1914, he asked to be again +sent to the front. He met his death at Verdun in 1916. His successor was +Commandant Poulet, _Conseiller d’Etat_, who took up office on Christmas +Day, 1914. + +In July, 1917, the Mission was detached from the General Headquarters +and placed under the Ministry of War. Its new name, expressive of +enlarged activities, was changed to _Mission Militaire Administrative en +Alsace_ (Military Administrative Mission in Alsace), the central office +being transferred to Masevaux, which Fate had placed half-way between +St.-Amarin at one end of the reconquered triangle and Dannemarie at the +other. + +Ever since, in and out of the building of the German _Kommandantur_, once +the nave of the old Abbey, men clad in horizon-blue have been coming and +going, busied about affairs after the French way, the ancient town of +Masevaux entering into the unexpected enjoyment of what might be called +an Indian summer. Nothing else has happened to it, so far as I can see, +since the Revolution, when the Chapter was suppressed and the Goddess +Reason briefly installed in the Abbey. And Masevaux loves and cherishes +its brief glory as only lovely and transient things are loved and +cherished.[12] + + + + +VIII + +LUNCHEON AT BITSCHWILLER. THE MISSION IN RESIDENCE AT ST.-AMARIN. +SAINT-ODILE + + +_November 5th._—Awakened early, early by the sound of heavy firing. +Later, looking out of the square, I see the market in full swing. Against +the inn of Les Lions d’Or, with its comfortable courtyard and two red +wings, stands a wagon-load of hay with a pale-green cover thrown over it. +Carts of cabbages and carrots, drawn by white oxen, are pulled up under +the yellowing trees. The black of the clothes of the women making their +purchases cuts in very hard. Blue-clad men come and go; several motors +are standing before the door of the Administration. The shining, diffused +light of the mist-hidden sun rounds every corner and fills up every space +with a pleasant softness. + +At eleven I start out with the commandant, Captain Sérin, and Lieutenant +Laferrière to motor to Thann through a world of rust and green and +gold-colored hills, under the whitest of heavens. So soft and shining +is the beauty of the lovely earth, and so soon to pass into the winter, +that I say to the commandant how like the transient beauty of a woman +of forty-five are these delicate, hazy hills with their cashmere shawls +still twisted about their shoulders, drawn up over their heads, dropping +down to their green-valleyed feet. I mean the woman of forty-five who is +still loved. + +Again we stopped on the crest between the valleys of Masevaux and of +Thann, and again we stopped and peered through the wire-and-pine screen, +out toward Mulhouse and the Rhine and the Black Forest. The valley was +blue and shining. Even the windows of the great, white building of the +_Idioten-Anstalt_, where the Germans are bivouacked, were visible. Beyond +were the high towers of their potassium-works. As those three men stood +looking out over the rich plain I thought, “Always will I remember the +officers of the Mission like that, standing on the heights, shading their +eyes with their hands as they looked down into the land of Egypt, wherein +the Lord was to lead them....” + +New shell-holes were all about us, and there was a sharp, continual +reverberation of cannon among the cashmere-shawled hills. + +At Thann we stopped for a moment by the fountain near the church (in +peace-times, the old statue of St.-Théobald that I saw at Sewen surmounts +the charming column), the commandant having been saluted by a young +American officer, leading by the hand a little girl of seven or eight, in +Alsatian costume—huge black bow, black velvet bodice, full white skirts. +He was quite simply a young man whose parents had gone to America, he +himself had fought on the Mexican border, got his commission, and was +proudly—oh, so proudly and so smilingly—walking his native streets of +Thann with his little niece. + +We are _en route_ to lunch with M. and Madame Galland, at Bitschwiller, +who receive us as agreeable people of the world receive their guests in +all quarters of the globe. They were of those who could have gone, yet +remained, during the many bombardments of the town—_noblesse oblige_, and +have been a blessing to the valley. + +[Illustration: THANN. THE CATHEDRAL PORTAL] + +Madame Galland, with powdered hair, slender, delicate of feature and +of form, dressing older than she is, might have looked out of a Latour +pastel. M. Galland, too, is fine-featured, well groomed, agreeable, and +there was a handsome daughter with a quietly sorrowful expression on her +young face. It is a house from every one of whose many wide windows one +saw gold leaves hanging on black branches, behind them warm, rust-colored +hills, traced with pale-yellow larches and stamped with black patterns +of pine. Within, the rooms were beautiful with blue-clad men. There was +an agreeable and suave odor of kindness and unstintingness about the +house, mingling with that of the ease of people of the world, and the +surety of those in authority, altogether a _good_ house. Eight or ten +officers besides ourselves sat down to the usual delicious and abundant +Alsatian luncheon, the conversation intimate enough to have color, +general enough not to exclude the stranger within the gates. And it +ran after this way, beginning with accounts of that last day of July, +1914, when _Kriegsgefahrzustand_ had been proclaimed in the valley and +they were completely cut off from the outer world, witnessing only the +sinister passing and repassing of regiments of dragoons and detachments +of artillery. M. Galland had procured all the flour and dried vegetables +possible at Mulhouse to ration the population of Bitschwiller in case of +need, and collected what money he could. The days passed in suspense, +till the 6th of August, when they remarked much coming and going of +troops; on the 7th the German cavalry was seen beating a hasty retreat. + +A _Brigadier de Chasseurs_, mounted on a great black horse, is the first +Frenchman they see, advancing alone, looking slowly about him, his +revolver in his hands, fearing some snare. Then the _Pantalons Rouges_ +pour into the valley, flowers at every bayonet and in every tunic, and +the Gallands receive the first French general to enter Alsace since +1870, General Superbie, commanding the 41st Brigade. At two o’clock, +after refreshments had been offered from every house, the regiment took +the road to Mulhouse, where that same night many of them had their +“rendezvous with death.” + +The talk then fell on that mysterious thing called luck, and how the +soldier must have it, be _chançard_, if he were to come through, and of +generals who, like General Liautey, wouldn’t have under them any save +notoriously lucky officers. And there was much heedless joking (with +the Fates perhaps listening). I, who never say even within myself, “I +_will_ do thus and so,” without adding “if God will,” remarked at last, +propitiatingly, that “’twas somewhat difficult to tell _beforehand_ who +was going to be lucky.” + +“But for military purposes,” dryly remarked an officer who had not yet +spoken, “one needs to be lucky only as long as the war lasts,” which +being hideously true, we turned to the less elusive subject of the +rich and easy living of the peasants in this part of the world since +the war, and how they, even like unto those other tens of thousands of +“war-workers,” will “miss” it. They had become accustomed to the troops, +and there was the thrice blessed _popote_ in which they more or less +shared. And when the Americans came things were still better in a still +better world. For they were very free with their money (though no one +could understand a word that they said), and then they went, and the +French troops came again, and there was something very pleasant about +their return. Though they didn’t have the money of the Americans, they +could be conversed with and they would lend a hand in the garden, and +were always joking with the children, and helped with the crops, and the +virtues of the Americans, if not their money, were somewhat forgotten. +They were, in places, even remembered as a nuisance, wanting everything +cleared up, stupid bores about the dung-heap, “and will you believe it, +Monsieur,” one of them said to Laferrière, “they even washed their dishes +with _soap_, and you couldn’t give the dishwater to the pigs!” + +After which I related Colonel Burnside’s “best short story,” also +concerning the peasant point of view. When he was in Lorraine with +his men, at the well-named watery (not watering) place called +Demanges-aux-Eaux, a delegation of villagers waited on him, with the +complaint that the Americans made so much noise at night that the _sheep_ +couldn’t sleep! + +And we finished luncheon gaily, to the rather distant sound of German +guns, with the story of the wife of a (or probably the) French soap +manufacturer in Tonquin who came to the Gallands’ for convalescence +after “war-strain.” How she charmed them with her singing, especially +of children’s songs, delighted them with the reserve and modesty of her +conduct, and after two months turned out to have been once a well-known, +café-chantant singer with the proverbial “past and many brilliant +presents,” enjoying a glimpse of home-life in Alsace. + +Coffee was poured by the handsome daughter, who with her firm yet +delicate profile, and rich, dark hair drawn heavily back, looked like +some model for a head on a bank-note or medallion. Her mother, saying to +me, “_Vous êtes femme de cœur_” took me apart and told me her history. + +And perhaps because so much had been buried in the great war of youthful +love and hope, I may record a little of this story; its grief is typical +in simplicity and purity of many countless thousands in this land of +France. + +For months she had been beloved by a handsome young _chasseur_ stationed +with his regiment at Bitschwiller, one of many officers to frequent the +hospitable house of the Gallands. His photograph on a table shows him +tall, broad-shouldered, straight-eyed, kind-mouthed. On account of the +uncertainties of his life he did not declare himself while there, but +immediately afterward, doubtless because of some presentiment, he wrote +to the mother telling of his love. This was found to be returned and they +became fiancés. + +A few weeks after he was killed in Flanders, in one of the Mont Kemmel +combats, a ball striking him in the forehead as he leaped from a trench +to lead a counter-attack. + +He was one of ten sons. Six of his brothers had fallen, too. Awed, I +asked concerning her who had borne them, but she had gone to her grave +long before the World War; though I knew her not, thinking of the mother +of the Maccabees, and many like her, I thanked God that those seven +wounds had been spared a mother’s heart. Then we returned to the young +girl’s story. + +“But never to have looked into each other’s eyes and exchanged the glance +of love,” I said, “it’s a shadowy and heavy grief for her youth to bear. +Would it not have been better for them to have been united?” + +The mother answered, after a pause, “There was no time.” + +“But this can’t be the end for her; she’s only beginning life!” I said, +and thought of the great, sorrowing hosts of these young widows of the +heart alone, and of the vexed question in their families, as to whether +it was better to become a widow or remain a maid. + +“She said to me only the other day, ‘I have all that I need for my whole +life.’” + +“She will find that the heart is not like that,” I cried; “it doesn’t +seem able to content itself even with the sweetest and holiest things of +memory. It’s forever reaching out.” + +For a moment we stood with clasped hands, looking out to the hills whence +despair had so often come, and Madame Galland added, quite simply, +“Fifty thousand sleep around about us.” + +For one of the many-colored hills, pressing close to the broad windows +of the salons, separated us from the Molkenrain and the sacramental +Hartmannswillerkopf. + +In the nearest, that rises without any perspective immediately from +the house, is an old quarry, and it is there that since four years +the workers in M. Galland’s factory are sheltered during the frequent +bombardments of the town, for in what once was used for constructing +spinning-machines eleven million shells have been turned out, all of +which is quite well known to the enemy. + +The pleasant odor of the house followed us to the motor and even as we +rolled swiftly down the valley of the Thur, past Moosch, against whose +hill, still like a picture tilted back, lies the military cemetery, cut +out of the rust and gold-colored hill, with its black splashes of pines. +Again peace to those who lie there. + +Everywhere negro troops, sitting, standing, leaning, lying (a good deal +of leaning and lying). An occasional forlorn-looking white officer. It is +the same Fifteenth New York Infantry. + +“I am told they were all, before they were drafted, lift-boys and +newsboys and bootblacks and railway-car porters,” said one of the +officers. + +“You mustn’t class these last with the others. You don’t know the majesty +and authority of the Pullman-car porter. He’s as final as the Germans +think the Fourteen Points are,” I answered. + +I had felt myself somewhat exotic when I arrived in Masevaux; but I’m +blotted into the landscape, one with Alsace, compared to these sons of +Ham, clad in khaki, who fill the blue-and-gold valley of the Thur. + +Then we roll into the long street of the village of St.-Amarin, named +after the saint to whom a saint friend said, upon seeing him about to +make himself scarce at the approach of assassins, “_If you miss this +opportunity for martyrdom, you may never get another!_” (It all depends +on what you want and what your friends can do for you, and it isn’t a bit +like politics.) But I’ll tell the story of St.-Amarin another time. + +The town that bears his name is long and rambling. There is a pink church +tower surmounted by a slate-roofed top, shaped something like a turban +with a point like those on helmets, and there is the fountain bearing +the date 1830, and on its column is perched the Gallic cock, and it +is the pride of the long street and vies with the church square as a +meeting-place. + +But this is 1918 and the commandant, who loves St.-Amarin, as I can see +by the gentle, almost affectionate way he looks about, shows me first the +cinematograph, in a sort of club for soldiers. It has been a Mecca of +warmth and comfort since three years for those coming down from frozen +mountain-sides. Pictures by George Scott (good pictures) decorate it, and +fancy is unbridled where the enemy is concerned. + +The Crown Prince is represented in a _loge_ with a voluptuous actress +twice his size, and, furthermore, the artist, not content with mere paint +and canvas, has given him real wooden legs which dangle from the painted +sides of the painted _loge_. The Prince of —— said to an officer showing +him about, “And even so you have flattered my cousin.” + +Franz Joseph, shrunken by years, is represented huddled up in another +_loge_, with another actress, but it didn’t strike me as funny, nor did +it recall in any way the tales of his very unspectacular friendship with +the faithful Käthe Schratt. + +A little way down the street is the pleasant officers’ club, with books +and papers, deep chairs and long divans. I dwell a little on the comfort +of it all, thinking what it has meant to half or entirely frozen men +coming down from those relentless winter heights. + +Then we go to the Bureaux de l’Administration across the way, which had +been the headquarters of the “Mission Militaire d’Alsace” until it was +transferred to Masevaux a year ago. + +It, too, is in what was once the Oberforster’s house, only _its_ walls +had been hung by the commandant with ancient souvenirs picked up in the +valley; old engravings of Alsatian generals, Rapp, Kléber, and Lefèvre, +Duke of Dantzig, this last vanquished husband of Madame Sans-Gêne as well +as victorious general of France. And there are some old engravings of the +portals of the church at Thann, and 1860 street scenes, with bombazined +women and high-collared men. An enormous flag of Louis Philippe decorates +one corner, and many horns and antlers of the Oberforster’s time hang in +the entrance-hall. There is a busy, pleasant coming and going of men who +like their work. + +More officers are presented, and there is much joking about our Masevaux +_popote_ and odious comparisons. We tell them proudly of the new +coffee-pot, but the haughty chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ answers that +it was needed, and probably we had at last heard what people really +thought about the coffee at the Masevaux mess. I am to lunch here on +Thursday and see—or rather, _taste_! + +And all love St.-Amarin and its wide valley, even those who now live at +Masevaux. + +Home by the Route Joffre with Sérin and Laferrière. A rising up over +indigo mountains, blackening at their base, blotted against the strange +white sky, white even now at sunset, then a drop into the dark valley +of Masevaux, talking of politics, theirs and mine, things of wisdom and +valiance done or undone. And the end in sight. Though Laferrière said: +“I am not sure that they will feel so conquered. They will proudly record +the dates of their great victories, and their historians will tell of +their sweeping invasions; one must confess they have had great generals. +They will doubtless reproach their statesmen with not having made better +alliances, and decry their _gaffes_. But as for fighting, they will +feel that men may fight one to two, one to three or to four or even +five, but that no one can fight the world. _Tenez_, for Napoleon, after +Waterloo, there was nothing more personally, but his victories remain +among the great military glories of history.” On the crest as we started +to drop into the valley, in that pale, pale sky above a blue, blue hill, +something almost like words was written in delicate gold, in long looping +characters, by the unseen, setting sun. I know not what they spelled, but +I think it was Peace, lovely Peace.... + +Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off my things and lain +me down when word was brought up that Captain Bernard was waiting for +me. Put on my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out all +over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness which conceals the +whereabouts of the match-box, as well as minor accessories like gloves +and veil, I depart to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where +I find more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious little +bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called _shankelé_, are served with tea, and +there was brought out a great tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted +with the eagle of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable silk, +dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many and many another, it +had been put in a long box and nailed against the beams in the attic, +remaining so hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the winter +of 1915. + +Then home through black and muddy streets, full of hurrying, stumbling +forms. Later the cheerful _popote_. + +And then before I went to sleep I read again the story of Saint-Odile +according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs somewhat like this:[13] + +At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of the Rhine Valley, +Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by Childeric II, one of the last of the +Merovingian kings. + +He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable, worshiping neither +pagan divinities nor the one God. + +He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay in the Vosges, and +here one day he received the visit of an Irish monk and gave him shelter, +according to the custom of the time. + +Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said to him: + +“Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous powers. If that be +true, demand of thy God that my wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me +a son and heir.” + +At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining long in prayer in +spite of Atalric’s impatience. + +When at last the holy man arose, he said: + +“No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife will bring forth a +daughter, and thy life will be one long struggle with her. But in the end +the dove will vanquish the lion.” + +Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant prophet well flogged, +but he finally contented himself by chasing him from the castle to the +accompaniment of his choicest maledictions. + +When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear and trembling (her +lord having made no secret of what he expected) gave birth to a blind +daughter, such a rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle +thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings are not recorded. +The duke declared loudly that he did not intend to endure such dishonor, +and that if the child were not promptly hidden he would with his own +hands make away with it. + +Fortunately Bereswinde had a sister who was abbess of the Convent of +Baume-les-Dames in Burgundy. To her the child was sent, and the legend +has it that Odile recovered her sight at the touch of the baptismal +waters, thus symbolizing the opening of her eyes to spiritual light in +the darkness of a barbarian age. + +She was tenderly reared by the abbess, who, however, told her nothing of +her princely birth, letting her think she was the child of parents killed +in war, though, as she grew in years and beauty, she was treated as a +princess; her charm and gentleness were so great that it was recorded +that birds and even deer would eat from her hands as she wandered in +the forest clearings. Often at night in her cell she had strange and +beautiful visions. The most frequent was that of an angel of shining +though severe visage, who would appear presenting her now with roses, now +with lilies, the perfume enfolding her as if in some heavenly felicity. +But once as day was about to break she had quite a different vision. +It was that of a proud and beautiful adolescent who wore, as did the +Frankish lords of the times, a gray tunic with a leathern girdle, while +his golden hair fell freely about his shoulders. His long sword was +suspended from a strap decorated with shining plaques of gold. The purple +border of his tunic showed him indeed to be a prince, and in his mien +there was both pride and gentleness. + +Odile’s heart leaped up and she was about to address him when suddenly he +vanished, and the angel of the austere visage took his place, holding out +a cross of ebony on which hung an ivory Christ. The next night, and many +after, the young lord returned. At last he came carrying in his hands +a crown of gold. Odile was about to grasp it, when the angel, graver +and sterner than before, stepped between them and presented to Odile a +jeweled chalice. Thinking she was to partake of the Saving Host, Odile +pressed it to her lips. What was her horror when she found it filled +with blood still hot and throbbing. So great was her trouble that on +awakening she recounted her dream to the abbess, who then revealed to her +the secret of her birth. How her gentle mother, worn by the harsh tempers +of the duke, was long since dead, and her father had sworn never to look +upon her face. The image in the dream was that of her young brother, +Adalbert, born after her, and heir to the duchy. “But,” added the abbess, +“beware of seeking out thy fierce father; thy mother is no longer there +to defend thee. Stay rather here, for thou art destined at my death to +become abbess of this convent.” + +But Odile was so deeply moved by this glimpse of the glory of her race +and the promise of fraternal love that she could not resist the desire +to contemplate with her earthly eyes the brother whose image had so +enchanted her, to enfold him, if even for a single time, in her arms. By +a faithful servitor she despatched a letter to him, saying in it: “I am +Odile, thine unknown sister. If thou lovest me as I thee, obtain from my +father that I enter into my daughterly estate. I salute thee tenderly. At +thought of thee my heart blossoms like a lily in the desert.” + +This letter acted as a charm upon Adalbert, awaking in his youthful heart +all generous and romantic sentiments. He cried, “Who is this sister whose +words are sweeter than those of a betrothed?” + +A tender desire seized him to make her his companion and coheir and to +give her back her rank and family estate. He answered, “Trust but in me. +I will arrange all things for the best.” + +Shortly after, while his father was absent at the chase, he sent to +Baume-les-Dames a splendid chariot drawn by six richly caparisoned +horses. With it went a numerous retinue, that Odile might return to her +father’s house in a way befitting her estate. And now begins the tragedy. + +Atalric is in the banquet-hall of his castle of Obernay, where his +birthday is being celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. It is the +day, too, that he has chosen to present his son and heir to his vassals. +About the tables, groaning under the weight of gold and silver dishes, +his many courtiers are sitting, drinking from great horns of aurochs or +clanking their burnished hanaps. Atalric, happening to go to the window, +espies in the plain a chariot approaching, drawn by six horses; banners +are flying and palms waving. Above it float the ducal colors. + +He cries out in surprise, “Who is it that approaches?” + +Adalbert answers with all the valiance of his young and trusting heart, +“It is thy daughter Odile come to beg thy mercy.” + +“Who is the dolt that counseled her return?” + +“It is I who called her, and on this day of thy feast I beg thy grace for +her.” + +“How has she, who desires my death, been able to bewitch you?” cries +Atalric, pale and stiff with anger. + +Adalbert protests, invoking his father’s pity, the honor of the family, +and his own brotherly love, but Atalric, beside himself, commands the +youth to cast his sister from the threshold. Adalbert refuses. + +“If it must be done, do it thyself,” he answers, proudly. Upon this the +duke menaces his son with disinheritance if he does not immediately +obey. But Adalbert, drawing his sword, lays it at his father’s feet, +telling him that rather than fail in fraternal love he will give up his +heritage. This fills his father with so blind a fury that he gives his +son a great blow upon the temple with the hilt of his sword. + +The stroke is mortal, and Adalbert falls to the ground. The vassals +crowd in fear at one end of the great hall, while Atalric stands alone, +petrified by the horror of his crime. + +At this moment in the fullness of her young beauty, dressed as a bride +for her nuptials, Odile enters the hall. A single look suffices. She +gives a great cry and throws herself on her knees by her dying brother. +She clasps his bleeding head, she kisses his glazing eyes, and in that +single kiss, that one despairing embrace, the pain of the whole world +transpierces her gentle breast. It is the chalice of blood the angel once +put to her lips. The dreadful crime of her father, the loss of her adored +brother, to whom she had been mystically united by a more than fraternal +bond, turn all her desires to the other world; the first young innocent +love of family is changed into solicitude for all who are suffering in +that barbarian world. Her novitiate begins. + +Atalric, devoured by remorse, though still impenitent, did not dare cast +his daughter out, but he spoke no word to her, harboring always in his +heart the prediction of the Irish monk, “The dove will overcome the lion.” + +In order to avoid him, Odile spent her days mostly in the great forests +that surrounded the castle, often climbing to the heights of Altitona. +Under the shadow of those great trees, high as the nave of some +cathedral, she no longer heard the striking of the hours of human time. +All things appeared to her under the guise of eternity. Her beautiful +brother, her unique love, was dead, almost as a martyr. Why should she +not in turn gather for herself a palm like to that he carried as he +roamed the heavenly fields? + +One day, as she was deeply meditating these things, she found herself +midway up the great hill, when, enveloped in a blinding light, the angel +of her dreams in the convent of Burgundy suddenly appeared. His wings, +touched with glory, were widely unfolded, and his face shone like the +sun. With an imperious yet protecting gesture he pointed to the top of +the mountain, where were seen the crumbling remains of a Roman camp, +saying to her soul, “There, Odile, is thy home; there shalt thou dwell +and gather to thee others whose thoughts are holy and whose wills are +bent to service.” + +Odile remained long in ecstasy. When she had recovered her fleshly sight +the angel was gone, but she had understood. On the heights of Altitona +she was to build a sanctuary which should be a refuge of peace, a +fortress of prayer, a citadel of God. It was vocation. + +Strangely increased in beauty, she returned at night-fall to the castle, +and this added beauty was observed by all. + +Shortly after Atalric, through pride and also to get rid of her, +conceived the design of marrying her to a great Austrasian lord from +Metz, then his guest, who had been struck by love for her. He called her +to him, and told her his intention. She answered gently: + +“Father, thou canst not give me to any man. Thou knowest I am vowed to +Christ alone.” + +The duke, enraged at her resistance, but grown somewhat wary by +experience, sought out a docile monk and commanded him to impress upon +Odile the wisdom of obedience, by which she might placate him and even +win his heart. But all was in vain. Then he conceived the black idea of +delivering his daughter by force into the arms of the Austrasian lord, +thinking, once she had been embraced by the lover, she would consent to +marriage. He sent two armed men to seize her in a grotto where she was +accustomed to pray. Hardened by the fierce design that filled his heart, +he cried out when she was brought before him, “The Lord of Austrasia +awaits thee for betrothal; willingly or unwillingly thou shalt be his.” + +Odile, knowing the supreme moment had come, answered: “Thou hast already +killed thy son. Wouldst thou also cause the death of thy daughter? If +thou bindest me to the arms of this man I will not survive my shame, but +I will kill myself. Thus thou wilt be the cause not only of the death of +my body, but of my soul as well, and thou wilt thyself be destined to +eternal damnation.” + +“Little care I for the other world. In this I am and will remain the +master.” + +“That in truth thou art,” she answered, gently, “but listen to me and +recognize the goodness of my God. Allow me instead to build a sanctuary +upon the heights of Altitona; thou wilt thus be delivered from me for all +time. There I, and those gathered with me, will pray for thee. I feel a +strange power within me.” + +Atalric made a violent gesture, but she continued without flinching, +“Menace me, trample me under-foot, but tremble before this image,” and +she took from her bosom the ivory Christ hanging from the ebon cross. + +In that moment, as father and daughter faced each other, the powers of +heaven and hell, of spiritual promise and unregenerate will, were arrayed +in combat. But Atalric did not at first give way. Suddenly, however, the +countenance of Odile became more terrible than that of a warrior, and her +whole mien was wrapped in an angelic majesty. In her dilated eyes Atalric +thought for an instant that he saw the bleeding image of his murdered +son. An intolerable pain filled his heart, and he cried out under the +irresistible pressure of the heavenly will: “Thou hast conquered. Do as +thou wilt, but never let me look upon thy face.” + +“Thou wilt see me in the other life,” answered his child. + +The legend adds that Atalric, regretting his moment of weakness, did not +immediately renounce his evil designs. Odile was obliged to flee before +his increasing wrath and was pursued by him and the Austrasian lord, +accompanied by many armed men, even beyond the Rhine. + +But at the moment when they were about to seize her, at the foot of +a mountain where there seemed no issue, the rock parted suddenly and +received her. A few minutes later it again opened and Odile appeared +enveloped in a supernatural light, declaring to her awestruck pursuers +that she belonged forever to Christ alone. Then Atalric and the +Austrasian lord turned silently and left the spot. The dove had conquered +the lion. + +The legend has transformed her father’s momentary conversion to her will +into the physical image of the suddenly sundered rock. But in the end it +is all the same, for Odile, _Vierge Candide et Forte_, represents forever +the victory of the transfigured soul over brute force, the incalculable +power of faith sealed by sacrifice, the saving breath of the invisible +world breathed into the visible. + +During centuries the great Benedictine Convent of Mount Saint-Odile +(Odilienberg) performed its works of faith and mansuetude in that +barbarian and ruthless world; the voices of Taran, the God of War, and +of Rosmertha, the Goddess of Life and Love, according to the pagan ways, +were replaced by another, promising eternal felicities to those born +again in Christ. + +From a wall of _grès rose_, this same _grès rose_ that I have found as +building-stone for temple and home and fountain all over Alsace, Odile, +needing one day to give instant refreshment to an old man spent with +fatigue, caused the spring of crystal water to gush forth from which +pilgrims still drink. And in the Chapel, called that of Tears, is a +deeply indented stone, worn, it is said, by the knees of the saint as +she knelt there praying for the release of the soul of her father (long +dead and unpenitent) from the pains of purgatory. The legend has it that +only toward the end of her life was she able to accomplish this, when at +last the chalice of blood the angel once gave her was transmuted into an +elixir of eternal life. + +The redemption of the soul of Atalric signifies, too, the conversion of +the Merovingian world to Christianity, and to a new will to give up life +that it might be found again—and many other things that it is difficult +to tell of in words, but the soul can perceive them. + +And on the Odilienberg has beat for centuries the very heart, as it were, +of Alsace; above its throb being laid, passionately, now a hand from the +West, now one from the East.... + +To this day, they who at evening ascend its heights and wander under the +lindens of the terrace built above the old pagan wall, looking out upon +the splendid panorama of the Vosges, breathe the mystical fragrance of +the lily and the rose that perfumed the last sigh of Saint-Odile. + +These things I am not able to know of myself, for the Odilienberg is +still in German hands. + + + + +IX + +THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH + + +_Faro come colui che piange._—DANTE + +_November 6th._—And to-morrow I am to pass into the sweet, broad valley +of the Thur and there dwell. I ask neither how nor why, knowing it will +be vastly pleasant, though a somewhat startled feeling overtakes me at +the thought of leaving Masevaux, _tout ce qui finit est si court_. For +a fleeting, nostalgic moment I think, too, “What am I about, binding +sheaves in this rich corner of the earth that is not mine?” + +As we gather for lunch, some one reads the sweeping clauses of the +conditions of the armistice with Austria-Hungary. Nothing is left save +hunger and disorder. I wonder if those to whom one of the “first aims of +the war is the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy” see, in their passion, +what it will mean to surround the centripetal force of Germany with +floating, unsteady bits, that inevitably will be drawn to it. Some one +hazarded the remark, evidently not so trite as we once thought it, that +“if Austria didn’t exist, she would have to be invented.” Passion seems +more than ever to be its own blind end, and, looking at those men, I +thought, have we not fought and died the good death for other and further +ends? + +Then Laferrière began reading the American _communiqué_. We are but +five miles from the Sedan-Metz line, one of the principal lines of +communication of the Germans! + +As in a dream I listen to the deeds of _my_ soldiers, recited in the most +beautiful of French, as many deeds of many men have been recited to many +women through the ages. + + “_Ce matin la Ière Armée a repris son attaque. En dépit d’une + résistance désespérée nos troupes [américaines] ont forcé le + passage de la Meuse à Brieulles et à Cléry-le-Petit._” ... + + “_Beaumont, nœud de routes important, est tombé devant nos + troupes victorieuses qui se sont avancées jusqu’au Bois de + l’Hospice à deux milles au nord de Beaumont. Au cours de leur + avance elles se sont emparées de Létanne. A Beaumont, nous + avons délivré 500 citoyens français qui ont salué nos soldats + comme leurs libérateurs...._ + + “_L’avance des deux derniers jours a amené en certains points + notre ligne à cinq milles de la voie ferrée Sedan-Metz, une des + principales lignes de communication des armées allemandes._”[14] + +As we sit down the commandant tells me they had been picking all sorts +of strange things out of the air that morning, the ether stamped with +unaccustomed names. He had just got a message, not meant for French ears, +bearing a new signature, Ebert; the day before he had got one bearing +that of Scheidemann. It is like a further dream of a dream, these things +that are borne “upon the sightless couriers of the air.” + +At two o’clock I started out with Bernard and Laferrière, the latter on +the errand of rounding up an actor in one of those obscure yet deadly +village dramas. + +“Generally I have little to do; they know they are well off,” he said, +and we agreed that it was indeed a pity to be pursued by original sin +even unto these pleasant valleys. + +We descend at Rammersmatt, a quite unsinful-looking place, and while he +is gone Bernard and I visit the old church, beautifully held in the cleft +of the hill, lying against another hill, looking down on the plain of +Cernay, toward the German lines. It is this same plain of Cernay, which +I mentioned before, that was known in the old days as the “_Champ de +Mensonges_.” There Ariovistus was defeated by Caæsar. There, too, Louis +le Débonnaire was attacked by his three sons and betrayed by his army, +and ever since it has been justly known as the “Field of Lies.” Centuries +later the Swedes vanquished the imperial armies there under a Duke of +Lorraine. To-day it is that thing known as “No Man’s Land,” brown with +barbed-wire entanglements and rough with shell-holes—and other things +besides. + +Back of it are the zigzagging German lines. It is, too, the place of +the century-old legend of the Niedecker’s young Thierry who, wandering +there one night, saw strange sights. He had not drained a single glass +of the _Rang de Thann_, nor of the red wine of Turckheim, called “_Sang +des Turcs_,” but was dreaming, as an adolescent does, of everything and +nothing, when suddenly the very stones of the valley began to move, and +great fissures showed in the earth. From them issued thousands upon +thousands of warriors of bygone times, striking against their shields and +crying out in strange, hoarse voices, “_Hodeīdah! Hodeīdah!_” + +Finally a man taller than all the others, Louis le Débonnaire, son of +Charlemagne it was, his long, silvery hair surmounted by a gold and +jeweled crown, jumped on a white horse and called by name, one after the +other, the chiefs of his cohorts, who answered, “Here.” + +Then the king, groaning with great groans, spoke beseechingly the names +of the sons he had begotten, Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin. + +But Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin mocked him and to further wound him caused +to be brought on the battlefield his nephew, Bernard, he who had taken +arms against him and whose eyes the king had caused to be put out (and +for this the king knew little sleep). + +Then as the battle begins the sightless Bernard jumps up behind the +king’s saddle, paralyzing his every movement. But at the very height of +the combat, above its clash and shoutings, the third hour of morning +sounds from a church tower, and suddenly the earth receives again the +ancient host and all is as before. Only Thierry from the Niedeckers lay +as if dead. + +And the Field of Lies, _le Champ de Mensonges_, is said to be the spot +where the children of earth will be assembled at the Day of Judgment, +for what crime can equal that of the sons of Louis, who conquered, +imprisoned, and caused to die of grief a father whose only fault was +that he loved them too well? It is even said that it is the troops of +Louis who will sound the brazen trumps to awaken the dead for their last +accounting. + +Now I see it as “No Man’s Land,” rusty and brown with patches of barbed +wire, rough with great shell-holes, but they say that even in intervals +of peace it is never so luxuriantly fertile as are the fields that lie +about it.... + +A white, very white afternoon heaven stretches above us. Very violent +cannonading. + +“_C’est nous—c’est le Boche_,” Bernard repeats from time to time. Then +his sharp eye distinguishes a group of German airplanes, and, looking +where he points, I see five spots black, black in the white sky. + +They, too, are immediately fired on. I hear over my head the great +swish made by the shells from the guns placed on a hill behind us—or so +sounding. My ear is not quick to distinguish directions in these echoing +hills. + +Little balls of snow-white shrapnel, like beautifully wound balls of +fleecy wool, gently unloosen themselves about the black spots of the five +airplanes, which, after a while, disappear to the east. + +Though not so overcome as the Niedecker’s Thierry, I feel that my eyes, +too, have looked on a strange spectacle. + +Then Laferrière rejoins us. By the pleased look on his face we guess that +he hasn’t made the wages of sin too high, and we continue on our way +under the late, and still very white, afternoon sky. Suddenly the heavily +plated, thickly enameled rust and gold and black of the hillsides seem to +disappear and the earth is green again, young and tenderly green, like +spring, but how and why? It lasted but a few minutes, for on the slopes +toward Thann there was again the autumnal gleam of gold and rust, and +spots of fathomless black. + +Entering Laimbach, we stopped to get the mayor, who was to conduct us +to the old Jesuit church, half-way between his village and the village +of Otzwiller, or rather its site, for Otzwiller disappeared completely +during the Thirty Years’ War, wherein each lovely Alsatian valley had +been sacked and burned and destroyed, and friends of yesterday were +enemies of to-day, and _vice versa_. + +The mayor was a voluble, amiable mayor, who had conserved, during those +many German years, a vast amount of creaking, noisy, unpleasant French. + +His village was ancient, high-roofed, many-fountained, and had been much +shelled. The streets were full of children playing, blue soldiers were +walking about, girls were leaning out of the windows to give and get a +greeting, or being pinched as they giggled about the streets, clicking +their sabots in the mud. As we passed out the white sky darkened suddenly +and a hard red began to burn in the west. We found ourselves nearing a +half-demolished fifteenth-century church, placed strangely between the +battered, living village and the ghostly village of the Thirty Years’ +War. It was of _grès rose_ and had been built on the foundations of an +even earlier one, and near it was a shell-shot, ancient, high, red-roofed +presbytery. For generations the church had been a shrine of St.-Blaise, +and on every 3d of February the mayor told us (but sadly, as one speaking +of a pleasant past) there had been a great pilgrimage made by those +suffering from throat maladies. + +Now over all was hanging a penetrating atmosphere of bootless desolation, +and I was suddenly seized with an anxious feeling that I should be about +the secret lonely business of my soul. Life seemed unbearably sad and +short, and “where was the place of eternal happiness, the place where the +Barbarian need be feared no more?” ...[15] + +In front of the church had been placed, somewhat indiscreetly, the +officers thought, a big battery. And the mayor said, too, apologetically, +“_Evitément z’édait mal joizi par écard à l’éclise_,” for the battery had +soon been sighted. After the church had received many shells right in her +pink and lovely bosom, it had been moved some forty meters away, but even +so it had again been _repérée_, and the church had suffered the usual +fate of churches near batteries. Some fine old columns were left in the +apse, of the delicious _grès rose_. For a moment Laferrière and I stood +scaling off bits of the disfiguring gray plaster and wondering why it had +ever been put on, it and all the other gray stucco that a certain austere +century had plastered over gorgeous building-stone everywhere in Europe. + +The church, like the village of the Thirty Years’ War, will soon be but +a name, for its walls are cracked and sagging, and with another winter’s +frost they will crumble and fall. Through the roofless nave we walked +over a mass of torn-up old mosaic flooring, and heaps of gaudy modern +stained glass fallen from the lovely, ancient, pointed windows. + +It was getting dark as we passed out into the disorderly cemetery, +between the church and the battery (and even for a cemetery very +uninviting, torn up as it was by recent shells). Ends of coffins were +sticking out, shabby, twisted, bead wreaths and muddy, discolored +tricolor badges lay about, while in the middle of a once tidy family +plot, by name Hilz, was a huge new shell-hole of only the day before. + +The mayor gave a shudder as he looked at his own familiar graveyard, +where his parents and his friends had been laid—though not to rest. He +was out for the first time after grippe and he said, with a determined +look and in his most creaking French, “If I have to die, all right, but +I’ve forbidden my daughter to bury me here.” Many, many had also fallen +in the fields, and everywhere thin earth lay over damp, shallow graves +marked by shabby, crooked crosses. Meadow mists were beginning to rise +and the copper-colored edge had hardened in the sky. I felt again an +inexpressible discouragement. I tried to think of Peace, so near, so +hotly desired, so redly pursued, but I could only perceive the damp +meadow, the demolished church, the gun-emplacements, the disorderly, +shelled cemetery, and the humid odor of death and mold and rotting +leaves. As yet nothing seemed to have risen incorruptible. + +We turned and went again along the dark, damp valley road till we reached +the village with its consoling hum of life. Through the dusky street +washed the lovely soft blue of soldiers; a group stood with some girls +around the beautiful fountain, deeply pink in the half-light, built +in the fifteenth century by the Jesuits, though the mayor insisted on +placing the Sons of Loyola in the fourteenth. In fact, the Jesuits and +the fourteenth century were one in his mind. Then, as far as he was +concerned, came the war of 1914. He wanted us to come into his house to +partake of some brand of white liqueur—as I have said the people of these +valleys distil all and every bright-colored fruit of their earth. It +would seem that the whole flora of Alsace can be used to this end, and no +matter which of God’s colors go into their alembics, passing through, it +comes out pure white, to befuddle the heads and harden the stomachs of +the populace—and little boys are born with the burden of deafness. Though +twilight enveloped us, I knew the look that must be on the mayor’s face, +and something a bit phosphorescent came into his eyes as he spoke of a +_petite mirabelle_. Fortunately, it was too late to accept. + +A few minutes later we found ourselves on the screened road to Masevaux, +moving slowly, without lights, the road overlooking the Field of Lies, +where the Germans watched. + +Above the hills in front of us was a very thin, very long, very red, +crescent moon. No one spoke. + +Doubtless the officers, like myself, were wondering upon what, when it +was full and white, its light would shine. Now it was turned to blood. + +The roads were crowded with rattling artillery wagons, transporting guns +and supplies under cover of the deep, blue night. Once or twice on some +hillside, turned away from the German valley, was the leaping of a flame, +from the fire of a group of _artilleurs_, who were to wait the morning on +wooded slopes. + +Thoughts of the ghostly village of Otzwiller, now but a name, pursued +me, and of the Swedish invasion. And the miseries of the Thirty Years’ +War seemed to confound themselves with these of the war I know so well, +while the night deepened, under the long, thin, red moon, hanging behind +black-palled hills, in a heaven that still had an edge of copper. + +A church bell sounded and something flying swiftly touched me at that +hour of the evening sacrifice, and I knew then that those who tread the +olives are rarely anointed with the oil, and I cried out within myself +suddenly and in despair, a long-unremembered line of the great Italian: + +“_Faro come colui che piange._” + + + + +X + +THE VALLEY OF THE THUR + + +_November 7th, St.-Amarin._—This morning farewell, perhaps a long +farewell, to Masevaux, and I now dwell in the broad, sweet valley of +the Thur. I had felt many pains of parting while putting my things into +the Japanese straw basket and the little leather valise. This was quite +a simple act, for I flatter myself that those receptacles contain only +essentials, though I had long since begun to wish that I had brought +another dress for evening, feeling a bit dull always buttoned up in my +uniform, and only a white shirt changed from a blue one to mark the +difference between morning and evening. One of those 1918 dresses, that +can be carried in the pocket without making it bulge, would not have +added perceptibly to the weight of my accoutrement, and would have +brightened up the _popotes_. The light from the Oberforster’s chandelier +at Masevaux was as pitiless as that which beats about thrones—and +presidential chairs (which much resemble them)—and ladies _en mission_ +should come prepared. + +Before leaving I went to say good-by to Mère Labonne, who showed me the +good things in preparation for luncheon and begged me to stay—scrambled +eggs with truffles, two _poulets_ ready for roasting, a tart _au mocha_ +that she was frosting on a marble table. But the look of one who goes was +in my eyes, and she ceased to insist. + +Return to the Place du Chapitre; many officers and motors under the +yellowing trees in front of the _Kommandantur_, a general arriving, some +sort of delegation departing. I say a thousand thanks to the amiable, +cultivated, agreeable Demoiselles Braun, three of whom wear decorations +for their war-work in hospitals, for contagious diseases, and one, +Stéphanie, “_qui n’a pas dit son dernier mot_,” is charming after the way +of the perceptive, witty women of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. +Then I find myself getting into the motor of the commandant, who, in +the meantime, has greeted and sped the general on his way. His face has +something shining about it as he gives the great news, written on the no +longer insubstantial air, of the German demand for an armistice. Then +he reads the _communiqué_ from the Belfort newspaper as we drive out of +Masevaux, telling us more about the Germans in full retreat, and the +Americans close behind them at _Sedan_! What a rustling of the pages of +history! The mind leaps to new things, life normal again, and all forces +bent to reconstruction. + +As we pass over the screened road to Thann, where we are to lunch +with the military mayor, Captain Saint-Girons, the net of broom and +pine camouflage, screening the valley where the Germans are, suddenly +seemed some monument of ancient history; and, unlike the noisy hours of +yesterday, there was no sound of cannon. + +Arrived at Thann, it is we who give the great, the unbelievable, the +unrealizable news of the demand for an armistice to Captain Saint-Girons, +who, with several uniformed schoolmasters, is waiting in front of the +Mairie to receive us. And our “feet are beautiful as the feet of them +that bring the Gospel of Peace and glad tidings of good things.” + +I think for a moment how strange for _me_ to carry it to them, to these +men, who have fought for it, who have waited for it, watched for it, bled +for it—but everything is strange in this strangest of all strange worlds. + +Going into the house, we find other schoolmasters, with some bright-eyed +little boys ranging in years from seven to twelve. + +Then to lunch. I sit on the commandant’s right, Captain Gasquet, +_adjoint_ of the mayor, on my other side, the mayor himself opposite, the +schoolmasters placed prudently and watchfully near that selected flock, +who enliven the ends of the table. Now these little Alsatian hopefuls are +very bright of eye, rosy of cheek, and on their good behavior, which, in +spite of lurking potentialities, persisted during the lunch, even when a +glow, doubtless not unaccustomed, tinged their cheeks, as they drank the +wine of their own hillsides. + +At dessert I asked Commandant Poulet to drink to Sedan, the _new_ Sedan. +I thought within myself, “Is it not even now as a temple being cleansed +and glorified in the chalice of the blood of _my_ people, the blood of +the khaki-clad youths from over the seas, whom Fate, since all time, had +decreed to unseal it?” Tears came to my eyes, there was a deep beat in my +breast. + +And it had been forty-eight years and two months and seven days since it +was torn from a vanquished France. + +I scarcely remember what was said of the day’s events; feeling, rather +than thought, was flooding about the table, and it was in gratitude, +in wonderment, and rather silently, for a group of Frenchmen, that the +luncheon proceeded. Each was thinking perhaps of his part of loss and +grief making up the victory. + +Names of Americans who had visited Thann were spoken: Dr. Herbert Adams +Gibbons, long the friend of Alsace, and in some wise, as I told them, the +god of the machine directing my steps to them; Mr. John Weare; and others +whom I don’t recall. There had been, too, a fair and fleeting vision of +Mrs. Bliss one snowy winter day. + +Many beautiful words were said of my country, and in that hour I think +it was, to them of the reconquered triangle, “_dulce et decora_” to have +even the least of the daughters of the Stars and Stripes at their board, +that hers should have been among the feet bringing “the glad tidings of +good things.” + +When coffee and _quetsch_ and cigarettes were passed around, the +schoolmasters made ready to pour some of the heady white liqueur into the +glasses of even the smallest of the little boys, but the commandant said, +“No,” and cigarettes only are offered to the babes. I would put my hand +in the fire (knowing I could draw it out unsinged) that it was not the +first time they had puffed “caporals.” The seven-year-old one held his +with an astounding ease, not entirely hereditary. When he had finished he +was stood on a chair, from which he recited “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_,” the +lines concerning the now extremely well-demonstrated “_La raison du plus +fort est toujours la meilleure_,” being given almost at a breath, one +word tightly tied to another in quite an ingenious way. + +An older one, whose naturally flashing eye was slightly restrained only +by the solemnity of the occasion, gave us the equally classic, “_Maidre +corpeau sur un arbre bergé_.” He hadn’t been caught so young, and the old +Adam in the shape of his German accent was heavy upon him. Then, standing +in a row, they sang “_Le Chant du Départ_,” that greatest of all the +wars’ marching songs, and the childish voices cut my heart like a knife, +and tears were loosened, and through their blur I seemed to see the march +of the generations of Alsace adown the ages, fulfilling the shifting, +cruel destinies of border peoples. Ghosts of the Thirty Years’ War, of +the Napoleonic wars, of 1870, and of 1914, and of the other dateless +struggles that have ravaged their rich valleys, come before me. I weep +and weep, and my handkerchief is a microscopic, damp, gray ball. I have +an idea that pride of sex alone restrained the blue-clad men from tears. +Peace, lovely Peace, desired like the morning, was arising, but her light +was to shine on rivers of blood, running through such black ruins that +her glory and her sweetness, and even her hope, hurt with a great hurt, +and I thought again on those who, empty-armed, must yet rejoice.... + +Afterward I strolled along the banks of the pebbly Thur with the +commandant and Captain Saint-Girons. There is a river-path leading under +balconied, red-roofed houses, or by gray walls, and there is an old round +tower having a caplike roof with a point on the top, and against it are +silhouetted a poplar and a sycamore. Nearly everywhere the lovely gray +lace spire of the cathedral shows above roof or tree or chimney; and it +is said that though Strasbourg’s cathedral is higher and Friburg’s is +wider, Thann’s is the loveliest.[16] + +When the Mission had its headquarters at Thann, the commandant and +Captain Saint-Girons were wont to walk along this path in the afternoon, +holding a sort of tribunal, receiving petitions, granting favors, +righting differences that may occur even among the delivered, quite after +the fashion of Saint-Louis receiving the petitions of his people under +the great tree. + +The river flows through the heart of the lovely old town, badly bombarded +in spots. To our left as we walked rose the deep-colored hills in the +full afternoon burnishing of their deep rusty reds and pale gilts. +As we pass up the steep winding road we meet the Duc de Trévise, +under-lieutenant, with a sketch in his hand of a shell-shot historic +corner of Thann, the commandant wishing to save at least a memorial +wherever he can. Furthermore, Thann was black-spotted with our negro +troops. Sometimes I stopped and spoke, sometimes I waved as I passed, +just to see the full, white-toothed smile against the exotic background. + +[Illustration: THANN. LA VIEILLE TOUR] + +The orphanage toward which we are bound is in the old Château de +Marsilly, beautifully situated in the cleft of its own hill and restored +not too cruelly. Close above it rises the Engelberg, the tower of whose +castle was blown up when Turenne practised the arts of war in the valley. +Part of it lies like a great ring, and is called the “Eye of the Witch.” +To our right as we mount is a V-shaped glimpse of the valley where the +Germans lie intrenched, formed by close, rich hillsides, on which lie in +lovely, ruglike designs the vineyards of _l’heureuse Alsace féconde en +vignobles_. + +A charming, vivacious nun whose age was unguessable by twenty years, +dark-eyed and satin-skinned, whose manners could not have been surpassed +for ease by any woman of the great world, greets us. I think for the +thousandth time how perfect the polish the conventual life gives. I have +seen in peasant cottages the rooms wherein they were born, these women +of restrained gesture, of dignified mien, of easy charm in conversation, +of finished courtesy, and realize again that something invisible, +imponderable, yet all-powerful, shapes the coarse block, polishes the +rough surface, till there is no resemblance to that out of which it was +hewn. + +As we turn to go down we stand for a moment looking again through the +V-shaped cleft at the rich, blue plain held by the enemy. + +“How often,” said Captain Saint-Girons, after a silence, “it has +seemed to me like the Promised Land, and how often during these four +interminable years have I longed to look at these hills _from_ the plain.” + +“Now all is fulfilling itself,” I answered. + +The commandant said nothing, but his gaze, too, was fixed on the wide +horizon. + +Then we visited the military cemetery, a pleasant place, as cemeteries +go, with many trees, and fallen, rustling leaves, and a few late-blooming +flowers. Many sons of France were lying there since “the beginning”; +others had been but lately laid away. The two officers stood for a moment +with uncovered heads by the graves of four comrades of the Mission, +killed by a bomb in front of the Mairie, as they were going in for lunch. +Again I bowed my head and tears were loosened. Never as in this war has +“death been made so proud with pure and princely beauty.” How can we so +soon be engaged in “business as usual,” compete with the splendor of +these dead? + +Then we pass down the valley of the Thur, so greatly loved by those who +dwell therein, inclosed by purple and dark-amber hills, but inclosed +easily, widely, leaving room for fancy, for delight, with no sense of +being shut in by heaps of earth that press too tight. + +As we enter St.-Amarin, the long, central street is like a pale-blue +ribbon, for through it a battalion of some Marseilles regiment is +passing. As my eye received it I knew the lovely picture for some +bleaching daguerreotype, its color and lineaments to fade in the bright +light of peace. We stop a moment at the Administration building and see +again M. de Maroussem, to whom, on meeting him first at Madame Galland’s, +I had said, “You are an Englishman?” And to those who have frequented +international worlds I don’t need to say how he looks. To others I would +say that he is tall, blond, athletic, wearing easily a well-cut, not too +new uniform, and having a perceptive blue eye (which, however, is really +a very French eye when one takes a second look). One would have known +that he hunted in England and had polo-ponies in France. In civil life he +is a banker. + +Now among other things he is chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ and tells +me dinner is at 7.45 “tapant.” The hour is near wherein I am to be shown +how far superior the St.-Amarin _popote_ is to that of Masevaux. + +Then the commandant accompanies me to the house of M. Helmer, the +well-known Alsatian lawyer who is counsel for the Mission. Also it was +he who defended Hansi when he was brought before the German courts and +condemned for _lèse-majesté_.[17] + +From the great bowed window of Madame Helmer’s drawing-room I could look +down the suddenly mystical-seeming valley, discerned by the spirit rather +than the eye at 4.30 of a November afternoon. It was but a stretch of +white filmy substance between violet hills, under a gray-green heaven, +with something warm and precious at its western edge. Such a passing of +the day as the saints of old would have loved. + +Hung along the wall opposite the great window are engravings of the +Mantegna frieze from Hampton Court, and there were many books. + +After tea the commandant took his leave and Madame Helmer showed me to +my comfortable room where I had thirty saving minutes, horizontal and in +the dark, fully conscious, but completely resting, thought consecutive +but not active, flowing in a smooth way between banks of quiet nerves in +quiet flesh. + +“Seven forty-five tapant” finds me again at the Administration building, +whither M. Helmer accompanied me, and it is very pleasant as I enter. +Commandant Poulet is sitting at a huge desk signing papers, more +blue-clad officers and two _infirmières_ are presented, after which we +pass into the dining-room, whose doors are flung open in classic style by +a well-trained orderly. In Masevaux we simply gathered and sat down. Now +the mess-table of St.-Amarin has a decided touch of elegance, too, in the +way of pink-shaded candles, and in the middle there was an arrangement +of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves. Instead of a Mère Labonne they have +a _cordon bleu_ who performs his rites very suitably in the dark-blue +uniform of the chasseurs. We sit down to a dinner that might have been +served with pride at Voisin’s or the Café de Paris, where all except +the chairs is extra and getting back a cane or hat costs the remaining +eye (if one remains) of the head. I am indeed impressed, as I was meant +to be, and M. de Maroussem might have said, “Didn’t I tell you so?” in +his pure and pleasant English. I sat between the commandant and Captain +Perdrizet, chief of the Forestry Service of the Thann district, and +to the sound of cannon, which in spite of peace prospects was heavily +firing over the Hartmannswillerkopf, we consumed _carpes à la Flamande_, +a course of game elaborately presented with all its feathers, finishing +with _poires Bordaloue_, the whole perpetuated on a charming menu card +decorated with the classic Alsatian stork by Andrieux, one of the +officers of the mess. + +As I sat down I saw in front of me a sign over the door leading into +the pantry, a somewhat Y.M.C.A.-ish sign, “_Sois sobre et tu vivras +longtemps_” (“Be sober and you will live long”), and de Maroussem’s +feelings were almost hurt when I asked if perhaps behind me there was one +that said, “_Mange peu et tu seras invité souvent_” (“Eat little and you +will be invited often”). And when it came time for coffee and cigarettes +and some especially old _quetsch_ he brought out the book, “The Friends +of France,” that I had first seen at Harry Sleeper’s in Gloucester Bay, a +thousand years ago, it seemed, and we turned to the death and citation of +Norman Hall, Commandant Poulet recalling again that he had begun his work +in Alsace on the 25th of December, 1914, and on the 26th he had stood by +Norman Hall’s open grave. + +Then a radio, just received, concerning the Parlementaries, is discussed; +among them is slated von Hintze, leading to talk of the days when I had +known him in Mexico. Count Oberndorf, too, husband of a dear and charming +friend of Dutch and American birth, was on the list, and we spoke of +Vienna as it had been—and was no more. _Sic transit_ ... though I thought +within myself, as I looked, for a flashing moment, down the vista of +history, many things return. + +It was late when two officers accompanied me to my dwelling, to the +sucking sound of boots in mud, and under a starless sky hanging dark +and heavy over a black, black earth. At last I could draw literally the +drapery of my couch about me and lie down to dreams of _my_ men in blood +and glory before Sedan. + + + + +XI + +THE RE-GALLICIZING OF ALSACE + + +_November 8th, St.-Amarin, Night._—Fancy and feeling too quickened for +sleep. If there is anything I did not see or anything I did not feel, in +and about St.-Amarin, I challenge some one of the Mission to produce it. + +This was my day, or rather half of it. At 8.45 Lieutenant Fress, +Inspector of Schools, came to fetch me, and not knowing how to be late +(alack!), I am on the stairs as he rings the bell. We pass out into a +white, rather flat November world toward the schoolhouses, everywhere the +clean odor of freshly hewn wood and sawdust hanging on the November air. + +Now the re-Gallicizing of Alsace is one of the most interesting political +operations I have ever seen, and Heaven knows I’ve seen many in many +lands. But this washing out and marking in of history on the clean slate +of childhood is different from anything else, though easier than most +things, the eye of youth glancing easily from earth to heaven and from +heaven to earth—and soft and eager the slate of its mind. + +The St.-Amarin schoolhouse is a large, solid building, its walls hung +everywhere with huge war-posters, all of those one sees in Paris and many +besides. + +The classes for the smaller children, in accordance with the traditions +of the valley, here also are in the hands of the Sisters of “The Divine +Providence,” who, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century, +opened in St.-Amarin the first school for girls. The other classes are +taught by carefully selected Alsatian teachers or by mobilized French +schoolmasters. Formerly French was the language of honor, for the +well-to-do only, but now this article, once “of luxury,” is for all the +language of their country and their heart, and pride mixes with the zeal +with which the peasants pursue _la belle langue_—not always successfully. +For in these border regions the tongue has an un-Gallic thickness; the +voice is placed far back in the throat, with a strong accent on the +tonic, nothing of the light flinging from the lips that makes the beauty +of the French language and its conquest so difficult. + +We begin with a class of small children, where a smiling, almost +exuberantly happy nun is teaching a group of little delivered darlings to +sing, “_il y avait une bergère et ron, ron, ron, petit pat à pon_”—to my +surprise, in the latest manner of Jacques Dalcroze. They evidently mean +to keep abreast of the times here in Alsace. + +While they recited I looked about. The room was large, light, and +superheated by a small, black, iron stove fiercely burning. On the wall +were maps of the Old World, and, I had almost said, of the world to come, +for new divisions of countries were indicated. Among the many posters and +in the place of honor was a big colored text, which I afterward saw in +every room, with the head-line, “_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une +paix fondée sur la parole de l’Allemagne_” (“Why one cannot make a peace +founded on the word of Germany”). + +The children were literally as good as gold. No scuffling of feet nor +restless rubbing about on the seats. I remarked this as we left the room +after listening to “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_” recited in those shrill, thin +voices, and Lieutenant Fress said, with a smile: + +“What remains of the Boche discipline makes them docile and attentive +scholars; they are often several hours in class without needing to be +reprimanded for chattering or lack of attention.” + +Later I delicately inquired about ink-throwing or “spitballs,” but it +appeared they’re unknown. + +We then betook ourselves upstairs to a class of older girls, from ten +to thirteen or thereabouts, to whom Lieutenant Fress, with the greatest +confidence, put the most difficult questions. It was a class of French +history, and he began boldly with the Druids and finished with the war of +1914. He has a gift for teaching, and was so easy with those children, +whom I should have been embarrassed, not to say terrified, to approach, +that the answers came pleasantly and quickly. When at a certain moment, +however, there was a delay, I got anxious, thinking to myself, suppose +the Sister or Lieutenant Fress were to say to the class: + +“You don’t know? Then we must ask this _aimable_ lady who has come across +the ocean to visit you. _She_ will tell us.” And of Charles the Fat, +then engaging our attention, I only remembered vaguely that he had had +a saintly wife of whom he grew tired. There were other questions, too, +about Louis of Aquitaine, which awakened only the faintest echoes in +memory, but which to my relief were answered to complete satisfaction by +a determined, dark-eyed, round-faced girl of twelve or thereabouts. + +Lieutenant Fress then asked who could recite “_La Laitière et le Pot au +Lait_.” All hands shot up, and the recitation proceeded with much _brio_. + +“What does this teach us?” he boldly asked at the end. + +At this a heavy-jawed, but very bright, near-together-eyed girl raised +her hand without a second’s hesitation, and equally without a second’s +hesitation answered: + +“To think only of the present.” As is elegantly expressed in the enemies’ +tongue, that girl wasn’t one of whom it would be said she would be “left +hanging,” except of course as regards the imponderabilities. + +Lieutenant Fress: “But is it well to think only of the present? What of +imagination, and things that may happen in the future?” + +A small, undersized girl with a deep-blue eye somewhat nervously answered: + +“In imagination one builds castles in Spain.” + +This was encouraging, but what she called _châteaux d’Espagne_ seemed +not, however, to find great favor, for a silence fell on that bright-eyed +class. + +“But isn’t that all right?” continued Lieutenant Fress, giving a fillip. +“Must we think only of the things we can see and touch?” + +At the mention of seeing and touching, hands again shot up. He indicated +a thick-haired, heavy-browed girl. + +“In thinking of the things she doesn’t see, the good housewife would +forget to cook the dinner, _et cela serait tommage_,” was the answer +coming from the deepest depths of her consciousness. + +On which we leave the schoolroom, with its extremely practical +atmosphere, the argument being unanswerable, even by Lieutenant Fress. +I could but think on that long line of peasants who have wrestled with +realities, begotten, brought forth, tilled the soil, baked the bread, +struggling all the time with their border-destiny, nature and history, +even more than their own wills, having made them what they are. It +struck me as reasonable that they should be a canny set, those little +girls. Something alert, perceptive of realities, was forming them, they +could not be over-given to dreams, for which one is both sorry and glad, +according to the way one happens to feel about human things at the +moment—and not necessarily the way they are. Even Marcus Aurelius tells +us that “if a thing displease us” (I suppose he only forgot to add, +“or if a thing please us”) “it is not that thing, but our view of that +thing.” And certainly a lot of perfectly good things are spoiled by the +point of view. + +In the next room they were having a lesson in American history, quite in +the note everywhere these days, and I know the Sister saw the hand of God +as I entered at that special moment (she was a quiet-eyed, not very young +Sister, who had trod further paths than those of learning). Then and +there I heard the tale of the Boston Tea-party, and its consequences, of +the War of the Rebellion, and the name of Lincoln, pronounced “Lancone,” +who “wanted all men to be free and equal,” sounded through the room. No +one, of course, expressed a doubt, nor ever will in schoolrooms, that men +aren’t free, neither are they equal. As for myself, I thank God nearly +every morning that some men always will be better than others, realizing +that there is more difference between man and man than between man and +beast, which truth was recalled to me but shortly by an equalitarian +friend of the New Republic—but it’s not for schools, like many other +truths. Even Saint Paul can do nothing except cry out, “Shall not the +potter have power to shape the vessel as he will, some to honor, some +to dishonor?” which again recognizes the fact of inequality without +explaining it. However, there’s no use going into that now. + +I soon found myself in a class of boys of twelve to fifteen years of age. +They were having a lesson in German, and were reading a “piece” called +“_Der arme Sepp_,” the history of whose misfortunes (he was a stable-boy, +and the horse ran away and the wagon was broken, and he was received by +his master with blows) didn’t seem to stick; for after it had been read +out no boy, in answer to Lieutenant Fress’s questions, could recount the +short and simple annals of poor Sepp. + +They weren’t nearly so bright as the girls. Dull-eyed, pimply-faced, +squeaky-voiced, they were wrestling with something that was for the time +stronger than books—the eternal _Frühlings Erwachen_, that has always +occupied philosophers and scientists—though not so much parents, who are +apt to avoid the issues involved. + +We passed finally into a class where young women were dissecting _Les +Obsèques de la Lionne_, under the guidance of a brown-bearded, one-armed +teacher in uniform. It was a small room, and you could have cut the +air with a knife. And for the mist I could scarcely see the placard +“_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une paix fondée sur la parole +d’Allemagne_” and the portraits of Clémenceau and Poincaré. + +About this time I began to understand that La Fontaine is the pillar of +the French educational system; and there is no doubt that he _did_ clear +up a lot of doubtful things, in the most liquid use of the clearest of +all languages. + +We listened here to dissertations on the falseness of courts and +courtiers, the charms of which were not touched on. How those who +frequented them learned disastrous habits of dissimulation, not to +say lying, and how ’twas better to live in obscurity (which for some +reason is always supposed to be cheerful and where nobody ever lies +perhaps because it isn’t worth while). Courts are not in favor anywhere +just now, but everybody will admit they’ve had a glorious past; and as +for democracy’s future, which the Bolsheviki and the New Freedom are +decidedly handicapping, they _may_ run it a close second. This class +was not so interesting, however, as were the children’s—discussions of +intellectual propositions by people who aren’t intellectual being an +awful bore at any time. + +Toward the end there was a horrid moment, Lieutenant Fress bearing up +with equanimity, when the over-bold teacher, interrupting the reading, +asked the meaning of the word “_apothéose_.” Dead silence. + +“_Continuez_,” he finally said, though a young woman with an immense +amount of corn-colored hair waved low about some spectacled blue eyes, +and wearing a large silver pin with the word “_Adieu_” on it, showed +signs of being about to bring forth the answer. + +They finished the fable in unison in their strong border-accent, which +seemed to get thicker and thicker as we got farther up the flights of +learning. + + _Amusez les rois par tes songes,_ + _Flattez-les, payez les d’agréables mensonges._ + _Quelque intignation dont leur cœur soit rembli,_ + _Ils goberont l’abbât, vous serez leur ami._ + +But methought it isn’t anything like what the “people” will have to +“swallow,” when everybody is free and nobody is equal. And I wondered +again at those who think to change the destinies of nations from without, +by formulas or commands, when each evolves mysteriously, mystically, +inevitably from within, out of its own particular shape and substance +and strength. Even one from over the seas, clad in the supremest power a +great nation has ever lent a mortal, though he pull the earth to pieces +in the attempt, cannot change this law of nature. “_Que direz-vous, races +futures?_” + +And time respects nothing that is done without it. + +As we came out into the square, little boys were bringing in armfuls of +wood for their schoolroom stoves, others were already noisily scampering +home for dinner in the crisp, sawdusty air; straight columns of smoke +from many chimneys evoked women standing about noonday fires; there was a +homely, human feeling about it all.... + +As I went through the school it seemed to me that the types of the +children were modified in two ways, inclining now toward the elongated +head, with pointed chin, dark hair, dark eyes, and mantling color, now +toward the round-headed, square-jawed, blond type, with full, dreamy, +blue eyes. But under these modifications one felt that there was a +persistent something that was their own, neither German nor French nor +anything else, for all the mingling; the Alsatian root and stem, with an +inalienable, peculiar life mounting in it, its very own, its race-gift. + +And this essential gift, this rich, diverse inheritance, had been +received from each point of the compass. From the south, through the +defiles of the Alps, the great Latin traditions had infiltered. From the +north and east had come Germanic thought, with its mystical reactions, +its metaphysical inclinations, its marvelous legends, and its romantic +chronicles of gods and half-gods. From the west, from Gaul, came grace +and courtesy and the deathless wish for liberty. Was ever a people more +richly endowed? Yet, how shall even such a seed grow if it never lie +quiet in the warm darkness of the earth?... + +Then I turned from the paths of learning, and went over to the very +well-kept ambulance, in charge, since several years, of the ladies from +Mulhouse, whom I had met at dinner the night before. + +And I stood by the bed of a dying negro of the Fifteenth New York +Infantry, his eyes already glazed, and thought how he was to leave the +broad valley of the Thur for that other wider Valley of the Soul, where, +it is said, we are all of one color. And I am inclined to believe it, for +the further I go, even in this life, the less real difference I find in +people; even the white, unfortunately, are extraordinarily alike about +most things; and one can but wonder why the few high differences, rather +than the low and easy likenesses, are discouraged by so many good men. + +Then I sought out the church of pink stone, passing a pink fountain +in the chestnut-planted square it fronts on, where blue-clad soldiers +were coming and going, busy about their midday meal. And, entering the +church, I thought, after commending the soul of the negro to its Maker, +of St.-Amarin, who has given his name to the broad, sweet valley and its +pleasant town. + +The chronicles have it that he erected an oratory hereabouts with his +own hands. Later when St.-Prix, the holy bishop of Auvergne, was passing +by, on his way to the court of Childeric to obtain permission to build +a church, he stopped at the oratory to rest and found its builder lying +ill of a fever. St.-Prix making the sign of the cross upon his breast, +immediately the fever falls, and Amarin finds himself bathed in a gentle +sweat. He arises, gives thanks to God, and in gratitude offers to +accompany St.-Prix to the king’s court. + +Now, some time before, St.-Prix had run afoul of a vicious, thick-souled +man named Hector, Count of Marseille. The matter being brought to court, +in the final judgment the holy bishop had been acquitted, and the wicked +Hector convicted and put to death. + +But the family of Hector was proud and vengeful and powerful (in our days +we’ve seen such), and learning that St.-Prix had set out on the journey, +sent a squad of archers and other soldiery to make away with him _en +route_. + +These came upon him, accompanied by St.-Amarin, in a village known as +Volvic. Now when Amarin saw the assassins stretching their bows, the +first thought of the natural man was to get out of harm’s way. But +St.-Prix, further advanced in sanctity and therefore more perceptive +of the invisibilities, seizing him by the arm, said to him the words, +alas! so incomprehensible to us, children of the age: “If you lose this +opportunity for martyrdom, you will perhaps never find it again!” + +At this Amarin stood his ground, though one has a feeling from the little +one knows of him that he had a natural love for life. He was the first to +be massacred, “his soul leaving his body in the company of angels.” + +The assassins, thinking their work well done, were about to depart, when +St.-Prix called to them, saying: “But I am he whom you seek. Do with me +what you will.” Whereupon one of the evil men, Radebert by name, gave him +a sword-thrust through the breast. And as he cried out the words each one +of us should ever have ready on his tongue (Heaven knows they are needed +often enough), “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do,” another +thrust caused his brains to spurt from his head. Whereupon angels were +seen again descending, and the murderers, appalled by a great light that +filled the valley, took their flight. + +Sitting quietly in the pink church of St.-Amarin (its interior is noble +of breadth and length, though not high), I thought how sweet is the +mystical gift, and that one but stingily endowed in other ways, without +houses or lands, or even learning or beauty or grace, if he have but the +inner light, draws many unto him. + +So alluring are such that kings in anguish call for them; even the +wasters of life, they know not why, sometimes seek them out; others have +been known to forget their money-making, or stop their spending, and +render themselves physically uncomfortable, trying to get at the strange +and secret gift they offer. + +For the permanent interest of life is the unseen, and neither visible +joys nor visible griefs can compete with it, nor any of the ways of the +flesh, however pleasant or however straight. + +And who would not sometimes dwell on these inner stages of the +life-journey? With joy on the first period, which is that of innocence, +passing with a sigh to the second, which is that of deviation; with +a moistening of the dry heart to the third, that of reconciliation. +Finally in humility to the fourth and last, which is that of pilgrimage, +where the soul, accepting the two great natural abhorrences, old age and +dissolution, hopeth for redemption and renewal.... + +And then I found the clock was striking twelve and I left the inner +world (alas! rarely is my stay in it long, even if no clock strikes) and +hurried to the _popote_. + + + + +XII + +THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF + + +“_Now thou art come upon a feast of death_” + +Very pleasant luncheon, after the accounting of the flesh, though not +dallied over, as Captain Perdrizet, a man (Heaven reward him; I never +can) of much _élan_ and quite a little perception of values, suggested +changing my afternoon program, which was that of calling on various +members of the high and comfortable bourgeoisie, whose “fleeting +mansions” are known to me in many lands. When I found that, instead of +basking in the comforts of this same bourgeoisie, eating their sweet and +pleasant cakes, sitting in their deep armchairs, looking at the portraits +of their ancestors, fingering their bric-à-brac and looking out at their +view, I might, if the special commander of the special sector so willed +it, make a pilgrimage to the sacramental Hartmannswillerkopf, where +fifty thousand sleep—and where others even then as we spoke were laying +themselves down, my heart was greatly quickened and my soul, after its +manner, began to burn. + +The sun was coming out between heavy showers as Captain Perdrizet and I +departed hastily for Wesserling, where the permission was to be got. Now +Wesserling rather deserves a page of its own, for many reasons, though, +having a single thought—that of the pilgrimage—I gave but a glance +at the very interesting little war-museum, stamped hastily on memory +the quite delicious emplacement of the old château, now divided into +various large and comfortable dwellings of the people on whom I was to +call, and commanding the lovely valley to the west. Captain Perdrizet, +who proved at every step to be a man of sequence as well as enthusiasm, +took me straight to Commandant de Saint-Denis. After some conversation, +which I politely didn’t catch, but which terminated by: “_Oui, si c’est +comme ça_” (I looked perhaps more reasonable than I felt with that heat +about my heart), “but I must telephone to the commandant of the sector +at Camp Wagram, and from there you must proceed with an armed escort.” +Gratefully, but with exceeding celerity, we shook the dust of the +_Kommandantur_ from our feet, and returned through the valley as far as +Willer, when we began to rise in a world of mist and breaking light, from +time to time deluged by a diamond-like shower. Up, up through hills that +one can no longer call changeless, for they are hills with their heads +nicked off, neither branch nor leaf left on the stumps that outline their +notched and shabby crests. Past batteries and gun-emplacements, embedded +in wet foliage, many of them made by American troops last summer. Deep +through a world of rusty beeches, with pine forests splashed like ink +on near hills, here and there the torch of a larch—_mélèze_, it is +called—and it is the only one of its family that grows yellow in autumn +and sheds its foliage, and doubtless kind heaven made it so, that it +might be a lamp in dark forests. There was the sound of rushing waters; +and everywhere that beauty of moving, blue, helmeted figures afoot, on +horseback, or on muleback was woven into highway and forest path, and to +mind came immortal verses, of which I changed two words: + + Know’st thou the mountain-bridge that hangs on cloud? + _Blue men_ in mist grope o’er the torrent loud. + In caves lie coiled the dragon’s ancient brood. + +For do not everywhere “in caves” great guns “lie coiled” whose “ancient +brood” are these munition-heaps spawned upon the mountain-side? + +[Illustration: AMERICAN TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY] + +[Illustration: FRENCH TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FALL OF THE +BASTILE, JULY 14TH] + +Up, still up, past a long convoy of munitions and food mounting slowly +and heavily to the sacrificial Hartmannswillerkopf, which seems like +a great altar under whose stone lie many saints—and the number of its +cemeteries is one hundred and thirteen, while God alone knows the +unnamed, unnumbered graves, and those yet to be dug. I find that rarely +do the bones of soldiers travel far, and so it should be, for what spot, +even of a father’s inheritance, is so truly his as that where he has +fallen? No litigation of man can despoil him of it, and even when he and +his deeds are forgotten it is still his. So let him lie. + +Everywhere from the forest came strong, damp odors of things fugitive +and deciduous. The violently released sap of shell-splintered and broken +trees mingled its odors with that other natural smell of falling leaf. +Lush mosses exuding still deeper, earthier odors were folded about the +broken shafts in soft, green velvet swathings. And some of these forest +wounds were new, some old and almost healed, like the human griefs of the +war. + +At a sharp turn in the road we leave the motor, passing on foot many +camouflaged dugouts, and, somewhat breathless, reach the collection of +low wooden huts known as “Camp Wagram.” Each little building has layers +of fresh pine branches on its roof, and its sides are painted in piebald +or zebra-like patterns. + +We were shown into the dugout of the commandant, commanding the 363d +Infantry, whom we found writing at a little pine table. He received us +smiling, and not surprised, our visit having been announced by telephone. +A smallish man with very attentive eyes, whose quiet exterior and strong +Burgundy accent cover, I am told, a heart of gold, together with quick +judgment and complete fearlessness. + +He gives me a military cape to replace my heavy fur coat, and we start +out to Camp Meudon, farther up, where we are presented to another +commandant who is frankly, though politely, surprised to see a woman +where no woman has been. + +A few harmless jokes about being at Meudon, yet, alas! so far from +Paris, are exchanged, after which, followed by the armed escort, we +mount through the wet, shabby forest to the very top of the Molkenrain. +There crouching in some bushes we peer out through them to the +Hartmannswillerkopf, that culminating, coveted point of the great +plateau, where men have wrestled unto death these four years past. Brown, +withered, not a tree on it left, its form is traversed only by a long +black line—the German trenches. + +Behind and on each side of “Le Hartmann,” as it is called “for short,” is +a great, misty, German plain; toward the left, in the extreme background, +is the three-crested hill of the “Hohkoenigsberg”; great flamelike +patches of cloud lay upon it, transmuting its stones and mortar into +something gorgeous and unsubstantial. To our right and beyond stretched +another great German plain, in front of which curtains of sun-shot cloud +were falling and rising. One moment villages and fields and white ribbons +of road shone, the next they would be blotted out by pillars of mist, and +others came into view. + +“If they see us, they will fire,” warned the commandant as I made an +involuntary movement to rise, when another quick diamond-like shower beat +about us. + +“But isn’t it too dark?” I asked; that world of the Hartmann sector +seemed so indistinct in shifting light and rain. + +“They’ve seen us when it was darker than this,” he answered, rather +grimly, with the expression of one remembering lost men. + +Passing to another vantage-ground of the Molkenrain, whence we could see +the Sudel, now entirely in French hands, we met a group of blue men, +emerging beautifully out of the colored mist under the silver heaven. +They were carrying hot soup to other blue men in the brown trenches of +the Hartmann. + +Standing for no uncompleted emotions as far as the Hartmann is concerned, +Captain Perdrizet stopped a glowing-eyed, red-cheeked, black-haired +Meridional stripling and told him to let me have a taste from the can he +was carrying. I drank, thinking “there are many ways of winning the war,” +from a dipper for which a trusty, much-camouflaged hand had first to hunt +in its steaming depths. As I thanked him I wondered within myself should +I wish him a quick young death or a long life and a toothless old age? As +will be seen I’m obsessed by the veterans. + +About this time Commandant Moreteaux said: “But Madame will only have +seen the Hartmann in mist and rain. Why not come a second time and lunch +with me to-morrow?” + +I looked at Captain Perdrizet, he at me, and both being, as I have +said, mortals of “first movement,” and knowing holy enthusiasm, we +accept—though I bethink me somewhat late of our chief, the commandant of +the Military Mission, who marks the shining course of my Alsatian hours, +and who might have other plans. It was “to see.” + +As we came down in the gathering gloom, over the shell-ravaged sides of +the mountain, I was conscious of a deep, in some way sweet, feeling that +I might be going to see, to _feel_, it all again. And, too, as is the way +of the heart, it seemed then somewhat to belong to me. + +I was not as one who never more will pass. + +Everywhere in the brown, wet forest pale-blue forms stood aside to make +way for us. As we reached Camp Wagram, where I re-exchanged the long, +blue military cape for my coat, great shots began to echo through the +hills, and the flare of guns illuminated the thin, dark, scraggly crests. +It was still war. Near, so near, men were breathing out their souls, to +be “scattered by winds and high, tempestuous gusts.” + +As we stood making our adieux, a radio was brought to Commandant +Moreteaux, and we heard then and there that Foch had received the German +Parlementaries, and given them seventy-two hours, from eleven o’clock +of that day, Friday, to say “Yes” or to say “No.” Nobody spoke when he +ceased reading. It seemed suddenly like the world’s end. + +And it’s a good, quick place to get one’s world-news, there in the +Hartmannswillerkopf sector! + +Then we said another and quite hasty _au revoir_, fearing night would +descend upon the valley before we could, for the motor had to go without +lights, and there was many a turn and twist at which to take a skidding +chance at fate. + +The forest got blacker and blacker, there was the sound of rushing +waters, the rattle of munition-wagons, the stamp of hoofs, and voices of +dimly outlined men whose tunics were quite white in the twilight. The +odors, too, deepened with the coming darkness. I was chilled in body and +soul, for were not they also there, those other tens of thousands, whose +beds were dug in these damp hills, mingling in some way with the living? +How close the two worlds are I never knew until this war, where death is +ever near, and sometimes sweet, and often, often young. The hoary Reaper +with his scythe has been replaced by a figure, lithe and strong, a bugle +in his hand. + +As we reached the dark valley the cannon cracked again, again the +night sky was illumined. The unnatural shapes of trees fallen one +against the other at sharp angles were black in the twilight fog; the +road was a loose, wet ribbon; more waters rushed. And who would see +the Hartmannswillerkopf in sunshine? This damp, gray, afternoon robe +of consecration, clasped with its clasp of emerald, carnelian, topaz, +amethyst, like to the clasp of a high-priest, is its true garb. And the +wide mantle of the November night was folding close over all its beauty +and its grief. + +At Bitschwiller we call on Madame Jules Scheuer. She knows irremediable +grief and bears it with a noble courage. One of her sons fell far from +her in Champagne; the other, mortally wounded on the Hartmann, was +brought down one winter night to die in her arms, and lies forever in +the sweet, broad valley of the Thur, claiming so little of his vast +inheritance.... + +To the _popote_ at eight. Six Protestant pastors had been announced to +dine with us, two of mine in the act of being convoyed through Alsace +by four of theirs. The Americans were “looking over the ground,” they +delicately informed me. I didn’t ask “what ground”; with my name it might +have sounded argumentative, which I never, never am. + +Now during these days of my Alsatian visit I had thought, at intervals, +that it might very possibly be a nuisance to have a woman always tagging +at some polite heel or other, but when I saw that six pastors could +happen to them all at once, I then and there ceased forever feeling +apologetic. I even fell to thinking that they hadn’t done so badly when +they got me. + +I can’t say that, at dinner, all went as merry as a marriage feast, +because the Americans didn’t speak French, nor the officers English, +except de Maroussem, who could but didn’t, even seeming but remotely +interested in watching them consume the plenteous repast. And as for +myself, I was too dull with fatigue and too spent with the emotions of +the Hartmann to be able to do any “paying in person.” For a time, too, +those men of my race were the strangers to me, not the blue-clad men of +the Mission. + +Suddenly, as we were unsuspectingly taking our coffee, one of the +shepherds began saying prayers over us with a drop in his voice after +each sentence, thanking God for their being there, for our being there, +for Alsace being there, and I don’t remember what else, save that it was +fairly comprehensive. After which everybody signed everybody’s menu, and +then as they were on the run through the garden of Alsace, lingering +nowhere, though scattering possibly seedless blessings everywhere, +they said good-by and went out forever into the rain. And they ought +to have thanked God for the dinner, which was a triumph, with vintage +wines served by two orderlies, under Monsieur de Maroussem’s chic though +somewhat detached eye. + +As the door closed we fell to talking as people would when six clergymen +who came all at once leave all at once, though unexpectedly one came back +for his umbrella—producing a momentary hush. + +One of mine had generously given me several boxes of cigarettes, produced +from deep, sagging pockets, and we stopped to have an “evangelical +puff” as some one called it, while I tried to explain what “nervous +prostration” is to those Frenchmen—and to explain why the largest of the +American clergymen, very nice, and looking like a lion-tamer, as some +one remarked, could have had it, and been in bed with it, for a year. +“_Chacun a sa petite misère_,” one of them said, “_mais c’est étrange, +tout de même._” + +One of the officers of the St.-Amarin _popote_, Debrix, is the image +of the famous Coligny, and so called by his comrades, but he is, it +appears, an excellent Papist, while Perdrizet, who, if he had on a suit +of mail, might have borne the banner of the Virgin, following Godefroy +de Bouillon into Jerusalem, is an equally excellent Protestant, his +family having fled to Montbéliard after the revocation of the Edict of +Nantes, and these two are continually being joked about their natural—or +unnatural—camouflage. But in these days nobody really cares, alack! +alack! what anybody believes, scarcely, alack! what anybody does, +especially if they are quiet about it and it doesn’t interfere with the +other person’s plans. And that’s why the war will be forgotten just as +soon as the newspapers stop talking about it and business looks up and +the women get new clothes, which they need. However, as the dead soldiers +will mostly be in heaven, their smiles won’t be too unkind, though their +language!—if it’s anything like what I’ve discovered they use on earth! + +I was finally convoyed home by a largish contingent of the sons of Mars. +As soon as we stepped from the door we were in ankle-deep mud; the sky, +black and flat and close, had a vaultlike heaviness, and the fog was +so clinging that I was as if wrapped in some soft, wet stuff. Monsieur +and Madame Helmer were kindly waiting up for me, but mercifully let +our good-night be short. And here I am with no more thought of sleep +than a meadow-lark at dawn, though that’s my only resemblance to the +meadow-lark, for I am tired, dead-tired, and my hair is still wet with +the mists of the Hartmann. + +And how shall one sleep who has so lately touched the fringe of the +mountain-couch where many soldiers lie? + + + + +XIII + +“LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE FREUNDSTEIN AND ITS PHANTOMS + + +_November 9th._—This morning at eight-thirty we started out, Captain +Perdrizet, Lieutenant Debrix, and I, for the famous trip along the crest +of the mountains that, on one side, hang over the valley of the Thur, and +on the other fall toward the Germanies. Having beheld with my eyes the +first and second line defenses of these crests and of the “Hartmann,” I +have come to some slight realization of how men have lived (and died) +four winters through on these weather- and shell-swept heights. + +We had to go to the very end of the shining valley before beginning the +ascent to the crests, passing Wesserling, situated so charmingly on its +eminence in the ancient moraine, commanding the valley from both ways. +Once upon a time the Château of Wesserling belonged to Prince Löwenstein, +Abbot of Murbach, the history of the great Abbey of Murbach being closely +bound up with that of these valleys, for Charlemagne gave to the first +abbot, St.-Pyrmin, the whole country of the Thur, with St.-Amarin and +Thann and all the lesser towns. In the eighteenth century the Abbey was +converted into a noble Chapter with residence, and a big new church, at +Guebwiller, now in German hands. But the Chapter had a short life there, +and probably not a gay one, and during the Revolution it was suppressed. + +The vineyards round about have been renowned since time immemorial, and +on Guebwiller’s southern slopes there is a wine celebrated even among +the most celebrated of Alsace, which enlivens without making noisy, and +inspires without depressing (evidently what the juice of the grape was +meant to do when the vine grew on the first hillsides of the world). It +is called “_Kitterle brisemollets_” (“Kitterle break your calves”), those +whom it delights evidently not journeying far, except in fancy. + +A great book could be written about the wines of Alsace, the soft, +gleaming, light-colored wines of this land of sunny slopes, which may +become even as a Mecca for pilgrims arriving “dry” from over the seas. In +fact, quite a delightful perspective opens itself out. + +From Wolxheim comes a wine, once the favorite of Napoleon, which was +always found on the imperial table. There are the wines of Rouffach, +“home town” of the husband of Madame Sans-Gêne; of Kaisersberg, known +fashionably and pertinently as “Montlibre” for a short space during the +Revolution, and by the “Rang” of Thann; Alsatians once swore, “_Que +le Rang te heurte!_” (“May the Rang strike you!”) There is, too, an +exceptional, ancient, red vintage called “_Sang des Turcs_,” whose name +recalls the twilight days of Turkish invasions and Soliman the Great. + +But the Alsatian wines are mostly made from compact bunches of little, +white, sweet grapes, with irislike colors shading them richly. The +inhabitants, holding their _pinard_ in great veneration, feel it a +sacred duty to see that it is _good_. It is called colloquially “_thé +d’Octobre_” (“October tea”) one of the officers told me, after the manner +of the famous “_purée septembrale_” (“September purée”) of Rabelais, +who, it appears, greatly appreciated the wines of these hillsides. But +they are pitiless concerning poor wines, which they call “fiddlers’ +wines,” or “_Sans-le-Sou_,” or “_gratte-gosier_” (“throat-scratcher”), +and “_grimpe-muraille_” (“wall-climber”), as he who drinks them is apt +to try that and other useless feats, instead of sitting and dreaming or +joking and being happy. These bad wines are also known collectively and +disdainfully as _vins des trois hommes_ (wines of three men) because +it appears it takes three men to accomplish the feat of drinking a +single glass—the man who supports the drinker, the man who forces the +treacherous liquid down his throat, and the third the unhappy victim. +Now the once rich soil of the ancient mellow vineyards has got thin and +stony; for the men who have grown them have been occupied with killing +these past four years, and neglect for even a season can spoil the best +and oldest vines. + +In times of peace there are many textile manufactories in these valleys, +too. After the Napoleonic wars _la main d’œuvre_ (labor) was scarce, just +as it will be after our war, workmen being brought even from India, and +to this day in the midst of modern machinery here, in the valley, there +are places where they still keep to the ancient block system of stamping +cloth, with the ritual hammer-stroke, this process giving more fadeless +and beautiful colors than any machine-stamped, aniline-dyed stuffs that +ever were. Such cloths are still called “_Indiennes_.” + +And all around here the Swedes did as tidy a bit of work as was ever +done by invading armies, the seventeenth century being for the valley a +century of ravage and desolation. In one of the books[18] Mr. Helmer gave +me last night I read that the cantons were so reduced during the Thirty +Years’ War that places like Bitschwiller could register but four adults +and eleven children, Moosch eleven adults and twenty-three children, +St.-Amarin thirteen adults and forty-four children, and so on, the chief +of their diet being acorns and roots and mice and other classic nutriment +of epochs of destruction. There were moments when the Imperials, the +Swedes, the French, and the Lorrains disputed the territory, and various +troops camped on the Hartmannswiller and descended to the valley—and +the _Roi Très Catholique_ was the ally of the Swedes, and the Abbey +and its territories were under the Holy German Empire. But whoever was +momentarily in possession, it was always disastrous for the inhabitants +of the valley—and of what the children suffered these fatal figures I +have quoted evoke some dull perception. + +As we pass the pleasant villages of Fellering and Odern and Krüt, all +shining in the radiance of a strong though intermittent sun, with here +and there scarfs of rainbow-like mists draped about them, we foolishly +mocked the weather wisdom of Mr. Helmer, who, on being asked as we +started out, if the weather would hold, had regretfully said, “No.” + +At Krüt we start to ascend the Wildenstein. Gorgeous matutinal effects +continued their prismatic play everywhere on soft and fathomless black +hills, the yellow lights on the _mélèze_ almost outshining the sun. On +one mountain-side they made a line as would some procession of pilgrims +bearing torches, and one almost thought one saw cowled heads and heard +the chanting of a “_Pilgerchor_.” + +The air we were breathing was strong yet tenuous, and I felt a great +refreshment and exhilaration. + +In these wide days of bending the hills, of folding the valleys, there +has been, as it were, some unpacking of my mind, some shaking out of my +soul, things long hidden have come to light, and the patched lining of +memory has been freshened. Almost every event has appeared, accompanied +by its secret meanings, in its relationship to secondary, generally +unapparent, significances. I have had, too, a quickened sensitiveness to +the beauty of the natural world. And can a journey do more for one than +this? + +It was a stiff mount to Huss in a sort of distilled pine fragrance, +with a continual looking back, where the billowing lightsome pink and +yellow scarfs, woven of sun and mist, were flinging themselves more and +more wastefully about the shining valleys. Near the top our motor’s +_bougies_ got clogged with oil, and a thin, white fog, now opaque, now +sun-shot, began to close in on us. We arranged the _bougies_, but there +was nothing for human hands to do about that white fog, and we found +ourselves suddenly, at a turn in the road, tightly inclosed by it, and +were seemingly alone on the heights, where the only thing that appeared +to grow and thrive were the stretches of wire entanglements, like great +patches of dried heather. Everywhere were groupings of black crosses, +with their tricolor badges, above wind-swept, fog-enveloped, sun-bathed +graves, dug on these treeless heights. + +But there, in that thin, high air, I suddenly became conscious of the +volatilization of the spirit, and knew those graves indeed for empty.... + +One last time, as we passed Camp Boussat, named after the colonel who +fell here, and looking like a mining-camp, the mist shifted, showing the +jeweled, gossamer-clad valley, and then we were again fog-locked, and +I saw its beauty no more—only brown seas of wire entanglements losing +themselves in those shrouds of cottony white, which lifted here and there +to show some detail of the strange life on the bleak crests. There were +dugouts everywhere, and very low buildings camouflaged in wood-colors and +crisscross designs. In them were men washing, men cooking, men smoking, +all in astonishment, which sometimes gave place to grins, and doubtless +pleasantries in the best Gallic manner, at the appearance of the weaker +sex on their grim, bare mountain-tops. + +We passed endless gun-emplacements, and cemented munition-depots, barely +visible through thick layers of pine branches, and near them heads would +be sticking out of what seemed mere holes in the earth. + +About this time Captain Perdrizet, whose ardent spirit had been +considerably dampened by the closing in of that thick, cold fog, began +also to fear we should be late for _déjeuner_ at Camp Wagram, from which, +it appeared, we were separated by several valleys and a few hills of the +eternal sort. The motor’s _bougies_ got clogged again (what part of its +being they are I know not); the chauffeur got moody, Captain Perdrizet +more visibly vexed, Debrix quieter and more philosophic (he is a +_littérateur_ when there’s no war, and has written a beautiful poem about +Thann); as for myself, knowing strange and enkindling things were behind +me, others doubtless before me, and that whatever happened would be +interesting, I felt myself sweetly detached from time and circumstances, +which for one of deadly punctuality is saying much. + +A peculiarity of the motor’s ailment was that it couldn’t go down as +fast as it could go up, so, a-limp, a-crawl, a-hump, we descended into +a valley packed extravagantly with that thick, unspun cotton-like +atmosphere, leaving the dead and living alike to their bare heights. At a +certain village whose name I forget (I can hear the reader saying, “Thank +God she has forgotten it, and we can perhaps get on to Camp Wagram for +lunch”)—at a certain village, however, I repeat, two ravens went across +our path, going to the left of the motor. Said Perdrizet, on taking in +the dire occurrence, his color like to the white fog and his hair and +mustache like to the raven’s, “We’ll never get there!” + +Now I am superstitious, too, and glory in it, for, though it gives me a +good deal of otherwise avoidable worry, it colors life. From time to time +friends and circumstances load me with a new one, and I go staggering +on. Two ravens crossing the road to the left _was_ a novelty, and I see +anxious days to come when motoring for engagements where one must be in +time—or one thinks one must. And superstition has nothing to do with +the processes of the brain, rather lodges itself elusively anywhere and +everywhere in one’s being. + +The two officers consulted their timepieces again, finding a trifling +and consoling difference of twenty minutes (looked at from one way). The +chauffeur’s watch didn’t go, and I never carry one. As the motor stopped +again, Perdrizet began to fidget extremely much, and to say that if it +weren’t for me he’d kill the chauffeur, and decided that we couldn’t take +in the village of Goldbach, almost entirely destroyed in this war, where +Madame Sans-Gêne first saw the light of day, and later the duke. + +However, in spite of the two ravens and the _Erdwible_,[19] or other +spirits of those forest-hills, we at last found ourselves twisting up +the road to Camp Wagram, an hour late, and we began to sound noisily +the horn of arrival. The commandant and his young captain had been long +awaiting us on their hillside. With many apologies on our part because +of the delay, and on theirs because of the fog, we went into the little, +low mess-room built of rough boards, with its heavy camouflage of fresh +pine branches on its low roof, its windows of oiled paper, and its sides +painted like a green-and-yellow tiger. + +The commandant did something to his watch as we sat down, and then +gallantly yet unblushingly remarked that it was just 12.30, but that +even _had_ we been late it would have only meant a longer anticipation +of something pleasant. My companions both gave smiles of satisfaction +for that, on the Hartmann, where men are almost entirely concerned with +killing or being killed, the commandant was living up to the French +reputation in more ways than one. I thought, too, that it was a very +happy beginning, looking well, so to speak, among the _hors d’œuvre_. +Captain Perdrizet had told me the day before that if the commandant +had to requisition every man and mule in the sector there would be an +excellent lunch. Now the very good food was accompanied by a delicious, +warm Burgundy from the commandant’s own part of the world, and at dessert +a bottle of Pommery & Greno, very cold, a souvenir of his service in +Champagne, was poured. All drank sparingly of both, after the manner +of Latins. Some asked delicately, even humbly, as one really wanting +information, concerning the rumor that the United States were “going +dry,” and wondered why it was to be. I rather wondered myself, up there +on the Hartmann, forgetful for a moment of the unpleasant things I know +about distilled liquors in the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave. + +Said the commandant, puzzled, looking at his not large glass of ruby +liquid, “_Un peu de vin en mangeant, tout de même?_ ...” (“But a little +wine at one’s meals?...”) + +Said another officer, with a quickly restrained gesture of distaste: +“_Est-ce vrai qu’il faut boire seul et debout et entre les repas en +Amérique?_” (“Is it true that one must drink alone and standing up and +between meals in America?”) + +I was saved an answer to this question, which was a fairly near picture +of some of the national customs, by the shaking, deafening sound +of an exploding shell. Those paper windows didn’t seem to mind it, +though everything on the table rattled. The commandant looked at the +captain, who disappeared, returning almost immediately to say that an +artilleryman with his horses had been killed—and the doctor, who had +started to the door, sat down again. + +A few minutes later, as we were beginning the _tournedos grillés, maître +d’hôtel_, the telephone rang, and a radio was brought in hot and given to +me for a souvenir. It was one sent by the German parlementaries saying +that as they were unable to get back to Germany by road on account of +broken bridges, they would be obliged to proceed by air, and that their +’plane would be marked by two white flames—_zwei weisse Flammen_. + +“It sounds safe, but all the same I don’t envy the officer detailed to +accompany them,” said somebody; and they all smiled and seemed glad they +weren’t in the airplane. I’ve noticed in the past two or three days that +military men are beginning to prize life again. + +I was sitting opposite the commandant, on my right was Doctor Lantieri +with four stripes on his sleeve, and on my left was young Captain de +Santis, who had met us. Curiously enough, both were of Corsican descent, +and showed it so distinctly that when some one mentioned the great +Italian bag of Austrian prisoners after the cessation of hostilities, and +how the “Tiger” had said you simply couldn’t hold them back, I got a bit +worried, though nobody else seemed to mind. + +The young captain took from his pocket a couple of proclamations dropped +by German aviators on the Hartmann yesterday—and furthermore presented me +with a large panoramic view of the Champagne sector, where he had fought. +I thought it was something rightly belonging to his family, but there was +that in his proud, Corsican gesture which forbade refusal. + + =The German People Offers Peace.= + + The new German democratic government has this programme: + + =“The will of the people is the highest law.”= + + The German people wants quickly to end the slaughter. + + The new German popular government therefore has offered an + + =Armistice= + + and has declared itself ready for + + =Peace= + + on the basis of justice and reconciliation of nations. + + It is the will of the German people that it should live in + peace with all peoples, honestly and loyally. + + What has the new German popular government done so far to put + into practice the will of the people and to prove its good and + upright intentions? + + a) The new German government has appealed to President + Wilson to bring about peace. + + =It has recognized and accepted all the principles which + President Wilson proclaimed as a basis for a general + lasting peace of justice among the nations.= + + b) The new German government has solemnly declared its + readiness to evacuate =Belgium= and to restore it. + + c) The new German government is ready to come to an honest + understanding with France about + + =Alsace-Lorraine.= + + d) The new German government has restricted the =U-boat War=. + + =No passengers steamers not carrying troops + or war material will be attacked in future.= + + e) The new German government has declared that it will + withdraw all German troops back over the German frontier. + + f)—The new German government has asked the Allied + Governments to name commissioners to agree upon the + practical measures of the evacuation of Belgium and France. + + These are the deeds of the new German popular government. Can + these be called mere words, or bluff, or propaganda? + + Who is to blame, if an armistice is not called now? + + Who is to blame if daily thousands of brave soldiers needlessly + have to shed their blood and die? + + Who is to blame, if the hitherto undestroyed towns and villages + of France and Belgium sink in ashes? + + Who is to blame, if hundreds of thousands of unhappy women and + children are driven from their homes to hunger and freeze? + + =The German people offers its hand for peace.= + +After which, being the only woman who had ever lunched in the H.W.K. +sector, I was photographed by the doctor with the four stripes. Then in a +fog thickly enfolding us, as well as the mountains, we started out with +gas-masks, compasses and pistols, plus an armed escort, toward the German +lines, for they wanted to show me the ruins of the Castle of Freundstein, +now an observation post, directly overhanging the great plain I had seen +yesterday. Much banter between the commandant and Captain Perdrizet, +their eyes very alert, as to the right road, the one that wouldn’t lead +us into the enemies’ hands. Suddenly a firing of French guns began right +over our befogged heads, with a near swish and crack, and answering +duller German guns. In the thick fog, even those men accustomed to +sensations seemed quite keyed up, and the commandant had become like some +woodsman, looking closely at the trunks of battered trees, some with old +scars, some with new, and other indications, invisible to me, along the +path. Finally, at a certain crossroad, he stopped, saying: “_That_ would +lead us straight to them. Even now a pointed casque might appear, though, +with the probable armistice in sight, they will be less venturesome.” + +I: “What would they do?” + +He: “Throw hand-grenades first and then”—he looked at the others—“there’d +be a scuffle.” + +It didn’t sound attractive, I must say, the potentialities of the fog +seeming even quite horrid, and I was entirely ready to hunt in the +opposite direction for the path to the Freundstein, which, according to +the compass, lay pleasantly due west. Dreadful, unexploded things, too, +were lying about, in new and ancient shell-holes, and there was much +careful stepping among broken tree-trunks and half-demolished barbed +wire, and I got a horrid rip in the last of my American boots. + +Here and there was a black cross, and the possibility of being underneath +one, instead of above one, if we _did_ meet a German patrol, came before +me. With all one’s poetizing or philosophizing, there _is_ a difference, +and one’s a long time dead—as I know Lieutenant Lavallée would agree. + +Suddenly the path began to rise, the commandant giving an exclamation of +relief as he saw a steep ladder almost in front of us, apparently leaning +against a wall of fog. Captain Perdrizet’s eyes began to shine again; +he’d been quite subdued, not to say cast down. + +“It’s like a scene of opera, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. And then he +proceeded up the ladder, tipped, it seemed, at an angle of forty-five +degrees the wrong way, I wondering how on earth I was to get down, +unless I fell. Then we descend from a ledge over heaps of century-old, +moss-grown mortar deep into the tower, and, passing through a long, +subterranean passage, find ourselves in a tiny, closet-like room of +ageless masonry. Stationed at an opening are two men with telephones +over their ears, binoculars, compass, and charts lying on the sill of +the opening in the masonry, which is shaped like this ⌓ and looks to +the northeast, toward the Hartmann and the Sudel, and other consecrated +heights, as well as the great, covered German plain—whose contours were +more impenetrably veiled than its future. I had had a feeling, crouching +in the wet bushes the day before, gazing out on its wide splendors in +shifting sun and shower, that I would look no more upon it, nor upon the +little, worn, brown crest of the Hartmann, cut by the black line of the +German trenches, running through the naked wilderness of branchless +trees—though I had not known why. + +When we had blithely retraced our steps to the highroad, cracking many +uncomplicated jokes, pleasing largely because we felt that kindness +toward the universe so distinctive of the front, when no actual killing +is going on, we suddenly encountered, almost bumping into them, two +swearing, sweating, heavily laden _poilus_, who had got lost in the +fog looking for their detachment. On seeing us they threw down their +accoutrement on a wet bank and expressions strong and classic began to +cut the air. A sergeant, risen up from somewhere at the unmistakable +sounds, ran toward them, calling and gesticulating wildly. But, wiping +their brows, they continued. They had taken the last step they were +going to on that so-and-so and so-and-so mountain, and if they found +their detachment or not they _enfiché’d_ themselves, only they didn’t +use this elegant word to express their sentiments. The sergeant got more +excited, and cried, “_Espèces de types_” and.... At this the commandant, +foreseeing that the artillery exchange might get too loud for feminine +ears, said to the biggest one (both were enormous), seeing his number: +“You are looking for Camp Meudon, _mon ami_. It’s farther up; in an hour +you are there. Follow the path up and always to the right.” + +On which, like lambs, they who had sworn not to move from that spot till +the hill crumbled shouldered their accoutrement, thanked Perdrizet in +the best French manner for the cigarettes he gave them, and disappeared +quickly, the strains of “Madelon” being loudly borne back to us on the +fog. + +“_Ce sont des enfants_” (“They are children”), said the commandant, with +his kind smile, “and _good_ children.” + +And that was the last word I heard concerning the war and “_les enfants +de la Patrie_” on the Hartmann, for the hour of farewells had come. + +And how deep was the mutual well-wishing enfolding that moment those who +have seen peace breaking over the graves of the Hartmann, as I and they +saw it, alone can know. + +As we parted, they taking a higher path, disappearing almost immediately +in the fog, and we the lower road back to the motor, I suddenly +understood, too, the new look one sees in all men’s faces. Everywhere it +is the same. It is that of men who have been ready to die, to “separate +from the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of living,” but who +suddenly know they need not die, at least not now—nor _that_ way. + +Coming down the heavily shrouded mountain-slope as quickly as possible, +to be in time for my adieux to St.-Amarin before hastening over to +Masevaux that same evening, Captain Perdrizet told me the legend of +the “Phantoms of Freundstein.” I was then at a point of fatigue where +present emotions were no longer possible, and time works such wonders +that the most tragic tale of Freundstein, the Rock of Friends, was even +as a poultice. And I could still be interested in hearing that to this +very day there is a proverb, “_Er isch vom Freundstein_” (“He is from +Freundstein”), which, said of a man, means so hospitable is he that his +house belongs to his friends. And the legend runs after this fashion: + +The last of the lords of Freundstein, Count Jerome, had a beautiful +daughter, Christine by name, whom he adored, and whom he took with him +everywhere, even to the chase, for which purpose a gorgeous litter had +been made wherein she might rest. The Lord of Geroldseck, passing by one +day, saw her as she lay asleep. Struck by her loveliness, he swore then +and there that he would make her his. + +Soon after he proceeded to Freundstein to ask her hand in marriage, but +she answered that it was useless, as her heart already belonged to a +certain very noble cavalier of Thann. Her father gave the same answer. +One night a great noise was heard before the gates of Freundstein; it was +the Lord of Geroldseck come with his vassals to take the castle and its +lovely young châtelaine by assault. Freundstein resisted for three days. +Then, seeing it was in vain, Christine and her father took final refuge +in the high tower whose ruins rise above the chamber where we found the +men with the telephones strapped to their ears. There had once been a +sloping stairway in the tower, so broad that a horseman might ascend it. +Up this road the Lord of Geroldseck pursued them. Arrived at the top, +he was about to seize the girl, but her father, taking her in his arms, +leaped with her into space. The gesture that Geroldseck made to retain +her whom he loved caused him to lose his own balance, and he, too, fell +and was killed. And their ghosts forever haunt the spot, and the echo, +no matter what words are cried to the hills, always gives back the last, +despairing call of Geroldseck: + + “_Je t’aurai, je t’aurai, je t’aurai._”[20] + + + + +XIV + +RETURN TO MASEVAUX + + +_November 9th._—I was received so warmly by the amiable Demoiselles +Braun, who had my room ready for me; so kindly by Captain Bernard, who +came a moment afterward to tell me he would call for me at seven-fifteen; +so dearly by Laferrière, who also called for me, that I felt I had +indeed got “home.” As we were walking along to the _popote_ Captain +Tirman joined us in the darkness and told us that Bavaria had proclaimed +itself a republic, and that there was news (military news by radio) of +the abdication of the Kaiser. Somebody cried, “_Demain, de quoi demain +sera-t-il fait?_” as we entered the house where the little cat, the +forgetful, unabashed little cat, who but three short days before had done +such well-nigh disastrous things to my fur coat, also awaited me. + +Again a charming dinner, conversation about that first August of the +war, the retreat from Mons, of Charleroi, and many, many other places; +of forced marches and aching feet; of fatigue and hunger and thirst, +now packed away gloriously in memory, though sometimes the strange look +appeared on their faces as they talked. Stories were told of those who +had gone to “_faire un bridge à Limoges_”[21] and remained there, and +of others, like Mangin, who had come back, Mangin, the booty of whose +glorious Tenth Army now overflows the Place de la Concorde. And of Foch +who had _nearly_ gone there. And of the immense glory hanging over each +and every battlefield, for, though black crosses were evoked, each was +entwined with colors too bright for human eyes. And then we turned our +thoughts from _tempus lachrymarum_ to the New Day, in whose sun, though +not like to the brightness of those fallen, we all shine. The _long_ +destiny is heavy and dark beside the light, bright way of heroes, and +never did one realize till now how truly the gods love those whom they +snatch young. We, after all, as one of the officers remarked, will die in +our beds or by accident—and is it so desirable? + +Then Sérin told his oft-repeated, but now dearly loved, story of “_Bravo, +Capitano_,” of the _Capitano_ who thanked the Madonna for the thirteen +trenches and the sea of barbed wire between himself and the enemy, but +which I won’t tell. And Captain Antoni told the story of the wounded +Boche who was given the _Croix de Guerre_, and how the French general +said, as he entered the hospital ward: + +“Are these the brave men who so valiantly held their position on +the twenty-fourth? With inexpressible pleasure I give each one his +well-merited _Croix de Guerre_,” and then proceeded down the line of +beds. On Number 33 was lying a man with closely bandaged head, only one +gleaming eye visible, and the _Croix de Guerre_ was pinned also on his +valiant breast, and if it was removed by the Angel of Death or by orders +of the colonel I forget. Neither is it recorded if the German smiled. + +And I told of the swift passing of the autos, mine and the commandant’s, +on the dark hills of the Route Joffre, when I was coming back from +St.-Amarin and he going there. How sadly I had seen its kind lights +rise along the heights and disappear, and there had been no friendly +handclasp on the hills, nor words of thanks from me in the dim light of +the blurred Pleiades and the young, half-veiled, white moon. + +After dinner some one hazarded the word “bridge,” but there must have +been that in my eye making for solitude rather than companionship, for +the next thing I heard from some Frenchman, perceptive as to woman’s +looks, was: + +“_Madame est sans doute bien fatiguée et nous jouerons demain._” + +And soon I was stumbling home on one or two or three blue-sleeved arms, +in the inky darkness of a starless and moonless Masevaux. + +I had found St.-Amarin charming, and I left with deep regret, but at +Masevaux I was experiencing the sensation, very agreeable, I must say, of +one who, having wandered, returns to his or her first love; and any one +who has done it will know exactly how I felt, and I don’t have to tell +them. As for those who have never returned, they wouldn’t understand if I +did explain. + + + + +XV + +THE VIGIL OF THE ARMISTICE + + +“_The Star is fall’n and Time is at his period_” + +_November 11th, 1 A.M._—At ten-thirty Captain Tirman came back to the +_popote_ where we were playing bridge—Sérin, Laferrière, Toussaint, and +I. He was very pale, but there was something shining about his face. + +“_Ça y est, l’armistice._” + +Dead silence; we don’t even drop our cards. In his excitement a very +naughty soldier’s word escapes him. He turns away in consternation, +and the others, somewhat appalled, too, at last drop their cards. I +try not to smile. General recovery; they hope I didn’t catch it. It +was sufficient, however, to break that strange feeling of _absence_ of +feeling that each one of us was experiencing. + +“_Alors c’est fini, la guerre_,” some one finally said in a dazed way, +and with the words the cruel thing seemed to drop heavily from us, as +would some hideous, exhausting burden. + +Toussaint, with his far look of one who loves forests, very strongly +marked, said, “To think that it has found us like this playing bridge at +the _popote_!” + +Sérin: “I’ll not go to bed to-night.” + +I: “Oh, my friends!” and then nothing more—my knees suddenly as if broken. + +Laferrière (very quietly, after a pause): “I cannot but think of those +who are not here.” And his words evoked great shining bands of the +dear young, pressed closely, one against the other, out of their flesh, +crowding the heavens. + +Then Sérin, again with his _bon sourire d’enfant_, “_Il faut boire_.” + +A bottle of _Asti spumante_ is produced by Laferrière, who in a dreamy +way remembers that he is _chef de popote_. The stock of champagne is +exhausted. Nearly every day, and sometimes twice a day for the past week, +have not the radios, plucked out of the air by the commandant, plus the +beauteous _communiqués_, necessitated the opening of bottles even unto +the last? + +Sérin, as we drink, all of us paralyzed by the sudden cessation of the +world-horror, tells how one of his gendarmes would keep referring to the +armistice as “_la Mistie_,” in two words, and we drink to _la Mistie_. +But in spite of the too, too simple joke, how still, yet stern was each +one’s heart! + +About this time Toussaint seizes from the stove the marble “hunk” (it’s +the only word for it), “_Amor condusse noi_,” and makes as if to throw it +at the dead and gone Oberforster’s clock, stopped, as I said, some four +years ago at 12.25. + +Sérin again, with his most childlike expression: “_La Paix a éclaté!_ +Peace has broken out, and I will break out worse than peace if I don’t do +something!” + +As I have said, Masevaux at that hour—it had got to be eleven o’clock—was +as lustrous as an ink-pot, and all being still the prey of a strange +paralysis of feeling, nobody suggested anything. + +Peace, lovely, precious peace, dreamed of, desired through years of +anguish, so _redly_ bought in money of the heart’s blood, was ours! Those +crowding hosts gone out into the “dateless night” seemed suddenly to +return, the only moving things on a stunned earth. They had not renounced +in vain the dear clothing of the flesh. + +But how could we understand in one moment the immensity of what had +happened? Never have I felt myself so small, so almost non-existent—an +insect that had fortuitously _not_ been crushed. But the soul’s great +converging point _was_ reached. The war was done and won. Men need no +longer kill each other by the tens of thousands, nor need women by the +millions, because of it, weep. + +We touched glasses again, but quietly, oh so quietly! + +Some one sighs and no one speaks. After a while Toussaint, standing by +the stove, again fingers “_Amor noi condusse_,” but it is taken out of +his hands by one of the officers. Then Sérin suggests waking up the +curé, getting the keys of the church, and ringing the bells. Tirman, +in authority in the absence of the commandant, still at St.-Amarin, is +gripped by that conservatism known to each and every one in command at +great moments, and becomes cautious, even suspicious. + +“_Mais non, c’est peut-être tout de même une blague. Attendons jusqu’à +demain._” (He has quite recovered from his naughty word.) + +Some one insists, “But Headquarters wouldn’t joke about a thing like +that.” + +Tirman, however, sits down at the piano, breaks out into the “Beautiful +Blue Danube” and refuses to have the bells rung. + +Sérin: “But what can one do here at Masevaux, black as the ace of spades +and everybody snoring! _A Paris, il y aurait moyen de fêter même si c’est +une blague!_” + +I: “You are ready for anything.” + +He: “_Et comment!_” With a light in his straightforward _good_ soldier’s +eye, and somewhat as a child longing for the impossible, “Just think of +them in Paris, the restaurants full, _et des femmes sentant bon_!”[22] + +Then four dazed officers accompanied by a dazed lady proceeded to awaken +the postmaster from his slumbers. That heroic expression of rejoicing +accomplished, we groped our way to the Place du Chapitre. In one of +the _chanoinesse_ houses Captain Bernard also dwells. Sometimes he has +headaches on account of his wound, and to-night he had left us early to +go home. On his not answering, some one hazarded the remark, “Perhaps +he isn’t there” (Heaven knows there’s nowhere else to be but where one +belongs, at Masevaux!), and it proved, indeed, to be pure defamation, for +after a while he appeared at his window, or rather one heard him saying: +“What’s the matter? I was sleeping the sleep of the just.” + +“_Ça y est, l’armistice_,” some one cried out. + +Then that man, who had been through every campaign and would forever wear +“Verdun” stamped on his brow, made no answer. + +And the night was dark, dark, the lovely moon too young to wait up, even +for peace. We stumbled across the roughly paved square to my dwelling, +and there we clasped hands with a strange, new clasp, and I, the woman +and the American, wanted to say something, anything, but I had only +begun, “_Mes chers amis_,” when I felt my voice break. I turned quickly +and went in. What need to speak? Hearts lay open that night. + +_2 A.M._—Have been reading to quiet the heavily throbbing nerves. Picked +out of the bookcase an hour ago _L’Histoire des Elèves de St.-Clément, +Metz_, 1871. The names Gravelotte, St.-Privat, Malmaison, Sedan, confuse +themselves in my mind with Ypres, Verdun, with Belleau Woods, with +St.-Mihiel, Suippes, Eparges. I remember being told that in a terraced +cemetery at St.-Mihiel three thousand Germans sleep. Though friend or +foe, this night I see them all arisen, standing each one by his grave, +clad in horizon-blue, khaki—or field-gray, all those who at some word +of command had left the “pleasant habit of living, the sweet fable of +existence,” and I whispered in great need of consolation, “I know that my +Redeemer liveth and at the last day we shall rise.” + +_3 A.M._—And how shall sleep come, lovely sleep, desired like the +morning? I slept not that night of the 3d of August which held the whole +war in its darkness, and now with the youth of the world lying in “the +grave’s quiet consummation,” shall I sleep? + +Then slowly I became conscious of emanations from a giant, near people +in defeat, not knowing what new thing to will, casting off the old +fidelities, which once had given them the horn of human plenty. Thrones +were shaking; “when _peoples_ rage, _kings_ must weep”; a world was to be +remade out of empty places and blood.... I remembered how a poet[23] had +cried out, as a prophet, after that other war: + + _Ton peuple vivra,_ + _Mais ton empire penche, Allemagne!..._ + +And then I fell to thinking on love, I know not why, unless it was for +the millions of lovers taken so suddenly from the world, or because of +those yet left. How shall I say? But I knew that there were three things, +not two—the lover, the beloved, and love. And of this last and separate +thing one can have, in extremely sensitive states, impersonal cognizance, +when for some reason (again what know I?) fancy has been set free, +imagination stirred, and they go flinging themselves, not so much about +the personal as about the common destiny. For a moment, so brief that it +was gone even as it came, my soul caught the light that hangs over dear, +persistent, far, illusory hills of fancy and inclination, and felt the +mysterious break of feeling on the dim, shadowy lake of the heart. Vague, +beaming forms passed along its shores, dissolving, lambent outlines, +awakening desire for all the beauty of the wide earth, for things not in +my personal destiny, and which, if they were to be, would be no better +than that which is, not even so good. It was the greed of the human +heart.... + +And I cried out from my many-times-turned pillow, “O Life, O Love, O +Death, O too, too fragile illusion of existence!” + +_4 A.M._—A soft, rich-toned bell is striking. A cold breath comes in at +the window, a cock crows. There is the first sound of the click of sabots +across the square; the Day of Peace is about to break over the world. +But here in the bed of the young deserter from the German ranks, dead in +Champagne, the war still has me in its arms and presses me close to its +cold, oozing breast. The familiar odor of drying blood comes to me. Old +groans strike on my ear. Those who, dying, are not dead crowd about me, +and the “blue-black cloud” envelops me. I am weary unto dissolution. And +Sleep, darling Sleep—not even a brush of your wings against me! + +In this early morning, in the “little hour before dawn,” the grief of the +world sits tight about my heart—the icy hurt for things dead and gone, +and the heaviness of those who awaken to a world empty of what was once +the heart’s concern and desire. + +Old distastes, too, press on me, old distastes, I say, not hates. How +hate any one like unto myself, hurrying along the night-path to the +grave, mutual, frightened possessors of a shadowy, urgent immortality? + +For these last few years I have entered, as it were, into some knowledge +of charity, not that I like everybody, but I have come to realize that +the distaste is often in myself and not due to some fault or lesser +excellence in others. Truly in this whole journey I have encountered but +two whom in an idle, hazy way I did not like; one was of an amorphic +species and the other had judgments too violent, and at the same time too +conventional and platitudinous, to permit interest. But even of these I +shall ultimately think with indulgence. + +_5 A.M._—Closed the book recording the deeds of those young, long, long +fallen of St.-Clément’s school, and I pass to thinking how the word now +on the lips of the world is freedom. + +But is not the deepest wish of the human heart for love which is never +free, but always in bond to that which is its hope and its desire? And I +cried out concerning freedom what once in the world’s greatest hour was +cried out concerning truth, “What is it?” and begged that it might show +its true form and aspect, above all to one who, invested with incredible +power by a great people, would seem to hold even the lightnings in his +hand. + +More sabots click across the square, and a pale light sifts in at the top +of the curtains. It’s the eighth day of Creation. Innumerable men have +stood (and so near me) their last night through in the trenches.... + +Yesterday with its happenings seems a thousand years ago. I had motored +with Laferrière to lunch at Dannemarie across a rich plain, through +Morzwiller, where Alan Seeger spent a week with the Foreign Legion, and +spun who knows which of his young and gorgeous fancies? + +Now, as then, the long street of Morzwiller was crowded with a highly +colored, exotic regiment, and we were stopped a moment by a detachment +passing. In front of the red-roofed, cream-colored inn, with its +yellowing grapevine clinging close and flat, a young officer in the +strong, mustard-tinted khaki and red _checchia_ of the Moroccans was +getting off his horse, a blooded, white, long-tailed beast of Araby; on +his breast was a blaze of decorations and there was something implacable +in his young glance as he looked about, and something very straight in +his mien—a man who had been at his enemy’s very throat, or drawn the +sucking bayonet out all red. Two or three men of his regiment, wearing +also their crimson _checchias_, were sitting at a table drinking a +light-yellow wine. A woman came out, emptied a pail, called to a cat. A +very young girl behind her made a slight sign to one of the men sitting +at the table. In another minute we had passed on. + +Everywhere in the rich fields were great brown stretches of barbed-wire +entanglements, repeating the rusty tones of the beech forests which +fringe them. I asked Laferrière what would become of those thousands upon +thousands of kilometers of barbed wire. He answered indifferently, as one +does of things past, “Little by little the peasants will use the poles +for their kitchen fires and the wire for their hedges.” + +And we continue through that flat yellow and green and brown world to +Dannemarie, one of the “territories” of the reconquered triangle, drawing +up before some sort of government building, known to German and to French +administrators, in and out of which American soldiers are now passing. +I ask one of them where their officers are quartered, thinking to pay +my respects after lunch. There is a vagueness as he asks of a passing +comrade, “Say, ’ain’t we got a major somewhere here?” The flooding +Americanism of my soul is for a moment stemmed; then we go over to the +_popote_, where we are to lunch with Lieutenant Ditandy, in charge at +Dannemarie. Laferrière, always ready to praise his comrades, tells me +that he is possessed of much energy, good sense, and decision (rather in +our American way, I found later) and the “territory” has flourished under +him. + +Pleasant lunch, enlivened by some last German salvos, which shook the +windows and caused the glasses on the table to ring. Much and easy +conversation—as we ate the classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut, boiled +potatoes, and pork, and the equally classic pancakes—mostly about +the irrealizable and irreconcilable dreams of small and penniless +nations, springing up like poor and unthrifty relations at the day of +inheritance. And how amusing, even, the adjustments might become, once +the blood-letting had ceased, though everybody felt more or less of a +pricking in the thumbs at the thought of _l’après-guerre_. One could not +then foresee that the movement of the Peace Conference would be about +as rapid as that of the notoriously timeless glacier. Nor was it given +to prophets to foretell the exceeding glitter of its generalities, nor +how those same small nations, without a cent in their pockets, some +even without pockets, like the Zulus and Hottentots, would multiply a +hundredfold in its dewy shade. The metaphors are mixed, though not more +so than the theme, and unfortunately it _won’t_ “be all the same in a +hundred years,” everything having been taken into account except the +future. + +After lunch we start out in the motor driven by the swift yet careful +chauffeur, accompanied by a doctor _à deux galons_, who speaks English +very well, but doesn’t understand a word I say—and my English is +generally intelligible, though perhaps one wouldn’t know right away if I +came from England or the United States. + +We passed the high, broken, pink viaduct of the railway, looking, against +the near Swiss hills, like a bit of aqueduct in the Roman Campagna, +though without any beauty of light. It had been destroyed the first days +of the war, rebuilt, again destroyed, and then abandoned. + +We were running straight toward the trenches, through that green and gold +and brown autumn world, the road screened by wire netting interwoven with +pine branches and broom, and there were kilometers of cloth screening, +too, torn and flapping. The lines are but a few yards distant, and +everywhere between us and them are the brown lakes of barbed wire. + +At St.-Léger an infantry band is playing the terrible, the gentle, the +dolorous, the gorgeous, the human, the superhuman “_Sambre et Meuse_,” +which will forever evoke those seventeen hundred thousand sons of France +who to its beat marched to their death. We stop to listen. A veteran +of 1870 (no village seems to be complete without one or more) comes +out, his green-and-yellow ribbon in his rusty buttonhole, and gives +Lieutenant Ditandy a toothless, palsied salute. Black-clad women are +grouped about the blue-clad band, under a great yellow chestnut tree. The +mustard-tinted khaki and red _checchias_ of a passing Moroccan regiment +give a last deep accent to the color of the scene. And for a long way our +road runs like this: + +[Illustration] + +We continue swiftly through villages shot to bits and deserted save for +the troops, _Quatrième Zouaves mixtes_, they mostly are, quartered within +their crumbling walls. There are tattered cloth screens for camouflage +hung across the streets, as electioneering signs would be hung, or the +banners of festivities and welcome. Open-mouthed, the soldiers see the +auto pass where for two years no wheeled thing has rolled. If men went +there they slipped silently behind the screens and under cover of night, +with food and munitions or carrying wounded men. + +As for me, I begin to feel like a cross between Joan of Arc and Madame +Poincaré. + +Lieutenant Ditandy points out “_le Bec de Canard_,” the duck’s bill, a +long tongue of Swiss territory that juts in comfortingly between the +French and German lines, and is greatly beloved by everybody. + +On the outskirts of the battered village of Seppois we pause; a few more +turns of the wheel and we would be in full sight of the German lines. I +make good my woman’s reputation for lack of sense of responsibility and +beg to proceed. Lieutenant Ditandy, however, caps daring by a somewhat +belated prudence (there is something bold and hard in his eye when it’s +turned toward the enemy), saying: + +“We ought not to be here; as it is, our safe return depends on whether a +German officer sees us and, seeing us, thinks he might as well turn the +mitrailleuses on. The first man to be killed in the war was killed near +here—it would be too stupid to be the last.” + +Laferrière: “Not to speak of the incident it would create, and if the +colonel sees us—well, the prison at Seppois isn’t inviting.” So we turned +toward the Swiss frontier instead, and I thought deeply, sweetly on her +so dear, so near, as I looked toward these hills enfolding her, the best +loved of my heart. + +Then we turned another way, passing again through Seppois. Arab troops +are quartered there, and we were held up by the sentinel, who wanted +to see our papers. He was dark of color, delicate of hand, straight of +nose, and wore his military coat buttoned by one of its top buttons in +such a way that it fell with an effect of burnous. He couldn’t read +French characters, so he called to another thin, small-handed, straight, +coffee-colored man, who might have been his twin, who couldn’t read them, +either, and finally they both threw up their slender hands, resembling +those of some antique bronze of an adolescent, after which we passed +on. And I told Sérin’s story of the Arab guard who held him up one dark +night, in the trenches, but generously gave him the countersign, saying +to him, “_Si tu ne dis pas tire-lire, tu ne passes pas!_” (“You can’t +pass unless you say tire-lire!”) + +They’re cold, these Arabs, they’re gray with cold, and they don’t know +why they fight, nor whom, but they follow their officer to the death, +and, if he falls, lose heart under these gray skies with which Allah +seems only remotely connected. + +And then we turned back and went through young woods where countless +thousands, no, millions of shells were piled on shelflike receptacles, +as one would pile bottles of wine on cellar shelves. Everywhere were the +words “_Route interdite_,” “_Défense de passer_,” and we passed, until +we came to Faverois, with its old, old church on the top of a tiny hill, +over which the town spilled. The broad, low steps of the church were +made of ancient tomb slabs, and, stooping, I saw, on one of them, half +obliterated, “_in pace_,” and “16—.” + +There was much that was unspoiled, or more likely forgotten, in the +interior. A suave-expressioned St.-Sebastian, with dimpled limbs, so +evidently unfit for the arrows that transfixed them, and something +yearning and earthly about his eyes, was above the Louis XV altar; quite +unmistakably he was of the gay century. In another niche was an unknown +saint, dressed like a personage of opera; three plumes were on his head +and he wore a golden shirt of mail and high, fringed boots. At the +side-altars were charming, very pure models of angels, and bow-knots and +shells (I mean, for once, _sea_-shells). As we came out we noticed that +the roof of the church was painted a silver-white and that of the old +house nearby, with the round tower, was painted the same way, and other +houses, too, and when we asked why they told us it shone like crystal at +night and was to warn airplanes of their nearness to the Swiss frontier. + +A blue group of _poilus_ was standing on the crest of the street, looking +at a newspaper. One cried out in a loud voice, “_Guillaume a ——_,” only +one can’t write the word. And going up we saw the news of the Kaiser’s +abdication in letters quite American in size. + +Then in a very understandable zeal that I should miss nothing, the doctor +_à deux galons_, espying a khaki figure, said, “There comes an American,” +and I saw approaching a blond, round-faced young man with spectacles. +Something leaped within me as I turned to him. But he answered me in the +stiffest German accent possible, “Ja, pig news”; and when I said, “Yes, +we’ve won the war!” he answered, “Well, I do t’ink we god ’um shust now.” +Unreasonably, the thing that had leaped within me lay down. I said, +“Good-by.” He said, “So long.” And so much for American meeting American +on the hill of the village of Faverois. + +Laferrière had marched all through this country, _sac-au-dos_, and in one +place he buried a comrade, and in another he knew hunger and thirst, and +in another he had watched the day break after a night battle. There is a +history to Faverois, too, but I don’t know it, and it’s just as well, +for I would be sure to tell it in this long vigil, and I _must_ finish +with the war. + +Back to Dannemarie, the chauffeur driving like the wind, and Lieutenant +Ditandy finds out where the American officers have their headquarters. +There is a battalion[24] attached to the Seventh French Army. I am +conducted over a muddy street, past two classic dung-heaps, the kind so +evidently handed down from father to son, and go up some dark backstairs, +and there Colonel Wing and Major Griffiths are rung up by an orderly. +I give my name, and they all know of me. In a moment appear, young and +slim and untried and eager, the colonel and the major, glad to see an +American woman in Dannemarie. And then they took me to their more than +simple quarters out through another door and another court, where there +was the usual mud, but only the scent of a vanished dung-heap. How many +good American dollars they had “planked down” for this priceless compound +I know not. After a while we walked back to the motor waiting in the +square, and I presented them to the French officers. One of them said he +had been at Plattsburg with my husband that first historic summer, and +spoke of General Wood, whose aide he had then been, saying, with a flush, +“He is the greatest man in the United States, as well as the greatest +general,” and there in the square of Dannemarie I thought, “_Magna est +veritas_,” and then, “Too late, too late.” + +On our way home, not far out of the town, we come across a group of +Americans and French colonials standing by the road. Lying on the +embankment was a young man with a fractured skull, his face deathly pale, +except for the contusions, already swollen and blue. His hair was matted +with blood and his red _checchia_ lay in the ditch. The stern young +officer of the many decorations (there were three rows of them) that I +had seen descending at the inn at Morzwiller, was there, on his beautiful +mare, and he held the halter of another very good beast, the one that +had just unhorsed his rider. We got out and the young man was placed +carefully in our motor to be taken to the hospital at Dannemarie, after +which we started to walk back to Masevaux—about thirty kilometers. In +war-time you don’t wonder “can you do it,” you just start out; sometimes +you get there alive, sometimes you don’t. This turned out all right, for +shortly after our motor, which had met an ambulance, came back for us. + +[Illustration: AMERICA AND ALSACE] + +And then we found ourselves passing through a sunset-world, cut by a +bar of level light, so strangely thick where it touched the golden +earth that it was almost like a ledge or a wall over which we looked +into wind-still, purple forests, and above us, like the tarnished gilt +ceiling of a temple, was the pale, amber sky. We talked somewhat of hope, +somewhat of life, from which the red thing had so suddenly gone, as +they alone can talk who have laid their heads close against the cruel, +beautiful, full breast of war. + +As we drove into the Place du Chapitre a delicate white moon, seen +through the nearly bare lindens, was hanging in a deepening sky, close +above the soft, dark roofs of the houses of the _chanoinesses_. There was +no breath of wind. No cannon sounded. One’s heart, too, I found, was very +still. Millions of men waited face to face in dark lines, and that same +moon touched their bayonets, their helmets, and their drinking-cups. The +sun had set upon the last day of the World War.... + +The maid who brings my breakfast as I lie half dead, but not asleep, +after the burning, consuming night, opens my blinds. + +French and American flags are flying from many windows. Something wets +my eyes. Then—if in my flesh or out of it I know not—I see a strange +brightness filling the Place du Chapitre, and a further glory bathes my +being in such sweet and cooling waters that I again am strong to pass, +with the Sons of Victory, into the New Day. + +In the old house are sounds of feet running to and fro. From our windows +also blue and white and red flags are being hung. In the street are +heard, “_Ça y est_,” and “_L’armistice est signé_.” + + + + +XVI + +DIES GLORIÆ + + +“_O Eastern Star! Peace, peace!_” + +And I arose and went to the church where there was a great ceremony, for +it was the feast of St.-Martin, patron of Masevaux, as well as the end of +the war.... + +Afterward I stood outside on the wide rose-gray steps, under a sky of +matchless silver-blue, among groups of villagers, soldiers, and officers. +A blue infantry band, grouped under that blue vault against the pink +church, played the “Marseillaise” and “_Sambre et Meuse_,” with a great +blare of trumpets, quickening the heart-beats, then “The Star-Spangled +Banner,” and many eyes were wet with tears of hope and loneliness. + +Amid the throng I noticed some new silhouettes, always in groups. They +were those of husky young men in civilian holiday garb; flat, black +hats, short, black jackets coming only to the waist, long, tight, black +trousers, pink vests, and high, white collars. These young men, who +looked no one straight in the eye, were strange-souled ones who had +burned with no fever of combat; the lamp of no cause had shone before +their faces; they had known no country for whom ’twas sweet and fitting +to die. Free not to serve in the French army, out of reach of the German +authorities, they had passed from adolescence to manhood during the +World War unsplashed by blood. And they will be a generation apart. +Even as they appeared on the day of victory in groups, apart. Later, in +tribulation of maturity, in weakness of old age and fear of death, they +may sigh that they were not among those who “dying are not dead,” and +would exchange the worn drapery of their couches for the “blue-black +cloud.” And those who have not known a hot youth will know a cold old age. + +A motor was standing under the lindens of the Place du Chapitre and by +it a black-bearded, giant chauffeur who might have been among the hosts +of Louis le Débonnaire on the Field of Lies. I got in with Laferrière +and he took me up on a hillside, and from the height showed me a last +time the kingdoms and principalities into which his race had come. The +plain shone in a blue and exceeding beauty; we ourselves were caught +in a glistening web of air shot with color by the low-arching November +sun. Marking the course of the great river was a line of mist shimmering +in the same warm-tinted sun of Indian summer. “_L’été de St.-Martin_” +indeed. Here and there villages shone brighter than day, and the hills +were deep-colored, yet soft and unsubstantial. Victory, like a shining, +soft-rolled ball whose tangles were hidden, was in our hands—or like to a +crystal sphere as yet undarkened by events. + +The grass of our hillside was dew-wet in the sun, white and frosty in the +shade. Each fallen, rust-colored beech leaf, each scarlet cherry leaf, +was set with something glittering. All, all was a-shine. Even the heart, +too, after the dark years. + +I cried within myself, though I might have said it aloud, “O beauty of +life, why art thou so often hidden?” And I had in mind the eternal years, +though the newborn hour of victory was so passing sweet upon the hillside. + +And looking at the splendid river whose course was marked by the shining +band of mist, I thought how deep the Lorelei was hidden in its timeless +waters, though ’tis said she betrays but once those listening to her +song. And long since, for the noise of battle, the hypnotic chanting of +the Rhine-maidens lulling their nation to dreams of boundless might had +not been heard. I thought, too, how the blood of the world’s armies had +put out the circle of fire about Brünnhilde, though whence it was first +kindled it may be again rekindled; and for all our dead—and theirs—in +the middle of Europe there are, I know not how many, tens of millions +to whom the fire-music is their light and heat, the river the symbol of +their strength; and what to do with it all? Walhalla has been destroyed +in the greatest roar of sound mortal ears have ever heard, but that +which wrought its pillars and its walls is still there, and in other +wide-doored mansions Wotan’s warriors may drink again deep cups of +hydromel. + +Siegfried lies dead upon his bier, but Brünnhilde’s candle throws a +light upon his face, and though Loge seems no longer at his post, it +is believed he waits somewhere unseen, protecting, as best he may, the +Walkyries’ unquiet sleep, until they wake and ride again, crying, “_Je +ho, je te ho!_” inciting to battle and to sacrifice. + +And as nations always have the governments their mystical qualities +create, in spite of the great defeat in the West and the solvent forces +in the East, I thought, “Is anything really changed in Germany of that +which makes each nation like only unto itself?” Old things may take new +names, but, the blood-madness past, they will walk again the banks of +their great river—listen once again to the Rhine-maidens, and Lorelei, +combing her hair, will sing once more for them, while the wonder-working +music that has so scorched us will draw again its circle. And the German +people may be more portentous in defeat than when their armies were +spilling over Europe—only, one who says this too soon will be stoned and +one who thinks it not at all be deceived. + +Then from some distant church tower softly sounded the first noontide of +peace, and, turning, I left the Germanies to their predestined fate. “He +beheld and melted the nations,” and truly of them may be said “_Glück und +Unglück wird Gesang_.” + +For to each one his own, and the power of rhythmic sound over the world’s +will can no more be separated from that nation’s destinies than can +certain inborn qualities of the French be separated from theirs. That +pervading sense of style, that illuminating, stimulating art, their +conversation, that incomparable arrangement of words, their prose; or, +in the mystical realm, that bright and singular thing they denominate +“_la Gloire_,” which one of my countrywomen[25] has written of in golden +words, and that other peculiar and essential translation into habit and +custom of the word “_honneur_,” and many more deathless qualities that +make France what she is and not something else.... + +Then I found myself following Laferrière over another diamond-set path +of rustling autumn leaves, and we got into the motor and went down the +hill into the beflagged and crowded town, drawn so brightly, yet so +transiently, out of its antique obscurity. + +At the _popote_ many guests were assembled, among them three men of the +Anglo-Saxon race, come to eat in Masevaux the first-fruits of victory, +and later, not so very much later, perhaps that very night, they were to +tell of it to the world, each seeming to have, as it were, the end of a +telegraph wire cuddled in his pocket by his stylographic pen. + +Many, I knew not who they were, came in after lunch to salute the +commandant, whose house and heart were wide open that day. Black-robed, +tremulous women, youngish officers with very lined faces on which, +over night-loss and night-grief, was written something at once soft +and shining and eager; but, with all the coming and going, a strange +new quiet pervaded everything. Noise had, for a time, gone from the +border-world. + +Afterward we were taken up to see the room once lived in by Anna, +the wife, or rather widow, of the Oberforster. In it was the most +extraordinary piece of furniture, designed to occupy two sides of a +corner, that I have ever seen. It was a divan, a narrow, hard divan, at +right angles with itself and upholstered in mauve rep. Above the narrow +seat and reaching nearly to the ceiling was a series of mirrors set in +woodwork like many panes of glass, the mirror parts too high to see +oneself in. On the floor near it was a hard, tasseled cushion of old-gold +satin on which I am sure no foot had ever rested, for it seemed rather +to belong to the dread family of bric-à-brac. On the divan was a small, +woolen-lace cushion bearing the words “_nur ein Viertelstündchen_” in +shaded silks. + +Voluptuous the divan was not, neither was it respectable, nor +comfortable, nor practical, nor anything natural to a divan, but it +doubtless represented some dim longing of the soul of her who bought and +installed it, some formless inclination toward beauty, out of the daily +round of the good housewife; perhaps even a “soul storm,” after the Ibsen +manner, had so externalized itself. Who knows, or ever will know, or +cares? + +The wide bed was of the newest and horridest of _art nouveau_, and over +it was a spread of many pieces of coffee-colored machine-made lace put +together with colored wools. There was a writing-table near the window +at which you couldn’t write, for all the writing space was taken up with +little drawers or tiny jutting-out shelves, and an imitation bronze +vase, holding some faded artificial roses, was built into it, where +the hand would naturally slip along when writing. Over it, between the +windows, hung an illuminated verse, “_Allein soll ich denn reisen? die +Heimat ist so schön._” From the Oberforster’s album some one took and +presented to me a photograph of Anna, which I couldn’t connect with +that room, a rather sharp-nosed, mild-eyed woman whose head was leaning +against her husband’s head. And the husband is one among millions +of husbands who lie in their graves, for whom the pleasant habit of +existence is no more. + +Downstairs on their upright piano, in the corner of the dining-room, are +those high piles of music of the masters, and much of it is arranged for +four hands. + +In the afternoon a great weariness came upon me, and the light of victory +seemed to pale, but I knew that it was only within myself, because of the +long vigil in which I had burned both oil and wick. I stood listening +for a while to the military bands in the Halle aux Blés and the Place du +Marché, but the gorgeous fanfare of the trumpets reached me only dully, +as from a great distance. + +Then many little boys, after the eternal manner of little boys, began to +set off firecrackers, and the sudden noises hurt my ears. + +I went to my room, but was too wearied to compose myself to rest, and +soon came out, chilly and wandering. The sun had set upon the square and +something cold had began to come up from the earth; I seemed to have +finished both joy and mourning. I thought that perhaps forever I would be +alone, unable to partake of the world’s gladness. + +I could not remember, in that afternoon ebb of vitality, that with +the evening hours would come rushing in the tide of nervous strength, +bringing again warmth to my heart, light to my spirit, and that +buoyantly I would be treading the _Via Triumphalis_ of this borderland. + +A little later in a blue twilight, bluer close to the earth where those +many Sons of Victory pressed, I walked out with Laferrière past the +ancient, evocative Ringelstein, along the Doller, and we called on a very +charming woman who had also seen the war of 1870—Madame Caillaux. She +gave us a perfect cup of tea and was flanked by no veteran, and she, the +portion of whose youth and age had been war, was calm with the pleasant +calm of those who harmoniously have sewed together the ends of life. + +When we came out a pale white moon had arisen over some black cedars +planted near the door, and as we walked slowly back, saluted by blue-clad +men, or standing aside to let munition-wagons rattle by, Laferrière told +me of some of the glorious deeds of his comrades of the _popote_, though +no word of himself. + +In the Place du Chapitre the populace was already gathered about the +fountain of the stone flame. It was like looking at an old print, +recording old victories and old rejoicings, together with the eternal +hope of the people that new victories, unlike the old, may mean new +things for them. + +I felt through my single being the surge of the generations, and against +my hand the beat of the changeless human heart, forever quickened or +retarded by the same things. Loving, hating, desiring, forgetting, and +finally relinquishing its beat, because it must. Though I remembered that +in all times there are men who prefer something else to life.... + +In the evening Madame Mény gave a great dinner for the officers of the +Mission, to which I was also bidden. Madame Mény is the daughter of +Madame Chagué and lives next door to her mother in an ancestral home +with high, sloping roof and deep windows, giving on the Place du Marché, +overlooking the fountain, which I can’t see from my window. The officers +wore all their decorations and even gloves, and I felt as a wren might +feel among the birds of paradise, and I wished again that I had brought +a good dress and something sparkling for my breast. When dinner was half +through came Captain Bacquart from Paris, belated on that Belfort train, +still at its old tricks. He was slightly condescending, as one might be +coming from the City of Light to the dusky provinces, but everything +he had to tell, even the things he had heard in the greatest solemnity +from Ministers of State, had been grabbed by the Mission out of the air +before he left Paris, and in addition everybody knew a lot of things +he didn’t know, that had happened while he was on the way. But we did +smile at the story of the routing out of a station-master, whose trust +was train-schedules and lost articles rather than events, to be asked +whether he knew if the armistice had been signed, by the species every +station-master hates even in peace-times—that is to say, travelers—and +“_Saperlotte!_” and “_Nom de Dieu!_” rose to the station vault when he +found that _that_ was what they wanted him for! + +After dinner there was music and for a last time I heard Lavallée sing of +“_la douce Annette_.” Then another officer whom I had not seen before, +Lieutenant Ruchez, sang in a veiled but flooding voice many of Schumann’s +songs. It began by the commandant asking for the “Two Grenadiers,” and +for a time the old wounds ceased to burn, even though we thought of those +many whose prayer had been “Bury me in the earth of France.” On that +night of victory he sang, too, in his musician’s voice, “_Du meine Seele, +du mein Herz_,” and “_Ich grölle nicht wenn auch das Herz mir bricht_,” +and nobody found it strange. They knew how for all time lovers will +tremble at the words, “_Ewig verlor’ nes Lieb_,” or in ecstasy cry out, +“_Du meine Seele, du mein Herz_,” to the impulse of the immortal music. + +Afterward we sang the “Marseillaise” with further and deeper thought of +those hosts who to its sound had gone up to a death of glory. + +Then M. Mény opened more champagne and each one drained a last time the +red-gold hanap of victory. + +And many, many shades haunt these borderlands, the clash of spear on +armor mingling with the roar of 75’s and 420’s. + +When we came out midnight was striking. The ancient square was dark and +still where all the evening distorted forms had gesticulated in the flare +of torches, crying of victory and, too, of freedom, the word I scarcely +dare breathe, so strange and terrible may be its meaning.... Though what +shall more deeply move us than the hope that the unborn inclination of +our soul toward love in freedom shall find its being and its breath?... + +The commandant and his staff accompanied me a last time across the +starless, moonless square to my dwelling, where there was a close +handclasping of friends in victory, for had I not been caught up in the +apotheosis of the Mission? I felt for a moment, as I stood on the broad +steps, like a figure in the background of some great allegorical painting. + +For these men, as for me, the “moving finger having writ, was moving on.” +Soon they would go from the hillside to the plain they had so long looked +down upon. And the scroll of their history there is tightly rolled, nor +can any man say what is written on it. + +But this they knew, and with a point of sadness, that their work of +intimate companionship, of trust, of hope and dolor shared in the valleys +of St.-Amarin, Masevaux, and Dannemarie was already in the past. And all +endings are sad, even those of victory. + +The next morning, in a pale, chill, shifting fog, through which I had +glimpses of _camions_ full of shivering, velvet-bodiced, black-bowed +children _en route_ for the Belfort train to Paris, and huddled veterans +bound the same way, I passed forever from Masevaux, as a wind that goeth +and returneth not. + + +THE END + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +[1] Permission. + +[2] “We’ll get them,” and “we’ve got them.” + +[3] _Prisonnier de Guerre_ (Prisoner of War). + +[4] NOTE.—As far back as the end of the sixteenth century, there is, in +the annals of Masevaux, mention of the tanneries of the Braun family. + +[5] Officers’ mess. + +[6] + + And the forgetful trooper + Who lets the hour pass + And dallies too long, alas! + Will be punished by his under-officer. + +[7] The word “ballon” comes from the patois, _bolong_, _bois long_, which +took its name from the great forest, “La Selva Vosagus,” once covering +the Alsatian plain and its mountains. + +[8] + + Like to the hawk + That on auroral clouds + Doth rest his velvet wings, + Looking for prey, + So hovers my song. + +[9] Hilaire Belloc, _The Road to Rome_. + +[10] A letter from Laferrière of November 20th, recounting national +events, and the breaking up of the little group, says also: “_La +cafetière, la fameuse cafetière a une large felure qui fait craindre sa +fin prochaine. Ce serait un symbole?_” + +[11] In spite of the Tower (Turenne was a La Tour d’Auvergne) the Roses +will bloom. + +[12] After the signing of the armistice and the French occupation of the +two provinces in their entirety, another reorganization became necessary. +To each of the three divisions of Alsace-Lorraine was sent a _Commissaire +de la République_—the Commandant (I had almost said my Commandant) +Poulet was given charge of Upper Alsace with residence in the ancient +and comely town of Colmar. To Lower Alsace with residence at Strasbourg +was appointed M. le Conseiller d’Etat Maringer with the title of High +Commissioner, and to M. Mirman, the celebrated Mayor of Nancy, was given +Lorraine with residence at Metz. + +[13] Edouard Schuré, _L’Alsace Française, Rêves et Combats_. + +[14] AMERICAN COMMUNIQUÉS + + _Tuesday morning._ + +This morning the First Army resumed the attack. In spite of desperate +opposition our troops have forced a crossing of the Meuse at Brieulles +and at Cléry-le-Petit. They are now developing a new line in the heavily +wooded and very difficult terrain on the heights east of the river +between these two points. + +On the entire front the enemy is opposing our advance with heavy +artillery and machine-gun fire, notwithstanding which we are making +excellent progress. The west bank of the Meuse, as far north as opposite +Pouilly, lies in our hands. + +In the course of several successful raids in the Voivre, detachments +of the Second Army have penetrated the enemy’s trenches, destroying +material, dugouts, and emplacements, and capturing prisoners. + + _Tuesday evening._ + +The First Army under Lieut.-Gen. Liggett has continued its success. +Crossing the river south of Dun-sur-Meuse under a heavy artillery fire +which frequently wrecked the new constructed bridges, the troops of +Maj.-Gen. Hines’s Corps fought their way up the slopes of the east bank. + +Breaking the enemy’s strong resistance, they captured Hills 292, 260, +Liny-devant-Dun, and drove him from the Bois de Châtillon. + +During the afternoon our gains in this sector were extended northward; +Dun-sur-Meuse was captured and our line pushed forward a mile beyond +that town, as far as the village of Nièlly. The troops of Maj.-Gen. +Sunmerall’s Corps reached the river at Cesse and Luzy and mopped up the +forest of Jaulnay. + +The important road center of Beaumont fell before our victorious forces, +who pushed on to the Bois de l’Hospice, two miles north of that town, +capturing in their advance the village of Létanne. + +At Beaumont we liberated five hundred French citizens, who welcomed our +soldiers as deliverers. + +The advance of the past two days has carried our line to points within +five miles of the Sedan-Metz railroad, the main line of communications of +the German armies. Between Beaumont and Bar Maj.-Gen. Dickman’s Corps, +in close liaison with the French Fourth Army on its left, pushed forward +under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire through the rugged forest +areas beyond Stonne. + +The villages of Yoncq, La Basace, and Stonne were taken. + +We have taken to-day west of the Meuse 51 additional guns, making a total +of more than 150 since November 1st. + +Thirty of our bombing planes executed a successful raid on Mouzon +and Raucourt this morning, dropping over two tons of bombs with good +effect. Reconnaissance and pursuit squadrons carried out many successful +missions, machine-gunning enemy troops and greatly assisting the advance +of our troops. + +Seventeen enemy planes were shot down and two enemy balloons burned. +Seven of our planes are missing. + +[15] And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet, +the place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where +the Barbarian may be feared no more.—ST. AUGUSTINE, _Upon the Barbarian +Persecution_. + +[16] “S’Strassburger Münster isch s’höschet, s’Friburgers’ dickscht, aver +S’Thanner s’fienecht.” + +[17] Some of the jokes that were Hansi’s undoing were exceedingly +harmless, as, for instance, the domestic revelations of Frau Professor +Kugelberg, who answers to the correspondence column the following: “No, +I never throw away the old trousers of my husband. I have had great +success with cutting them skilfully and employing the least worn parts, +in constructing for my young daughters charming and dainty corset-covers, +which have the merit also of being very inexpensive. Trimmed with white +ribbons, these corset-covers have quite a virginal air, but also with +apple-green and cherry-red bows they can be made most attractive.” As for +“Professor Knatschke” he is now a classic. The Alsatians have, in a very +marked degree, what one might call the wit of border peoples, the tongue +often being the only weapon left them. + +[18] Gilles Sifferlen, _La Vallée de St.-Amarin_, 1908. + +[19] Fairies: kindred to the “green people” of Ireland. + +[20] “I will have thee, I will have thee, I will have thee.” + +[21] “To play bridge at Limoges” means that an officer is temporarily—or +permanently—retired before the age limit. “_Être limogé_,” to be limoged, +is another familiar form. + +[22] The next morning I learned that Sérin, who had been “ready for +anything, _et comment_,” had gathered together, being chief of the +Gendarme Service, those of his men who were watching over the slumbers of +Masevaux and quite simply “opened wine” for them, drinking solemnly again +to “_la Mistie_,” while they as solemnly drank to the health of their +respected chief. So do great hours fulfil themselves in little ways. + +[23] Victor Hugo, _Alsace et Lorraine_, 1872. + + Thy people will live, + But thine empire topples, Germany!... + +[24] Battery B, 42d Artillery C.A.C. + +[25] Edith Wharton. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75745 *** |