CHAPTER XIII

SOME TYPES OF VICE

A variety of human vices : The red wine of Algeria : Shum-Shum : If there were no wine

It was always a marvel to me that neither cards nor dice played the slightest part in the life of the Legion, in sharp contrast with the important part they take in the life of the English Tommy, and especially of the American soldier, who is an incorrigible gambler. On a little station in Texas a detachment of sly old regulars in the course of the single night that they were quartered there cleaned out all the cowboys of the neighbourhood. I was one of the victims. But that's another story…. Anyhow, the Legion is free from the vice of gambling. This is perhaps hardly to be wondered at; five centimes wages. The possibility of winning or losing five centimes is hardly worth a throw of the dice.

In its place all the vices of almost every nation in the world can be found in the Foreign Legion. This is not saying too much; I've looked on.

Vicious influences are, however, much stronger in Indo-China and in French Tonquin, where the garrisons of the various stations are all drawn from the Legion. Veterans like Smith used to tell me things about the life in Tonquin that almost made my hair stand on end. In the inland districts the stations are quite small, and a few légionnaires have to look after a large number of natives. The entire system of justice on such a station, including the power of life and death, lies in the hands of a couple of young officers and a few sergeants and corporals. Surrounded by all possible human vices in their very worst forms, to whose influence the deadly monotony inevitable on one of these stations is added, the men live exposed to constant danger occasioned both by the intrigues among the natives and the murderous climate. The one seeks relief in spirits, the other swears by opium. The fact that opium-smoking plays an important part in the life of the French Navy and among the French Army officers in the Colonies has been made public often enough already: every veteran in the Legion knows well enough that in Toulon and Marseilles there are countless opium dens which depend solely on the custom of French officers. These opium dens were thoroughly discussed in the French press during the trial of the midshipman Ullmo.

The habit of opium-smoking has, in nearly all cases, been acquired in Indo-China. Spirits, opium, and loneliness form the fruitful soil in which the Legion's vice takes root. In solitary cases even the officers come under its influence. When this happens the results are sometimes very terrible….

Among the garrisons of Indo-China the most notorious used to be those of Sui-can and Bac-le. A certain Lieutenant Duchesne, who was later killed in battle, many say by his own men, and the fact that the bullet hit him in the back goes to prove the truth of this statement, has made his name immortal in the Legion in this connection. Though he has been dead several years, one still hears of his cruelty. His légionnaires were all forced to submit themselves to his vicious freaks, resistance being punished with the penal section, which is ten times worse in Tonquin than those in Algeria. The obedient, however, were promoted.

Even to-day the same sort of thing can be found here and there in Indo-China. There are always stories like this to be heard in the Legion, adjutants and sous-officiers being freely named who are said to owe their promotion to the vicious preference of some officer or other. A good deal is perhaps spiteful gossip, but the stories are so frequent, and the details given are so minute, that there must be a certain amount of truth in them.

In addition to these outside influences, a further cause of depravity is the involuntary celibacy to which the légionnaire is subjected. And this celibacy has its origin in a financial consideration: the five centimes per day.

… One always comes back again to the same point from which one started.

Whoever really knows the Foreign Legion, whoever takes the trouble to probe the depths of its misery and sin, of its brutality and vice, always comes back, like a man walking in a circle, to the same source of all its ills: the pitiful wage that's not worth calling a wage which this business enterprise pays: this infamous business enterprise that a chivalrous nation has so long tolerated and tolerates still.

All human vices are to be found in the Legion. And first among the minor ones comes drunkenness. This takes the first place, occurring most frequently and being the most characteristic and easily indulged, in a country where the price of a litre of heavy wine varies between ten and twenty centimes.

"The man who has troubles, drinks"—Algerian wine, or in Indo-China a horrible spirit, which is distilled, I believe, from rice and which rejoices in the name of "Shum-Shum," and has the advantage of an uncommonly high percentage of alcohol. It has only one drawback, and that is its infernal smell, which delicate European noses cannot stand. The légionnaire, however, drinks it: while drinking he holds his nose, since he hardly values its aroma as he does its alcohol. I have often heard old légionnaires singing the praises of Shum-Shum. One could get accustomed to its smell, they said, and it made one very, very drunk.

The droll verses of the old German humourist, Wilhelm Busch, with their subtle point, might have been written for the Legion. How they drank in the canteen of the Foreign Legion in Sidi-bel-Abbès. The litre—a litre of wine—took the place of the current coinage. Thus it was nothing unusual for a légionnaire, when asked to wash for a comrade well endowed with this world's goods, to raise one finger: that meant, of course, a litre.

"If we hadn't wine…." I shall never forget Smith's pet expression.

There are no statistics on this point. I am, however, quite certain that a good half of the miserable wages paid to the Foreign Legion are spent in purchasing the red wine of Algiers. In addition to this, nine-tenths, nay ninety-nine-hundredths of the notes and postal orders which the légionnaires are continuously sent by anxious parents and relations in Europe go to swell the coffers of Madame la Cantinière.

This is in no sense an accusation. When one considers the life of the soldier of the Legion with understanding, one recognises that no one in the world has more cares than he, no one a better right to his few hours of oblivion. Yes, the African légionnaire has a hard life, and drunkenness in his case is really almost excusable. I only want to show what a prominent rôle the red wine of Algeria does play in the life of the Legion. It is, it is true, the most general vice, but it is the only means of obtaining a few moments of bliss, and the sole source of pleasure.

Wine is the cause of a great many punishments. Drunkenness is a "sale offense," to use the soldier's expression, a dishonourable offence that is severely punished, and which continually furnishes the penal section with new material.

As an instance of this I will give you the story of a man in my company, a Belgian named Lascelles. At regular intervals he got a postal order for a small sum sent him from some relative in Europe. On receiving his money, he vanished as soon as he came off duty and did not come back to the barracks again for at least twenty-four hours. As long as his coppers lasted, he used to go from wine-shop to wine-shop and empty bottle after bottle. On his return he would be immediately locked up for overstaying his leave of absence; generally, however, to celebrate the event he had made a great disturbance, and committed a series of more or less grave offences, for each of which he was punished singly. Every month the time he spent in prison grew longer and longer, beginning with a trifling eight days and increasing to a month's solitary confinement. In between whiles, Lascelles was a capital soldier, who did his work willingly enough. When, however, his name was read out at roll-call—a postal order for Lascelles—one could be sure that a day later would find him in prison once more. In a few months he had worked his way up the regimental scale of punishments, and then came the inevitable end and he was sent off to the penal section.

Lascelles' misfortunes were at any rate his own fault. It often happens, however, that spiteful sergeants in the Legion take advantage of a man's love of drink to work his ruin.

A sergeant has a spite against a man and waits patiently for the day when he comes into the barracks in a state of intoxication. He then follows him to his quarters and gives him some order or other. The man feels how needless and spiteful this is, and, being hardly in a condition to think of danger, answers with a curse. This is just what is wanted. Even when the man is sober enough to do what he has been ordered, he is severely punished for his curse. Should he continue to be "insubordinate" he comes before the court-martial.

This is a very old trick in the Legion, and only recruits or very old légionnaires under the influence of drink and suffering at the same time from the cafard are caught by it. The average légionnaire is careful, and, drunk or sober, obeys every order no matter how furious he may be. "Nix Zephyrs pour moi," he says.

"Ah yes, there is another side to the proverb, 'If there were no wine….'"

Every vice was represented there. The most brutal egotism and boundless avarice ruled that hard life. One grudged one's comrade a crust of bread, a sip of wine, or a piece of meat. The man who had a few shillings sent him was an object of hate and envy.

Intrigue—slander—lying—theft—the Legion brings all the bad points in a man's character to full development.

Whose fault is it?

CHAPTER XIV

MY ESCAPE

In the Arab prison : The letter : Days of suffering : Flight! : The greedy "Crédit Lyonnais" : Haggling in the Ghetto : The palm grove as a dressing-room : On the railway track : Arab policemen : Horrible minutes : Travelling to Oran : Small preparations : On the steamer St. Augustine : Marseilles-Ventimiglia : Free

The days came and the days went, and with every day I understood more what it meant to be a légionnaire in Africa.

The knowledge so gained was not pleasant.

One day I was on guard in the Arab prison of Sidi-bel-Abbès, an ugly, gloomy building in the middle of the town. An old retired sergeant of the Legion was overseer of the Arab prison, and with the help of two gendarmes kept the Arab prisoners in strictest order. The prison was always crowded with native sinners, for the petty thefts in the market-place and the constant fights in the negro quarter kept the cells of that grey building near the Place Sadi Carnot always full. The native prisoners had often made trouble, and mutinies had been quite frequent. The last outbreak had been very serious, so since that time the Legion had sent a guard every day to the Arab prison consisting of a corporal and six men.

My rifle with fixed bayonet over my shoulder, I kept pacing slowly on the top of the broad wall surrounding the prison in an enormous square. The sun burned down pitilessly. In the tiny courtyard small groups of Arab prisoners cowered in the sulky silence of inactivity. All talking was forbidden in the prison. The overseer's sharp words of command now and then, and the ring of my steps on the stones of the wall, sounded into the silence. Mechanically I followed the path prescribed for "sentry-go," marching round and round the prison square.

From the high wall I had a view of all Sidi-bel-Abbès. The town was like a city of the dead in this frightful heat. The blinds in all the houses were pulled down and there was not a soul to be seen in the streets. In the hot, trembling air the faint outlines of the mountains of Thessala glittered in the far distance. There was not a breath of wind.

Two légionnaires in white fatigue uniforms turned into the street leading to the prison. They were men from our company, bringing us our evening soup. They called out something to me that I could not understand and I acknowledged it with an indifferent nod. Then they knocked at the gate of the prison and had to wait an age till the overseer opened it with his jingling bunch of keys and they could carry their soup-pail into the guard-room. Some minutes later one of them came into the yard by the guard-room and beckoned to me to come nearer to him. As I approached, I saw that he held a white something in his hand.

"Eh, une lettre pour toi!" he cried. "Here's a letter for you."

Very much annoyed I called down to him to hurry up and get out of this. It was too hot for practical jokes. I never got letters….

"But here is one," said the man. "Your name, your company, your number—everything all right! La la—I'm off—I'll give your letter to the corporal. May Allah better your bad temper! Sapristi, how hot it is!"

I had to wait half an hour until I was relieved. Those were terrible minutes. A letter—a letter for me? It seemed almost impossible. There was nobody in the world who could or should know where I was or what I was doing. The blood rose in hot waves to my head—and all at once I recognised that there was only one human being who could have written to me—that her love was not dead.

Slowly the seconds, the minutes went by. I waited in indescribable suspense. The sun was sinking. The houses of Sidi-bel-Abbès were bathed in its ruddy glow. Below me in the prison yard I heard a noisy chattering in guttural Arabic. The prisoners were being given their food and were then allowed to speak. The poor devils' chatter seemed to pierce my brain; that buzzing noise down below hurt me, until I could not stand it any longer.

"Be quiet there!" I cried.

There was immediate silence. A gendarme called out to me that I had made a mistake and that talking was allowed. "Pas defendu de parler," he said to the prisoners, and the Arabs looked up at me with angry eyes.

And I had to go on waiting, waiting….

This awful suspense seemed to have lasted for hours when the corporal at last came to relieve me. The conventionality of passing orders and sentry instructions was being gone through; we were on service and it was contrary to all discipline—but I could not wait any longer.

"You've a letter for me, corporal?" I asked.

"Yes, there is a letter for you," he answered. "You can have it as soon as I have done relieving the sentries. En avant—marche!"

A new period of anxious waiting and torturing expectation…. At last the corporal of the guard came back and put his hand in his pocket:

"Voilà!"

On the white envelope I saw the characters of the handwriting I knew so well. I went out into the square which was now empty, as the prisoners had been locked up in their cells again. I read and read—again and again….

Love stretched out its hand to the lost soldier of the Legion and spoke to him of happiness to come. Long years hence when the légionnaire would be no longer a légionnaire. The letter's many pages bore traces of tears. I wanted to tear off my uniform, that brand of slavery condemning me to inactivity. Within me all was in a whirl. In the darkness of the ugly court I dreamed dreams of the past and hopes of the future so hopelessly far off. During the four hours from watch to watch I sat motionless in the prison-yard.

In these few hours there came to me that energy which meant the beginning of a new life. Then it was my turn for sentry duty again. And then I sat down at the small table in the guard-room while the corporal and the other men slept, and wrote an endless letter with the corporal's pencil on the back of report forms. Page upon page….

The next day a letter from my mother came; a letter that neither asked questions nor held reproaches. It only spoke of love and anxiety for me. This letter solved the riddle of how my whereabouts had been discovered. After long months of waiting and wondering the people who loved me got the idea that I might be in the Foreign Legion, since the last letter they received from me had been dated from the French fortress, Belfort. My mother wrote to the general in command of the fortress and to the French Secretary of War. The answer was long delayed, but at last the news came that I had joined the Foreign Legion at Sidi-bel-Abbès—that I was the légionnaire number 17889!

With that hour in the Arab prison which brought me the first letter, the days of suffering began. I performed my duty and did my work like a machine, thinking of nothing but the letters which the next post would bring me. I hardly spoke a word to anybody in those times. When I was off duty I went for long walks in the still paths by the fortifications in order to be alone. Finally only one idea governed my thoughts: Flight!

Week after week I received letters every day, begging and beseeching me to have patience. I was to remember that all hopes for the future would be shattered if I was caught deserting. Better to wait for years than to risk everything. But I could not wait. And one day there came a registered letter from my mother. When I opened it, I held banknotes for a large sum of money in my hand….

This meant freedom! I crossed the court of the barracks as one in a dream. This money in my pocket meant new life for me—my mother had for the second time given me life. I knew what a sacrifice this money meant; how hard it must have been for my mother with her tiny widow's pension to scrape together such a sum of money for me. And all at once a wave of happiness overcame me—I should be free! I should be able to thank those loving ones who were helping me….

I got that letter at five o'clock in the afternoon. I was just off duty and had come back to the barracks, having been pulling out weeds in the Legion's cemetery. That should be my last bit of work as légionnaire.

Not a single hour I intended to wait. There was no more rest for me in the land of Sidi-bel-Abbès. In our quarters my comrades were sitting at supper as I came back from the regimental post-bureau, and Smith was much surprised at my eating nothing, and at my putting on at once my extra uniform. He looked suspiciously at me, as if he had an idea that I had something out of the way on my mind. I would have been only too glad to say a last good-bye to the old bugler who had been a true friend to me in his rough way, but he was sitting at table with the rest of the men. When I had finished dressing and had quietly taken my letters and the few trifles I wanted to take with me out of my knapsack, Smith came up and lay down on his bed as usual after supper.

"Good-bye, old man," I whispered. "You've been a good fellow."

Smith did not move. Only his eyes lighted up….

"Got money?" he asked gently.

"Yes."

"Then it's all right. Good-bye, sonny—good-bye!"

As I went out the other men were sitting on the benches doing the various odd jobs which were part of life in the Legion. They rubbed and polished—polished and rubbed. At that time they were hardly more to me than a passer-by in the street. Now, I confess, the face of every one of them is indelibly burnt into my brain.

I was to be subjected to a final annoyance.

The sergeant of the guard stopped me at the gate of the barracks, because in my excitement I had buttoned up my overcoat on the wrong side. He said he had a good mind to turn me back for my carelessness.

"Nom de Dieu! you pig, don't you know that this month the overcoats are buttoned on the right side?"

But he let me go. Through the crowd of légionnaires I hurried down the promenade. The first place I had to go to was the "Crédit Lyonnais," the famous French bank which had a branch in Sidi-bel-Abbès near the Place Sadi Carnot. The greater part of my money consisted of Belgian banknotes, which naturally were not in circulation in Algeria, and I thought I should be able to have them changed at the bank more quickly and cheaply than anywhere else. There I made a mistake. The clerk at the counter explained in a roundabout way that Belgian banknotes were of no use to them, and that it would cost a lot of money to send them to Paris. He was only greedy, of course (everybody in Sidi-bel-Abbès is), and trying to get an especially high commission out of me. Perhaps he thought that a légionnaire should be too pleased at having so much money to bother about a few francs more or less. There he was in error. I replied I should complain to the colonel of my regiment that the only bank in Sidi-bel-Abbès tried to overcharge a simple soldier. Whereupon this greedy clerk of a world-famous bank grumblingly took my notes and gave me French money for them.

Through the brightly illuminated main streets, saluting officers right and left, I hurried to the Ghetto. In the very first alley of the Ghetto I met an old fellow who looked promising. I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Eh! Civilian clothes?"

The Jew raised his forefinger warningly.

"Can't sell to légionnaires."

I turned on my heels and went slowly on. But he was after me already.

"How much?"

"Twenty francs."

"Fifty!"

"Thirty."

"Forty-five!"

"Look here," I said. (The conversation was held in bad Algerian French, of course.) "I'll give you forty francs, and that settles it. But I've got to have those clothes quick."

The Jew looked at me dubiously, and held out the palms of his hands. One could not be mistaken about the gesture: he had his doubts about my solvency. So I reassured the old man by showing him a few gold pieces. Now the son of Israel was quite satisfied, and led me a few steps farther on into a house. A tiny little lamp was smoking in a foul-smelling room.

"Sarah!" called out my companion.

An old woman came hobbling out of a neighbouring room, and when she heard what was wanted went off and fetched a heap of clothes. Amongst them there was a suit which looked fairly respectable. It fitted me pretty well, and in the natural order of things we began haggling again. Fifty francs changed hands.

Then I gave the Ghetto man another gold piece.

"Now hurry up and get me a hat somewhere, a pair of boots, a collar and a tie."

But here the fat old woman with her shrill voice began to make difficulties. I was bringing misfortune on them. It was after business hours anyway. I must not stay in the house any longer—it was far too dangerous. "Allez vous en—allez vous en!"

The old lady began to get on my nerves, and I went willingly enough. At the corner I waited for the old Jew. In ten minutes he came back, and said that he could for twenty francs get me a really good outfit, boots, an extra collar, a good hat and a pair of gloves; for an extra twenty he could procure an excellent revolver. He got the money, and after a short time came back with two bundles.

At the end of the next street there was the high wall of the fortifications. From the inside I could climb over easily enough. The drop to the ground on the other side was a pretty big one, but I landed unhurt in the sand, in the middle of a palm grove. From the open windows of a villa close to the grove a flood of light streamed, and I could hear the merry sounds of a waltz. I could see the couples dancing. Many officers were amongst them. But there was no danger of being seen; it was pitch dark among the palms. In feverish haste I tore off my uniform and put on the civilian clothes. They fitted me well. It was quite a strange feeling fastening a collar and tie once more….

And when I had changed I nailed uniform and overcoat, and boots and belt, and everything to a palm with the bayonet, wondering who would find them in the morning!

I drew on my gloves and my toilet was complete. In the villa the band (it was the Legion's band too) was playing a German waltz: "Das ist das süsse Mädel…."

With a feeling very much akin to fright I walked to the nearest gate in the fortification walls. The soldiers on guard there, however, did not take the slightest notice of me. This gave me more confidence. Slowly and unostentatiously I crossed the promenade as though I were merely a respectable citizen out for a stroll. Légionnaires were promenading everywhere. More than once I had to turn and make a detour to avoid meeting non-commissioned officers of my own company. It was an exciting walk. At last I had passed through the main streets and came to a suburban road leading straight to the railway station. The little station was quite deserted. I looked carefully about me to see whether anybody was watching me, and then climbed down the steep embankment to the railroad tracks, leading straight to the north to Oran.

In the meantime it had become quite dark. From afar the lights of the station and of the switch-signals were shining; the lines themselves lay hidden in pitch-darkness. I began to run. At first I kept stumbling over the sharp stones between the rails and once I fell at full length. Soon, however, I got the hang of the thing, springing from sleeper to sleeper. I ran as hard as I could. A quarter of an hour, half an hour. Then I had to stop, coughing and out of breath. It was beginning to drizzle. The landscape was cloaked in inky darkness and there was only a faint gleam of light on the horizon far behind me to show where Sidi-bel-Abbès lay…. As far as I could tell I must have covered about five kilometres. My feet were paining me. I drew off one of my boots and found that there were long rows of nails sticking up inside and that the soles were damp with blood. I tore up my handkerchief and made a pad from the rags to cover the nails. But the horrible little monsters bored through even this. Anyhow, it was far better than before. I examined the revolver in my pocket and it was a pleasant surprise to find that it was a capital weapon, a Browning pistol. The old Jew, who certainly knew nothing about weapons, had, with the revolver, atoned for his sins in the matter of boots!

Once more I started forward. My feet had to get accustomed to the nails whether they liked it or not. From now on I kept up an alternate double and walk, husbanding my strength as I had learnt to do in the Legion, running five minutes at the double and then walking five minutes, always following the railway's bee-line for the north. Once I heard the roar of a train behind me and lay down flat in the sand by the rails. Thus hour after hour went by. I had already passed three stations, which merely consisted of a few houses which lay there deserted in the darkness. As I passed a lonely signal-house a dog began to bark and I started off in deadly terror, running like a madman till I had left the beast tearing at his chain far behind me. How thankful I was for the silence and darkness…. I breathed with difficulty, I had been running so hard. My clothes were soaked with sweat, and when I stopped for a moment to rest, an icy shiver passed over my whole body. But I pulled myself together, for I wanted to reach a medium-sized station, where it would not be so noticeable when I took a ticket for Oran.

The rain soon stopped again. And now the moon began to shine fitfully through the gaps in the clouds, even this faint light being much more than I cared about. A terrible fear of being seen by a police patrol came over me. All at once the country became hilly. On either side of the rails there lay mighty rocks, great jagged boulders of sandstone, and I rejoiced in the shelter they gave me. I had been running for some minutes between the rocks when I heard a strange noise. At first I thought it was another train. But as the sound grew nearer and grew clearer I knew what it was: galloping horses!

Through a gap in the rocks I could see the fine white line which marked the road. It was scarcely a hundred yards away from the railway. On this road a patrol was coming along at a gallop….

Had the police already seen me? Just before, where the country was flat, my silhouette must have stood out sharply defined against the sky in the moonlight.

In a paroxysm of fear I crawled in between two rocks and held my breath to listen. The horses drew nearer and nearer, the beat of their hoofs on the roadway ringing out loud and clear. Peeping out of my hiding-place I could see the dark forms of horses and their riders. Now they were up with me. I heard a sharp exclamation in Arabic. The three men pulled up their horses and came to a halt.

I pulled out my pistol. The barrel shone in the moonlight. I hastily covered up the weapon with my coat, for fear it should betray my hiding-place. Then I carefully cocked the pistol and felt whether the cartridge-frame was in order. A feeling of icy calmness came upon me. I made up my mind not to stir from my hiding-place and not to fire until the gendarmes were quite close to me in their search. I considered the matter carefully. Two full cartridge-frames I took in my left hand, ready to refill the chamber. My idea was to empty the magazine in quick shooting in order to get in as many shots as possible before they recovered from their surprise.

Down below some one lit a match. It burned for a moment only. I heard one of the gendarmes laugh. Then the three men galloped forward again. One of them must have asked his comrades for a match….

The noise of the galloping horses was soon lost in the distance, but for a long time I sat trembling from head to foot between the two rocks. The tears of over-excitement were running down my face as I put up the pistol. I could have yelled for joy that this awful danger was over. When I stood up again, I fell back against the rocks. My trembling knees could not support my body….

Les Imberts was the name of the station. It was forty-two kilometres distant from Sidi-bel-Abbès; in seven hours I had covered a distance of about thirty English miles. When at four o'clock in the morning I reached the station and deciphered its name and its distance from Sidi-bel-Abbès in the darkness, there was not a human being to be seen. The stillness of night still lay upon everything. A few hundred yards from the station a number of freight cars stood. I jumped into one of them and studied, lighting one match after another, the Algerian time-table which my careful mother had sent me. The first train to Oran went at a few minutes past five.

The first thing to be done was to care for my outer man a little. I climbed out of the car again and found, after a long search, a barrel half full of water standing under a shed. Day was just breaking. After a very hurried wash I hid again in one of the cars, brushing my clothes and cleaning my boots with my handkerchief. I was very glad of the extra collar which my friend of the Ghetto had purchased. Finally I had a look at myself in my tiny looking-glass. It would do! Indeed, the effect was not half bad. It would do very well; decently dressed people were scarce in Algeria….

At five o'clock I started on a roundabout route for the station. A dozen people stood waiting on the platform, amongst them an Arab policeman leaning lazily against the wall. I went straight up to the ticket office.

"Oran—première classe!"

"Sept-soixante," said the official. "Seven francs and sixty centimes."

I jumped into the nearest first-class compartment, and found to my joy that it was empty. The train started off. During the two hours' journey from Les Imberts to Oran I brought my dress into decent order and smoked innumerable cigarettes to drive away my sleepiness. At the barrier in Oran a sergeant of Zouaves and a corporal of the Legion were watching for deserters, but they didn't take the slightest notice of me.

Until ten o'clock I wandered about the town. Then I went to the office of the French Mediterranean line and took a second-class ticket for Marseilles. The passenger boat St. Augustine was due to start at five in the afternoon.

All at once I became very sleepy. I could hardly keep my eyes open, but I had not the courage to go to an hotel and rest there for a few hours. So I went into a restaurant and enjoyed a long-drawn-out French dinner and a bottle of heavy Burgundy. Suddenly I remembered that it would look suspicious if I started on a sea voyage without any luggage. For a few francs I procured a big valise whose paste-board sides looked really "the same as leather," and bought newspapers at every corner to stuff my "luggage" with.

At a few minutes to five I went on board the steamer. With a cigarette between my lips and a bundle of newspapers under my arm I walked up and down the deck, read Le Rire, and did all I could to assume a careless mien. In reality I was in a very serious situation. The question was: Had a telegram from the regiment with my description reached Oran already or not?

The half-hour struck, but the St. Augustine was still in dock. Police came and went. All at once I felt myself go pale as death; a patrol of four Zouave sergeants was coming up the gangway. They went over the whole ship, looking carefully about them. Then they interchanged a few words with the captain and went on again….

I was just beginning to breathe again, when a gendarme came up to me and asked, saluting courteously:

"Monsieur is a Frenchman?"

"Non, monsieur, an Englishman," I answered quietly, and smiled at the gendarme in spite of the icy fear gripping at my heart.

If he should chance on the idea of asking for my papers I was lost!

"Your name, please?"

"Eugene Sanders."

"Profession?"

"Engineer—from Tlemcen—on the way to Nice."

"Thank you."

… After a few minutes the ship's bell rang out, the gangways were pulled in, and the screw began to revolve. I went into my cabin and went to sleep. During the whole of the sea voyage I had not a single thought, not a single hope, not a single fear—I merely slept.

As the St. Augustine ran into harbour in Marseilles, a new difficulty presented itself. What would the custom-house say to my valise filled with paper? Luggage of this sort would have made anybody suspicious.

Chance came to my aid. A number of boats crowded around the ship, and several boatmen climbed on board to offer their services as porters, and so on. I went up to one of them and told him that I wanted to be put on shore as quickly as possible. Could he do it?

"For five francs," the fellow said.

"All right. Row me over."

My satchel I left on board to avoid the customs inspection.

A gangway had already been let down from the side of the steamer, and I stepped down into the boat with my boatman. Ten minutes later I stood on the "quai" in Marseilles. In another five minutes I had found a cab and was on my way to the station. Half an hour later I was seated in a compartment of an express train for the Riviera.

A Riviera journey in the darkness…. Toulon flew past—Cannes. In Nice I could hear even in the railway-train the noise of the carnival which was nearing its end—the platform was covered with confetti. We reached Monaco—Monte Carlo, with its brilliantly illuminated casino.

At last we reached Ventimiglia: the first Italian station!

It was one o'clock in the morning. I stormed into the telegraph-office and despatched two telegrams to my two dearest….

Free—free again!

CHAPTER XV

J'ACCUSE

Two years after : Shadows of the past : My vision : Public opinion and the Foreign Legion : The political aspect of the Foreign Legion : The moralist's point of view : The "Legion question" in a nutshell : A question the civilised world should have answered long ago : Quousque tandem…?

Two years have passed.

They were years of fighting and years of toil. Years in which I burnt much midnight oil, and in which every tiny success meant worlds to me. My personal attitude towards the Foreign Legion was a rather peculiar one at first. For several months I forced myself never even to think of the time when I was in the Legion. Those times should merely be to me a dim shadow of the past.

I looked upon them as an ugly page that I should only too gladly have torn out of the book of my life: since, however, I could not rid myself of them in this way I avoided ever opening the book at this page…. But the past which we should like to forget has an unpleasant way of forcing itself upon us, unbidden and against our will.

Often as I lay back in my arm-chair in an idle quarter of an hour, scenes from my life in the Legion mingled dimly with the blue smoke of my cigarette. An endless procession of légionnaires would pass before me, a procession of men loaded like beasts of burden, their backs bent almost double, panting and gasping as they struggled forward in the sand: I could see their staring eyes, their rounded backs. I felt the tortures they were undergoing, how they struggled forward till their last ounce of strength was spent: even their groans were audible to me. Every one of these men seemed to look at me with hatred. You sit there in your arm-chair? In an atmosphere of culture? Amongst beautiful things of art? You belong to us! Off to your place, légionnaire, on the wing of the first row of fours in the eleventh company. Quick march, légionnaire, or die! When I spent a golden coin on some amusement I seemed to see the hands of the légionnaires, trembling claw-like hands, grasping for my money and trying to rend it from me. Gold! Wealth unheard of after the miserable coppers of the Legion! Give it to us, said those fingers, give it to us! Have you forgotten our five centimes, légionnaire?

My imagination worried me.

I gave a part of the story of my life price, and after much hesitation wrote this book. I have only described the ordinary routine of life in the regiment of foreigners as I myself experienced it. It is merely a tiny part of what every légionnaire undergoes.

I wanted to show the légionnaire—how he lives, and how he must work. I did not dream of being able to warn foolish young fellows about the Legion. It is impossible to warn a fool. But I thought, and think still, that a true and exact description of the French Foreign Legion would perhaps help to put an end to an institution which is a disgrace to civilised humanity, and which should be to the civilised nations of to-day as unintelligible as the slave trade…. And above all I wanted to get rid of those visions which troubled me.

In considering the Foreign Legion one must above all be careful not to go to work with common-places, nor to start from general axioms. The idea is so prevalent that the soldiers of the Foreign Legion are lost and ruined men, even criminals—morally and practically useless at best. A good-for-nothing lot of fellows who are no loss to anybody.

One is apt to dispose of the légionnaire in a few trite remarks. Men of learning write from their arm-chairs to the papers about "the hirelings who have sold themselves into slavery, thus helping to revive the feudal system of the Middle Ages." If, however, the question were more closely inquired into, I am sure that it would be found that these rogues and vagabonds are not, in reality, quite so bad. True, I can bring forward no positive proof of this. There are no statistics about the Foreign Legion, and I am in no better position than any other human being to bring forward authentic material. There are not even official figures about the strength of the two regiments. I admit, willingly enough, that a large percentage of the men in the Foreign Legion really deserve the callous summing up that one is wont to apply to the whole regiment. All that I have seen and heard in Africa, however, has convinced me that the other and greater part of the men in the Foreign Legion are anything but the lost souls one imagines them to be. They come into the Legion as poor workmen. Their story is the sad one of the vagabond workman who had to starve on the French high road, because he could not speak the language. It is these men who have always formed the heart of the Foreign Legion. It is the pangs of hunger that drives men into the Foreign Legion—French and English, Germans and Italians, Spaniards and Austrians, men of all countries, men of all races. Yes, hunger is a most efficient recruiting sergeant for the Foreign Legion.

The hungry man who seeks a refuge in the Foreign Legion gets, it is true, his daily bread; he is, all the same, disgracefully swindled. It cannot be repeated often enough how hard the légionnaire has to work, how miserable his existence is, how he gives his whole strength for a wage that is not worth mentioning. We are so practical in our modern ideas of life; every workman knows well enough the exact value of his work in the current coin of the realm, and takes advantage of every opportunity of getting a higher wage. And, in an age which is ever improving the standard of living, and which has so absolutely changed the ideas of the poorer classes, how is it possible that a business concern like the Foreign Legion—it is really nothing but a business concern, a commercial undertaking—can always get hundreds and thousands of labourer-soldiers, for a wage compared with which the wages of the tiniest village are riches?

The results are startling when one compares the Foreign Legion with the world's two other mercenary armies, those of America and England, both of which countries, by-the-by, take great care to keep up a certain moral standard among their soldiers. These two armies, in sharp contrast to the Foreign Legion, pay their soldiers exceptionally well. The least that an American regular receives is thirteen dollars a month; the English Tommy gets a shilling a day. And these are soldiers and not workmen. They are mercenaries, like the légionnaire, but at any rate they are well-paid mercenaries.

The miserable wages, together with the existing conditions of life in the Legion, are enough to convince even a Frenchman that the existence of the Foreign Legion is a sin against the very first principles of humanity—and has been for eighty years. In the sand of Algeria, in the swamps of Madagascar, in the fever-pested plains of Tonquin, in the valleys of Mexico, there lie these men of every nation, these men who have died in the Foreign Legion, who have sold their lives for their rations and five centimes a day.

If one leaves the dead in peace and only considers the living, one reaches the same conclusion: robbery, and robbery of the destitute at that! A sin against every principle of humanity! Oh, thrice accursed Legion: forcing inexperienced young fellows into its ranks, who would never join did they know what lies before them; absolutely callous as to the value of human life, forcing its soldiers to conditions of life which must ruin their health for ever!

It is not for this alone that the Legion is answerable. It is also answerable for the vices of the Legion, for it is the life in the Legion that has brought the tiny seeds of these vices to full bloom.

About the political aspect of the Foreign Legion there can be no two opinions.

The Foreign Legion is an antiquated, ridiculously out-of-date survival of the feudal system of the Middle Ages, with all the disadvantages of the mercenary system, but without the romantic halo which in days gone by hung around the soldiers of fortune.

According to modern ideas, it is absolutely monstrous that one of the most cultured nations of the world should have in its pay a corps composed of men of all nationalities, and who are, as is generally acknowledged, very often foreign deserters, who enlist to save themselves from starvation. Their colours bear the unsatisfying motto, "Valeur et Discipline." The inscription on the national flag, "Honneur et Patrie"—"For Honour and our Country"—could hardly be given to these "mixed pickles." But these two words, "Valeur" and "Discipline," are pregnant with meaning. Comparisons with the English and American armies are not only of interest as far as the pay is concerned; there is in all respects a vast difference between these two armies and the Foreign Legion. Only men of British birth can join the British army. The American army takes foreigners into its ranks, but only those who possess the so-called first papers, i.e., have sworn before a magistrate that they intend to become American citizens after the prescribed five years. The American mercenary is looked upon as an American citizen and has to take the oath of allegiance. The Foreign Legion, on the other hand, knows no oath at all. The printed bit of paper that the recruit for the Foreign Legion signs is merely a contract, a statement of the conditions of service. This contract is the only chain which fetters the légionnaire to the Legion—a contract which, according to every one of our modern ideas of international law, is null and void. To-day, in international law, contracts opposed to public morality are much talked about, and what could be more immoral in every sense of the word than this contract that the French Republic makes with its recruits, this contract in which what is got out of a man and what he is paid stand in such an unsatisfying relation to each other.

As I have said before, there can be no two opinions about the Foreign Legion. Every one with sound ideas of political economy must agree that it is an unheard-of condition of affairs when a nation is allowed to receive the deserters and criminals—I speak now of that other half of the Foreign Legion—of the States surrounding it, indeed from all the States in the world, with open arms, and to make use of them on principle for a special military organisation. One cannot speak too strongly about this transaction, which is a piece of military blackguardism with something more than despicable about it. And not only the feudalism of the Middle Ages survives in the Foreign Legion but also the morals of those times, when a poor devil enlisted because he did not know of anything better to do with his life: of those times when a deserter was valued because he made a pair of arms and legs the less in the opposing force. In the Foreign Legion's enlistment bureaux a recruit gets a special welcome when he announces that he is a deserter, and is then looked upon as a really valuable addition to the corps. It is also a fact that France offers sanctuary to all criminals who fly from justice. The Foreign Legion will only give up murderers—every other kind of criminal is safe there. And France's selfish reason for this is that she can thereby fill the ranks of a regiment that is always fighting for France and which is always ready to do the hardest work for her in the most unhealthy climates. The average Frenchman has, during the Legion's eighty years of existence, contented himself with attributing the successes of the Foreign Legion to the French flag, and has always looked upon the Foreign Legion as a profitable and patriotic institution. It is only quite of late that the Foreign Legion has come to be looked upon in France as a problem. To-day the Foreign Legion is not an institution that every Frenchman considers quite in the natural order of things. Even the French Ministry of War has busied itself with the "Legion problem." It could not, however, quite make up its mind to give up the Legion. The possibility of employing a soldier who receives five centimes a day, and who can be made use of for all sorts of dangerous undertakings in the worst of climates, is too great a temptation.

Perhaps the real reason for this tenacity is that France, who is so proud of her military traditions, finds it hard to bring herself to dissolve a corps which has been in existence for more than eighty years and which has been led by many a famous general and marshal of France.

It has been suggested that it would be a good idea to change the method of recruiting. Passports should be demanded to make sure that the recruit had not got into trouble with the authorities of his own country. Deserters from the armies of other countries should on no condition be accepted.

There is a diversity of opinion about these suggestions in French military circles. One party asserts that with the deserters the Foreign Legion would lose the flower of its strength, the soldiers who have been trained in other armies. The other side urges that if the pay were raised and the time the men must serve in order to qualify for a pension shortened, the adventurous life in the Foreign Legion and the hope of promotion would always bring more than enough good stuff from all nations for service under the Legion's flag. In these debates the military point of view is the only one of importance and since, considered from this point of view, the Legion has always borne itself splendidly, things have been left as they were. All suggestions for a change in the organisation of the Legion have naturally been made very quietly. All the same the Legion has, of late, come very much before the public in France.

There is no doubt that they are beginning to look at the Foreign Legion a little critically in France. The number of those who doubt that the country is right in keeping up this barbarous institution is growing daily. Referring to the great mutiny of the soldiers of the Legion at Saida, Jaurès wrote in the Humanité:

"The Foreign Legion will doubtless be a source of everlasting difficulty to us; the idea of forming a body of troops for the French army from foreign deserters is at any rate an unusual one."

This is a step in the right direction. They are beginning to talk about the problem of the Foreign Legion. Its existence is no longer considered absolutely natural. The question has been raised. If the Foreign Legion did not exist, and some member of the French parliament were to suggest the formation of a corps of foreign mercenaries, preferably foreign deserters, the suggestion would doubtless be received with indignation. The tactless politician would be sure to be confronted with the somewhat obvious remark that it would be unworthy of the dignity of France to gather a band of foreigners under the tricolour to defend French soil. One would hear some very pretty speeches on the subject. That sort of thing can be tolerated in the Balkan States or in Venezuela or Honduras, but not in our proud France. Some deputy or other would be certain to warn the nation—the warning is a very obvious one—that other States could institute Foreign Legions, filling their ranks with French deserters. Think of the shudder that would pass through the land at the idea of English ships manned by, or German colonies conquered by, French deserters.

… The Foreign Legion lives upon its past. The Frenchman is accustomed to it and hardly notices what an anachronism it is.

The problem of the Legion is so easy. It can be divided into two questions:

Is it fair to pay a man who works really hard a daily wage of five centimes?

Is it fair to make use of a poor devil's misfortunes, or the fact that he has got into trouble with the authorities of his native land, in this way for national purposes?

The answer to these questions is not difficult.

In later years especially, the French Government has made a clean sweep of many French institutions that seemed to be incompatible with the fair fame of France. One can be quite sure that it will in course of time be recognised that the Foreign Legion must be done away with.

One is only tempted to ask: How long will it last?

Quousque tandem…?