It never occurred to Pierre Duval, as he trudged those long kilometres toward the front, that he was doing a penance.
The joy of a mind made up is a potent cordial.
The greetings of comrades on the road put gladness into his heart and strength into his legs.
It was a hot and dusty journey, and a sober one. But it was not a sad one. He was going toward that for which he was born. He was doing that which France asked of him, that which God told him to do. Josephine would be glad and proud of him. He would never be ashamed to meet her eyes. As he went, alone or in company with others, he whistled and sang a bit. He thought of “L'Alouette” a good deal. But not too much. He thought also of the forts of Douaumont and Vaux.
“Dame!” he cried to himself. “If I could help to win them back again! That would be fine! How sick that would make those cursed boches and their knock-kneed Crown Prince!”
At the little village of the headquarters behind Verdun he found many old friends and companions. They greeted him with cheerful irony.
“Behold the prodigal! You took your time about coming back, didn't you? Was the hospital to your taste, the nurses pretty? How is the wife? Any more children? How goes it, old man?”
“No more children yet,” he answered, grinning; “but all goes well. I have come back from a far country, but I find the pigs are still grunting. What have you done to our old cook?”
“Nothing at all,” was the joyous reply. “He tried to swim in his own soup and he was drowned.”
When Pierre reported to the officer of the day, that busy functionary consulted the record.
“You are a day ahead of your time, Pierre Duval,” he said, frowning slightly.
“Yes, sir,” answered the soldier. “It costs less to be a day ahead than a day too late.”
“That is well,” said the officer, smiling in his red beard. “You will report to-morrow to your regiment at the citadel. You have a new colonel, but the regiment is busy in the old way.”
As Pierre saluted and turned to go out his eye caught the look of a general officer who stood near, watching. He was a square, alert, vigorous man, his face bronzed by the suns of many African campaigns, his eyes full of intelligence, humor, and courage. It was Guillaumat, the new commander of the Army of Verdun.
“You are prompt, my son,” said he pleasantly, “but you must remember not to be in a hurry. You have been in hospital. Are you well again? Nothing broken?”
“Something was broken, my General,” responded the soldier gravely, “but it is mended.”
“Good!” said the general. “Now for the front, to beat the Germans at their own game. We shall get them. It may be long, but we shall get them!”
That was the autumn of the offensive of 1916, by which the French retook, in ten days, what it had cost the Germans many months to gain.
Pierre was there in that glorious charge at the end of October which carried the heights of Douaumont and took six thousand prisoners. He was there at the recapture of the Fort de Vaux which the Germans evacuated in the first week of November. In the last rush up the slope, where he had fought long ago, a stray shell, an inscrutable messenger of fate, coming from far away, no one knows whence, caught him and ripped him horribly across the body.
It was a desperate mass of wounds. But the men of his squad loved their corporal. He still breathed. They saw to it that he was carried back to the little transit hospital just behind the Fort de Souville.
It was a rude hut of logs, covered with sand-bags, on the slope of the hill. The ruined woods around it were still falling to the crash of far-thrown shells. In the close, dim shelter of the inner room Pierre came to himself.
He looked up into the face of Father Courcy. A light of recognition and gratitude flickered in his eyes. It was like finding an old friend in the dark.
“Welcome!—But the fort?” he gasped.
“It is ours,” said the priest.
Something like a smile passed over the face of Pierre. He could not speak for a long time. The blood in his throat choked him. At last he whispered:
“Tell Josephine—love.”
Father Courcy bowed his head and took Pierre's hand. “Surely,” he said. “But now, my dear son Pierre, I must prepare you—”
The struggling voice from the cot broke in, whispering slowly, with long intervals: “Not necessary.... I know already.... The penance. ... France.... Jeanned'Arc.... It is done.”
A few drops of blood gushed from the corner of his mouth. The look of peace that often comes to those who die of gunshot wounds settled on his face. His eyes grew still as the priest laid the sacred wafer on his lips. The broken soldier was made whole.
There were three American boys from the region of Philadelphia in the dugout, “Somewhere in France”; and they found it a snug habitation, considering the circumstances.
The central heating system—a round sheet-iron stove, little larger than a “topper” hat—sent out incredible quantities of acrid smoke at such times as the rusty stovepipe refused to draw. But on cold nights and frosty mornings the refractory thing was a distinct consolation. The ceiling of the apartment lacked finish. When wet it dropped mud; when dry, dust. But it had the merit of being twenty feet thick—enough to stop any German shell except a “Jack Johnson” full of high explosive. The beds were elegantly excavated in the wall, and by a slight forward inclination of the body you could use them as fauteuils. The rats approved of them highly.
There were two flights of ladder-stairs leading down from the trench into the dugout, and the holes at the top which served as vestibules were three or four yards apart. It was a comfort to think of this architectural design; for if the explosion of a big shell blocked up one of the entrances, the other would probably remain open, and you would not be caught in a trap with the other rats.
The main ornament of the salon was a neat but not gaudy biscuit-box. The top of it was a centre-table, illuminated by a single, guttering candle; the interior was a “combination” wardrobe and sideboard. Around this simple but satisfying piece of furniture the three transient tenants of the dugout had just played a game of dummy bridge, and now sat smoking and bickering as peacefully as if they were in a college club-room in America. The night on the front was what the French call “relativement calme.” Sporadic explosions above punctuated but did not interrupt the debate, which eddied about the high theme of Education—with a capital “E”—and the particular point of dispute was the study of languages.
“Everything is going to change after the war,” said Phipps-Herrick, a big Harvard man from Bryn Mawr and a member of the Unsocial Socialists' Club. “We are going to make a new world. Must have a new education. Sweep away all the old stuff—languages, grammar, literature, philosophy, history, and all that. Put in something modern and practical. Montessori system for the little kids. Vocational training for the bigger ones. Teach them to make a living. Then organize them politically and economically. You can do what you like, then, with England, France, and America together. Germany will be shut out. Why study German? From a practical point of view, I ask you, why?”
“Didn't you take it at Harvard?” sarcastically drawled Rosenlaube, a Princeton man from Rittenhouse Square. (His grandfather was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, but his mother was a Biddle, and he had penetrated about an inch into the American diplomatic service when the war summoned him to a more serious duty.) “I understood that all you Harvard men were strong on modern languages, especially German.”
Phipps-Herrick grunted.
“Certainly I took it. It was supposed to be a soft-snap course. What do you think we go to Harvard for? But that little beast, Professor von Buch, gave me a cold forty-minus on examination. So I dropped it, and thank God I've forgotten the little I ever knew of German! It will be absolutely useless in the new world.”
“Right you are,” said Rosenlaube. “My grandfather used to speak it when he was angry—a sloppy, slushy language, extremely ugly. At Princeton, you know, we stand by the classics, Latin and Greek, the real thing in languages. You ought to hear Dean Andy West talk about that. Of course a fellow forgets his Virgil and his Homer when he gets out in the world. But, then, he's had the benefit of them; they've given him real culture and literature. There's nothing outside of the classics, except perhaps a few things in French and Italian. Thank God I never studied German!”
The third man, who had kept silence up to this point, now gently butted in. It was little Phil Mitchell, of Overbrook, a University of Pennsylvania man, who had been stopped in his junior year by a financial catastrophe in the family, and had gone out to Idaho to earn his living as third assistant bookkeeper in a big mining concern. He took a few real books with him, besides those that he was to “keep.” Double entry was his business; reading, his recreation; thinking, his vocation. From all this the great war called him as with a trumpet.
“Look here, you fellows,” he said quietly, “in spite of this war and all the rest of it, there are some good things in German.”
“What,” they cried, “you, a fire-eater, stand up for the Kaiser and his language? Damn him!”
“With all my heart,” assented Mitchell. “But the language isn't his. It existed a long while before he was born. It isn't very pretty, I'll admit. But there are lots of fine things in it. Kant and Lessing, Goethe and Schiller and Heine—they all loved liberty and made it shine out in their work. Do you mean to say that I must give them up and throw my German overboard because these modern Potsdammers have acted like brutes?”
“Yes,” cried Phipps-Herrick and Rosenlaube, nodding at each other, “that's what we mean, and that's what America means. The German language must go!”
“Look here,” said Phipps-Herrick, “you admit that modern education must be useful? Well, there won't be any more use for German, because we are going to shut Germany out of the international trades-union. She has betrayed the principles of the new era. We are going to boycott her.”
“Won't that be rather difficult?” queried Mitchell, shaking his head. “Seventy or eighty million people—hard to shut them out of the world, eh?”
“Nonsense, dear Phil,” drawled Rosenlaube; “it will be easy enough. But I don't agree with Phipps-Herrick about the reason or method. We are going to have a new era after the war. But it will not be a utilitarian age. It will be a return to beauty and form and culture—not with a 'k.' First of all, we are going to kill a great many Germans. Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the ugly statues in the Sieges-Allee and smash the parvenu German Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany will speak or read German. It is a barbarous tongue—shapeless and hideous—used by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. Sorry for Kant and Goethe and Heine and all that crowd, but their time is up; they've got to go out with their beastly language!”
“Yes,” said Phipps-Herrick, “out with them, bag and baggage. Think what the German spies and propagandists have done in America. Schools full of pacifist and pro-German teachers; text-books full of praise of the German Empire and the Hohenzollern Highbinders; newspapers full of treason, printed in the German language. Why, it's only a piece of self-defense to clean it all out, root and branch. No more German taught or spoken, printed or read, in the United States. Forget it! Twenty-three for the Hun language!”
“Noble,” gently murmured Mitchell, shaking his head again; “very noble! But not very easy and perhaps not entirely wise. Why should I throw away something that has been useful to me, and may be again? Why forget the little German that I know and burn my Goethe and refuse to listen to Beethoven's music? I won't do it, that's all.”
“Our little friend is a concealed Kaiserite,” said Rosenlaube. “He wants to Germanize America.”
“No, Rosy,” said Mitchell, thoughtfully running his hand over some nicks on the butt of his rifle in the corner; “you know I'm not a Kaiserite of any kind. I've got seven scored against him already, and I'm going to get some more. But the language question seems to me different. Cut out the German newspapers and the German schools in America by all means! No more teaching of the primary branches in any language but English! Make it absolutely necessary for everybody in the U. S. A. to learn the language of the country the first thing. Then in the high schools and universities let German be studied like any other foreign language, by those who want it—chemists, and philosophers, and historians, and electrical engineers, and so on. We could censor the text-books and keep out all complimentary allusions to the Hohenzollern family.”
“Oh, shut up, Phil,” growled Phipps-Herrick. “You're too soft, you old easy-mark! You don't go half far enough. We may not decide to exterminate the Hun race in Europe. But we have decided to exterminate their language in America.”
His hand was groping inside the biscuit-box. He pulled out a little ditty-bag and carefully extracted a bit of newspaper.
“Listen to this, you fellows. This is from the National Obscurity Society. You know a chap with a German name is president of it, but he's a real patriot, hundred per cent, not fifty-fifty, Philly. 'The following States have abolished the teaching of German: Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, California, and Oregon.' Abolished, mind you! What do you think of that?”
“Most excellent Phippick,” nodded Rosenlaube, “I opine, as Horace said to Cicero, 'That's the stuff,' or words to that effect. What saith the senator from Mitchellville?”
“Noble,” grinned Phil, “unmistakably noble! Those Obscurity fellows are a fiery lot. It reminds me that during the late war with Spain, when I was a little, tiny boy, but brimful of ferocity, I refused to eat my favorite dessert because it was called Spanish cream. I felt sure at the time that my heroic conduct was of distinct assistance to Dewey in the battle of Manila Bay.”
“Well, then,” said Phipps-Herrick, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him good-humoredly, “you murderous little pacifist with seven nicks on your gun, will you give up your German? Will you forget it?”
Mitchell chuckled and shook his head,
“As far as requisite under military orders. But no further, not by a—”
A pair of muddy boots was heard and seen descending one of the ladders, followed by the manly and still rather neat form of Lieutenant Barker Bunn, a Cornell man from West Philadelphia. The three men sprang to their feet and saluted smartly, for the lieutenant was very stiff about all the preliminary forms.
“Too loud talking here,” he said gruffly. “I heard you before I came down. Who is here? Oh, I see, Sergeant Phipps-Herrick, Privates Rosenlaube and Mitchell. It's your turn to go out on listening post to-night, sergeant. Twelve sharp, stay three hours, go as far as you can, come back and report, take Mitchell or Rosenlaube with you. Captain's orders.”
The sergeant saluted again, and the two men looked at each other.
“Why not both of us, sir?” said Mitchell.
The lieutenant regarded him with some surprise. Listening post is not a detail passionately desired by the men. It is always dirty, frequently dangerous, generally obscure, and often fatal. Hence there is no keen competition for it.
“Two is the usual number for a listening post,” said Barker Bunn thoughtfully. “But there is no regulation about it, and the captain did not specify any number. Well, yes, I suppose you can all three go, if you are set on it. In fact, I give the order to that effect.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Rosenlaube and Mitchell. Phipps-Herrick, feeling that the strict etiquette of the preliminaries had been fully observed and the time to be human had come, held out a box of “Fierce Fairies.”
“Have a cigarette, Bunn, and take a chair, do. Time for a little talk this quiet night? Tell us what's doing up above.”
“Nothing particular,” said Barker Bunn, lighting and relaxing. “But the old man has a hunch that the Fritzies are grubbing a mine—a corker—to get our goat. Hence this business of ears forward. The old man thinks the Fritzies have a strong grouch against this little alley, and since they couldn't take it top side last week they're going to try to bust it out bottom side with a big bang some day soon. Maybe so—maybe just greens—but, anyway, you've got to go on the Q. T. with this job—no noise, don't even whisper unless you have to; just listen for all you're worth. P'r'aps you'll hear that little tap-tap-tapping that tells where Fritzie Mole is at work. Then if you come back and tell the old man where it is, he'll give you all the cigarettes you want. But say, do you want me to give you a pointer on the way to go, the method of procedure, as the old man would call it?”
They agreed that they were thirsting for information and instruction.
“Well, it's this way,” continued Barker Bunn. “You know I had a bit of experience in listening post while I was with the Canadians down around 'Wipers'; and I noticed that most of the troubles came from a bad method of procedure. Fellows went out any old way; followed each other in the dark, and then hunted for each other and came to grief; all those kind of silly fumbles. Now, what you need is formation—see? Must have some sort of formation for advance. Must keep in touch. For two men a tandem is right. For three men, what you want is a spike-team—middle man crawls ahead, other men follow on each side just near enough to touch his left heel with right hand and right heel with left hand—a triangle, see? Keep touching once every thirty seconds. If you miss it, leader crawls back, side men crawl in, sure to meet, nobody gets lost. Go as far as you can, then spread out like a fan, fold together when you can, come back if you can—that's the way to cover the most possible ground on a listening post. Do you get me?”
“We get you,” they nodded. “It's a wonderful scheme.” And Rosenlaube added in his most impressive literary manner: “Plato, it must be so, thou reasonest well.”
“But tell me,” said the lieutenant, “what were you fellows chattering about so loud when I came down?”
So they told him, and, according to the habit of college boys, they skirmished over the ground of debate again, and Barker Bunn vigorously supported the majority opinion, and Mitchell was left in a hopeless minority of one, clinging obstinately to his faith that there had been, and still might be, some use for the German language.
Midnight came, and with it the return of the lieutenant's official manner. He saw the trio slide over the top, one by one, vanishing in the starless dark. “Good luck going and coming,” he whispered; and it sounded almost like an unofficial prayer.
In single file they crept through the prepared opening in the barbed-wire entanglement, and so out into No Man's Land, where they took up their spike-team formation. Phipps-Herrick was the leader, the other men were the wheelers. They had agreed on a code of silent signals: One kick with the heel or one pinch with the hand meant “stop”; two meant “back”; three meant “get together.” They carried no rifles, because the rifle is an awkward tool for a noiseless crawler to lug. But each man had a big trench-knife and a pair of automatic pistols, with plenty of ammunition.
The space between the two front lines of barbed wire in this region was not more than four or five hundred yards. In the murk of that unstarred, drizzling night, where every inch must be felt out, it seemed like a vast, horrible territory. There was nothing monotonous about it but the blackness of darkness. To the touch it was a paysage accidente, a landscape full of surprises. Dead bodies were sprinkled over it. It was pockmarked with small shell-holes and pitted with large craters, many of them full of water, all slimy with mud. Phipps-Herrick nearly slipped into one of the deepest, but a lively kick warned his followers of the danger, and they pulled him back by the heels.
Now and then a star-shell looped across the spongy sky, casting a lurid illumination over the ghastly field. When the three travellers caught the soft swish of its ascent, they “froze”—motionless as a shamming 'possum—mimicking death among the dead.
It was a long, slow, silent, revolting crawl. Sounds which did not concern them were plenty—distant cannonade, shells exploding here and there, scattered rifle-shots. All these they unconsciously eliminated, listening for something else, ears pressed to the ground wherever they could find a comparatively dry spot. From their point of hearing the night was still as the grave—no subterranean tapping and scraping could they hear anywhere under the sea of mud.
Once Rosenlaube caught a faint metallic sound, and signalled through Phipps-Herrick's left leg to Mitchell's left arm, “Stop!” All three listened tensely. They crawled toward the faint noise. It was made by a loose end of wire swaying in the night-wind and tapping on a broken helmet.
They were getting close to the German barbed wire. The leader had swung around to the west, following what he judged to be the line of the front trench, perhaps forty yards away. He was determined to hear something before he went back. And he did!
Just as he had made up his mind to call up the other fellows for the final spreadout in fan formation, his groping right hand touched something round and smooth and hard. It seemed to be made fast to a string or wire, but he pulled it toward him and gave the “stop” signal to his followers.
The thing he had picked up was a telephone receiver. How it came to be there he did not know. Perhaps a German listening post had carried it out last night, in order to receive directions from the trench; perhaps the mining party—man killed, receiver dropped, wire connection not cut, or tangled up with other wires—who can tell? One thing is sure—here is the receiver, faintly buzzing. Phipps-Herrick joyfully puts it to his ear. He hears a voice and words, but it is all gibberish to him. With a look of desperation on his face he gives the “get together” signal.
Rosenlaube crawls up first and takes hold of the cylinder, puts it to his ear. He hears the sound, but it says absolutely nothing to him. It is like being at the door of the secret of the universe and unable to get over the threshold.
Then comes Mitchell, slowly, a little lame, and almost “all in.” Phipps-Herrick thrusts the receiver into his hand. As he listens a beatific expression spreads over his face. It lasts a long time, and then he lays down the cylinder with a sigh.
The three heads are close together, and Mitchell whispers under his breath:
“Got 'em—got the whole thing—line of mine changed—raiders coming out now—twelve men—rough on us, but if we can get back to our alley we've got 'em! Crawl home quick.”
{Illustration with caption: “I'm going to carry you in, spite of hell"}
They crawled together in a bunch, formation ignored. Presently steps sounded near them. A swift light swept the hole where they crouched, a volley of rifle-shots crashed into it. The Americans answered with their pistols, and saw three or four of the dark forms on the edge of the hole topple over. The rest disappeared. But Rosenlaube had a rifle-ball through his right hip and another through his shoulder. Mitchell and Phipps-Herrick started to carry him.
“Drop it,” he whispered. “I'm safe here till dawn—you get home, quick! Specially Phil. He's the one that counts. Cut away, boys!”
Meantime the American trench had opened fire and the German trench answered. The still night broke into a tempest of noise. A bullet or a bit of shell caught Mitchell in the knee and crumpled him up. Phipps-Herrick lifted him on his back and stood up.
“Come on,” he said, “you little cuss. You're the only one that has the stuff we went out after. I'm going to carry you in, 'spite of hell.”
And he did it.
Mitchell told the full story of the change in the direction of the German mine and the plan of the next assault, as he had heard it through that lost receiver. The captain said it was information of the highest value. It counted up to a couple of hundred German prisoners and three machine-guns in the next two days.
Rosenlaube, still alive, was brought in just before daybreak by a volunteer rescue-party under the guidance of Phipps-Herrick. All three were cited in the despatches. Phipps-Herrick in due time received the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry on the field. But Mitchell had the surplus satisfaction of the hearing ear.
“Look here, old man,” Rosenlaube said to him as they lay side by side in the hospital, “'member our talk in the dugout just before our big night? Well, I allow there was something in what you said. There are times when it is a good thing to know a bit of that barbarous German language. And you never can tell when one of those times may hit you.”
If you love a certain country, for its natural beauty, or for the friends you have made there, or for the happy days you have passed within its borders, you are troubled and distressed when that country comes under criticism, suspicion, and reproach.
It is just as it would be if a woman who had been very kind to you and had done you a great deal of good were accused of some unworthiness. You would refuse to believe it. You would insist on understanding before you pronounced judgment. Memories would ask to be heard.
That is what I feel in regard to French Canada, the province of Quebec, where I have had so many joyful times, and found so many true comrades among the voyageurs, the habitants, and the coureurs de bois.
People are saying now that Quebec is not loyal, not brave, not patriotic in this war for freedom and humanity.
Even if the accusation were true, of course it would not spoil the big woods, the rushing rivers, the sparkling lakes, the friendly mountains of French Canada. But all the same, it hurts me to hear such a charge against my friends of the forest.
Do you mean to tell me that Francois and Ferdinand and Louis and Jean and Eugene and Iside are not true men? Do you mean to tell me that these lumbermen who steer big logs down steep places, these trappers who brave the death-cold grip of Winter, these canoe-men who shout for joy as they run the foaming rapids,—do you mean to tell me that they have no courage?
I am not ready to credit that. I want to hear what they have to say for themselves. And in listening for that testimony certain little remembrances come to me—not an argument—only a few sketches on the wall. Here they are. Take them for what they are worth.
September, 1894
In one of the long stillwaters of the mighty stream that rushes from Lac Saint Jean to make the Saguenay—below the Ile Maligne and above the cataract of Chicoutimi—two birch-bark canoes are floating quietly, descending with rhythmic strokes of the paddle, through the luminous northern twilight.
The chief guide, Jean Morel, is a coureur de bois of the old type—broad-shouldered, red-bearded, a fearless canoeman, a good hunter and fisherman—simple of speech and deep of heart: a good man to trust in the rapids.
“Tell me, Jean,” I ask in the comfortable leisure of our voyage which conduces to pipe-smoking and conversation, “tell me, are you a Frenchman or an Englishman?”
“Not the one, nor the other,” answers Jean in his old-fashioned patois. “M'sieu' knows I am French-Canadian.”
A remarkable answer, when you come to think of it; for it claims a nationality which has never existed, and is not likely to exist, except in a dream.
“Well, then,” I say, following my impulse of psychological curiosity, of which Jean is sublimely ignorant, “suppose a war should come between France and England. On which side would you fight?”
Jean knocks the dottle out of his pipe, refills and relights. Then, between the even strokes of his paddle, he makes this extraordinary reply:
“M'sieu, I suppose my body would march under the flag of England. But my heart would march under the flag of France.”
Good old Jean Morel! You had no premonition of this glorious war in which the Tricolor and the Union Jack would advance together against the ravening black eagle of Germany, and the Stars and Stripes would join them.
How should you know anything about it? Your log cabin was your capitol. Your little family was your council of state. Even the rest of us, proud of our university culture, were too blind, in those late Victorian days, to see the looming menace of Prussian paganism and the conquer-lust of the Hohenzollerns, which has plunged the whole world in war.
February, 1917
The “Schools” building, though modern, is one of the stateliest on the Main Street. Here, in old peaceful times, the university examinations used to be held. Now it is transformed into a hospital for the wounded men from the fighting front of freedom.
Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford.
“Come,” he says, “I want you to see an example of the Carrel treatment of wounds.”
The patient is sitting up in bed—a fine young fellow about twenty years old. A shrapnel-shell, somewhere in France, passed over his head and burst just behind him. His bare back is a mass of scars. The healing fluid is being pumped in through the shattered elbow of his right arm, not yet out of danger.
“Does it hurt,” I ask.
“Not much,” he answers, trying to smile, “at least not too much, M'sieu'.”
The accent of French Canada is unmistakable. I talk to him in his own dialect.
“What part of Quebec do you come from?”
“From Trois Rivieres, M'sieu', or rather from a country back of that, the Saint Maurice River.”
“I know it well—often hunted there. But what made you go to the war?”
“I heard that England fought to save France from the damned Germans. That was enough, M'sieu', to make me march. Besides, I always liked to fight.”
“What did you do before you became a soldier?”
“I was a lumberjack.”
(What he really said was, “J'allais en chantier,” “I went in the shanty.” If he had spoken in classic French he would have said, “J'etais bucheron.” How it brought back the smell of the big spruce forest to hear that word chantier, in Oxford!)
{Illustration: “I was a lumberjack."}
“Well, then, I suppose you will return to the wood-cutting again, when this war is over.”
“But no, M'sieu', how can I, with this good-for-nothing arm? I shall never be capable of swinging the axe again.”
“But you could be the cook, perfectly. And you know the cook gets the best pay in the whole shanty.”
His face lights up a little.
“Truly,” he replies; “I never thought of that, but it is true. I have seen a bit of cooking at the front and learned some things. I might take up that end of the job. But anyway, Im glad I went to the war.”
So we say good-by—“bonne chance!”
Since that day the good physician who guided me through the hospital has borne without a murmur the greatest of all sacrifices—the loss of his only son, a brave and lovely boy, killed in action against the thievish, brutal German hordes.
SAINTE MARGUERITE August, 1917
The wild little river Sainte Marguerite runs joyously among the mountains and the green woods, back of the Saguenay, singing the same old song of liberty and obedience to law, as if the world had never been vexed and tortured by the madness of war-lords.
A tired man who has a brief furlough from active service is lucky if he can spend it among the big trees and beside a flowing stream. The trees are ministers of peace. The stream is full of courage and adventure as it rushes toward the big sea.
We are coming back to camp from the morning's fishing, with a brace of good salmon in the canoe.
“Tell me, Iside,” I ask of the wiry little bowman, the best hunter and fisher on the river, “why is it that you are not at the war?”
“But, M'sieu', I am too old. A father of family—almost a grandfather—the war is not for men of that age. Besides, it does not concern us here in Quebec.”
“Why not? It concerns the whole world. Who told you that it does not concern you?”
“The priest at our village of Sacre Coeur, M'sieu'. He says that it is only right and needful for a good Christian to fight in defense of his home and his church. Let those Germans attack us here, chez nous, and you shall see how the men of Sacre Coeur will stand up and fight.”
It was an amazing revelation of a state of mind, absolutely simple, perfectly sincere, and strictly imprisoned by the limitations of its only recognized teacher.
“But suppose, Iside, that England and France should be beaten down by Germany, over there. What would happen to French Canada? Do you think you could stand alone then, to defend your home and your church? Are you big enough, you French-Canadians?”
“M'sieu', I have never thought of that. Perhaps we have more than a million people—many of them children, for you understand we French-Canadians have large families—but of course the children could not fight. Still, we should not like to have them subject to a German Emperor. We would fight against that, if the war came to us here on our own soil.”
“But don't you see that the only way to keep it from coming to you on your own soil is to fight against it over there? Hasn't the English Government given you all your liberties, for home and church?”
“Yes, M'sieu', especially since Sir Wilfred Laurier. Ah, that is a great man! A true French-Canadian!”
“Well, then, you know that he is against Germany. You know he believes the freedom of Canada depends on the defeat of Germany, over there, on the other side of the sea. You would not like a German Canada, would you?”
“Not at all, M'sieu', that would be intolerable. But I have never thought of that.”
“Well, think of it now, will you? And tell your priest to think of it, too. He is a Christian. The things we are fighting for belong to Christianity—justice, liberty, humanity. Tell him that, and tell him also some of the things which the Germans did to the Christian people in Belgium and Northern France. I will narrate them to you later.”
“M'sieu',” says Iside, dipping his paddle deeper as we round the sharp corner of a rock, “I shall remember all that you tell me, and I shall tell it again to our priest. You know we have few newspapers here. Most of us could not read them, anyway. I am not well convinced that we yet comprehend, here in French Canada, the meaning of this war. But we shall endeavor to comprehend it better. And when we comprehend, we shall be ready to do our duty—you can trust yourself to the men of Sacre Coeur for that. We love peace—we all about here (nous autres d'icite)—but we can fight like the devil when we know it is for a good cause—liberty, for example. Meanwhile would M'sieu' like to stop at the pool 'La Pinette'' on the way down and try a couple of casts? There was a big salmon rising there yesterday.”
That very evening a runner comes up the river, through the woods, to tell Iside and Eugene, who are Selectmen of the community of Sacre Coeur, that they must come down to the village for an important meeting at ten o'clock the next morning.
So they set off, quite as a matter of course, for their thirty-five mile tramp through the forest in the dark. They are good citizens, as well as good woodsmen, you understand. On the second day they are back again at their work in the canoe.
“Well, Iside,” I ask, “how was it with the meeting yesterday? All correct?”
“All correct, M'sieu'. It was an affair of a new schoolhouse. We are going to build it. All goes well. We are beginning to comprehend. Quebec is a large corner of the world. But it is only a corner, after all, we can see that. And those damned Germans who do such terrible things in France, we do not love them at all, no matter what the priest may say about Christian charity. They are Protestants, M'sieu', is it not?”
“Well,” I answer, hiding a smile with a large puff of smoke, “some of them call themselves Protestants and some call themselves Catholics. But it seems to me they are all infidels, heathen—judging by what they do. That is the real proof.”
“C'est b'en vrai, M'sieu',” says Iside. “It is the conduct that shows the Christian.”
BELOW CAPE DIAMOND March, 1818
The famous citadel of Quebec stands on top of the steep hill that dominates the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint Lawrence. That is Cape Diamond—a natural stronghold. Indians and French, and British, and Americans have fought for that coign of vantage. For a century and a half the Union Jack has floated there, and under its fair protection the Province of Quebec, keeping its quaint old language and peasant customs, has become an important part of the British Empire.
The Upper Town, on the high shoulders of Cape Diamond, with its government buildings, convents, hospitals, showy new shops, and ancient gardens, its archiepiscopal palace, trim theological seminary, huge castle-like hotel, and placid ramparts dominating the Ile d'Orleans with rows of antiquated, harmless cannon around which the children play—the Upper Town belongs distinctly to the citadel. The garrison is in evidence here. A regimental band plays in the kiosk on Dufferin Terrace on summer evenings. There is a good mixture of khaki in the coloring of the street crowd, and many wounded soldiers are seen, invalided home from the front. They are all very proud of the glorious record that Canada has made in the battle for freedom. Most of them, it seems to me, are from English-speaking families. But by no means all. There are many of unmistakable French-Canadian stock; and they tell me proudly of the notable bravery of a certain regiment which was formed early from volunteers of their own people—hunters, woodsmen, farmers, guides. The war does not seem very far away, up here in the region of the citadel.
The Lower Town, with its narrow streets, little shops, gray stone warehouses, dingy tenements, and old-fashioned markets, is quite a different place. It belongs to the slow rivers on whose banks it drowses and dreams. The once prosperous lumberyards are half empty now. The shipping along the wharfs has been dwindling for many years. The northern winter puts a quietus on the waterside. Troops, munitions, supplies, must go down by rail to an ice-free port. The white river-boats are all laid up. But a way is kept open across the river to Levis, and the sturdy, snub-nosed little ice-breaking ferry-boats buffet back and forth almost without interruption. There is a plenty of nothing to do, now, in the Lower Town; pipe-smoking and heated discussion of parish politics are incessant; an inconsiderate quantity of bad liquor is imbibed, pour faire passer le temps.
Suddenly—if anything can be said to happen suddenly in Quebec—bad news comes from the Lower Town. A riot has broken out, an insurrection of the French-Canadians against the new military service act, an armed resistance to the draft. Windows have been smashed, shops looted. A mob, not very large perhaps, but extremely noisy, has marched up the steep curve of Mountain Hill Street, into the Upper Town. Shots have been exchanged. People have been killed. The revolution in Quebec has begun.
That is the disquieting rumor which comes to us, carefully spread and magnified by those agencies which have an interest in preventing, or at least obstructing the righteous punishment of the German criminals in this war. Can it possibly be true? Have the French-Canadians gone crazy, as the Irish did in 1916, under the lunatic incantations of the Sinn-Feiners? Are they also people without a country, playing blindly into the hands of the Prussian gang who have set out to subjugate the world?
No! This riot in the old city is not an expression of the spirit of French Canada at all. It is only a shrewdly stupid trick in local politics, planned and staged by small-minded and loud-voiced politicians who are trying to keep their hold upon the province. The so-called revolutionists are either imported loafers and trouble-makers, or else they are drawn from that class of “hooligans” who have always made a noise around the Quebec hotels at night. They shout much: they swear abominably: but they have no real fight in them. They can be hired and used—up to a certain point—but beyond that they are worthless. It is a waste of money to employ them. The trouble below Cape Diamond froths up and goes down as quickly as the effervescence on a bottle of ginger beer. Before you can find out what it is all about, it is all over. It has not even touched the real French-Canadians, the men of the forests and the farms. They are loyal by nature, and slow by temperament. You have got to give them time, and light.
What is happening in Quebec now? Just what ought to happen. The draft is going forward smoothly and steadily, without resistance. Sons of the best French-Canadian families are volunteering for the war. Recruits from Laval University are coming in, stirred perhaps by the knowledge that forty thousand Catholic priests in France have entered the army which fights against the Prussian paganism.
The petty politicians who have sought to serve their own ends by putting forward the mad notion of secession and an independent “Republic of Quebec” have gone to cover under a storm of ridicule and indignation. M. Bourassa's iridescent dream of French-Canadian nationalism has disappeared like a soap-bubble. M. Francoeur's motion in the Quebec legislature, carrying a vague hint that the province might withdraw from the Dominion if the other provinces were not particularly nice to it, was snowed under by an overwhelming vote. The patriotic and eloquent speech of the provincial Premier, M. Gouin, was received with every sign of approval. The political cinema has shown its latest film, and the title is evidently “Fidelite de Quebec.”
Meantime a Catholic missioner has been in the province. The visit of Archbishop Mathieu of Saskatchewan was probably made on the invitation, certainly with the consent, of the hierarchy of Quebec. That intelligent and fearless preacher brought with him a clear and ringing gospel, a call to all Christian folk to stand up together and “resist even unto blood, striving against sin”—the sin of the German war-lords who have plunged the world in agony to enforce their heresy that Might makes Right.
Such a message, at this time, must be of inestimable value to the humble and devout people of the province, attached as they are to their church, and looking patiently to her for guidance. The parish priests, devoted to their lonely tasks in obscure hamlets, may get a new and broader inspiration from it. They may have a vision of the ashes of Louvain University, the ruin of Rheims Cathedral, wrought by ruthless German hands. Then the church in Quebec will measure up to the church in Belgium and in France. Then the village cure will say to his young men: “Go! Fight! It is for the glory of God and the good of the world. It is for the Christian religion and the life of free Canada.”
“Well, then,” says the gentle reader, of a sociological turn of mind, who has followed me thus far, “what have you got to say about the big political problem of Quebec? Is a French-speaking province a safe factor in the Dominion of Canada, in the British Empire? Why was Quebec so late in coming into this world war against Germany?”
Dear man, I have nothing whatever to say about what you call the big political problem of Quebec. I told you that at the beginning. That is a question for Canada and Great Britain to settle. The British colonial policy has always been one of the greatest liberality and fairness, except perhaps in that last quarter of the eighteenth century, when the madness of a German king and his ministers in England forced the United States to break away from her, and form the republic which has now become her most powerful friend.
The perpetuation of a double language within a state, an enclave, undoubtedly carries with it an element of inconvenience and possibly of danger. Yet Belgium is bilingual and Switzerland is quadrilingual. If any tongue other than that of the central government is to be admitted, what could be better than French—the language of culture, which has spoken the large words, liberte, egalite, fraternite? The native dialect of French Canada is a quaint and delightful thing—an eighteenth-century vocabulary with pepper and salt from the speech of the woodsmen and hunters. I should be sorry if it had to fade out. But evidently that is a question for Canada to decide. She has been a bilingual country for a long time. I see no reason why the experiment should not be carried on.
Quebec has been rather slow in waking up to the meaning of this war for world-freedom. But she has been very little slower than some of the United States, after all.
The Church? Well, the influence of the Church always has depended and always must depend upon the quality of her ministers. In France, in Belgium, they have not fallen short of their high duty. The Archbishop of Saskatchewan, who came to Quebec, preached a clear gospel of self-sacrifice for a righteous cause.
But the plain people of Quebec—the voyageurs, the habitants, my old friends in the back districts—that is what I am thinking about. I am sure they are all right. They are very simple, old-fashioned, childish, if you like; but there is no pacifist or pro-German virus among them. If their parochial politicians will let them alone, if their priests will speak to them as prophets of the God of Righteousness, they will show their mettle. They will prove their right to be counted among the free peoples of the world who are willing to defend peace with arms.
That is what I expect to find if I ever get back to my canoemen on the Sainte Marguerite again.
SYLVANORA, July 10, 1918.