thinks of us," to express what is passing in the mind of the average Frenchman, setting down nought in malice. For we must realize that in the mass the two nations are driven to hearsay or to the newspaper for their opinions of each other. And those flamboyant paragraphs, which please the people's pride, have more chance of remaining in the memory than colourless official news, which says that England has doubled her battle-line and organized munitions. These facts are hidden away in inconspicuous type, and lack the attraction of the other. So Jacques Bonhomme is not always sure that England is serious in the war, for his eye has caught the heading of his newspaper : "Another Strike in Wales." And his fellow-man in England goes to bed with the conviction that, but for John Bull, France would not last a week. It is well to say these things-if they can be told in the spirit of truth and with the desire that good may come of them. Finally, in writing about France, one has always the solace of the thought that though she may be swayed upon the branch in the oscillation of events, she can always save herself, for she has wings. As Victor Hugo says: 66 'Soyez comme l'oiseau, posé pour un instant Sur des rameaux trop frêles, Qui sent plier la branche et qui chante pourtant CHARLES DAWBARN. FRANCE AT BAY CHAPTER I THE NEED OF IMAGINATION A PERFUNCTORY knowledge of the French, gleaned from a few visits, will hardly help us to that complete understanding of those temperamental differences from ourselves which lie below the salients of the common view. The circumstances of the Great War have rendered such comprehension more than ever necessary. How are we to work with our Allies, to gain full advantage of co-operation, unless we read their minds, learn their ways of life, and their habit of thought? If, in the texture of this book, some rays of light traverse its warp and woof and reach the reader's eye, then is its mission fulfilled. I wanted to present France as she is in the throes of a great fight, at bay to her enemy, struggling for existence, that she may be able to breathe more freely on the morrow. I wanted to present France as I see her, modestly proud and immeasurably great. I should like English people to perceive her greatness as well as to realize the forces that have been at work to change and modify her into what she is to-day. And, to do that, one must not be content to repeat the phrases of the B newspapers, bus exercise a little enterprise and embark upon an imaginary journey across France. Let us look out upon life from the train and motor-car, rub shoulders with it in the marketplace, and not imagine that we see the whole of it from a café window on the Paris Boulevard. This has been a common error in the past-so common that it has exposed itself. The public of the AngloSaxon world has at last realized that the true France lies, not in cosmopolitan assemblages in great centres of population, but in the hard-working, patientlyenduring, thrifty, and scarcely articulate population of the provinces. Where is this vain and frivolous people, this decadent race of which we have heard so much? I will tell you where it was in September 1914. It was on the banks of the Marne and the Germans were on the other side. After a few days' fighting, the Germans were still on the other side, but much farther away-nearer their "natural frontier"; they were fleeing, in fact, from the decadent French. This was not a bad performance, when you think of it, for a senile and out-worn people, admittedly illprepared for war with the greatest military power. The France with which we have to do in this book is the France of the battlefield and the hospital, the France behind-the-lines, of the militarized factories and the farms and fields. The heroism of fighting France has been revealed by the communiqués; but these rather inhuman documents do not speak of the hospitals where the men lie dumb, uttering no cry when wounds are probed, when surgeons perform their harshly necessary work. And these victims of the war merely say to the orderly who has been |
