The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon Part 6

As much as the German atrocities have done to destroy our confidence in the divine origin of the human soul, the French soldiers have done to vindicate the majesty and beauty of a soul made in the image of G.o.d.

I have seen French boys that were so simple, brave and modest in their courage, so beautiful in their spirit, as to make one feel that they were young G.o.ds and not men. One day, into one of the camps, came a lawyer from Paris. He brought the news of the revival of the Latin Quarter. For nearly three years a shop near the Beaux Arts had been closed. During all this time the French soldier had been at the front.

When the first call came on that August day he put up the wooden shutters, turned the key in the lock, and marched away to the trenches.

Said the lawyer: "I come from your cousin. The Americans are here in Paris. Your cousin says that if you will give me the keys and authorize her to open the shop she will take your place. She can recover your business, and perhaps have a little store of money for you when you have your 'permission' or come home to rest. She tells me that she is your sole relative." The soldier shook his head, saying: "I never expect to come home. I do not want to come home. France can be freed only by men who are ready to die for her. I do not know where the key is. I do not know what goods are in the shop. For three years I have had no thought of it. I am too busy to make money. There are other things for me--fighting, and perhaps dying. Tell my cousin that she can have the shop." Then the soldier saluted and started back towards his trench.

"Wait! Wait!" cried the attorney. Then he stooped down, wrote hurriedly upon his knee, a little paper in which the soldier authorized his cousin to carry on the business, in his name. Scrawling his name to the doc.u.ment, the soldier ran towards the place where his heart was--the place of peril, heroism and self-sacrifice.

This was typical of the thousands of soldiers at the front, for French soldiers suffer that the children may never have to wade through this blood and muck. The foul creature that has bathed the world in blood must be slain forever. With the full consent of the intellect, of the heart and the conscience, these glorious French boys have given themselves to G.o.d, to freedom, and to France.

2. Why the Hun Cannot Defeat the Frenchman

One morning in a little restaurant in Paris I was talking with a British army-captain. The young soldier was a typical Englishman, quiet, reserved, but plainly a little excited. He had just been promoted to his captaincy and had received one week's "permission" for a rest in Paris.

We had both come down from near Messines Ridge.

"Of course," said the English captain, "the French are the greatest soldiers in the world."

"Why do you say that?" I answered. "What could be more wonderful than the heroism, the endurance of the British at Vimy Ridge? They seem to me more like young G.o.ds than men."

To which the captain answered: "But you must remember that England has never been invaded. Look at my company! Their equipment is right from helmet to shoe, so perfectly drilled are they that the swing of their right legs is like the swing of one pendulum. I will put my British company against the world. Still I must confess this, that, so far as I know, no English division of fifteen thousand men ever came home at night with more than five thousand prisoners.

"But look at the French boys at Verdun! As for clothes, one had a helmet, another a hat, or a cap, or was bareheaded. One had red trousers, one had gray trousers and one had fought until he had only rags left. When they got within ten rods of the German trench they were so anxious to reach the Boche that they forgot to shoot and lifted up their big bayonets, while they shouted, 'For G.o.d and France!'

"That night when that French division came back ten thousand strong they brought more than ten thousand German prisoners with them to spend the night inside of barbed wire fences.

"The reason is this: These Frenchmen fought for home and fireside. They fought against an invader who had murdered their daughters and mothers.

The Huns will never defeat France. Before that could be done," exclaimed the English captain, "there would not be a man left in France to explain the reason for his defeat."

3. "I Am Only His Wife"

Human life holds many wonderful hours. Love, marriage, suffering, trouble, are crises full of romance and destiny, but I question whether any man ever pa.s.sed through an experience more thrilling than the hour in which he stands at the Charing Cross or Waterloo Station in London or in the great station in Paris and watches the hospital trains come in, loaded with wounded soldiers brought in after a great battle.

Often fifty thousand men and women line the streets for blocks, waiting for the trains. Slowly the wounded boys are lifted from the car to the cot. Slowly the cot is carried to the ambulance. The nurses speak only in whispers. The surgeons lift the hand directing them. You can hear the wings of the Angel of Death rustling in the air.

When the automobile carrying two wounded boys moves down the street, the men and women all uncover while you hear whispered words, "G.o.d bless you!" from some father or mother who see their own son in that boy.

Now and then some young girl with streaming eyes timidly drops a flower into the front of the ambulance--pansies for remembrance and love--upon a boy whom she does not know, while she thinks of a boy whom she knows and loves who is somewhere in the trenches of France.

One morning a young nurse in the hospital in Paris received a telegram.

It was from a young soldier, saying: "My pal has been grievously wounded. He is on the train that will land this afternoon. He has a young wife and a little child. You will find them at such and such a street. I do not know whether he will live to reach Paris. Can you see that they are at the station to meet him? That was his last whispered request to me."

That afternoon at five o'clock, with her face pressed between the iron bars, a young French woman, with a little boy in her arms, was looking down the long platform. Many, many cots pa.s.sed by, and still he did not come. At last she saw the nurse. The young wife did not know that her soldier husband had died while they lifted him out of the car.

The young nurse said that she never had undertaken a harder task than that of lifting the boy in her own arms and leading the French girl to that cot, that she might know that henceforth she must look with altered eyes upon an altered world. A few minutes pa.s.sed by and then a miracle of hope had happened.

"I saw her," said the nurse, "with one hand upon his hair and the other stretched upward as she exclaimed: 'I am only his wife, France is his mother! I am only his wife, France is his mother! I give him to France, the mother that reared him!'"

4. A Soldier's Funeral in Paris

The two boys were incredibly happy. Two mornings before they had landed in Paris. What a reception they had had in the soldiers' club from the splendid French women! How good the hot bath had seemed! Clean linen, a fresh shave, a good breakfast, a soft cot, plenty of blankets, twenty-four hours' sleep, and they had wakened up new men. The first morning they walked along the streets, looking into the shop windows; in the afternoon one of the ladies took them to a moving picture show, and now on the second day here they were, at a little table before the cafe in one of the best restaurants in the Latin Quarter, with good red wine and black coffee, and plenty of cigarettes, and not even the boom of cannon to disturb their conversation. Strange that in three days they could have pa.s.sed from the uttermost of h.e.l.l to the uttermost of safety and peace. "These are good times," said one of the boys, "and we are in them."

Then they heard a policeman shouting. Looking up, they saw a singular spectacle. Just in front of them was a poor old hea.r.s.e drawn by two horses, whose black trappings touched the ground. Shabbier hea.r.s.e never was seen. Strangest of all, there was only a little, thin, black-robed girl walking behind the hea.r.s.e. There were no hired mourners as usual.

There was no large group of friends walking with heads bared in token of reverence; there was no priest; no carriages followed after. Saddest of all, there was not even a flower. What could these things mean? How strange that when they were so happy this little woman could be so sad.

Suddenly one of the soldier boys arose. He stepped into the street and looked into the hea.r.s.e. There he saw these words: "A soldier of France."

He began to question the woman. Lifting her veil, he saw a frail girl, and while the traffic jam increased she told her story. The soldier had been wounded at the Battle of the Marne. He was one of the first to be brought to Paris. He never walked again. "I am very poor; I have only one franc a day. We have no friends. I borrowed money for the hea.r.s.e."

The boy returned to his fellows. "Fall in line, boys!" he shouted. "Here is a soldier of France. This little girl has taken care of him for three years on one franc a day. Line up, everybody, and tell the men to swallow their coffee and wine and fall into the procession. Go into the shops and say that a soldier of France lies here." When that hea.r.s.e began to move there were twenty men and women walking as mourners behind the body. Two soldier boys walked beside the frail little girl with her heavy crepe. As the soldiers walked along beside the hea.r.s.e the procession began to grow. On and on for two long miles this slowly moving company increased in number until one hundred were in line, and when they came into G.o.d's Acre they buried the poor boy as if he were a king coming in with trumpets from the battle. For he was a soldier of France.

5. The Old Book-Lover of Louvain

Among the fascinating pursuits of life we must make a large place for the collection of old books, old paintings, old missals and curios.

Certain cities, like Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Madrid, have been for a thousand years like unto the Sarga.s.so Sea in which beautiful things have drifted.

Fifty years ago, men of leisure began to collect these treasures. Some made their way into Egypt and Palestine, and there uncovered temples long buried in sands and ruins and all covered with debris. From time to time old missals were found in deserted monasteries, marbles were digged up in buried palaces. Men came back from their journeys with some lovely terra cotta, some ivory or bronze, some painting by an old master, whose beauty had been hidden for centuries under smoke and grime. The enthusiasm of the collectors exceeds the zest of men searching for gold and diamonds amid the sands of South Africa.

Fifty years ago a young scholar of Louvain won high praise because of his skill in dating and naming old pictures and ma.n.u.scripts. When ten years had pa.s.sed by, this scholar's name and fame were spread all over Europe. Many museums in different countries competed for his services.

The time came when the heads of galleries in London and Paris and Rome sent for this expert to pa.s.s upon some art object. During the fifty years this scholar came to know every beautiful treasure in Europe.

In the old castles of Austria, in a monastery of Bohemia, in the house of an ancient Italian family, in certain second-hand bookstores, in out-of-the-way towns he found treasures as precious as pearls and diamonds raked out of the muck-heap.

When death took away his only son and left his little grandchildren dependent upon himself the old book-lover looked forward serenely into the future. He knew that every year his treasures were growing more and more valuable. Living in his home in Louvain he received from time to time visits from experts, who came in from all the cities of the world to see his treasures, and if possible, to buy some rare book.

Then, in August, 1914, came the great catastrophe, as came the explosion of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii under hot ashes and flaming fire.

One morning the old scholar was startled by the noise and confusion in the street. Looking down from his window he saw German soldiers, German hors.e.m.e.n, German cannon. He beheld women and children lined up on the sidewalk. He saw German soldiers a.s.sault old men. He saw them carrying the furniture, rugs and carpets out of the houses. He saw the flames coming out of the roofs of houses a block away.

A moment later an old university professor pounded upon his door and called out that they must flee for their lives. There was only time to pick out one satchel and fill it with his precious ma.n.u.scripts and costly missals. Then the two old scholars fled into the street with the grandchildren. Fortunately a Belgian driving a two-wheeled coal cart was pa.s.sing by. Into the cart climbed the little grandchildren. Carefully the satchel filled with its treasures was also lifted into place.

At that moment a German sh.e.l.l exploded beside the cart. When the old book-lover recovered consciousness the cart was gone, the grandchildren were dead and of all his art treasures there was left only one little book upon which some scholar of the twelfth century had toiled with loving hands.

Carried forward among the refugees several hours later, Belgian soldiers lifted the old man into a train that was carrying the wounded down to Havre. In his hand the collector held the precious book. Excitement and sorrow had broken his heart. His mind also wandered. He was no longer able to understand the cosmic terror and blackness. A n.o.ble officer, himself wounded, put his coat under the old man's head and made a pillow and bade him forget the German beast, the bomb sh.e.l.ls, the blazing city. But all these foul deeds and all dangers now were as naught to the old man.

"See my little book," he said. "How beautiful the lettering! Why, upon this book, as upon a s.h.i.+p, civilization sailed across the dark waters of the Middle Ages. Look at this book of beauty. The ugliness of the tenth century is dead. The cruelty and the slavery of b.l.o.o.d.y tyrants is dead also. The old cannon are quite rusted away. But look at this! Behold, its beauty is immortal! Everything else dies. Soon all the smoke and blood will go, but beauty and love and liberty will remain."

And then lifting the little book the old collector of Louvain pressed his lips to the vellum page, bright with the blue and crimson and gold of seven hundred years, and in a moment pa.s.sed to the soul's summer land, where no shriek of German sh.e.l.ls rends the air, where wicked Germans have ceased from troubling and where the French and Belgians, worn by the cruelty of the Huns, are now at rest and peace.

6. A Vision of Judgment in Martyred Gerbeviller

To-day everybody knows the story of Gerbeviller, the martyred.

To the northwest is that glorious capital of Lorraine, Nancy. Farther northwest are Verdun and Toul, with our American boys. The region round about the martyred town is a region of rich iron ores.