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Page 32
The general relations, indeed, between our soldiers and the French
population could not be better. General after General, both in the bases,
and at the front dwelt on this point. A distinguished General commanding
one of our armies on the line, spoke to me of it with emphasis. "The
testimony is universal, and it is equally creditable to both sides." The
French civilian in town and country is, no doubt, profiting by the large
demand and prompt payments of the British forces. But just as in the case
of the women munition workers, there is infinitely more in it than money.
On the British part there is, in both officers and men, a burning sympathy
for what France has suffered, whether from the outrages of a brutal
enemy, or from the inevitable hardships of war. The headquarters of the
General I have mentioned were not more than fifteen or twenty miles from
towns where unspeakable things were done by German soldiers--officers no
less than men--in the first weeks of the struggle. With such deeds the
French peasantry and small townsfolk, as they still remain in Picardy and
Artois, can and do contrast, day by day, the temper, the courtesy, the
humanity of the British soldier. Great Britain, of course, is a friend and
ally; and Germany is the enemy. But these French folk, these defenceless
women and children, know instinctively that the British Army, like their
own, whether in its officers, or in its rank and file, is incapable,
toward any non-combatant, of what the German Army has done repeatedly,
officially, and still excuses and defends.
[Illustration: One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King.]
[Illustration: A Howitzer in the Act of Firing.]
The signs of this feeling for and sympathy with the French _civils_, among
our soldiers, are many. Here is one story, slight but illuminating, told
me by an eye-witness. She is one of a band of women under a noble chief,
who, since very early in the war, have been running a canteen for
soldiers, night and day, at the large railway-station of the very base I
have been describing, where trains are perpetually arriving from and
departing to the front. In the early days of the war, a refugee train
arrived one afternoon full of helpless French folk, mainly of course women
and children, and old people, turned out of their homes by the German
advance. In general, the refugees were looked after by the French Red
Cross, "who did it admirably, going along the trains with hot drinks and
food and clothing." But on this occasion there were a number of small
children, and some of them got overlooked in the hubbub. "I found a raw
young Scotchman, little more than a boy, from one of the Highland
regiments," with six youngsters clinging to him, for whom he peremptorily
demanded tea. "He had tears in his eyes, and his voice was all husky as he
explained in homely Scotch how the bairns had been turned out of their
homes--how he _couldn't_ bear it--and he would give them tea." A table
was found. "I provided the milk, and he paid for bread and butter and
chocolate, and waited on and talked to the six little French people
himself. Strange to say, they seemed to understand each other quite well."
III
It was with this railway-station canteen that my latest memories of the
great base are concerned. All the afternoon of our second day at ---- was
spent in seeing a fine Red Cross hospital, and then in walking or driving
round the endless reinforcement and hospital camps in the open country.
Everywhere the same vigourous expanding organisation, the same ceaselessly
growing numbers, the same humanity and care in detail. "How many years
have we been at war?" one tends to ask oneself in bewilderment, as the
spectacle unrolls itself. "Is it possible that all this is the work of
eighteen months?" And I am reminded of the Scotch sergeant's reply to his
German captive, who asked his opinion about the duration of the war. "I'll
tell you what--it's the furrst five years that'll be the worst!" We
seem--in the bases--to have slipped through them already, measuring by any
of the ordinary ratios of work to time. On my return home, a diplomat
representing one of the neutral nations, told me that the Military
Secretary of his staff had been round the English bases in France, and had
come back with his "eyes starting out of his head." Having seen them
myself, the phrase seemed to me quite natural.
Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the
canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods'
shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and chairs;
and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end with a
crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just departing
for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright light, and
its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting for the
moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; some were
writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; the piano was
going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the songs of the day, of
which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the room. The men--drafts
going up to different regiments on the line--appeared to me to come from
many parts. The broad Yorkshire and Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney
of the Home Counties, the Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and
Somerset--one seemed to hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter
had slackened a little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk
of the indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of
them drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres
and Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the
quickest pace of life, their appetites!--half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, at
_3d_ each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the
French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism,
simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance of
his being sent to Egypt. "Why are you so anxious to go to Egypt?" "Because
it was there the Holy Family rested," said the lad shyly. The lady to whom
he spoke described to him the tree and the Holy Well in St. Georgius, and
he listened entranced.
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