A Volunteer Poilu | Page 5

day's sunset was at
its end, and a great mass of black clouds surged over the eastern
horizon, turning the seas ahead to a leaden somberness that lowered in
menacing contrast to the golden streaks of dying day. The air freshened,
salvos of rain fell hissing into the dark waters, and violet cords of
lightning leaped between sea and sky. Echoing thunder rolled long
through unseen abysses. In the deserted salon I found the young
Frenchman with the star-shaped scar reading an old copy of "La
Revue." He had been an officer in the Chasseurs-à-pied until a fearful
wound had incapacitated him for further service, and had then joined
the staff of a great, conservative Parisian weekly. The man was a
disciple of Ernest Psichari, the soldier mystic who died so superbly at
Charleroi in the dreadful days before the Marne. From him I learned
something of the French conception of the idea of war. It was not
uninteresting to compare the French point of view with the German,
and we talked late into the night while the ship was plunging through
the storm. An article in the review, "La Psychologie des Barbares," was
the starting-point of our conversation.
"You must remember that the word 'barbarian' which we apply to the
Germans, is understood by the French intellectually," said he. "Not
only do German atrocities seem barbarous, but their thought also.
Consider the respective national conceptions of the idea of war. To the
Germans, war is an end in itself, and in itself and in all its effects
perfect and good. To the French mind, this conception of war is

barbaric, for war is not good in itself and may be fatal to both victor
and vanquished." (He spoke a beautiful, lucid French with a sort of
military preciseness.)
"It was Ernest Psichari who revealed to us the raison d'être of arms in
modern life, and taught us the meaning of war. To him, war was no
savage ruée, but the discipline of history for which every nation must
be prepared, a terrible discipline neither to be sought, nor rejected when
proffered. Thus the Boches, once their illusion of the glory of war is
smashed, have nothing to fall back on, but the French point of view is
stable and makes for a good morale. Psichari was the intellectual leader
of that movement for the regeneration of the army which has saved
France. When the doctrines of pacificism began to be preached in
France, and cries of 'A bas l'armée' were heard in the streets, Psichari
showed that the army was the only institution left in our industrialized
world with the old ideals and the power to teach them. Quand on a tout
dit, the military ideals of honor, duty, and sacrifice of one's all for the
common good are the fundamentals of. character. Psichari turned this
generation from a generation of dreamers to a generation of soldiers,
knowing why they were soldiers, glad to be soldiers. The army saved
the morale of France when the Church had lost its hold, and the public
schools had been delivered to the creatures of sentimental doctrinaire
government. Was it not a pity that Psichari should have died so
young?"
"Did you know him?" I asked.
"Yes; I saw something of him in Africa. The mystery of the East had
profoundly stirred him. He was a dark, serious fellow with something
of the profile of his grandfather, Ernest Renan. At Charleroi, after an
heroic stand, he and every man of his squad died beside the guns they
served."
Long after, at the Bois-le-Prêtre, I went to the trenches to get a young
sergeant. His friends had with clumsy kindness gathered together his
little belongings and put them in the ambulance. "As tu trouvé mon
livre?" (Have you found my book?) he asked anxiously, and they tossed
beside the stretcher a trench-mired copy of Psichari's "L'Appel des

Armes."
One morning, just at dawn, we drew near a low, sandy coast, and
anchored at the mouth of the great estuary of the Gironde. A spindly
lighthouse was flashing, seeming more to reflect the sunlight from
outside than to be burning within, and a current the color of coffee and
cream with a dash of vermilion in it, went by us mottled with patches
of floating mud. From the deck one had an extraordinary view, a
ten-mile sweep of the strangely colored water, the hemisphere of the
heavens all of one greenish-blue tint, and a narrow strip of nondescript,
sandy coast suspended somehow between the strange sea and unlovely
sky. At noon, the Rochambeau began at a good speed her journey up
the river, passing tile-roofed villages and towns built of pumice-gray
stone, and great flat islands covered with acres upon acres of leafy,
bunchy vines. There was