Fighting France

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Fighting France

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fighting France, by Stephane Lauzanne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Fighting France
Author: Stephane Lauzanne
Contributor: James M. Beck
Translator: John L. B. Williams
Release Date: June 1, 2006 [EBook #18483]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FIGHTING FRANCE
BY
STEPHANE LAUZANNE LIEUTENANT IN THE FRENCH ARMY, CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOR EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE "MATIN," MEMBER OF THE FRENCH MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES M. BECK, LL.D. LATE ASSISTANT ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
TRANSLATED BY JOHN L. B. WILLIAMS, A.M. SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON
1918

Copyright, 1918, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America

TO
MY CHIEFS MY COMRADES MY MEN WHO ARE FIGHTING FOR THE GREAT CAUSE OF LIBERTY AND CIVILIZATION
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

FOREWORD
To be Editor-in-Chief of one of the greatest newspapers in the world at twenty-seven years of age is a distinction, which has been enjoyed by few other men, if any, in the whole history of journalism. There may have been exceptional instances, where young men by virtue of proprietary and inherited rights, have nominally, or even actually, succeeded to the editorial control of a great metropolitan newspaper. But in the case of M. Stéphane Lauzanne, his assumption of duty in 1901 as Editor-in-Chief of the Paris Matin was wholly the result of exceptional achievement in journalism. Merit and ability, and not merely friendly influences, gave him this position of unique power, for the Matin has a circulation in France of nearly two million copies a day, and its Editor-in-Chief thereby exerts a power which it would be difficult to over-estimate.
M. Lauzanne was born in 1874 and is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of Paris. Believing that journalism opened to him a wider avenue of usefulness than the legal profession, he preferred--as the event showed most wisely--to follow a journalistic career. In this choice he may have been guided by the fact that he was the nephew of the most famous foreign correspondent in the history of journalism. I refer to M. de Blowitz, who was for many years the Paris correspondent of the London Times, and as such a very notable representative of the Fourth Estate. No one ever more fully illustrated the truth of the words which Thackeray, in Pendennis, puts into the mouth of his George Warrington, when he and Arthur Pendennis stand in Fleet Street and hear the rumble of the engines in the press-room. He likened the foreign correspondents of these newspapers to the ambassadors of a great State; and no one more fully justifies the analogy than M. de Blowitz, for it is profitable to recall that when in 1875 the military party of Germany secretly planned to strike down France, when the stricken gladiator was slowly but courageously struggling to its feet, it was de Blowitz, who in an article in the London Times let the light of day into the brutal and iniquitous scheme, and by mere publicity defeated for the time being this conspiracy against the honor of France and the peace of the world. Unfortunately the coup of the Prussian military clique was only postponed. Our generation was destined to sustain the unprecedented horrors of a base attempt to destroy France, that very glorious asset of all civilization.
De Blowitz took great interest in his brilliant nephew and at his suggestion Lauzanne became the London correspondent of the Matin in 1898, when he was only twenty-four years of age. This brought him into direct communication with the London Times which then as now exchanged cable news with the Matin, and it was the duty of the young journalist to take the cable news of the "Thunderer" and transmit such portions as would particularly interest France to the Matin, with such special comment as suggested itself. How well he did this work, requiring as it did the most accurate judgment and the nicest discrimination, was shown when he was made Editor-in-Chief of the Matin in 1901.
His tenure of office was destined to be short for, when the world war broke out, M. Lauzanne, as a First Lieutenant of the French Army, joined the colors in the first days of mobilization and surrendered the pen for the sword. His career as editor had been long enough, however, for him to impress upon the minds of the French public the imminency of the Prussian Peril. As to this he had no illusions and his powerful