France at War | Page 7

of the
Archbishop's palace on the one side and dust-heaps of crumbled houses
on the other. They shelled, as they still shell it, with high explosives
and with incendiary shells, so that the statues and the stonework in
places are burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed;
statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; windows
thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one looks at the tortured
pile there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a
soul than it has to-day.
Inside--("Cover yourselves, gentlemen," said the sacristan, "this place
is no longer consecrated")--everything is swept clear or burned out
from end to end, except two candlesticks in front of the niche where
Joan of Arc's image used to stand. There is a French flag there now.
[And the last time I saw Rheims Cathedral was in a spring twilight,
when the great west window glowed, and the only lights within were

those of candles which some penitent English had lit in Joan's honour
on those same candlesticks.] The high altar was covered with
floor-carpets; the pavement tiles were cracked and jarred out by the
rubbish that had fallen from above, the floor was gritty with dust of
glass and powdered stone, little twists of leading from the windows,
and iron fragments. Two great doors had been blown inwards by the
blast of a shell in the Archbishop's garden, till they had bent
grotesquely to the curve of a cask. There they had jammed. The
windows--but the record has been made, and will be kept by better
hands than mine. It will last through the generation in which the Teuton
is cut off from the fellowship of mankind--all the long, still years when
this war of the body is at an end, and the real war begins. Rheims is but
one of the altars which the heathen have put up to commemorate their
own death throughout all the world. It will serve. There is a mark, well
known by now, which they have left for a visible seal of their doom.
When they first set the place alight some hundreds of their wounded
were being tended in the Cathedral. The French saved as many as they
could, but some had to be left. Among them was a major, who lay with
his back against a pillar. It has been ordained that the signs of his
torments should remain--an outline of both legs and half a body,
printed in greasy black upon the stones. There are very many people
who hope and pray that the sign will be respected at least by our
children's children.
IRON NERVE AND FAITH
And, in the meantime, Rheims goes about what business it may have
with that iron nerve and endurance and faith which is the new
inheritance of France. There is agony enough when the big shells come
in; there is pain and terror among the people; and always fresh
desecration to watch and suffer. The old men and the women and the
children drink of that cup daily, and yet the bitterness does not enter
into their souls. Mere words of admiration are impertinent, but the
exquisite quality of the French soul has been the marvel to me
throughout. They say themselves, when they talk: "We did not know
what our nation was. Frankly, we did not expect it ourselves. But the
thing came, and--you see, we go on."

Or as a woman put it more logically, "What else can we do? Remember,
we knew the Boche in '70 when you did not. We know what he has
done in the last year. This is not war. It is against wild beasts that we
fight. There is no arrangement possible with wild beasts." This is the
one vital point which we in England must realize. We are dealing with
animals who have scientifically and philosophically removed
themselves inconceivably outside civilization. When you have heard a
few--only a few--tales of their doings, you begin to understand a little.
When you have seen Rheims, you understand a little more. When you
have looked long enough at the faces of the women, you are inclined to
think that the women will have a large say in the final judgment. They
have earned it a thousand times.

III
BATTLE SPECTACLE AND A REVIEW
Travelling with two chauffeurs is not the luxury it looks; since there is
only one of you and there is always another of those iron men to relieve
the wheel. Nor can I decide whether an ex-professor of the German
tongue, or an ex-roadracer who has lived six years abroad, or a
Marechal des Logis, or a Brigadier makes the most thrusting driver
through three-mile stretches of military traffic repeated at half-hour
intervals. Sometimes it was motor-ambulances