Over There

Over There, by Arnold Bennett

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Title: Over There
Author: Arnold Bennett
Release Date: March 19, 2004 [eBook #11641]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OVER
THERE***
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OVER THERE
War Scenes on the Western Front
By ARNOLD BENNETT

I The Zone Of Paris
From the balcony you look down upon massed and variegated tree-
tops as though you were looking down upon a valley forest from a
mountain height. Those trees, whose hidden trunks make alleys and
squares, are rooted in the history of France. On the dusty gravel of the
promenade which runs between the garden and the street a very young
man and a girl, tiny figures, are playing with rackets at one of those
second-rate ball games beloved by the French petite bourgeoisie. Their
jackets and hats are hung on the corner of the fancy wooden case in
which an orange-tree is planted. They are certainly perspiring in the
heavy heat of the early morning. They are also certainly in love. This
lively dalliance is the preliminary to a day's desk-work. It seems
ill-chosen, silly, futile. The couple have forgotten, if they ever knew,
that they are playing at a terrific and long-drawn moment of crisis in a
spot sacred to the finest civilisation.
From the balcony you can see, close by, the Louvre, with its sculptures
extending from Jean Goujon to Carpeaux; the Church of St. Clotilde,
where Cesar Franck for forty years hid his genius away from popularity;
the railway station of the Quai d'Orsay, which first proved that a
terminus may excite sensations as fine as those excited by a palace or a
temple; the dome of the Invalides; the unique facades, equal to any
architecture of modern times, to the north of the Place de la Concorde,
where the Ministry of Marine has its home. Nobody who knows Paris,
and understands what Paris has meant and still means to humanity, can
regard the scene without the most exquisite sentiments of humility,
affection, and gratitude. It is impossible to look at the plinths, the
mouldings, the carving of the Ministry of Marine and not be thrilled by
that supreme expression of national art.
And all this escaped! That is the feeling which one has. All this beauty
was menaced with disaster at the hands of beings who comprehended it
even less than the simple couple playing ball, beings who have scarcely
reached the beginnings of comprehension, and who joined a barbaric
ingenuousness to a savage cruelty. It was menaced, but it escaped.

Perhaps no city was ever in acuter peril; it escaped by a miracle, but it
did escape. It escaped because tens of thousands of soldiers in
thousands of taxi- cabs advanced more rapidly than any soldiers could
be expected to advance. "The population of Paris has revolted and is
hurrying to ask mercy from us!" thought the reconnoitring simpletons
in Taubes, when they noted beneath them the incredible processions of
taxi- cabs going north. But what they saw was the Sixth Army, whose
movement changed the campaign, and perhaps the whole course of
history.
"A great misfortune has overtaken us," said a German officer the next
day. It was true. Greater than he suspected.
The horror of what might have happened, the splendour of what did
happen, mingle in the awed mind as you look over the city from the
balcony. The city escaped. And the event seems vaster and more
sublime than the mind can bear.
The streets of Paris have now a perpetual aspect of Sunday morning;
only the sound of church-bells is lacking. A few of the taxi- cabs have
come back; but all the auto-buses without exception are away behind
the front. So that the traffic is forced underground, where the railways
are manned by women. A horse-bus, dug up out of the past, jogs along
the most famous boulevard in the world like a country diligence, with a
fat, laughing peasant-woman clinging to its back-step and collecting
fare-moneys into the immense pocket of her black apron. Many of the
most expensive and unnecessary shops are shut; the others wait with
strange meekness for custom. But the provision shops and all the sturdy
cheap shops of the poor go on naturally, without any self-consciousness,
just as usual. The pavements show chiefly soldiers in a wild, new
variety of uniforms, from pale blue to black, imitated and adapted from
all sources, and especially from England--and