War and the Future | Page 6

of procession of himself and his sons, all with long straight noses and
sidelong eyes. It is all dreadfully old-fashioned. General Joffre sits in a

pleasant little sitting-room in a very ordinary little villa conveniently
close to Headquarters. He sits among furniture that has no quality of
pose at all, that is neither magnificent nor ostentatiously simple and
hardy. He has dark, rather sleepy eyes under light eyelashes, eyes that
glance shyly and a little askance at his interlocutor and then, as he talks,
away--as if he did not want to be preoccupied by your attention. He has
a broad, rather broadly modelled face, a soft voice, the sort of
persuasive reasoning voice that many Scotchmen have. I had a feeling
that if he were to talk English he would do so with a Scotch accent.
Perhaps somewhere I have met a Scotchman of his type. He sat
sideways to his table as a man might sit for a gossip in a cafe.
He is physically a big man, and in my memory he grows bigger and
bigger. He sits now in my memory in a room like the rooms that any
decent people might occupy, like that vague room that is the
background of so many good portraits, a great blue-coated figure with a
soft voice and rather tired eyes, explaining very simply and clearly the
difficulties that this vulgar imperialism of Germany, seizing upon
modern science and modern appliances, has created for France and the
spirit of mankind.
He talked chiefly of the strangeness of this confounded war. It was
exactly like a sanitary engineer speaking of the unexpected difficulties
of some particularly nasty inundation. He made little stiff horizontal
gestures with his hands. First one had to build a dam and stop the rush
of it, so; then one had to organise the push that would send it back. He
explained the organisation of the push. They had got an organisation
now that was working out most satisfactorily. Had I seen a sector? I
had seen the sector of Soissons. Yes, but that was not now an offensive
sector. I must see an offensive sector; see the whole method. Lieutenant
de Tessin must see that that was arranged....
Neither he nor his two colleagues spoke of the Germans with either
hostility or humanity. Germany for them is manifestly merely an
objectionable Thing. It is not a nation, not a people, but a nuisance.
One has to build up this great counter-thrust bigger and stronger until
they go back. The war must end in Germany. The French generals have

no such delusions about German science or foresight or capacity as
dominates the smart dinner chatter of England. One knows so well that
detestable type of English folly, and its voice of despair: "They /plan/
everything. They foresee everything." This paralysing Germanophobia
is not common among the French. The war, the French generals said,
might take--well, it certainly looked like taking longer than the winter.
Next summer perhaps. Probably, if nothing unforeseen occurred, before
a full year has passed the job might be done. Were any surprises in
store? They didn't seem to think it was probable that the Germans had
any surprises in store.... The Germans are not an inventive people; they
are merely a thorough people. One never knew for certain.
Is any greater contrast possible than between so implacable, patient,
reasonable--and above all things /capable/--a being as General Joffre
and the rhetorician of Potsdam, with his talk of German Might, of
Hammer Blows and Hacking Through? Can there be any doubt of the
ultimate issue between them?
There are stories that sound pleasantly true to me about General Joffre's
ambitions after the war. He is tired; then he will be very tired. He will,
he declares, spend his first free summer in making a tour of the
waterways of France in a barge. So I hope it may be. One imagines him
as sitting quietly on the crumpled remains of the last and tawdriest of
Imperial traditions, with a fishing line in the placid water and a large
buff umbrella overhead, the good ordinary man who does whatever is
given to him to do--as well as he can. The power that has taken the
great effigy of German imperialism by the throat is something very
composite and complex, but if we personify it at all it is something
more like General Joffre than any other single human figure I can think
of or imagine.
If I were to set a frontispiece to a book about this War I would make
General Joffre the frontispiece.
4
As we swung back along the dusty road to Paris at a pace of fifty miles
an hour and upwards, driven by a helmeted driver with an aquiline

profile fit to go upon a