TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_) and small capitals are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

The book cover was modified by the transcriber and has been added to the public domain.

CIVILISATION
1914-1918

BY

GEORGES DUHAMEL

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY

T. P. CONWIL-EVANS

THE SWARTHMORE PRESS LTD
(formerly trading as Headley Bros. Publishers Ltd)

72 OXFORD STREET, LONDON, W. 1

1919

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

With the exception of, perhaps, “Le Feu” by Henri Barbusse, no book made such a stir in the France of 1914-1918 as Georges Duhamel’s[1] “Civilisation.” Its success was as immediate as its appeal was universal. Like “Le Feu,” it was awarded the Prix Goncourt, and ran to an enormous circulation.

There is no doubt, too, that posterity will acclaim it as a remarkable work. For it is something more than a human document of the war. One feels in the poignant experiences of the few French soldiers, depicted by M. Duhamel, the tragic fate of twentieth-century man—the Machine Age man—in the grip of the scientific monster he has created for himself. These intimate pictures have the cumulative effect of an epic in which the experiment of humanity is menaced by man’s own inventiveness and heroism.

This impression is the creation of the particular style of M. Duhamel. It is not by the vigorous simplicity of a Guy de Maupassant that he achieves his effects, nor by the exact observation which one might expect of him as a doctor of medicine. His strength lies in the violent imagery with which he intensifies his descriptions, giving the impression of life and feeling to inanimate objects. He thus often produces the effect of a monstrous dream or nightmare.

Emile Zola was a past master of this method; but, in his case, too often, the subject did not lend itself to such treatment. M. Duhamel does not lay himself open to this objection. No style could be more appropriate than his for expressing the cold precision of the machinery by means of which this so effectively organised war has ruined our world.

Like Emile Zola, M. Duhamel does not shirk any detail however unpleasant. Differences in language and point of view make it impossible to reproduce all of these. But with the exception of “Les Amours de Ponceau” all the tales comprising “Civilisation” are included in the translation.

I am much indebted to Miss Eva Gore-Booth for kindly reading the proofs.

T. P. C.-E.

London, October 1919.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Georges Duhamel, born 1884, poet, dramatist, and doctor of medicine. His poems include “Des Légendes,” “Des Batailles” (1907), “L’homme en Tête” (1909), “Selon ma loi” (1910), “Compagnons” (1912); and plays: “La Lumière” (played at the Odéon, 1911), “Dans l’ombre des Statues” (Odéon, 1912), “Le Combat” (Théâtre des Arts, 1913), “La plus grande joie” (Théâtre du Vieux Colombier); and several critical works on poetry. “Vie des Martyres,” 1917; “Possession du Monde” (Essays), 1918.

CONTENTS

A FACE

A commanding and almost gracefully shaped brow, a look that was at once childish and profound, a dimpled chin, a rather flaunting moustache, a bitter expression about the laughing lips: that French face I shall never forget, though I saw it only for a second in the flickering light of a match.

It was an autumn night in 1916. The train which runs from Châlons to Sainte-Menehould was making its return journey, with all lights out. The Champagne front, on our left, was then calm, sunk in volcanic sleep: a sleep of nightmares, sudden alarms, and sharp flashes. We pierced the darkness, slowly crossing the wretched country, which seemed in our mind’s eye to be even more wretched and distorted by the hideous machinery of war. The little train, with cries of weariness, hobbled along with a rather hesitating gait, like a blind man traversing an accustomed road.

I was going back, my furlough being over. Feeling rather ill, I lay on the seat. Opposite me, three officers were chatting. Their voices were those of young men, but in military experience they were veterans. They were rejoining their regiment.

“This sector,” said one of them, “is fairly quiet at present.”

“Certainly, there will be nothing doing until the spring,” replied the other.

Silence followed, broken by the restless clatter of the wheels running on the rails. Presently we heard a young, laughing, satirical voice saying, almost in a whisper:

“Oh! we shall be compelled to do some mad thing before spring.”

Then, without any connecting remark, the same man added:

“It will be my twelfth attack. But I have always been lucky. I have only been wounded once yet.”

These two phrases were still echoing in my ears when the man who had uttered them lighted a match and began smoking. The light gave a furtive glimpse of a handsome face. The man belonged to an honoured corps. The insignia of the highest awards that can be given to young officers gleamed on his yellow tunic. A quiet and discreet courage emanated from his personality.

Darkness once more enfolded us. But would there ever be a night black enough to extinguish the image which then flashed before me? Would there ever be a silence so complete as to stifle the echo of the two little phrases murmured amid the rattle of the train?

Since that time I have often thought of the incident whenever, as on that night, I have turned, with love and anguish, towards the past and towards the future of these men of France—my brothers who, in such great numbers, have given themselves up to die and are not ashamed to utter the thoughts that lie nearest the heart; whose nobility of soul, and unyielding intelligence and pathetic simplicity, the world appreciates too little.

How could I not think of it at a time which saw the long martyrdom of a great people, who, across a night without bourne, search solely for the paths along which they may at last find freedom and peace?

REVAUD’S ROOM

One never got tired in Revaud’s room. The roar of the war, the rumbling of transport waggons, the spasmodic shocks of the gunfire, all the whistling and gasping sounds of the killing machine beat against the windows with a spent fury, as in the shelter of a creek resound the echoes of a storm raging in the open sea. But this noise was as familiar to the ear as the heart-beats of the miserable world, and one never got tired in Revaud’s room.

It was a long, narrow apartment where there were four beds and four men. It was, notwithstanding, called Revaud’s room, because the personality of Revaud filled it from wall to wall. It was just the size for Revaud, exactly fitting like a tailor-made coat. In the beginning of November there had been all kinds of nasty intrigues hatched by Corporal Têtard to get Revaud removed elsewhere; and, the intrigues succeeding, the poor man was taken up to another storey and placed in a large dormitory of twenty beds—a bewildering desert, no longer homely, but ravaged by a raw, cruel light. In three days, by an involuntary decision of his body and soul, Revaud had got worse to such an alarming extent that he had to be carried down with great haste and placed behind the door in his own room, where the winter light came filtering in, full of kindliness.

And thus things remained; whenever a seriously wounded man, an extraordinary case, was brought to the division, Mme. Baugan was asked to go and see Revaud at once and “sound him on the question.”

Revaud pretended to make things rather difficult at first, and ended by saying:

“Very well; I am quite willing. Put the man in my room....”

And Revaud’s room was always full. To be there, you had to have more than a mere bagatelle of a wound: a broken foot, or some trivial little amputation in the arm. It was necessary to have “some unusual and queer things”—a burst intestine, for example, or a displaced spinal cord, or yet cases in which “the skull has been bent in or the urine doesn’t come out where it used to before the war.”

“Here,” Revaud used to say with pride, “there are only very rare cases.”

There was Sandrap, “who had to have his needs satisfied through a hole in his side”—Sandrap, a little man from the north, with a round nose like a fresh apple, with beautiful eyes of a delicate grey colour of silk. He had been wounded three times, and used to say every morning: “They’d be surprised, the Boches, if they could see me now.”

There was Remusot, who had a large wound in the chest. It made a continual Faoo aoo ... Raoo aoo ... Faoo ... Raoo ...; and Revaud had been asking from the first day:

“What a funny noise you’re making! D’you do it with your mouth?”

In a hoarse voice he wheezed:

“It is my breath escaping between my ribs.”

And lastly there was Mery, whose spine had been broken by an aerial torpedo, and who “no longer felt the lower part of his body, as if it didn’t belong to him.”

All this little world was living on its back, each in his place, in a promiscuous atmosphere of smells, of sounds, and sometimes of thought. The men recognised each other by their voices rather than by their faces; and there was one great week when Sandrap was seen by Revaud as he was being carried to the dressing-room in a stretcher on a level with the bed, and the latter exclaimed suddenly:

“Hallo! is that you, Sandrap? What a funny head you have got! And your hair is even funnier.”

Mme. Baugan came at eight o’clock, and at once she began scolding:

“There’s a nasty smell about. Oh! Oh! my poor Revaud, I’m sure you have again——”

Revaud avoided the question:

“Very fine, thanks. I’ve slept very well. Nothing more to report. I’ve slept quite well.”

Then Mme. Baugan drew back the sheets, and, overcome by the sad and ignoble smell, she muttered:

“Oh! Revaud! you are unreasonable. Will you never be able to control yourself!”

Revaud could no longer dissemble. He confessed phlegmatically: “Ah, it’s true enough! But whatever you say, nurse, I can’t help myself.”

Mme. Baugan came and went, looking for fresh linen and water. She began to wash him and dress him as if he were a child.

But suddenly overcome with shame and a kind of despair, he moaned:

“Madame Baugan, don’t be cross with me. I wasn’t like that in civil life.”

Mme. Baugan began to laugh, and Revaud without more ado laughed too, for all the lines of his face and his whole soul were made for laughing, and he loved to laugh even in the midst of the most acute pain.

This reply having pleased him, he trotted it out often, and, when confessing to his little infirmity, he used to tell everyone “I wasn’t like that, you know, before I joined up.”

One morning, in making Mery’s bed, Mme. Baugan startled the room with an exclamation. The paralytic lad had not been able to restrain himself.

“What! Mery! You, too, my poor friend!”

Mery, once a handsome country lad with a splendid body, looked at his dead limbs and sighed:

“It is quite possible, Madame. I can’t feel what’s going on.”

But Revaud was delighted. All the morning he cried, “It isn’t only me! It isn’t only me!” And no one grudged him his joy, for when you are in the depths of despair you are glad to have companions in your misery.

The most happy phrases have only a short-lived success. Revaud, who had a sense of humour, soon felt the moment coming when he would no longer find comfort in the remark that “he wasn’t like that before he joined up.” It was then he received a letter from his father. It came unexpectedly one morning. Revaud’s face had just been washed, and his great Gallic moustache had been cut—from caprice—according to the American pattern. All the hospital filed past at the corner of the door in order to see Revaud who looked like a very sick “English gentleman.”

He turned the letter over with his fingers that were deformed by misery and toil; then he said uneasily, “What does the letter mean? Do they still want to kick up a row?”

Revaud was a married man; but during the six months in which he had remained without news from his wife he had got used to his loneliness. He was in his room, behind the door, and sought no quarrels with anyone. Then why had a letter been sent to him?

“It must be they want to make a row,” he repeated; and he handed the letter to Mme. Baugan, for her to read.

The letter came from Revaud’s father. In ten lines written in a painstaking hand, with thick downstrokes and fine upstrokes, with flourishes and a dashing signature, the old man announced that he was going to visit him one day in the near future.

Laughter came back again to Revaud, and with laughter a final justification for living. All day he toyed with the letter, and used gladly to show it and say:

“We are going to have a visit. My father is coming to see us.”

Then he began to be rather confiding.

“My father, you know, is a fine fellow, but he has had some hard knocks. You will see my father—he’s a fellow that’s up to a few tricks, and, what’s worse, he wears a shirt collar.”

Finally he ended by restricting his comments on his father’s character to this statement:

“My father!—you’ll see—he wears a shirt collar.”

The days passed, and Revaud spoke so often of his father that in the end he no longer knew whether the visitor had come or was yet to come. Thus, by a special providence, Revaud never knew that his father did not come to see him; and afterwards, when wanting to make allusion to this remarkable period, he had recourse to a very ample phrase, and used to say:

“It was the time of my father’s visit.”

Revaud was spoiled: he never lacked cigarettes or company, and he used to confess so contentedly: “I’m the pet of this hospital.”

Besides, Revaud was not difficult. Tarrissant had only to appear between his crutches for the dying man to exclaim, “Here’s another who’s come to see me. I told you I was the pet here.”

Tarrissant had undergone the same operation as Revaud. It was a complicated business, taking place in the knee. Only, in the case of Tarrissant the operation had been more or less a complete success, and in the case of Revaud, more or less a failure, because “it depends on one’s blood.”

From the operation itself Revaud thought he had learned a new word: “His knee had been ‘dezected.’” He used to look at Tarrissant, and, comparing himself with the convalescing young man, he came to the simple conclusion:

“We are both ‘dezected’ men, except that my old woman has left me; and, too, I have been overworked.”

It was the only allusion that Revaud ever made to his conjugal misfortune and to his toiling past.

But really, why think of all these things? Hasn’t man enough to do with a troublesome leg, or this perpetual need which he cannot control?

Every evening each one prepared to face the long night with little preparations, as if they were about to set out on a journey. Remusot was pricked in the thigh, and at once he was in a dreamland bathed in sweat, in which the fever brought before his eyes things he never would describe to anyone. Mery had a large mug of some decoction or other prepared for him, and he had only to stretch out his arm to get it. Sandrap smoked his last cigarette, and Revaud asked for his cushion. It was a little cotton pillow, which was placed against his side. Only when this was done was Revaud willing to say, “That’s it, boys! That’ll do.”

And from that moment they went off into a sleep that was horrible and teeming like a forest waylaid with snares, and each of them wandered in the pursuit of his dreams.

While the mind was beating its wings, the four bodies remained still. A little night-light relieved the darkness. Then, in slippered footfalls, a night attendant came and put his head through the door and heard the four tortured respiratory movements, and occasionally surprised the open but absent look of Remusot; in contemplating these patched-up human remains, he suddenly thought of a raft of shipwrecked men—of a raft tossed by the waves of the sea, with four bodies in distress.

The window-panes continued to vibrate plaintively with the echoes of the war. Sometimes, in the course of the long night, the war seemed to stop, as a woodcutter pauses to take breath between two blows of his axe.

It was then that, in the deep and sudden silence, they awoke with queer painful sensations; and they thought of all the things that happen in battle—they thought of these things when not a sound could be heard.

Dawn broke reluctantly, those days of winter. The orderlies scrubbed the floor. They blew out the spluttering night-light which stank of burnt fat. Then there were the morning ablutions, and all the pains and screams of wound-dressing.

Sometimes, in the middle of the trivial duties of the day, the door was solemnly opened and a general entered, followed by the officers of the staff. He paused at first on the threshold, overcome by the unwholesome air, then he made a few steps into the room and asked who were these men. The doctor used to whisper in his ear, and the general replied quite simply:

“Ah, good! Excellent!”

When he had gone, Revaud always used to assure us:

“The general wouldn’t think of coming here without seeing me. He’s an old pal.”

After that, there was something to talk about the whole day.

Many officers used to come as well—of the highest rank. They read the papers pinned on the wall. “Frankly,” they said, “it’s a very fine result.”

One of them began one day to examine Mery. He was a doctor, with a white-bearded chin, very large and corpulent, his breast decorated with crosses and his neck pink with good living. He seemed a decent fellow and disposed to show sympathy. He said, in fact:

“Poor devil! Ah, but you see the same sort of thing might happen to me.”

More often than not, nobody came, absolutely no one, and the day was endured only by being taken in small mouthfuls, like their meat at dinner.

Once a great event happened. Mery was taken out and placed under the X-rays. He came back, well content, remarking:

“At least, it isn’t painful.”

Another time Revaud’s leg was amputated. He had murmured when giving his consent: “I’d done my best to keep it, this old leg of mine! Well! well! So much the worse, so get on with it. Poor old thing!”

He burst out laughing once again; and no one has laughed, and no one will laugh again, as Revaud did that day.

His leg then was to be amputated. The noblest blood in France flowed once more. But it took place between four walls, in a little room white-washed like a dairy, and no one heard of it.

Revaud was put back to bed behind the door. He awoke, and like a child said:

“They’ve set me back quite warm and ‘comfy’ with this leg.”

Revaud had rather a good night, and when, on the next day, Mme. Baugan came into the room, he said to her, as he now was in the habit of saying:

“Fine, Madame Baugan. I’ve had a good night.”

With this, his head dropped on one side, his mouth opened little by little, and, without further remark or movement, he was dead.

“Poor Revaud!” exclaimed Mme. Baugan. “Oh! he is dead.”

She kissed his brow, and at once began to lay him out, for a long day faced her and she could not afford to waste time.

As Mme. Baugan dressed Revaud, she grumbled and scolded good-naturedly because the corpse was difficult to manage.

Sandrap, Mery and Remusot said nothing. The rain streamed down the panes, which never stopped rattling because of the gunfire.

ON THE SOMME FRONT

I hadn’t the heart to laugh, but sometimes I felt vaguely envious. I thought of the men who were carrying on the war, in the newspapers—those who wrote: “The line has been pierced; why hesitate to throw in fifty divisions?” Or: “we have only to bring our reserves right up to the line. A hundred thousand men must at once fill the gap.”

I longed to see that brave set compelled to find between Fouilly and Maricourt a little corner as secure as their little heaps of paper plans, on which a purring cat might find repose. I swear they would have found it rather difficult.

I thought abstractedly about my work as I went along; from time to time I glanced round at the scene, and I assure you one hit upon some queer things.

Beneath the rows of poplar trees that stretched along the valley a huge army had taken cover, with its battalions, its animals and wagons, its iron and steel, its faded tarpaulins and leather trappings that stank, and its refuse heaps. Horses nibbled at the bark of large decaying trees, that were stricken with a premature autumnal disease. Three meagre elm trees served as a shelter for a whole encampment: a dusty hedge threw its protecting shadow over the ammunition train of a regiment. But the vegetation was scarce and the shelter it afforded most scanty, so that from all parts the army overflowed right on to the bare plain, tearing up the surface of the roads and leaving a regular network of tracks, as if great hordes of wild beasts had made their passage along it.

There were roads that marked off the British from the French. There you could see marching by the splendid artillery of the British, quite new and glistening, fitted with light-coloured harness and nickel-plated buckles, with special rugs for the horses, that were well fed and gleaming like circus mounts.

The infantry were also filing past—young men, all of them. They marched to the wild negro music of the flutes and gaily-coloured drums. Then cars fitted with beds, tier upon tier, came slowly along, jolting as little as possible, carrying the wounded fair-haired boys with wondering eyes, looking as placid as a touring party of Cook’s.

Our villages were packed to suffocation. Man had got everywhere, like a plague or a flood.

He had driven the cattle from their shelter and fixed his abode in hutches, stables and cowsheds.

The shell depôts seemed like pottery fields full of earthenware pitchers. Barges floated on the slimy water of the canal. Some carried food and guns: others served as hospital-boats.

From the movements of this heaving mass of beings and the creaking of their machinery, the panting of a giant seemed to issue forth and fill the silence. The whole scene suggested a sinister fair, a festival of war, a gathering of Bohemian clans and dancers of evil repute.

The nearer you got to Bray the more congested the country appeared to be. The motor-riding population held tyrannic sway over the roads, forcing the lowlier horse-wagons to drive across the fields. Little trollies running on rails clanked along pompously, showing great independence, hugging the ground with their small wheels, and their back loaded with millions of cartridges: in amongst the boxes some fellows were squatting, half asleep, proclaiming to the world in general the pleasure of being seated on something which does all the walking for you.

When I got above Chipilly, I beheld an extraordinary scene. An immense plain undulated there, covered with so many men, things and beasts, that over vast stretches the ground was no longer visible. Beyond the ruined tower which looks upon Etinehem lay land of a reddish-brown colour. I saw later that this colour was due to a great mass of horses closely pressed against each other. Every day they were brought to the muddy trough of the Somme to slake their thirst. The tracks were turned into sloughs, and the air was filled with an overpowering smell of sweat and manure.

Then, towards the left, stood a veritable town of unbleached tents, whose top coverings were marked with large red crosses. Farther on, the ground sank down, only to curve up again suddenly towards the battlefield quivering on the horizon in a black fog. From different points a burst of discharging shells sent up white clouds, side by side, in quick succession, like rows of trees on the roadside. In the open sky more than thirty balloons formed a ring, giving one the impression of spectators interested in a brawl.

The Adjutant, pointing out the tents, said to me, “That’s Hill 80. You will see more wounded passing there than there are hairs on your head, and more blood flowing than the water in the canal. All those who are hit between Combles and Bouchavesnes are brought to Hill 80.”

I nodded, and we relapsed again into silence and reflection. The day gave out in the unclean air of the marshes. The English were firing their big cannon not far from us, and their roar crashed along the alignment like an enraged horse dashing blindly away. The horizon was so thick with guns that you could hear a continuous gurgle as of a huge cauldron in the tormenting grip of a furnace.

The Adjutant turned again to me. “Three of your brothers have been killed,” he said. “In one sense you are out of the business. You won’t be very badly off as a stretcher-bearer. In another it is unfortunate, but a good thing for you. It’s hard work, stretcher-bearing, but it’s better than the line. Don’t you think so?”

I said nothing. I thought of that devastated little valley where I had spent the first few weeks of the summer in front of the Plémont hill—the deadly hours I spent looking at the ruins of Lassigny between the torn and jagged poplars, and the apple-trees blighted with the horror on the edge of the chaotic road, and the repulsive shell-holes full of green slime and swarming with life, and the mute face of the Château de Plessier, and the commanding hill which a cosmic upheaval alone had made capable of giving rise to grim forebodings. There during long nights I had breathed the fetid air of the corpse-laden fields. In the most despairing loneliness I had been in turn terrified of death and longing for it. And then some one came along one day to tell me that “You can go back behind the lines. Your third brother has been killed.” And many of the men looked at me, seeming to think with the Adjutant, “Your third brother is dead. In a sense you are lucky.”

Those were my thoughts as I entered upon my new duties. We were walking along the plateau, which stood out before heaven, erect as an altar, piled with millions of creatures ready for the sacrifice.

It had been dry for several days, and we lived under the rule of King Dust. The dust is the price we pay for fine weather: it attacks the fighting pack, intrudes upon its work, its food and its thoughts; it makes your lips filthy, your teeth crunch, and your eyes inflamed. But when it disappears the reign of mud begins, and then we passionately desire to stagnate again in the dust.

Far away, like idly moving rivers, large columns of dust marked all the roads in the district, and were filtered by the wind as they flowed over the countryside. The light of day was polluted with it, as the sky was ravaged by great flights of aeroplanes, and the silence violated and degraded, and the earth with its vegetation torn and mutilated.

I was not that day by any means disposed to be happy, but all this plunged me into the deepest gloom.

Looking all around me I found the only places where I could rest my eyes were in the innocent looks of the horses or on some unfortunate timid men who worked on the roadside. Everything else was nothing but a bristling gesture of war.

Night had fallen when we arrived at the city of tents. The Adjutant took me to a tent and found me a place on some straw which was strongly reminiscent of the pigsty. I took off my knapsack, lay down and fell asleep.

I got up with the dawn and, wandering through the mist, tried to find my bearings.

There was the road leading from Albert—worn, hollowed, and terribly overrun. It bore the never-ending stream of wounded. Alongside of it stood the city of tents, with its streets, its suburbs, and its public squares. Behind the tents, a cemetery. That was all.

I was leaning on a fence and I looked at the cemetery. Though it was overflowing, its appetite was insatiable. A group of German prisoners were occupied in digging long dark pits that were like so many open and expectant mouths. Two officers went by: one was fat, and looked as if at any moment he would be struck with apoplexy. He was gesticulating wildly to the other. “We have,” he said, “got ready in advance 200 graves and almost as many coffins. No, you can’t say that this offensive has not been planned.”

As a matter of fact, a large number of coffins had been already completed. They filled the tent where the corpses were to be unceremoniously laid out. Outside in the open, a large gang of joiners were engaged in cutting up planks of pinewood. They were whistling and singing innocently, as is usual with those who work with their hands.

I realised once again how a man’s opinion of great events is determined by his vocation and aptitudes. There was a sergeant there whose views of Armageddon varied with the quality of the wood which he had to use. When the wood was bad he used to say, “This war is damned rot.” But when the wood was clear of knots his view was: “We’ll get them licked.”

The heavy and responsible task of running the hospital was entrusted to a nervy and excitable young man. He appeared at every moment, his fingers clutching bundles of papers, which he passed from one hand to the other. I had few opportunities of hearing him speak, but, when I did, each time I caught the same words: “That’s not my business—I am getting crazy with it all. I have enough worries of that sort.”

I knew then that he had to think of many things. Almost all day a procession of motor cars, heavily laden with a groaning mass of wounded, came along the winding road which was being hastily metalled, looking like the ravenous gullet of this vast organism. On the top of the bend the lorries were unloaded under a porch decorated with flags, bearing no small resemblance to the festooned arch which on wedding days is erected at church doors.

From the first day I was ordered on night duty to deal with the ambulance cars as they arrived. A dozen of us were grouped under the porch for this purpose.

Up to that time it was only in the trenches that I had seen my comrades, wounded beside me, starting out on a long and mysterious journey of which little was known to us. The man who was hit appeared to be spirited away—he vanished from the battlefield. I was going to know all the stages of the suffering existence he was then only beginning.

The night I went on duty there had been a scrap towards Maurepas or Le Forest. Happening between two days of tremendous fighting, it was one of those incidents which seldom call for a single line in the communiqués. Yet the wounded streamed in all night. As soon as they were lowered from the cars, we got them into a large tent. It was an immense canvas hall lit with electricity. It had been pitched on ground covered with stubble, and its rough soil was bristling with anæmic grass and badly pressed clods. Those among the wounded who could walk were directed along a passage railed off on both sides, as is done at theatre entrances to make the crowd line up into a queue. They seemed dazed and exhausted. We took away their arms, knives and grenades. They let you do anything to them: they were like children overcome with sleep. The massacre of Europe cannot proceed without organisation. All the acts of the play are based on the most detailed calculation. As these men filed past, they were counted and labelled; clerks verified their identity with the unconcerned accuracy of customs officials. They, on their part, replied with the patience of the eternal public at government inquiry offices. Sometimes they even ventured to make a remark.

“Your name is Menu,” one cavalryman was asked. “Isn’t it?”

And the cavalryman replied in a heart-rending tone:

“Alas! it is, unfortunately.”

I remember a little man whose arm was in a sling. A doctor was looking at his papers, and said:

“You have a wound in your right arm?”

And the man replied so modestly:

“Oh! it is not a wound. It is only a hole!”

In one corner of the tent they were giving out food and drink. A cook was carving slices of beef and cutting up a round of cheese. The wounded seized the food with their muddy and blood-stained hands; and they were eating slowly and with evident relish. The inference was plain. Many were suffering primarily from hunger and thirst. They sat timidly on a bench like some very poor guests at a buffet during a garden party.

In front of them there were a score of wounded Germans who had been placed there indiscriminately. They were dozing or throwing hungry glances on the food and the pails of steaming tea. Hitting on a popular slang expression, a grey-haired infantryman, who was munching large pieces of boiled beef, said suddenly to the cook:

“Hang it all! Why not give them a piece of bully-beef?”

“Do you know them then?” said the cook jocularly.

“Do I know them! The poor devils! We have been punching each other the whole blessed day. Chuck them a piece of meat. Why not?”

A frivolous young man, short-sighted, with a turned-up nose, added in a tense voice:

“Ought to be done, you know—our honour....”

And they went on gravely chatting and gulped down cupfuls of a hot brew which was poured from a metal jug. From another angle in the tent the scene was very different. The men were lying down: they had grave wounds. Placed side by side on the uneven ground, they made a mosaic of pain stained with mud and blood, the colours of war; reeking with sweat and corruption, the smells of war; noisy with cries, moans and hiccups which are the sounds and music of war.

I shivered at the sight. I had known the bristling horror of the massacre and the charge. I was to learn another horror, that of the tableau—the accumulation of prostrate victims, the spectacle of the vast hall swarming with human larvæ, in heaps, on the floor.

I had finished my work with the stretcher and hastened to make my round of the wounded. I was so deeply moved that I was rather hindered in my work. Some of the men were vomiting, suffering unutterable agony, and their brows streaming with perspiration. Others were very quiet and could be more or less rational: they seemed to be following the internal progress of their illness. I was completely upset by one of them. He was a fair-haired sergeant with a slight moustache. His face was buried in his hands and he was sobbing with despair and what seemed like shame. I asked him if he was suffering pain. He scarcely replied. Then, gently lifting his blanket, I saw that he had been terribly hit by grape shot in his virility. And I felt a deep pity for his youth and his tears.

There was also a boy who used to utter a queer plaint, current in his locality. But I could only catch these syllables: “Ah! mon ... don....” A doctor who was passing said to him:

“Come, come! a little patience! Do not cry out like that.”

The child paused a moment before replying: “I’d have to lose my voice first if I’m not to cry.”

His neighbour was a big, rough, good-natured fellow with a powerful jaw, strong and massive features, with the peculiar shape of the skull and growth of hair that characterise the folk of Auvergne.

He looked at the boy who was groaning at his side, and, turning to me, commented, with a shrug of the shoulders:

“Rotten luck being hit like that, poor child!”

“And what’s the matter with you?” I said to him.

“Oh, I think I have lost my feet; but I am fairly strong and my body is solid.”...

It was true! I saw that both his feet had been torn away.

Round the electric arcs, luminous rings were formed by the sickening vapour. On the sides of the tent, in the folds, you could see the flies sleeping in big black patches, overcome by the cold freshness of night.

Large waves rolled on the canvas, passing like a shudder or violently flapping, according as the wind or gunfire was the cause.

I stepped carefully over some stretchers and found myself outside, in a night that roared, illuminated by the aurora borealis of the battlefield.

I had walked, with my hands held out in front of me, until I came upon a fence. Suddenly I knew what it was to be leaning against the parapet of hell!

What a human tempest! What explosions of hatred and destruction! You would have said that a company of giants were forging the horizon of the earth with repeated blows that filled the air with countless sparks. Innumerable furtive lights gave one continuous great light that lived, throbbed and danced, dazzling the sky and the land. Jets of iridescent light were bursting in the open sky as if they fell from the blows of the steam-hammer on white-hot steel. To me who had only recently left the trenches, each of these firework displays meant something—advice, commands, desperate calls, signals for slaughter; and I interpreted this furnace as if it had expressed in words the fury and distress of the combatants.

Towards Combles, on the left of Maurepas, one section above all seemed to be raging. It was just there that the junction was made between the English and the French armies; and it was there that the enemy concentrated a tumultuous and never-slackening fire. Every night, during many weeks, I saw this place lighted up with the same devouring flame. It was at each instant so intense that every instant appeared to be the decisive one. But hours, nights and months went slowly by in the eternity of time, and each of these terrible moments was only one intense outburst out of an infinity of them. Thus often the agony of wounds is such that you would hardly think it could be endured any longer. But death comes not willingly at the desire of men: it strikes at will, when it likes, where it likes, and hardly permits itself to be directed or coaxed.

Morning came. Those who have seen the daybreaks of the war, after nights spent in fighting, or in the bloody work of the ambulance, will understand what is the most ugly and mournful thing in the world.

For my part, I shall never forget the green and grudging light of the dawn, the desolating look of the lamps and the faces, the asphyxiating smell of men attacked by corruption, the cold shiver of the morning, like the last frozen breath of night in the congealed foliage of large trees.

My work as a stretcher-bearer was over. I could return to carpentry. I made heavy planks of green wood and thought of all sorts of things, as the mind does when robbed of sleep and overwhelmed with bitterness.

Towards eight o’clock in the morning the sun was hailed by a race of flies as it was emerging painfully from the mist; and these animals began to abandon themselves to their vast daily orgy.

All those who were on the Somme in 1916 will never forget the flies. The chaos of the battlefield, its wealth in carrion, the abnormal accumulation of animals, of men, of food that had gone bad—all these were factors in determining that year a gigantic swarm of flies. They seemed to have gathered there from all parts of the globe to attend a solemn function. Every possible kind of fly was there, and the human world, victim of its own hatreds, remained defenceless against this horrible invasion. During a whole summer they were the absolute monarchs and queens, and we did not dispute the food with them.

I have seen, on Ridge 80, wounds swarming with larvæ—sights which, since the battle of the Marne, we had been able to forget. I have seen flies dashing themselves on the blood and the pus of wounds and feeding themselves with such drunken frenzy that, before they could be induced to leave their feasting and fly away, they had to be seized with pincers or with one’s fingers. The army suffered cruelly from them, and it is amazing that, in the end, victory was not theirs.

Nothing had a more lugubrious and stripped appearance than the plateau on which stood the city of tents. Every morning heavy traction engines went up the Etinehem hill and brought water to the camp. Several casks placed in amongst the trees were filled with water of rather a sweet taste, and this provision was to suffice, for a whole day, to slake the thirst of the men and clean away the impurities and emissions of disease.

Except on the horizon line, not a bush was to be seen. Nowhere a tuft of fresh grass. Nothing but an immense stretch of dust or mud, according as the face of the sky was calm or stormy. To relieve this desolate scene with a little colour, someone had had the happy idea of cultivating a little garden between the tents. And the wounded, on being lowered from the cars, were astonished to see, in the midst of the ghastliness of military activity, the pale smile of a geranium, or juniper trees uprooted from the stony ridges of the valley and replanted hastily in the style of French gardens.

I cannot, without being strangely moved, recall the tent in which about twelve soldiers were dying of gaseous gangrene. Around this deathly spot ran a thin little border of flowers, and an assiduous fellow was calmly trying to bring into bloom crimson bell-flowers.

Sometimes the earth, torrid with the month of August, seemed to reel with the satiating deluge of a storm. At such moments the tents used to crackle furiously and seemed, like great livid birds, to cling to the earth in order better to resist the blast of the south wind.

But neither the gusts of rain nor the galloping thunderclaps, none of these tumults of Nature, interrupted man from his war. The operations and the dressing of wounds continued on Hill 80 as, on neighbouring hills, the batteries ploughed up the disputed ground. Often it seemed that man insisted on speaking more loudly than Heaven, and the guns and the thunder seemed determined to outbid each other.

Once, I remember, the thunder had the last word: two sausage-shaped balloons took fire, and the artillery, stricken blind, stammered and then became mute.

In a few days, I was given the job of furnishing the tents with little pieces of joinery, benches and tables. I worked on the spot, taking my tools with me, and I did my best not to disturb the patients, who were already exhausted by the din of battle. This was very painful work, because it made me a helpless spectator of unutterable misery. I remember being greatly touched on one occasion: a young artilleryman, wounded in the face, was being visited by his brother, a cadet in a neighbouring regiment. The latter, very pale, was looking at the face of the wounded man, of which only an eye could be seen and a stained bandage. He took his hands, and bent down quite naturally to kiss him; then he shrank back, only to come near again, victim of an emotion of mingled horror and pity. Then the wounded man, who could not speak, had an inspiration that was full of tenderness: with outspread fingers he began to stroke the hair and face of his brother. This silent affection told how willingly the soul gives up the spoken word and yields to its most intimate gestures.

In the same tent Lieutenant Gambin was dying.

He was rather a crude, simple-hearted man, who had been engaged in some obscure civilian employment, and who now, solely by dint of his stubborn courage, had gained a commission. His large frame lay exhausted from hæmorrhage, and for two days he lay dying. The breath of life took two days to quit his ice-cold limbs, from which exuded large beads of glutinous sweat. From time to time he sighed. At last, leaving my screw-driver and iron nails, I asked him if he would like something. He looked at me with wide-open eyes, full of memories and sadness, and said:

“No, thank you. But oh, I’ve got the hump!”

I was almost glad to see him die: he was too conscious of his long, dragging, terrible death.

Little Lalau who died the same day was at least unconscious, though delirious, to the last.

He was a country lad, and had been struck in the spinal cord by a piece of shell. A kind of meningitis ensued, and, at once, he lost his reason. The pupils of his eyes swung to and fro with sickening rapidity; he never ceased moving his jaw, apparently chewing like a ruminant. One day I found him devouring a string of beads which had been hung round his neck by a chaplain. An orderly kept his mouth open while we removed several pieces of wood and steel. The poor wretch laughed softly, repeating: “It’s a bit hard. It’s a bit hard to chew”; and the lines of his face twitched with innumerable spasms of pain.

Delirium upsets and wounds the spirit. For it constitutes the uttermost disorder—that of the mind. But it perhaps betrays benevolence on the part of Nature when it deprives man of the consciousness of his misery. Life and death have it in their power to confer these mournful blessings. Once I saw a soldier struck in so many places that the doctors decided he was beyond the resources of their skill. Among other wounds there was a long splinter of steel driven like a dagger through his right wrist. The sight was so cruel and revolting that an attempt was made to remove the steel. A doctor gripped it firmly and tried to loosen it with sharp, short pulls.

“Is it giving you pain?” he said from time to time.

And the patient replied:

“No; but I’m thirsty!”

“How is it,” I asked the doctor, “that he can’t feel the pain you are giving him?”

“It’s because he is in a state of shock,” replied the surgeon.

And I understood how the very extremity of pain sometimes obtains for its victims a truce which is, in a way, a foretaste of the sweets of death—the prelude to extinction.

At each end of the large marquees one of those small bell tents had been erected to which the soldiers had given the name of “mosques.” They served as death chambers. There were placed the men who were lost to human succour, in a loneliness that presaged the tomb. And some of them were aware of this. There was a soldier with a riddled abdomen who asked, on entering the tent, to be dressed in clean linen.

“Don’t let me die,” he pleaded, “in an unclean shirt. Give me something white. If you are too busy, I’ll put it on myself.”

Sometimes, unutterably wearied by so much suffering, I asked for work outside the camp, in order to sort out my ideas and renew the theme of my reflections. It was always with a sigh of comfort that I got away from the city of tents. I contemplated, from a distance, this sinister agglomeration, which certainly bore comparison with an itinerant fair. I tried to distinguish amid the white canvas and red crosses the tops of these little “mosques.” I gazed also at the cemetery where hundreds and hundreds of bodies had been buried; and, realising the sum of the misery, despair and rage accumulated on that spot of the earth, I thought of the people who, far away in the heart of France, were crowding the concert cafés, the drawing-rooms, the cinemas, the brothels, finding brazen enjoyment in themselves, in the world, in the weather; and, sheltered by this quivering rampart of the sacrificed, will not share in this universal anguish. I thought of these people with more shame than resentment.

The excursions in the open freshened me a little, and I found some comfort in the sight of healthy men spared by the battle.

Sometimes I went as far as the English sector. Masses of long-range artillery were to be seen there. The guns were served by soldiers in shirt-sleeves and long trousers stained by oil and cart-grease. They looked more like factory workers than soldiers. You felt then how war has become an industry—an engineering business devoted to mechanical slaughter and massacre.

One night, walking along the Albert road, I overheard the conversation of some men who were sitting on the upturned earth of a pit. By their accent they were peasants from the north and must have belonged to the regiments which had just been under fire.

“After the war,” said one of them, “those who are going to dabble in politics, they’ll have to say they had a hand in this confounded war.”

But this frank opinion, caught in passing one night along a road in the front—this inconsequent, unanswered comment was lost in the tumult of the gunfire.

I gained much by being stretcher-bearer. I came to know the men better than I had ever done until then—to know them bathed in a purer light, naked before death, stripped even of the instincts which disfigure the divine beauty of simple souls.

In the midst of the greatest trials our race of peasants has remained vigorous, pure, worthy of the noblest human traditions. I have known them—Rebic, Louba, Ratier, Freyssinet, Calmel, Touche, and so many others whom I must not name if I am not to mention the whole country. It cannot be said that pain chose its victims, and yet, when I used to pass by their beds where their destiny struggled—when I looked at their faces, each one of them, they all seemed to me good, patient, energetic men, and all of them deserved to be loved.

Did Rebic, that grey-haired sergeant, not richly deserve that a loving family waited longingly for him at home? One day we came to dress the big gash in his side, and we hastened to bring him white linen and made him a warm bed; he began to weep, good and simple man, and we asked him why, and he made this sublime answer:

“I cry because of the agony and misery I am giving you.”

As for Louba, we could not expect to hear him speak: a shell had smashed in his face. There remained nothing of it except one immense cruel gash; an eye displaced, twisted; and forehead—a humble peasant forehead. Yet one day, as we whispered some brotherly words, Louba wished to show how pleased he was, and he smiled to us. They will remember, those who saw the soul of Louba smiling faceless.

Freyssinet, child of twenty, often lapsed into delirium, and was aware of it in his conscious moments, and asked pardon of those whom it might have disturbed. The hour came when he sank into the peace everlasting. A much-decorated personage was making the round of the wards attended by an imposing suite. He stopped at the foot of each bed and uttered, in a fitting voice, words conferring whatever honour which they represented in the minds of the patients. He stopped before Freyssinet’s bed and began his speech. As he was an important and methodical man, he said what he had to say without noticing the many signs that were being made to make him desist. Having spoken, he nevertheless asked those who were looking on:

“You wanted to tell me something?”

“Yes,” replied someone; “it is that the man is dead.”

But Freyssinet was so modest, so timid, that the very attitude of his corpse betrayed respect and confusion.

It is there, also, that I made the acquaintance of Touche.

He came to us, poor Touche! his head broken, having had to leave a temporary hospital owing to its catching fire. I saw him turning out with his groping hands a bag which contained all his possessions.

“No, no,” he was saying, “they are all lost, and I’ll never find them.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I am looking for the little photos of my two boys and of my wife. Unfortunately, they are lost. I shall miss them.”

I helped him in his search, and then I saw that Touche was blind.

Poor Touche! He easily recognised me by my voice and always had a smile for me. He was awkward at table, as a man would naturally be who is not yet accustomed to his infirmity. But he tried to manage by himself, and used to tell us in a quiet voice:

“I am doing my best, you see: I scrape my plate until I feel there is nothing more.”

Could I forget the name of the man who was brought in, one night, with his two legs smashed, and who murmured simply:

“It’s hard to have to die! But come! I’ll be brave.”

But Calmel, Calmel! No one who knew him will ever wish to forget him. Never did a man more passionately desire to live! Never did a man attain greater nobility by his endurance and resignation! He suffered mortal wounds which at every moment the light of the life within him repudiated. It was he who, during a night bombardment, addressed his hospital comrades, exhorting them to be calm, with his authoritative moribund voice.

“Come, come!” he used to say; “we are all men here, are we not?”

Such is the strength of the spirit that these words alone, uttered by such a man, were capable of restoring order and confidence in the hearts of everyone.

It was to Calmel that a plump civilian, entrusted with some business or other with the armies, said one day with jubilant conviction:

“You appear to be badly hit, my brave man. But if you knew what wounds we inflict on them, with our 75! Terrible wounds, old boy, terrible!”

Each day brought visitors to Hill 80. They came from Amiens in sumptuous motor cars. They chatted as they traversed the great canvas hall, as if at a prize exhibition of agricultural produce: to the wounded they addressed a few words that were in keeping with their personal station, their opinions and dignity. They wrote notes on memorandum-books and sometimes accepted invitations to supper from the officers. There were foreigners, philanthropists, politicians, actresses, millionaires, novelists, and “penny-a-liners.” Those who were looking for strange sensations were sometimes admitted to the “mosque” or the operation-room.

They went away, well content with their day when the weather was fine, in the sure knowledge that they had seen some queer things, heroic fighters, and a model establishment.

But silence! I have pronounced their names—Freyssinet, Touche, Calmel—and the memories which they leave in my heart are too noble to be mingled with bitterness.

What has become of Hill 80 deserted? The battle has advanced towards the east. Winter has come; the city of tents has furled its canvas, as a fleet of sailing ships which must prepare for new destinies.

Often, in imagination, I see again the bare plateau and the immense burial ground left derelict in the fields and the mists, like the wreckage of innumerable ships down in the depths of the sea.

RÉCHOUSSAT’S CHRISTMAS

Réchoussat repeated in a shrill, strained voice: “I tell you, they’re not coming after all.”

Corporal Têtard turned a deaf ear to this. He was sorting out his stock on a table: lints, oil, rubber gloves reminiscent of the fencer, probes enclosed in a tube like vanilla cornets, a basin of enamelled sheet-iron resembling a big bean, and a bulging vase with a wide gaping mouth, looking like anything at all.

Réchoussat affected an air of indifference. “They needn’t come if they don’t wish to. Anyway, I don’t care.”

Corporal Têtard shrugged his shoulders. “But I tell you they will come,” he said.

The wounded man obstinately shook his head. “Here, old boy! nobody’ll come here. All those who visit downstairs never come up here. I’m only telling you. I don’t really care, you know.”

“You may be sure they will come.”

“Really, I don’t know why I have been placed here alone in the room.”

“Probably because you must have quiet.”

“Whether they come or not, it’s all one to me.”

Réchoussat frowned to show his pride, then he added, sighing:

“You can begin now with your bag of tricks.”

As a matter of fact Corporal Têtard was ready. He had lighted a candle-end and in one movement drew back the sheets.

Réchoussat’s body was revealed, extraordinarily thin, but Têtard scarcely noticed it, and Réchoussat had for three months now been fairly accustomed to his misery. He knew quite well that to have a piece of shell in the back is a serious matter, and that, when a man’s legs and abdomen are paralysed, he is not going to recover quickly.

“Feeling better?” asked Têtard in the course of his operation.

“Yes,” he replied. “Now it’s six o’clock and they haven’t come. Good thing! I don’t mind.”

The corporal did not reply; with a weary expression he rubbed together his rubber gloves. Riveted to the wick, the candle-flame leaped and struggled, like a wretched prisoner yearning to escape and fly up alone in the blackness of the room, and beyond, higher, higher, in the winter sky, in regions where the sounds of the war of man are no longer heard. Both the patient and the orderly watched the flame in silence, with wide-open vague eyes. Every second a gun, far away, snapped at the panes, and each time the flame of the candle started nervously.

“It takes a long time! You’re not cold?” asked Têtard.

“The lower part of my body does not know what cold means.”

“But it will, one day.”

“Of course it will. It’s dead now, but it must become alive again. I am only twenty-five; it’s an age when the flesh has plenty of vigour.”

The corporal felt awkward, shaking his head. Réchoussat seemed to him worn out; he had large sores in the places where the body rested on the bed. He had been isolated in order that his more fortunate comrades should be spared the sight of his slow, dragging death.

A long moment went by. The silence was so oppressive that for a moment they felt their small talk quite inadequate. Then, as if he was continuing a mental discussion, Réchoussat suddenly remarked:

“And yet, you know, I’m so easily satisfied. If they came for two minutes only.”

“Hush!” said Têtard. “Hush!”

He leaned, listening, towards the door. Obscure sounds came from the passage.

“Ah, here they are!” said the orderly.

Réchoussat craned his neck. “Bah! No, I tell you.”

Suddenly a wonderful light, rich in reflections of gold and crimson—a strange fairy light—filled the passage. The wall in front stood out; ordinarily as pale as December woods, now it suddenly exhibited the splendour of an eastern palace or of a princess’ gown. In all this light there was sound of happy voices and of laughter. No one could be heard singing, yet the light itself seemed to be singing a magnificent song. Réchoussat, who could not move, stretched his neck the more vigorously, and raised his hands a little above the sheets, as if he wanted to feel this beautiful sound and light.

“You see, you see,” said Têtard. “I told you they would come.”

Then there was a big blaze. Something stopped before the door: it was a tree—a real fir-tree from the forests, planted in a green box. There were so many Chinese lanterns and pink candles hanging from its branches that it looked like an enormous torch. But there was something grander to come: the wise and learned kings now entered. There was Sorri, a Senegalese gunner, Moussa and Cazin. Wrapped in cloaks from Adrianople, they wore long white beards made of cotton wool.

They walked right into Réchoussat’s room. Sorri carried a little packet tied with ribbon. Moussa waved aloft two cigars, and Cazin a bottle of champagne. The three of them bowed punctiliously, as they had been told, and Réchoussat found himself suddenly with a box of chocolates in his right hand, two cigars in his left, and a glass of foaming wine on his little table.

“Ah, boys! No, no; you’re joking, boys.”

Moussa and Cazin laughed. Sorri showed his teeth.

“Ah! boys,” repeated Réchoussat, “I don’t smoke, but I’m going to keep the cigars as a souvenir. Pass me the wine.”

Sorri took the goblet and offered it as if it were a sacred cup. Réchoussat drank gently and said:

“It’s some wine! Good stuff!”

There were more than a score of faces at the door, and they all smiled at the gentle naïve Réchoussat.

Afterwards, a veritable sunset! The wonderful tree receded, jolting into the passage. The venerable kings disappeared, with their flowing cloaks and their sham beards. Réchoussat still held the goblet and gazed at the candle as if all the lights existed there. He laughed, slowly repeating, “It’s some wine!” Then he continued to laugh and never said a word.

Quite gently the darkness entered the room again, and lodged itself everywhere, like an intimate animal disturbed in its habits.

With the darkness, something very sad insinuated itself everywhere, which was the odour of Réchoussat’s illness. A murmuring silence rested on every object, like dust. The face of the patient ceased to reflect the splendour of the Christmas tree; his head sunk down, he looked at the bed, at his thin ulcerated legs, the glass vessel full of unclean liquid, the probe, all these incomprehensible things, and he said, stammering with astonishment:

“But ... but ... what is the matter then? What is the matter?”

LIEUTENANT DAUCHE

It was in the month of October 1915 that I made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Dauche.

I can never recall that time without deep emotion. We had been living, before Sapigneul, through weeks of fire. The Champagne offensive had for long been rumbling on our right, and its farthest eddies seemed to break on our sector, as the waves scattered by a hurricane that spends itself in the open sea. For three days our guns had made reply to those of Pouilleuse, and we had waited, rifles at hand, for an order which never came. Our minds were uneasy and vacant, still reeling from that kind of resonant drunkenness which results from a prolonged bombardment. We were glad at not having to make a murderous attack, and at the same time we worried over the causes which had prevented it.