Sunday, August 30
Twenty-eighth day of the war. Sunny, but sultry, August Sunday. Light northerly breeze, thermometer at five P.M. 26 degrees centigrade.
No let-up in the fighting. The Germans continue with wonderful tenacity their favorite tactics of rolling up their forces on their right, and then enveloping and striving to turn the Anglo-French left. The French left, as officially announced at the War Office, has been forced to yield ground. But the result of the gigantic battle in the department of the Aisne near La Fère, Guise, and Laon, on the road to Paris, still hangs in the balance.
It seems pretty certain that the French armies were concentrated too far to the east. The temptation to enter Alsace, where strong force is needless, was too great for the then war minister, M. Messimy, to withstand. France is paying for this now. For over twenty years it was an open secret among military authorities that the main German attack upon France would burst in through Belgium and the northern departments of France, which seem to have been left without adequate fortifications. Here is France’s vulnerable point. For France to be now outnumbered in this theater of the war is strong evidence of her also being out-generaled. While the French have wasted needless troops in futile excursions beyond the Vosges and in the Ardennes, they seem to have been blind to the tremendous concentration of German fighting strength in the north. Had it not been for the solid, heroic resistance of the British army under Field-marshal Sir John French, on the extreme French left at Mons and Cambrai, it is very likely that the French would have sustained a crushing defeat. That the French should be outnumbered on the lines near La Fère seems incomprehensible and requires satisfactory explanation from the Ministry of War. Further proof of this primary fault is forthcoming in the proclamation issued to-day, calling to the colors the 1914 class, some two hundred and fifty thousand young men of twenty, due to join the army in October. Moreover, those classes of the reserves of the territorial army called up when the general mobilization order was issued and for some unaccountable reason actually sent home again, have also been recalled.
[Photograph: Copyright by American Press Association. Parisians watching the German air-craft that drop bombs on the city.]
In broad daylight, at 1.15 this afternoon, the Germans left their first visiting-card in Paris. This came in the shape of three bombs dropped from a German aeroplane, that made a curved flight over the city at an altitude of two thousand meters. The first bomb fell at the corner of the Rue des Vinaigriers and the Rue du Marais, another in the Rue des Récollets, and a third near an asylum for aged workmen on the Quai Valmy. The airman also let fall an oriflamme, two and a half meters long, bearing the black and white Prussian colors, ballasted by sand in an india-rubber football, attached to which was a letter, written in German, which ran as follows: “The German Army is at the gates of Paris. The only thing left for you to do is to surrender! (Signed) LIEUTENANT VON HEIDSSEN.”
The first bomb wounded two women, one of whom died of her injuries at the hospital shortly afterwards. She was concierge of the house Number 39 Rue des Vinaigriers. No other damage was done. There were thousands of Parisians promenading the streets at the time. The news spread like wild-fire, but no panic, nor even undue excitement, ensued; the people of Paris are totally different to-day from what they were in 1870. Of course the intention of these aeroplane bomb-throwers, of whose exploits we shall probably hear a great deal, was to create a panic and demoralize the inhabitants, and especially to terrify women and children. This utterly failed. After dropping the three bombs and his carte de visite, the German aeroplane vanished towards the east. It seems strange that the flotillas of air-craft at Buc were thus caught napping and allowed the German air-lieutenant to escape.
I called in the afternoon upon Madame Waddington and her sister, Miss King. Madame Waddington was anxious about her grandchildren, who are at their country place not far from Laon, where the battle is now raging. Madame Waddington says that Mr. Herrick, whom she saw this morning, told her that if worse came to the worst, the seat of government would probably be transferred to Bordeaux.
A large sum in gold coin, it is said, has been taken from the vaults of the Bank of France and sent to Rennes. Sharp comment is elicited by an incident at the Travellers Club, a somewhat select resort of Americans, English, and other foreigners, in the former hotel of the famous beauty of the Second Empire, Madame de Paíva, in the Champs-Elysées. It appears that a wealthy and prominent German by birth, but naturalized American, Mr. X., casually remarked one day at the club that he did not intend to trouble himself to get a permis de séjour (permission to reside in Paris), because “when the German troops arrived in the capital, these papers would no longer be needed.” Mr. X. was told that if he persisted in expressing such views, offensive to the members of the club and to the hospitable city in which the club was situated, his resignation would be forthwith accepted by the house committee. Mr. X. paid no attention to the warning, but when next he entered the club—a few days after the incident—he was informed that his name had been stricken from the list of members.
M. Adrien Mithouard, President of the Municipal Council, states that arrangements were made months ago to store a large quantity of flour in the city, so as to provide the civilian inhabitants with bread. This flour is in the hands of the military authorities, who have a considerably larger supply than was originally intended, and are still adding to it.
There will be no lack of coal. The army has accumulated enormous quantities, and the Gas Company has enough coal for five months. M. Mithouard also says he recently made a personal investigation of the water supply, and found that, even if the aqueducts were cut, the city would have two hundred and sixty thousand cubic meters of filtered water available every day from the Ivry and Saint-Maur waterworks; and even without these, Paris could still have two hundred and sixty thousand cubic meters a day chemically purified.
The Municipal Council has also approved a proposal to buy up certain provisions to be added to the necessaries of life for the civilian population.
M. Georges Clemençeau, the “parliamentary tiger,” who, although remaining outside the Cabinet, is one of the greatest personal forces of France, has made a stirring statement to Mr. Somerville Story, editor of the Daily Mail. M. Clemençeau said:
“Yes, their guns are almost within sound of Paris. And what if they are? What if we were yet to be defeated again and again? We should still go on. Let them burn Paris if they can. Let them wipe it out, raze it to the level of the ground. We shall still fight on.
“This is not my personal resolve alone. The Government, too, is just as grimly determined. Do you know, it is strange that one should have been able to come to feel like this, but the Germans could destroy all these beautiful places that I love so much; they may blow up the museums, overthrow monuments—it would only leave me still determined to fight on.
“France may disappear, if you like. It may be called Frankreich, if you like. We may be driven back to the very Pyrenees. It will not abate one fraction our vigor and our decision.
“And in this terrible war we must all realize how unutterably great are the stakes. It is we in France and our friends in Belgium who are doomed to suffer the most bitterly. England will be spared much that we must endure. But we must all make sacrifices almost beyond reckoning. We are fighting for the dignity of humanity. We are fighting for the right of civilization to continue to exist. We are fighting so that nations may continue to live in Europe without being under the heel of another nation. It is a great cause; it is worthy of great sacrifices.
“I say this to convince you of the unbreakable spirit of the French nation.
“But the situation is not yet so grave. We knew our frontier would be invaded somewhere. We have many troops in reserve for the big battle that will follow this one.
“The Germans cannot besiege or invest Paris. Its size is too vast. Its defence will be assisted by the armies now fighting on the Oise, seventy miles away.
“The fortifications of Paris are by no means the feeble things they were in 1870. From the Eiffel Tower we can control the movements in co-operation with our armies in the provinces of France.
“The situation is in no way desperate, although the Germans have invaded France. France will fight on and on until this attempt to establish tyranny in Europe is overthrown.”
[Photograph: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y. Eiffel Tower’s searchlight, to reveal bomb-throwing air craft and air-scouts of the Germans.]