Monday, September 14
Forty-third day of the war. Dull morning with slight showers. Sky overcast all the afternoon. Southwesterly wind blowing strong. Thermometer at five P.M. 16 degrees centigrade.
Back in Paris again, after a five hours’ ride in a second-class compartment intended for ten, packed with twelve. Most of my fellow-passengers were refugees returning to Creil, Beaumont-sur-Oise, and other places north of Paris, now evacuated by the Germans.
Within living memory Paris has rarely seen so dense and vast a throng as that which assembled on Sunday in the Cathedral of Notre Dame for the special service of “intercession for the success of French arms,” when Monseigneur Amette, Cardinal of Paris, preached a stirring sermon, exhorting people to “make extreme sacrifice for their native land.” There must have been eight thousand persons in the cathedral. Not only were the five naves densely packed, but all the chapels along the side aisles were crowded with worshippers. An imposing procession was formed, including many religious bodies, associations of young girls, and all the Roman Catholic clergy of Paris. This cortège left the cathedral through the three gates of the great façade and took up its position between the basilica and the exterior railings. Here a temporary platform had been erected, from which Monseigneur Amette addressed the enormous crowd that filled the Rue d’Argonne, the Pont Notre Dame, and the Place Notre Dame, right up to the Prefecture of Police. After the Cardinal had pronounced the benediction, the crowd joined with impressive solemnity in the invocation of Sainte-Geneviève, Saint-Denis, Joan of Arc, and other saints on behalf of the French armies, and afterwards dispersed quietly and reverently.
Tuesday, September 15.
Forty-fourth day of the war. Gray, cloudy day, with occasional glimpses of sunshine. Brisk southwest wind. Temperature at five P.M. 15 degrees centigrade.
The Franco-British armies are close on the Germans’ heels, but as everybody in Paris expected, the enemy is inclined to resist along their new lines. They are throwing up defences on the northwest, from the forest of l’Aigle to Craonne, and in the center from north of Rheims and the Camp of Chalons to Vienne-la-Ville on the west fringe of the Argonne.
The outlook seems so encouraging to the Herald that it has returned to ante-bellum conditions and reduced its price to fifteen centimes in France, and twenty-five centimes abroad, and usually appears in double sheet form.
Another American wedding to-day at the Town Hall of the sixth arrondissement. The bridegroom was Mr. John R. Clarke of New York, and the bride was Miss Marion Virginia Goode, also an American. Mr. Clarke went to the front immediately after the wedding, having volunteered in the British army for automobile service. He was arrayed in the regulation khaki uniform, and as he drove to the Mairie in his car just brought back from the Aisne with a number of bullet-holes in it, he was greeted with cheers. The bridal party was accompanied by Mr. Charles G. Loeb, of the American law firm of Valois, Loeb and Company.
The American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly is doing really effective work. Among the wounded being treated there are French, Belgians, a few “Turcos,” British officers and men, and some wounded German prisoners. Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, who has been entrusted by the French Red Cross Association with the charge of the hospital, is indefatigable in her personal attention and efforts. The organization seems perfect. The funds so far subscribed exceed five hundred and seventy-four thousand francs. During a brief visit to the hospital, I noticed that Mrs. Vanderbilt herself visited the wounded, and with the aid of her experienced staff of trained nurses, prepared them for surgical operations. Mrs. Vanderbilt wore the white Red Cross uniform. Half concealed about her neck was a double string of pearls. Rose-colored silk stockings were tipped with neat but serviceable white shoes, and in this attire she seemed to impersonate the presiding “good angel” of the hospital.
Through the courtesy of a friend who was going to Meaux in charge of a Red Cross automobile to distribute hospital stores to a field hospital near Plessis-Pacy, I had an opportunity to visit the scene of the recent battles along the Ourcq Canal, where General von Kluck’s army met its first signal defeat. We came near to the villages of Chambry, Marcilly, Etrepilly, and Vincy—along the road from Meaux to Soissons—and found that the trenches dug by the Germans were filled with human corpses in thick, serried masses. Quicklime and straw had been thrown over them by the ton. Piles of bodies of men and of horses had been partially cremated in the most rudimentary fashion. The country seemed to be one endless charnel-house. The stench of the dead was appalling. Of the fifty odd houses that form the village of Etrepilly, not one remained intact. Some of them had been hit by a shell that penetrated through the roof, falling into the cellar, and by its explosion bringing down from garret or second story all the furniture in one confused mass of ruin. But many other houses had been simply sacked and looted. Cupboards, chests of drawers, and wardrobes were smashed open, and their contents scattered pell-mell in the streets, courtyards, and fields. Here was the portrait of an ancestor ripped to shreds by a bayonet; there was a child’s cradle. An old-fashioned grandmother’s armchair, with its cushions and ear-laps, lay smashed in fragments in the gutter. The village had fortunately been deserted by its inhabitants at the approach of the Germans, who, furious with rage, had looted, sacked, or wantonly destroyed whatever they found.
How thirsty the Germans were! The roads and fields and trenches were strewn with bottles, full or half-empty. The Germans must have been obliged to retreat suddenly, for heaps of unexploded shells for the three-inch and five-inch German field-guns were abandoned, and in wicker baskets were loads of three-inch unexploded shells, apparently about to be served to the gunners. Wanton, ruthless devastation everywhere! In a field was a wrecked aeroplane, a white and yellow taube, with its right wing reaching into the air, looking like some gigantic, wounded bird. Towards sunset, an automobile passed along the road through this terrible desolate valley of death. In it sat Monseigneur Marbeau, the venerable Bishop of Meaux—the successor of Bossuet, the famous “Eagle of Meaux”—who now and then raised his right finger aloft and then lowered it with the sign of the cross, as he pronounced benedictions on this vast charnel-house. A great number of German killed and wounded wearing uniforms of the Eleventh Prussian Infantry Regiment indicated that this corps had occupied the village of Etrepilly. As there were no civilian villagers noticed in this part of the country, this seems presumptive evidence that the Eleventh Prussian Infantry participated in this looting and wanton devastation.
As we were about to return to Paris, we met a friend of M. Gaston Ménier on his way from the latter’s country-house near Villa-Cotterets, where the memorable chasses à courre take place in the forest, which, under normal conditions, abounds in deer and stags. The château had been used as the headquarters of a brigade of Bavarian infantry. The house was intact, but some valuable furniture of the Louis XV period and some paintings had been destroyed, and the cellar, that had contained over two thousand bottles of excellent wine, including forty dozen bottles of champagne of the admirable vintage of 1904, had been “visited,” and only seven bottles remained. The Bavarians, in pursuance of their practice in 1870, carried away all the clocks in the château.
Wednesday, September 16.
Forty-fifth day of the war. Sky heavily overcast. Southwesterly wind. Thermometer at five P.M. 15 degrees centigrade.
After the victorious contest of the Marne, we are now to have the gigantic struggle of the Aisne. The battle now engaged, because the Franco-British pursuit has compelled the German armies all along the line to reënforce their rear guards and fight, extends some one hundred and fifty miles in length on one front from Noyon, the heights north of Vic-sur-Aisne, Soissons, Rheims, to Ville-sur-Tourbe, west of the wooded ridge of the Argonne. Another “front,” where vigorous defence is made by the German eastern armies, extends from the eastern border of the Argonne to the Forges forest north of Verdun, some fifty miles long.
Now that the Germans are fighting on the defensive, it is not too soon to record the fact that their extraordinary raid of a million of soldiers through Belgium to within twenty miles of Paris has failed. Nothing in military history approaches this avalanche of armies. The German invasion of France and the threat to invest and capture Paris is coming to an end. Yet this war can only be ended by an invasion either of France or of Germany being driven to a triumphant conclusion. The theater of war must soon be transferred from France to the east. The curtain falls upon the German invasion of France, and for the present, at least, Paris is no longer in danger. I see that a change has come over the Parisians, and I can read in their calm, confident faces the brighter phase that the war has assumed. Parisians of every class, from the grande dame of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the midinette of the Rue de la Paix, or the professional beauty of Montmartre, are subdued and chastened by the sudden change that overtook their bright and exuberant existence. During this first period of the war, Paris assumed the aspect of a Scottish Sabbath. Feverish pursuit of pleasure, earnest hard work, luxury, elegant distinction, thrift, thronged boulevards, crowded theaters, clamorous music halls, frisky supper parties, tango teas, overflowing gaiety, sparkling wit, boisterous fun, and sly humor, have all vanished. The machinery of Parisian life is working at quarter speed. Streets are nearly deserted, except for rapidly flitting automobiles, used mostly for military purposes. The Rue de la Paix is a vacant pathway, where one might play lawn tennis all day long. Probably three fourths of the Paris shops are still closed. The underground trains are as yet few and far between. Now and then a tramway rumbles along the streets, but there is not a solitary omnibus running in the city. The popularity of the bicycle is regained, for well-to-do folk whose motor-cars have been requisitioned now make use of the humble wheel. The quaint, one-horse cab, evoking souvenirs of Mürger, Paul de Kock, and Guy de Maupassant, with venerable cocher, re-appears. There are some auto-taxicabs about, and their slowly increasing number indicates that Paris is beginning to shake off the paralysis imposed by the outbreak of the war. Undisturbed by the turmoil, the forty “immortal” Academicians are continuing their labors on the Dictionary of the Academy. They are approaching the end of the letter “E” and are to-day discussing, with singular actuality, the word “Exodus.” May that mean the German exodus from French soil!
The End