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France At War On the Frontier of Civilization - Rudyard Kipling · Rudyard Kipling Classics Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Introductory poem Section zero of France at War on the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Frontier of Civilization by Rudged Kipling. This librevox recording is
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: in the public domain recording by Timbalkley of stories dot
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: org dot End's ed introductory poem Section zero France by
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Rugged Kipling broke to every known mischance, lifted over all
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: by the light, sane joy of life, the buckler of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the gall, furious in luxury, merciless in toil, terrible with
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: strength that draws from her tireless soil, strictest judge of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: her own worth, gentlest of men's mind, first to follow truth,
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  Speaker 1: and last to leave old truths behind. France beloved of
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: every soul that loves its fellow kind. Ere our birth
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: rememberest thou by side we lay fretting in the womb
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: of Rome to begin the fray. Ere men knew our
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: tongues apart our one taste was known. Each must bold
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the other's fate as he wrought his own. To this end.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: We stirred mankind till all the earth was ours, till
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  Speaker 1: our world end. Strifes began wayside, thrones and powers, puppets
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: that we made or broke to bar the other's path,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: necessary outpost folk, hirelings of our wrath. To this end,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: we stormed the seas, tack for tack, and burst through
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: doorways of new worlds, doubtful which was first, and on
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: hilt rememberest thou ready for the blow? Sure, whatever else
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: we met, we should meet our foe. Spurred or bulked
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: at every stride by the other's strength, we rowed the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: ages down at every ocean's length. Where did you refrain
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: from us? Or we refrain from you? Ask the wave
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that has not watched war between us? Two others held
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: us for a while, but with weaker charms, these we
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: quitted at the call for each other's arms, eager toward
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the known delight. Equally we strove each the other's mystery, terror, need,
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  Speaker 1: and love to each other's open court. With our proofs
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: we came where could we find honor else or men?
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: To test the claim from each other's throat, We wrenched
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: valah's last reward, that extorted word of praise, gasped which
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  Speaker 1: lunge and guard in each other's cup. We poured mingled
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: blood and tears, brutal joys, unmeasured hopes, intolerable fears, all
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  Speaker 1: that soiled or salted. Life for a thousand years proved
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: beyond the need of proof, matched in every climb, O companion,
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  Speaker 1: we have lived greatly through all time, yoked in knowledge
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  Speaker 1: and remorse. Now we come to rest, laughing at old villainies.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: That time has turn'd to jest, pardoning old necessity. No
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  Speaker 1: pardon can efface that undying sin we shared in ruin
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: market place. Now we watched the new year's shape, wondering
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: if they hold fiercer fighting in their hearts than we
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: launched of old. Now we hear new voices rise, question, boast,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: or gird as we raged. Rememberest thou when our crowds
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: were stirred. Now we count new keels afloat and new
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: hosts on land mast like ours, rememberest thou when our
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: strokes were plann'd. We were schooled for dear life's sake
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to know each other's blade. What can blood and iron
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: make more than we have made? We have learn'd by
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: keenest use to know each other's mind. What shall blood
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and iron loose that we cannot bind? We who swept
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: each other's coasts sacked each other's home. Since the sword
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of Brynus clashed on the scales at Rome. Listen court
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and close again, wheeling girth to girth in the strained
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  Speaker 1: and bloodless guard set for peace on earth, Broke to
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: every known mischance, lifted over all by the light, sane
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: joy of life, the buckler of the Gaul, furious in luxury,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: merciless in toil, terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil,
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  Speaker 1: strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of men's mind,
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  Speaker 1: First to follow truth, and last to leave old truths behind.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: France beloved of every soul that loves or serves its kind.
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  Speaker 1: First published June twenty fourth, nineteen thirteen, and of introductory
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: poem recording by Timbalkley of Bries dot org dot endzed
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Section one of Fronts at War on the Frontier of
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  Speaker 1: Civilization by RUDYERD. Kipling. This Libertyvox recording is in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. Recording by Timbalkley of Stories dot org dot endzed,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Section one on the Frontier of Civilization. It's a pretty park,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: said the French artillery officer. We've done a lot for
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  Speaker 1: it since the owner left. I hope he'll appreciate it
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  Speaker 1: when he comes back. The car traversed a winding drive
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  Speaker 1: through woods between banks, embellished with little chalets of a
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  Speaker 1: rustic nature. At first, the chalets stood their full height
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  Speaker 1: above ground, suggesting tea gardens in England. Further on they
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: sank into the earth, till at the top of the
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  Speaker 1: ascent only their solid brown roofs showed torn branches drooping
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  Speaker 1: across the driveway. With here and there a scorched patch
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  Speaker 1: of undergrowth explained the reason for their modesty. The chateau
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: that commanded these glories of forest and park sat boldly
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: on a terrace. There was nothing wrong with it, except
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  Speaker 1: if one looked closely a few scratches or dints on
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  Speaker 1: its white stone walls, or a neatly drilled hole under
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  Speaker 1: a flight of steps. One such hole ended in an
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: unexploded shell. Yes, said the officer, they arrive here. Occasionally
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: something bellowed across the folds of the wooded hills. Something
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: grunted in reply, Something passed overhead querulously, but not without dignity.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Two clear, fresh barks joined the chorus, and a man
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: moved lazily in the direction of the guns. Well, suppose
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: we come and look at things a little, said the
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  Speaker 1: commanding officer an observation post. There was a specimen tree,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a tree worthy of such a park, the sort of
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  Speaker 1: tree visitors are always taken to admire. A ladder ran
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  Speaker 1: up into a platform. A little wind there was swayed
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway.
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  Speaker 1: A telephone bell tinkled fifty foot overhead. Two invisible guns
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  Speaker 1: spoke feverishly for half a minute, and broke off like
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: terriers choked on a leash. We climbed till the topmost
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: platform swayed sickly beneath us. Here one found a rustic shelter,
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  Speaker 1: always of the tea garden pattern, a table, a map,
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  Speaker 1: and a little window wreathed with living branches that gave
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  Speaker 1: one the first view of the devil and all his works.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It was a stretch of open country with a few sticks,
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  Speaker 1: like old tooth brushes, which had once been trees round
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  Speaker 1: a farm. The rest was yellow grass, barren to all appearance,
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  Speaker 1: as the felt the grass is yellow because they have
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: used gas. Here, said an officer, their trenches are. You
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: can see for yourself. The guns in the woods began again.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: They seemed to have no relation to the regularly spaced
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: bursts of smoke along a little smear in the desert
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  Speaker 1: earth two thousand yards away, no connection at all with
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the strong voices overhead, coming and going. It was as
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: impersonal as the drive of the sea along a breakwater.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Thus it went a pause, a gathering of sound, like
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the race of an incoming wave. Then the high flung
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: heads of breakers spouting white up the face of a groin.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Suddenly a seventh wave broke and swept the shape of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: its foam like a plume, overtopping all the others. That's
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: one of our torpilleure, what you call trench sweepers, said
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the observer. Among the whispering lives, some one crossed the
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: platform to consult the map with its ranges. A blistering
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: outbreak of white smokes rose a little beyond the large plume.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It was as though at the tide had struck a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: reef out yonder. Then a new voice of tremendous volume
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: lifted itself out of a lull that followed. Somebody laughed,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Evidently the voice was known. That's not for us, Agannar said,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: they're being waked up from He named a distant French
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: position tnso is attending to them. There we go on
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  Speaker 1: with our usual work. Look another topicur the barbarian. Again
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: a big plume rose, and again the lighter shells broke
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: at their appointed distance. Beyond it. The smoke died away
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: on that stretch of trench, as the foam of a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: swell dies in the angle of a harbor wall, and
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: broke out afresh half a mile lower down. In its
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: apparent laziness, in its awful deliberation, and its quick spasms
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  Speaker 1: of wrath, it was more like the work of waves
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  Speaker 1: than of men, And our high platform's gentle sway and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: glide was exactly the motion of a ship, drifting with
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  Speaker 1: us toward that shore. The usual work, Only the usual work,
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  Speaker 1: the officer explained. Sometimes it's here, sometimes above or below us.
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  Speaker 1: I have been here since May. Little sunshine flooded the
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  Speaker 1: stricken landscape and made its chemical yellow look more foul.
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  Speaker 1: The detachment of men moved out on a road which
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  Speaker 1: ran toward the French trenches, and then vanished at the
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  Speaker 1: foot of a little rise. Other men appeared to be
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  Speaker 1: moving towards us, with that concentration of purpose and bearing
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  Speaker 1: shown in both armies. When dinner is at hand, they
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: looked like people who had been digging hard. Same work, always,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the same work, the officer said. And you could walk
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  Speaker 1: from here to the sea or to Switzerland in that ditch,
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  Speaker 1: and you'll find the same work going on everywhere. It
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  Speaker 1: isn't war. It's better than that, said another. It's the
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  Speaker 1: eating up of a people. They come and they fill
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  Speaker 1: the trenches, and they die, and they die, and they
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  Speaker 1: send more and those die. We do the same, of course.
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  Speaker 1: But look, he pointed to the large, deliberate smoke heads
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  Speaker 1: renewing themselves along that yellow beach. That is the frontier
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  Speaker 1: of civilization. They have all civilization against them, those brutes yonder.
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  Speaker 1: It's not the local victories of the old wars that
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  Speaker 1: we're after. It's the barbarian, all the barbarian. Now you've
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  Speaker 1: seen the whole thing in little Come and look at
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  Speaker 1: our children soldiers in caves. We left that tall tree,
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  Speaker 1: whose fruits are death ripened and distributed. At the dingle
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  Speaker 1: of small bells, the observer returned to his maps and calculations.
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  Speaker 1: The telephone boy stiffened up beside his exchange. As the
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  Speaker 1: amateurs went out of his life. Some one called down
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  Speaker 1: through the branches to ask who was attending to Belile,
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  Speaker 1: had let us say, for I could not catch the
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  Speaker 1: gun's name. It seemed to belong to that terrific new voice,
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  Speaker 1: which had lifted itself for the second or third time.
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  Speaker 1: It appeared from the reply that if Belile talked too long,
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  Speaker 1: he would be dealt with from another point miles away.
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  Speaker 1: The troops we came down to sea were at rest
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  Speaker 1: in a chain of caves which should be gun life
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  Speaker 1: as quarries, and had been fitted up by the army
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  Speaker 1: for its own uses. There were underground corridors, anti chambers, rotunders,
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  Speaker 1: and ventilating shafts, with a bewildering play of cross lights,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: so that wherever you look'd you saw Goya's pictures of
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  Speaker 1: men at arms. Every soldier has some of the old
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  Speaker 1: maid in him, and rejoices in all the gadgets and
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  Speaker 1: devices of his own invention. Death and wounding come by nature,
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  Speaker 1: but to lie dry, sleep soft, and keep us off
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  Speaker 1: clean by forethought and connivance his art, and in all things,
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  Speaker 1: the Frenchman is gloriously an artist. Moreover, the French officers
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  Speaker 1: seem as mother keen on their men, as their men are.
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  Speaker 1: Brother fond of them. May be the possessive form of address,
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  Speaker 1: MoU general mon capitaine helps the idea, which are men
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  Speaker 1: cloak in other and curti phrases. And those soldiers like
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: ours had been welded for months in one furnace. As
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  Speaker 1: an officer said, half our orders now need not be given.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Experience makes us think together. I believe too that if
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  Speaker 1: a French private has an idea, and they are full
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  Speaker 1: of ideas, it reaches his se hoe quicker than it
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  Speaker 1: does with us the sentinel hounds. The overwhelming impression was
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  Speaker 1: the brilliant health and vitality of these men, and the
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  Speaker 1: quality of their breeding. They bore themselves with swing and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: rampant delight in life, while their voices as they talked
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: in the side caverns and among the stands of arms,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: were the controlled voices of civilization. Yet as the lights
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: pierced the gloom, they looked like bandits dividing the spoil.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: One picture, though far from war, stays with me. A
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: perfectly built, dark skinned young giant had peeled himself out
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  Speaker 1: of his blue coat and had brought it down with
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a swish, upon the shoulder of a half stripped comrade
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  Speaker 1: who was near at his feet with some foot gear.
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  Speaker 1: They stood against a background of semi luminous blue haze,
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  Speaker 1: through which glimmered a pile of coppery straw, half covered
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  Speaker 1: by a red blanket. By a divine accident of light
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: and pose, it was Saint Martin giving his cloak to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the beggar. There were scores of pictures in these galleries,
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  Speaker 1: notably a rock hewn chapel, where the red of the
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: cross on the rough canvas salt cloth glowed like a ruby.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Further inside the caves we found a row of little
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: rock cut kennels, each inhabited by one wise, silent dog.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Their duties begin at night with the sentinels and listening posts.
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  Speaker 1: And believe me a proud instructor, my fellow here knows
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the difference between the noise of our shells and the
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: bosch shells. When we came out into the open again,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: there were good opportunities for this study. Voices, wings met
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and passed in the air, and perhaps one strong young
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: tree had not been bending quite so far across the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: picturesque park drive when we first went that way. Oh yes,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: said an officer. Charles had to fall somewhere, And he added,
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  Speaker 1: with fine toleration. It is after all against us that
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the Bosh directs them. But come here and look at
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: my dug out. It's the most superior of all possible dugouts. No,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: come and look at our mess. It's the writs of
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: these parts. And they joyously told how they had got
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: or procured the various fittings and elegances, while hands stretched
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: out of the gloom to shake, and men nodded welcome
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and greeting, all through that cheery brotherhood. In the woods
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: work in the fields, the voices and the wings were
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: still busy after lunch when the car slipped past the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: tea houses in the drive and came into a country
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: where women and children worked among the crops. There were
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: large raw shell holes by the wayside or in the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: midst of fields, and often a cottage or a villa
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: had been smashed. As a bonnet box is smashed by
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: an umbrella. That must be part of Ballile's work when
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: he bellows so truculently. Among the hills to the north.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: We were looking for a town that lives under shell fire.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: The regular road to it was reported unhealthy, not that
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the women and children seemed to care. We took by ways,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of which certain exposed heights and corners were lightly blinded
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: by wind breaks of dried tree tops. Here the shell
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: holes were rather thick on the ground. But the women
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and the children and the old men went on with
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: their work with the cattle and the crops. And where
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: a house had been broken by shells, the rubbish was
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: collected in a neat pile. And where a room or
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: two still remained usable, it was inhabited, and the tattered
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: window curtains fluttered as proudly as any flag. And time
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: was when I used to denounce young Franz because it
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: tried to kill itself beneath my car wheels. And the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: fat old women who crossed the road without warning, and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: specially deaf old men who slept in carts on the
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: wrong side of the road. Now I could take off
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: my hat to every single soul of them, but upon
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: cannot traverse a whole land bare headed. The nearer we
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: came to our town, the fewer were the people, till
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: at last we halted in a well built suburb of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: paved streets, where there was no life at all, a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: wrecked town. The stillness was as terrible as the spread
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: of the quick busy weeds between the paving stones. The
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: air smelt of pounded mortar and crushed stone. The sound
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: of a foot fort echoed like the drop of a
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: pebble in a well. At first, the horror of rect
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: apartment houses and big sharps laid open makes one waste
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: energy in anger. It is not seemly that rooms should
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: be torn out of the sides of buildings, as one
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: tears the soft heart out of English bread. The villa
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: roof should lie across iron gates of private garages, or
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the drawing room doors should flap alone and disconnected between
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: two emptinesses of twisted girders. The eye wearies of the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: repeated pattern that burst shells make on stone walls, as
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the mouth sickens of the taste of mortar and charred timber.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: One quarter of the place had been shelled nearly level.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: The facades of the houses stood doorless, roofless, and windowless,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: like stage scenery. This was near the cathedral, which is
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: always a favorite mark for the heathen. They had gashed
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and ripped the sides of the cathedral itself, so the
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: birds flew in and out at will. They had smashed
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: holes in the roof knocked huge cantles out of the buttresses,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and pitted and starred the paved square outside. They were
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: at work too that very afternoon, though I do not
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: think the cathedral was their objective. For the moment. We
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: walked to and fro in the silence of the streets,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and beneath the whirring wings overhead. Presently a young woman
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. An old woman
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: opened a shutter, how it jarred, and spoke to her.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: The silence closed again, But it seemed to me that
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I heard a sound of singing, the sort of chant
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: one hears in nightmare cities, of voices crying from the
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: underground in the cathedral. Nonsense, said an officer, who should
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: be singing here. We circled the cathedral again and saw
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: what pavement stones can do against their own city when
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the shell jerks them upward. But there was singing after all.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: On the other side of a little door in the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: flank of the cathedral. We looked in doubting and saw
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: at least a hundred folk, mostly women, who knelt before
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the altar of an unrecked chapel. We withdrew quietly from
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: that holy ground and it was not only the eyes
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of the French officers that filled with tears. Then there
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: came an old, old thing with a prayer book in
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: her hand, pattering across the square, evidently late for service.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And who are those women, I asked? Some are caretakers,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: people who have still little shops. Here. There is one
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: quarter where you can buy things. There are many old
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: people too, who will not go away. They are of
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the place you see. And this bombardment happens often, I said,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: it happens always. Would you like to look at the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: railway station? Of course it has not been so bombarded
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: as the cathedral. We went through the gross nakedness of
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: streets with our people till we reached the railway station,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: which was very fairly knocked about, but as my friend said,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: nothing like as much as the cathedral. Then we had
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: to cross the end of a long street, down which
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the bosh could see clearly. As one glanced up it,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: one perceived how the weeds to whom men's war is
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the truce of God, had come back and were well established.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: The whole length of it, watched by the long perspective
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: of open empty windows. End of section one recording by
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Timbalkley of Stories dot org dot enzed Section two of
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: France at War on the Frontier of Civilization by Radjad Kipling.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Timbalkeley of Stories dot org dot enzed Section two the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Nation's Spirit and a new inheritance. We left that stricken
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: but undefeated town, dodged a few miles down the roads
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: beside which the women tended their cows, and dropped into
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: a place on a hill where a Moroccan regiment of
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: many experiences was in billets. They were Mahomedans, bafflingly like
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: half a dozen of our Indian frontier types, though they
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: spoke an accessible tongue. They had, of course turned the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: farm buildings where they lay into a little bit of
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Africa in color and smell. They had been gassed in
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the north, shot over and shot down, and set up
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to be shelled again. And their officers talked of North
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: African wars that we had never heard of, sultry days
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: against long odds in the desert years ago. Afterward, Is
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: it not so with you? Also? We get our best
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: recruits from the tribes we have fought. These men are children,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: They make no trouble. They only want to go where
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: cartridges are burnt. They are of the few races to
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: whom fighting is a pleasure. And how long have you
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: dealt with them? A long time, A long time. I
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: helped to organize the corps. I am one of those
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: whose heart is in Africa. He spoke slowly, almost feeling
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: for his French words to give some order. I shall
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: not forget his eyes as he turned to a huge
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: brown AFRIDI like Mussulman, hunkering down beside his accouterments. He
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: had two sides to his head that bearded, burned. Slow
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: spoken officer met and parted within an hour. The day
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: closed after an amazing interlude in the chateau of a dream,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: which was all glassy ponds, stately trees, and vistas of
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: white and gold saloons. The proprietor was somebody's chauffeur at
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the front, and we drank to his excellent health. But
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a little village in the twilight, full of the petrel
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: of many cars and the wholesome flavor of healthy troops.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: There is no better guide to camp than one's own
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: thoughtful nose, and I poked mine everywhere in no place
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: then or later did it strike that vile, betraying taint
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of underfed, unclean men, And the same with the horses.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: The line that never sleeps. It is difficult to keep
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: an edge after hours of fresh air and experiences, so
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: one does not get the most from the most interesting
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: part of the day, the dinner with the local headquarters.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Here the professionals meet the line, the gunners, the intelligence
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: with stupefying photoplans of the enemy's trenches, the supply, the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: staff who collect and note all things, and are very
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: properly chafed, And to be sure, the interpreter, who, by
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: force of questioning prisoners naturally develops into a sad You see,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: it is the little asides to each other, the slang
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and the half words, which, if one understood, instead of
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: blinking drowsily at one's plate, would give the day's history
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: in a little but tire and the difficulties of a
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: sister not a foreign tongue, cloud everything, and one goes
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: to bleets amid a murmur of voices, the rush of
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: single cars through the night, the passage of battalions, and
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: behind it all the echo of the deep voices calling
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: to one another along the line that never sleeps. The
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: ridge with the scattered pines might have hidden children at play.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Suddenly a horse would have been quite visible. But there
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: was no hint of guns, except a semaphore, which announced
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: it was forbidden to pass that way, as the battery
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: was firing. The boshe must have looked for that battery too.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: The ground was pitted with shell holes of all calibers,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: some of them as fresh as mole casts in the misty,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: damp morning, others where the poppies had grown from seed
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: to flower all through the summer. Where are the guns?
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I demanded? At last they were almost under one's hand,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the ammunition in cellars and dugouts beside them. As far
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: as one can make out, the seventy five gun has
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: no pet name. The bayonet tis Rosalie, the Virgin of Bayonne,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: But the seventy five, the watchful nurse of the trenches
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and little sister of the line, seems to be always
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Susan Gas. Even those who love her best do not
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: insist that she is beautiful. Her merits are French logic, directness, simplicity,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: and the supreme gift of occasionality. She is equal to
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: everything on the spur of the moment. One sees and
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: studies the few appliances which make her do what she does,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and one feels that any one could have invented her
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: famous French seventy fives. As a matter of fact, says
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the commandant, anybody, or rather everybody did. The general idea
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: is after such and such system, the patent of which
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: but I had expired, and we improved it. The preach action,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: with slight modification, is somebody else's. The sighting is perhaps
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: a little special, and so is the traversing. But at
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: bottom it is only an assembly of variations and a rain. That,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: of course, is all Shakespeare ever got out of the alphabet.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: The French artillery make their own guns, as he made
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: his plays. It's just as simple as that. There is
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: nothing on for the moment. It's too misty, said the commandant.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: I fancy that the bosh being as a rule methodical,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: amateurs are introduced to batteries in the Bosch's intervals. At
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: least there are hours healthy and unhealthy, which vary with
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: each position. But as the Commandant reflected, a moment, there
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: is a place and a distance. Let us say he
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: gave a range. The gun servers stood back with the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: bored contempt of the professional for the layman who intrudes
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: on his mysteries. Other civilians had come that way before,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: had seen and grinned, and complimented, and gone their way,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: leaving the gunners high up on the bleak hill side
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: to grill or mildew or freeze for weeks and months.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Then she spoke. Her voice was higher pitched, it seemed,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: than ours, with a more shrewish tang to the speeding shell.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Her recoil was as swift and as graceful as the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: shrug of a frenchwoman's shoulders. The empty case leaped forth
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and clanged against the trail tops of two or three
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: pines fifty yards away. Nodded knowingly to each other, though
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: there was no wind. They'll be bothered down below to
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: know the meaning of our single shot. We don't give
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: them one dose at a time as a rule. Somebody laughed.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: We waited in the fragrant silence. Nothing came back from
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the mist that clogged the lower grounds, though no shell
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of this war was ever launched, with more earnest prayers
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: that it might do hurt. Then they talked about the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: lives of guns, What number of rounds. Some will stand
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: and others will not. How soon one can make two
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: good guns out of free spoilt buns, and what crazy
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: luck sometimes goes with a single shot or a blind
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: salvo lessen from the Bosh, A shell must fall somewhere, and,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: by the law of averages, occasionally light straight as a
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: homing pigeon on the one spot where it can wreck most.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Then the earth opens for yards around, and men must
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: be dug out, some merely breathless, who shake their ears,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: swear and carry on, others whose souls have gone loose
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: among terrors. These have to be dealt with as their
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: psychology demands, and the French officer is a good psychologist.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: One of them said, our national psychology has changed. I
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: do not recognize it myself. What made the change? The Bosh,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: If you've been quiet for another twenty years, the world
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: must have been his rotten, but all his. Now he
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: is saving the world, how because he has shown us
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: what evil is. We you and I, England and the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: rest had begun to doubt the existence of evil. The
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: barsh is saving us. Then we had another look at
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the animal in its trench, a little nearer this time
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: than before. And quieter on account of the mist. Pick
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: same observation post, table, map, observer and telephonist, the same
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: always hidden, always ready guns, and the same vexed foreshore
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: of trenches, smoking and shaking from Switzerland to the sea.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: The handling of the war varies with the nature of
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the country, but the tools are unaltered and looks upon
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: them at last with the same weariness of wonder as
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: the eye receives from endless repetitions of Egyptian hieroglyphics. A long,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: low profile with a lump to one side means the
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: field gun and its attendant amunition case. A circle and
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: slot stand for an observation post. The trench is a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: bent line studded with vertical plumes of explosion. The great
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: guns of position, coming and going on their motors, repeat
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: themselves as scarabs, and man himself is a small blue smudge,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping, or watching
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and running. Among all these terrific symbols tragedy of reams.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: There is no hieroglyphic for rems, no blunting of the mind.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: The abominations committed on the cathedral. There the thing peers upwards,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: maimed and blinded from out of the utter wreckage of
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the archbishop's palace on the one side, and dust heaps
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: of crumbled houses on the other. They shelled, they still
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: shell it with high explosives and with incendiary shells, so
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: that the statues and the stone work in places up
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: burned the color of raw flesh. Gargoyles are smashed, statues,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: crockets and spires, tumbled, walls split and torn, windows thrust out,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: and tracery obliterated. Wherever one looks at the tortured pile,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: there is mutilation and defilement. And yet it had never
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: more of a soul than it has to day. Inside.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Cover yourselves, gentlemen, said the sacristan. This place is no
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: longer consecrated. Everything is swept clear or burnt out from
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: end to end except two candlesticks in front of the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: niche where Janovac's image used to stand. There is a
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: French flag there now. And the last time I saw
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Rhem's cathedral was in a spring twilight, when the great
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: west window glowed and the only lights within were those
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: of candles which some penitent English had lit in Jone's
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: honor on those same candlesticks. The high altar was covered
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: with floor carpets. The pavement tiles were cracked and jarred
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: out by the rubbish that had fallen from above. The
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: floor was gritty with dust of glass and powdered stone,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: little twists of leading from the windows and iron fragments.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Two great doors had been blown inwards by the blast
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: of a shell in the archbishop's garden, till they had
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: bent grotesquely to the curve of a cask. There they
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: had jammed the windows. But the record has been made,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and will be kept by better hands than mine. It
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: will last through the generation in which the Teutan is
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: cut off from the fellowship of mankind, all the long
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: still years, when this war of the body is at
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: an end and the real war begins. Reams is but
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: one of the altars which the Heathen have put up
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: to commemorate them their own death. Throughout all the world
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: it will serve. There is a mark well known by now,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: which they have left for a visible seal of their doom.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: When they first set the place alight, some hundreds of
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: their wounded were being tended in the cathedral. The French
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: saved as many as they could, but some had to
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: be left. Among them was a major who lay with
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: his back against a pillar. It has been ordained that
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the signs of his torments should remain an outline of
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: both legs and half a body, printed in greasy black
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: upon the stones. There are very many people who hope
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and pray that the sign will be respected at least
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: by our children's children. Iron nerve and faith, And in
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: the meantime Reams goes about what business it may have
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: with that iron nerve and endurance and faith, which is
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the new inheritance of France. There is agony enough when
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: the big shells come in. There is pain and terror
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: among the people, and always fresh desecration to watch and suffer.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: The old men and the women and the children drink
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of that cup daily, and yet the bitterness does not
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: enter into their souls. Mere words of admiration are impertinent.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: But the exquisite quality of the French soul has been
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the marvel to me throughout. They say themselves when they talk,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: we did not know what our nation was. Frankly, we
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: did not expected ourselves, but the thing came, and you see,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: we go on or as a woman put it more logically,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: what else can we do? Remember, we knew the Bosh
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: in seventy when you did not. We know what he
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: has done in the last year. This is not war.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: It is against wild beasts that we fight. There is
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: no arrange possible with wild beasts. This is the one
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: vital point which we in England must realize. We are
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: dealing with animals who have scientifically and philosophically removed themselves
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: inconceivably outside civilization. When you have heard a few and
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: a few tales of their doings, you begin to understand
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: a little. When you have seen dreams, you understand a
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: little more. When you have looked long enough at the
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: faces of the women, you are inclined to think that
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the women will have a large say in the final judgment.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: They have earned it a thousand times. End of section two.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Recording by Tim Bulkeley of stories dot org dot enz.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Section three of France at War on the Frontier of Civilization.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information not a volunteer, please
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Timbalkley of Stories dot
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: org dot Enz. France at War on the Frontier of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Civilization by radjud Kipling, Section three, Battle Spectacle and a Review.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Traveling with two chauffeurs is not the luxury it looks,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: since there is only one of you, and there is
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: always another of those iron men to relieve the wheel.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Nor can I decide whether an ex professor of the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: German tongue or an ace roadster who has lived six
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: years abroad, or a marechal de Lgi or a brigadier
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: who makes the most thrusting driver through three mile stretches
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: of military traffic repeated at half our intervals. Sometimes it
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: was motor ambulances strung all along a level or supply,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: or those eternal big guns coming round corners with trees
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: chained on their long backs to puzzle aeroplanes and their leafy,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: big shell limbers snorting behind them in the rare, breathing spaces.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Men with rollers and road metal attacked the road in peace.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: The roads of France, thanks to the motor, were none
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: too good in war. They stand the incessant traffic far
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: better than they did with the tourist. My impression, after
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: some seven hundred miles printed off on me at between
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: sixty and seven kilometers was of uniform excellence. Nor did
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: they come upon any smashes or break downs in that distance,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and they were certainly trying them hard. Nor which is
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: a greater marvel, did we kill anybody, though we did
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: miracles down the streets to avoid babes, kittens and chickens.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: The land is used to every detail of war, and
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: to its grime and horror and makeshifts, but also to
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: war's unbounded courtesy, kindness and long suffering, and the gaiety
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that comes, thank God, to balance overwhelming material loss farm life.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Amidst war. There was a village that had been stamped
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: flat till it looked older than Pompeii. There were not
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: three roofs left, nor one whole house. In most places
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: you saw straight into the cellars. The hops were ripe.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: In the grave dotted fields round about. They had been
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: brought in and piled in the nearest outline of a dwelling.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Women sat on chairs on the pavement picking the good
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: smelling bundles. When it finished one, they reached back and
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: pulled out another through the window hole behind them, talking
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and laughing. The while the cart had been maneuvered out
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: of what had been a farm yard to take the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: hops to mark it. A thick, broad, fair haired wench
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: of the sort that Millay drew, flung all her weight
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: on a spoke and brought the cart forward into the street.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Then she shook herself and hands on hips, danced a
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: little defiant jig in her sappo. As she went back
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to get the horse, another girl came across a bridge.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: She was precisely of the opposite type, slender, creamy skinned,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and delicate featured. She carried a brand new broom over
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: her shoulder through that desolation and bore herself with the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: pride and grace of queenis Sults. The farm girl came
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: out leading the horse, and as the two young things passed,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: they nodded and smiled at each other. With the delicate
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: tangle of the hop vines at their feet. The guns
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: spoke earnestly in the north. That was the Argonne, where
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: the crown Prince was busily getting rid of a few
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: hundred of his father's faithful subjects in order to secure
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: him the reversion of his father's throne. No man likes
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: losing his job, and when at long last, the inner
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: history of this war comes to be written, we may
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: find that the people we mistook for principles and prime
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: agents were only average incompetence, moving all hell to avoid dismissal.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: For it is absolutely true that when a man sells
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: his soul to the devil, he does it for the
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: price of half nothing. Watching the gun fire, it must
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: have been a hot fight. A village wrecked, as is
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: usual along this line, opened on it from a hillside
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: that overlooked the an Italian landscape of carefully drawn hills,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: studied with small villages, a plain with a road and
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: a river in the foreground, and an all revealing afternoon
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: light upon everything. The hills smoked and shook and bellowed.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: An observation balloon climbed up to sea, while an aeroplane,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: which had nothing to do with the strife but was
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: merely training a beginner, darked and swooped. On the edge
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: of the plain. Two rose pink pillars of crumbled masonry,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: guarding some carefully trimmed evergreens on a lawn half buried
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: in rubbish, represented an hotel where the Crown Prince had
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: once stayed. All up the hillside to our right, the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: foundations of houses lay out like a bit of tripe,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: with the sunshine in their square hollows. Suddenly a band
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: began to play up the hill among some trees, and
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: an officer of the local guards, in a new steel
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: anti shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth century salad,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: suggested that we should climb and get a better view.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: He was a kindly man, and in speaking English, had discovered,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: as I do when speaking French, that it is simpler
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: to stick to one gender. His choice was the feminine,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: and the boshe described as she throughout made me think
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: better of myself, which is the essence of friendship. We
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: climbed a flight of old stone steps for generations, the
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: playground of little children, and found a ruined church and
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: their battalion in billets, recreating themselves with excellent music and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: a little horseplay on the outer edge of the crowd.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: The trouble in the hills was none of their business
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: for that day. Still, higher up on a narrow path
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: among the trees, stood a priest and three or four officers.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: They watched the battle and claimed the great bursts of
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: smoke for one side or the other, and at the
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: same time they kept an eye on the flickering aeroplane, ours,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: they said, half under their breath, theirs, No, not ours.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: That one theirs, and the full is banking too steep.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: That's bosh shrapnel. They always burst it high. That's our
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: big gun behind the outer hill. He'll drop his machine
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: in the street if he doesn't take care. There goes
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: a trench sweeper. There's last two were theirs. But that
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: and it was a full roar was ours. Behind the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: German lines. The valley held and increased the sounds till
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: they seemed to hit our hillside like a sea. A
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: change of light showed a village. She exquisitely penciled a
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: top of a hill with reddish haze at its feet.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: What's that place, I asked, the priest replied, in a
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: voice as deep as an organ. That tis sunt It's
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: in the Bosch lines. Its condition is pitiable. The thunders
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: and the smokes rolled up and diminished and renewed themselves,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But the small children romped up and down the old
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: stone steps. The beginner's aeroplane unsteadily chased its own shadow
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: over the fields, and the soldiers in billet asked the
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: band for their favorite tunes, said the lieutenant of the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: local guard. As the cars went on, she played tipperary
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: than she did to an accompaniment of heavy pieces in
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: the hills, which followed us into a town, all ringed
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: with enormous searchlights. French and boshed together, scowling at each
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: other beneath the stars. It happened about that time that
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Lord Kitchener with General Joffre, reviewed a French army corps.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: We came on it in a vast dip of ground,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: under gray clouds, as one comes suddenly on water. For
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: it lay out in misty blue lakes of men, mixed
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: with darker patches like ossiers, and undergrowth of guns, horses
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and wagons. A straight road cut the landscape in two
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: along its murmuring front. Veterans of the war, it was
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: as o Cadmus had sown the wagon's teeth, not in
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: orderly furrows, but broadcast till horrified by what arose, he
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: had emptied out the whole bag and fled. But these
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: were no new warriors. The record of their mere pitched
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: battles would have satiated a Napoleon. Their regiments and batteries
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: had learnt to achieve the impossible. As a matter of routine,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: and in twelve months they had scarcely for a week,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: lost direct contact with death. We went down the line
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: and looked into the eyes of those men with the
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: used bayonets and rifles, the packs that could almost stow
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: themselves on the shoulders that would be strange without them,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: at the splashed guns on their repaired wheels, and the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: easy working limbers. One could feel the strength and power
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of the mass as one feels the flush of heat
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: from off a sun baked wall. When the general's cars
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: arrived there there was no loud word or galloping about
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the lakes of men gathered into straight edged battalions. The
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: batteries aligned a little, a squadron rained back or spurred up,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: but it was all as swiftly smooth as the certainty
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: with which a man used to a pistol draws and
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: levels it at the required moment. A few peasant women
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: saw the generals alight the aeroplanes, which had been skimming
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: low as swallows along the front of the line. Theres
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: must have been a superb view, ascended leisurely and waited
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: on like hawks. Then followed the inspection. One saw the
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: two pigers, tall and short, growing smaller, side by side
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: along the white road till far off among the cavalry.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: They entered their cars again and moved along the horizon
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: to another rise of gray, green plain. The army will
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: move across for your standing. Get to a flank, someone said,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: an army in motion. We were no more than well
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: clear of that immobile host when it all surged forward,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: headed by mass bands playing a tune that sounded like
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: the very pulse of France. The two generals, with their staff,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and the French Minister for War were on foot near
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: a patch of very green lucerne. They made about twenty
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: figures in all. The cars were little gray blocks against
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the gray skyline. There was nothing else in all that
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: great plain except the army. No sound but the changing
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: notes of the aeroplanes and the blunted impression, rather than
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: noise of feet of men on soft ground. They came
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: over a slight ridge, so that once saw the curve
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: of it, first fird then grasped with the tips of bayonets,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: which immediately grew to full height, and then beneath them
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: poured the wonderful infantry. The speed, the thrust, the drive
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: of that broad blue mass was like a tide race
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: up an arm of the sea, And how such speed
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: could go with such weight, and how such weight could
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: be in itself so absolutely under control, filled one with terror.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: All the while the band on a far headland was
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: telling them, and telling them as if they did not
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: know of the passion and gaiety and high heart of
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: their own land, in the speech that only they could
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: fully understand. To hear the music of a country is
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: like hearing a woman think aloud? What is the tune?
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I asked of an officer beside me, my faith? I
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: can't recall it for the moment. I've much to it
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: often enough, though Saint Bremur's. Perhaps, Look there goes my battalion.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Those chaseur yonder he knew, of course, But what could
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: a stranger identify in that earth shaking passage of thirty
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: thousand artillery and cavalry. The note behind the ridge changed
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: to something deeper. Ah, our guns, said the artillery officer,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and smiled tolerantly. On the last blue waves of the line.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Already beating toward the horizon, they came twelve abreast, one
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty guns free for the moment to take
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the air in company behind their teams, and next week
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: would see them hidden singly, or in lurking confederacies by
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: mountain and marsh and forest, or the wrecked habitations of men,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: where the big guns followed them with that long nosed
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: air of detachment peculiar to the breed. The gunner at
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: my side made no comment. He was content to let
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: his arm speak for itself. But when one big gun
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: in a sticky place fell out of alignment for an instant,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: I saw his eyebrows contract. The artillery passed on with
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the same inhuman speed and silence as the line, and
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the cavalry, shattering trumpets closed it all. They are like
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: our cavalry in that their horses are in high condition,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: and they talk hopefully of getting past the barbed wire
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: one of these days and coming into their own meantime,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: they're employed on various work as requisite, and they all
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: sympathized with our rough rider of dragoons, who flatly refused
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: to take off his spurs in the trenches. If he
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: had to die as a damned infantryman, he wasn't going
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: to be buried as such. A true horse of the
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: flanking squadron decided that he had had enough of war
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: and gibbed like Glot's wife, And we all watched him
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: ranged about till he found a stick, which he used
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: but with that effect. Then he got off and led
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the horse, which was evidently what the brute wanted for.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: When the man remounted, the gibing began again. The last
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: we saw of him was one immensely lonely figure leading
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: one bad but happy horse across an absolutely empty world.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Think of his reception. The sole man out of forty
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: thousand who had fallen out the bosh as mister Smith,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the commander of that army corps, came up to salute.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: The cars went away with the generals and the Minister
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: of War. The army passed out of sight over the
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: ridges to the north. The peasant women stooped again to
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: their work in the fields, and wet mists shut down
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: on all the plane but one tingled with the electricity
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: that had passed. Now one knows what the solidarity of
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: civilization means. Later on the civilized nations will know more,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and will wonder and laugh together at their own blindness.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: The Lord Kitchener went down the line before the march passed.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: They say that he stopped to speak to a general
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: who had been Marshon's chief of staff at the time
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: of Fashoda, and Fashodo was one of several cases when
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: civilization was very nearly maneuvered into fighting with itself for
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: the King of Prussia. As the saying goes, the awl
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: embracing vileness of the Bosch is best realized from French soil,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: where they have had large experience of it. And yet,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: as some one observed, we ought to have known that
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: a race who have brought anonymous letter writing to its
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: highest pitch in their own dirty court affairs, would certainly
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: use the same method in their foreign politics. Why didn't
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: we realize for the same reason. Another responded that soci
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: he did not realize that the late mister Smith of
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: your England, who married three wives, bought through baths in
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: advance for each of them, and when they had left
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: him all their money, drowned them one by one. And
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: were the baths, by any chance called Dunkirk, Austria and France.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy a third asked, no, they were respectable
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: British tubs. But until mister Smith had drowned his third wife,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: people didn't get suspicious. They argued that men don't do
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: such things, that sentiment is the criminal's best protection. End
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: of section three of France at War on the Frontier
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: of Civilization read by Tim Bulkeley of Stories dot org
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: dot enz. Section four of France at War on the
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Frontier of Civilization by RUDYERD. Kipling. This abrivox recording is
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Recording by Tim Bulkley of Stories
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: dot org dot endzed Section four The spirit of the people.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: We passed into the zone of another army and a
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: hillier country, where the border villages lay more sheltered. Here
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: and there a town and the fields round it give
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: us a glimpse of the furious industry with which France
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: makes and handles material and troops with her as with us.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: The wounded officer of experience goes back to the drill
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: ground to train the new levies. But it was always
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: the little, crowded, defied villages and the civil population waiting,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: unweariedly and cheerfully on the unwearied, cheerful army that went
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: closest to the heart. Take these pictures caught almost anywhere
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: during the journey. A not of little children in difficulties
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: with the village water tap or high handled pump. A
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: soldier bearded and fatherly, or young and slip and therefore
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: rather shy of the big girl's chaff, comes forward and
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: lifts the pail, or swings the handle. His reward from
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: the smallest babe swung high in air, or if he's
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: an older man pressed against his knees is a kiss,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: then nobody laughs. Or a fat old lady making oration
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: against some wicked young soldiers, who, she says, know what
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: has happened to a certain bottle of wine? And I
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: meant it for all, yes, for all of you this evening,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: instead of the thieves who stole it. Yes, I tell
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: you stole it. The whole street hears her, so as
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the officer who pretends not to, and the amused half
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: battalion up the road. The young men express penitence. She
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: growls like a thunderstorm, but softening at last, cuffs and
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: drives them affectionately before her. They are all one family.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Or a girl at work with horses and a plowed
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: field that is dotted with graves. The machine must avoid
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: each sacred plot, so hands on the plows dolts her
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: hair flying forward, she shouts and wrenches till her little
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: brother runs up and swings the team out of the furrow.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Every aspect and detail of life in France seems overlaid
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: with a smooth patina of long continued war, everything except
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: the spirit of the people, and that is as fresh
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: and glorious as the sight of their own land in sunshine.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: A city and a woman. We found a city among
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: the hills which knew itself to be a prize greatly
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: coveted by the Kaiser. For truly it was a pleasant,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: so desirable, and an insolent city. Its streets were full
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: of life. It boasted an establishment almost as big as harrods,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: and full of buyers. And its women dressed and shot
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: themselves with care and grace, as befits ladies who at
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: any time may be ripped into rags by bombs from aeroplanes.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: And there was another city whose population seemed to be
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: all soldiers in training, and yet another given up to
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: big guns and ammunition. An extraordinary site after that became
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: to a little town of pale Stone, which an army
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: had made its headquarters. It looked like a plain woman
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: who had fainted in public. It had rejoiced in many
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: institutions that were turned into hospitals and offices. The wounded
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: limped its wide dusty streets. Detachments of infantry went through
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: it swiftly and utterly. Bored motor lorries cruised up and down, roaring.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: I suppose for something to look at or to talk to.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: In the center of it, I found one Janny, or
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: rather his marble bast, brooding over a minute iron railed
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: garden of half dried asters, opposite a shut up school, which,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: it appeared from the inscription Janny had found it somewhere
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: in the arid thirties, was precisely the s lot of
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: school that Janny, by the look of him, would have invented.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Not even French adaptability could make anything of it. So
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Janny had his school with a faint perfume of varnish,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: all to himself, in a hot stillness of used up
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: air and little worlds of dust. And because that town
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: seemed to barren, I met there a French general whom
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I would have gone very far to have encountered. He,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: like the others, had created and tempered an army for
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: certain work in a certain place, and its hand had
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: been heavy on the bosh. We talked of what the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: French woman was and had done and was doing, and
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: extolled her for her goodness and her faith and her
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: splendid courage. Then we parted. I went back and made
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: my profoundest apologies to Janny, who must have had a mother.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: The pale, overwhelmed town did not now any longer resemble
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: a woman who had fainted, but one who must endure
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: in public or manner of private woe, and still with
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: hands that never cease working, keeps her soul and is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: cleanly strong for herself and for her men French officers.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: The guns began to speak again. Among the hills that
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: we dived into, the air grew chillier as we climbed forest,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and wet rocks closed round us in the mist. To
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: the sound of waters trickling alongside. There was a tang
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: of wet fern cut pine, and the first breath of autumn.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: When the road entered a tunnel and a new world.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Alzais said, the governor of those parts thoughtfully. The main
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: thing was to get those factory chimneys smoking again. They
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: were doing so in little flats and villages all along.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: You ha's any girls, because they're at work in the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: textile factories. Yes, it isn't a bad country for summer hotels,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: but I'm afraid it won't do for winter sports. We've
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: only a meter of snow and it doesn't lie, except
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: when you're hauling guns up mountains. Then of course it
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: drifts and freezes like Davos. That's our new railway below there, Pily,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: it's too misty to see the view. But for his medals,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: there was nothing in the governor to show that he
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: was not English. He might have come straight from an
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Indian frontier command. One notices this approximation of type in
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: the higher ranks, and many of the juniors are cut
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: from the very same cloth as ours. They get. But
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: if a fun may be going, their performances are as
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: incredible and outrageous as the language in which they described
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: them afterwards is bald but unconvincing. And I overheard the
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: tail end of a yarn told by a child of
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: twenty to some other babes. It was veiled in the
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: obscurity of the French tongue, and the points were lost
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: in shouts of laughter. But I imagine the subaltern among
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: his equals displays just as much reverence for his elders
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: and betters, as our own boys do. The epilog at
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: least was as old as both armies. And what did
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: he say then? Oh, the usual thing. He held his breath,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I thought he burst. Then he damned me in heaps,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: and I took good care to keep out of his
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: sight till next day. But officially, and in the high
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: social atmosphere of headquarters, their manners and their meekness are
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: of the most admirable. There they attend devoutly on the
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: wisdom of their seniors, who treat them so it seemed
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: with affectionate confidence front that never sleeps when the day's
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: reports are in. All along the front there is a
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: man expert in the meaning of things who boils them
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: down for that cold official digest, which tells us that
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: there was the usual grenade fighting at we made appreciable
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: advance at, et cetera. The original material comes in sheaves
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and sheaves where individual character and temperament have full and
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: amusing play. It is reduced for domestic consumption, like an
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: overwhelming electric current, otherwise we could not take it in.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: But at closer range one realizes that the front never sleeps,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: never ceases from trying new ideas and weapons, which, so
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: soon as the Bosh thinks he has mastered them, are
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: discarded for newer annoyances and bewilderments. The Bosh is, above
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: all things, observant and imitative, said one who had counted
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: quite a few bosh dead on the front of his sector.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: When you present him with a new idea, he thinks
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: it over for a day or two. Then he presents
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: his repast. Yes, my general, that is, he was exactly
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: what he did to me when I did so, and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: so he was quite silent for a day. Then he
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: stole my patent, and you, I had a notion that
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: he'd do that, so I'd change the specification. Thus spoke
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: the staff, and so it is among the junior commands,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: down on to the semi isolated posts, where boy Napoleons
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: live on their own through unbelievable adventures. They are inventive,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: young devils, these veterans of twenty one, possessed of the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: single ideal to kill, which they follow with men as
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: single minded as themselves. Battlefield tactics do not exist. When
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: a whole nation goes to ground, there can be none
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of the victories of the old bookish days. But there
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: is always the killing, the well schemed smashing of a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: full trench, the brushing out and the mowing down of
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: its occupants, the unsuspicious battalion fire in the rear, located
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: after two nights, extreme risk alone among rubbish of masonry
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: and wiped out as it eats or washes itself. And
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: more rarely, the body to body encounter with animals removed
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: from the protection of their machinery. When the Bayonets get
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: their chance. The Boshe does not at all like meeting
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: men whose info he is dishonored or mutilated, or used
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: as protection against bullets. It is not that these men
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: are angry or violent. They do not waste time in
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: that way. They kill him the business of war. The
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: French are less reticent than we about atrocities committed by
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: the Bosh, because those atrocities form part of their lives.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: They are not tucked away in reports of commissions and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: vaguely referred to as too awful. Later on, perhaps we
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: shall be unreserved in our turn. But they do not
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: talk of them with any babbling heat or bleat, or
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: make funny little appeals to a public opinion that like
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: the bosh has gone underground. It occurs to me that
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: this must be because every Frenchman has his place and
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: his chance, direct or indirect, to diminish the number of
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: bosh still alive. Whether he lies out in a sandwich
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: of damp earth, or sweats the big guns up the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: crests behind the trees, or brings the fat loaded barges
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: into the very heart of the city where the shell
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: wagons wait, or spends his last crippled years at the harvest.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: He is doing his work to that end. If he
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: is a civilian, he may, as he does, say things
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: about his government, which after all, is very like other
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: popular governments. A lifetime spent in watching how the cat
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: jumps does not make lion tamers. But there is very
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: little human rubbish knocking about France to hinder work or
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: darkened council. Above all, there is a thing called the
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: honor of civilization to which France is attached. The meanest
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: man feels that he, in his place, is permitted to
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: help uphold it, and I think bears himself therefore with
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: new dignity. A contrast in types, this is written in
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: a garden of smooth turf under a copper beach, beside
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: a glassy mill stream, where soldiers of Alpine regiments are
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: writing letters home, while the guns shout up and down
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: the narrow valleys. A great wolfhound, who considers himself in
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: charge of the old fashioned farmhouse, cannot understand by his master,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: aged six, should be sitting on the knees of the
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Marechal de Loge, the iron man who drives the big car.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: But you are French, little one, says the giant, with
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: a yearning arm round. The child yes, very slowly, mouthing
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: the French words. I can't speak French, but I am French.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: The small face disappears in the big beard. Somehow, I
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: can't imagine the Marechal de Loge killing babies, even if
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: his superior officer, now sketching the scene, were to order him.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: The great building must once have been a monastery. Twilight,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: it softened its gaunt wings in an angle, of which
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: were collected fifty prisoners. Picked up among the hills behind
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: the mists. They stood in some sort of military formation,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: preparatory being marched off. They were dressed in khaki, the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: color of gassed grass that might have belonged to any army.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Two wore spectacles, and I counted eight faces of the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: fifty which were asymmetrical out of drawing on one side.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Some of their later draft give us that type, said
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: the interpreter. One of them had been wounded in the
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: head and roughly bandaged. The others seemed all sound. Most
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: of them looked at nothing, but several were vividly alive
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: with terror that cannot keep the eyelids still, and a
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: few wavered on the gray edge of collapse. They were
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: the breed which, at the word of command, had stolen
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: out to drown women and children, had raped women in
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: the streets at the word of command, and always at
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: the word of command, had sprayed petrol, or squirted flame,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: or defiled the property and persons of their captives. They
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: stood there outside all humanity, yet they were made in
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: the likeness of humanity. One realized it with a shock
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: when the bandag's creature began to shiver, and they shuffled
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: off in response to the orders of civilized men. End
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: of section four recording by Timbalkley of Stories dot Org
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: dot enzed Section five of France at War on the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Frontier of Civilization by Rajad Kipling. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Recording by Timbalkeley of stories dot
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: org dot endzed section five Life in the trenches on
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the mountain side. Very early in the morning, I met
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Alan Breck with a half heeled bullet scrape across the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: bridge of his nose and an Alpine cap over one ear.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: His people a few hundred years ago had been Scotch.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: He bore a Scotch name and still recognized the head
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: of his clan, but his French occasionally managed German words
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: for he was an Alsatian. On one side, this, he explained,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: is the very best country in the world to fight in.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: It's picturesque and full of cover. I'm a gunner, I've
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: been here for months. It's lovely. Might have been the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: hills under Mussouri, and what are cars expected to do
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: in it? I could not understand. But the demon driver,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: who had been a road racer, took the seventy horse
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: power Mercedes and threaded the narrow valleys as well as
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: occasional half spiss villages full of Alpine troops. At a
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: restrained thirty miles an hour. He shot up a new
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: made road more like Massouri than ever, and did not
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: fall down the hillside. Even once. An ammunition mule of
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: a mountain battery met him at a tight corner and
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: began to climb a tree. See there isn't another place
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: in France where that could happen, said Allen. I tell you,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: this is magnificent country. The mule was hauled down by
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: his tail before he reached the lower branches, and went
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: on through the woods, his ammunition boxes jinking on his
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: back for all the world as though he were rejoining
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: his battery at Jutog. When expected to meet the little
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: hill people bent under their loads, under the forest gloom,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the light, the color, the smell of the woodsmoke, pine needles,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: wet earth, and warm mule were all him Alayan. Only
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: the Mercedes was violently and loudly a stranger halt, said
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Allen at last, when she had done everything except imitate
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: the mule. The road continues, said the demon driver seductively. Yes,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: but they'll if you go on. Stop and wait. We've
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: a mountain battery to look at. They were not at
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: work at the moment, and the commandant, a grim and
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: forceful man, showed me some details of their construction. When
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: we left them in their bower, it looked like a
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: hill priests wayside shrine. We heard them singing through the
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: steep descending pines. They, too, like the seventy five, seemed
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: to have no pet name in the service. It was
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: a poisonously blind country. The woods blocked all sense of direction.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Above and around the ground was any angle you please,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: and all sounds were split up and muddled by the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: tree trunks, which acted as silencers. High above us, the respectable,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: all concealing forest had turned into sparse, ghastly blue sticks
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: of timber, an assemblage of leper trees round a bald
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: mountain top. That's where we're going, said alleyn. Isn't it
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: an adorable country? Trenches A machine gun loosed. A few
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: shops in the fumbling style of her kind, when they
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: feel for an opening, A couple of rifle shots answered
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: they might have been half a mile away or a
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: hundred yards below. An adorable country. We climbed up until
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: we found once again a complete tea garden of little
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: sunk houses, almost invisible in the brown pink recesses of
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: the thick forest. Here the trenches began, and with them
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: for the next few hours, life in two dimensions length
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: and breadth. You could have eaten your dinner almost anywhere
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: off the swept dry ground. For the steep slopes favored draining.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: There was no lack of timber, and there was unlimited labor.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: It had made neat double length dugouts where the wounded
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: could be laid in during their passage down the mountain side.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Well tended, occasional latrines, properly limed dugouts were sleeping and eating.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Overhead protections and tool sheds were needed, And as one
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: came nearer the working face, very clever cellars against trench sweepers.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Men passed on their business, a squad with a captured
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: machine gun, which they tested in a sheltered dip. Armorers
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: at their benches, busy with sick rifles, fatigue parties for
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: straw rations and ammunition. Long processions of single blue figures
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: turned sideways between the brown, sunless walls. When understood after
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: a while, the nightmare that lays hold of trench stale men.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: When the dreamer wanders for ever in those blind mazes,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: till after centuries of agonizing flight, he finds himself stumbling
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: out again to the white blaze and horror of the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: mined front. He who thought he had almost reached home.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: In the front line, there were no trees above us now.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: Their trunks lay along the edge of the trench, built
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: in with stones where necessary, or sometimes overhanging it in
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: ragged splinters or bushy tops. Bits of c off not
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: French showed two in the uneven lines of debris at
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: the trench lip, and some thoughtful soul had marked an
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: unexploded Bosh trench sweeper as not to be touched. It
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: was a young lawyer from Paris who pointed that out
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: to me. We met the colonel at the head of
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: an indescribable pit of ruin full of sunshine, whose steps
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: ran down a very steep hillside under the lee of
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: an almost vertically plunging parapet. To the left of that parapet,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: the whole hillside was one gruel of smashed trees, split stones,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: and powdered soil. It might have been a ragpicker's dump
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: heap on a colossal scale. Allan looked at it critically.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: I think he had helped to make it. Not long before.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: We're on the top of a hill now, and the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: bosh are below us, said he. We gat them a
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: very fair second. Now lately, this said the colonel is
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: the front line. There were overhead guard against hand bombs,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: which disposed me to believe him. But what convinced me
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: most was a corporal urging us in whispers not to
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: talk so loud. The men were at dinner, and a
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: good smell of food filled the trench. This was the
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: first smell I had encountered in my long travels up hill,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: a mixed, entirely wholesome flavor of stew, leather, earth and
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: rifle oil. Front line professionals. Proportion of men were standing
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: to arms while others ate. But dinner time is slack time,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: even among animals, and it was close to noon. The
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: posh got their soup a few days ago, some one whispered.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: I thought of the pulverized hillside, and hoped it had
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: been hot enough. We edged along with still trench, where
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: the soldiers stared with justified contempt. I thought upon the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: civilian who scuttled through their life for a few emotional
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: minutes in order to make words out of their blood.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Somehow it reminded me of coming in late to a
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: play and incommoding a long line of packed stalls the
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: whispered dialog was much the same. Pardon beg a pardon,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: miss monsieur, to the right, monsieur, If monsieur will lower
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: his head, one sees best from here, monsieur, And so on.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: It was their day and night long business carried through
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: without display or heat, or doubt or indecision. Those who
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: worked worked. Those off duty not five feet behind them
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: in the dugouts were deep in their papers, or their
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: meals or their letters, while death stood ready at any
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: minute to drop down into the narrow cut from out
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: of the narrow strip of unconcerned sky. And for the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: better part of a week one had skirted hundreds of
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: miles of such freeze. The loopholes not in use were
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: plucked rather like old fashioned hives, said the colonel, removing
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: a plug. Here are the bosh. Look you'll see their
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: sand bags. Through a jumble of riven trees and stones.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: One saw what might have been a bit of green sacking.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: They're about seven meters distant just here, the colonel went on,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: that was true too. We entered a little fortalis with
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: a cannon in it, in an embracure, which at that
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: moment struck me as unnecessarily vast, even though it was
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: partly closed by a frail packing case lid. The Colonel
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: sat down in front of it and explained the theory
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: of this sort of doubt by the way he said
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: to the gunner at last, can't you find something better
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: than that? He twitched the lidd aside, I think it's
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: too light. Get a log of wood or something, and
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: he trench sweepers. I loved that colonel. He knew his men,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: and he knew the Bosh had them mucked down like birds.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: When he said there were behind dead trees or behind boulders,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: sure enough, there they were. But as I have said,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: the dinner hour is always slack. And even when we
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: came to a place where a section of trench had
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: been bashed open by trench sweepers and it was recommended
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: to duck and hurry, nothing much happened. The uncanny thing
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: was the absence of movement in the Bosh trenches. Sometimes
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: when imagined that when smelt strange tobacco or heard a
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: rifle bolt working after a shot. Otherwise they were as
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: still as pig. At noonday, we held on through the maize,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: past trench sweepers of a andy light pattern with their
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: screw tailed charge already a grave or so. When I
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: came on men who merely stood within easy reach of
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: their rifles, I knew I was in the second line.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: When they lay frankly at ease, and they dugouts, I
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: knew it was the third. A shot gun would have
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: sprinkled all three. No flat plains, said allyn, no hunting
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: for gun positions. The hills are full of them, and
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: the trenches close together and commanding each other. You see
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: what beautiful country it is. Colonel confirmed this, but from
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: another point of view. War was his business, as the
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: still woods could testify, But his hobby was the trenches.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: He had tapped the mountain streams and dug out a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: laundry where a man could wash his shirt and go
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: up and be killed in it. All in a morning,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: had drained the trenches till a muddy stretch in them
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: was an offense, and at the bottom of the hill
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: it looked like a udropathic establishment. On the stage. He
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: had created baths where half a battalion at a time
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: could wash. He never told me how all that country
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: had been fought over as fiercely as yeep in the west,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: nor what blood had gone down the valleys before his
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: trenches pushed over the scalped mountain top. No, he sketched
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: out new endeavors in earth and stones and trees for
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: the comfort of his men. On that populous mountain there
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: came a priest, was a sub lieutenant, out of the
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: wood of snuff, brown shadows, and half veiled trunks. Will
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: it please me to look at a chapel was all
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: open to the hillside, most tenderly and devoutly done in
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: rustic work, with reedlings of peeled branches and panels of
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: mass and thatch Saint Hubert's own shrine, as all the
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: hunters who passed before it, going to the chase on
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: the far side of the mountain where their game lay.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: A bombarded town. Allan carried me off to tea the
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: same evening, in a town where he seemed to know everybody.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: He had spent the afternoon on another mountain top inspecting
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: gun positions, whereby he had been shelled. A little marmite
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: is the slang for it. There had been no serious smammytage,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: but he had spotted a bosh position which was marmitable,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and we may get shelled now, he added, hopefully they
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: shell this town whenever they think of it. Perhaps hell
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: shell us at Tea. It was a quaintly beautiful little place,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: with its mixture of French and German ideas, its old
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: bridge and gentle minded river between the cultivated hills, the
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: sand bag cellar doors, the ruined houses, and the holes
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: in the pavement looked as unreal as the violences of
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: a cinema. Against that soft and simple setting. People were
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: abroad in the streets, and the little children were playing.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: A big shell gives notice enough for one to get
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: to shelter, if the shelter is near enough. That appears
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: to be as much as any one expects in the
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: world where one is shelled, and that world had settled
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: down to it. People's lips are a little firmer, the
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: modeling of the brows is a little more pronounced, and
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: maybe there is a change in the expression of the eyes,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: but nothing that a casual afternoon caller need particularly notice.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Cases for hospital. The house where we took Tea was
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: the big house of the place, old and a treasure
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: house of ancient furniture. It had everything that the moderate
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: heart of man could desire. Gardens, garages, out buildings, and
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: the air of peace that goes with beauty in age.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: It stood over a high celar ridge, and opposite the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: cellar door was a brand new blindage of earth packed
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: between timbers. The cellar was a hospital with its beds
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: and stores, and under the electric light, the orderly waited
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: ready for the cases to be carried down out of
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: the streets. Yes, they are all civil cases, said he.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: They come without much warning. A woman gashed by falling timber,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: a child with its temple crushed by a flying stone,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: an urgent amutation case, and so on. One never knows. Bombardment,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: the Bosh textbooks say, is designed to terrify the civil
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: population so that they may put pressure on their politicians
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: to conclude peace. In real life, men are rarely soothed
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: by the sight of their women being tortured. We took
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: tea in the hall upstairs, with a propriety and an
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: interchange of compliments that suited the little occasion. There was
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: no attempt to disguise the existence of a bombardment, but
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: it was not allowed to have awagh talk of lighter matters.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I know one guess who sat through it as near
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: as might be inarticulate with wonder. But he was English,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: and when Allan asked him whether he had enjoyed himself,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: he said, oh, yes, thank you very much. Nice people,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: aren't they? Allan went on, oh, very nice, and and
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: such good tea. He managed to convey a few of
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: his sentiments to Allan after dinner. But what else could
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: people have done? Said he? They are French. End of
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: section five, recording by Timbalkley of stories dot org dot
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: end z. Section six of France at War on the
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: Frontier of Civilization by rodjud Kipling. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Recording by Timbalkeley of Stories dot
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: org dot enz, Section six. The common task of a
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: great people. This is the end of the line, said
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: the staff officer, kindest and most patient of chaperones. It
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: buttressed itself on a fortress among the hills. Beyond that,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: the silence was more awful than the mixed noise of
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: business to the westward. In mileage on the map, the
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: line must be between four and five hundred miles. In
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: actual trench work, many times that distance. It is too
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: much to see at full length. The mind does not
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: readily break away from the obsession of its entirety or
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: the grip of its detail, when visualizes the thing afterwards
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: as a white hot gash worming all across France, between
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: intolerable sounds and lights under ceaseless blasts of world dirt.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: Nor is it any relief to lose oneself along the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: wilderness of piling, stoning, timbering, concreting, and wire work, or
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: incalculable quantities of soil thrown up raw to the light
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: and cloaked by the changing seasons, as the unburied dead
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: are cloaked. Yet there are no words to give the
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: essential simplicity of it. It is the rampart put up
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: by man against the beast, precisely as in the Stone Age.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: If it goes, all that keeps us from the beast
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: goes with it. One sees this at the front as
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: clearly as one sees the French villages behind the German lines.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: Sometimes people steal away from them and bring word of
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: what they endure. Where the rifle and the bayonets sir
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: men use those tools along the front, where the knife
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: gives better results. They go in behind the hand grenades
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: with the naked twelve inch knife. Each race is supposed
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: to fight in its own way. But this war has
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: passed beyond all the known ways. They say that the
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: Belgians in the north settle accounts with a certain dry passion,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: which has varied very little since their agony began. Some
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: sections of the English line have produced a soft voiced,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: rather reserved type, which does its work with its mouth shut.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: The French carry an edge to their fighting, a precision
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: and a dreadful knowledge, coupled with an insensibility to shock,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: unlike anything one has imagined of mankind. To be sure,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: there has never been like provocation. For never since the
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: Aca went about to bind the Fenris Wolf has all
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: the world united to bind the beast. The last I
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: saw of thet was Allen Brack, speeding back to his
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: gun positions among the mountains, and I wondered, what delight
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: of what household the lad must have been in the
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: old days. Supports and reserves. Then we had to walk
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: our way, department by department against the tides of men
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: behind the line, supports and their supports, reserves and reserves
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: of reserves, as well as the masses in training. They
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: flooded towns and villages, And when we tried short cuts.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: We found them in every by lane. Have you ever
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: seen mounted men reading their home letters with their reins
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: thrown on their horses necks, moving an absorbed silence through
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: a street which almost said hush to its dogs, or
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: met in a forest a procession of perfectly new big guns,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: apparently taking themselves from the foundry to the front. In
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: spite of their love of drama, there is not much
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: wind addressing in the French character. The Bosh, who is
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: the priest of higher counter jumpery, would have had half
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: the neutral press out in cars to advertise these vast
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: spectacles of men and material. But the same instinct as
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: makes their rich farmers keep to their smock, makes the
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: French keep quiet. This is our affair, they argue. Everybody
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: concerned is taking part in it. Like the review you
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: saw the other day. There are no spectators. But it
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: might be of advantage if the world knew. Mine was
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: a foolish remark. There is only one world to day,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: the world of the Allies. Each of them knows what
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: the others are doing, and the rest doesn't matter. This
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: is a curious but delightful fact to realize at first hand,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: and think what it will be later, when we shall
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: all circulate among each other and open our hearts and
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: talk it over in a brotherhood more intimate than the
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: ties of blood. I lay that night at a little
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: French town and was kept awake by a man somewhere
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: in the hot, still darkness, howling aloud from the pain
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: of his wounds. I was glad that he was alone,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: for when one man gives way, the others sometimes follow.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: Yet the single note of misery was worse than the
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: baying and gulping of a whole ward. I wish that
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: a delegation of strikers could have heard it. That a
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: civilian should be in a war zone at all is
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: a fair guarantee of his good faith. It is when
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: he is outside the zone, unchaperoned, that questions begin and
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: the permits are looked into. If these are irregular, Papa
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't care to contemplate it. If regular, there are still
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: a few counter checks. As the sergeant at the railway
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: station said when he helped us out of an impasse,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: you will realize that it is the most undesirable persons
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: whose papers are of the most regular. It is their business,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: you see. The Commissary of Police is at the Hautel
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: de Ville, if you will come along for the little formality. Myself,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: I used to keep a shop in Paris. My card
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: these provincial towns are desolating Paris and no foreigners. He
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: would have loved his Paris as we found it. Life
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: was renewing itself in the streets whose drawing and proportion
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: one could never notice before. People's eyes, and the women's especially,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: seemed to be set to a longer range, a more
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: comprehensive gaze. One would have said they came from the
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: sea or the mountains, where things are few and simple,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: rather than from houses. Best of all, that were no foreigners.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: The beloved city for the first time was French throughout.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: From end to end. It felt I coming back to
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: an old friend's house for a quiet talk after he
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: had got rid of a house full of visitors. The
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: functionaries and police had dropped their masks of official politeness
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: and were just friendly at the hotels. So like school
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: two days before the term begins, the impersonal valet, the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: chamber made of the set to frank smile, and the
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: unbending head waiter had given place to one's own brothers
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: and sisters, full of one's own anxieties. My son is
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: an aviator, Monsieur. I could have claimed the Italian nationality for
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: him at the beginning, but he would not have it.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: Both my brothers, Monsieur, are at the war. One is
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: dead already, and my fiancee I have not heard from
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: him since March. He is cook in a battalion. Here
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: is the wineleist, Monsieur. Yes, both my sons and a nephew,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: and I have no un news of them, not a
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: word of news. My God, we all suffer these days,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: and so too among the shops, the mere statement of
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: the loss or the grief at the high but never
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: a word of doubt, never a whimper of despair. Now, why,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: asked the shopkeeper. Does not our government or your government,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: or both our governments send some of the British army
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: to Paris. I assure you we would make them welcome.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Perhaps I began, you might beg them too welcome, he laughed.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: We should make them as welcome as our own army.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: They would enjoy themselves. I had a vision of British officers,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: each with ninety days pay to his credit and a
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: damsel or to at home, shopping consumedly, and also said
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: the shopkeeper. The moral effect on Paris to see more
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: of your troops would be very good. But I saw
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: a quiet English Professt Marshal losing himself in chase of
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: defaulters of the new army who knew their Paris. Still,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: there's something to be said for the idea to the
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: extent of a virtuous brigade or so. At present, the
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: English officer in Paris is a scarce bird, and he
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: explains it at once why he is and what he
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: is doing there. He must have good reasons, I suggested
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: teeth to an acquaintance. No good, he grumbled. They've thought
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: of that too. Behind our lines is simply crawling with dentists.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: Now the people transfigured if when I asked after the
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: people that gave dinners and dances last year, where everyone
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: talked so brilliantly of such vital things, When got in
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: return the addresses of hospitals, those pleasant hostesses and maidens
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: seemed to be in charge of departments, or on duty
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: in wards or kitchens or sculleries. Some of the hospitals
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: were in Paris. Their staffs might have one hour a
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: day in which to see visitors. Others were up the
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: line and liable to be shelled or bombed. I recall
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: one French woman in partic killer, because she had once
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: explained to me the necessities of civilized life. These included
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: a masseurs, a manicurist, and a maid to look after
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: the lap dogs. She is employed now and has been
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: for months past, on the disinfection and repair of soldier's clothes.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: There is no need to ask after the men one
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: has known. Still, there was no sense of desolation. They
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: had gone on, the others were getting ready. Or France
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: works outward to the front, precisely as an endless chain
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: of fire buckets works towards the conflagration. Leave the fire
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: behind you and go back till you reach the source
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: of supplies. You will find no break, no pause, nor
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: apparent haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: her bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: should be used. It is a people possessed of the
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: precedent and tradition of war for existence, accustomed to hard
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: living and hard labor, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance. You
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: know when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom till then
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: we conceived, we knew how the man's nature sometimes changes
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: past knowledge or belief. He who was altogether such an
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: one as ourselves, goes forward simply even likely to heights
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: we thought unattainable. Though he is the very same comrade
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: that lived our small life with us. Yet in all
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: things he has become great. So it is with France
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: to day she has discovered the measure of her soul.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: The new war. One sees this not alone in the
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: It is more than contempt of death. It is the
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: godlike preoccupation of her people under arms which makes them
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: put death out of the account. But in the equal
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: passion and fervor with which her people threw out give
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: that may in any way serve their sword. I might
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: tell you something that I saw of the cleaning out
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: of certain latrines, of the education and antecedents of the cleaners.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: What they said in the matter, and how perfectly the
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: work was done. There was a little Rabelais in it, naturally,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: but the rest was pure devotion, rejoicing to be of use,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: similarly with stables, barricades and barbois work, the cleaning and
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: piling away of wrecked house rubbish, the serving of meals
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: keeps its temper, and all the unlovely, monotonous details that
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: go with war. The women, as I have tried to show,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: work stride for stride with the men, with hearts resolute
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: and a spirit that has little mercy for shortcomings. A
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: woman takes her place wherever she can relieve a man
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: in the shop, at the posts, on the tramways, the hotels,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: and a thousand other businesses. She is inured to field work,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: and half the harvest of France this year lies in
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: her lap. One feels at every turn how her men
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: trust her. She knows, for she shares everything with her world,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: what has befallen her sisters, who are now in German hands,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: And her soul is the undying flame behind the men's steel.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: Neither men nor women have any illusion as to miracles
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: presently to be performed, which shall sweep out or drive
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: back the bosh. Since the army is the nation, they
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: know much, though they are officially told little. They all
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: recognize that the old fashioned victory of the past is
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front line trench.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: They all accept the new war, which means grinding down
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: and wearing out the enemy by every means and plan
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: and device that can be compassed. It is slow and expensive,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: but as deadly sure as the logic that leads them
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: to make it their one work, their sole thought, their
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: single preoccupation, a nation's confidence. The same logic saves them
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: a vast amount of energy. They knew Germany in seventy
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: when the world would not believe in their knowledge. They
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: knew the German mind before the war. They know what
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: she has done. They have photographs during this war. They
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: do not fall into spasms of horror and indignation over
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: atrocities that cannot be imagined, as the English papers say.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: They mention them in full and book them to the account.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: They do not discuss, nor consider, nor waste an emotion
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: over anything Germany says or boasts, or arcues, or implies
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: or intrigues. After. They have the heart's ease that comes
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: from all being at work for their country, the knowledge
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: that the burden of work is equally distributed among all,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: the certainty that the women are working side by side
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: with the men, the assurance that when one man's task
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: is at the moment ended, another takes his place. Out
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: of all these things is born their power of recuperation
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: in their leisure, their reason calm while at work, and
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: their superb confidence in their arms. Even if France of
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: to day stood alone against the world's enemy, it would
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: be almost inconceivable to imagine her defeat now, wholly so
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: to imagine any surrender. The war will go on till
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: the enemy is finished. The French do not know when
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: that hour will come. They seldom speak of it. They
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: do not amuse themselves with dreams of triumphs or terms.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: Their business is war, and they do their business. End
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: of France at War on the Frontier of Civilization by
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: rodyad Kipling, recording by Timbalkley of stories dot org dot
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: end z