“We did not listen to the cries of surrender or to the beseeching plaints of the wounded,” said a French soldier, describing one of these scenes.  “We had no use for prisoners and on both sides there was no quarter given in this Argonne wood.  Better than fixed bayonets was an unfixed bayonet grasped as a dagger.  Better than any bayonet was a bit of iron or a broken gun-stock, or a sharp knife.  In that hand-to-hand fighting there was no shooting but only the struggling of interlaced bodies, with fists and claws grabbing for each other’s throats.  I saw men use teeth and bite their enemy to death with their jaws, gnawing at their windpipes.  This is modern war in the twentieth century—­or one scene in it—­and it is only afterwards, if one escapes with life, that one is stricken with the thought of all that horror which has debased us as low as the beasts—­lower than beasts, because we have an intelligence and a soul to teach us better things.”

The soldiers of France have an intelligence which makes them, or most of them, revolt from the hideous work they have to do and cry out against this infamy which has been thrust upon them by a nation which compelled the war.  Again and again, for nine months and more, I have heard French soldiers ask the question, “Why are such things allowed by God?  What is the use of civilization if it leads to this?” And, upon my soul, I could not answer them.

18

The mobilization of all the manhood of France, from boys of eighteen and nineteen to men of forty-five, was a demonstration of national unity and of a great people rising as one man in self-defence, which to the Englishman was an astounding and overwhelming phenomenon.  Though I knew the meaning of it and it had no real surprises for me, I could never avoid the sense of wonderment when I met young aristocrats marching in the ranks as common soldiers, professors, poets, priests and painters, as hairy and dirty as the poilus who had come from the farms and the meat markets, millionaires and the sons of millionaires driving automobiles as military chauffeurs or as orderlies to officers upon whom they waited respectfully, forbidden to sit at table with them in public places, and having to “keep their place” at all times.  Even now I am astonished at a system which makes young merchants abandon their businesses at a moment’s notice to serve in the ranks, and great employers of labour go marching with their own labourers, giving only a backward glance at the ruin of their property and their trade.  There is something magnificent in this, but all one’s admiration of a universal military service which abolishes all distinctions of class and wealth—­after all there were not many embusques, or privileged exemptes—­need not blind one to abuses and unnecessary hardships inflicted upon large numbers of men.