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CHAPTER XXI

NO!

The opening of our War Museum, which was the conspicuous event of the following days, filled Crillon with delight.

It was a wooden building, gay with flags, which the municipality had erected; and Room 1 was occupied by an exhibition of paintings and drawings by amateurs in high society, all war subjects.  Many of them were sent down from Paris.

Crillon, officially got up in his Sunday clothes, has bought the catalogue (which is sold for the benefit of the wounded) and he is struck with wonder by the list of exhibitors.  He talks of titles, of coats of arms, of crowns; he seeks enlightenment in matters of aristocratic hierarchy.  Once, as he stands before the row of frames, he asks: 

“I say, now, which has got most talent in France—­a princess or a duchess?”

He is quite affected by these things, and with his eyes fixed on the lower edges of the pictures he deciphers the signatures.

In the room which follows this shining exhibition of autographs there is a crush.

On trestles disposed around the wall trophies are arranged—­peaked helmets, knapsacks covered with tawny hair, ruins of shells.

The complete uniform of a German infantryman has been built up with items from different sources, some of them stained.

In this room there was a group of convalescents from the overflow hospital of Viviers.  These soldiers looked, and hardly spoke.  Several shrugged their shoulders.  But one of them growled in front of the German phantom, “Ah the swine!”

With a view to propaganda, they have framed a letter from a woman found in a slain enemy’s pocket.  A translation is posted up as well, and they have underlined the passage in which the woman says, “When is this cursed war going to end?” and in which she laments the increasing cost of little Johann’s keep.  At the foot of the page, the woman has depicted, in a sentimental diagram, the increasing love that she feels for her man.

How simple and obvious the evidence is!  No reasonable person can dispute that the being whose private life is here thrown to the winds and who poured out his sweat and his blood in one of these rags was not responsible for having held a rifle, for having aimed it.  In the presence of these ruins I see with monotonous and implacable obstinacy that the attacking multitude is as innocent as the defending multitude.

On a little red-covered table by the side of a little tacked label which says, “Cold Steel:  May 9,” there is a twisted French bayonet—­a bayonet, the flesh weapon, which has been twisted!

“Oh, it’s fine!” says a young girl from the castle.

“It isn’t Fritz and Jerry, old chap, that bends bayonets!”

“No doubt about it, we’re the first soldiers in the world,” says Rampaille.