FRANCE AT WAR.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15478, 4 January 1916, Page 5

FRANCE AT WAR.

AS SEEN BY RUDY Alt D KIPLING

-u.r xvuujfara jvipiuig ■written inimitably of the British armies; he has now performed the same officc for the French, and in "France at War" has recorded his impressions of an extended visit to our Allies' lines. He was taken everywhere, from the Champagne country to the snow-cover-'ed \ Ob^c-s; lie saw villages over which ..He tiue 01 invasion had iiowed and -oi:ea; towns where bombardment was 01 tiie daily routine, fields where .vomen, cliilaren, and oid men worked uncoueerned.y though an occasional snelt droppea dangerously close. Aad, finally, he came away wondering. Uas this me v rar.ee of tradition —cynical, flippant, and decadent. Were these quiet, self-possessed people related to the volatile Gaul whom we used to know? Here was a nation that meant to go through with tiie task it had undertaken, however long was its duration and however enormous the sacrifice. The composure masked a passionate intensity oi purpose. The discoveiy of their new psychology has surprised even themselves a littiC. They say when they talk, "We did not know what our nation was. Frankly, we did not expect it ourselves. But the tiling came, and —ycu see, we go on.'' The German is responsible for the change. "If he had been quiet for another twenty years," a young officer remarked, "the world would have Decn his—rotten, but all his. Now he is saving the world because he has shown us what, evil is." -Mr Kipling saw many varieites of the French fighting man, and ivas struck time and again by a haunting resemblance to the British type. This : is hardly in accordance with our conceptions of the Frer.cn soldier, but Mr Kipling is very emphatic on the point; lie constantly returns to it. The Governor of a portion of Aisaco occupied by the French "might have come straight from an Indian frontier command." Except for his medals, which were unfamiliar, thero v. - as nothing to show that he was not English. "One notices this approximation of type m the higher ranks," says, Mr Kipling elsewhere, "and many of the juniors are cut out of the very same cloth as ours. They get whatever fun may be going; their performances are as inedible and outrageous as the language' in which they describe them afterwards is bald but convincing." The tosemblaiice was marked in the case of the coloured troops. "There were Mohammedans, bafflingly like half a dozen of our Indian frontier types, though they spoke no accessible tongue." Their officers talked of wars of which names the Englishman has never hoard, though their conditions are sufficiently familiar—sultry days against long odds in sandy deserts and desolate mountain gorges. "Afterwards—is it not so with you also? We get our best recruits from the tribes we have fought. The men arc children. They make no trouble. They only want to go where cartridges are burnt. They are of the few races to whom fighting is pleasure." Their leaders were _ bronzed slow-speaking Frenchmen, with eyes that dreamt of distances. Their men were their children,, and their hearts were in Africa. Anon the author was introduced to a battery of the famous "seventyfives. ' This appears to .be the only weapon used by the French that has not received a pet name. The bayonet is .Rosalie, the virgin of Bayonne; and there are affectionate abbreviations for the other arms. But tho soixante quinzo, the watchful nurse of the trenches, and tho little sister of the line, is always the soixante. quinze. Thero is something in the grim tensity of her attitude that forbids familiarity even from her intimates. She is not beautiful. "Her merits are Frenchlogic, directness, simplicity, and the supreme gift of 'occasionally.' She is equal to everything on- tho spur of t e moment. One sees and studies the few appliances which make her do what sho does, and one feels that anyone could have invented her." "As a matter - observed the commandant to rp^ od y— or > rather, eyerybodv did. Tho general idea is after such and such a system, the patent or winch had expired, and we improved it; the breech action, with slight modification, is somebody else's • the sighting is perhaps a little special' and so is tho traversing, but, at bottom! it is only an assembly of variations and arrangements." That, of course, 1 comments Mr Kipling, is all that Shakespeare ever got out of the. a], phabet. The .French artillery make their own guns just as h 0 made his plays. It is quite simple—if you have the knack. The high priests of the I soixante quinze are naturallv a hauglitj and exclusive caste (though the besl of good fellows), who regard the resl of the army with tolerant condescension, and mero civilians with empyreal scorn. " : And so it was all along the front, the front that never sleeps. The retina was almost blurred by the endless succession of impressions, the ordsrlv confusion of objects. "Pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find the same observation post,_ table, map, observer and telephonist, the same alwavs-hidden, al-ways-ready guns, and the same vexed foreshore of trenches smoking and shaking from Switzerland to the sea ih 0 handling of war varies with the nature of the country, but the tools aro unaltered. One looks at them at last with the same weariness of wonder as tho eye receives from endless repetitions of Egyptian hieroglyphics. A long low profile with a lump to one side means the field gun and its attendant ammunition case; a circle and a slot stand for an observation post; the trench is a bent line studded witli vertical plumes of explosion. The great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, repeat themselves as scarabs: and man himself is a small blue smudge no larger than a icrcsight crawling and creeping among all thesa terrific symbols." This smoking, heaving line from Switzerland to the sea, this "whitehot gash worming all across France, between intolerable sounds anjl lights, under ccaseless blasts of whirled dirt," is the frontier of civilisation, and tho •French people know it. They regard it as their sacred trust to hojd it unbroken. That is why all France is figuratively in the trenches. That is wuy the aged peasant bends his rheumatic limbs to the plough, and the lady of high degree thinks no task too menial. "All Franco works outwards to tho front precisely as an endless chain of fire buckets works towards the conflagration. Leave the fire behind you, and go back till you reach tho source of supplies. You will find no heat, no pause, no apparent hate, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or her bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be used. It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training, and illumined and transfigured bv resolve and endurance." It is also a people with no illusions. They are supremely confident, but they expect no miracles presently to be performed which will sweep out the Boche by one dramatic stroke. .They recognise that the old-fashioned victory which decided a campaign is as obsolete as a rifle in a front line trench. They know what is before them, and they are cheerfullv prepared for it. This is Mr Kipling's conclusion: "Even if France to-day stood alone against tho world's enemy it would be almost inconceivable io imagine her defeat now;. wholly so to imagine anv surrender. The war will go on till the enemy is punished. The French do not know when that hour will come; tbey seldom speak of it; they do not amuse themselves with dreams of triumphs or terms. Their business is war, and they do their business."