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T H E
W A R P I L G R I M
By Johannes Jorgensen
Translated from the Danish by Ingeborg hund
BURNS & OATES, Ltd 28 Orchard Street
London, W.
i Q17
VERDENSKRIGEN 1914-18
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OU O
THE WAR PILGRIM
The War Pilgri
By Johannes Jörgensen
Translated from the Danish by Ingeborg Lund
/
BURNS COATES Ltd.
28 Orchard Street London W
I9I7
P R I N T E D I N E N G L A N D B Y T H E W E S T M I N S T E R P R E S S , L O N D O N ,
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Pilgrim in Austere Paris 9 With Charles Péguy and Joan of Arc 19
Among Belgian Refugees 32
With Madame Carton de Wiart, who tells of her Prison in Berlin 40 His Ave to Edith Cavell 49 Among " The Darling Young " 55
At Belgian Headquarters 67
In the wake of Expelled Carthusians 76
On the Frontiers 82
At the Unpriced Store 90
By the Sacred River of Yser 98
At the Awakening 103
The Pilgrim says Goodbye 118
T h e W a r Pilgrim
IN AUSTERE PARIS
I
N the days before the War the journey from Rome to Paris took a little over twenty-four hours. It takes longer in the second year of the War ; you spend a night in the train and a day and another night.
The first night is gone, the day is come, we are getting on. I hear newly-entered passengers whispering to each other, and I feel that all the old force of this word, traveller, has been revived by the War.
Yes, one is indeed a stranger, an out
sider, not " one of our own." The days of a world-embracing Nationalism are over ; nation has risen against nation, man stands against man. It is the day of the sword, the day of the wolf.
The train runs through the Spring- coloured country of Piedmont, half- melted snow is in the ditches, the fields are faintly tinged with new green, yellow
•
10 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
flowers bloom under the borders of willow and hedges of poplar. Far away rise the snow-gleaming Alps. At Modane you change trains ; there are no through carriages now. From the mildness of spring you pass into winter ; the foot
board is slippery with ice, you slip on the hard frozen snow on the platform.
You are now across the frontier, in the light grey French carriage with its warn
ing notices on the walls : " Be quiet ! Beware ! Enemy ears are listening! "
You stretch yourself on a seat under your rug ; in the dim light of the dark blue night-lamp a young officer, stretched out on the opposite seat under his pale blue cloak, is faintly visible. Now and then the door is flung open at icy cold stations and the chill of winter rushes in ; officers go muttering through the corridors, look
ing for sleeping berths. You pass Cham- béry, Aix-les-Bains. You wake in the morning to see ice-plants on the window and, when you have thawed a hole, a landscape covered with snow, bare willows bordering the roads with iron-bright
I N A U S T E R E P A R I S u
sledge-marks in the snow, cawing crows, distant brown forest edges, under a cold raw sky. Far away already is the mild, sweet air of spring in Rome ; far away are the steps of the Piazza di Spagna with the blossoming peach trees, and the Tangerine orange sellers, and the violin trio that plays in the afternoon sunshine in the shelter of the warm yellow wall.
A winter city, a serious city, a city of blood-red reality is the Paris I find. In mild, sunny Rome, gaudy posters of cinema stars, Francesca Bertini, Petrolini, flashed their brilliant colours from every street corner. Raw and chilly Paris, where all the streets end in a frosty mist, has her posters too, but nearly all are offi
cially white, with no large type, but a great deal of text—advertising posters too, but they are for VCEuvre des Blessés, for Le Secours National, for UCEuvre four les F rane ais dans les territoires oecu- fés. And while in Rome there were then crowds of handsome, well-dressed young men not engaged in military duty, the
——
1 2 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
only young men to be seen in France are now les mutilés, who alone, or in couple*, or in groups, go about in the streets—always so clean and so neat, with handsome, serious faces. But here dangles an empty sleeve, or there the legs end in two wooden stumps. I go into a church or two, Saint Sulpice, les Car- mes. There are no Italian paper-flowers on the altar, no crimson gold-fringed hangings on the pillars ; but there is a grey, dreary top-light, almost semi- darkness ; a smell of gas, an icy-cold draught in the grey doorways and vesti
bules. The priest says his Mass, not for five old women and three English " mis
ses," but for a nation in mourning and a nation at prayer. People of all ages and both sexes kneel at the altar-rail.
I leave the churches, I wander down the familiar streets on the left bank of the Seine. The wooden pavement of the Boulevard St. Germain has crinkled up ; it has been patched as well as may be with stones. All the booksellers' windows are filled with war books and religious
I N A U S T E R E P A R I S 13 literature, " The Cross and the Sword,"
as Joseph de Maistre and Ernest Psichari have said. I stroll into a café ; all the newspapers are full of letters from sold
iers at the front. One feels very close to the great reality.
" Paris is not herself," say those accus
tomed to look on her as only a gigantic pleasure-garden, with their favourite walk between Le Chat Noir and Luna Park.
There were many Germans of old amongst those to be met on that road. I still re
member, when staying in Paris in 1913, receiving a visit from a young writer who came from the other side of the Rhine.
He was on his way home from Spain I believe, and had only a day and a half in the City of Pleasure. He had arrived the day before. " Where did you spend your evening then ? " I asked. " In the taverns of Montmartre," was his answer. To clean him, I took him to see Napoleon's tomb, and, as we stood by the parapet from which you look down on the black sarcophagus with its one immense name as an epitaph, he was silent for a moment.
i4 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
But soon after he wanted to confide his impressions to me in fluent Berlinese.
" German is not spoken here," I an
swered, and took him outside. I left him at Antoine's door, beside the Chat Noir.
He was also interested in the Théåtre Libre.
Many from other places, too, think they know Paris when they have found amusement in the Bullier, and drunk absinthe in the Closerie des Lilas. To them Paris now seems " Ah ! how changed ! " For they do not know that what has happened is only that Paris has washed the pigment from her face, and that France has shown her real and honest countenance to the world.
And at this point I should like to quote from a letter I sent, in the spring of 1913, to a paper in Denmark :
" How one feels, when one is away from Denmark, that one is on the great high roads, where the tremendous winds of the spirit and the storms of great destinies pass on their whirling way ! Yonder, in that little corner of the
I N A U S T E R E P A R I S 15 world, people were fighting their wret
ched little fights with the dreary oppo- ents of national defence, who availed themselves of the most vulgar insinu
ations—and then one goes to Germany and sees a nation burden itself with a sacrifice of millions and in one common enthusiasm commemorate the great year 1813.
" One goes to Belgium and finds a small nation, the most exposed of all, ready to maintain its independence against the formidable enemy.* One goes to France and sees the Republic propose the law of the three years' ser
vice ; and one sees five thousand students demonstrate in favour of this law at the foot of the Strasburg statue. We feel something like a breeze of spring in Denmark ; but out here there is a tre
mendous storm that will pass over the world and renew everything.
" And now, as always, France leads
* These lines appeared in the Nationaltidende in March, 1913. In August, 1914, it was proved that Bel
gium was both " the most exposed nation of all," and was besides "ready to maintain her independence ag-ainst the formidable enemy."
i6 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
the way, la grande nation, to her last breath, to her last drop of blood. Amongst the lights at this moment shining out of the gloom in the world, the light from Paris is perhaps the strongest; and what darkness would there not fall upon the world if it were put out ! Imagine if the day really came when there was no longer any France ! Even the light that shines from Rome, which is to me the very light by which I live, even that light, it seems to me, would lose half its splendour."
The Danish poet, Drachmann, once concluded a poem of victory with the question : " But where are the young men to be found ? " The young men were then to be found in Denmark with George Brandes ; in Norway with Björn- son ; in Sweden with Strindberg; in
France with Taine and Renan and Zola.
It is long ago, and at the present day the young men in France give ear to men of a quite different order. They do not listen to Anatole France, but to Paul Bourget, with his firmly constructed
I N A U S T E R E P A R I S 17
novels, to René Bazin, to Maurice Barrés, and to Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras, the two leaders of the patristic paper, VAction Frangaise. These men may differ on many single questions. Two things tower in all of them, their country and the Church. Unlike the Government, they desire a French France and a Catholic France. They will not submit to being ruled by men whose very names (Steeg, Klotz, Grumbach) proclaim them to be aliens, whose actions label them anti- national and anti-ecclesiastical. Steeg (Minister of Education) and his " school without God " have been hard pressed in the Chamber of Deputies from the French and Christian side. And, before long, the proposal will be made in Paris that the Sisters of Mercy be allowed to return to the hospitals. As was very rightly pointed out to the Municipal Council of Paris by de Puymaigre, the proposer of the measure, a Hospital nurse costs 1,200 francs a year and a Sister only 200 !
There is unmistakable evidence of a
18 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
reaction in both the upper and lower grades of French society. Even the Sor
bonne and the Ecole Normale are under the influence of the new spirit. Bergson's philosophy has been to many minds " a bridge to the Church " ; and a thinker like Boutroux is near Christianity in his theory of morals and of their foundations.
It was a sign of the times that, at the commemoration in Paris of the massacre of the priests in 1792, the chief speech was made by the literary editor of the Journal des Debats, the fine critic, André Halleys.
And what shall I say about the young men from Jammes and Claudel to Bau
mann and Gauléne ? In a French review of young writers, I find another who is wholly on the side of France and Christ
ianity : Francois Mauriac. There can be no longer any doubt that France is awakening, and with France's will come the awakening of the world. The night is gone, and the light will arise for all those who crave for it.
WITH CHARLES PEGUY
W
HEN, in the spring of 1913, I spoke of the new spirit that inspired France, I was called a fanatic and a dreamer. The Autumn of 1914 showed that I was justified. The winter of 1914- 15 came. The spring of 1915 and the summer of 1915, and yet an autumn and yet a winter, and still a spring and still a summer—and all said the same as I :
" France is awakening." They said more:
they said : " France is awake."
When I wrote that article, when I mentioned the names of those who have created the new France, which has since bled at Verdun and resisted indomitably, there was one whom I did not even know, one whom I ought otherwise to have mentioned before all others. I know him now, for now the whole world knows him. He died a hero's death in the battle of the Marne at Villeroy, between Meaux and Dammartin, on September 5th, 1914,
20 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
and his immortal name is Charles Péguy.
An immortal name which, before his death, could not be found in any Who's Who, not even the accurate Degener had him in his conscientious Wer ist's. What was Péguy to the world ? A little shabbily- dressed man, in baggy trousers, the editor of an obscure politico-literary review called Les Cahiers de la Quin- zaine, at one time a Socialist and Drey- fusard, a friend of Zola and Jaurés, now a Catholic, a convert among Catholics, but one, it seems, who did not have his children baptised—" the wife, you un
derstand."
Those who knew more knew that Péguy was the author of a sort of remarkable poetical work which he entitled La Tapisserie de Sai?ite Genevieve et de Jeanne d'Arc, and that he wrote in a peculiar, stilted style with endless, very wearisome repetitions. This strange man, this " type " from the quarter around the Sorbonne, where he could be seen passing to and fro from his little editorial office, always in a long black cloak, often
f F I T H C H A R L E S P E G U T 21
with the heels of his boots worn down—
this queer little man, when the war broke out, became a warrior and died a hero. " At about five o'clock in the after
noon," it is said in an account of Péguy's last moments, the order was given for attack. The German cannon spat flame, the rifle fire was close and murderous.
We had to run across a field of oats, and many men fell. We found cover behind a ditch at the road side. Five hundred yards away it is thick with spiked helmets that can just be seen above the ground.
The bullets whistle over our heads.
Lieutenant Péguy's clear, youthful voice commands ' Fire !' and a moment after ' Forward !' We run, ducking as much as possible. But the mitrailleuse fire is awful;
we run two hundred yards, but not ten of us can escape alive. ' Throw yourselves down,' orders Péguy, ' and fire at will ! ' He remains standing himself, field-glass in hand, to direct our shooting. We fire like maniacs, we are black with powder, the rifle barrels are burning hot. Every minute a scream, a cry of pain, or a groan,
22 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
is heard round about us. Friends fall at one's side. How many dead have we ? No one knows.
" Péguy is still standing up, notwith
standing our shouts of warning. He is splendid in his heroic courage. His voice rings out over us : ' Fire ! fire in God's name—fire ! ' In our run most of us have lost our knapsacks, which are very important means of cover. Some com
plain, ' We have no knapsacks, lieutenant ! It is certain death—none of us will es
cape alive.' 4 What matter ? ' he shouts through the din of the mitrailleuses.
' Neither have I any knapsack ! What matter ? Only go on firing ! ' And as if to invoke death he raises himself to his full height. At the same instant a bullet strikes him in the forehead, and Péguy falls without a sound, his head split."
He would not — as André Suarés writes—let slip the opportunity of achiev
ing an immortal life. He died standing, and his death was an act of faith for which he expected the reward for fidelity prom
ised to those " who hunger and thirst
W I T H C H A R L E S P E G U Y 23
after righteousness, for they shall be filled.Hear his own prophetic verse : Happy are they who die for the mere
sod
(Granting their war is righteous before God) ;
Their debt to its four corners shall suffice As initiation to the sacrifice.
Happy are they, the dead whom death doth bless,
Risen in obedience, crowned in lowliness.
JOAN OF ARC
I
BEGIN to settle down to life in Paris. I live in a small hotel in the Rue Yaugirard, in which the food is good and plentiful, and in which the host himself presides at the table and fills the glasses of his guests with his dark claret or his sparkling cider from Brittany.The hotel was once a convent ; the chapel is still standing in the garden and is now occupied by one of the numerous War works. There is a continual coming and going of soldiers in the house, and there are frequently young officers at the table, accompanied by black-garbed mothers, taking a last meal before their departure for the Front, or a first meal after their return from it. One day there is a young blind Lieutenant with his sister—he has lost the sight of both eyes by shrapnel.
He is brave and cheerful, however, and entertains us brightly about his increased sharpness of hearing. The optic nerves
J O A N O F A R C 25
had been severed ; on the same occasion the nerves of taste were also cut, so that he can no longer distinguish between bitter and sweet, and may as well put salt in his coffee as sugar. He laughs, he is rosy and well-nourished, and he can
not see that the young girl in black at his side is pale, and that her eyes are seeking ours and mutely saying : " Isn't it a piteous sight ? "
" I am come in the name of God,"
said Joan of Arc, who is France, as Francis of Assisi is Italy, and Birgitta of Vadstena is Sweden. Joan, of whom Charles Péguy never tired of singing, this son of the church-cleaner at Orleans, in his man
hood and in his poet's visions, saw her come riding through the woods at Put- eaux, across the field at Nanterre : Bold she was and brave and in the saddle
firm was she,
Loved of all and welcome everywhere, Clear in her speech and witty, thus
seemed it best to her ;
26 " T H E W A R P I L G R I M
Wise as a grandame bent with weight of years,
Eyes solemn as a cloistered nun's when reciting prayers ;
With the courage of an eagle, the mild
ness of a dove
Next to Our Lady the greatest of the Saints.
In translating these lines of Péguy, I am overwhelmed by the deep emotion that I know so well, and that always comes to me at the mere mention or sight of Joan's name, at the mere thought of her.
Why ? What is there between the Maid of Domrémy and myself that her name should stir me to tears here in this dull hotel, overlooking a Parisian landscape of roofs and chimneys beneath the mourn
ful sky of a northern March day ? Joan, daughter of France, what is there be
tween thee and me, between the purest and bravest maiden, whose life was self- denial hard as a steel breast-plate, whose death was a victory over fire and foe, and the writer who is only brave at his
J O A N O F A R C 2 7 desk, the poet who has a cowardly love of life and a miserable fear of death ? Slowly, as one goes to the confessional to meet the ideal one has betrayed, I take out the book with Boutet de Monvel's drawings of the life of Joan. It was René Bazin who showed them to me first in the original. I have them now in repro
duction to look at when I like.
Step by step, then, I trace the events of this girl-life, with its brief but deep span of years. I see her on the green field under the cherry trees of Lorraine, see her as a shepherdess and spinning her distaff. Then come the first visions, the first voices, St. Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Margaret, the fateful words are uttered—those words that were to lead her to the stake at Rheims:
" Go, daughter of God, go ! "—and she goes, like the centurion's servant in the Gospel.
I see her twice going to Vaucouleurs
—the first time in vain, the second time Baudricourt gives her a horse and a soldier's apparel, and she rides away to
28 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
find the Dauphin and tell him that he is really of the blood of France, that the blood in his veins is not the blood of sin, that he is born in wedlock, and has there
fore the right of the lawfully born to the kingdom. I follow her on the road, I hear Mass with her in the convent church of Saint Urbain at Auxerre ; Jean de Metz hands her some silver coins, so that she may give alms to the beggars at the church door. She is in man's clothes, a girl in armour, and I see her " sitting erect in the saddle," as the poet says,
" and praying with her chin resting on the hilt of her sword.'1 She comes to Chinon, she finds and points out the Dauphin who has hidden himself amongst his courtiers, and one day, at the end of April, she sets out along the banks of the silver-grev Loire to relieve Orléans. Her iron-gauntleted hands are folded in prayer, above her head the white banner, with the two holy names, flutters in the breeze, and the soldiers fall on their knees before her. I see her entry into Orléans, on foot, she meek and humble in the midst of the
J O A N O F A R C 29 pageant, the flourish of trumpets and the hosannas of the people. There she goes, so young, so young, only seventeen springs old. In the midst of the acclam
ations, the lifted arms, the waving caps, she passes, a silent and slender figure, white and steely blue, with downcast eyes and prayer-folded hands. Then comes the storming of the English rampart—
Joan wields no sword, she only raises her white banner, and her blue cloak streams out behind her like a big blue flower being blown away by the wind. The evening after the battle comes, and Joan, surrounded by her officers, sees the dead, hears the moans of the wounded, and weeps as she bends over the pommel of her saddle.
Again comes battle, victory. I see Joan on the scaling-ladder on the ninth of May, I see her on June the eighteenth in the battle of Patay, leading a storm- cloud of irresistible lancers. And again I see her on the battlefield, the fighting over, raising a wounded warrior's head in her arms and supporting it on her breast,
3o " T H E W A R P I L G R I M
on which the armour is covered by her simple white gown, and a Franciscan
hears the last words of the dying man.
At last it comes, the great day, when Charles the Seventh is anointed King of France at Rheims. To the battle-voice of trumpets and the acclamations of the army, Joan kneels humbly and alone ; her work is finished ; her heart swells with Simeon's hymn of thanksgiving :
" Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." At Saint Denis, on the graves of the Kings of France, she lays her sword. But she remains with the army.
I go further with her—to Compiégne, where she falls into the hands of the enemy ; to the trial at Margny and the unsuccessful flight from Beaurevoir, and the prison at Rouen. She is now in the hands of those from whom she shall not escape—the English and Couchon, she is handed over to Pilate and Herod, to Annas and Caiaphas. I see the whole cohort " mocking her, 1 see her before-, the Grand Council, I hear her defending!
herself, alone, as Truth is alone, against
J O A N O F A R C 31 the Scribes and Pharisees. " I come from God, from the Blessed Virgin, from all the Saints and the Church that is above.
Ye say that ye are my judges, but have a care what ye do, for I am truly sent by God, and ye judge me at your peril."
She stands before them, young and alone;
and they sit on benches, old, in great numbers, and in all the panoply of their office. And to their clerks they dictate the sentence : " She has blasphemed.
We thrust her out of the Church as a heretic and apostate and deliver her into the hands of the secular power." " Bishop,"
says Joan, and her finger points him out, " I die at thy hands."
Then they burn her, and they sink into the dust and ashes of oblivion them
selves, while Joan immortally rides at the head of her people, and, after half a thousand years, again leads an army in the everlasting conflict between those who honour God with their lips and those who serve Him in their hearts.
AMONG THE BELGIAN EXILES AT HAVRE.
IRST of all I wish to visit my exiled Belgian friends at Le Havre, Henri Carton de Wiart and Madame de Wiart, recently liberated from the Moabit prison for women.
Getting to Le Havre, however, is a difficult matter. The town is within the war zone, and it depends on the military authorities whether one is allowed to take a ticket or not. I spend an afternoon in various offices of the Ministry for War ; I wait for hours amongst scores of other applicants ; I hear one relent
less " No " after another. " Mais, won lieutenant ", I have to sail by the steamer from Le Havre to-morrow ! " " You will have to sail from somewhere else ! "
" But my wife is expecting me/' " She must expect you somewhere else/' But she has no money to go anywhere else."
" Then she must borrow.'' " But she
A M O N G T H E B E L G I A N E X I L E S 33
doesn't know anybody there from whom she can borrow." " Anyhow, you can't go to Le Havre ! " That is what happens in one case after another. " My case is quite a special one," a Jewish-looking gentleman assures the officer on duty.
" All cases are special," promptly retorts the other. The result is the same : " You can't go to Le Havre."
At first things look rather gloomy for me too ; but a letter from Count Lau- bespin, of the Belgian Legation, at last succeeds in breaking down all barriers, and they hand me the safe-conduct which dispenses me from the regulation passport. I put up this paper with the numerous other documents a stranger must now be supplied with when travel
ling—nationality passport, French pass
port Declaration d* étranger, Permis de séjour, and, in my case, the permit to enter within the Belgian war zone. The last- named paper holds good only for two days and permits me to proceed to " La Panne par Vitinéraire direct, four mission.''
At last I am seated in the morning
34 "THE WAR PILGRIM
express to Le Havre. Again I travel out into the Spring of a French landscape.
I say " again," because my life has so shaped itself that, generally, I happen to be in France in the spring. I was there in 1913 and 1914, and am there this year.
The train runs along the banks of a silvery grey river, the Seine ; and soon I see the towers of Rouen, Notre Dame, Saint Ouen churches, not yet reached by the bombs of the enemy. A couple of hours later, the train rumbles into the dismal station at Le Havre, occupied by the military. It was here that an American, who arrived with a safe-conduct as good as mine, was not allowed to leave the station, but was kept under guard until the first train that left for Paris, and ruthlessly returned thither.
I should be very loth for this to happen to me, and my friends have taken due pre
cautions. I find the way open for me between the military and police guards, and soon I am seated in a motor car beside Madame Juliette Carton de Wiart.
" Is it true," I was asked in a letter from Denmark, " that Madame Carton
A M O N G T H E B E L G I A N E X I L E S 35
de Wiart has been in prison in Germany ?"
So little do they know, then, in Copen
hagen of what happens in Belgium !
" Yes," I answered, " she has been in prison and has now happily been set free, after undergoing her sentence."
My first impression of the Belgian Minister's wife is one of surprise at seeing her so completely unchanged. She looks just as she did the first time I saw her in Brussels, now five years ago. Her hair is silvery grey, but her smile is just as cordial, her eyes as ardent, all her words and movements as full of life and activity now as then. For activity, again and again activity, now as before, now more than ever, is the watchword of Madame Carton de Wiart's life.
" I will take you straight to one of our CEuvres, " she says, while the car, with its small Belgian flag fluttering on the screen in front, takes us through the dingy sea-port streets of Le Havre, wintry, muddy, and still dim with the morning mist. A grey, dreary reality environs me ; everywhere one sees soldiers
3 6 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
—English, Belgian, French, everywhere ambulances, hospitals, military offices.
We stop before a low grey building in a muddy outlying street : " it is a garage which we have taken and re
arranged," says Madame Carton. And with brisk, energetic steps she goes before me into a building that looks like a big warehouse.
As indeed it is. I find myself in a big clothing store—shelves from floor to ceiling full of systematically assorted goods—here boys' trousers, there aprons, yonder straw hats, there ladies' boots.
Large packing-cases, with newly-arrived goods, stand open on the floor, other cases are being fastened up, ready for dispatch : a large drapery establishment on military lines it is, with this peculiarity that the goods have all been used before, and that the new customers do not pay.
I am in the great Vestiaire Beige, from which an average number of 25,000 gar
ments each month are supplied to the homeless Belgian refugees.
It is an understood thing, of course,
A M O N G T H E B E L G I A N E X I L E S 37
that all the work is done free. Madame Carton de Wiart introduces me to a few of the ladies who devote themselves to this work of charity. Everything is primi
tive. I see the word " Office " on a wooden partition, and account books lying on a roughly nailed-up desk, the remaining furniture consisting of two chairs and an enamelled iron wash basin and jug.
The goods are supplied by kind people all over the world, Australia, New Zea
land, and the Transvaal being especially generous contributors. The cast-off cloth
ing is repaired and " smartened up "
at the Vestiaire. The customers are first of all the twenty-two colonies of Belgian exiled children (les enfants de VT ser, as they are called) ; next, the Belgian refugees in Paris, and at Lourdes, where there are about five thousand. " In this case for instance,, there are old felt hats, frills, ribbons, blouses, cloth slippers, feathers for hats, small boys' knicker
bockers, skirts, underclothing—a little of everything. These greasy old felt hats,
38 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
for instance, can be washed and cut into felt soles. These artificial flowers can, with the aid of a little wire, be made quite effective on a straw hat for spring wear.
This white frock can be altered for a little girl who is going to her First Com
munion."
The telephone rings, and my obliging guide asks to be excused. I wander about in these passages, in which all kinds of clothes are neatly arranged on the shelves of rough-hewn deal boards. Men are moving away the depleted packing-cases ; I hear Madame Carton de Wiart giving her orders : " Twenty parcels of tooth
brushes—then the van can take the lot on Thursday. We have a van, I must explain," Madame de Wiart tells me,
" which goes round every week to all our colonies in Normandy. This is one of our two central warehouses ; the other, for food supplies, is at Yvetot."
" And you direct the whole affair ? " I ask her. " I ? O, no. Monsieur Berryer, the Minister for Home Affairs, does that. I am only the servant of Monsieur Berryer."
A M O N G T H E B E L G I A N E X I L E S 39
" But the servant, too, of another and higher Master," I say to myself ; " the servant of Him Who said, 'I was naked and ye clothed Me.' "
IN THE COMPANY OF MM E .
CARTON DE WIART, WHO TELLS OF HER PRISON IN BERLIN.
S
AINTE ADRESSE, on the sunny coast near the great seaport of Normandy, a town of villas built by one man, Dufayel, as a rival to Nice or Cannes, is now the seat of an exiled Government, from which a nation conducts the last fight for its freedom.When the Belgian Government found itself compelled to quit Antwerp, France at first offered Abbeville, but that sea
port at the mouth of the Somme was too near the Front ; the roaring of the guns can be heard from Arras, lhen England suggested Jersey, the island in which the last century saw another great exile; but German submarines might cut the communications with the sur
rounding world. Thus the Belgian Gov
ernment chose Sainte Adresse. Here the offices of the Ministries are installed in a
W I T H M M E . C A R T O N D E J V I A R T 41
large house of residential flats, in which also the Belgian post and telegraph offices have been set up. The Belgian statesmen live with their families in the quite new
" Kurhaus," a building intended chiefly for summer climate, and standing be
neath the steep cliff wall of La Héve, on the shore of the grey sea.
" And now," I say to her, " you must tell me something about your imprison
ment."
We settle down to a talk in the work
room of the Belgian Minister's wife. It is filled with books and papers, letters received and letters written but not yet dispatched. Before her on the writing- table stands the Crucifix ; also the por
traits of King Albert and Queen Elisabeth that accompanied her into prison. In her clear, bell-like voice she says :
" It was in the first days of August,
I9I4? You know that Brussels, like so many other Belgian towns, had a con
siderable German population. The men had been recalled to the army, but the women and children had been left
42 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
behind. Our Government had arranged the large circus in the R.ue de l'Enseigne- ment as a concentration camp for them,
but many of them were without the most necessary things. I undertook to help them, and I saw that they were supplied with milk and other food.
Amongst my own compatriots there were some who found that I went too far in my care of the Germans. The Germans have thanked me for it in a peculiar way.
" Very soon, however, we had enough to do in thinking of our own people.
Liege fell, Louvain was in flames, thou
sands of homeless refugees came to the capital. In company with Monsieur Max, the Burgomaster, I organised free meals for the refugees ; they were given in the schools that were empty because of the summer holidays. On August iSth the Kaiser's troops entered Brussels. My husband had had to go with the Govern
ment to Antwerp ; I stayed with my children in the Ministry of Justice in the Rue la Loi. I thought I could go on with the work I had begun for the benefit
W I T H M M E . C A R T O N D E W I A R T 43
of our refugees. In this I received the active support of two ladies, Madame Gaston de Leval, whose husband is the advocate of the American Embassy at Brussels, and Miss Caroline Hedger, an American, who devoted her skill and enthusiasm to battling with the typhus epidemic then rife among the refugees.
My activities, however, soon aroused the suspicion of von Bissing—it did not take much rousing at any time ! Sentries were posted at my door, no one could visit me without a police permit, and when I went out I was followed by a policeman in plain clothes. Even my youngest little daughter had to have a permit when her nurse took her out in a perambulator !
Naturally, I was suspected of writing to my husband. In December, 1914, Cardinal Mercier's splendid Pastoral Let
ter came, and I distributed copies of it wherever I could. I also distributed typewritten copies of the speech that my husband had made in the Hotel de Ville in Paris. Such things as these are not allowed to pass unpunished. One
44 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
night the German police and German soldiers broke in and began to search the house. A ticking was supposed to have been heard in the cellar, and it was thought that it must come from an in
fernal machine, with which I intended to blow up myself and all the Germans living in the house. I went down with them to the place from which the suspicious sounds came, and they were discovered to emanate from the water metre that was peaceably carrying out its work !
" Meanwhile, in the search of the house, a number of letters from Belgian soldiers at the Front were seen. This proved that I was in communication with my fighting compatriots outside the German censorship, and that I served as a connecting link between the soldiei^
on the other side of the Yser and their families at home. It was enough to serve the Germans as a pretext for instituting ' legal ' proceedings against me. For twenty hours on end the military counsel kept me under examination. He had the fixed idea that I was taking part in a
W I T H M M E . C J R T O N D E W I A R T 45
conspiracy that aimed at getting rid of von Bissing. Besides this, I was accused of informing the Allies of the position of the Germans in Belgium. In spite of the gravity of the situation, I could not help finding my examining judge comical. For instance, in one of my notebooks he had found these words of Talleyrand's : ' It is easy to militarise a civilian. It is im
possible to civilise a military man.' In this quotation the judge discerned an allusion to the guerilla warfare said to have been organised by the Belgian Government ! ' Who is Talleyrand ? ' he asked.' A minister.'' Indeed ! A minister ? Where ? ' 'A French minister.' 4 Ah ! then you admit that you have been in communication with a French minister ?' ' I admit nothing. I answer your question.' ' Which office, then, has this minister ? ' ' The Foreign Office.' 1 That is not correct. The minister of the French Foreign Office is M. Delcassé.' '1 did not say it was the present one.' ' Then it was a former one?" Very much former. He was a minister of the King of France.1 ' Madame,
46 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
you are mocking the German Law ! ' "
Madame Carton de Wiart laughed.
" I could not help it ! The same dignified personage also found it suspicious that my daughter Gudule should have been given the name of the patron saint of Brussels—as if we had the intention of demonstrating against the Germans as far back as twelve years ago. However, everything I said or did not say was of no consequence. I had to be punished.
On May 18th I was arrested. For three davs I was kept a prisoner at Headquarters.
On the 21 st there was a new trial, this time before an assembled court and lasting seven hours. I conducted the defence myself ; I did not wish a Bel
gian advocate to be exposed to the revenge of the Germans. I had the satis
faction of once hearing the President of the Court exclaiming in annoyance : ' It is evident, Madame, that you are married to an advocate ! ' Then sentence was given,three months-and-a-half of ordinary imprisonment. I was given one month for having distributed the Cardinal's
W I T H M M E . C A R T O N D E W 1 A R T 47
Pastoral. The half month was added in order to bring me under the law by which sentences exceeding three months have to be undergone in Germany, not in Belgium. The next morning already I was to leave. I begged for permission to take my youngest children with me ; it was refused. I begged to be allowed at least to see my children and bid them good-bye; that also was refused. Then for a moment my courage failed me and when I was alone in my cell again I burst into tears.
" After a railway journey of twenty- four hours I arrived in Berlin. During the first four days I was lodged at the Hotel Métropole in the Friedrichstrasse.
I asked the reason. 1 It is because the castle which His Majesty the Emperor has selected as a residence for your Ex
cellency is not yet quite ready,' was the respectful and, of course, lying answer.
The true reason was that the legal papers concerning my trial and sentence had not yet arrived in Berlin. As soon as they did I was taken by two policemen in plain clothes to the large prison for
48 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
women in the Moabit quarter. I spent the first fortnight amongst convicted prostitutes. Then I was transferred to another division. I lived the same life as the other prisoners, went for exercise in the prison courtyard with a number on my back like the rest. The only visitor I could receive was the Spanish Ambas
sador, and our conversation always took place in the presence of German officers.
What I most suffered from was not loneliness, but the conduct of the female warders. Often I almost lost patience, but then I contemplated the Crucifix.
The months slipped away. On September 13th my time was up. On the 14th I left Moabit, but with orders not to return to Brussels. After imprisonment I was to be punished still further with exile. I was conducted to the Swiss frontier, whence I came here through France.
After a year's separation I saw my hus
band again. We succeeded later in getting our children here, and now we only wait to go home when the hour of justice strikes."
HE SAYS HIS AVE TO EDITH CAVELL
1
AM alone in my room at the Hostelry Sainte Adresse. The window overlooks the sea and the cliffs, about the crests of which a flock of jackdaws are constantly screaming. On the point of one of the cliffs the younger members of the Carton de Wiart family have built a fortress which they have named Mont Cornillon, and, according to what I was told at luncheon, the garrison has dis
played a truly heroic courage in an engagement with the " Boches," who are the children from a neighbouring villa, and all have been mentioned in the orders of the day of the commanding officer. Private Gudule C. de W. has even, in attempting a daring reconnais
sance, fallen from a height of forty metres, but has escaped with only a slight injury, which has rendered a sojourn of three days at the ambulance necessary.
5 0 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
As I look out towards the little Belgian toy flag, fluttering in the raw wind from the top of Mont Cornillon, I am re
minded of something that Madame Car
ton de Wiart also told me : " Amongst the things of which I was accused was that I had helped young Belgians liable to military duty across the frontier. I had done so, and I admitted it."
This accusation against the Belgian minister's wife was not mentioned amongst the others in the German indictment.
The reason was the simple one that if this accusation had held, it would have entailed a sentence which the Germans dared not execute, a sentence of death.
In the case of an English hospital nurse a few months later they had more—
courage. On October I2th, 19155 a t t w o
o'clock in the morning, a German oflicer shot Edith Cavell as one shoots a dog.
No Danish nor Swedish, no English nor French, no Italian nor Spanish, no Russian nor Japanese officer would have been capable of this horror : of putting his revolver to the temple of a woman in ?
H I S A V E T O E D I T H C A V E L L 5 1 swoon and pulling the trigger. He would have thought of his mother or sister, his wife or his daughter—he could not have done it. The German officer could.
The German people are not created to rule. They could not rule in the Middle Ages, they cannot do so now. With few alterations, one might read in a news
paper of 1917 or 1915 what the chronicle relates in 1160 :
The siege of Crema began on Ny 4th ; on the 10th Frederick Barbarossa arrived in person. The Emperor, who in the besieged saw only rebellious subjects, determined to terrify them by severe punishments. Milan and Crema had sent hostages to him ; he commanded several of them to be hanged on gallows outside the town. Others of the hostages were the children of distinguished families of the city ; he ordered these children to be bound on a siege tower which he caused to be advanced on the town, so that the besieged could not defend themselves against attack from the tower without wounding or killing their own children.
52 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
Then a shriek of despair arose from the walls of Crema. The unhappy parents begged their fellow-countrymen rather to kill them so that they might not see their children die. At the same time, they cried to the children that they should take courage and give their lives for their country. And so it came to pass that the battle was not interrupted, but the hostile siege tower had to be withdrawn, after nine of the young hostages who covered it with their bodies had been killed."
In this way the German troops in Belgium sheltered themselves by driving Belgian women and children before them.
The method is the same, because eight centuries have changed nothing, either in German cruelty or German cowardice.
But the cowardly and the cruel can be tyrants—they cannot be masters.
Never, therefore, was there a more thorough mistake than when the Germans thought themselves chosen to be the
" blonde ruling nation." The blonde ruling nation already exists. It is the nation that rules the seven seas and half
H I S A V E T O E D I T H C A V E L L 53
the earth because it rules itself. The German " Weltmachtstellung " is only a bad imitation (bad in both senses, technically and morally) of the world dominion of this nation. A cheap copy, divided from the original by the same abyss that separates the English Com
monwealth from the German Staat.
The significance of this War is indeed this, the meeting of those who belong to each other. A Mercier stands side by side with a Destrée and a Vandervelde—the Prince of the Church and the Labour Leader. Their highest faith is the same : that God is Justice, and that he who commits an injustice denies God.
Those who are of the same mind find each other. The waters are divided as they were by the rod of Moses. Nietzsche wished to divide the world into masters and slaves, and round about Europe Little- Nietzsches have preached the same gospel, on the tacit understanding that they be
longed to the masters. With its blood- dripping hand the war now divides the world into two other camps. On one side
HHN
54 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
are those who believe that God is the highest Being and that honour and justice are real values, for which one must die if need be. On the other side are those who maintain with the Greek sophist that man is the goal of all things—that we rule over the law, not the law over us.
AMONG " THE DARLING YOUNG"
W
E make up a small party to visit a Belgian school colony in the neighbourhood of Le Havre. There are several to choose from, Caudebec, Sassetot-le- Mauconduit, Ouville l'Abbaye, Barrentin.
The choice falls on the last, and soon the motor bears us away from Le Havre.
On the journey I am told what I am going to see. On October 22nd, 1915, ninety-six orphan children left Belgium ; seventy-four of these were under seven years of age, the youngest was two.
Several of them were suffering from wounds caused by bombs, and they were all in such a state of terror of the Ger
mans that they began to cry at the mere sight of a uniform. Some Sisters of Mercy, Les Sæurs de Notre Dame, from West Roosebelte, came with them. They reached Le Havre in what a state ! And then the Belgian Minister for Home Affairs took charge of them. He organised
56 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
the two centres of supplies—that for clothing at Le Havre and that for food at Yvetot. The French Government allows each child fifty centimes a day, but even the strictest economy needs seventy.
Four sous a child each day therefore had to be raised. Then accommodation had to be found, available houses had to be inspected, the state of sanitation ascertained, the water for drinking tested.
Finally, Sisters to undertake the work had to be obtained ; also a priest to minister to the colony.
Happily, the greatest difficulties were early overcome. Over twenty colonies are in working order. The peasants in the various districts take a friendly interest in the children, some send a side of bacon now and then, or a sack of potatoes. A military doctor sees to their health and rushes in a motor car from one colony to another ; just now he is looking after the children's teeth. As it happens, we meet him at Barentin. g-
U Quite naturally, our talk comes round to the sufferings of the Belgian people,
" T H E D A R L I N G Y O U N G " 57
to all that was sacrificed for an idea, for a pledged word, for " a scrap of paper."
Does the nation not regret it ? Is there no feeling of bitterness against those who required the great sacrifice of them ? Do not the Belgians repent of their ideal
ism, now that they are exiles, or desolate amongst the ruins of their homes ? " I think not," says Madame Carton de Wiart.
And she goes on to relate the following : It was in January, 1915, and she could still go about fairly freely in Bel
gium. In company with Monsieur Cousot, the Belgian Senator, she went to Dinant, where the victims of the August massacres
"were just being dug out. The snow was falling on the blackened walls, and men, whose hands were protected by rubber gloves, were working amongst the ruins and bringing out body after body. The sight was so tragic that Madame de Wiart could not bear it, but sought refuge in a convent that was now used as a working- home. There one hundred and twenty- six women were busy with all kinds of sewing. They all belonged to Dinant,
•i
5 8 " T H E W A R P I L G R I M
and all had the grief-worn faces that one sees wherever the German hoof has trodden. " May I ask these women a question ? " Madame de Wiart had said to the Matron. The permission was given. " How many of you did not lose anyone in August last year ? " Out of the one hundred and twenty six, two stood up. " My heart hammered in my breast as if it would burst," says Madame Carton de Wiart. " Then I gathered all my courage together and asked furthei .
< Are you not sorry, then, for what King Albert has done ? Would you not have preferred that he should have let the Germans pass through ? ' The answer came at once, clearly and distinctly, from one hundred and twenty-six pairs of lips :
< No, Madame, no ! the King has done well ! ' And amongst those women were mothers whose children had been killed before their very eyes—children no older than my youngest one ! "*
* In Tanuary, 1915, the extent of the massacre at Dinant was not yet accurately known. The list which has now been published contains the names of 600 victims. Of these, eleven were children under 5 year»,
" "THE DARLING YOUNG " 59 Madame Carton de Wiart ceases speak
ing. We are all silent. At four cross-roads the chauffeur hesitates, examines the sign-posts, and we roll slowly along a deep and muddy field-path, in amongst trees, where masses of yellow cowslips make splashes of colour on lawns where the grass is still withered. Hazel bushes with yellow catkins brush against the windows of the car which swings round before the steps of a handsome building, formerly the Chateau Malaise, now the Belgian School Colony of Barentin.
It is the middle of the afternoon, and we are at once shown into the Sisters' sitting-room, a large, bright room, with two tall, many-paned windows, and geraniums on the window-sills. On the table, covered with oilcloth, are large enamelled jugs with coffee and hot milk, and plates with plentiful bread and butter.
Near the window the plump and rosy- cheeked Sisters are busy at their work.
There is laughter in their eyes, and bright
twnChidren between the ages of 5 and 9 years, twenty- Ge°man t^oops°! " 15 ^ Th<?y bad fired at the
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6 0 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
smiles are on their Hps as they talk to each other in the strong and w a r m-hearted Flemish tongue, which I have not heard for so long. They are as merry as young girls, as happy as n e w l y-married wives, as serious as mothers.
Mothers they are indeed, and of a large family. The fourteen Sisters have one hundred and thirty-six children under their care. We see the dormitories : six
teen beds in each. There is a comical look about these rows of modest iron be steads, with their white hangings, in
stalled in stately rooms with gilded stucco-work. We are shown the refectory, the kitchen, the store-rooms, everywhere we see order, cleanliness, and Sisters at
work. _ ,,
" But where are the children . ask. They are at school, and we are con- ducted to an adjoining building. On small benches, at low tables, row after row of little Flemish children's heads smile a welcome to us. They are charm
ing, all these little round, closely-cropped heads, with eyes as bright as cherries,
" T H E D A R L I N G T O U N G " 6 1 and small, delicate, rosy lips. We hear them singing as we go in ; but now the singing ceases, and while all eyes and lips laugh, all the little hands wave us a wel
come, a mixed, confused choir of voices shouts for joy : " Maman Carton ! Maman Carton !' Fifty little hands are stretched out to her, and she has to go through all the rows, to table after table and press each little outstretched hand.
The Sister in charge smilingly waits until the sounds of rejoicing are over.
Then she asks one or two of the cleverest of the little folk to show what they can do. 1 hey learn to read and write both in Flemish and French, and they also recite poetry. One fair-haired little girl recites faultlessly one of La Fontaine's fables.
" Her mother and her brother were killed by a bomb at her side," the Sister whis
pers to us. We go on to other class-rooms, to bigger children, to the oldest, then again to quite small children. Everywhere the same joy, everywhere the same forest of children's hands stretched out to the visitors. We have to shake hands
62 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
with all of them—not any may be passed over.
In one of the class-rooms they are writing a composition. The subject is outlined on the blackboard :
T H E W O L F A N D T H E L A M B .
1. First describe the calm and peaceful state of the pastures. The sheep, the lambs, the shepherd, the shepherd's dog.
2. The coming of the wolf—its deceitful talk. The simple-minded lamb. Its rashness.
3. What lesson can be drawn from it.
" You have set them a subject of very actual interest, Sister," I say to the class- mistress. " Only too actual," she answers.
We leave the school building, and stroll about a little in the soft, muddy paths of the park. Twilight is falling ; the great lime trees outline their black delicately- branched fans against the dull sky. Near the boundary of the garden is a coach
house which is to be fitted up as a chapel.
Already a large wooden Crucifix has been
" T H E D A R L I N G T O U N G " 63
hung upon the wall. We stand there a little while looking up in the twilight at the figure hanging there on three nails.
The heart wound is faintly open like a dying man's mouth. We look up at the Pierced Hands and at the thorn-crowned drooping Head. Instantly I am over
whelmed at the thought of all that has happened down the centuries, and that still happens all the world over in the name of this crucified Man ; all the wounds that have been healed, the suffer
ings relieved, the naked clothed, the hungry fed, the thirsty given to drink, the lepers nursed, the little children gathered in and kept alive ; all the hap
piness of the lives lived in faith in Him, all the light He has brought into the darkness of our ignorance, all the peace He has bestowed upon the restless heart of man ! " Can an evil tree yield good fruit ? " He Himself had asked. The Tree of the Cross has borne good fruit for nigh two thousand years now ; it has been a Tree of Life indeed.
I can see as well as anyone, perhaps
64 T H E W A R P I L G R I M
better than many, all the arguments that human reason can allege against faith in a crucified God. In the depths of my mind I have an inheritance from my forefathers, plain, simple folk who did not care for the extraordinary — who preferred work
ing-clothes to festive attire, and to whom a state of everlasting bliss seemed one in which they could not feel at home, just as they could not feel at home at the Prefect's Christmas dance. Deeply rooted in me there is the retiring shyness of my native provincial town of Svendborg, a shyness which, in respect of the doctrine of Christianity about our eternal destiny in resplendent light (if only we care to win it) wants to hide in a semi-dark corner and say : Thank you, but it is far too grand for me. I am in my every
day clothes." And I have an inherited, an inborn, old-fashioned downrightness of a seafaring race, which asks : " Is it quite certain, after all, this course that faith has mapped out for us ? Is it as unshak- ably correct and real as when you get your latitude and longitude with your
" T H E D A R L I N G T O U N G " 65 sextant and your chronometer that shows Greenwich time ? "
But there is a bigger world than that of Svendborg. Even on the Ivory Coast or " out at Rio" my forefathers were still at Svendborg. There is another reality behind the sailor's reality. There are nights when one is compelled to steer by the star that shows itself, and if that happens to be the very star that shone over Bethlehem ? There are gales on a lee shore when one is fain to run one's ship aground on a rock—and if that happens to be the very Rock of Peter ? And the star is really a star and a fixed light, not a will o' the wisp or a weather beacon. And behind the Rock of Peter there is a deep sheltered harbour where the damaged vessels can get their leak
ages repaired. Those are realities which a sailor knows how to value—and a sailor's son likewise. Thus in the most personal and practical affairs proof can be given of the truth of Christianity—that it is the Tree of Life.
And the other tree—the tree of denial
