22 
Land & Water 
August 15, 1918 
unjust indictment that was being brought against tliem. 
And now for the credit of France they have deemed it neces- 
sary to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the world. 
For this purpose they have during this war organised a move- 
rrient, which is known as La Croisade dcs Femmes franfaises. 
Led by some of the most distinguished of their compatriots, 
(Madame Poincare, La Duchesse d'Uzes, Mme. Adam, Mme. 
Alphonse Daudet) the Crusaders appeal to women throughout 
France to make known in the world what French women 
really are, what they have done and are doing in this war. 
They describe in their manifesto how women of all classes 
have combined for national service, how all distinctions of 
rank and creed have vanished, how in their nurse's costume, 
their last year's tailor-made, or alas ! too often in their 
widow's weeds, they labour side by side for the national cause. 
"We are all here," they cry, "all except one: that doll 
without heart, without morals, without courage, that creature 
of pleasure, of coquetry, of perdition ! Where is she ? " 
they ask, "we cannot find her, she is not here, she was but 
the invention of our enemy's jealousy." 
But so diligently did the Teutons before the war promulgate 
this fiction of French decadence that we find in France itself 
certain writers beginning to believe it. France dying. La 
France qui meurt was the ominous title of a book, by M. 
Alcide Ebray, published in 1910. About the same time an 
Academician, the late M. Emile Faguet, in a series of volumes, 
was lamenting his country's lack of initiative, enterprise, 
and will-power. 
The depressing effect of this pessimistic view of France may 
even be traced dwring the first two weeks of the war. Many 
of the intellectual young Frenchmen, who, in those August 
days went forth to fight for their country, believed, as Renan 
had believed in 1870, that France was on her deatli-bed. With 
their hearts overclouded by the shadow of the 1870 defeat, 
they were convinced that the Germans would march swiftly 
into Paris and thence overrun the whole of France. The 
German boast of "in three weeks in Paris, in three months in 
London, in three years in New York," did not seem to them 
entirely without reason. 
"I saw the iterrible siege of 1871," wrote a Frenchman at 
the end of July, 1914. "Am I again about to experience the 
horror of beholding the Germans in the suburbs of our capital ? 
How will Paris behave faced by. the menace of war ? Will 
the Socialists revolt ? Shall we have a genera:! strike ? Will 
the working classes refuse to mobilise as they have so often 
threatened ? Will the Revolutionary Party dehver us with- 
out a blow into the hand of the German, while our Russian 
and English allies helplessly look on at our death agony? "* 
The perfection of German military organisation was well 
* Georges Ohnet. Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris pendant la 
de 1914. Fascicule i, p. cj. (Paris, Societe d' Editions Littert 
A rtist iques) 
guert e 
Litteraires et 
known in France. And the French realised they were not 
ready. Every one was saying, "Why, the German Army 
will devour the French Army in one mouthful."* Not with- 
out foundation appeared the bragging of the Berliner Tagc- 
blatt : " Poor little Frenchmen, we are going to break every . 
bone in your little bodies." .-\nd, until the battle of the 
Marne, misgivings continued to oVercloud the horizon of 
many patriotic Frenchmen. But the brilliant defence of 
the capital, the glorious victory of the battle of the Ourcq, 
the sudden vvlte-face of the invading army, saved Paris and 
saved France. Henceforth French liearts were filled with 
confidence and assured of ultimate triumph. 
But Frenchmen need not have despaired. A glance at 
the history of the French nation would have shown them 
that France has ever been the land of re-awakenings and re- 
commencements. " No sooner do her enemies believe her 
to be dying, and, full of hatred and glee, rush to bury her 
corpse, than she rises all aglow with life and vigour from her 
death-bed, and brandishing her swOrd she cries; "Here I 
am, behold me., young like Joan of Arc, like the great Conde 
at Rocroi, like Marceau the Republican, like General 
Eonaparte.f 
There is no better school of optimism than the historj- of 
the French nation. Hopefulness has well been called the 
"Dauphin of France." 
I''or Kis heart to thrill with hope and confidence in the 
future the Frenchman need only carry his mind back to his 
country conquered and occupied by tlie English, then delivered 
by Joan of Arc ; to his nation distracted by civil strife, torn 
asunder by religious disputes, then united and made pros- 
perous by Henri Quatre ; to his land a prey to factions of 
the nobility, laid waste with fire and sword, then blossoming 
into all the glories of Le Grand Siecle. He has only to remem- 
ber the menace from foreign Powers successfully averted 
during the Revolution, the humiliation, the dismemberment, 
the civil war of 1871, succeeded by the magnificent recovery 
of the last forty years. 
If he thinks of these things, no Frenchman can fail to- 
assent to Gambetta's words, uttered in the darkest hour of 
defeat : "No, it is irnpossible for the spirit of France to b& 
overcast for ever." N 
Especially may he take courage wlien he considers the 
part played by France : when he sees the unity and 
patriotism of the mobilisation days even surpassed by 
the tenacity, the fortitude, the heroic energy, the valour 
displayed throughout four years : when in the future he 
carries his mind back to the glorious 19th cf July, which 
brought the news of Marshal Foch's dramatic counter-stroke, 
and altered the whole aspect of the war. 
• Ibid. 40. 
t Maurice Barres. L' Union Sacree, j>. 76. i 
The Man of Decision : By Douglas Jerrold 
An Episode of War 
I SUPPOSE you might say he was romantic ; at least, 
he had his dreams, his illusions of greatness. His 
family was nothing to boast of, nothing which spoke 
for itself; no one referred to him as "so and so's 
son, you know, I knew his father well in the old days." 
He was not heir to a name, a title, or even a legend. 
But he was heir to his father's unrealised ambitions, to that 
limitless hope which drives the middle class slowly upward 
through generations, which keeps them ever hopeful of 
seizing the elusive moment and meeting its searching test 
without a qualm. I do iiiot say that they meet it with an 
unvarying success ; that is the haunting doubt, the pre- 
occupation, you might almost say, of that particular class. 
That is the point of my story. 
Arnold had made a success of life in his way. People 
were beginning to talk about a career ; that meant a lot in 
his milieu. The son of a penniless country solicitor who has 
married the curate's ugliest daughter does not in the common 
order of things have a career ; he is put into something ; 
at best he goes into something. It is never suggested that 
he goes on to anything. And that is the meaning, ultimately, 
of a career. 
And Maurice Arnold had meant to go on. Some odd 
strain in the blood lifted him, I suppose. Mark you, he was 
not a genius — I don't mean that — but he had his dreams. 
You might have thought, at the first acquaintance, that he 
was just a pushing boy with a good manner ; but he was a 
little more than that, he had, if you understand me, 
egoism without ambition ; he just wanted to be recognised 
as a personality, to individualise himself. He didn't care 
for self-expression ; he never wrote a line, and cared nothing 
for art : I don't suppose he knew the meaning of the word. 
But he wanted to realise himself. 
He worked like the devil at school, at Bedford, I think, 
but I can't be sure, and he got a scholarship to Cambridge. 
But he wasn't satisfied. He flattered himself after the event, 
of course, that he had not exerted himself in the least, that 
that wasn't his really searching hour. He wouldn't accept 
his level, take his degree, and go into some Government 
office. He wanted to do something difficult. 
That was his weakness, undoubtedly, for there was nothing 
in particular that he wanted to do. Yet it was not vanity : 
he hated applause and he positivelv shrank from popularity. 
He preferred to sit in his armchair in his rooms dreaming 
impossible destinies, not as you might think, centred round 
an overmastering ambition — he never looked forward to 
successive triumphs along some aveniie of his desire — but 
round little trivial incidents in which he did the difficult, 
almost the quixotic, thing. Lending a man his last five 
pounds under some preposterously imagined circumstance 
when five pounds was the key ready to his hand to some 
gigantically irrelevant success ; being imprisoned rather than 
wear a mauve tie — not because he disliked mauve, it was his 
favourite colour — but because he would imagine some com- 
pelling motive for wearing mauve, and fancy himself rebelling 
against the universal custom for some absurdly inadequate 
reason . . . rebelling firmly, and facing his fate without 
flinching. 
