Читать книгу Joffre and His Army - Charles Dawbarn - Страница 12

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We have seen Joffre in the various stages of his career acquiring that many-sided experience, which was to serve him in excellent stead when, finally, he came to supreme power. Sometimes the engineer officer was uppermost, sometimes the combatant. Though in the latter years, when qualifying for the Council of War, he commanded troops over the very ground where French and English were to oppose the invaders in incredible battles, it is yet true that his experience, with the exception of operations against the Chinese and the Tuaregs on the Niger in his march to Timbuctoo, consisted in the main of engineering exploits with a military aim. Thus he coaxed the desert into a railway track, and thus he cast up mounds of earth and built defensive masonry around Paris and in the provinces and at various strategic points in France overseas. This contact with a larger patrie and with the wider aspects of his profession proved of immense service when, in the process of time, he came to his great estate. It was in reviewing the work of his early years, the period of his maturity and then of his later life that he fully comprehended the character of his task. He realised all the elements that make up France, all the elements that must be flung into the crucible of a national army. "Vive la France" had a new meaning for him, for it meant the France of Asia and Africa as well as the France of metropolitan frontiers.

None the less, for all the pleasure of the prospect, he was sensible of the weaknesses that lay underneath. None better. Had he not himself said in his now famous speech to the Polytechnicians, that you could improvise nothing in war? As a soldier, tried in the service of his country, he was penetrated with that truth. There must be preparation in war—that was the implacable verity. He was emphatic on the point in a speech which must be regarded as one of the documents of the war. For he was speaking to officers, past members of the famous school of which he is a distinguished alumnus, and declared with that sense of reality joined to idealism, which is as pleasing to the plain man as to those in search of lofty generalisation, that preparation implied many things. His auditors, at this Old Boys' gathering, strained their ears in the expectation of hearing something removed from the banalities of the usual chairman's utterance. And they were not disappointed. The speech fitted the occasion like a glove; it was no common one, for the Balkan War had broken out. The eventual Commander-in-Chief could not ignore a subject fraught with such consequence to himself and to his hearers (for the most part officers) and quietly aware, no doubt, of the curiosity he had excited, dealt broadly, yet sufficiently, with the situation.

He began by arraying the forces one against the other in the theatre of war. On the one side he said were numbers and on the other preparation. You could tell by the way in which he insisted on the latter word how much it meant to him. And yet the subject must have been painful, for none realised better than this impressive-looking man, with brow rimmed with white hair and the white of massive eyebrows, that France was not prepared. In elaborating his theme, he told what preparation meant. The whole of national life must co-operate in it. And what were the factors of success? They were of three kinds: material, intellectual, and moral. Under the first came the number and equipment of the troops, under the second and third the capacity of leaders and the patriotism of the people. It was clear that he felt the deep significance of the last quality. Numbers and equipment were certainly important, but patriotism was the soul of the army. "To be ready in our epoch," he insisted, "implies a significance of which those who prepared and conducted war in the past can realise only with difficulty. It would be illusory to count upon the popular élan though it exceeded that of the volunteers of the Revolution, if it were not supported by a previous organisation. 'To be ready' to-day, one must have directed, in advance, all the resources of the country and all its moral energy towards the unique end, 'Victory.'" And then he proceeded to utter the phrases which have become classical. They are a synthesis of Joffre's system, the exposition of his inward faith. "One must have organised everything, foreseen everything. Once hostilities are commenced, no improvisation will be valid. What lacks then, will be definitely lacking. The least omission may cause a disaster."

And he proceeds to particularise. The call to arms must reach those for whom it is intended. Each man must know where to go and how to get there and he must meet there his officers, his arms, and his effects. And over this army which has been organised, equipped, and assembled must be chiefs, military and administrative, imbued with the national theory of the war. "But neither the material organisation of this army nor its training would suffice to assure victory if to this intelligent and strong body a soul were lacking. This soul is Patriotism." That he should lay stress upon the word showed how deeply he had realised how even elaborate schemes of mobilisation could come to naught without this saving grace, without the faith which moves mountains. He seemed to say: "We can save France, even if there are flaws in our preparations, provided we possess Patriotism—the sacred flame." By this alone could soldier and civilian summon the courage to resist reverses.

That Joffre himself accepted the heavy burden of office, showed that he, too, was inspired by a strong love of country and faith in the unlimited powers of French adaptability. He knew that his countrymen were capable of heroic resistance and a persistent and yet strenuous effort, which would astonish the world, because he had read in the heart of the piou-piou undying love for country, and because he had watched silently the growth of that national spirit evoked by the brutal provocation of Germany. He knew, also, the delicacy of fitting discipline to democracy and a fierce national spirit of independence and justice to the exigencies of a European War. Intuition and experience told him that only by the finer emotions could the mass be moved, that it would rebel against mechanical methods and harsh domination and yield only to the influence of enlightened chiefs. Thus he was the man destined to lead and to become the interpreter of the racial spirit of France.

Joffre had established between himself and the soldier in the trenches an irresistible current of sympathy. How, nobody knows, but, at the very commencement, his benevolent activity for the common welfare was a common saying endearing him to the legions under his control, and many were the incidents quoted of his tenderness of heart. He had found a swift way to the understanding and implicit obedience of his troops. By his acts of kindness and consideration he had accumulated a stock of allegiance from which to draw in the supreme hour, when he should say, as on the eve of the battle of the Marne: "Now is the time to conquer or to die." Had he learned these secret arts of sympathy in the wilds of Africa or in the cloistered life he led, like the Pope in the Vatican, when harnessed to his work of preparation at the Ministry of War? I do not know, but I suspect that this trait, like the others, was inborn and developed by urgent circumstance. However we explain it, he became the most popular man in France, a god and a hero, a name to conjure with. "Notre Joffre" was a symbol of success, and of popular confidence. The "magnificent rumour" which had preceded him on the day of mobilisation was crystallised into a solid renown when the public saw with what calm and celerity he assembled troops and with what mastery he played upon the railway keyboard. Napoleon had won his battles with the legs of his soldiers, Joffre was going to win them with his railways.

It is not possible, of course, to repair defects of forty years in two or three years even of unremitting labour; but knowing, as he did, the tone and temper of the men he had to command and the miraculous capacities of their nervous energy he did not doubt for a moment the final triumph, and a species of sublime confidence radiated from him whether at the Ministry or in the field. It was with his friend and companion-in-arms, General Pau, that he began to work at the problems belonging to his position, and the first of them was the effectives. When the intentions of Germany could be no longer disguised, Joffre resolved upon the only course compatible with his responsibilities. He urged the Government to augment the army pari passu with the increased numbers on the other side of the Vosges, and, happily, he found in M. Barthou, the Premier, a political leader as strongly impressed as he with the high necessity of action. This admirable statesman became, therefore, one of his collaborators in the national defence. A Deputy at twenty-seven and a Minister at thirty-three, this lawyer and journalist found full scope for his activities only in the wide region of national politics. His quickness of comprehension astonished the experts, and perhaps confirmed their uneasy suspicions that a lawyer knows everything; but M. Barthou's enthusiasm and deep conviction were beyond all question. Some reproached him for being a man of letters, guilty of writing an excellent history of Mirabeau, but he sacrificed ruthlessly his intellectual leisure and his love of reading on the altar of duty. It would seem as if the figure of the Revolutionary aristocrat, which glows from the pages of his book, had communicated his fire to his accomplished and versatile biographer. So M. Barthou rose grandly to the situation and became, with Generals Joffre and Pau, organiser of the new military plan to save France from her disparity with the German Army.

Joffre occupied himself with his accustomed method to the work of preparing the Government victory. Some one has recalled a conversation which he had with Joffre at this time. The General sits in an armchair looking steadily into space. His visitor insists on the impossibility of increasing the annual contingents to the French Army. But, he says persuasively, you can supplement the number by enrolling the black man. "The black man," repeats Joffre, and his mind goes back, no doubt, to his colonial days. He is again building the railway from Kayes to Bafoulabé, he is again on the Niger at Goundam, where they brought him news of Bonnier's massacre with his eleven officers and sixty-four tirailleurs. And he asks suddenly: "But what sacred fire will animate them? Will they ever equal our own soldiers defending, field by field, their own soil?" Joffre, indeed, had realised the impotency of numbers unless animated by the spirit of a great cause. He would not hear of reinforcing the French regiments by those newly acquired citizens of France in Central Africa. "No, no," he said; "the Three-Years Law is a vital question; do not give the enemies of the measure the pretext they seek."

The Generalissimo went to the Chamber, to act, with General Pau, as Government Commissioner during the progress of the great debate. I imagine that the experience was more painful to him than first facing fire in a Paris fort in 1870. For the Socialist opponents of the Bill heckled the Commissioners, challenging not merely their arguments but also their figures. The temptation was strong upon Joffre at times to retort angrily upon the obstructionists, but he kept his temper and a cold, even tone of courtesy. In his rare interventions he spoke briefly and directly to the point, figures in hand. He maintained throughout an impassive attitude, and looked a formidable figure as he stood resolutely to his guns dominating the wilderness of talk. Even in the lobbies of the Chamber, in the entr'actes of the debate, he did not unbend from his attitude of reserve, which, though it angered the obstructionists, impressed them in spite of themselves. Here was the man who could keep his head—the tête froide demanded by Napoleon as the first essential of a battle-chief. Pau, on the other hand, was much less calm and was visibly vexed at the shameless opposition. The fingers of his whole arm (for he had lost the other in the War of '70) clinched and unclinched as if anxious to meet the foe at close quarters.

Heartily glad to be allowed to return to his labours, Joffre gave himself more thoroughly than ever to the task of preparation. He occupied himself more particularly with the question of transports, and the perfection of the system that he worked out was revealed at the outbreak of the war, when the Commissariat proved an instant success. The trenches were well furnished with food. But alas! the medical service, which depended not upon the General Staff but upon the Ministry of War, proved in those early days a lamentable failure, for the war had caught it in a state of transition. The mobilisation, itself, impressed every observer by its order and regularity; Joffre revealed himself a master organiser. He was as prepared as man could be with the time and "material" to his hand. He had trained his body as well as his mind by a just balance between work and rest and physical exercise. He had the true soldier's horror of growing soft. As a captain he was out riding one day when he fell, owing to his horse stumbling, and was carried to bed with injuries to his head. He spent a few weeks of his convalescence at Rivesaltes. Fearing that his mental powers were affected by his accident, he set himself a hard problem in mathematics to test his brain. At the end of three days' silent work, he cried suddenly in broad Catalan from his bed to his brother, who was sharing the room with him, Soun geuri ("I am cured"). The anecdote shows his strenuous character and detestation of self-indulgence, and also that he is not quite as reserved by nature as his proud title of Le Taciturne would imply. Joffre's taciturnity, in fact, is self-imposed—part of his vigorous system of preparation. It comes, also, from the fact that he is not, naturally, an orator and knows it. Serious and meditative, his temper is not as severe as some suppose; his sternness in all questions of discipline has been forced upon him by duty. On the contrary, it pains him considerably to punish any one, and he suffers as much as his victims when he has to pass judgment upon serious faults and incapacity.

His daily habits made him physically hard, just as his studies equipped him for continuous intellectual labour. The morning gallop in the Bois on a strong horse, such as would have carried Du Guesclin in his wars against the English in the moving Middle Ages, and his walk to the Invalides or the Ministry of War from his distant home in Auteuil gave him the training he needed. On campaign, the motor-car replaced the healthier exercise, but even then he managed to take long solitary walks which reposed his mind and recreated his body. Even the most pressing matters are not allowed to interfere with his regular rest. To bed at nine and up at six is a rule maintained even in the heat of battle. He feels it to be necessary for the equipoise of his constitution. Joffre has the great Corsican's faculty of suspending his intellectual powers by a mere effort of the will and thus obtains complete repose of the cerebral system. His slumbers were childlike even after Charleroi; on his motor journeys, to points along the Front, he slept profoundly. This recuperative power is inestimable in a commander upon whom is cast a vast responsibility. He was often to be seen in his car behind the lines sunk in restorative sleep, his head inclined to an angle like some tired Atlas, worn with supporting the world upon his broad shoulders.

This man, eminently French in heart and mind, has consistently trained for his great position. Nothing has been too great a sacrifice to secure the victory. To railwaymen, who came to thank him for his praise of them in the mobilisation, he said: "I work for the salvation of France and then I shall disappear." Just as he knows the character of the men under him, he knows the value of his own services to France and throws both into the balance at moments when every gramme of weight is of consequence. He seems able to communicate his own confidence and calm to others—he, so uncommunicative with his low voice, his gentle and pensive manner. Evidently, in this preparation of the soul for combat he must shut out the distressing sights and sounds of battle. He must not think of devastated homesteads and ruined villages, he must not think of widowed women and weeping children, nor, as he goes along the line of yesterday's battle, must he think of what lies there, of the ghostly army that is still presenting arms to him. All these things he must banish from his mind, in the hardening processes of a great decision—this man who has never given a contrary order. And yet Joffre l'humain is as just a title as any which honour him, for it expresses his natural kindness and desire to save life. And a Socialist professor wrote, in an organ of his political faith, that if, after the war, a monument was erected to the great General, no mother need turn her head away from it. Joffre was touched when he read the phrase, for he is as proud of his humanity as of those purely military virtues, which have gone to his preparation.