'Yfto^ttAjJ; J&^-atfl- ^J V (J HELPING FRANCE BY THE SAME AUTHOR A Village in Picardy With 20 illustrations from Poulbot's DBS GOSSES ET DBS BONHOMMES Colored Wrapper $1.50 net Treasure Flower With 12 full page illustrations, 4 in colors $1.50 net The Village Shield (in collaboration with GEORGIA WILLIS READ) With 12 full page illustrations, 4 in colors Colored Wrapper $1.50 net E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY REFUGEE FROM HAZEBROUCK AGED 92 HELPING FRANCE The Red Cross in the Devastated Area BY RUTH GAINES AUTHOR OF "A VILLAGE IN PICAHDT," ETC. NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY ^'-''-flSl FIFTH AVENUE COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY All Right* Reterved Printed in the United States of America PREFACE A FRENCH newspaper correspondent was conducted one day through the Paris offices of the American Red Cross. He was vastly and courteously impressed both by what he saw and by his guide. "But," he writes, "I cannot name to you the person who showed me about because he was an officer, and I suppose that in America as in France the uniform fosters and expresses the wish for a loss of identity." It was charmingly put, delicately imagined. Best of all, it is true. Our American Red Cross in France, ac- cused by some of aggressiveness, practicality and all the pushing faults of our young democ- racy, has nevertheless the innate shyness of its youth and of its singleness of purpose. All its hope is that it may have helped to alleviate suffering and advance the hour of victory. 1562959 vi Preface For this reason, no names of Red Cross workers will be found in the pages of this book. They have acted merely as the repre- sentatives of our Red Cross in France and are by their own request anonymous. The author regrets only that thanks can not be given where due to the many colleagues and many of them in inconspicuous positions whose help has made this record possible. THE AUTHOR. PARIS, February, 1919. NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS IT has been the aim of the soldier-artists of France to publish to all the world the desecration of her ancient monuments and cherished soil. To this fact we owe the re- markable series of woodcuts, etchings and paintings of her ruins, from which we have drawn freely for this record. Here, as in every manifestation of life, the French have found beauty also. As M. Georges d'Esparbes writes in the preface to that rare album, "Noyon, Guiscard, Ham," by M. Armand Gueritte, "When I had under my eyes the aquafortes which M. Gueritte has portrayed of his countryside in the in- vaded territory, a great pity pierced me before that aspect of the motherland, of which these drawings showed me the wounds. I did not see beyond that: my country destroyed. . . . vii viii Note on the Illustrations If this work is so lovely, it is because we divine that its purpose is, above all, to be of use, and that purpose renders it again lovelier ; because its reason for being is perhaps the highest reason of art." The same purpose, from a constructive point of view, has animated French architects. Plans for French reconstruction have kept pace with German destruction. Hence we have series such as that of M. Georges Wybo, from which, by permission, we have drawn our chapter headings: "Reflexions et Croquis sur T Architecture au Pays de France." "In order to protect a patrimony which is dear to us," M. Wybo has drawn these examples of typical regional architecture. They will serve as an inspiration in rebuilding the ruins. When our soldiers pass through the rural districts of France, they may see in the village halls, if they will, posters of welcome bearing the legends: "Peasants of France, salute the soldiers of free America who come by the mil- lions to mingle their blood with that of our Note on the Illustrations ix sons, to preserve us in the right to cultivate our fields, and to prevent the barbarians from depriving us of our hard- won liberties," or "The Heart of America. In the interior, as with the armies, no suffering is a matter of in- difference to the American Red Cross." Conversely, American artists, such as Miss A. M. Upjohn, have made their contribution to France. The fidelity, the sympathy of her portraits are those not alone of the artist, but of the relief worker who has lived among and loved the peasants of devastated France. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAUB I. "HOME SERVICE" 1 II. To WIN THE WAR 21 III. THE FIELD OF OPPORTUNITY ... 29 IV. THE PLAN: ORGANIZATION .... 39 V. THE PLAN: ADMINISTRATION ... 52 VI. THE PLAN: COOPERATION .... 60 VII. COOPERATION IN PRACTICE .... 72 VIII. DIRECT INTERVENTION 91 IX. "POLISHING THE TARNISHED MIRRORS" . 108 X. BEHIND THE BRITISH LINES . . . 121 XI. THE PERSONAL TOUCH 132 XII. OUR PRESENCE WITH THEM . . . 145 XIII. THE ROAD TO VERDUN . . . .156 XIV. THE PREFECT OF THE FRONTIER . . 175 XV. THE FLAGS OF VICTORY . . . .191 APPENDIX . 213 ILLUSTRATIONS FA OB Refugee from Hazebrouck, aged 92 Frontispiece A. M. UPJOHN In Front of the Church at Saint-Cernin * GEORGES WYBO 1 A Poor Village of France . . JEAN PERKIER 9 Old Fortifications at Antibes * . GEORGES WYBO 21 A War Orphan of Brittany . . A. M. UPJOHN 23 Noyon, in April 1917* GEORGES WYBO 29 A House in Noyon . . ARMAND GUERITTE 37 Notre Dame, From St. Julien-le-Pauvre * GEORGES WYBO 39 Bridge at Tours * . . . GEORGES WYBO 52 The Son of a Soldier, Paris . . A. M. UPJOHN 55 Public Fountain at Noyon * . . GEORGES WYBO 60 Ruins of Contalmaison, Somme PAUL MANSARD 69 Municipal Offices at Urrugne * GEORGES WYBO 72 The Chateau, Ham . ) A . . f ARMAND GUERITTE 87 A Street m Guiscard . . J Onvillers Church, Santerre * GEORGES WYBO 91 Laon Cathedral * . . . GEORGES WYBO 108 * Reflexions et Croquis sur I' Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. Hachette et Cie., Paris. xiii xiv Illustrations PAOB The Mill on the Somme, Ham] . . f ARMAND GUERITTE 111 A Street in Ham . . . J House on the Luce Plateau (near Amiens) * GEORGES WYBO 121 Lowland Farm (near Soissons) * GEORGES WYBO 132 Street in Fontenoy * . . GEORGES WYBO 145 Bora in Flight from Lens, 1914 . A. M. UPJOHN 147 Village Hall at Fismes * . . GEORGES WYBO 156 Market at Montrejeau * (Comminges) GEORGES WYBO 175 Church of Flirey, Meurthe-Moselle LUCY GARNOT 179 Saint-Cyr (near Dourdan) * . GEORGES WYBO 191 Telegraph Corps Putting up Wires, Noyon ARMAND GUERITTE 195 Map . . . 214 * Rlflexions el Croquis tur I' Architecture ou Payi de Franct: George* Wybo. Hachttte et Cie., Parit. HELPING FRANCE In Front of the Church at Saini-Cernin. Reflexions et Croquis sur I' Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. Hachette et Cie., Paris. HELPING FRANCE CHAPTER I "HOME SERVICE" IF there is one division above all others of the American Red Cross activities for the soldier which the American Expeditionary Force in France holds dear, it is, I venture to state, that of the Bureau of Home Service. Many a soldier is anxious over wife or sweet- heart, or aged parents, left, too often, without 2 Helping France adequate means of support, or unheard from, it may be for months. The Home Service bridges the thousands of miles of silence, and relieves suspense with aid, or best of all, with information. Infinite pains are taken in this service; millions of dollars spent. To what end? Primarily that the American soldier, freed of anxiety, may be a more efficient pawn in the great game of war. It is also, I venture to state, in its role of home service, that is, of service to the sol- dier's family, that the American Red Cross has made its most valuable contribution to the French Army as well, and to the French nation during the war. For it is in terms of home service that the activities of the Depart- ment of Civilian Relief of the American Red Cross in France can best be interpreted to America. It is according to the moral even more than to the material evaluation of this service that the millions of Red Cross mem- bers, who have by their sacrifices and their contributions made it possible, should take "Home Service" 3 stock of their contribution to the Great War. Picture to yourself the mental state of a French soldier mobilized hastily in 1914 in the northern regions of France, so soon over- run and so tenaciously held by the enemy. Multiply him by thousands. Send him through the campaigns of the Marne, of the bitterly contested Chemin des Dames, of the defense of Verdun, if you will, and bring him thus to the little hamlet whence he started. What will he find? What did he find? I quote from an eye witness,* whose company was just going into repose after twenty-two days in the front line trenches, twenty-two days in the "hell of Verdun." They saw, along the road, "a modest house, which had been disemboweled by an exploding shell. Its steps were half demolished, its blinds hung crazily; the gaping windows showed the emp- tiness of the interior. 'My house,' cried a man suddenly, and darted in. It was not * Raymond Joubert: Verdun. 4 Helping France difficult to do, since the wicket of the little garden, held in place by only one hinge, flapped to and fro in the wind. "The man, when we saw him again," con- tinued the narrator, "was all agog, his arms waving, his body convulsed with hilarious surprise. Everything was reduced to dust in his house, and methodically and minutely destroyed. He had good cause to laugh! He would never have believed his misfortune so complete." And what of his family, his wife, his chil- dren, his parents? In every case, one of two things had happened. They had either re- mained to be taken prisoners by the Germans, or they had fled before them, fugitives. All degrees of misery are comprised in these two classifications. They make the subject mat- ter of two main divisions of our Red Cross civilian relief; that of rehabilitation, acting in the devastated area, and that of refugees, following the families in their dispersion into every department of France. Yet there can "Home Service" 5 be no hard and fast distinction; for civilian prisoners, sent into slavery in Germany and later shipped back by the thousands daily, became refugees; and there were thousands more, refugees from destroyed villages, gath- ered into the larger as yet undestroyed centers in the devastated territory itself. In short, the story of rehabilitation in the devastated area, which is all the present volume pre- tends to, is the story in epitome, of all Red Cross home service in France. Civilian prisoners! America has heard of them, and shuddered at the revival by Ger- many of the methods of pre-Christian war- fare, in this twentieth century. "You have sat at the funeral of dear sons," cried a mem- ber of the Belgian Relief Commission work- ing on the German side of the lines, " But you have never sat at the funeral of a city."* And he goes on to describe in poignant terms the first levy of the citizens of Mons. All the night, after the deportation, he walked the * John H. Gade: National Geographic Magazine. 6 Helping France streets of that stricken city, unable to sleep, equally unable to escape from the shrieks of the bereaved. Mons, Valenciennes, Lille and a score of others their sorrows were the same. Counting the last and most infamous de- portation of fourteen thousand young lads and gray beards just before the armistice, there were forty thousand old men and women, young men and maidens carried into slavery from Lille alone. "I saw," says an eye witness of this last atrocity, "I saw, in August, 1914, our valorous regiments set forth for the war. I saw, in October, 1918, the interminable columns of civilians set forth into exile, and I remarked in the latter, at the end of four years of weakening occupa- tion, as in the former, on the threshold of glory, the same bearing, the same faith, the same valiance, the same anxiety to do honor to France, and to proclaim on high its heroism and its mighty vitality."* The words of the Old Testament recur like a dirge: "How * Pierre Bosc: Les Allemands & Lille. "Home Service" 7 doth the city sit solitary that was full of people, how is she become a widow that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tribu- tary!" Lille was a great manufacturing city, form- ing with Roubaix and Turcoing, her neighbors and companions in misfortune, the pre-war triumvirate of textile industries in France. Arras, Cambrai, Lille, famous in our ears to-day as landmarks in the flux of battles, were formerly famous for the productions to which they gave their names, arras, cambric, and lisle. "Even the Sultan knew well the tapestries of Arras,"* in the fourteenth cen- tury. Yet it is not in the destroyed cities, not even in Soissons or Reims, rich in historic associa- tions though these are referred to as "mur- dered" that the heart of France is cen- tered. The cities of the Northern provinces grew up out of the small industries of the vil- * Albert Demangeon: La Ficardie. 8 Helping France lages. Lille, Arras, Amiens, all took the produce of the country, the flax, the wool of the flocks, even the lucid waters of the Somme, as the raw material of their wealth. To a larger extent than most manufacturing cen- ters, they depend still for their hands or did before the war on the winter leisure of the farmers. North, south, east, west, wherever you go in France, it is the land that is the source of individual, of national wealth. The land and the people, they are inex- tricably bound together. Books are written explaining the character of the peasant (pay- san) by the character of the locality (pays) which has bred him, and his fathers and grandfathers before him. The texture of the soil, the nature of the crop, have determined the routine of his life, the style of his building, the temper of his soul. Two-thirds to nine- tenths of the farmlands in the invaded de- partments are owned by the farmers them- selves. Of these, the small farmers or peas- A Poor Village of France. L'n Pauvre Village de France: Rent Benjamin. Woodcuts by Jean Perrier, G. Weil & Co., Paris. "Home Service" 9 ants make up the bulk, "each family having its house, its land, and passing on to the chil- dren its home, its traditions, its agricultural implements."* The family, the home (foyer), the locality (pays), the land; these are the cumulative passions which blend and fire the patriotism of France. You will hear not so often "beautiful France," as the "beau- tiful land of France." You will hear one Frenchman ask another "Of what pays are you?" In the Marseillaise itself though not alas! in the English translation the soldier fights to rid the furrows of the hated in- vader. The invaded region, despoiled, pro- faned, is "notre grande blesse*e, la terre de France." The very apple trees, girdled and dying, have a personality; the villages are "assassinated;" the windowless houses are "blind." This love of the land, one finds it in France the basis not only of defense but of reconstruc- tion. Mme. Moreau, President of the Vil- * Albert Demangeon: La Picardie. io Helping France lages Libels, notable among the associations for reconstruction formed by French women, says in addressing her colleagues: "In this task we, women of the frontier, have the part Providence has given us. This work is woven with our lives and mingles itself with our mem- ories, our affections, with the heavy respon- sibilities of our situation. It is not ours to assume it or not to assume it. It imposes itself. Who then will raise again the family home, restore our fields, our vines, replant for our little children the woods which our grandfathers have planted, if it is not we? The names of villages and the corners of farms, which in the Communiques are only names, we have known since our infancy every stone and every spring of them and all that we love there is gone. Whether we belong to the Marches of Lorraine with my compatriot, the blessed Joan of Arc, to the Nord, to the country of Soissons, to the Marne, or to the Ardennes, we have the honor to be of the chosen land, the land of the front, and I say "Home Service" ir it proudly, we, we, too, belong to the Twen- tieth Corps."* Again, listen to the plea of the Justice of the Peace of Combles, sent in 1917 to the American Red Cross. "Ladies and Gentle- men of Free America" he begins, "I have the honor to call to your attention one of the most unfortunate regions of France, devastated and destroyed by more than two years of war the village of Combles, chief town of a Canton composed of twenty-one communes in the department of the Somme. ... If a journey is made at the present tune through these regions, so alive and so fertile before the war, but now so desolate, nothing is to be seen but a vast chalky plain, quite white and everywhere reduced to powder. The ground which had a fertile soil of one meter in depth, has been completely turned up and the shells and the machine guns have brought to the surface the subsoil of pebbly chalk. This soil, which is now mixed with all sorts of rub- * Report. 12 Helping France bish and scraps of shells, will take more than fifty years to recover its fertility. "Shall I relate to you, ladies and gentle- men, the sufferings, the endurance, the cour- age and heroism displayed by the unfortu- nate inhabitants of Combles and of the com- munes of Hardecourt-aux-Bois, Guillemont, Ginchy, Maurepas, and later of Morval, Rancourt, Sailly-Sallisel (the first-mentioned places situated on the Front opposite the Anglo-French positions established at Mari- court), the courage displayed in the face of such misfortunes and destruction and in the midst of vexations and violence of all sorts to which they were subjected? "Maricourt! a village ever to be remember- ed, which a very ancient tradition speaks of as consecrated to the Virgin, curtis Marias (Vil- lage of Marie). This village has, in fact, never been trodden under foot by the invad- ing hordes, neither in 1870 nor in the present war: When the Bavarians and other Germans "Home Service" 13 boasted that by means of renewed attacks they would succeed in taking the village, the women of Combles replied proudly : c You will not take Maricourt, not even a brick of it!' and the village and its trenches stood out against all the attacks of the Germans in 1914, 1915, 1916! Its defenders were intrepid and the place remained impregnable. "William II and the Crown Prince them- selves came to Combles, accompanied by Staff Officers of their allies, and pointed out to the latter the difficulty of taking the position. "Numerous Bavarian regiments were used up in their fruitless attempts, renewed from month to month for more than two years, to take this village. The discouraged men re- maining from these regiments were sent to other fronts. They were replaced by Prus- sian regiments who, more obstinate or better trained, wished to excel the Bavarians, but they in their turn were destroyed. Thou- sands of them lay in front of the Anglo-French trenches at Maricourt. 14 Helping France "During these alternate attacks and regular battles in which the villages of Guillemont, Ginchy, Maurepas, Hardecourt were under fire from the heavy guns, the population of Combles, continuously on the qui vive, was a prey to every kind of anguish. "Many a time we hoped to see our victo- rious soldiers reach our town. We heard the French drums sounding the charge, we heard the reply of their artillery and their heavy fire, then the heavy guns hidden in the woods above Combles hurled their shells at our regi- ments which, in their eagerness, had drawn too close. Too frequently, in the middle of the night, when the troops had broken through the enemy and were rapidly advancing on Combles, violent storms occurred followed by torrential rain which soaked the hills and the valleys, and stopped dead the advance of our men who could thus no longer be seconded by their artillery. Then silence and darkness would reign again. For us, the hope of deliv- erance was once more lost, and we were happy "Home Service" 15 if on the following morning we did not see the arrival of twenty or thirty French or Eng- lish soldiers, harassed and with torn uniforms covered with blood and mud and escorted by Boche soldiers who led them away, prisoners, down the High street of Combles. "These unfortunate prisoners were abso- lutely forbidden to speak to us, but we said a sympathetic word to them in a low voice. The greater part of them did not look dejected or discouraged, but rather indignant at hav- ing to submit to such captivity, and a gleam of courage and hope was still to be seen in their eyes, like heroes whom Fortune had be- trayed ! "Over the six kilometres which separated Maricourt and Hardecourt from Combles the same tragedies were frequently renewed during the darkest nights, when the Germans opened furious attacks to surprise first the advance posts and then the trenches of Mari- court. What struggles, what hecatombs by thousands! According to German officers, i6 Helping France there were heaps of corpses of soldiers and horses to the height of a man between the fronts of the two armies. More than thirty thousand of their soldiers were thrown pele- mele and buried in the quarries between Hardecourt-aux-Bois and Maricourt. Their wounded were continually passing through to the hospitals established at Combles. The tombs of soldiers and officers increased the size of the cemetery threefold. The bodies of superior officers were transported from Combles to Peronne, to be sent to their fam- ilies in Germany. "Our heroes, who have died for their coun- try, and for the emancipation and liberty of nations, also sleep by thousands at Harde- court and Carnoy, where the struggle was so obstinate, and on all this part of the banks of the Somme, which they have bathed with their blood, where they have left their bones, to arrest the vandals of Germany ! "But the day of our departure and of our "Home Service" 17 forced evacuation, was also the prelude to the destruction of Combles ! "On the 28th of June, 1916, after a bom- bardment which raged for five days and five nights, the inhabitants were obliged to leave their unfortunate town, abandoning to the cupidity of the enemy everything which we had been able during the previous two years to retain in our dwellings everything we pos- sessed in the way of furniture, bedding, cloth- ing, silver, books, pictures, family heirlooms in fact everything that was precious remain- ing to us. It was only on the follow- ing 25th of September that Combles was finally occupied by the Anglo-French troops who took possession of it after terrible strug- gles. "Fifteen hundred wounded Germans were found in the vast subterranean quarters twenty meters in depth, the entrance to which was situated in the center of the town, and more than six hundred prisoners were at the same time captured in the borough which 1 8 Helping France had been surrounded on all sides by the Allied troops. "The Germans retired to the north towards Sailly-Sallisel and continued the bombard- ment of what remained of Combles, in order to hinder the advance of the Anglo-French armies. " The town being thus successively under the fire and crushed by the shells of both armies, was converted into a mass of ruins, to such an extent that it would be difficult to recog- nize the sites of its principal houses, its public monuments, the church several centuries old the town hall, schools, squares, and old streets. "For more than two years, either at Com- bles or in the northern region to which we were evacuated, and where we were still under the German domination, I have personally en- countered the same dangers, endured the same sufferings, and the most trying vexations after having lost practically all that I pos- sessed and seen my family dispersed, two of "Home Service" 19 my children having been wounded and the third being at present on the battle front. "I appeal therefore, Ladies and Gentle- men, for your generous intervention in favor of our town of Combles and its communes which, by their long martyrdom and their courage, have well deserved universal sym- pathy. "You will thus contribute, Ladies and Gentlemen of Free America, of the Great Sis- ter Republic, to the renewal of our valiant rural population and to the re-establishment of Our France, with whom you are entering into the struggle for the triumph of justice, of the liberty of nations and of the future of humanity." Alas! the commune of Combles, even the impregnable "Village of Mary" fell to the invaders in the spring of 1918. But its appeal is typical of the touching confidence of France in her sister ally. In answering the spirit of such an appeal, America has builded even better than she knew. She has asked, 20 Helping France through her Red Cross, to be admitted into the very heart of France, into that place doubly sacred in France from the intrusions of strangers the home. And she has been doubly welcomed. In the words of Mme. Eduard Fuster, who has given invaluable service in guiding the policies of the American Red Cross: "You have come here not only to help us win the war, but to share with us all our burdens, all our sufferings; those of the front and those of the trenches, and those also behind the lines. . . . All the victims of war have laid their problems before you, all our sorrows have found an echo in your hearts." Old Fortifications at Antibes. Reflexions et Croquis ur I' Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. Hachette et Cie., Paris. CHAPTER II TO WIN THE WAR rTIHE American Red Cross is, like the -^ present American Army, young. Al- though the Geneva Convention, called in 1863, was signed by fourteen nations in 1864, Amer- ica did not sign it until 1882, and it was only in 1905 that the volunteer organization styled the American Red Cross was established by 21 22 Helping France Act of Congress as the official relief organiza- tion of the United States. Its purpose as then defined is: "To continue and carry out a system of national and international relief in time of peace and to apply the same in mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods and other great national calamities and to devise and carry on measures for preventing the same." But the Red Cross is not so young as the American Army in its intervention in France. Prior to our entering the war, it had already its representative in the field in the form of the American Relief Clearing House, through which contributions in money and in supplies were shipped and distributed for two years. The American public was already familiar with pleas on its behalf, such as that made by President Wilson in January, 1917: "Another winter closes around the great European struggle, and with the cold, there comes greater need among soldiers in the fighting line, and in the hospitals, and still more A War Orphan of Brittany. To Win the War 23 among the women and children in ruined homes or in exile." Yet it remained for the declaration of war to develop the astounding resources which the conscience and the imagination of the American people placed at the disposal of the Red Cross. The preparation of the Army was not more swift nor more far sighted than that of its service of mercy. A war council of seven members, created May 10, 1917, placed the organization on a war basis. The Chairman of that Council brought to it a name renowned in the business world. The cam- paign drives of the Red Cross, resulting in the collecting of $350,000,000, attest not only the generosity, but the confidence of the nation in the integrity and sagacity of the adminis- tration of those funds. The membership of the organization leapt into the millions; the American Red Cross became what the French were quick to call it the expression of the heart of America toward France. For it was not to our own army, but to the 24 Helping France needs of our Allies, particularly of France, that the initial service of our Red Cross was ded- icated. To us, in America, it seemed the logical, the tangible thing to do, to send the Red Cross personnel as an advance guard, an earnest of the army that was to follow. The civilian activities of the Red Cross at home, the contributions, already large, which we had made to the relief of Belgium and of France through other agencies, had accus- tomed us to look upon civilian relief in a foreign country as natural. Not so was our advent regarded by Europe. France welcomed us, but as something new, unheard of. Her response was enthusiastic in proportion to her wonder. Other allies had given of their treasure, and we must never forget, more largely than we, to the same cause; they had given what we had not yet had the opportunity to do, their millions of lives. But America brought for the first time in the history of the Red Cross, a war service in aid of civilians as well as of soldiers, I To Win the War 25 would say, for the first time in the history of nations. Private societies, such as the Eng- lish Quakers as far back as the Franco- Prussian War of 1871, rendered a similar ser- vice to France; in France, on the advent of the Red Cross, they and many other foreign- born organizations were already engaged in civilian relief. The significance of the entry of the American Red Cross lay in the fact that it represented not a private agency, but the American Government. The President of the United States, as its president as well, spoke through it to the people of France. "Wher- ever these Red Cross men and women go," he said, "they are carrying the message that Americans cannot rest without seeking to relieve such suffering." The spirit with which they went to that service is equally illus- trated in the charge given by the Chairman of the War Council to one of the first groups to cross the ocean: "Make the French glad that you have come." Aside from the moral support which was 26 Helping France doubtless given by the actual presence of their new ally in their midst to which, from the day of our advent until now, the French press and people give tribute there were sound military reasons why the Red Cross should add civilian to battlefield relief. War, never confined to the actual field of combat, has always caused destruction of property, and loss of civilian life. But never before has war been organized, nation against nation, as was the war which Germany organized and launched against the whole world. When the heroic Mayor of Noyon, that ancient city where Charlemagne was crowned, protested against the infractions of the terms of the Hague convention by its German con- querors in 1914, he was told: "We are not making the war solely against the French Army: we are making it against the whole of France; our aim is to ruin it, to weaken it by every means possible. You complain of being pillaged; well, we consider every store, every unoccupied house as belonging to us: To Win the War 27 where there are legal occupants, we are dis- posed, by indulgence, not to take more than is necessary for the well-being of the German army. If we spare ever so little the civil pop- ulation of the war, and do not compel them to undergo all its consequences, it is because we are not barbarians; such are our methods of war, the harder they are, the more inexorable, the shorter will be the war!"* It was the realization of this menace, driven home by the violation of Belgium, the sinking of merchantmen, the well-attested atrocities of Northern France, that arrayed the civilized world against the outlaw, Germany. The defense of civilization was being made over there, on the plains of Picardy, along the Chemin des Dames, in the forests of Ardennes, at Verdun. "Whatever may be the character of the American Red Cross in time of peace," said the first Commissioner to France of the Amer- *Noyon pendant 1'occupation allemande: Ernest Noel, in La Revue Hebdomadaire. 28 Helping France ican Red Cross, before the Anglo-American press on September 17, 1917, "to-day in the midst of this catastrophe, its supreme func- tion is to aid in every way possible the winning of the war. It would be a pitiable and mis- taken conception to regard it from the point of view of a charity at a moment like this. For three years our Allies have taken upon themselves our part in the battle. They have carried all the burden of anguish, they have suffered all the wounds, they have died for our sakes. It is inevitable that some time must yet elapse before our troops can play their part seriously in the trenches. Mean- time, the American organizations should claim it not only as a privilege, but as a strict obliga- tion, to do all that is in their power to aid the valiant nations to whom our people are so deeply indebted." Noyon, in April 1917. Reflexions et Croquis sur I' Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wyba. Hachette et Cie., Paris. CHAPTER III THE FIELD OF OPPORTUNITY rflHE American Red Cross Commission * arrived in France in June, 1917. It consisted of eighteen members, each con- tributing some special part toward the great end in view, the winning of the war. Battle- field relief, it was understood, would be ef- fected immediately under the supervision of the War Department, but "civilian relief will present a field of increasing opportunity 30 Helping France in which the Red Cross organization is espe- cially adapted to serve." In the devastated area, which bounds the horizon of the present narrative, the field was indeed ample, and the opportunity ripe. One cannot picture wholesale destruction. Not even an eye witness of it, mile after mile, and village after village, can have the con- cept of it which would be his were the cottage razed, the village decimated, the region ruined, the country fought for, his own. Not only so, but that part of Northern France overtaken by perfidy in 1914, was, historically, the home of France. The modern names of the departments involved: the Nord and the Ardennes, completely swallowed up, the Pas- de-Calais, the Somme, the Aisne, the Oise, the Meuse, the Meurthe and Moselle, and the frontier of the Vosges, scenes for four years of gigantic struggle, these revolutionary appella- tions lose completely their savour of an- tiquity. But let us mention the provinces of Artois, of Picardy, of Champagne, of Lor- The Field of Opportunity 31 raine, of the He de France, whence came the very name of the French nation, and there move before our eyes like a pageant the me- dieval powers, the spiritual dominions, the literary glory which have made the France of to-day. One of our soldiers, stationed near Domremy, was asked by a Frenchman, who was showing him about, if he knew Joan of Arc. "Sure," was the response, "I went to sol""^ "-ith her." "And when was that?" inquire^ che astonished Frenchman. "In 1429," he replied. Whether many of our privates, like this one, have gone to school with French history or not, the children of France have done so generation by generation. Even a geography is not complete without its political account of the soil. Soissons, Reims, the Marches of Lorraine, the Santerre of Picardy, now laid in ruins, yet stand as rep- resentatives of the ideals of a race. Figures convey their picture of economic destruction. The devastated area, in its entirety, covered and covers at the present 32 Helping France moment six thousand square miles of France. It comprised that area most thickly populated, richest in manufactures, and richest in agri- culture. One quarter of the wheat crop was formerly raised in it. Eighty-seven per cent of the beets from which France derived her sugar came from it. 2,000,000 people had made in it their homes. In it were the* deposits of iron, of potash and of coal, greedily coveted by Germany; so much so, that the possession of them became that military necessity which turned into a scrap of paper the neutrality of Belgium and of Luxembourg. This area, varying with the fortune of bat- tles, consisted, in June, 1917, of the territory still in the hands of the Germans, of the actual front, and of the territory from which the Germans had been driven out. The former was being cared for, as well as it could be in captivity, by the Dutch and Spanish dele- gates who took over the operation of our Bel- gian Relief Commission on our entry into the war. The front, at least fifteen miles in The Field of Opportunity 33 depth at any given point, was reserved for military operations. Back of this front were situated the "regions liberees," of civilian relief. They extended in a broad swathe a hundred miles long by thirty wide, up the valley of the Marne. They paralleled the road to Verdun. They lay in a fringe along the northern border of the frontier provinces of the Meurthe and Moselle and the Vosges. Most recently uncovered, and hence offering the clearest opportunity, they comprised the 1580 square miles of the Somme, the Aisne and the Oise cleared of the Germans in the "Great Retreat" of March, 1917. It was to this area that the American Red Cross first turned its attention. A preliminary survey was made. Contrast may help to picture what the Commission saw. In a certain classic on agriculture,* may be found this description of the regions through which the Commission- ers passed. "They comprise those orchard Albert Demangeon: La Picardie. 34 Helping France lands, gardens and vineyards picturesquely mingling with, or bordering a field of wheat, a patch of vegetables, a bit of clover, a cluster of vines, often tilled by the spade, by a race of petty farmers. The division of the soil is pushed to the extent that the trees of the one owner overhang the property of the other; beneath the tangle of apple trees, of pears, of peaches, of apricots, of plums, of cherries and of nuts oftentimes trellised, are hidden a thousand varied crops which succeed one another without lapse; here the asparagus and the grapes of Laon; there the artichokes and the string beans of Noyon, everywhere, as far as Clermont, all the lucrative products of intensive culture, which have given to the valley of Therain between Clermont and Creil the name of the "Vale of Gold" (Vallee Dore*e). Nothing can equal the charm of those sunny and verdant slopes, at the same time orchards and gardens, their roads deep rutted by the coming and going of the laborers' heavy boots. This aspect of nature fresh The Field of Opportunity 35 and picturesque, this culture minute and varied, separates us widely from those plains of immense and monotonous toil where the eye loses itself at the horizon above the fields of grain." A writer of greater power passed this way in the summer of 1917. "In Egypt, behind the quarries on the Nile, there is a place as desolate where nothing living moves. But this is France dear, rich, green France this scorched and arid desert, with the cruel gaping wound torn in her fair side. This is France and it is full summertime! Weeds and poppies and grasses, poppies and grasses and weeds, trenches and broken wagon wheels, a nightmare of ugly things. And here a pitiful group of crosses and there another, tens of them, hundreds of them, close to the road. . . . "Come now and look from this mount. "A livid sky a forest of blackened stumps and poles and the interminable stretch of weeds nothing but this as far as the eye can see. 36 Helping France "Here you should count three hundred villages, with each a little church. "Villages? Churches? not even heaps of stones remain to mark their sepulchres. "Gone blotted out."* Yet this is not the whole picture. There are intermediate tones. Not only were there such communes, like Combles, caught and crushed between opposing artillery, there were the greater number too quickly taken by the Germans to have suffered bombardment. Each, except for certain centers of refuge, suf- fered the same fate, to be held for a varying period, to be depopulated by successive de- portations, to be sacked and finally to be systematically destroyed. "The Germans, when they retreated in March, 1917, certainly believed that they had thrown insurmountable difficulties in our path. They left behind them smashed bridges and roads ripped up by tremendous explosions, which sometimes, as in Licourt, caused craters * Elinor Glyn: Destruction. Duckworth & Co., London. A House in Noyon. Aprts le Recul Allemand, Mars 1917. Noyon, Guiscard, Ham: Armand Guiritte. Vernant