Future historians will state that France has fought not only with all her courage, her tenacity and her soul, with all her men, women and children: they will also state that these men, women and children, in spite of the terrible times, their suffering and their mourning, have remained firmly united, forming a firm rock from which not a single stone has been splintered.

In that tormented, feverish France where the ardor of the Revolution still boils, there were, before the war, different parties, cliques, groups and churches. The war has leveled, united and bound them all together.

In some admirable pages, consecrated to the "Effort of French Womanhood," M. Louis Barthou has painted the picture of the sacred union there is among all the French women:

The sacred sense of union that reigns among the men is no less firm. It is only necessary to read the letters written on the eve of their deaths—in that hour when a man, alone, face to face with himself, lets his soul speak—by the fighters who gave their heart's blood for the sacred cause.

They all say the same things.

Here is a letter a Jew wrote, named Robert Hertz, a second lieutenant of the 330th infantry regiment, who fell on the 13th of April, 1915, at Marcheville:

This is the letter of a Protestant, second lieutenant Maurice Dieterlin, who was killed on the sixth of October, 1915, and who, on the eve of the Champagne offensive, wrote these last words they were to read from him, to his family:

What wonderful enthusiasm! But still more beautiful is this prayer, that of a little Protestant soldier from the Montbéliard country, who died in the Gare d'Amberieu hospital:

This prayer, in which the little soldier had put his last living thoughts, was received by a Catholic sister who had cared for him, and sent by her to his sorrowing family—a touching proof of sacred union.

All of them, Catholics, Protestants and Jews, speak of God and pray to Him.... Read this letter from Captain Cornet-Acquier, that captain to whom his wife wrote, "I would urge you on with my voice if I saw you charging the enemy." He tells this little incident:

This is the letter a young Catholic wrote the evening before a battle to his fiancée:

Finally, here is a priest, Father Gilbert de Gironde, second lieutenant in the 81st infantry, who was killed on the seventh of December, 1914, at Ypres, writing his last letter.... For of the twenty-five thousand priests who went off at the beginning of the mobilization, three hundred were called military chaplains, the rest were officers, stretcher-bearers, or common soldiers—and note the 4,000 citations in the army orders which the "Journal Officiel" has published, which report the acts of courage and of bravery done by these priests on the battle field:

Catholics, Protestants, Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, that is what they write. It is a belittling, a profanation, that, in spite of myself, I have separated and differentiated among them. For down there, in the bloody mud of the trenches, they are one body which lives together and dies together.

There was a little Breton who, on the Battle field of the Marne, was shot in the chest. The death agony at once set in, and in his agony he asked for a crucifix. No priest happened to be on the spot, there was only a Jewish rabbi. The rabbi ran to get the crucifix, he brought it to the lips of the dying man, and he, in his turn, was killed!...

In a little barrack in the hollow of one of the depressions at Verdun lived together a priest, a minister and a rabbi. We often saw the place. On the evening after a frightful battle, they were all three in the charnel house where the dead bodies are brought. They were surrounded by stretcher-bearers, who said to them:

"We do not dare throw earth on the bodies of our comrades without a prayer being said over them."

The Catholic priest asked to what faith they belonged.

"We do not know. How can we find out? But can't you arrange among yourselves?"

"Well, we shall bless them one after the other."

And there in the bleeding night was seen the incomparable sight of the three men side by side, the Catholic, the Protestant and the Jew, reciting the last prayer and disappearing....

M. Maurice Barrès, the celebrated French writer, from whose magnificent book, "The Spiritual Families of France," I have borrowed a great number of the letters I have quoted, has pointed out that all French churches are fighting in this hour, forming one great church. Yes, every church and every saint is fighting! These saints belong to all beliefs, some of them to no belief. But one religion has united and solidified them all—the religion of their country, the religion of Liberty, the religion of civilization. All speak the same prayer, all have the same faith in their hearts, all fall martyrs in the same cause.

The old walls which, in times of peace, separated parties and men, have crumbled into dust at the same time when the German shells crumbled into dust the little village churches. An infinite cathedral, a cathedral that is invisible and great has risen on high. It is the cathedral of the faith of France, in which all faiths commune in the same hope—a cathedral which time and suffering and death itself shall not destroy.

III

France is suffering ... that is true. In the cataclysm that she did not wish for, that she did not start, that she did not prepare, she has lost more than a million men. And what men they were! The Ecole Normale, which is the preparatory school for the French university, lost seventy per cent of its pupils. That means that three-quarters of the thinkers, the literary men, the scientists, the philosophers, the professors of the France of tomorrow have been wiped out. They were the flower of her youth, the élite of her intelligence. Add to that seven departments, roughly 20,000 square kilometers in area, which have been invaded, devastated, ruined and pillaged. In these seven departments all the machinery, all the raw materials, all the merchandise, all the furniture even to the door-knobs and the boards in the floors have been taken away. These departments were among the richest and most prosperous of those on which France prided herself most industrially.

Add to that the cultivation that has been destroyed, the soil that has been made untillable, the trees that have been cut down, the roads that have been torn up and the bridges that have been destroyed. All the misery, all the mourning, all the sickness: a million wounded and injured men who have been lost as living forces by a nation which did not have too many inhabitants. Add the hundred thousand prisoners Germany sends back to us who have been made tuberculous, paralytics, nervous wrecks or lunatics because they have been physically maltreated. Yes, France is suffering.

But it is not true that she is worn out. It is not true that she is bled white. The horrible hope Germany had formed of emptying France of her strength, of leaving her, fighting for breath and conquered, beaten to the earth for centuries to come, has not been realized. France always stands upright, her arm is still strong, her muscles vigorous and her blood rich.

To destroy the lie that France is bled white, we must let figures, facts, statistics and definite proofs speak. The public shall judge for itself....

A nation that is worn out and bled white has no army to defend itself. France not only still has an army, but she has an army that is numerically and materially stronger than it was at the war's beginning. In 1914, at the Marne, France had an army of 1,500,000 men; today, after four years of war, France has on her battle front, in the war zone, an army of 2,750,000 men.

But the value of fighting men today lies only in the artillery they have to support them behind the lines. It lies in the shells the artillery is able to fire, in all that material that makes up the sinews of war of the present day. Here we find the most extraordinary and marvelous effort that history records. France, invaded, occupied, weakened; France that had no munitions industry prior to 1914—or a small munitions industry at best—that France has built up a war industry that is doubtless the best in the world, which is equal to the German war industry and on which the Allies can draw in the common cause.

Listen to these figures and keep them in your heads. They are vouched for by M. Millerand, who was minister of war during the first year of hostilities:

Now consider these figures, given out by M. André Tardieu, High Commissioner of the French Republic at Washington, in a letter to the Hon. Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War:

This incomparable war industry has permitted us not only to fight, to defend ourselves and to attack the enemy, but also to supply our friends, our Allies, with the munitions necessary to fight. Up to January, 1918, these are the amounts of munitions France was able to hand over to the nations fighting at her side in Europe:

And to France has come the honor of making the light artillery for the American Army—amounting to several hundred guns per month.

A nation that is worn out and bled white has an empty treasury and is no longer able to obtain taxes from its ruined citizens. Let us consider what France had done in a financial way in this war.

From the first of August, 1914, to the first of January, 1918, the French Parliament voted war credits amounting to twenty billions of dollars. Of this enormous fund only two billions have been borrowed from outside sources; all the remainder has been subscribed or paid for by taxation or by loans in France herself. More than a billion dollars has been loaned to her Allies by France.

In 1917 France had the heaviest budget in all her history. The single item of taxes was raised to six billion francs ($1,200,000), and these taxes were paid to the penny, although ten million Frenchmen were mobilized in the Army, in the factories, and on the farms, or were untaxable in the occupied regions.

In 1915, 1916 and 1917 France raised three great national loans. That of 1915 amounted to exactly 13,307,811,579 francs, 40 centimes, of which 6,017 millions were paid in hard cash. That of October, 1916, amounted in round numbers to ten billions francs, of which more than five billions were paid in hard cash. That of December, 1917, amounted to 10,629,000,000 francs, of which 5,254 millions were paid in cash.

Thus, in spite of the war, her invaded territories, and her mobilized citizens, France has in three years raised three national loans of almost seventeen billions francs in hard cash. That is three times the amount of the war indemnity she paid Prussia in 1871.

A nation worn out and bled white has no more monetary reserve, no more funds in its treasury, and has been brought into bankruptcy. The Bank of France, which is probably the leading national bank in the world, whose credit has never weakened in the gravest hours of the nation's history, declared on the first of January, 1918, a gold reserve of 5,348 millions of francs, an increase of 272 millions over the gold in hand on January first, 1917. This is the greatest deposit the bank has ever had. All this came from the national resources: the weekly payments are still a million and a half francs, which are paid without compulsion and without legal processes.

The individual deposits in the great credit establishments of France which, on the thirty-first of December, 1914, amounted to only 4,050 millions of francs, amounted to 6,050 millions on the thirty-first of December, 1917.

And during the first three months of the year 1918, from the first of January to the thirty-first of March, the surplus deposits made by the peasants and the working classes in the National Saving Bank was seventy-five millions of francs, an excess of more than eight hundred thousand francs daily.

A nation that is worn out and bled white is incapable of manufacturing and sees its commerce and industry perish. Here is the statement of M. Georges Pallain, Governor of the Bank of France, representing the accounting of the Counsel General of the Bank for 1917:

A nation that is worn out and bled white is unable to bind up its wounds or relieve its bed of suffering. France has not waited for the end of the war and the evacuation of her territory to bring in life where the Germans thought they had left only death.

In eighty-four of the liberated cantons the work of reconstruction has already commenced. Commissions have been appointed. These commissions have proceeded already to the evaluation of the damage done and, without waiting for authorization, the administration has paid advances amounting to a not inconsiderable figure. Thus a sum totalling more than one hundred and forty millions francs has been expended for the reconstruction of the liberated regions. Seventeen millions have been expended in cash for repairs; in advances to the farmers for work or supplies, twenty millions; in advances to workmen, a half million; for the circulation of funds to the farmers, merchants and small manufactures, two millions; under the heading of reconstruction of buildings or the rapid reinstallation of the evacuated population, one hundred millions.

An Office National de Reconstruction for the villages has been established, and an agricultural Office National de Reconstitution has been organized; great things have already been realized from private organizations. This is the account of what one of them, the organization of National Nurseries, sent in 1914 to the front and into the liberated regions:

A nation that is worn out and bled white has no colonies, or, if she has, these same colonies are likewise bloodless and worn out. The French colonial empire remains intact while the German colonial empire has disappeared from the face of the earth. The support the colonies brought to the mother country is wonderful and deserves a separate study on its own account.

Here is the picture the celebrated German colonial empire offers.

In 1914 Germany possessed a colonial empire two million square kilometers in area. It represented approximately four times the area of the German Empire, and before the war its exports amounted to about one hundred millions of francs or twenty-five millions of dollars. There were German Southwest Africa, 35,000 square kilometers in extent, with 1,750 kilometers of railroads, with its copper and diamond mines, its metals which were worth commercially thirty-seven millions of marks in 1911; German East Africa, twice as big as the German Empire, having 1,225 kilometers of railroads, with its harbors where nine hundred and thirty-three merchant ships had touched in 1911; German New Guinea, as large as two-thirds of Prussia, with its rich deposits of gold and coal, its maritime commerce of 240,000 tons; the Samoan Islands, one single port of which, Apia, was visited by one hundred and ten steamers in a year; Tsing-Tao which, in 1911, had exported 32,500,000 marks' worth of merchandise, whose maritime interest was represented by five hundred and ninety steamers which carried a million tons of freight. All that has fallen away; all that is actually in the hands of the Allies.

The conquest was difficult; it was finished only in 1916. An order of the day of General Aymerich, commander-in-chief of the troops which conquered Kameroon, points with brief eloquence to some of the difficulties which have been overcome:

In this conquest France played a large part, just as was the case in the conquest of Togoland, with her Senegalese Tirailleurs, the famous Tirailleurs, so much decried and discussed before the war, who were to win the admiration of the English generals under whose orders they fought.

It is appropriate to cite here the order of the day of the commanding officer of these troops, because it shows us a side of the colonial wars, about which little has been said:

Of the German colonial empire, four times as big as the fatherland, not a spot exists that is not in the hands of the Allies today. England holds the greater part; Japan has Tsing-Tao; France a considerable part of the African possessions.

Now let us look at the picture the French colonial empire offers.

In 1914 France ruled, in the north of Africa, over five and a half millions of natives in Algiers, two millions in Tunis and four millions in Morocco. When the war broke out there was not a single German in Morocco who was not certain that the natives would rise in revolt against France.

"Not a single Frenchman," wrote, in peace times, the correspondent of the Cologne Gazette, "should escape alive." The German Government was convinced of the fact that the revolt of the inhabitants and the massacre of the French would be followed by an appeal of all the Moroccans for the intervention of the Kaiser. But nothing of the sort took place. In Algiers the most perfect calm continued to reign; in Tunis there was a little trouble that was soon suppressed; in Morocco there was a man, diplomat and soldier at the same time, who was able to keep peace and hold the country firm to France. He was General Lyautey.

During the early days of August, 1914, the question was raised whether or not it would be necessary to abandon the outposts in the interior of Morocco and withdraw toward the coast cities. General Lyautey declared that he would abandon nothing and advised the French Government to that effect. He sent troops, the famous Moroccan regiments, the best fighting units there were in 1914, to the battle fields of Flanders, receiving in exchange territorial divisions recruited for the most part from the Midi. However, with these territorial divisions General Lyautey assured the safety of all that portion of the empire that was in his care; he finished the operations he had commenced; he maintained French prestige and, some months later on, he found means to open at Casablanca a Moroccan exposition which showed the marvelous work that had been accomplished in that country—French for a few years only.

The French colonies not only remained incomparably calm and peaceful but they also made a marvelous effort in coming to the aid of the mother country both with men and with their commerce.

M. Ernest Roume, Governor General of the Colonies, in charge at the war's beginning of the government of Indo-China, sent to France more than sixty thousand native soldiers and military workers in eighteen months. They were recruited from the Asiatic possessions of France. In Senegal, in Soudan and in Morocco men volunteered by hundreds of thousands. Moroccans, Kabyles and blacks came to fight by the side of the French troops on the Champagne and Lorraine fronts.

Besides, North Africa largely took care of the feeding of France.

In 1914 the cereal crop had been notably deficient in Algiers and especially in Tunis. However, Algeria did not hesitate to give the mother land all the grain she asked for; 50,000 quintals of wheat and 500,000 quintals of barley and oats were thus hastened to continental France, and in addition, 40,000 quintals of wheat went to Corsica and 130,000 to Paris. In 1915 the colonies made an even better showing: Algeria furnished France with 1,625,000 quintals of wheat, 918,000 quintals of barley, and 77,000 quintals of oats. In 1916 this figure was passed and the total exports amounted to four million quintals of grains. As for Morocco, it exported in 1914, 90,000 quintals of wheat and 130,000 quintals of barley; in 1915 it exported 200,000 quintals of wheat and a million quintals of barley; in 1916 it exported more than two million quintals of grains. Add to that the 900,000 sheep Algeria furnished for the French commissariat and more than 40,000 sheep furnished to the English commissariat to feed the Hindoo troops stationed at Marseilles. Then add in the cattle exported from Algeria and Morocco by the thousands, add for Algeria the wines and the vegetables, and for Tunis the olive oil. In 1916 the confederation of Algerian winegrowers gave the French poilus fifty thousand hectoliters of wine.

Everywhere in the colonies buildings have been built, agriculture has continued, public works have been constructed. In the midst of war Algeria has opened up railroads; Tunis has opened the line from Sfax to Gabès; Morocco the lines from Casablanca to Fez and from the Algerian frontier to Taza.

General Lyautey said, "A workshop is worth a battalion in Morocco."

Workshops have been opened everywhere. There was never so much work done. The colonial empire was never more prosperous, more active and more glorious.

A nation that is worn out and bled white has passed the stage where it can come to the aid of others. In her death agony, she has no more than her own strength to last her during the last hours. France has been able to come to the aid of the other Allies. She has lent them a strong helping hand, she has been able to save them from total extinction. French troops have fought and are still fighting on all the battle fronts; in Italy, the Balkans, Palestine and Central Africa. It is almost to France alone and to France especially that the salvage of the remnant of the Serbian Army has been due.

We remember what happened in September, 1915. At the time when the dual offensive was attempted in Artois and in Champagne, the German Armies invaded Poland, Volhynia, Lithuania and Courland, delivered Austrian Galicia and commenced to submerge Serbia beneath their innumerable legions. Invaded by three armies, the German, Austrian and Bulgarian, all of them amply supplied with heavy artillery and asphixiating gas, poor little Serbia was doomed beforehand. But, tenacious to the end, her heroic defenders preferred to leave their country rather than submit to a hated yoke. Step by step the Serbians, always facing the enemy, retreated to the sea. It was a terrible tragedy. Their retreat will remain a matter of legend, like that of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon. As they retreated, the Serbians called, in their despair, for help.

Who went to Serbia's aid? It was not Russia, whose armies were quite worn out. It was not England, who feared an attack on Egypt and who was still fighting at the Dardanelles. It was not Italy, whose special efforts were directed towards preventing the junction of Austria with Greece, and who was satisfied with establishing herself at Valona and thus driving a wedge between her two rivals on the Adriatic coast.

But France, France who is represented as worn out and bled white, heard Serbia's call for help and decided to respond to it.

Supplies were first landed at San Giovanni di Medua and Antivari in the smaller French boats. But it was soon evident that these supplies would be insufficient and that the Serbs could not maintain their positions in the Adriatic ports even with French help from the sea. The complete evacuation of an entire army, piece by piece, had to be undertaken. The transporting of entire Serbia beyond the seas, to another country, had to be considered. Where were they to go? Where were the thousands of worn out soldiers, of sick and wounded men, to be transported?

Once again France answered. France held Tunis, France held Bizerta. Tunis and Bizerta would shield temporarily the remains of Serbia. From the end of November, 1915, the smaller French ships, torpedo boats, trawlers and transports made the trip from Durazzo to San Giovanni di Medua to embark the Serbian Army. Great steamers, such as the Natal, Sinai, and Arménie, and a flotilla of armored cruisers followed them. Thirteen thousand men were transported in this fashion.

But the situation grew worse. The Serbs along the seacoasts were pressed harder and harder by the Austrians and by Albanian bands. Besides, the transporting to Tunis was too slow when the progress of the enemy was considered. Finally the appearance of typhus and cholera rendered more dangerous the removal of the unfortunate troops to a great distance. A new plan was arranged. The remaining Serbs were to be transported not into Tunis, which was so far away, but to a land as near as possible to the scene of disaster. Corfu was there; Corfu, only sixty miles away from the farthest point of debarkation; Corfu, whose climate was marvelously suited to the recovery of sick men; Corfu which offered a very safe harbor. It was decided to occupy Corfu, prepare the island, transport the entire Serbian Army thither and assure that this army would be built up there. And France was charged with carrying out this operation.

On the seventh of January, 1916, the first French organization of ten trawlers set out from Malta to make a preliminary reconnoissance around Corfu, to drag for mines and to clear out the submarines. A second flotilla followed it forty-eight hours later. On the eighth of January the armored cruisers Edgar Quinet, Waldeck-Rousseau, Ernest Renan, Jules Ferry and five torpedo boats, which were located at Bizerta, received orders to embark a battalion of Alpine chasseurs with their arms, baggage and mules and to take up their positions to be ready at the first signal.

On the night of the tenth, the French consul at Corfu woke up the Greek prefect in order to announce to him the imminent arrival of our squadron and what it was going to do. After he had received the formal protest of this functionary, he went down to the port, where there was no longer any doubt in anyone's mind of what was going to happen. With him went guides and automobiles to finish everything quickly before the Germans could offer any opposition. Some minutes later, on time at the rendezvous agreed upon, the French cruisers came into the harbor and immediately disembarked their contingent of Alpine Chasseurs. Before daybreak the principal vantage points as well as the most important positions on the island were occupied. Suspected persons were seized in their beds, a doubtful post of T. S. F. was seized also. Corfu, which went to sleep half German, woke up entirely French to the tune of the martial music that was to inform the inhabitants of the little change that had taken place over night.

The question remained of Achilleion, the property of William of Germany, which was about nine miles from the city. If Achilleion had been a French property and German soldiers had paid a visit, what pillage, what defilement, what orgies there would have been!

But Achilleion was a German property, and the French have a method of procedure that is peculiarly their own. This is what happened, according to the narrative of a young naval officer who was on the spot: