H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/December 3, 1915

§1.

Whenever there is a lull in the pious, beery sobbing over Belgium, Serbia and Armenia, one hears some sad, sweet brother hymning the “rebirth” of France. This wind-music, of course, was originally scored for the plaintive cor anglais, but it is now chiefly piped by “loyal” American gullets. It is not only empty and imbecile, but also cruelly injurious, and doubly so, to the gallant French people, for on the one hand it insinuates that they were in a state of sinister collapse and demoralization before the war, and on the other hand, it raises up an expectation of their future performance which it will be physically impossible for them to fulfill, and so exposes them inevitably to the suspicions and misunderstandings which go with disappointment.

The French, in point of fact, are neither the “converted” slackers and voluptuaries that the English try to make them out, nor the wild-eyed, Moslem-like, down-with-the-infidel fanatics, but a people who try to expel the conqueror from their fatherland with praiseworthy if ill-starred assiduity, and who bear the stupidity and poltroonery of their ally as stoically as they bear the heartbreaking success of their foe. To say that they have been “reborn,” that they have come to a “spiritual awakening” or that they have suffered any other such high-sounding transcendental experience is as insulting as to say of a man that he has stopped stealing or of a woman that she has become virtuous. The French were a brave and patriotic people before the war; they are a brave and patriotic people during the war, and they will be a brave and patriotic people after the war. They needed no buffoonish Billy-Sundaying to teach them how to fight, and how to endure, and how to die.

§2.

Their troubles of today—and of their singularly bleak tomorrow—come from two causes, the one having to do with their senseless, pettish yearning for revanche, and the other arising out of their child-like yielding to English blandishments. Both hook up very intimately with the political crookedness and numskullery inseparable from mobocracy. If there had been statesmen in France after 1870, the common people who have been told the truth about the events of that year, and their hot passions would have cooled down. That is to say, they would have been told (a) that Sedan was a fair answer to the wanton piracies of Napoleonic times, (b) that Germany, having taken back the old German territories of Elsass and Lothringen, aspired to no more, and (c) that France’s days as the strutting grenadier of Europe were over, that gloire was something that had better be put behind the clock.

But instead of statesmen, France had only shyster politicians of the sort so depressingly familiar in our own fair land. The central aim of all these politicians was not to steer France into safe waters, but to get jobs for themselves. To that end there was a constant playing upon the credulity and excitability of the mob, an endless harrowing of its quite laudable patriotism, a diligent flaunting of the German bugaboo. Germany, in France, served much the same purpose that the Money Power served in the United States. It was the infallible standby of the French Bryans, Roosevelts, Bleases, Tillmans, LaFollettes and Sulzers. An alarm about German designs in Northern Africa, about German negotiations with Austria, Italy or England, or about German spies in the Quai D’Orsay was sufficient to save a menaced minister, or to convert an “out” into an “in.” Whenever there threatened to be an exposure of the abominably rotten internal affairs of the republic—the endless petty grafting, for example—it was always easy to shut off the demand for the facts by hinting at dark doings beyond the Vosges. In brief, Germany was the mattress that French politicians fell upon, the bale of hay they hid behind, the fabulous bull that fed them with very real steaks. They had only to appeal to the national patriotism, to the quite natural dislike of Germany, to the carefully cultivated fears of the people, to save themselves from a too rigid and embarrassing scrutiny. In exactly the same way Dr. Wilson now plays upon the emotions of the mob to divert its attention from the complete failure of his economic perunas, the perils of his Christian Endeavor diplomacy, and the dangerous financial position of the country.

§3.

Now add to this hand-raised Germanophobia the sudden and ardent wooing of England, and it is easy to see how France was misled into her present intolerable difficulties. The late King Edward was an enormously clever fellow, a man of the world in the best sense, a German masquerading as an Englishman with tongue in cheek, a believer in nothing. With what gusto he poured the royal smile upon those French ex-shopkeepers and notaries-turned-Metternichs in tricolor sashes and carefully imitative beards! How he know how to tickle them, to anæsthetize them, to inflate them, to hornswoggle them! What a killing, indeed, he made of them, and how eagerly the English at home pickled the carcasses! . . . The same English who, in the years before the Entente Cordiale, had made Paris their brother, and founded the fiction of French lewdness! How the sudden rise of German sea power had changed their tune! What eagerness they brought to the courting of the Gaul! . . . And how foolishly the poor Gaul fell for it!

Here, indeed, is one of the tragedies of the world. France, friendly with Germany, would have been secure against any conceivable attack. But France in alliance with England is merely England’s chest-protector—and Germany’s chopping-block. A heavy price to pay for the boon of being governed by such affecting patriots as Faure, Loubet, Millerand, Delcasse and Poincaré! A large bill for the few amiable rounds of drinks with a paunchy, elderly gentleman of uncertain morals!

§4.

Her “spiritual awakening”? “Rebirth?” Where do they come in? Answer: They don’t come in at all. The French simply made a mistake, and now they are trying their darndest to fight their way out of it. One cannot help viewing their difficulties, even allowing everything for their courage and pertinacity, with a certain sour irony. First, they allowed England to inveigle them into what, after all, is England’s war; then they gallantly signed the so-called Three Musketeers agreement; and now, under that agreement, they are held in the forefront of the fray, while the brave English invent excuses to rearward. (There is even talk of withdrawing Sir John French’s army from France, leaving the French to bear the whole burden!) And, meanwhile, they have to submit to lordly patronage, taking pats on the head like the Canadians! Their very courage is praised as something creditable and scarcely expected, a new and highly laudable quality, the fruit of a “rebirth” (i. e., of unaccustomed association with the English!) . . .

Two grave dangers threaten the French. One is the danger that they may take this “rebirth” and “spiritual awakening” buncombe seriously, and so come out of the war with their traditional honesty corrupted by Anglo-Saxon phariseeism and snuffery. The other is that they may keep on obeying the English command (so subtly conveyed as flattery!) to charge the enemy, and so commit national suicide in front of the German trenches. A few more such “triumphs” and “glorious victories” as the three “rescues” of Alsace-Lorraine, the multiple takings of the Labyrinth and the late grand drive in the Champagne, and the French Army will be ready for the coroner. Its efforts have been stupendous. And some of its feats have won the enthusiastic admiration of its foes (for example, when one French fort fell after six weeks of titanic fighting, the tattered defenders marched out between lines of German troops presenting arms and a German band played the “Marseillaise”), but that sort of thing cannot keep up forever. France has amply vindicated her honor. Very soon she must choose between an honorable peace and fanatical self-destruction.

§5.

But the Germans will be driven out! Bosh, Hippolyte! Go tell it to your grandma! The time to drive the Germans out was after they had been halted at the Marne. They had suffered a severe (though surely not a crushing) defeat, they had lost the advantage of the offensive, they were vastly outnumbered, the Russian invasion was giving them serious concern, and months must still elapse before they could get up their full strength of reserves. What the French failed to do at that incomparably favorable time they have not succeeded in doing since, despite the most herculean striving. In a whole year’s time and under assaults of almost unimaginable ferocity the Germans have not fallen back at any one spot more than two miles, and along nine-tenths of their long western line they have not fallen back at all. Of the part of France held by them the French have not reconquered 1 per cent. And to accomplish this little they have had to bring up their very last reserves—boys of 17 and 18 and men of 48 and 50. Nearly a year ago the French War Office announced that it had 4,500,000 men in the field. Add the 750,000 Canadians, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Belgians, Welchmen, Gurkas, Sikhs, etc., and the few Englishmen. Call the total 5,250,000. Does anyone seriously maintain that the Germans have had an equal number to hold this force off? Nay! But the Germans have had Kluck, Emmich, Bülow, Beseler, Prince Rupprecht, et al. And having these still, they still have Northern France.

§6.

The end, of course, no man knoweth. I have often argued that he fate of Germany (and, for that matter, of all Europe) will not be decided in the west, but in the east. My conviction at the moment is that the decision is already reached. This leaves France in a position that gradually grows worse. To take German trenches is possible, true enough, but so is it possible to choke a lion by ramming one’s head into his mouth. The thing for the French to consider is whether they will gain or lose, in the long run, by playing the goat for England. No one in the whole world doubts their courage, but if they keep on with their sanguinary futilities a good many very good friends will begin to doubt their sense. What if their final reward is not glory, but . . . pity? Besides, it is highly dangerous for a healthy and honorable people to ally themselves with a race so decayed and ludicrous as the English. The French, indeed, already begin to show the effects of that blight. French “atrocity” books, silly pamphlets by stoneheaded college professors, disquieting translations of the Kipling-Wells-Beck-New York Herald literature begin to reach me from my Paris agents. . . . It is a bad, bad sign! . . .