1
200
3
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https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/files/original/3/480/MS-75_Cru_Notes-guerre.pdf
05299eaff184f2ff59d5e09c3a24392e
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Manuscrits
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Plusieurs dizaines de manuscrits des 16e-18e siècles, principalement juridiques, conservés dans les réserves des BU de l'université et d'autres partenaires du projet (bibliothèques municipales, archives et chambre de commerce)
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Notes de guerre, d'après mon carnet de route : journal d'Albert L. Cru, Hôpital 23, Alençon, Orne, août-sept. 1914
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Rédigé au cours de sa convalescence, le terrifiant journal du fantassin Albert Cru, frère de Norton Cru, envoyé sur le front des Vosges en août et septembre 1914 et gravement blessé au cours d'une offensive sur Vauvilliers le 24 septembre
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Cru, Albert L.. Auteur
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BU des Fenouillères - Arts, lettres et sciences humaines (Aix-en-Provence), cote MS 75
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s.n. (Alencçon)
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1914
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domaine public
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Notice du catalogue : http://www.sudoc.fr/253358256
Vignette : https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/files/vignette/MS-75_Cru-Norton_Notes-guerre_vignette.jpg
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application/pdf
1 vol.
98 p.
28 cm
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fre
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text
manuscrit
manuscript
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https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/items/show/480
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France. 19..
Vosges. 19..
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Tapuscrit
Contient 3 cartes détaillées du front et des combats qui se sont déroulés à: Bourgonce, La Salle et Vauvilliers
Ecrit durant ses séjours dans les hôpitaux de Laval et d'Alençon
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BU des Fenouillères - Arts, lettres et sciences humaines (Aix-en-Provence)
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Notes de guerre, d'après mon carnet de route : journal d'Albert L. Cru, Hôpital 23, Alençon, Orne, août-sept. 1914 <br />- Feuille <i>Alencon</i> ; 62 ; 1845 ; Dépôt de la Guerre (France) ; Pelet, Jean-Jacques-Germain (1777-1858), ISBN : F80621845. <br />- Lien vers la page : <a href="http://www.cartomundi.fr/site/E01.aspx?FC=27252" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.cartomundi.fr/site/E01.aspx?FC=27252</a>
Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) -- Littérature et guerre
Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) -- Récits personnels
-
https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/files/original/1/452/MS-73_Cru-Norton_War-books.pdf
3a5f69163889fd303fd35c70f8fcf115
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Ouvrages imprimés édités au cours des 16e-20e siècles et conservés dans les bibliothèques de l'université et d'autres partenaires du projet (bibliothèques municipales, archives et chambre de commerce)
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War books, a study in historical criticism, by Jean Norton Cru. From the original French Du Témoignage, published in Paris, February 1931, by Librairie Gallimard (NRF), and itself compiled from Témoins by the same author, a large octavo of 740 pages published in Paris, October 1929, by Les Etincelles
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Histoire
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Pour Norton Cru, le récit de la Grande Guerre et la vérité historique doivent reposer avant tout sur l'authenticité des témoignages de ceux qui ont réellement vécu les combats et en ont compris le sens réel. Un propos à l'époque très polémique...
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Cru, Jean Norton (1879-1949)
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BU des Fenouillères - Arts, lettres et sciences humaines (Aix-en-Provence), cote MS 73
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Les Etincelles (Paris)
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1929
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domaine public
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Notice du catalogue : http://www.sudoc.fr/241576644
Notice du catalogue : http://www.calames.abes.fr/pub/#details?id=Calames-20222192361631
Vignette : https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/files/vignette/MS-73_Cru-Norton_War-books_vignette.jpg
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application/pdf
1 vol.
II-169 p.
29 x 24,5 cm
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eng
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text
monographie imprimée
printed monograph
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https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/items/show/452
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Europe. 19..
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Note : tapuscrit, copie dactylographiée de II-169 p., dans rel. mécanique noire 29 x 24,5 cm., don de la soeur de l'auteur 1969
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BU des Fenouillères - Arts, lettres et sciences humaines (Aix-en-Provence)
Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) -- Aspect psychologique
Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) -- Littérature et guerre
-
https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/files/original/1/431/MS-75_Cru-Norton_Courage.pdf
5361def60d60269470d94c5b61e2b4ff
PDF Text
Text
COURAGE AND FEAR IN BATTLE
ACCORDlNG TO TRADITION AND IN THE GREAT WAR.
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Profe ssor J. N. Cru
��COURAGE AND FEAR IN BATTLE
ACCORDING TO TRADITION AND IN THE GREAT WAR.
In the fi lde
f France-... a land~cape of low hills and coppice
ehro ded in darkneee--in No Man's Land, an outpost of a dozen "poilus"
in eheepekins and mufflers, seated on the shallow bottom of a ditch,
watching the black empty space in front, listening to the awful silence-their chief, the bespectacled s rgeant, muses to keep awake,--and because
thinking is his professional bent.
he must endeavor to solve them.
The war assails him with riddles and
He calls to his aid the reminiacences
of his academic training; he searchea his memory for half forgotten fragments of poetry or prose, in an attempt to find allusions to hie present
plight.
He remembers great writers who do epeak or wars, of heroes, of
battle psychology--, but how little does this seem to fit present circumstances.
Yet, this s rgeant and his peasant soldiera are daily called
heroes in the press, in official speeches, in the fiery utterances at
patriotic meetings.
They read these, our soldiera, in the aoiled,
crumpled newspapers passed from hand to hand, and they smile sadly.
How
can it be possible, that they be heroes in the same sense as the warriors
of tradition, legend and history?
shell and gas spare him, will the
After the war is over, if shot and
rgeant go back home, in hie little
college town, to step up to his pedestal, the pedestal of a hero, or, in
modern parlance, of a superman?
How absurd!
gupermen?
They?
are several million supermen of their kind and of many hues:
Why! there
white,
black, tawny, yellow •••• and there are not enough pedestals in the world
for them all.
Is this a mockery that they should be dubbed heroes?
Truly, a cheap enough meed for their present hardships and mental agonies.
And the sargeant•s meditation goes on during the long, slow hours
of night watches, for weeks, for months, for years, ~hile the war drags
along with a monotany broken now and then by spells of offensive,
meditation i$ out of question.
hen
But whether in a sector of attack, or in
��a normal sector, the one spectre haunting the mind ia destruction or mangling of the dear self, the.ever present danger, and the aenee of it:
~ . and the frantic reaction against fear:
courage.
What are they?
Thus meditates this anchorite of a new Thebaid; the trench world, eut
off from the aociety of mere men, being the most suitable place for cogitation and introspection.
Ladies and gentlemen, a fitting title for my talk today might be:
"A commentary for the use of non-combat/ante, upon some un~ritten chap-
------ - - =---
tera of an unwritten book entitled~Meditations in a Trench."
This imma-
terial book being my only bibliography, store of reference and source of
information, I do especially invite your criticiam of this lecture, I do
court your opinion, trusting that they will be as kindly as helpful.
In
order to guide the trend of our thoughts towards a definite object, I
propose the choice of a text, according to the faehion of preachere.
text Will be Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Canto XI, Stanza 26.
Our
In the lines
preceding, the author explains how the "infernal tool" (artillery) "was
born amid the German race• and how •working on their weaker wit", "he who
plots for our disgrace, the demon" •at last upon his fatal purpose hit.•
Stanza 26--How, foul and pestilent discovery,
Didst thou find place within the human heart?
Through thee is martial glory lost, through thee
The trade of arme become a worthleas art:
And at such ebb are worth and chivalry,
That the base often plays the better part.
Through thee no more shall gallantry, no more
Shall valour prove their prowess as of yore.
When I was under artillery fire for the firet time, my breath stopped, I was shaken from head to foot by deep stirrings
l had never con-
ceived as possible, the violence of my emotion swept me off the foundation of steady thoughts and firm resolves.
caused me a keen deception.
Sot
It took me by surprise, it
What a comedown!
I realized to my
dismay that I was not "such stuff as fighters are made of."
Instead, I
wae born to be a pedagogue, a bookworm, nota bulwark of national liberty,
��no!
Mother Nature had endowed me with weak heart, thin blood, 9tomach
sensitive to mal de mer.
She had denied me the sacred fire, the power,
the fiber, the grit, the guts, the ferocioue will to charge madly with my
fellows, through a cloud of smoke, in the glory and intoxication of promieed victory.--Then, I looked at the other men.
That was comforting:
ashen faces, twitched mouths, haggard eyes •••• not among all to be sure, but
enough to restore part of my self respect.
I still admired and envied the
officers and the few men who seemed self-possessed or unconcerned.
,,.
impassiveness imposed upon my greenhorn naivete.
Their
By degrees I grew wiae,
but it took me well over two years of front to reach the conclusion that I
was yet to meet the man, private or officer, who was not the occaeional
Yictim of abject fear.
I soon learnt myself to put on the mask of impassi-
vity, for the sake of my prestige.
thoae early war days.
Moreover, eomething puzzled me, in
One of the accepted ideas about war, ia that soldiers
become accustomed to danger, and veterans are inured to fear.
Here were
our veterans who had fought for two months before, during and after the
Marne:
they looked more upset than we, replacement men, fresh from the rear,
just come to fill the gaps.
killed?
Why did they not get accustomed ta being
Another revelation and d~ception1
so different from our preconceived ideas.
What was war then?
I had been lied to.
have many other notions to throw overboard?" I thought.
It was all
"Shall I
During the leisure
of trench life I began ta ponder over the problems of fighting psychology,
and l continued during four years, in the light of bitter experience, in
the pitileas glare of raging battle, which lays bare the hearts of men,
tears off the masks of pretence, lifts the veils of decency, bares shame.
M.y own anguish did not smother the inquisitive and critical bent of mind,
characteristic of pedagogues.
The habit grew with me to acrutinize my own
emotione, to analyze my terrors, and al~o to investigate the feelings of my
men, to obtain from them the frank confession of thei
inmost heart throbs.
A combatant does not object to tell one who under9tande, one
ho is an
��initiate of the great suffering Brotherhood.
more I was anxioue to know.
The more I learned, the
In 1917, being with the English army, I took
advantage of confidential moode of my messmates, British officers, in
A
A
tete a tetes over a whisky and soda.
Their proverbial aloofness did not
stand in the way, the sacred privacy of war emotions was laid open tome:
was I not in the same boat?
most of them?
Had I not even a longer front experience than
In 1918 I confessed Americans at the front, and after the
Armistice, in the camps and hospitals in thia country.
Both the proud
English and the laconic American agreed that they would never dare impart
to those dearest to them the confidence of their human frailty under fire •
•
"Why?" I asked.--"Because they cannot understand.•
Thus, by introspection
and by examination of others, I became a~are that in this respect we have
been liTing on legend and myth, that the current ideas about courage or
fear, heroism or cowardice, aggressiveneas and fighting spirit, whatever
support they found in military history of ancient timee, of feudal times
or even of the near past, have hardly anything to subatantiate them in the
facts of the Great War.
The war stories we have read ever since our child•
hood are either lies, dangeroua lies, or find no parallel in the late Conflict of Nations.
If the German people had known the true visage of far in
1914, they would not have started with hasty enthusiasm upon a fresh and
joyoua war.
A fresh and joyous ~ t
Is not this a proof of the absurdity
of their illusions, which were ours too, in a lesser degree, concerning the
magnificent romance of Battle?
There, in my trench, I took the solemn oath
never to help those lies, and,--if God should spare my life,--to bring back
the sincere, unadorned relation of my experience.
I swore never to allow
my imagination or any desire for literary expression to make of my post-war
self a traducer of my former fighting self.
got themselves into print.)
(There are some traitors who
I swore never to betray my comradee by paint-
ing their anguish in the bright colora of heroic, chivalroue sentiment.
What are the origin and formation of our ideas about military courage
��-5-
or fear, heroism or cowardice, aggressiveness and fighting spirit?
They
were, they still are the natural inspiration of tribe esprit de corps, of
national bigotry, of narrow patriotism {a crude kind of love of the Fatherland founded on self-admiration and contempt of the foreigner, namely:
doctrine of the Chosen People.)
axiome as these:
All
~
the
This feeling finds expression in euch pit\y
soldiers are heroes, enemy soldiers are all cowards-
or--Any one or our men is a match to five of theirs--or--Our flag has never
gone down to defeat •••• as for our few reverses, they must be ascribed to
treason, ta inferiority in numbers, to cr1minal unpreparedness, ••• and ta many
other legitimate rea~ons.
I am sure that you have (perhaps not read) but
heard this many time~ during the war.
the blanket to itself.
I have.
Thus every nation pulls all
Public opinion and the press are, besides, strongly
influenced by literature, ancient and modern, bearing upon the subject:
more
especially by poetry, from Homer to Victor Hugo, singera of national glory,
and also by legendary or anecdotic history, from the story of Leonidas to
that of a winner of the Congressional Medal.
We look in vain for a corrective in the learned studies on military
history.
Their authors are either civilians, lacking the personal touch
with the battlefield, or erudite officers who confine themselvea to the
purely abstract, technical discussion of strategy and tactics, ahunning the
slippery subject of the psychology of the individual in battle.
Everything
we read confirms us in our prejudice that fear is a shame, that to take
shelter is proof of cowardice, that .22:!.! men are fearless (moet of them at
least.)
But the first shell falling near us, explodes our absurd, inhuman
notions, and leavee us wondering •••• Wondering?
Yes, and bewildered, dazed,
stunned, when it is not stark mad, mad with terror--o~ with shock.
Must we then disbelieve the deeds of valor of heroes of old?
Achilles,
the Horaces, Roland, Tristan, Siegfrid, Richard the Lion Hearted, the Chevalier Bayard without fear and without reproach, were they in reality mollycoddles~
Or, if they were genuine heroes, have we become so effeminate in
��the twent ieth centu ry that we canno t watch their defian ce of wound
a and
death? I am ready to grant the truth- -in the main- -of old storie
s of permanen t herois m, makin g howev er an allowa nce for eloqu ent or litera
ry exaggerati on.
But, while on one hand, man is very much the same 1110w as befor e,
while his heart hae not change d, while his physi cal streng th and
moral fiber
are about of the same grade as in heroic agee,- -on the other hand,
warfa re
and its instru ments have been develo ped so wonde rfull~ that our poor
fleah
and bones and nerves cower now before the Giant Death of our own
cleve r inventio n. An age-lo ng equili brium betwee n man and hi8 tools is now
destro yed,
our p·hysi cal and menta l make-u p do not tally wi th the outpu t capac
i ty of the
seven ty-fiv e. Yet, strang e to say, in our timea of autom atic, high-s
peed
killin g machi nes, people still dream fondly of herois m in terms of
rapie r
and cuira ss, or hand to hand encou nter, of strike and parry , in a
word, in
terme of sports , of athle tic perfor mance . Roman cera have shaped
our ideas
of battle to this day; we are impen itent ideal iets. Indeed , the
code of
chiva lry lives today in the rules of sports of the fighti ng kind.
to both, a man must play fair, be game, endure punish ment witho ut
at least moral ly-~he must stand erect and never hide.
hiding , or even duckin g, was disqu alifie d.
Accor ding
flinch ing--
A knigh t showin g fear,
Battle s natur ally resolv ed them-
eelves into a numbe r of indivi dual duels, and a champ ion had no excuse
for
wincin g from rough treatm ent at the hands of anoth er champ ion. Courag
e was
natur al in him who had confid ence in hie streng th, in hie aptnea s
at striking and parry ing, in his horsem anship .
Fear would teropt him who was less
apt, but courag e was induce d in him by his very phvsi cal exerti on,
which in
turn induce d clearn eaa of vision and the belie f that there was compa
rative
safety as long as he ret~rn ed the blows .
I mean:
of human size, on a human scale.
Bad as it was, war was human , and
War was not might ier than man's
muscl es, not swifte r than man's motio ns, not fierce r than man's ardor
, not
more impla cable than man's mercy , as when a death dealin g blow was
staid
half-w ay.
Merci ! is a cry not heard in modern battle :
shell and gae cloud
��-7don't unde r etand it, they follow their path undietur bed.
No other foe is
within hearing .--Evide ntly our ancestor a could have found no justific ation
for human nerves breaking down under the stress of battle.
We may eurmise
that at the battle of Hasting s there were waong the caeualt ies no cases of
nervoue shock. It doea not prove that Normana and Saxons were of a finer
mettle than French and Germane of today, but rather that war waa suited then
to the capacity of resistan ce of body and soul, while now it overwhel ms and
shatters the stronge st and finest epeciraen e of virility .
Whence the change?
It was a fateful day when the first cannon waa fired,
when by the action of a perhaps weak and tremblin g hand, the new monater laid
low valiant warrior e, atone atroke.
aays our text.
"The base often playa the better part"
The flower of chivalry proteste d against the foul blow, and
well they might, because that day marked the beginnin g of the end of courage
and heroism accordin g to the old courtly standard s, 4rtiller y developp ed
apace, urged by kings, (ultima ratio regum.)
They saw in it the means to be
powerfu l even without the help of their unruly knights who had monopol ized
the noble art of fighting .
Our generati on is apt to forget the bitter denun-
ciation of the hellish engine of war by great men, writers , prelates , army
leaders, from the fo~rteen th to as late as the seventee nth century . By comparison , our condemn ation of gas warfare is mild.
You have heard Arioeto 'e
vitupera tion againet the abomina ble inventio n that diehonor e the professi on
of arms and makes courage useleas .
vigorous :
The invectiv e of Cervant es ia no less
"O thrice happy the ages that did not know the frightfu l fury of
theee accursed instrume nte of artiller y."
Rabelai s declares that it is
through diabolic al suggesti on that gunpowd er and cannon were created .
His
contemp orary Blaise de Montluc , a great general , the ablest military writer
of the Renaiss ance, who like Caesar, wrote his Commen taries, a ve~teran proud
of his scarred and eeamed face, says: "Bombar d, harqueb us and fire stick are
artifice s of the devil."
In the times of Louis XIV, Bishop Fl,chie r, in hie
funeral oration for Marehal Turenne aseert~ that Hell it was, who invented
��those bronze thunders for the destruct ion of mankind .
Note that theee proM
teste are not made againat war, but against the perversi on, the debaeing
of war by machine s which allow one man to kill many othere, without expoeing himeelf , without giving hie victime a chance to parry or to etrike
back. But protesta were of no avail. Bayard, the last knight, was killed
by gunshot .
Napoleo n's early career as an expert artille rist, bore no mean influence on the Emperor 's tactics and on the art of war after him. However ,
the part played by gune had grown very elowly from the Middle Ages to the
Russo-Ja paneee war. For a long time gune were consider ed eseentia l only
in a eiege.
In open warfare , they caused few casualti ee;
smoke were counted upon to scare the infantry .
the noise and
As late aa 1904--19 05 the
lasses caused by artiller y were only eight percen t of the caeualti e5;not
more than by bayonet e.
My own guess for the Great War (western front) ie
about eeventy percent by artiller y, about twenty percent by small arme,
(machine gun, rifle) about ten percent by gae, and lese than one percent
by bayonet , or other cold eteél.
Thue the harm done by weapone actuated
purely by human strength , hae reached the vanï°ehin g point.
Brawn, physica l
energy, courage of the kind Achillea had, are displace d by machine s.
The
wonder of it is that the German generals themselv ee, who had in 1914 such
a complete assortm ent of gune, counted upon them mainly for a moral effect.
Even they were etill held in the grip of obeolete traditio n.
The machine s
paeeed man's highest expecta tions; the moneter s broke loose from their
pye:;.ny maaters ; they did more killing than they were expected to, putting
the bayonet , and,--to wards the end-~eve n the rifle, out of busineae .--When
Pat wae aeked ta give a descrip tion of a gun, he said: "Firet you have a
hole, and then you have metal around it."
fathere.
This ie true of the gun of our
The modern one ie more complex and I called it a machine .
Some
here may think that the term machine is a little etretche d when applied ~o
either a field gun or a machine gun. They may think that the word appliee
��-9-
far more fittingly to a typewriter or a lawn mower that have so many finely
adjusted parts, transmitting power one to the other in a emooth motion.
You
ought to see a machine gun, or the breech and recoil apparatus of a 75 with
all their axes and wheels, pistons and cylindere, ratchets and cama, levels
and dials, a supreme creation of the art of the mechanic.
More than that,
these are automatic machines, in which the expanding force of the gasee,
besides driving the projectile, does more than half of the firing manoeuvre
in the gun, the whole of it in the machine gun.
With both weapons, the
task of the modern hero ie reduced to feeding the voracious machine, while
in the case of the machine gun, there ie even no neceeaity to feed it, one
hae only to bring near huge quantitiea of ammunition;
helps itself toit, gulping down ten bullets a second.
Bayard!
the w
I
rd thing
Shades of Roland and
Where are you mighty atrokes and expert defensee?
Look at your de-
generate descendants feeding long strips of amrnunition belt to a mitrailleuse, just as their civilian brothers feed cotton to a gin.
Look at your
unfortunate descendants hammered by enemy machines with blows no shield can
stop, no clever parry can ward off.
It is juet as abeurd to aek of Mr.
Ford's pampered toilera some of the enthueiasm of Benvenuto Cellini's apprenticee,--a.s to look for Percival's courteous equanimity in the uniformed
operatives of modern war.
What we call courage in modern assault is in moet
cases a "fuite en avant" according to the apt French phrase, a rout forward,
a flight at the enemy, feverish, tumultuous, desperate,--a mad deeire to
have done with the excruciating immobility under shell fire before the
attack.
You think this statement is excessive?
or unpatriotic feeling?
'tainted with pacifistic
Listen to an argument which to my surprise hae
never been put before the public.
It is a simple calculation of the killing
capacity of automatic weapone, I mean the maximum capacity under ideal conditions which are never realized.
Problem:
It took four years and three
monthe for the Allies with all their weapons to kill 1,700,000 Germane, to
wound about three times that number.
How long would it take to cause the
��saine caeualties, ueing as only weapons the machine guns of the French Army,
suppoeing the whole German host followed the tactica of eight to nine
centuries ago, adopted the battle formation ue·ed at Hastings, and all charged the French line, two hundred yards distant, over flat ground?
Answer:
One second would suffice to bring to the ground five million killed or
wounded.
The elemente of calculation are; 50,000 mitrailleuses, each firing
at the speed of six hundred shots a minute, each bullet able, at ehort range,
•
to go clean through ten human bodies standing close enough one behind the
otber.
In the arune problem if we replace the mitrailleuses by the 75 mm.
field gun, firing shrapnell, the time for the performance will be three
seconds and a half.
Elements:
10,000 gune firing twenty eight ehelle a
minute, each ahell containa three hundred shrapnell balla.
The machine
gune beat the artillery and vindicate the assertion that they are the most
destructive weapons ever uaed.
The reason for thie lies in the force of
penetration of the bullet that can run through ten bodies while a shrapnell
ball bas expended all its energy after entering one body.
I ask you now:
is there in industry any machine comparable to these in efficiency?
Where
ie even the poison gas capable of euch gratifying results?--(Allow me to
remark in paseing that childish predictione have been made by eelf-atyled
experte, as to the part to be played by gas in a future war.
Shelter and
protection have developped and will developt in gas warfare, juet as they
have developped to minimize the a.mazing theoretical efficiency of cannon
and machine gun.)
If the two million Americans who went over, almost all
came back, the reasons for it are:
they quickly adapted themselves to the
situation by behaving under fire like the Germane and the French,--and not
at all like the imaginary beings you read about in the magl.:zinee of 1917-1918, ideals of American pluck according to legend-fed writers and a legendfed public.
If the actually realized efficiency of war machines wae so
much below the incredible ideal statement I juat made, it is due to univereal fear, to the wise and wholesome awe which impelled soldiere to put their
��... 11-
bodies out of sight, to vanish insta.ntly, leaving only thin air for the
on-rushing missiles to plough through.
.!!!,
~
!.!E.!. 21.
undestro~ed
~
!i2, forward movement may
unhampered machine m,.
~ ~
When a machine gun
opens fire against a line of charging infantry, nothing can save the unit
from annihilation, unless the men throw themaelves on the ground and lie
flat, very, very flat.
Even there, occasional bullets from the razing
sheaf will pick them one after the other and within a short time there will
be a well arrayed line of corpses.
Romance and heroic attitudes are out of
place with the business-like mitrailleuse.
So the men must endeavor to lie
still lower, digging, scrat)"ching deaperately with tool, fingera or juet
with their spoone (I have used mine in this guise), and eink gradually in
the earth.
Most first line treiqchee had simila.r beginnings; they marked
the exact line on which a charge broke down suddenly under the aweeping fire
of one or more machine gune that had escaped detection and destruction by
the artillery of the attack.
When the trench is completed, deep and narrow, it afforde complete protfïe.
~ot~w~
.~tl.:tiwli~ ~ ~ ~u ; ~ ~.
tection against ~flat trajectory~ its plunginifire which drops shells from
above.
lig_ section of trench, long or short, manned
company, .2.!: regiment
~
.!.!:.
~
enough artillery against
whole army,
il•
lli
hill, .!!
best platoon,
~
enemy choosea
il
No heroism will help to avert the doom.
The fate of the occupants is sealed.
There ie a fatality aboutit which
never existed in paet military history.
attached to such cases.
~ ~
~
All soldiere know the inevitablenese
Ask yourselvee what their feelings may be when
they detect the sure signa of an impending bombardment a' outrance, a"feu
d'an/antiseement,• annihilating fire, such as leavea perhapa a few creaturee
alive, but not a shrea o:t rec:iietl-ll tcP.
Can there be anything in common be-
tween their thoughts, their anxieties and thoae of heroes we met in books?
I recoil before the task of making here a graphie picture of a "feu d'an-
,
eantissement."
My pen is far too weak, and I want to apare your nerves, to
spare my .2.!.!l• only too sensitive to the irnagery of scenes actually lived
��-12~
through.
To the spectators, standing just out of the strictly bounded
zone of fire, the awe of such a sight made our hearts melt in pity for the
bunch of men, our foes, stuck to their post in the doomed trench.
I recall
especially two occaaiona, Christmas week 1914 and September 1915, when,
being in perfect safety in our firat line trench, I watched over the parapet, the enemy position, three hundred yards away, undergo the thorough
process of obliteration by artillery.
Several men generally survive the
ordeal, and I keep the vision of a ghostly procession, headed for the rear:
cadaverous faces, glassy eyes, stiff or shaky gait, clothes in tatters
dripping pulverized earth, a few slight wounds, black with caked blood.
These spectera were led by some of their captors, Moroccan tiraille~~s,
who halted them by a camp kitchen where coffee had been prepared:
one cup
to each prisoner when they would have swallowed a gallon, unquenchable
thirst being a symptom of intense fear.
"Are these soldiers?" I thought.
"Was there ever a time before this when proud officers and doughty warriore
could be tranaformed like these, by the simple procesa of battle, into phantoms, mere shadowa of men?"
The capture of prisonere of this kind, in the
wilderness of their trench, is an easy task:
their weapons are loat, ehat-
tered, buried,--and ehouli they have in reserve an arsenal of brand new
arma, they could not use them, they have shed all wital energy,~ ils sont
I
U
videa, eay the French, emptied.
You recall two or three instances of an
incredible act of bravery, one American making single handed forty or fifty
prisoners.
Incredible?
Preposteroue?
Not at all, if you are familiar with
battle scenes.
I may appear to have wandered far from my subject.
In order to make
plain my characterization of military courage and fear as they manifeet
themselves now, as I saw them, as I felt them in me, I had first to place
them in their atmosphere.
I wish I had the gift to conjure up the moral
rather than the phyaical atmosphere of battle.
impossible.
The task ig difficult, nay,
Worda that have for me an objective precision, a power .of evo-
��cation which atirs my boaom, makes my heart ache. causes a momentary dizzinees, cannot create in you anything but banal, familiar, su~jective images:
hazy vieione made up with various recollectione of your reading ae
a child, as a youth. as a grown-up man or woman.
Traditional ideas, and
more eo, traditional images, have such a hold on our minds, that they are
unshakable--unleas displaced by other imagea more real, conaequently more
intense in their relief.
dy.
God forbid that I ehould prescribe you thie reme-
But it was indeed the deeire expressed by many French poilue that we
should all take turne at the front; that men of all countriee and conditions,
diplomate, cardinale, kinge and presidents included, should serve a short
spell, juet enough
to get first hand information about the marvels of balis-
tics and the emotions connected therewith.
They pretended cynically that
the simple experiment would do more to cool bellicose parties than any meeting of worthies at a round table.
A kindred, if lees impudent, opinion is
that of a French military critic, a rare bird, who talked only of thinge he
lived through:
•Nothing, outside of pereonal experience," says Roger Maurice
"can give an idea of thia war."
I was bold to try.
Having thus, to my deep regret, spent so much time to pave the way, I
shall begin my subject proper with this aphorism:
The current conception
of courage and fear, heroism and cowardice, more broadly, of battle psychology, is at such variance with facts innumerable, accessible, verifiable-~
that there is urgent need for all, civilian and military, to reconsider the
question, to revise obsolete opinion.
stands:
You cannot leave the matter where it
first and foremost, becau~e it givee war an attractive aspect,--
second, because all former combatants would hate you for your atubborn blindness, and they would despair.
What is courage, and what fear--nowadays--on the battlefield?
They
used to be incompatible, mutually exclusive; they are now concomitant and
inseparable.
Courage formerly was mainly confidence in one'e powers; fear,
distrust of the same.
The duellist of today, like the ~night of old is fear-
��-14less if he believes that his fencing is superior to that of any challenger.
In courage of this kind there enter several elements beside self confidence:
overweening pride, conceit and aometimes boasting and bullying.
often the self confidence is not juatified.
More than
Some manage to get a reputation
of bravery until the day of trial, when they are recognized as mare swag~
gerers.
Conversely some quiet men passas white livered until the day when
they rise to the occasion and reveal their true nature.
In this war
hich
lasted over 1500 days, such undeserved reputations were impossible after
the firat day of hostilities.
Thoroughly as I deteat war, I should like one
day to lecture on several advantages of war over peace.
One of these ie:
impossibility of shams; compulsory, inevitable sincerity (of character if
not of words.)
courage was:
All men were af~aid, who went under fire; their concomitant
12, carrl .2!!. in spite 2!, ~ -
to an unequal degree.
All afraid and all courageous,
The inequality existed bath between different indi-
viduals at any one time, and in the same man at different periods.
Those
capable of more courage showed the example; those capable of less, had the
courage to follow the example.
There never was in man's history a more im-
pressionable body than a platoon of forty or fifty men in the Great War.
When under heavy fire you could mould them like dough:
make heroes ot
them, and the next second a panic strick~n herd ••• with one word.
The only
difficulty was to find a moulder with a permanent virtue, I mean courage.
Courage was a painful struggle against fear, an inner strife between body
and soul, a breathless wrangle between the rearing snorting animaL that
shrank from suffering and destruction-- and the mind that i1stened to dut1,
or atuck blindly to self respect.
/
The torture attend1ng this miserable
dispute was intolerable; one would have accepted any physical pain in exchange.
When prolonged it often overcame the emotional capacity of some
men, and here you have the nervous breakdown, which constitutes nine-tenths
of the cases so absurdly called shell-shock- -(Real shell-shock, that is a
commotion received from one shell, was a rare accident, attended almost
��alway s with insta nt death :
the heart atopp ed, the lungs were torn, but no
exter nal wound was visib le. The other shock was cause d, not
by one shell ,
but by the whole sum of dange rs:
it was a battl e-sho ck, nervo us and mora l
in kind. )--Th ere is in my belie f no coura ge under fire, but
that wae born
in thia soul- rendi ng, nerve -rack ing trava il. Yet, happy would
the fight er
be, if, emerg ing victo rious from the ordea l, he could hope
for peace or
mind, his fears gone forev er, his coura ge acqui red for good.
But hie vietory over the shyin g brute could never be trust ed to last
more than a few
minu tes, a few hours in excep tiona l insta nces. --(Be it under
stood that l
allud e here to facts that happe ned in activ e opera tions , atten
ded with great
and const ant dange rs: drive s, offen sives , attac ks, raids
;--in quiet secto rs,
milit ary psych ol-0gy was very much like norm al, excep t for
the ever prese nt
anxie ty of a dread ed futur )--Du ring such minu tes or hours
, when the animal was conqu ered and silen ced, the soldi er exper ience d a
very stran ge state
of mind. He was no longe r aware of the frail ty of his fleeh
, he moved in
the midst of frigh tful dange rs with stead iness and preci sion,
he acted in
a sort of hallu cinat ion, in a world unrea l, all his ment al
power e excit ed
and aharp ened, but bent towar ds one singl e aim:
plish ed.
fears .
the missi on to be accom -
The hype rtens ion of his will elimi nated imag inatio n, the mothe
r of
The sense of unre ality persi sted forev er afterw arde and the
soldi er
could hardl y bring hims elf to belie f tthat he actua lly did,
or waa ever
capab le of doing , the feats attrib uted to him durin g this
atate of super human activ ity. Such feats are calle d heroi c, the man was
a hero durin g that
brief space of time. He acted like a hero, and also like
a fool, indul ging
in all kinds of unnec essar y, absur d prank s, as if he court
ed death . Havin g
becom e fearl es3 as a resu lt of a bruta l emot ional conf lict,-fear less for
once and for a few mome nts, in all his life time, he lacke
d the guida nce of
the sense of dange r, that wisdo m given us by Natur e for our
prese rvati on.
There fore, a fit of heroi sm (it is indee d almos t a disor der
of the mind) ie
gene rally atten ded by death . This excep tiona l chara cter
of heroi sm in the
��late war, pute it in great contra st with herois m accord ing to histor
y,
and with herois m as it was conce ived in the rear in 1914- -1918 . No
eoldi
er,
be he the best gifted in fighti ng quali ties, was a hero all
the time; very
few were heroe s more than once:
enem.y machi nes would not allow a repet ition
of impru dent expos ure; no joking with them. On the other hand, many
more
men than is believ ed, have exper ienced once the heroic sensa tion of
ephem eral
fearle ssnes s.
The names of a very small numbè r have attain ed newsp aper fame, becau
se
they chance d to do feats at the sa.me time specta cular and fallin g under
the
notice of a high comma nder. It is a cornmonplace to speak of the modes
ty of
these belaud ed heroe s.
The fact i9 true and perhap s misun dersto od.
They
are modes t beca~ se many, many others have done as much, but remain ed
unnot ic•
ed;--t hey realiz e also the absur dity of what happen ed to thera: the
strani ge,
unrea l exper ience: "I canno t believ e it mysel f"--th ey say,-- "I was
told by
the others ; but how can it be that I, a mere farme r, or a peace able
groce r,
or a timid lawye r, did such a thing . I remem ber dimly part of the
incide nt,
but the story as it goes was told by the members of my unit." --Whe n
the fit
is over, the hero, if he surviv es his rash and wonde rful adven ture,
becom es
a mere man again , again he ia the victim of fear, even to the exten
t of
arousi ng pity in his fellow s. It is a common experi ence a.mong comba
tants, to
find onese lf, a plain , averag e soldie r, lesa afraid upon a certai n
occas ion,
than some bemed alled office r, famous for his behav ior during a previo
us
battle . 1 do not mean that heroes must fall one day below the averag
e, because on anoth er day they rose so high above it; but simply that in
the matter of fear everyo ne bas hi9 turn, no one is proof again st it. I r
peat that
there was no such thing as perma nent fearle ssnes s. It ia impos sible
to conceive a man inured to fear, in moder n battle s, unles s you imagin e a
brute ,
devoid of sense and imagi nation , witho ut nerve s, nor sight , nor hearin
g, nor
smell . Indeed the inroad s of fear into your being are made throug h
your
eyes that see the havoc , throug h your ears that hear the din, throug
h your
��nose that smells T.N.T ., throug h your nerves that transm it the comm
otions ,-and with all these eleme nts, mere signs, harml ess in thems elves,
your imaginatio n const ructs a frigh tful image of Death . Moreo ver, if ever
a fearle ss
soldie r existe d in this war, his life would not have lasted • ore
than twenty four hours at the front, becau se nothin g could take the place of
fear of
dange r to prote nt his life threat ened from every direct ion and all
the time.
Must I remind you that while forme rly, soldie rs were killed fighti
ng, they
are now moatly killed waitin g, worki ng, march ing, eating , writin g,
talkin g,
8havin g, sleepi ng, prayin g •••• that while they are perfor ming every
single fil
of human daily life, they are ever consc ious of dange r, ever watch
ing ite
sign, ever ready to dodge , to plung e, to flatte n thems elves again
st the
ground or again st the trench ,all.
tends toward s zero.
As fear dwind les, that concio usness
So, one can make this statem ent which sounds parado x-
ical:
If there was a crack regim ent, unriv alled in the whole Army, with
all
its men fear1e as, a regim ent that, in Caesa r's time, would have been
worth
ten times its numb ers,•- it would have been of no use to the count
ry in 1918,
becau se all ite membe rs would becom e casua lties before they had the
chance
to accom plish anyth ing.-- Conse quent ly, fear being the indisp ensàb
le protectio n and wisdom of the soldie r, soon lost at the front the ridicu
le and
shame attach ed toit by tradit ion (provi ded it was held in leash ,
and not
allowe d to get the upper hand. ) Hidin g, instea d of being held as
cowar dly,
as of yore, was recomm ended and new orders were issued frequ ently
to remind
the troops of its neces sity, of the dire conseq uences of its negle
ct. Headquarte ra compl ained throug hout the war that eoldie rs contra vened
to such
order s. Hiding does not seem natur al in moder n man, and accid ent
l deathe
resul ted.-- It is intere sting to inquir e:
Why were fear and hiding shame ful
in forme r times?
Of course they were notas legiti mate as they are now, because notas indisp ensab le. Yet, I believ e that poets and histor
ians have
been insinc ere, boast ful, when they show us fearle ss beroe s of their
own.
There is more truth in Old Homer , and when at the front, I remem bered
with
��-18interest his vivid descrintion of fear in his most sympathetic hero Hector.
• ]{~ 14 ~ ~ ~ ' lt- ~, N. ~ ~ ~ adv:-IIM
In his last fight with Achillesl\in hot pursuit, around the wÎlls of Troy,
in an attempt to escape his fate.
historical.
Another striking instance is strictly
Marshal Turenne who, in Napoleon's eatimation, was the beat all
round man of war in the seventeenth century, was subject to fear and uncontrollable quaking at the beginning of an engagement.
On one occasion he
said, addressing his "animal": "You tremble, old carcass, but if you knew
where I am going to take you today, you would tremble very much more."
I
believe this story because it agrees with our own experience about the
seeming dissociation of mind and body on the battlefield, and about their
constant quarrel.
tory.
These two examples are exceptions in literature and hia-
If you know of any other I should li¼e to be told.
They confirm
the rule that fear, if it exist in others than contemptible ones, must not
be mentioned.
I confess there was good reason for the indignity of fear.
Why should a man have fear of another man?
Why should Hector have fear of
Achilles, and his brawn, and his fierceness, and his spear?
fighters of 1914, our case is totally different.
As for us
Does any one believe here
I suggested that the French, the men of France, were afraid of the men of
Germany?
What a relief if we had had to meet the enemy in a rough and
tumble, or with fists, with cudgels, clubs, any primitive weapons, limited
in their weight, speed, power, accuracy, range, by the human arm that
wields them!
Above all, what a relief, if all military operations had been
fighta, real, clean, straight fights.
The unanswerable reason for our
fear and hiding is; they were never caused by men, but by superhuman engines, invisible, shrouded in mystery, hurling from the ends of the horizon
invisible, lightning•like bolts, against which we, individually, were powerless fo parry, to evade or to hit back.
That is not fighting.
·any
nglish
and Americans enlisted early because they were good sports, eager to fight.
Several young men in this country still bemoan the untimely Armistice which
denied them the satisfaction of a good tu~ale with the enemy.
Virtuous,
��--19-
candid illusions!
If you want occasions to fight, practice wrestling,
boxing, football •••• even bull fighting, or enter the New York police force
or Irish politics but don't go to the front.
Here ia an image of modern war:
in the boxing ring tie a short rope to the ankle of one boxer, so that he
may not go beyond the center; moreover, trammel his arma ao that he cannot
hit, and be greatly hindered in parrying; let the other boxer be entirely
free, urge him to go at his adversary, to pummel him at will.
and absurd!
Diegueting
Yes, and what becomes of courage when you can neither strike
back nor parry?
Here is the knot of the question:
as long as war coneisted
in fighting, it was really, as some Germane said, a school of courage, heroism, devotio~.
My point is that fighting has become so rare that a man may
se ve four years, as I did, and never witness an instance of it.
has become abstract or ideal.
Fighting
There was a fight between Germany and France,
between German and French Armies, Army Corps, Divisions.
A division numbere
from 15,000 to 25,000 men, and any unit smaller than that was below fighting
size. What is fighting then? Since the time of cave men a fight has been~~
~ l J - ~ ~ M W1At}'~411-tt( ~
.~
M
fM1 Û ~ ~ , r aAen<J--~a~,{;j-~d.,
essefitiaÏly a.n exchangevof blows/\ they don't realiy hurt a[ senaitiveneee ie
½ r
dulled in the heat of the duel.
Besides, the ability to dodge, duck, evade,
parry,--hinder greatly the effectiveness of the blows aimed at your body.
Modern methods have done away with this age-long fight, the only real fight~
which will always be practiced among schoolboys, among followers of athletics
and by individuals
means.
ho wish to settle a difference without resort to legal
Even in bull fights, the bull, doomed though he is, has his chance
to gore his enemies.
In the Great
ara man, platoon, company, ba.ttalion,
regiment, brigade were too small to perform the complete act of fighting:
to hit and to receive punishment.
It was one, or the other, for houra, for
days at a time. When it was the turn of your regiment to receive punishment,
to be punched and pummelled, it afforded you scant comfort to know that five
miles to the west another regiment of your on division was giving a dose of
it to the enemy.
A fight was somewhat like thia:
the Genaan guns open up
��-20-
against French infantry; eeeing this the French batteries retort by taking
German infantry as a target: then the German heaviee, fa.r in the rear, will
try to silence the French 75's, to blow them up; finally, French bombing
planes will retaliate with huge bomba on the German heavies.
Taken as a whole, in abstract, of course it is a fight.
of view of the individual?
What ia this?
But from the point
Or of any group of less than 15,000 individuals?
Does it not look like an execution?
In each case the odds are all against one party and the target is a
helplese victim, absolutely powerless against the hits of a bigger fellow
whose position and nature put him out of reach.
and the boxer.
They are the punching ball
There is a keen feeling of handicap in a bombarded battery,
or trench:: "Oh, give us a chancet" is the cry of their hearts.
But they
have to stay there, to hold the position assigned to them, under a shower of
steel fragments, and the courage required of them is endurance, the resignation of martyrs, if you could imagine martyre whose torment would be protracted so as to last over four years with periods of intermission for a
breathing spell.
In this kind of fighting Death becomes anonymoue.
falls right into the trench:
murderer?
a dozen men are killed or wounded.
A ehell
Who is the
No one will ever know, least of all, the murderer himeelf will
never know of his murder.
The moder~ warrior could not pride himself in displaying the scalps of
his dead foes.
none at all.
left in it.
He is unable to know whether he killed several hundred or
The saying that war is murder, has almost no litteral truth
In that respect and from a certain ethicel angle, one might say
that modern war is more moral, since not one man in several thousands has
knowingly committed murder.
War has become a catastrophe, a world calamity:
but for the first time in human history it is no longer murder.
In a like
catastrophe, soldiers feel the almighty force of the blind furies unleashed
against them.
The shell is Fate, one of the
the inflexible one.
Motp~t
of the Greeks, Atropos,
If a shell qhould fall within a few yards of you, no
��-21-
power on earth could eave you.
the psychology of war.
This plain fact, perforce must change all
You may be the hero of your regiment, that would
not make the slightest difference to the shell.
It has no knowledge of
your courage, it cannot fear or respect your person, it is not impreseed by
your prestige.
Believe me:
the realization of this would have sobered
Achilles and made him feel a very frail little man.
If the renown of his
paet achievement did check the fighting ardor of the Trojans, lt would not
check the will to explode latent in a few pounds of T.N.T.
Formerly, cour-
age was a personal asset, it protected the hero's body even more than his
armor did.
Now courage is useless for this egotistic purpose, it serves
only to help along the cause one is fighting for, it ie a
country, with hardly any hope of recognition or thanks.
.f!!l!
gift to one'e
Courage, I eaid,
does not free one from fear, and fear is an insinuating kind of malady
which creeps stealthily into the hearts of even tried veterane.
I may com-
pare fear to seasickness that creeps in the sa.me fashion into its accustomed
victime, attacks other persans less frequently, and occasionnally conquers
some old salt of a skipper with years of navigation unscathed.
Both mala-
dies take advantage of some weakness in the nervous system, often a temporary weakness due to worry, mental fatigue or a depresaion due to sorrow,
to a bereavement for example.
This explains the case of the skipper 1ho
always defied mal de mer until it caught him in astate of lowered resistance.
The difference is that fear, for all the various classes of temper-
aments, is much more frequent than seasickness.
For both the pain is some-
what alleviated by the reaction of will, which is courage.
ilitary courage assumes two forma:
the active and the passive; the
courage of those who go "over the top", and the courage of those who hold
a position under bombardment,--violent motion and immobility.
form gets practically all the public recognition:
motion.
The active
citations, medals, pro-
It is natural that it should be so, because the active form is
spectacular, and mainly it
~
deeds, it performs work tangible, meaeur-
��-22-
able in yards of terrain conquere d, in prisone rs taken, in spoils captured .
But all soldiers do believe that it requiree lees of the spirit of sacrific e,
lese control of one's emotion e, less nervous resistan ce, lees moral energy
than the passive form. The colored troops used by the English and the
French could not stand still at their post under severe bombard ment.
The
experim ent was made early in the war, a.nd after that, colored troops were
speciali zed as shock units (stosstlt Uppe).
They had long periods of reet in
the rear and made very brief appariti ons at the front in sectors of attack,
coming just intime for the jump off, and being relieved a few hours after
they had attained their objectiv e.
The common saying among combata nts was:
"It requires the nerves of a white man to hold a trench under heavy bombard ment."
And even the white man's nerves were none too good at it.
Thus far I have spoken of courage and fear in individu als.
ception ia now antiqua ted in military techniqu e.
This con-
Headqua rtera were inter-
ested only in collecti ve courage and fear, and the two words were replaced
by the one word morale.
Morale is not at all synonymo us of courage and fear,
it is only the utilitar ian aspect of their possible manifes tation.
orale
is the etate of mind of a unit satisfie d or dissatis fied, contente d or grumbling, confiden t or diffiden t, discipli ned or unruly ••• which makes that unit
liable to, open to courage or fear.
In the same fashion have physici sts
discarde d the unscien tific words ~ a n d ~ for the precise term tempera -
.E!!.! (high or low.)
Morale like tempera ture moves along a graduate d scale,
it is high or low, it is never fixed, its index moves up and down for every
-man, platoon , regimen t or division .
The readings were made by a morale offi-
cer in each division ; the results were centrali zed in the Morale Bureau of
G.H.Q. where they were translat ed into curves. The best or the poorest division at any one time did not preserve its rank more than a few monthe, or
a few weeks, and in some cases, more than a few days. To take part in an
unsucce ssful attack, attended with heavy lasses, was enough to ehatter the
morale or a good, reliable division .
R
dy must be applied at once.
The
��-23-
divis ion was relie ved, sent far away from the din of battl e,
in comf ortab le
bille ts. Rest, sleep , good regul ar meals , lette rs from home
distr ibute d
once a day, mode rate drill , all these worke d wond ers and soon
the divis ion
was itsel f again .
If it had been kept on the firin g line too long after its
break down , the moral e would have reach ed so low a level as
to need sever al
month s for recup eratio n and even then the forme r h1gh level
migh t be irretriev ably lost.
A coIDinon pract ice intim e of short age was to send a tired
divis ion for part or whole of the recup eratio n perio d, in the
first line of
a quiet secto r. Most of the German deser ters I have seen comin
g tous , be•
longe d to such abuse d or overu sed divis ions that had been denie
d a comp lete
rest.
While the war was going on, all that I have said about battl
e psych ology
was matte r of cominon know ledge at the front among the milli
ons of fight ers
on both aides . But peopl e at home conti nued to live on the
ld stock of
tradi tiona l ideas .
The fight ers soon reali zed that a gulf had opene d behin d
them, cutti ng them off from their kin, their frien ds, their
fellow coun try.
men, who, beyon d the dange r zone, serve d too, by stand ing and
waiti ng. It
seeme d impo ssible to bridg e the abyss . There came then into
being two
world s, two mann ers of life, two natio ns: the one at the front
, the other
in the rear, at home.
Truly , war news passe d from one to the other , over
the gulf, and priva te corre spond ence, even men: wounded going
to hosp ital,
soldi ers on leave going home, but ideas never passe d, nor visio
ns, image s of
the dread ful exper ience . The two natio ns migh t speak the eame
langu age,
but words had diffe rent mean ings and evoke d diffe rent sensa
tions . The front
under stood that the rear did not under sta.nd them. It was so
diffi cult to
expla in the war, and then there was the censo rship which acted
upon the principle that bare truth was indig estib le food or the citiz ens,
it had to be
prepa red with a good sauce . One must be caref ul not to enerv
ate the publi c,
not to endan ger bis mora le with crude revel ation s.
the gr at weapo ns of the war?
Was not secre cy one of
And the secre t wae kept ••• until the day when
��-24-
it could be told.
The rear felt vaguely that there was some mi under•
standing between it and the front.
The rear were puzzled.
Many of them
concluded that the combatants were too proud of the spectacular and glorioue partit had been their privilege to play, that they had contempt for
the soldier who was given a safe soft job, and for the civilian who warmed
his slippered feet by the home fires, while the trench men stood in heavy
boots plunged in icy mire.
The rear was mistaken.
The trench men were
irritated by the war talk of the rear, by their candid patriotism, by their
offhand use of such terrible and sacred words as courage, devotion, sacrifice, never yield, the bitter end, our heroism.
utter these words?
What right had they to
Among trench men they were ever present in their thoughte
but never uttered, for they conjured a world of agonies, horrors and mental
diaputation.
The word
~
actually provoked their anger.
I saw one day
one of my men reading a Paris newspaper in the trench, and aa his eyes met
the word heroes in a very patriotic, confidenceTinspirin g article, the
poilu grew red in the face, crumpled up the sheet with rage and threw it in
the mud:
"Heroes!
heroes!" he gasped, suffocating; "those people in Parie
make a joke of our misery."
Now the war is over, but the gulf still lies between the two worlds;
now
il
can be told, a.nd i t must be told.
Not by army leaders, nor by poli-
ticians, nor by brilliant war correspondents, however often they visited the
front, but by cornbatants, men who did not visit, but who dwelt for years in
the kingdom of fear and death.
Every private, every officer who lived the
life and dangers of a private, must tell his long-kept secret, in hie
home, in his village, to the public at large if he is able to lecture or to
write.
For the sake of the future peace of the world, combatants ought to
break down the fence of public indifference, and laying aaide all reserve
or proud modesty, they ought to speak out, to unburden their souls.
The
weight some have been bearing is too great, and their solitary meditations
may lead--have led indeed--to suicide.
I ask earnestly of the American
��-25people to have pity for their soldiers, in a spiritual much more than in a
material sense. · They do not ask for your admiration, nor for you hero-worahip:
these would remind them painfully of your lack of understanding.
niat
they crave is your sympathy, your kindly interest in their ghastly experienc~
your curious desire to learn from them the simple awful truth, in such opposition with the traditions you accept, and to understand the lesson paid for
in millions of human lives.
If the lesson is unheeded, if the Great Illu-
sion preserves its prestige, another great war will come, in spite of conferencee, leagues, limita}ons of armament and pacifistic propaganda.
Listen to
the combatant, he is the true pacifist, because pacifism rests not on the
knowledge of peace, but on that of war, and here, I repeat, none but the
combatant knows what he is talking about.
That is the gist of an after dinN
ner speech by General Lejeune, head of the Marine Corps and who commanded in
the Ch~teau Thierry eector the fifth and sixth regimente of marines at the
fight of Belleau Wood, the bloodiest action (of thet scale) of all American
engagements in France.
I had finished writing this lecture when l read in the Atlantic Monthly
for December an article by a colonel of artillery, a
est Pointer:
Shock and After."
Read it, if you haven't~
I enjoyed the article, painfully.
reread it if you have:
"Shell
you will discover now between the lines the things
left unaaid and which I said today.
Soldiera of other countries, and especi-
ally of France, are writing freely about their unadorned war experiencee •.
But the American soldier appears to be inarticulate and he lives his after
war days in sullen, dwnb, unrelieved, uncomforted stoicism.
Poor fellow1
Is it that the American people, more so than Europeans, ha.a made the eubject
of war taboo?
Oris it that the war experience of the A.E.F. albeit long
enough for them to tas t:t the bitter cup to the dregs, was too short to accustom them to the idea that fear in battle is hwnan, and normal, and shamelees- and ennobling?
Perhaps both reasons explain the heart breaking silence.
The
above mentioned article may be the first of a seriea, it may prove to be the
��-2sthe national awakening to war reeponsibilitiee.
small still
Awaiting thi9, I beseech you to inform yourselves on the subject, to
read what is already available in the simple, truthful soldier confessions;
the French ones, the best of them at least, being the most beautiful things
ever written on the subject.
Read Maurice Genevoix, in Sous Verdun, unfor-
tunately still garbled by a censorshi~ that passed every word of the bitter,
unjust Barbusse.
Read Paul Lintier (a master of style like Genevoix) in
Ma Piece, and in Le Tube 1233, the bloody manuecript of which was found on
hie dead body, when he and his 75 were both destroyed by one shell.
Read
I
the three books by Lieutenant Pericard, who sharee with the aviator Guynemer the honor of being the most popular French hero.
made the sublime call:
"Debout les morts!"
He ie the one who
I shall conclude with one of
his pages, dealing with his fear:--"I have spoken freely. of my fear:
twenty times in Face~ Face, ten times in Ceux de Verdun.
said tome:
about
One of my friends
'You are exposing yourself to unjust judgment with this frank-
ness of yours.
If we are to believe what you say, you are a coward.'
If
in my stories I have given the impression that I am a coward I must have
expressed myself very inadequately.
to be cowardly is repugnant tome.
ie animal and ignoble.
the front.
It pleases me to confess my fear, but
Fear is human and noble; the other thing
Yes, I have euffered from fear ever since I came to
I have suffered from it more than others perhaps, becauee my
wild imagination hurled me into fear, hands and feet bound.
imagination is, the more harmful it is.
The more active
The reactiona caused in a man by
the threat of danger are in direct ratio#, not to his courage, but to his
impressionability.
The man most open to fear, will not be the leaet brave.
Thue thought Socrates, who was in the fight at Delium and at Potidoea, a.nd
this war has made clear tome the following sentence from the Phoedo
until then had remained mysterious:
cause they are afraid.••
hich
'O Simmias, men are valiant only be-
��
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Monographie imprimée
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Ouvrages imprimés édités au cours des 16e-20e siècles et conservés dans les bibliothèques de l'université et d'autres partenaires du projet (bibliothèques municipales, archives et chambre de commerce)
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Courage and fear in battle according to tradition and in the Great war : lecture delivered Feb. 14, 1922 at Williams College in the series of weekly public lectures by the Faculty
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Histoire
Description
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Des écrivains à « Debout les morts ! » de l'adjudant Péricard pour galvaniser sa compagnie, Norton Cru analyse l'héroïsme et la lâcheté aux combats pour conclure, avec le Phédon « Ô Simmias, les hommes ne sont vaillants que parce qu'ils ont peur »
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Cru, Jean Norton (1879-1949)
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BU des Fenouillères - Arts, lettres et sciences humaines (Aix-en-Provence), cote MS 75
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1921 (ca)
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domaine public
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Notice du catalogue : http://www.sudoc.fr/241446643
Vignette : https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/files/vignette/BULA-MS-75_Cru-Norton_Courage_vignette.jpg
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application/pdf
1 vol
26 p. dactyl. : 5 pl.
22 x 28 cm
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eng
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text
monographie imprimée
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https://odyssee.univ-amu.fr/items/show/431
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Europe. 19..
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BU des Fenouillères - Arts, lettres et sciences humaines (Aix-en-Provence)
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Note : une référence à l'"Atlantic Monthly" de décembre 1921 indique que Norton Cru a terminé de rédiger cette conférence à la toute fin de 1921 ou au tout début de 1922<br /><br />Ce tapuscrit fait partie d'un lot de documents offerts à la BU des Lettres d'Aix par la veuve de Norton Cru, Rose Cru, et Hélène Vogel, la jeune soeur de Norton Cru.<br /><br /> Pour plus de détails, lire le billet de Marie-Françoise Attard-Maraninchi, <em>chercheure au sein de <a href="http://telemme.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/membres/Marie-Fran%C3%A7oise_Attard-Maraninchi">l’UMR TELEMME</a> (Temps, Espaces, Langages, Europe Méridionale-Méditerranée) à Aix-Marseille Université</em> : <a href="https://tresoramu.hypotheses.org/752" target="_blank" rel="noopener" title="Le fonds Norton Cru à la BU de Lettres d’Aix-en-Provence"><em>Le fonds Norton Cru à la BU de Lettres d’Aix-en-Provence</em></a>
Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) -- Aspect psychologique
Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) -- Littérature et guerre