Those of us who had a hand in some part of the Battle of the Marne
were not slow to comprehend who the enemy was we were fighting and why
we had to fight him to the death.
Among the many things that will be always engraved on the tablets of
my memory, the deepest is of the time when I was on guard at the field
of battle on the Ourcq, north of Meaux, on the extremity of the battle
line of the Marne. Field of battle I have just written. No, it was not
a field of battle but a field of carnage. I have forgotten the corpses
I met in the roads or in the fields with their grinning faces and
their distorted attitudes. But I shall never forget the ruin that was
everywhere, the abominable manner in which the fields had been laid
waste, the sacrilegious pillage of homes. That bore the trade mark of
German "Kultur." That trade mark will be enough to dishonor a nation
for centuries.
I see again those humble villages situated along the road to Meaux,
Penchard, Marcilly, Chambry, Etrepilly, where a barbarian horde had
passed. Since there were no inhabitants remaining--men whose throats
could be cut, women who could be violated, or babies to shoot
down--the horde had vented its rage on the furniture and the poor
little familiar objects in which each one of us puts a bit of his
soul.
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