h the Marne, had
likewise failed. Then the Germans had gone back to the frontier. The
old boundary line of Bismarck is now in many instances an actual line
of fire, and nowhere on this front are the Germans more than three or
four miles within French territory.
If you should look at the map of the wholly imaginary Battle of Nancy,
drawn by Colonel Boucher to illustrate his book, published before
1910, a book describing the problem of the defence of the eastern
frontier, you will find the lines on which the French stood at Saffais
indicated exactly. Colonel Boucher had not dreamed this battle, but
for a generation the French General Staff had planned it. Here they
had expected to meet the German thrust. When the Germans decided to go
by Belgium they had in turn taken the offensive, but, having failed,
they had fought their long-planned battle.
Out of all the region of war, of war to-day and war yesterday, one
goes back to Nancy, to its busy streets, its crowds of people
returning from their day's work. War is less than fifteen miles away,
but Nancy is as calm as London is nervous. Its bakers still make
macaroons; even Taube raids do not excuse the children from punctual
attendance at school. Nancy is calm with the calmness of all France,
but with just a touch of something more than calmness, which forty-six
years of living by an open frontier brings. Twenty-one months ago it
was the gauge of battle, and half a million men fought for it; a new
German drive may approach it at any time. Out toward the old frontier
there is still a German gun, hidden in the Forest of Bezange, which
has turned one block to ashes and may fire again at any hour.
Zeppelins have come and gone, leaving dead women and children behind
them, but Nancy goes on with to-day.
And to-morrow? In the hearts of all the people of this beautiful city
there is a single and a simple faith. Nancy turns her face toward the
ancient frontier, she looks hopefully out upon the shell-swept Grand
Couronne and beyond to the Promised Land. And the people say to you,
if you ask them about war and about peace, as one of them said to me:
"Peace will come, but not until we have our ancient frontier, not
until we have Metz and Strassburg. We have waited a long time, is it
not so?"
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK.
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