HOW FEAR CAME TO PARIS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 149, 18 November 1914, Page 3

HOW FEAR CAME TO PARIS.

GENERAL PERCIN, TRAITOR. A CABINET OVERTHROWN.. SOME MYSTERIES EXPLAINED. AND SOME UNEXPLAINED. By Gelett Burgess, in "Collier's Weekly." (America.) Still flutter the flags of Paris—the hundreds of thousands of flags. Shops and houses, every window and balcony, lias its tricolour flung out into the air. Oh, the brave little cotton flags in the ■narrow dark itreets! No quarter of Paris is too poor to hang out the beloved flag of France. How brightly they fluttered a month ago! But today—limp, faded, soiled—how they droop. How Paris has drooped—how its hopes have faded since the war began! After the inspiration of those first hours came the wave of patriotism and. the uplift of courage. Then Paris settled down to silence. And at last, after weeks of agonised anxiety, came fear* to Paris. Was it indeed fear, though? No, nor panic—except in the minds of weaklings and strangers; but great was the shock of revelation that Paris is the very focus and target of the war. No crowds now march the streets shouting, "To Berlin?" Long ago vanished all hopes of a speedy triumph. , No—for the news has gone from bad to worse, from worse —but no; Paris does not doubt, has never doubted, never will doubt, the inevitable end—victory! August was a month of mysteries. We read the papers, read them all every day, then turned one' to another and asked: "What does it mean 2 What are they doing? What are they waiting for?" Day after day,came the amazing, the perplexing, the maddening communications of the War Office—for all Paris could make of them they might have been written in Wonderland, or Ithaca, N.Y. Rhetoric to throw at the birds, yes; but as for information — why, one might as well go to the fortune teller. The French, it would appear from the official reports, were always advancing, always winning, always charging impetuously with that cold steel which the Teuton feared. Uhlans were driven before them like the wind, the Germans fled like rabbits. They were starved, too, according to thjp papers. Why, you could go out ana catch a bunch of cavalry with a slice of of bread and jam! Why, then, did we not advance? W'y weren't we already in Belgium, hotfoot, all over the place? Why, when the communiques did mention a town, did we have to place our little flags always a little father west? So, week,by week, Paris clamouring for its daify bread of information, was given these wonderfully polished stones. The General Staff fed Paris with stultifying paradoxes until finally it outdid the literature of nonsense in this historic utterance; it made even careworn Paris laugh: "We have now retired to our entrenched lines, from which we would not have advanced had it not been for the gallant bravery of the Belgian troops." j* Paris laughed, Germany laughed, the whole world laughed, yes; but the news was grim. What! Retired to our entrenched frontier line? Paris had thought, of course, that we were already overrunning Belgium, rusliing to the assistance of heroic Liege, galloping over the frontier long ago-, bucking tlie German centre, and running round the ends, halfway to Berlin! Oh, no! The army, it appeared, had intended nothing more than to sit tight and let the Germans come on. •What had happened? What was wrong with General Percin, in command of the "first region," the forward lines? Tales began to leak out in Paris. From the etat major to the lowest private in the ranks the stories trickled, step by step; changing no doubt, at every repetition, but always coloured with the sinister doubt of—what? Incapacity? Insubordination? Treachery? The sergeant de ville told the concierge that General Percin had a German wife. The Republican Guard had a friend doing sentry duty at the Ministry of •War; he toid a reporter and the reporter confided it to a waiter, and the waiter told me. In some way all Paris was soon whispering it—that, at a critical moment in the battle of Charleroi, General Percin had been' ordered to support the English troops. The Germans were bottled up in a tight position, in a hollow, I believe—- , easily cut up. But Perein did not advance; the English were not supported for twenty-four hours—some say forty-eight; and the consequence was' —our retreat. So iar, in the main, all stories agree. It has never been mentioned in the papers, but Paris has already established an effective underground railway of news, and to-day all Paris believes the tale. What really happened? Did the General deny ever having received the orders, and was the despatch found when he was arrested (if he was arrested) in an inside pocket of bis overcoat? No one knows, No one will know for years, perhaps. And the General himself? What has become of him? Nobody seems to know that either. He is in the military prison at Ctierche-Midi, said some. He was shot, said others. Some papers asserted, soon after the battle, that General Percin had "resigned his position and had joined the volunteers"— an obvious absurdity. All we knew for sure. was that he had been relieved from command. But now, it is reputed, he is inspecting the formation of new artillery divisions (it is Percin who is responsible for the famous "75" gun which has terrified the Germans) and the Socialist papers are trying to defend his reputation. For Percin is a Socialist, and a great friend of Mcssimy, the late Minister of War. Both have been ardent opponents of the three years' compulsory military service. Both had been greatly hated, and Percin especially as tha originator of the "fiche" system in the army; for, being a bitter anticlerical, he had invented this underhand method of detective reports to card catalogue the activities and failings of every Roman Catholic officer. Later, it turned out that Percin had evacuated Lisle when told to hold it—had evacuated it so hurriedly, in fact that ho left the keys of the fortress, so to speak, in the doors, and twelve trainloads of supplies which the civilians had to hustle away after the army had gone. The other day I met a soldier who had fought at Charleroi. He told me two stories. He said: "I saw all my friends killed in less than three minutes. We . had entered a little village, thinking ' it unoccupied by the enemy. But they had a mitrailleuse in a cellar window—and zut! Out of three hundred and fifty men of my company only thirteen were left *live.' • He pointed to a scar on his cheek. The other story was shorted. "D'you know what Percin did?" he asked. "Why, he actually > put the Territorials (men from thiryfive to forty-(eight) on the first firing line!' Now, the first story may shock you; but it was the second which appalled all France. It meant, if true, ' that the General had lost his head and T had sent his weakest, most ill-trained, troops to sustain the brunt of the action. It was «n ugly —no

doubt about it. Another scandal was the criminal lack of ammunition. The papers, of course, handled the matter gingerly; or, not handling it gingerly enough, appeared with square patches of white paper where the type was ordred to be cut out by the military censor. Oh, there was no doubt about it, though—there was one terrible week at the front, and a panic at the War Office, that but few in Paris know, and that no one in Paris dares talk much about. Machine-guns were abandoned by the roadside for lack of cartridges. In a week, however, the hastily equipped factories at the ACagic City recreation giounds and elsewhere more than made up for' the shortage. At first X could scarcely believe the story, but an article in a morning paper concerning the manufacture of munitions of war in Paris was <?o mutilated by the censof that it was evident that some sucli disaster had happened.

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET. On top of this came the defeat in Aisaee. All over Paris one. still sees the now pathetic picture of France rescuing Alsace. Lieutenant France, 'mid smoke and shell, there embraces .beautiful Miss Alsace, while gallant soldiers tear down the boundary post of the frontier. This allegorical picture haunts every news stand with its ironic promise. For, alas! that rescue, so long, so ardently hoped for, has, for the moment, failed. Mulhouse has been entered —and evacuated; it has beeiT recaptured and again deserted. So, in the 'Plactt de la Concorde, the statue of Strasbourg, this August, has been alternately bedecked with flowers and crape. Back, back, back, our little pin flags crept over the map—over the Vosges, scurrying into France. Again Paris demanded: "What the devil is wrong now?" Only one paper was bold enough to explain. It was the Fifteenth Army Corp? that was rotten this time. And next day, Lord! how the fishwives and vegetable women in the great market of Paris, les Halles, were screaming from one to another: "Ah, those cowardly Marseillaise! The Marseillaise never were Frenchmen, and never will be! Shot in the back!" Furious were the military censors that morning, for never before had the iiiurio of a regiment or division been mentioned. The indiscreet paper was sharply rebuked, and the corps from Provence, was whitewashed—praised for their bravery the day afterward, for holding their own after having been "surprised."

•Surprised, yes, that was it. Surprised so much that they turned tail and ran for ten miles, as all Paris knows today. Why weren't the first of these panic-stricken troops shot down in their tracks by their own officers before they had stampeded an army? Only the captains and majors know, and they will never tell.

What is the answer? Politics, French politics—the only thing France has to fear in this war. The military clique —every man helping his friend, and everyone helping himself. Royalist against Republican, Clerical against Socialist. Above all, favoritism—a strongly entrenched bureaucracy which, until almost too late, not even France's desperate need could overthrow.

DOWN WITH BUREAUCRACY! Bombast and braggadocio still were the official communiques of the War Office. There came a day soon, however, when the best they could say was that there was not a German soldier on ■French soil. Then, presto! The Uhlans were over the border, and refugees from Brittany were flying southward. German ojivalry was carrying terror all over the countryside, at Lisle, at Caanbrai, at Douai, and south, still further and further south. The flying squadrons were dispersed by the Territorials, but there were always more Uhlans, more and more, till before we could believe it, mon Dieu! it was the hulk and mass of a German army that had swept over the border. It was invasion! Then Paris awoke and rubbed its eyes. Now Paris is used to revolutions. It has had them of all shapes and sizes and colors —-Republican, Royalist, army farces, and communist in "dead earnest. But never a revolution before such as the patriotic uprising which fused all France into one compact, determined mass, cast politics into the rubbish heap —how long will it stay there ?—and created a new, non-partisan Ministry upon the basis of efficiency alone.

AFTER THE SHAKE-UP. Mcssimy, the pacific; the blunderer, was retired with the rest of the Cabinet. Retired? He was fairly kicked out; for, of.all that Ministry, he was the only one who was'not thanked for his services. Milerand became Minister of War, and Joffre General-in-Chief. Michel, the blunderer, who has been demoted from General-in-Chief to Military Governor of Paris, and from that still lower, handed over the city to Galleni. Oh, there was a great scurrying to and fro of generals in Paris that week! You saw their splendid uniforms in taxicabs here, there, and everywhere. Pan came up from the south, Joffre came down from the north; the English came, and General French entered Paris, cheered like a victor.