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Updated: June 23, 2025
I must own that history, with its records of bitter enemies yesterday, bosom friends today, does not inspire one with much hope of seeing the dreamer's vision of universal peace realized. Still, I must confess that the attitude of French and English to one another today is almost thrilling. The English Tommy Atkins and the French poilu are delightful together.
The proprietors of the tiny epiceries must have been rapidly making their fortunes, considering the prices that they charged the unfortunate poilu, dreaming of some small luxury out of his five sous a day. But as one of them, a stout, smiling lady, explained to Joan, with a gesture: "It is not often that one has a war." Joan had gone out in September, and for a while the weather was pleasant.
This, as nearly as I can set it down, is what he told us: That the French fellows picked up baseball in a way that is absolutely amazing; they were not much good, it seems, at the bat, at any rate not at first, but at running bases they were perfect marvels; some of the French made good pitchers, too; Tom knew a poilu who had lost his right arm who could pitch as good a ball with his left as any man on the American side; at the port where Tom first landed and where they trained for a month they had a dandy ball ground, a regular peach, a former parade ground of the French barracks.
It seemed to be of endless length, and presented a most enticing spectacle. Four fortunates in each compartment had got the racks, otherwise the passengers stood: on the footboards, in the corridors, on the seats. If any one opened a door the pressure was such that at least six people fell on to the platform, and in one carriage a small poilu was being squeezed through the open window.
Your big friend, LlTIGUE, A. I thought you might be interested to see what sort of a letter a real poilu writes, and Litigue is just a big workman, young and energetic. You remember you asked me if the Allies would ever bring themselves to replying in sort to the gas attacks. You see what Litigue says so simply. They did have asphyxiating bombs.
Their compassion waged war against the Hun. The same is true of the American Ambulance Units which followed the French Armies into the fiercest of the carnage. They confirmed the poilu in his burning sense of injustice. That they, who could have absented themselves, should choose the damnation of destruction and dare the danger, convinced the entire French nation of its own righteousness.
Their attitude could not be called determined for there is not enough mental action in it, though there does exist an indisputable tenacity which is appalling. How they lack that infectious ardeur, that splendid élan which characterizes every little poilu! But they just plod on like a great machine, lacking intelligence in its parts, each vital, however, to the perfectly-fitted whole.
Also it was good to speak one's own tongue again, and although at present there were but few men to be seen in the neighborhood under sixty, there were military hospitals in the nearby villages. Moreover, there was always the prospect of the return of some gallant French poilu for his holiday from the trenches.
Everything might be worse than it is, says the poilu, and so he has composed a litany. Every regiment has a different version, but always with the same fundamental basis: "Of two things one is certain: either you're mobilised or you're not mobilised.
It is not only the physical loss they suffer, but the thought that no longer are they of use, that they are a care, that in the scheme of things even in their own little circles of family and friends there is for them no place. It is not unfair to the poilu to say that the officer who is blinded suffers more than the private.
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