BOOKS.
GEORGE SAND ON THE LATE WAR.* THE title of this interesting volume on the war which Madame Dudevant (George Sand) has published is not quite exact ; the book would have been more fitly called "The Jour- nal of a Provincial during the War ;" since, although the• writer was driven from her home in the Iudre to the houses of friends in the Creuse, she soon returned to her beloved Nohant, and there remained. It was not the " Prus- sians" who expelled her and her family from the dwelling in which, or near which, she had lived for half a century ; it was the small-pox, "an enemy more blind and wicked than war." Vainly, she says, they tried to remedy the evil,—" le paysan chasse le mOdeein, ou le voit arriver avec effroi,"—not the sole testimony in these pages to the almost savage simpli- city of the country folk. Retreating south, with children and grandchildren, the fugitive arrived deep iu the Crouse at Saint Loup, on the first step of the mass of mountains which rise aloft in Le Puy do Dome and Auvergne. A long drought had withered leaf and flower, the earth cracked, the streams and streamlets dried up ; for six months no rain had fallen in the Creuse. Water fit to' drink, water for ordinary purposes, was scarce. In the granite gulfs of the Tarde, whose roaring torrent is impassable in winter, there were only pools here and there. The vivid imagination of Madame Dudevant, though constantly pre-occupied with images of the sufferings on the battle-field, found a brief repose in a nature which she loves now as fondly as ever. But the war is not to be shut out. In the midst of a momentary enjoyment of the silence, the granite scarps and peaks, the walnut woods and rare flowers and insects in the ravine of the Tarde, she hears a voice saying, " Here is a retreat sufficiently fortified against the Prussians!" At once, to quote her phrases, " Tout s'evanouit, In nature disparait. Plus de contemplation. On se reproche de s'etre amuso un instant. On n'a pas le circa d'oublier. Va-t-en poesie, to n'est bonne a Hen 1" Yet even after this (September, 1870), when the sufferings of the French became still more poignant, Madame Dudevant found no small relief, if not momentary peace, in her boundless, genuine love of nature. Descriptive passages, often so wearisome, are in her pages like the phrases of instrumental music flowing between the verses of a tragic, ballad, oases of repose in the midst of fiery ex- citement and the wearing strain of painful attention. Although it is not likely that many persons in France felt as keenly as George Sand, yet there must have been thousands whose sufferings were of the same nature and were just as real, if not so extended and pro- found. Over and over again she complains that sleep has deserted her pillow ; and in one place she says, " Ne pas dormir est le supplice du temps ; quand la fatigue Petnporte, on se raconte is matin les
roves atroces insensOs qu'ou a faits." In another, "Les insomnies sent deivorantes, on ne les compte plus,"—and this only at the end of November ! All over France, more or less, through those dreadful months, this plague of sleeplessness must have been epidemic. How the observation of a physical fact, which calls out the sympathies of all, brings home to one the exacting pains of war. Here is another significant little anecdote. Aurore, her granddaughter, was so delighted with the beauty of the snow that she wanted to sleep in it, and said she envied the soldiers that enjoy- ment,—" comma l'enfance a des iddes cruelles sans le savoir " * Journal (Fun Voyageur pendant is Guerre. Georges Saud, "(Enures Chasies." Paris : Levy Prbros.
The same little maid heard her elders say that everything precious must be hidden. Aurore passed the day hiding her dolls ! It was not only from the "Prussians" that the country people had to con- ceal their valuables. There were, it seems, francs-tireurs, who were highwaymen in disguise, and who did a large business in the pro-
vinces. As the form of this book is that of a journal, the substance of the entries varies day by day, sometimes fact, sometimes argument, sometimes passionate invective ; but throughout, as one might anticipate, there is present an undertone of suffering and sorrow which casts a shadow over even the brightest pages. Never is there any outburst of hope, still less any expression of faith in the possibilities of a successful issue. From the very first Madame Dudevant despaired. Her memories of 1813 and 1815 came surging up, and she declared that the drama of 1870, though less grand, was wore appalling than that of 1815. The temper of her mind, saddened by long and painful experience, is shown iu the phrase, written before Coulmiers :—" Nous noes faisona l'effet de condam- nds h mort, qui attend du hasard le jour do l'exdcution, et qui bout presads d'en finir parcequ'ils ne s'intdressent plus k rien." After Coulmiers she writes :—" Lo Gendral d'Aurelle do Paladinea, nom singulier, est an pinaclo aujourd'hui. C'est, dit-on, un bosoms defer. Pauvre General! s'il no fait pas Pitnpossible, it sera vite chichu,"--a prophecy soon fulfilled. Again, still on the morrow of Coulmiers:—" On ao demand') si l'on pourra supporter quelque temps encore ce daespoir gdndral sans devenir fou, hl.eha, on
mdchant,"—words which, not the less because they are extravagant, mark profound discouragement.
The reader will not, therefore, be surprised to learn that this veteran Republican, looking out upon France in so sad a frame of mind, did not sympathize with the Government of National Defence, at least, not with the Tours Delegation. Gambetta's trust in the traditions of '92 and distrust of the Army found no favour in her eyes. Site thought it puerile to oppose " I'dld- ment civil," the improvised levy, to the trained Germans. She was alarmed at the optimism of the "'rents dictators." She wanted peace, and when told that honour commanded resistance, she answered, "Do not believe that France is degreded and lost because she can no longer make war ;" and she found some conso- lation in the assertion that a man to be a good soldier must be a savage, that the Germans were successful because they excelled in barbarism ; and that, despite the corruption infused into them by Imperialism, the French were still the most civilized people in Europe. " L'Allemand," she ejaculates, " est desormais is plus beau soldat de l'Europo, c'est-h-dire, is plus effacd, Is plus abruti dos citoyens du monde." Although the Tours delegation might endorse this language of passion, they did not and could not share in the motives which prompted it ; for M. Gambetta at least believed heartily in his own methods of saving France, and he indubitably breathed,into thousands of others the fire of his own convictions.
IIe did much ; he moved the provinces as no other man, throughout the war, moved them ; and to him it is owing that France, when she yielded, not with his will, yielded with harness on her back and arms in her hand. The following powerful passage, written towards the end of October, may be accepted as an exaggerated description of the truth :-
" Le Gouvernoment do lit Defense semblo condamnd a tourner dans un corals vieioux. Il espAre improviser une armee ; ii frappe du pied, des legions Bartent de terra. 11 proud tout sans choiser, it accepts sans prudence toes les devonements, al exigo sane humauitd tons les services. Il a boaucoup trop d'hommes pour avoir assez do soldats. II ddgarnit los ateliers, it laisse la charm) chive. II dtablit l'impossibilitd dos communications. 11 amble qu'il sit des plans gigantesques, A voir lea mouvemonts de troupes et do materiel qu'il epAre ; male lo desordro oat offroyable, et it no parait pas s'en. douter. Les ordrea donne ne pouvent pas etre executes. Le produateur est saerilie au fournissour, qui ne fournit riot ii temps, quand it fournit quelque chose. Rion n'est prepare, nulls part pour rdpondre aux bosoins qua Fen area. Partout los troupes arriveut it l'improvisto ; partout elles attendant, dans lea situations critique les moyens do transport et do nourriture AprAs une dtape de dix longues Hones, ollos restent convent pendant dix houres sous la pluio, avant quo lo pain lour soft distribud; ellos arrivont haraits6es pour occupor des camps qui u'exiatent pas, on dos sites dejit encombres. Nullo part les ordrea no sent transmis on temps opportun. L'administrations des Chemins do for est surmenee ; on certain endroits, on met dix heuros pour faire dix 'tenets ; lo materiel manquo, lo personnel est insuillsant, los accidents sent de tons lee jours. Les mantras moyons do transport devionnont do plus on plus rarest on no pout plus &banger les' decrees. Tons les sacrifices soot demand& a la foie, sans qu'on setnble Be dauber quo les uns paralysont los 'nitres. On s'agite demo- suremont, on n'avance pas, ou les resultats obtonus sent recounts tout-a- coup dosastreux. L'action du Gouvernement rossomble I► l'ordro qui serait donne A tout un peuplo do passer ►1 la foie our lo milme pont. La foule s'entasse, s'otouffe s'ecruse, en attendant quo lo pent s'effentire."
On the other hand, we may remark, for the Tours delegation, that they felt bound to act at once with whatever they could lay hands on, because they believed Paris would fall unless succoured atones, and that it was nobler as well as more expedient to make instant effort and fail, than to fail without any effort ; better to have such a substitute for an army as could be mustered than leave the country absolutely defenceless, absolutely without the means of weighting the scale when the time for treating arrived. Moreover, they intended to fight on after Paris had surrendered, and fight to the last. Nevertheless, on this, as on many other vital points, the impressions of Madame Dudevant are well worth consideration ; all the more as she could not have stood alone. M. Gambetta, especially, filled her with a distrust only less profound than that she felt in the attempted revival of the spirit and methods of 1792. Admitting that he was honest and sincere, she found him young, without experience, without political or military knowledge, with- out judgment ; in short, she held that he was not equal to the task he had undertaken, and was not aware of his own unfitness. One cannot help thinking that the woman's heart, lacerated by the spectacle of so much pain, had the mastery over the woman's brain in this severe and sometimes scornful estimate of the man who seemed to cause the prolongation of a horrible strife, which to the feminine critic appeared hopeless from the beginning ; and one cannot but remark that it was the total absence of any heroism of feeling from such characters as that of Madame Dude- vent, that actually rendered Gambetta's task so much more hopeless even than it was.
Not the least interesting and valuable sentences in this remark- able journal are those which reveal the attitude of the peasantry during the war. Madame Dadevaut, at least, knows well the cha- racter and beliefs of the rural folk whom she loves and has always loved with a genuine affection. She has been and is a Republican by preference, but she does not allow her convictions and feelings to blind her to the facts. Two things she predicates of the peasant, —he is not Republican and he thirsts for peace. But although his soul is in his fields, in his grass lands, in his harvests of corn and wine and chestnuts, he is not without some political sense, for the practice of universal suffrage under the Empire has done this much,—it has given the peasant a love for his vote. " If you take away our votes we will not pay taxes." Formerly he said, " Peu m'importe." The difference is immense. Madame Dude- vent thinks that education should have been spread far and wide, before the vote was accorded to the ignorant and unhappy ; but the vote has been accorded, and now the consequences must be faced as well as may be. Writing at the end of December she admits that the people did not represent heroism ; they longed for peace, and generally blamed the obstinacy with which the Government sought to preserve the national honour. The peasant thought that Paris should have capitulated long before, and regarded patriotism as an obstacle to peace. If a vote were taken, she correctly predicted that the peasant would neither cast his suffrage for the Empire which began nor for the Republic which prolonged the war ; the vote would be for peace ; but she refuses to blame pauvre Jacques Bonhomie,, she pities him because he has been kept systematically in a state of infancy. When Gambetta, at the last moment, still urged guerre otarance, resistance jusqtat complet euiseinent, the peasants were- enraged, and an old man said to George Sand :—" Ile s'y prennent comme ca? On leur fera voirqu'on n'attrape pas les mouches avec du. vinaigre." It is easy to see from these passages how the Empire obtained an absolute sway in the provinces, so long as it repre sented public tranquillity ; and it remains to be seen who will secure the votes of rural communities thus governed by " fear and egoism," when next there is an appeal to the people. At all events, the vote-loving peasant, with his distrustful and narrow views,. will be a powerful ally of that party or man who may be able to gain his confidence.
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