and their
cripples, and giving their youngest and their manhood to the God of
War. What is the magic in this tune so that if one hear it even on a
cheap piano in an auxiliary hospital, or scraped thinly on a violin in a
courtyard of Paris, it thrills one horribly? On the night of August 2,
when I travelled from Paris to Nancy, it seemed to me that France
sang La Marseillaise--the strains of it rose from every wayside station
--and that out of its graveyards across those dark hills and fields, with
a thin luminous line on the far horizon the ghosts of slain soldiers rose
to sing it to those men who were going to fight again for liberty.

Since then it has always been in my ears. I heard it that night in
Amiens when the French army was in retreat, and when all the young
men of the city, not yet called to the colours because of their youth,
escaped hurriedly on truck trains before a bridge was blown up, so
that if they stayed they would be prisoners in German hands. It was
these boys who sang it, with fresh, clear voices, joining in a fine
chorus, though not far away the soldiers of France were limping
through the night from abandoned positions:

Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces feroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons!

I listened to those boys' voices, and something of the history of the
song put its spell upon me then. There was the passion of old
heroism in it, of old and bloody deeds, with the wild wars of revolution
and lust for liberty. Rouget de Lisle wrote it one night at Strasburg,
when he was drunk, says the legend. But it was not the drunkenness
of wine which inspired his soul. It was the drunkenness of that year
1792, when the desire of liberty made Frenchmen mad. . . The men
of Marseilles came singing it into Paris. The Parisians heard and
caught up the strains. It marched to the victories of the Republican
armies. "We fought one against ten," wrote a French general, "but La
Marseillaise was on our side." "Send us," wrote another general, "ten
thousand men and one copy of La Marseillaise, and I will answer for
victory."

A hundred years and more have passed since then, but the tune has
not gone stale. Again and again in the Orders of the Day one read
that "the company went into action singing La Marseillaise, Lieutenant
X was still singing when, after carrying the enemy's position, he was
shot