FROM 1917 to 1918, the United States and France waged war shoulder to shoulder. From 1917 to 1924, on two hundred thousand acres of French soil, the United States and France undertook, developed, and maintained a social work for which no precedent existed. This effort was made on land drenched with the blood of the associated armies, around Soissons and Laon, in the most essentially French corner of France, the most charged with history, the most saturated with tradition, hence the least accessible to American understanding. Let us apply the test of hard facts to our analysis of contrasts by viewing this land and its life in the light of geography and history.

We are between the Oise and the Aisne, where converge the highways which, from east and north, lead to Paris. Here three provinces meet: Ile de France, Picardy, Champagne. North and south, the two rivers have pierced deep gaps running east and west. In between, their affluents have worn valleys perpendicular to their beds. Meeting in this triangle, the mother provinces have given birth to two 'pays' whose personality centering round Laon and Soissons has resisted the influence of their surroundings. Physical personality first, so different from the general aspect of the great provincial masses of Picardy, Ile de France, and Champagne. Moral personality, also ---the outgrowth of a series of events unparalleled in the annals of France.

Geology furnishes the basis of these characteristics. The region of Laon and Soissons, surrounded by an immense chalk formation, is a zone of transition in which the chalk, going down deep, is separated from the soil by calcareous masses cut up by waterways into good-sized plateaus. Contour, vegetation, hydrography, colour are all affected. Here and there outcroppings of lime; and from the sand and the sandstone a thick growth of hornbeam, ash, and birch arises. It used to be known as the Forest of Voas, but man having eaten into the woodland, it is now the forest of Coucy, forest of Saint-Gobin, forest d'Ourscamp, wood of Thiescourt, wood of la Cave, wood of Bouvresse, wood of Besme, forest of Compiègne. Here and there sand and sandstone give way to that rich loam which spreads over the black lands of Russia and across northern Germany, expands to the Belgian Campine, and triumphs in Picardy.

There it is the favourite soil of culture. On these plateaus, protected by their altitude against floods and by the nature of their soil against the forests, French agriculture was born. The view is as endless as the furrows. There the earliest plough knew no obstacle. For twenty centuries or thereabouts the Soissonnais and Laonnois have produced rye and barley and wheat and beets. The tableland laughs with rich harvests, yet the people live but poorly. Water is at an average depth of two hundred and fifty feet. The names of the villages which have ventured there, Chavigny-le-Sec, Berzy-le-Sec, bear witness to this drawback. We are in the land of wheat. Thanks to the strength of its roots, the ear supports drought which puts man to flight. On this tableland, men plough and sow and reap; with rare exceptions, they do not dwell.

The populated area is in the neighbourhood of the water which filters through the hillsides and runs in the valleys. So the villages encircle the plateau along a line traced by streams, which are at times overfed by the oozing clayey slopes. South of Laon, as around Anizy and Vauxaillon, lie marshes. In strong contrast to the barren greyness of the heights, this dampness favours a magnificent vegetation: trees, grasses, orchards, pastures. The sun aiding, a great diversity of cultivation brightens the hillsides. The Laonnois had its vineyards, the Soissonnais its market gardens, which surrounded with greenery the villages huddled halfway up the hillsides or lying in the valleys.

For more than two thousand years men have lived on this land in the same spots. The antiquity and continuity of human society---the privilege and burden of France--- are here imperatively made manifest. Nowhere did geographic personality assert itself earlier or more clearly. First the underground burrows of Gaul. Laon was originally a cave city. Proper names, the witnesses, says Liebnitz, of bygone civilizations, tell this hidden history in the valleys of the Oise and the Aisne. Creuttes, Crouttes, Crouy, Craonne, are its interpreters. Pommiers, Saint-Thomas, Pasly, Morsain with its Pierre Trouée, Vauxrezis with its Pierre Noble, Billy-sur-Aisne with its Pierre qui tourne à minuit, the wood of Pargny with its Druid remains, Pinon with its Celtic alleys, the tombs and coins unearthed in a hundred villages, all bear witness to a civilization already strong enough to reach out beyond its borders. Divitiac, King of the Suessons, was the first conqueror of England.

Rome appeared upon the scene! Thirty-eight roads cross and radiate from this region. Soissons, the military and administrative capital, was resplendent with Latin harmony. Open squares nobly planned, wide streets, houses which mingled their red tiles with the white stones of local quarries, the peristyles of the palaces, the splendour of the baths, of the amphitheatres, of the imperial establishments, of the armouries and mints and public granaries, all gave Augusta Suessonium the aspect of a metropolis in the days of the first Cæsars. Surrounding the city, rural villas and flourishing farms: forerunners of our modern villages. Vallisbona became Vauxbuin; Vallisserena, Valséry; Croviacum, Crouy; Muciacuin, Missy; Codiciacum, Coucy; Luliacum, Leuilly; Cotiola, Coyolles; Cuiciacum in alto, Cuisy en Almont; Cariciacum, Quierzy; Valliacum, Vailly. A Gallo-Roman official, Jovin, having built Juviniacum, Clovis won the battle of 486 there; it is now Juvigny.

At this early date, a social life whose features we can still trace took shape. The farm (curtis) grew into the village whose suffix denotes its origin; Blérancourt, Audignicourt, Bichancourt. If freemen gathered there, it became a vicus, and we have Vic-sur-Aisne. The agricultural unit found expression in the 'pays' (pagus) which grouped neighbouring villages; trading units also, in towns (civitates) from which grew cities and provinces. From the third century on, moral unity, the work of the Church, was to superimpose itself upon the others by its parishes and dioceses. A century later, the region was definitely organized. Men tilled the soil; the hillside bore the villa of the master; around it lay fields and the forest. Later, castles, symbols of protection as of oppression, were substituted by the misfortune of the times for the shallow ditches which in Roman days sufficed to indicate ownership. Later again, the monarchy razed the castles. Nearer still to us the Revolution partitioned the national domain. Neither the aspect of the land nor the essential conditions of life underwent the slightest change.

Essentially local communities, in which for centuries men have lived, laboured, suffered, thought, prayed, hoped, and died, as did their ancestors. Two rallying-points: the Church and the Commune. We may rest assured that even in our days a contemporary of Louis le Gros would find himself at home there. The houses all look alike and have always looked alike. There are farms, some large, some small, but all built foursquare to the winds, a barn outside the living quarters facing the entrance, a garden roundabout. Stone is used, not rubble as in Picardy and Champagne, for stone is everywhere and has been employed from the tenth century with magnificent prodigality. Except at Laon and Soissons, these stone dwellings shelter only tillers of the soil. For all time the soil has been their sole 'raison d'être,' whether they tilled it as serfs, owned it as nobles, or were clerks who lived by the transactions it entailed. The soil, the common bond of all, rustics and citizens. The soil, sole source of wealth and action. The soil, sacred gage of more than fifteen centuries of effort and suffering!

For this is the second characteristic: production first, then suffering. This land aspired but to grow grain. But because it is a highway, its grain has grown in gore. For two thousand years it has been raped by every invasion. From Clovis to Ludendorff, these fields have been trod by every conqueror, from north or east, who coveted the spoils of Paris. In days of turmoil, the Laonnois and the Soissonnais will ever be in the thick of the strife. For Laon and its hilltop, Saint-Gobain and its wooded massif, Coucy and its Chemin des Dames, are the bolts placed by Nature on the doors of the Oise, of the Aisne, of the Ailette, of Vauxaillon, and of Juvincourt, which bar the road to Paris. To force them, to seize the key to the heart of France, no sacrifices are too great. Because this land is where it is, because it is the threshold of Roman country facing Germanism, it was for twenty centuries to be a living frontier, predestined to martyrdom.

The narrow quadrangle formed by Laon, Chauny, Villers-Cotterets, and Soissons, less than one tenth the area of France, has been the scene since Caesar of more than two hundred sieges and pitched battles, to which may be added minor engagements and chronic devastations of which History has lost all count. Laon has been besieged on forty-two occasions, eleven times in twenty-seven years, from 922 to 949; four times in ten years, from 981 to 991; five times in seventeen years, from 1412 to 1429. Among its assailants, at times victors, at times vanquished, were Cymrics, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Burgunds, Normans, the Merovingian, Carolingian, Capetian kings, the chief officers of Neustria and Austrasia, the Dukes of France and the Dukes of Lorraine, the Plantagenets, the Bourbons, the Armagnacs, the Burgundians, the Imperialists, Napoleon, the Russians, the Prussians, the Austrians, the Germans. It is like some ancient cliff against which the waves beat everlastingly.

Let us go down to the arena in which Soissons lies. Thirty-two sieges and pitched battles have been fought there, and as frequently. Six in ninety-six years, from 883 to 979; eight in twenty-two years, from 1414 to 1436; four in seventy-three years, from 1521 to 1594; three in six weeks in 1814; two in five years, from 1914 to 1918. Among the leaders of the armies which clashed there were Divitiac, Caesar, Clovis, Syagrius, Sigebert, Chilperic, Brunehaut, Frédégonde, Charles Martel, Charles the Simple, Hugues of France, Otho of Germany, Hugues Capet, Charles VI, Charles V, Henry IV, Condé, Turenne, Napoleon, Wintzingerode, Blücher, Bülow, Mortier, without mentioning those of the last war. That after each ruin the city should have arisen again; that always after the cannon, the plough should have returned: that is the eternal mystery of French history.

As fully as its two capitals, the country between the Aisne and the Oise has known the same tribulations. Sixty times great armies have clashed there. Chauny was captured by the King of France in 1215, by the Duke of Burgundy in 1411, by the English in 1418, by the King of France again in 1430, by Maximilian of Austria in 1478, by Charles V in 1539, by the Spaniards in the next century. The plateau of Juvigny saw the victory of the Franks over the Romans. The Chemin des Dames has paid, how dearly History tells, for the strife between the Neustrians and the Austrasians, of which Trucy and on two occasions Laffaux were the battlefields. It witnessed the defeat of the Normans at Vailly; the supreme convulsions of Napoleon in 1814 at Craonne, Chavignon, and Vauclerc; the two battles of 1914, the two of 1917, the two of 1918. The farm of Hurtebise alone, and the tiny plot of land that surrounds it, have been taken, lost, retaken, and razed, seven times in a century. The stately walls of Coucy were stormed by the Duke of Orleans in 1411, by the King in 1412, by the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Orleans in 1419, by the English in 1423, by Mazarin in 1652. Mont-Notre-Dame was burnt by the Spaniards and by the Protestants.

For when foreign war was idle, civil war, religious war, and seditions came into their own. In 1178, the Bishop of Laon at Chailvet decimated his peasants who had revolted. With the aid of Thomas de Marle, Lord of Coucy, they took their revenge the following year. In the fourteenth century the Jacquerie razed more than a hundred castles in the Laonnois and Soissonnais. Then other bands: the Navarrais, flayers, outlaws, devils. After them Calvinism. Master of Chauny, it failed before Laon, but captured Soissons, which it sacked. Next the Ligue, and four more sieges with as many battles. Later the Fronde and the Revolution brought their devastation. For the door that leads to Paris was battered by civil enemies as by foreign foes. Civil war or foreign war, the results were always the same. They are scored deep in local chronicles. We read that in the fourteenth century 'it is at Coucy and around Soissons, that the greatest ill-doers are met with.' In 1414, this latter city, taken by the King and his Armagnacs, 'is pillaged clean, and by no report did the Saracens ever do worse.' Each time churches were emptied, communal goods confiscated, public buildings thrown down. It was, says a contemporary, 'an abyss of horror and darkness, of profound ignominy.' When Charles V, in 1539, gave over the towns to pillage, but forbade rape and assassination, he was lauded for such unaccustomed mildness as a benefactor of humanity. After the wars of religion the misery was such that Henry II and Charles IX had to forego taxes from Soissons, which was unable to pay anything. The wars of the seventeenth century led to famine after famine. Those of the nineteenth, of shorter duration were more bloody. As soon as labour returned and prosperity showed signs of revival, the plague broke out again.

Thus, through the course of centuries, these provinces were continually butchered and forever recovering. The souls of the peaceful peasants have been tempered by fire and sword. They never give way. They always come back. The last war found them broken to the game. Like others, it passed over them without forcing them back a foot.

AT this dread game of war the springs of life have here been strained almost to breaking point. The rise to preëminence of the four great forces --- Church, Feudalism, Monarchy, Democracy---which have made the world what it is, can be traced in the swell of the stupendous struggles which gave birth to French unity. To follow the growth of these forces and study their conflicts, no better observation post exists. Let us test this truth by the first and for long the most active of these forces: Religion. Bear in mind that we are in the home of Saint Remi, who wedded the altar and the throne; in the home of Calvin, who defined the premises of the Reformation.

As early as the third century, the Church asserted itself as a political power in the Soissonnais and the Laonnois. Remi, Archbishop of Rheims, and his suffragan of Soissons restrained the barbaric hordes after the defeat of Syagrius on the plateau of Juvigny. On the champ-de-mars of Soissons---between the Aisne, the slopes of Crouy, and Bucy-le-Long ---Clovis braved the anger of his followers and did obeisance to the Church. Here was tied the political knot which, by the marriage and conversion of the victor, prepared, the fusion of races. Here were laid the foundations of ecclesiastical power which was to play so decisive a part in the history of men, of things, and of ideals.

'Take for thyself,' said Clovis, 'as much land as thou canst ride over while I sleep.'

So the Archbishop mounted his horse and during the royal nap galloped at breakneck speed around Coucy, Juvigny, Leuilly, Anizy, which became holdings of the Church. He was driven off from Chavignon, and placed a curse upon the village: 'To labour always, and never grow rich.'

The domain of the Church was created. Quickly it grew. The bishopric of Soissons, founded in the third century; that of Laon, which dates from the fifth, waxed fat on royal bounties showered on their parishes and monasteries. Chilperic granted Fresnes-en-Lannois and Pierremande to the Abbey of Saint-Amand. Charles the Bald granted Guny and Ressons to Notre-Dame. The Abbey of Saint-Médard, in the diocese of Soissons, which had already received Crouy from Charles Martel, Vic-sur-Aisne from Berthe, the daughter of Charlemagne, Saint-Laurent, Saint-Waast, and the right to mint from Louis the Debonnaire, was to obtain Berzy-le-Sec and Coyolles from Charles the Bald. Charles the Bald also gave Vauclerc to the Abbey of Saint-Bernard; and his successors bestowed Pargny, Chavignon, Billy-sur-Aisne, and Trosly-Loire on Notre-Dame of Soissons. The Abbey of Saint-Vincent and Notre-Dame of Laon enjoyed similar largesse. Bishops and abbots, invested with secular power, fortified themselves as feudal lords. As early as 980, the Archbishop of Rheims built the first stronghold of Coucy, and, soon after, the Abbot of Saint-Crepin, the first castle of Pinon. The Churches of Saint-Médard, of Crouy, of Septmonts, of Berzy-le-Sec, and of Ambleny were also fortified.

The secular clergy, whose task was one of liaison with the times, strengthened its hold by multiplying the number of parishes. Elinand, the great Bishop of Laon, set the example and on all sides, in town and country, new churches blossomed forth. To the Cathedrals of Soissons and Laon were added Saint-Pierre à la Chaux, Notre-Dame des Vignes, Saint-Jean des Vignes, Saint-Remi, Saint-Leger, Saint-Crepin, Saint-Waast, Saint-Pierre du Parvis, Saint-Martin, Saint-Vincent. Throughout the countryside at Crouy, Coucy, Anizy, Pommiers, Belleu, Saint-Pierre-aux-Bois, Blérancourt, Mont-Notre-Dame, Missy, Vailly, Pernant, Camelin, Vic-sur-Aisne, Chevregny, Nogent-sous-Coucy, Chaillevois, Vaurezis, Corbeny, Urcel, Laffaux, Berzy-le-Sec, Ambleny, Vauclerc, Saint-Gobain, Saint-Nicholas-aux-Bois, Valséry, Mons-en-Laonnois, Saint-Julien, Royaucourt, village spires pointing heavenward bore witness to the ardour of local convictions.(2)

To the parish activities of the secular clergy were added the monastic labours of the regular orders. The monastery, in this world of violence, was the inviolable asylum where conscience took sanctuary. It sheltered the élite of the Church. It was, as they say, the entering wedge of the Church's holiness. By its importance one might gauge the warmth of religious fervour, and here that fervour shone with unsurpassed brilliance. Six abbeys were built by the Benedictine monks between the fifth and the tenth centuries, three by Cistercians between the eighth and the twelfth centuries; four by Premonstratensians; one by Johanneans; three by Minims; two by Capuchins; two by Feuillants; one by Picputians; one by the Order of Sainte-Geneviève; one by the Order of Saint-Croix; one Commandery of the Knights of Malta; besides five great convents and nunneries; all rich, powerful, sovereign, with their vassals, their men-at-arms, their taxes, their justice --- for centuries the only local authority of any stability.

Nowhere in France did religious art flourish more vigorously. Not only have we some of the finest examples of Roman and Gothic, but both are to be seen in astonishing diversity at every stage of their evolution. The genesis of style was admirably illustrated in the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Soissons, built in 655. As soon as the first inspiration dawned, which was to sweep away the clumsy Merovingian masonry by introducing vaulted ceilings; as soon as the earliest primitive Roman appeared, it was seen at Soissons in the crypts of Saint-Médard and Saint-Leger. And you could follow it through the countryside in many village churches: in the chapel of Sainte-Berthe, near Pargny; at Fontenoy, Camelin, Chivy, Trucy, Chevregny, Chavignon, whose semi-circular apse and stunted capitals gave a foretaste of the coming architecture.

When, after the great awakening of the year 1000, secondary Roman was at its best, with its semi-circular arches, its perfect curves, the harmony of its vaulting, its portals, and windows and galleries grouped and storied behind the high altar, its plain unornamented façades, its square and octagonal towers, the Soissonnais and the Laonnois owed a matchless adornment to the wealth of their quarries and the genius of their architects. The Bishop of Laon, the great Elinand, made his See the indefatigable centre of sacred art. A magnificent rivalry sprang up, to which bore witness the Abbey of Saint-Vincent at Laon, the Churches of Berzy-le-Sec, Ressons-le-Long, Vailly, Vasseny, Vaurezis, Nogent-sous-Coucy, the Abbey of Saint-Martin at Laon. From plainest to richest, from pastoral simplicity to monastic majesty, every form of pure Roman was here represented. It seemed that as far as this country was concerned, the lines of religious art were forever fixed.

Yet those lines changed and became more intricate, as several churches show. Buttresses, interlacing arches and aisles, unknown to the austerity of a preceding age, made their appearance. Recesses were cut into the massive walls, and tracery made its appearance. The lamp of force dimmed and the lamp of beauty brightened. Diffidently, at first, the Gothic sought to ally itself with the Roman. Nowhere better than between Oise and Aisne could the transition be followed. Barely suggested at Vaurezis by a single lancet arch, it asserted itself at Urcel with a Gothic nave and a Roman porch; at Pommiers, where, if the choir was Gothic, the transept and belfry were Roman; at Laffaux, where Gothic windows peered discursively from between Roman arches; at Saconin, where everything was Roman except the porch; at Coucy-la-Ville, in the chapel of the Knights Templar at Laon, and at Notre-Dame of Laon, where the divorce of the two styles was magnificently revealed.

Henceforth Gothic is queen. To gain height without sacrificing strength; to obviate the breaking of arches; to permit, without weakening the walls, the direct lighting of the nave, Gothic replaced the single arc by two arcs intersecting at the summit of the vault and strengthened the walls by buttresses. The churches of this age were more closely associated than previously with the life of the times. The architects were laymen. They were built by the people as a whole. They gave expression to local pride as much as to faith. Take stock of them, for no French province has a greater abundance: the Cathedral of Soissons, one of the most perfect of the thirteenth century; the Cathedral of Laon, of which Villard de Honnecourt says, 'I have visited many countries. Never, in any place, have I seen towers equal to those of Laon'; the Churches of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes at Soissons, of Ambleny, of Cœuvres, of Saint-Pierre Aigle, of Rouaucourt, of Paissy, of Mont-en-Laonnois; the Abbeys of Vauclerc and Valsery --- all bore striking witness to collective vitality. The builders proved their worth and handed down their fame to posterity, as attested by the proud inscription of Soissons: 'Sequuntur nomina eorum qui ecclesiam compleverunt.'

And how vigorous the race! What constructive effort at home, what wealth of contacts abroad! The pilgrimages of Mont-Notre-Dame and of Missy; the Councils of Soissons (744 and 1115); of Quierzy (849); of Laon (1146 and 19.33) made manifest the spiritual and ritual activity of the Church of the Aisne. The conventions signed by Hugues Capet With the Bishops of Soissons and of Laon attested its political power. Between the first in the year 907, and the second in 990, the throne of France was founded at Noyon. To Bouvines, the first of our national victories, the Abbey of Saint-Médard of Soissons sent its men-at-arms, who, the chroniclers state, 'full of prowess and gallantry fought as virtuously on foot as on horseback.' In the amazing epic of the crusades, the Churches of Soissons and Laon distinguished themselves by the great number and renown of the knights they sent: Yves de Nesle, Thomas de Marle, Raoul de Nesle, Hugues de Vermandois, Enguerrand de Coucy. The bishops closely associated with the beginnings of the third dynasty, privileged to receive the kings crowned at Rheims in their Château of Septmonts, were powerful in the royal councils. The Church between the Oise and the Aisne was unsurpassed in prestige.

Unsurpassed also in services rendered to the preservation of human knowledge and the safeguarding of civilization. Bishops, chapters, and monasteries were the guardians of the flame in the Dark Ages. They were the sole refuge of learning, erudition, and science in an era of brutality. In the twelfth century the school of Laon and its chief, Anselm, 'the doctor of doctors,' gathered together and preserved the vestiges of ancient thought. From their hands the lords received, with the laws of chivalry, what little discipline they were capable of. Bishops, such as William of Champeau and Jean Juvenal of the Ursins, were the honour of their province and the honour of their time. Their See of Laon gave Pope Urbain IV to the Church. The Church also provided the only charitable institutions for the poor and the sick; leperhouses, lazarettos, Hôtels-Dieu, hospitals, more numerous between the Oise and the Aisne than anywhere else in France.

But who says life, says struggle. Because a living force, the Church was stirred to its very marrow by the strife which divided France. Forever at war with the nobles who sought to usurp its lands and titles, it was to check them that Beraud, Bishop of Soissons, invented the 'Peace of God,' which feudal resistance restricted to a mere 'Truce of God.' Forever at war with the people, when the Commune of Laon obtained its first charter the Count-Bishop Gaudry withdrew it. Whereupon his flock very properly butchered him in a cask in which he had hidden and engraved on his tombstone these words, 'The Sheep have slaughtered the Shepherd.' (Pastorem jugulavit ovis.) Fifty-five years afterwards another bishop, Roger of Rozoy, decimated the militia of the confederated communes. Memories worth bearing in mind when modern times give rise to anti-clericalism.

More threatening than these political and social quarrels was the spiritual peril. I do not refer to conflicts of interest between bishops and chapters, nor even to conflicts of doctrine which led to the condemnation of Gottschalk and Abélard by the councils of Quierzy and Soissons. But in the sixteenth century, the Reformation rose up against Rome. Calvin spent his youth at Noyon-sur-Oise. He was curé at Marteville, a little farther north. In 1566 at Chauny the Calvinists set up their first stronghold. Laon resisted them, but Soissons fell into their hands and was sacked. The venerated relics of Nogent-sous-Coucy were fed to the flames. In no province was religious strife, continued by the Ligue to the threshold of the seventeenth century, more violent. Fifty years later it very nearly started all over again, at Laon, with Jansenism. All the hatred and the passion which religious wars have bequeathed to France is concentrated in this narrow region.

That is perhaps why the Revolution, not overbloody in the Soissonnais and the Laonnois, was hard only on Churchmen and Church property. Soissons, barely restored from past devastations, was once again sacked. The abbeys were seized, emptied, thrown down. For little or nothing a gang of speculators, formed of quarry-workers and vine-growers, bought the marvels of Saint-Médard and sold them for building material. Alone survived, with the crypt of the abbey turned into a warehouse, the portal of Saint-Pierre-au-Parvis, the spire of Saint-Jean des-Vignes and Saint-Leger. The Feuillants of Blérancourt were likewise devastated. It went hard with the priests and monks at Bichancourt, Saint-Gobain, Champs, Pont-Saint-Mard, Guny, Trosly-Loire, Nogent-sous-Coucy, Prémontré. In this last abbey the former Superior-General was thrown into prison. Few heads fell. But the blow dealt was a crushing one from which recovery was impossible. If not the moral strength, the splendour of the Church in these parts is gone forever.

Even when shorn of its privileges by the convulsions attendant upon the birth of the modern world, it retained the glory of having maintained, amid the individualistic anarchy of feudal times, the twin ideas of universality and unity. Thus the Church made possible the renaissance of criticism from which it suffered, and obliged its detractors to remain its heirs. After Saint-Remi, Calvin! Without the former, what would the latter have been?

Two temporal powers struggled under the eyes of the Church, with her and against her, for the heritage of Rome: the nobility and royalty.

Having gained a foothold in Gaul, the Germanic tribes applied to property those principles of personal subordination which bound them to their warlords: and it was feudalism. As early as the tenth century, the keep of Coucy, that citadel of feudal pride, was the outward and visible sign of this régime. The Gallo-Roman villa owed its security to the central power. Henceforth the individual was to rely on himself alone, and seek, behind the massive stone walls of his dwelling, to insure himself against the risks he inflicted upon others and which might recoil upon him. Built by an archbishop, usurped by a layman, Coucy, after throwing a wall around the houses huddled at its feet, was to dominate them by its central tower around which runs a double moat. Two hundred and twelve feet high, like a cathedral; three hundred and fifty feet in circumference; one hundred in diameter; walls fourteen feet thick --- here is the feudal lord's nest.

A fortress as well as a city. Ready for war with its embattled parapets, its machicolated turrets, its corbels, its loopholes, its moats, its drawbridges, its underground defenses, its dungeons, the castle had delicate ironwork and wood panelling, its hall of knights-gallant and its hall of ladies for festive occasions. It dominated and it protected. It protected against the neighbour, the robber, the enemy. In return for the protection, it dominated all who dwelt within its shadow. The region is full of such fortresses but Coucy is typical of them all. There was Quierzy-sur-Oise. There was Anizy. There was Bazouches, with its eleven towers. The spirit which dwelt there was still that of the leudes of Soissons. Roman order had vanished before the disorder of German individualism. For more than five hundred years we shall be able to trace it.

Two maxims tell the story of these times. The first, 'No lord without land; no land without lord'; and its complement, 'Who land has, war has.' To fight to win land, to fight to enlarge it, to fight to keep it, was the feudal ideal, the very negation of the idea of government. In the Soissonnais, Latin heredity reacted. In the Laonnois, the feudal principle reigned supreme. For this was the borderland of two forces whose struggles were merged in the first centuries of French life. Soissons was Neustria, and the continuous effort towards organized unity. Laon was Austrasia, with its ungovernable leudes, which gave Charlemagne to the world only to destroy his work. Up to the time of the Ligue, feudalism formidably entrenched in eastern France, was to defend its positions against the King who marched from east to west. The central axis of the struggle lay between Laon, the Austrasian, and Soissons, the Neustrasian.

During the lulls of battle, the men of those days, influenced by the Church, and the laws of chivalry aiding, set up and carried on certain forms of social life, the aim of which, though still a test of strength, led to a relative improvement in manners. The Laonnois and Soissonnais were famous from the thirteenth century for the splendour of their knightly tournaments. In 1175, Yves de Nesle, Count of Soissons, entertained his guests, among whom were the Count of Hainaut, Raoul de Coucy, Raoul de Clermont, Bouchard de Montmorency, at a great tournament which stretched from Braisne to Soissons. In 1187, the Valley of the Ailette, called the golden vale, was the scene of a similar festivity organized by Raoul de Coucy, in honour of the Duke of Limburg, the Counts of Hainaut, Namur, Soissons, Blois, the lords of Oudenarde, of Gavre, of Mortagne, of Braisne, of Quievrain, of Gistelle, of Rozoy, of Rumigny, of Moy, of Chavigny, and others too numerous to mention: a never-to-be-forgotten occasion which lasted not less than a whole week and the memory of which is still cherished by local tradition.

There were magnificent feats of arms, single combats, and feasts. The knights cut and thrust, ate and drank, paid their court to fair ladies. 'Arise, my lords, the day has come,' the heralds proclaimed at dawn, and the fête lasted till night fell. Many gages of love were exchanged in these meetings. Amid thousands, the chronicles have handed down the tragic story of Raoul de Coucy and the Dame de Fayel. We owe a vast literature, richer in sentiment than in tradition, to those intrigues of the days of chivalry. The Sieur de Coucy and Yves de Nesle, Count of Soissons, were famous poets. The first sang of his lady, and of Spring:

Commencement de douce saison bele
       Que je vois revenir
Remembrance d'amour qui me rappele
       Dont ja ne puis partir.

And sadly the latter echoed:

       Hélas! ma dame est si dure
       Que de ma joie n'a cure
       Ne de ma dolor guérir.

Then they resumed their armour, set their lances in rest against their foes, devastated their neighbours, defied the King, or crusaded against the unbelievers. Herbert de Vermandois died at Tarsus; Enguerrand de Coucy at Nicopolis. The lords of this country were the leaders of their day.

A great life, but a costly one. Costly to the poor who had to pay for it; costly to the great who gradually set everybody against them. The kings, with 'their long arms,' as Suger said, had much to do with this revolt, and derived no little profit from it. But not without woe. For they were anything but popular around Laon and Soissons, and each local monument bore witness to the precarious nature of their dawning power. In Saint-Médard, at Soissons, the nobles had shaven and deposed King Louis the Debonnaire. At Coucy, Hugues de Vermandois had imprisoned King Charles the Simple. At Quierzy-sur-Oise the edict making fiefs and benefices hereditary had been signed. Later, without arousing criticism, Enguerrand de Coucy, who had become Baron of Bedford by his marriage with a daughter of the King of England, took, advantage of this fact to obtain scandalous immunity for his possessions when the English made war in France.

And yet, from the beginning, fate had ordained that this corner of France should be the cradle of royal and national unity. Since the Treaty of Verdun in 843, the Laonnois and the Soissonnais have been part of France and they have always remained French, unlike our eastern, western, and southern provinces, which so often have changed hands. Before the Christian era, Soissons had been the capital of Divitiac; in Gallo-Roman times, the capital of Syagrius; under the Franks, that of Clovis and his successors. The kings of the first two dynasties called themselves 'Kings of Montlaon,' and Montlaon is Laon on its hilltop. The next three dynasties, which were to make of France a nation, instinctively clung to this country --- in which they resided and sought refuge --- covered it with buildings, remains of which have been handed down by the centuries.

In Merovingian and Carolingian times royal residences and palaces were built at Coucy, at Missy-sur-Aisne, at Coyolle, at Cuisy-en-Almont, at Quierzy. Clothaire died at Braisne; Charles Martel is buried there. At Quierzy, Pepin had himself crowned. Four times, from 754 to 769, he assembled his followers there, and there obtained their support for his expedition against the Lombards, our first Italian war. Charlemagne appeared --- and the land between the Oise and the Aisne was filled with his glory. In the Palace of Saint-Médard, at Crouy, the Emperor received Pope Leo III, organized his school of plain chant, and signed some of his most famous edicts.

At Saint-Médard also, Charles the Bald had his wife Hermintrude crowned, and hard by, at Chavignon in the Canton of Vailly, he held the first assembly of notables in 844. I have already mentioned the edict of 877, signed at Quierzy. In 936, at Laon, Louis d'Outre Mer was crowned. Although hailing from the east, the Carolingians soon saw that the Soissons and Laon triangle was an essential base. Already it was the heart of France.

It grew more and more so under their successors who were to build the nation. Duke Eudes, who paved the way for Hugues Capet's success, fortified the castle of Vic-sur-Aisne, to command the river and the port. In 987, Hugues established himself at Soissons, and in 992, at Laon. Between-times, when the nobles were off their guard in 989, he had himself acknowledged as king at Noyon: it was the dawn of monarchy. Even when Paris was made the capital, Soissons retained royal prerogatives. The kings held parliaments there in 1169 and 1212. At Laon they signed the Treaty of 1317, embodying the Salic law, which settled the succession. The village of Pernant, in the district of Soissons, will not soon forget the visits of Saint Louis. From the fourteenth century on, between the Oise and the Aisne, local history and royal history were one.

This seizure of authority did not go unchallenged. The feudal lords, heirs of Germanic tradition, and the kings, restorers of Latin unity, waged constant war. War began on the day when the jolly Louis V, always hither and yon, threw down more than half the walls of Coucy, in whose keep Charles the Simple had tasted the bitterness of feudal prisons. Later, Saint Louis, sitting beneath his oak, was to sentence another Coucy, whose soldiers had hanged three pupils of the Abbey of Saint Nicholas. Thus, for the first time in France was applied the principle, borrowed by royal jurists from Roman law, 'What the King wills, the law wills.' And now in the name of this same right, which, in the person of the King, had made so subtle a distinction between the prince and the sovereign, there appeared among the nobility at Laon and Soissons royal agents who were to be the undoers of feudal power. The King could still put the old question, 'Who made thee Count?' None dared to reply, 'Who made thee King?'

Let us follow the magnificent efforts which made France, the patient upbuilding of royal power in this land of transition, which is neither Champagne nor Picardy nor Ile de France, but the link of all three. What the Hohenstauffens failed in beyond the Rhine, the Capetians here accomplished. By direct annexation to the royal domain whenever possible; by the imposition of central authority upon local power when annexation was impossible, amalgamation continued unrelentingly. From the time of Louis-le-Gros, the, Laonnois was virtually included in the royal domain, and at each vacancy the Count-Bishop bowed to the royal prerogative of intervention. The Count of Soissons was now no more than a small feudal lord. The Coucys and the Vermandois alone remained powerful, but the process of erosion went on. Philippe-Auguste added the greater part of the Vermandois to his domain. In 1400, the House of Orleans bought the lordship of Coucy and the County of Soissons. Later, Henry IV, who through the Vendômes was heir of the Counties of Marle, of Soissons, and of la Fère, united them to the crown. It was a long and laborious process. So, without further delay, throughout the region, rights of succession were forestalled by political and administrative pressure.

At the end of the twelfth century, royal justice was administered at Laon for the bailiwick of Vermandois. In the thirteenth century, the Bishop of Laon was one of the twelve peers of France, whose newborn dignity attested the royal power. With Saint Louis the royal coinage and royal burghers made their appearance. In the fourteenth century, royal provosts were appointed at Soissons, Laon, and Coucy. In 1552, the Presidial of Laon was founded. After a few upheavals ---sieges of Soissons in 1414, 1567, and 1615; of Laon in 1594; destruction of Coucy in 1652 ----the aim was achieved: financial administration, the Treasury General at Soissons; political administration, the Intendance of Soissons; judicial administration, the bailiwick of Vermandois; military administration, the government of Picardy; at Coucy, at Chauny, at Craonne, sub-administrations. When in a suit over a succession in the Laonnois, the royal judges declared that 'The King cannot be vassal of any land,' their decision gave final expression to the work of ten centuries.

The King had broken the lord. Why? First, because monarchy was morally and intellectually superior to feudalism; because its authority was higher and farther removed; because it corresponded to the age-old need of order and stability; but also because from the earliest times monarchy had identified itself with an ideal that the nobility served only later: the national ideal. At the battle of 1125, against the German Emperor, Louis V was the rallying point. At the great fight at Bouvines in 1214, Philippe-Auguste carried the flag. Hugues Capet already boasted that he did not speak German, and under one of his successors the people of Sissonn echoed the same sentiment by petitioning for the right to change the name of their commune, Sissonn l'Allemande to that of Sissone la Françoise. When national pride thus manifested itself, it was to the King that it made appeal; it was to the King that it turned. Philippe le Bel was the hero of the nation when, returning some summons or other to the Emperor of Germany, he scrawled across the margin, the words 'Troup alement!'(3) Henceforth, the King was France.

What yesterday was feudalism now became rebellion and treason. When the nobles of the Soissonnais took the Duke of Burgundy's part against the King, no one was surprised at the violence of the repression in 1414. When the nobles of the Laonnois fought for the Ligue, Henry IV had the people on his side; and when, in 1594, he forced Laon to surrender after a severe siege, every one was happy. The revolt of Soissons during the minority of Louis XIII was rapidly suppressed. The Fronde was the final convulsion, and Mazarin, Abbot of Saint-Médard, of Soissons, as well as Minister of the King, met with the people's applause when he blew up the symbolic towers of Coucy with two tons of black powder. Order now reigned in France. The pushing back of the frontiers under Louis XIV, and their fortification by Vauban, gave the people of Soissons and Laon the feeling that order reigned abroad. National life had found its expression. The subject felt loyalty to France!

While the fate of these provinces was being debated, they continued to enjoy the special affection and particular solicitude of the monarchy. Francis I, Henry II, Henry IV, often resided there. It was at Folembray that Henry IV received Gabrielle d'Estrées, whom he afterwards established at Coucy, where she was brought to bed. At Folembray also he signed the edict of 1596, which paved the way to peace with the Ligue. Often, too, the Château de Vauxbuin, near Soissons, sheltered his amours. Soissons, Laon, Corbeny, had royal residences. Frequent gifts to the cities proved the affection of the kings. For years they furnished funds to build ramparts; and later, peace being assured, hospitals.

The nobility, removed from political power and deprived of its sovereignty, transformed its seats of war into seats of pleasure. Henceforth the nobles were courtiers, either of high degree like the Duke d'Orléans, successor of the Coucys, or commoners ennobled for services rendered to the royal house, like Potiers, Duke of Gesvres and Lord of Blérancourt; like Dupleix, Lord of Mercin. The peasant saw little of them, envied their wealth, and complained of their absence. There only remained on the land the minor nobility, too poor to go to Court, no better off than the commoners, yet threatened by the rising flood of anger against privilege. In 1789, they paid with and for the others, even the most inoffensive of them, like the charming Viscount Desfossés, who represented Soissons at the Constituent Assembly. As had been the abbeys, so were the castles doomed. Coucy illuminated on hearing that its lord, the Duc d'Orléans, had had his head cut off. Popular anger completed the work done by the monarchy against a political power which had become a social class and, in its new condition, had lost its raison d'être.

Monarchy also, a few months later, was to collapse in turmoil. In these provinces it had found the strength to enlarge the family fief --- at first small, then rounded out, at last grown wonderfully --- the family fief which in eight hundred years had become the France of to-day. Between Laon, Soissons, Chauny, we are in the heart of the country, where the kings built France. Here they placed their seal upon the work. Here were broken the assaults of the Armagnacs, of the Bourguignons, of the Calvinists, of the Ligue, of the English, of the German Emperors, of the Spaniards, and of the Germans. Individualism, courage, love of adventure, are the virtues which the feudal nobles bequeathed to this land. To our kings, the honour of having made it the keystone of the nation as well as the heart of France!

LAST upon the scene, but first by numbers, comes the anonymous crowd, which has taken centuries to pose itself, centuries to oppose itself, centuries to impose itself --- the People, who, throughout so many hardships, have found within themselves the strength to serve those who served France.

Genesis? Slavery! Roman law distinguished between the free settler of Soissons and Vic-sur-Aisne and the rustic slave of Coucy. But in either case it was the serfdom of man. The Franks changed nothing. The first guarantee of individual liberty came to the serfs of the Church when it permitted them to enter into wedlock at its altars. The second, paradoxically enough, came to them from feudalism, when feudalism, for its own sake, recognized the right of the serf not to be driven away from the land he cultivated. Settlers and serfs alike, riveted to the soil by unbreakable chains, found in it their real master. This gave rise to that indestructible love of man for the soil which, despite seditions, wars, and revolutions, has survived every liberation.

The serfs of the Laonnois and Soissonnais, no matter flow heavy successive yokes --- Gallic chiefs, Cymric brenns, Roman consuls, Gallo-Roman senators, Clovis, his sons, the Merovingians, the Carolingians, the leudes, and the officers of State --- retained enough introspection to respond, in the year 1000, to the appeal of the bishops. Stone upon stone, they raised the walls of cathedrals and churches. A great cry of hope rose to heaven, and on earth places of prayer, of meeting, of discussion. Thus were born our cities, with their sense of order, their turn for trade, their taste for organization. Thus was accumulated the wealth, which was one of the principal instruments of political freedom. Thus the tolling of the church bell, become the voice of the city, awoke the first longings for independence in the hearts of the people.

What did the people want? To live and --- in order to live --- to restrict in some measure the absolute right of requisition, personal and fiscal, which was the feudal lord's; to free, if not man's purse, at least man's body; to replace arbitrary power by a minimum of safeguards. It was natural that the cities should set the example, because of their population, which was more dense; because of their wealth, derived from trade. The communal movement resulted: 'a new and hateful word,' wrote the monk Guibert of Nogent-sous-Coucy. A word of no mean future either, seeing that in France as in Russia the most recent revolutions have found no better. In 1105, Saint-Quentin wrested its communal charter from the Counts of Vermandois. Five years later, Laon followed suit. A struggle was beginning which was to last for centuries.

A struggle whereby the Laonnois and Soissonnais were deeply divided --- a tragic and most bloody struggle. Laon had scarcely been organized as a commune when the Count-Bishop tore up the charter and paid with his life for this breach of faith. In 1128, a new charter which the canons of the chapter, unable to refuse, carefully defined: 'It is,' they said, 'a novelty by which the man of servile condition, by means of an annual payment, releases himself from all the duties of servitude.' The example was quickly followed. To cries of 'Commune, Commune!' Soissons, the other great ecclesiastical city of the region, demanded guarantees. And at the beginning of the twelfth century its tradesmen and artisans drew up their first local constitution, an empiric and imperfect makeshift halfway between the rights of the feudal lord and the aspirations of liberty. Then the countryside took a hand. Till then rural charters had been rare. Beyond those of Pommiers and Chevregny, granted by Louis d'Outre-Mer in the tenth century and that of Pont-Saint-Mard, which was of the eleventh, there were none. In the course of the twelfth century the communal flame spread like a forest fire. Nogent-sous-Coucy in 1117, Pargny, Filain, Condé in 1125, Morsain, in 1128, Vailly, in 1180, Marizelle, in 1160, Anizy, in 1174, Coucy-le-Château, in 1197, Saint-Pierre-Aigle, Crécy-au-Mont, Vaudesson, Coucy-la-Ville, Fresne-en-Laonnois, Folembray, Trosly-Loire, Allemant, Guny, in 1247, proclaimed the new law. Already in the midst of revolt, the sense of association asserted itself. Anizy grouped five villages to form the 'commune de Laonnois,' and the people of Crécy-au-Mont also sought the support of their neighbours. To curb the forces of feudalism, the law of the charter; to defend the charter, the strength of union.

Many a hard blow was given and taken. I have mentioned the drama of Laon in 1107, and the battle of Chailvet in 1178 between the Count-Bishop, Roger de Rozoy, and his peasants. In this duel the people would have succumbed but for assistance --- at times occult, at times overt --- from the King. In England feudalism was the handmaiden of the Monarchy against the people. In France, the Monarchy supported the people against the feudal lords. A common enemy? Joint action. Was the granting of a charter being negotiated? Some royal agent, counsellor of pleas, or doctor of laws lent a hand. If conflict arose, the power of monarchy intervened. The King in Council, not without advantage to himself, recorded the compromises reached by nobles and commons. The King confirmed the charters, once they were obtained: the Charter of Soissons in 1181, that of Laon in 1189, those of the Laonnois-rural in 1179 and 1259. It was a fundamental, traditional right of monarchy, and contributed as nought else to establish the royal prestige. The day when, hard pressed for money, the Monarchy abandoned it, and, as in 1771, suppressed the municipal liberties of Soissons to replace them by venal privileges sold to the highest bidder, the Revolution was not far off.

Another tie between the People and the Monarchy: national defense. Because the King was the first on the frontier if the frontier were threatened, the hearts of the people went out to him as the defender of France. Long before the privileged classes, the commoners of this region discerned the national character of the battle which Monarchy waged against its eastern and western neighbours. We have seen the men-at-arms of Saint-Médard opening the battle. In 1429, in the days of Joan of Arc, the people of Laon threw the English out of the town before the arrival of the royal troops, who had halted at Corbeny. In 1818, despite orders from Paris, the Laonnois, worthy of their sires, held up the surrender of the town to the Allies for a whole month. A new class was born, whose epic is history: the People of France.

The people insisted on having their say in matters of national destiny. In law, they had no right to do so; in effect, they had, because their money was needed. Here again both Church and Monarchy lent themselves to the wishes of the People, the former by throwing open its ranks, thus facilitating the formation of an élite chosen from the most deserving; the latter, by seeking the support of public opinion. As early as the thirteenth century, the bourgeoisie of Laon and Soissons attended the first States-General. Saint Louis, creator of the royal bourgeoisie, which after collective effort was to be the individual instrument of freedom, summoned two bourgeois of Laon with eight of their peers from other towns 'to consider the state of the Treasury.' The first political act of the Third Estate. At the States-General of Paris, in 1314, the Deputies of Soissons took a large part in the financial debate. In 1484, at the States-General of Tours, the six Deputies of the Vermandois presented the petition against excessive taxation. Jean Bodin, President of the Court of Laon, in the sixteenth century, was the orator of the States-General of Blois.

These men came from cities which despite wars and sieges had known periods of prosperity. In the fourteenth century, Soissons was reputed to be 'abounding in wealth and sunk in debauchery.' But what was true of the cities was not true of the country; and it was the awful suffering of the fields which prepared the stormy birth of modern times. There in the open were no walls to stop enemies or thieves; nought but a frightful succession of battles, of pillages, of oppression; the Hundred Years' War, the civil wars, the religious wars, which frequently forced the kings to forego all taxation from villages in the Soissonnais, where nothing was left. Against the privileged classes, who fought at the expense of the poor, the Jacquerie was the most plausible explosion of peasant wrath. Two centuries later, hardship was still a habit. Of it Antoine Richard, controller of finances at Laon, said: 'It is not only around Laon that many cultivators have given up their holdings from poverty and necessity, but also around the Thiérache .. . . The rich peasants have sold most of their birthright at very low prices to procure barley, oats, and bran to feed themselves and their families. The others are dying of hunger, sickness, and disease.'

France shone with the glory of Louis XIV, but the ills of the countryside were not remedied. Who has not read La Bruyere? --- 'One sees as it were wild animals, males and females, scattered through the fields, black, livid, and sunburnt, riveted to the soil which they harrow and turn with invincible stubbornness.' In 1757, a starving wolf carried off a young woman from the doors of Septmonts. This region, whose soil is the richest in France, suffered from chronic famine. In 1788, the provincial assembly of the Soissonnais declared that 'hardship has become excessive.' There were a few rare exceptions, a few families clinging to estates of the nobility which they were some day to buy in, and whence have sprung the rural dynasties of which more anon. But taken as a whole, the situation was lamentable, and the Marquis de Mirabeau was right when he said, 'Agriculture, as these peasants pursue it, is as bad as the galleys.' The vine-growers of the Laonnois poured their wine into the river, to escape ruinous taxes. What with tax-collectors who took half the produce of the land if the estate was large, and all of it if small, privations made worse by requisitions from Paris, epidemics ever on the increase, the 'pauvre peuple' was indeed very poor. However great its patience, such things could not endure.

When, in 1789, Bailly, 'labourer from Crecy-au-Mont,' and Leclerc de Laonnois, 'labourer from the Bailiwick of Chauny,' went to take their seats in the Constituent Assembly, everything was ripe for an explosion, psychological conditions as well as economic. At the call of newsmongers and lawyers, this people, which had already produced critics like Abélard, Calvin, and Condorcet, took up the thread of ancient sedition. From their ranks came Camille Desmoulins. the Kerensky of the Palais-Royal; Gracchus, the father of Communism; Saint-Just, Robespierre's alter ego; Fouquier-Tinville, purveyor to the guillotine. At the provincial assembly of the Soissonnais, in 1787, the first rumblings had been heard. Less than three years afterwards, from the Oise to the Aisne, the whole countryside was up and doing. The fever of Revolution was upon it. Following the rhythm of political crises, for seven years it was to give free rein to its passions.

First, the disappearance of the bishops, mitred abbots, canons, lords. Then, the appearance of Committees of Public Welfare with self-conferred powers of proscription, which from words passed to deeds. Names of streets were changed, and alongside the rue de la Montagne, Soissons had its rue de l'Indivisibilité, its rue Marat, its rue Ça Ira. Coucy changed its name from Coucy-le-Château to Coucy-la-Montagne and branded the Duke of Orleans. Bichancourt and Guny drove out or incarcerated their priests. The Premonstratensian monks, famous for their wealth, were dispersed and pillaged. In the garden of the Count of Lauraguais, at Manicamp, Saint-Just, deputy of Chauny, renewed the gesture of Tarquinius. When, a few months later, he sent orders to Paris to arrest all the nobles, no one mistook their meaning: heads were to fall like flowers. And the prisons were filling.

By good fortune, the Sieur Lebas, delegate of the Committee of Public Safety for the Soissonnais, had no taste for bloodshed. He mislaid papers, lost documents, and managed to drag out prosecutions, so that when the Terror ended, nearly all the accused from this region were still alive. Released from prison, they witnessed the execution of Saint-Just, who had sent them there. Little blood was shed. But the face of the country changed. At Soissons, churches and abbeys were savagely destroyed, for the people well knew for how long they had paid tithes. At Coucy, the castle, now the property of the Nation, was emptied of its furniture, even its doors and windows were taken. The Commune, hoping to save it, presented it to the hospital. But the hospital needed funds and turned it into a quarry, reducing it to such condition that the Duke of Orleans, thirty-five years later, was able to buy it back for six thousand francs. The Sieur Cagnon likewise demolished the abbey of Prémontré which he had bought for little or nothing in 1795. And at Blérancourt another gang of speculators treated the château and the convent likewise. Thieves and highwaymen infested the forests of Coucy and Saint-Gobain. Yet on fête-days the Goddess Reason was honoured by processions. A sans-culotte led a beflowered and beribboned plough over which floated this inscription, the voice of the soil in those hours of madness: 'The soil nourishes the State. The French respect and protect it.'

When all was over, the sons of Roman slaves and feudal serfs knew that they were sovereigns. Only, however, to surrender their sovereignty forthwith into the hands of Napoleon. Since then the Soissonnais and the Laonnois have thrice been devastated by foreign wars, but civil war has been unknown. The Revolution of 1830 was gaily carried through under the direction of the elder Dumas, who with a dozen firemen proclaimed the downfall of Charles X without the need of a single barricade. Other régimes followed, but their advent did not disturb the public peace. Fate reserved a new and heavier cross for this people. At the threshold of the drama how did they stand?

In its immense majority, a rustic race, working harder than its neighbours, known as doing more and better work, as first to garner the harvest, as quick to assimilate modern methods of agriculture. Its physical aspect is varied. The tall Dolichos of the north mingle with the swarthy thickset men of Mediterranean stock. For, with the Gaelic, Latin and German blood, which first coursed in its veins, has been mingled Norman, Flemish, Burgundian, and even Spanish. They call it the Picard race, and this name is as good as any other. 'Choleric Picardy,' said Michelet. Harshness is the dominating trait of these peasants. They are men of the soil; proud of their soil, because it is the best in France; in love with their soil, because they have seen it suffer. And this lends a note of bitterness to their pride as well as to their love. Bitterness towards men; towards men who have made the soil suffer.

Their conception of contemporary life, moulded by the history of the land, can be expressed in one word: property. Modern times which have made the people master of this soil are short and recent indeed compared to the centuries of servitude which have preceded them, centuries whose memory is ever present to the peasant. He knows that before working for itself, his family laboured for others. He has forgotten neither the time of the feudal lord, nor the slow conquest of his communal liberties, nor the legal confiscation by dimes, tithes, and gabelles. The day came when these chains were broken, and the son of the serf bought a homestead from the national domain, founded his own hearth in independence, and closed his fist, according to the stoic image, on acquired truths, for he is determined to retain forever the possession of the land which he owes to the French Revolution.

Does this mean that this region is politically united? No! The Laonnois and the Soissonnais of 1914, like the rest of France, were divided into two camps. There is a Right and a Left. There are Reds and Whites. The one clericals, the other anti-clericals. The one Conservatives and the other Radicals. But between these contending parties there is a limit to differences, and this limit is the soil. The soil is the rallying point and the basis of implied agreement. Quarrels are appeased if it is mentioned. To the extent that the most reactionary Conservative would never permit any one to lay hands upon the Revolutionary conquests to which he owes his holding, the most advanced Radical would take up arms against any one who suggested collective property. There is a deep-set unity of rural spirit which does not do away with political conflicts, but is stronger than they are and more durable.

The two currents of ideas, which for generations have sought to control the modern world, always form themselves into the same groups: those attached to dogmatic traditions which regulate; those attached to critical speculations which dissociate. Women, intimately sharing the lives of the men, are usually attached to the first of these tendencies. Men, even the most religious, are never entirely irresponsive to the appeal of free judgment. This is ordained by the intensity of their will, by their fierce determination to be the masters, the only masters of their property and of their acts. Nowhere is the inner conscience kept more secret nor better guarded. Nowhere is the sense of equality and independence more acute. The nobility has lost all authority and is in an absolute minority. The priest exercises only a conventional sway over consciences. Neither orders nor controls. Individualism is a religion.

The soil, passing into the hands of the people, has witnessed the formation among the people themselves of a peasant aristocracy which, enduring, has left an indelible mark upon things and ideals. Many families have lived for several centuries on the same stretches of land. The Lemoines of Saint-Aubin have ploughed the same furrows for three hundred and fifty years, and fifteen other families in the same canton of Coucy have holdings that date back for two centuries. The Demarcys of Beaumont (Canton of Chauny) have five hundred years behind them, thirteen other families, more than two hundred, and everybody else at least one hundred. Likewise in the Canton of Soissons, the twelve branches of the Fertés cultivate, and have cultivated since Louis XIV, some twelve thousand acres; and one might mention the Leroux of Tunnières, the Duvals of Ambleny and of Vezaponin, the Huberts of Septmonts, the Gaillards of Grand-Rozoy, without exhausting the archives of this splendid lineage. English, these people would have become lords; Americans, great bankers or captains of industry! Here they have remained kings of the soil.

The spirit of a race thus formed cannot be other than essentially local. Absorbed in his endeavour, which does not extend beyond the limits of his field, the Picard, from Oise to Aisne, allows nothing to divert him from it. His interest extends to the boundaries of his commune, not farther. He pays his taxes and considers himself even with society. If war threatens his land, he will fight to defend it. Ask nothing more of him, for he profoundly distrusts anything that might disperse his efforts. Neither the sense of association nor the notion of solidarity is at all developed in him. What the individual cannot do unaided must be done by the State. What the State cannot do will be left undone. You may call this impassibility, egotism, or you may call it pride. You will find it in every commune. Inflexible and hard to deal with, these men have purposely narrowed their horizon.

Within the range of this local patriotism, historical rivalries are as keen as on the first day. Chauny prides itself on being an industrial town in the centre of unchanging fields; as in olden days she used to pride herself upon her population, 'the largest in the Department.' Coucy, whose salt-bins had no equal for size, 'the largest in the province,' continues to look down upon the surrounding cantons. The cities are not less conservative than the rural communities. From papers more than a hundred years old I unearthed an amazing dialogue between Soissons and Laon, which for centuries have been in the habit of throwing into each other's faces 'the stagnant pools' of the marshes and the 'floods of Madame l'Aisne.'

The question was which of the two cities should be the capital of the Department. Soissons said: 'Soissons is a city which dates back farther and is older than the monarchy of which it was the real cradle; Soissons territory was the first to bear the name of France; Soissons was once the capital of the kingdom, and is now a capital in the French Empire; Soissons saw more than one king of the first two dynasties crowned or deposed, and was the seat of ten or twelve councils; Soissons has all the public services of the province, the storehouse for the wheat, and is one of the principal granaries for the feeding of Paris.' Laon answered in three lines: 'Our city has always had a peculiar aversion to despotism; our city bases its claims on its two hundred years' struggle for the establishment of its commune; and from its ramparts, one can see the frontier.'

When local spirit attains this power of feeling and of expression, centuries may pass, but the granite of character is not affected by the attacks of time. In 1914, the Laonnois and the Soissonnais were what we have seen they were throughout their whole history. War did not take them by surprise. They knew it well, and there was a generous response to national need. But the danger passed and it became necessary to reconstruct what war had destroyed. Then the opposite reflex came into play, isolating the individual. Then, by an astounding paradox, we saw a foreign people bringing to this country the Taylorized efficiency of its methods, its passion for solidarity, its imperative faith in common social effort. Mating of two ideals, or rather of two instincts. Extraordinary experiment in the conciliation of contraries. In truth, one hardly knows whether to be more surprised that it was attempted, or that it succeeded!