Roger Allier

Front matter

1^^

ALLIER

HIS PARENTS

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction v

Foreword xi

Foreword

This book was first written for relatives and friends. Those who knew and loved Roger Allier still love him and would like to know him a little better. They pool their recollections. They re-read together the old letters. The uninterested may find this wandering among relics a little tedious ; but those who linger over these remembrances in poignant grief, have only one regret: that they cannot stretch out the journey. The correspondence the pages of which they turn with deep feeling is rather voluminous; they quote only a small part of it, and they are sometimes tempted to ask themselves why they have not reproduced more.

It would, of course, have been easy, with the hundreds of letters at their disposal, to publish a collection which would have constituted the diary of a chasseur alpin from 191 1 to 1914. Such a diary would not be without value. Certainly it would be wrong, in these tragic hours when every regiment piles sacrifice upon sacrifice, to set up an odious comparison to the advantage of any one. The savage hate of the Germans, however — and their admiration — for the "Blue Devils" is a well-known fact, which no one has a right to suppress and which means much. What the chasseurs alpins have been during the War is explained quite simply by what they were in times of peace. You understand it all when you have before your eyes the diary of an alpin, beginning with the day when he took his place among his comrades as a private up to that day when, after serving his time as a non-commissioned officer and officer in all the rigor of training, he

xi xii FOREWORD

set out for the front at the head of the machine-gun section.

But one does not feel disposed to pay too much attention to the tales of "petty warfare" when the "big war" is unchained and marching in blood. The time will come when, to understand the things of today, it will be necessary to know the work of yesterday. A diary of this sort will then be reckoned at its full documentary value.

He who lives again in these pages was not by any means an exceptional being. Thousands like him are dead, men who were indeed his brothers and his equals in intelligence, morality, high ambitions, and determined devotion to justice and truth. Among these many had his ardent faith in God and in Christ. He is only one among them, and a place apart is not asked for him. But if the phalanx of those who are like him is so great and if the larger part of those who belong to it have been mowed down, one trembles before the crime which has been committed against humanity. And one shudders also at the thought of those who before God and men bear the responsibility of this crime committed under the invocation of the Lord of Hosts.

Argentieres, September 25, 1916.

The "Ecole Alsacienne" — Religious instruction — First impressions of Scotland — Tayport — Glentyan — Waverings — Vocation.

Roger Allier was born in Paris on July 13, 1890. His early life was uneventful — a normal boyhood, marked by no noteworthy incidents but the thousand trifles, recalled with eagerness by relatives, that indicate the awakening of personality. His studies were pursued at the "Ecole Alsacienne," from the time he was six years old till he took his bachelor's degree in philosophy. For many years in the Rue Denfert-Rochereau one could see the group of comrades, like a flock of sparrows, twittering and playing on their way to school, under the care of older boys more or less responsible for the lively group. Notable among these were Raphael Andoyer, Pierre Kruger, and Edmond Boegner.

Roger worked for the most part under those professors, many of whom are now gone, who have impressed upon the "Ecole Alsacienne" its distinctive character. One of them, Mr. Adrien Krebs, exerted a powerful influence on the boy. He was one of those teachers who regard teaching as much less a profession than a ministry — the shaping of souls, rather than the mere training of intellects. He possessed without knowing it the art of communicating by little tricks, of which his young hearers spoke sometimes with a smile and often with deep feeling, his consuming passion for everything that is beautiful and good. He communicated to his pupil a fervent love for the language and literature of ancient Greece. This love never left Roger. He wanted much to follow up the studies to which Mr. Krebs had introduced him. Though not specially drawn to the profession of teaching, he debated for a time whether or not he should enter this particular field, in order to pursue his passion for all that is summed up in Hellenism; it was for this reason that he enrolled in the course in advanced rhetoric in a lycee in Paris, and he never gave up reading the language he so greatly loved. One of his most-prized gifts from his father was a New Testament in Greek, printed at the Oxford Press, which was given him in 1905, Later, in active military service, he profited by an occasional leave to select from his library and take back his Homer or the Tragedies in the original.

His religious instruction began under Pastor Elie Bonnet, when he was in the fourth form. He was with him for three years. At the end of the third year, he felt himself still too young to take his first communion. It was not that he was deterred by doubts ; but he wished to do nothing of importance without a full understanding of the reason, and he was resolved to take this step only on that day when the act would mark a decisive point in his life. He asked his father during the school year 1 905- 1906 to give him special lessons in the development of religious revelation in the history of the human race. He wished to trace at the same time this development in the spiritual history of the people of Israel and in the Christian Church, and to make an appraisal of the place that Christianity occupies among the religions of the world. He was in the first form when on Whitsunday, 1906, he decided to take his first communion. He did this with such an elation of spirit that in the afternoon of that day, while at Versailles at the annual conference of the Student Christian Association of Paris, he felt the impulse to tell all the friends whom he met of what he had done that morning, and his eyes were shining with joy.

On leaving the first form he went to Scotland, where he spent two months. He had already been there with the hockey team of the "Ecole Alsacienne," to take part in a game with the pupils of the Naval School of Osborne. This time, however, he went all alone, to experience freedom. He experienced it, though barely sixteen years of age, in a place where he felt his individuality was deeply respected and where he was in contact with a virile piety which opened wide horizons to him. The weeks which he passed with Pastor Halliday's family, at Tayport, were surely among the happiest of his life. He threw himself with eagerness into all sorts of physical exercise — swimming in the Tay, long bicycle rides, endless hours of golf. He had as a companion on these rides and partner in his sports a young relative of the family, Sydney Martin, who fell afterward on the field of honor in France. At the same time he exposed himself to all sorts of questions.

Tayport, July 29, 1906.

At nine o'clock Mr. Halliday holds worship in English. All the members of the household gather for this ; and I, I follow with a New Testament in English. After that we go into what Mrs. Halliday calls the greenhouse, or conservatory. There Mr. Halliday has me read aloud from the newspaper. He tells me in German the words I do not know and thus I am becoming familiar with English politics (the Nationalists, the Liberals, the education bill, the motor-cars question), as well as all other events (the dissolution of the Duma, the interview of Mr. Stolypine and the exdeputies, the Dreyfus affair). . . . After reading the paper — which teaches me a host of useful words — I play the violin for an hour. Then, I learn the words which I have jotted down in my notebook. . . .

All his letters bring enthusiastic descriptions of what he sees, whether at Tayport, or on a trip with Mr. Halliday into the extreme north of Scotland, or in the excursions which he makes all alone in the "Highlands." He would like to engrave everything for all time on his retina: Dundee and its cathedral, Edinburgh, which he calls a wonderful city but does not wish to describe for fear of being unequal to his subject — he has heard it compared to Athens, but he thinks it is still more beautiful than the Greek city — the forests of beeches and Highland pines, the "Highland cattle" with their great heads and enormous horns, Loch Katrine with its wooded little islands where one looks for the silhouette of the "Lady of the Lake," the towns which recall the heroic victories of Wallace and Robert Bruce, Inverness with its Cromwellian fortress and Macbeth's castle, the battlefield of Culloden, the galleries of the cliffs of Lossiemouth in which he buries himself for hours with his bicycle lantern, "imagining myself," says he, "with Uncle Lidenbrock on his voyage to the center of the earth."

The religious life of Scotland immediately interested him. July 31, 1906, he wrote:

Last Sunday I went to church for the first time. The edifice is surrounded by a cemetery, and makes no show on the outside, though magnificent within. It was nearly full, although there was a service at quarter after eleven in the morning and another after luncheon.

Mr. Halliday preached a sermon on Christianity and the decadence of the Roman Empire. This I did not entirely understand, but I read and translated it in the afternoon with Mrs. Halliday. Some fine hymns were sung. Everybody sang, and not listlessly as in Paris. It is most extraordinary to hear so many male voices in a church. Every day the Salvation Army goes through the streets singing to the accompaniment of horns, snare drums, and a big bass drum. Sunday nobody works ; where ordinarily there are trains every half hour, there are but three in the entire day. People are expected to read only religious works. I read a considerable bit from my Greek Testament and started a life of George Buchanan. The rest of the afternoon we sang or played on the piano, the harmonium, or the violin.

He did not forget that he would one day be a student and he read with very keen interest a collection of meditations delivered before the students of Harvard University in the United States : "Afternoons in the College Chapel."

Two things struck him particularly in the Scottish piety with which he was being made acquainted. The first of these was a scrupulous regard for the truth, a horror of lying, a sort of worship of intellectual and moral loyalty. During the years that followed he never ceased to praise this trait. The second was the constant devoting of oneself to practical morality. . . .

These impressions are strong in the young Frenchman, who receives them without analyzing them keenly, but who will bring back from this contact with Scotland a fixed criterion of religious life and a firm insistence that conversion must give rise to tangible results. ■ The intimate relations betw^een his father and Missionary Coillard and the kindly recommendations of Mr. Alfred Boegner and of Captain Bertrand, of Geneva, secured for Roger the acquaintance of Mr, Richard Hunter, the great Scottish friend of the Zambezi Mission. He was invited to spend a few days at the latter's place in Glentyan, near Kilbarchan, in Renfrewshire, not far from Glasgow. There, he finds himself in the family of a great manufacturer, who devotes himself to his business from day to day without being a slave to it; who does not feel that his duty as a citizen and a man is ended when he has left his ofiice, and for whom leisure hours, wisely planned, are a means of enlarging unceasingly his vision of mankind and of taking in hand things that go far beyond the immediate horizon, such as the amelioration of the living conditions of workingmen, the construction of hygienic houses, the education of orphans, the preaching of the Gospel in the village near by, and an intelHgent share in the apostolic efforts being made in the heart of Africa or in India. While Mr. Hunter interests himself in the most minute details of the French Mission on the Upper Zambezi, one of his daughters, with whom Roger takes many walks in the neighborhood, is getting ready to go to India with the Young Women's Christian Association.

All these interests and many others proceed from the very heart of the piety which Roger meets at Glentyan. He is all eyes and ears for what surrounds him:

Glentyan, September i8, 1906.

Saturday being a holiday, Mr. Hunter did not go to town. He took me to Kilmacolm, about ten miles from Glentyan. It is a typical Scottish village, built of grey stone, on the side of a wooded hill, a veritable jewel of cleanliness and order. Some distance from there, on the summit of a hill, Mr. Hunter has built a home for orphans. There in that bracing atmosphere live about one hundred boys and girls whose education is being most carefully directed. They learn the trade for which they show the most pronounced natural ability and are prepared for the struggle of life.

The buildings, from which there is a splendid view of the surrounding country, are very interesting and should be described in detail. The interior is remarkably clean. Everything is shining. The corners of the rooms are rounded, so that there is no place for the slightest grain of dust to settle. The furnishings are in the "new art," at the same time simple and very artistic. All gives the impression of cleanliness and well-being. . . , Mr. Hunter has built throughout Scotland a large number of such houses.

Before leaving Scotland he stops for a week at Edinburgh, at the home of the Reverend Mr. Benvie, who takes it upon himself to make sure that he sees everything of interest in the city and its environs.

On returning from this trip Roger enters a class in philosophy. He has for a professor a very learned man who does not deny the existence of religious phenomena, but who studies these phenomena almost exclusively in insane asylums and thinks he has taken adequate account of them when he has been able to deliver some observations, more or less foreign, on a degenerate of the Sallo ROGER ALLIER

petriere or a demented one of Sainte-Anne. One should have seen the smile with which Roger, returning from a class where the professor had spoken to his pupils of some of his spiritual discoveries, related these to his father. Moreover, he took occasion to explain to the professor before his amused friends, that he had, in the life of normal men, met with much more interesting phenomena than those that he was bringing to them from the hospitals.

While he was attending this class in philosophy, a problem was continually putting itself before the young man with a force that was growing more and more disturbing : to what career should he devote himself after his graduation? If he had had a special aptitude for mathematics, he would have wanted to go to the Polytechnical School or the Central School to have one day the joy of building locomotives. He knew that it would be somewhat unwise for him to devote himself to that line. He had to be content to collect documents on the latest types of these engines. Up to his death he was a subscriber to an English review. The Railway Magazine. Physiology was not without its attraction for him. Above all, he would have Hked to continue the study of classic?! antiquity; but the teaching profession, most decidedly, did not appeal to him. He found himself at the end of the school year without having made any decision whatever. The long vacation was spent in a continual examination of conscience. He was not able to make lip his mind. It was during the prolonged meditations of two months spent on the Rigi that the thought of matriculating in the Law School came to him, and little by little, led him towards a resolution. It was during this sojourn that he felt, for the first time, in the ascent of Titlis with his friend Andre Guex, the awakening of his taste for Alpine climbing. His decision, however,

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE ii

had not yet been formed when the end of the vacation came. In order to give himself a few weeks' respite, he asked his father to enroll him in the advanced rhetoric course of a lyceum in Paris, This delay sufficed to draw him from his uncertainty. He told his parents that he was going to begin his. law course in November.

He never dreamed of becoming a lawyer. His aim was to present himself some day for the competitive examination for admission to the Conseil d'Etat.^ Two very different considerations led him to this determination. In the first place, being much interested in social questions, he could not help being struck by the way in which Parliament too often legislates on these questions. Nine times out of ten, the Houses enact laws that are almost inapplicable; the essential thing is to have made a showing in order to appease the voters. They adopt, then, a provision that a ruling of the public administration shall determine the actual method of application of the law. It is the duty of the Conseil d'Etat to render a little more nearly feasible the hasty work of Parliament. It is more and more evident that this body is called on to play a leading part, both in construing the laws voted by the Houses, and more especially in formulating proposed laws. Roger felt the importance of functions which, without ever bringing the least popularity to those who

^ "France has ... a special institution under the name of Conseil d'£tat, which was introduced by Napoleon I., and has been maintained since. It is presided over by the Minister of Justice or (in his absence) by a vice-president, and is composed of Councillors, Masters of Requests (Maitres des Requetes), and Auditors, all appointed by the President of the Republic. Its duty is to give opinion upon such questions, chiefly those connected with administration, as may be submitted to it by the Government. It is judge in the last resort in administrative suits, and it prepares the rules for the public administration." — "The Statesman's Year Book," 1918, p. 808.

discharge them, nevertheless offer an opportunity to render the largest service to our democracy. In the second place, he was living in a milieu in which all the problems brought up by the separation of Church and State were the object of constant thought and daily conversations. It was justifiable to think that the Conseil d'Etat, in the midst of the struggles which seemed on the eve of springing up, would be called on to become the arbitrator in the great interests in question, to determine the true limits of the domain of the State and that of conscience, to specify and to defend, at the same time, the rights of the State and the liberty of the religious consciousness. These were the two trains of thought which, a little abruptly, led the young man to decide in favor of studies to which he had given little consideration up to that time.

u

Program of studies — The Association of Protestant Students — With the miners of Henin-Lietard — The "White Star" — Examinations.

II

In November, 1907, Roger matriculated in the Law School and in the Free School of Political Sciences. The usual length of time given to studies in the Saint- Guillaume Street building is two years, after which the pupils take the examination for their diplomas. He decided not to present himself for this examination until the end of the third. If he thus stretched his preparation over a longer time, it was not, by any means, to lighten his work; it was in order to be able to follow at the same school, along with the special studies of the law course, other courses which had no immediate interest so far as his diploma was concerned, but which seemed to him valuable for general culture. These were especially those courses bearing on the development of social questions or on the relation of Church and State in the different countries of Europe. He was, also, in the Law School, a faithful listener in one of Mr. Charles Gide's courses, one which did not help him toward his master's degree, but which bore often on the problems facing a democracy. He also attended with the greatest interest the public course which his father was giving at the Protestant Theological School on "The Conflict between the Modern Conscience and Religion." Finally, this school having organized during the academic years 1908- 1909 and 1909-1910 some courses in advanced religious instruction, he enrolled there immediately; being also monitor in the Sunday school of Luxembourg Chapel, he was kept very busy in discharging his simple duties accurately.

Although busy with so many duties, Roger was very desirous of keeping up with his dearest comrades those ties which are so sweet during the years of study in common, and which differing choice of careers so often loosens or even completely severs. Friendship was a need of his heart. But it was not with him an exclusive relationship. He was not one of those who have one or two intimates and who give to these all their affection. Nor was he what they call a "good fellow," one of those individuals who have the air of giving themselves to everybody and who really give themselves to none. When he left the "Ecole Alsacienne" and began his student life, he sought to avoid as far as possible the danger of separation from those with whom he desired to continue intimate. He asked his parents to hold regularly for his personal friends a little informal reception. The third Sunday in each month in the afternoon Roger's friends, Parisians or not, were sure to find him and his parents at home in the house on the Raspail Boulevard. There were no invitations. Those came who wished to or who could. They talked of all manner of subjects just as they came to their minds and with no constraint. The most weighty discussions of the outside world had here their echo at times. Often, they limited themselves to exchanging impressions of the different courses of study in which each was interested. They vibrated in harmony in their enthusiasm over some of these and they united in laughing at others. The end of the afternoon arrived and they were loath to separate. Several of their habitues still like to recall these meetings of the "third Sunday."

At the time of his return from Scotland in 1907, Roger became an active member of the Association of Protestant Students at Paris. For a long time he had known of the

Student Christian Federation and its program. At the end of September of that same year he accompanied his father to Sainte-Croix and took part in the conference of the Christian Student Movement of French Switzerland. While he found in the headquarters in Vaugirard Street an agreeable meeting-place with good comrades, he also gained a conception there of the religious work which could and should be conducted among the students of the Latin Quarter. Surrounded by young men at grips with all the problems of moral and religious life and in quest of convictions which enable one to serve one's country and humanity truly, he felt the heavy responsibility which rests upon those who know what they believe and why. He asked himself if those who have this privilege do not take too easy a satisfaction in an unconsciously egoistical enjoyment of it, and if they make sufficient effort to possess in a personal fashion that which they have perhaps received passively. He would have wished that the Paris Association might become in increasing measure a liberal school of strong convictions. Having been from the first day very strongly drawn to the general secretary of the Association, Th. Cremer, then to his successor, Armand Kuntz, he became acquainted with the nucleus of students who put before the pleasure of making acquaintances the duty of blazing forth the principles of the Association. The realization of this program seemed to him impossible without serious study and he gave ungrudging help to those who were trying to form study classes :

"We are beginning to notice that there is a weak point in our defense. The convictions which we profess do not rest on a sufficiently solid scientific understanding. The researches and conclusions of biblical criticism are too foreign to the majority of us. It is high time that we open our Bibles together and that we cease to leave to the unbelieving a monopoly of historical research. It is not at all a question of abandoning the big assemblies.^ To these, however, we should add group meetings for the study of the Bible in a spirit at the same time religious and scientific, believing that this study, instead of shaking our convictions, will give them more force. I permit myself to make an appeal to all the students. They should, when coming to these evenings of study, feel absolutely free. We appeal not only to Christian students firm in their faith, but to all those who doubt, to seekers, and to agnostics. We wish to do violence to nobody's personal convictions, but to leave to each one a feeling of unhampered individuality. Our ideal is a foyer in which students will be associated in a serious search after the truth."

These words were spoken by him, in November 1910, on the occasion of the reopening of the Paris Association. But before being appointed by his comrades to formulate a program in their name, he had had three years of personal application of the principles v/hich were dear to him. Before extolling meetings of this sort, he had made the experiment with his intimate friends. He knew by experience the efficacy of what he was recommending to others.

He was also one of those who feel that Christian

^ An allusion to the meetings which the Association was holding each year for the general public.

students should find time to devote to social questions. He longed to be in contact with these, otherwise than through books or lectures of his professors. At the end of 1909, an occasion offered itself to meet several of them in the flesh. He seized it with eagerness, though it deprived him of a joy which to him was most dear, that of passing the Christmas holidays with his parents. It was not mere intellectual curiosity, however, that made him decide to give up this joy. He felt that the refusal to do a little work for others would be a strange way of celebrating the birthday of Him who came only to give Himself.

The minister, Mr. Rene Pfender, who had invited him to Henin-Lietard, himself tells of this visit in a letter to Roger's parents, written at St. Die, July 21, 1916:

"Sharing the concern of the Association of Christian Students to interest the youth of the universities in the conquest of our country for Christ, I had the thought that a particularly efficient method would be that denoted by the 'come and see' of the first disciples, consisting in having the students visit centers of evangelistic work, which would thus serve as tangible evidences of the power of the Gospel today. I had, therefore, asked my friend, Grauss,^ to find some student willing to pass the Christmas holidays at Henin-Lietard. Roger Allier was the first to respond to this appeal. Interested in social questions and desirous of ascertaining how the Gospel works the transformation of an industrial community, he 'came and saw,' and saw in the best way, by participating.

"It was on the morning of Christmas Day itself, about eleven o'clock, that he got off the train at the ugly little

^ General Secretary of the French Association of Christian Students. Left in August, 1914, as sergeant in the Forty-first Regiment of Territorial Infantry; commissioned sub-lieutenant in June, 1915. Died of wounds received in battle, August 29, 1918.

station of this important mining center. We went at once to the church, where we found the young people busy trimming the traditional fir tree. At once, Roger took off his gloves and his jacket, climbed a ladder, and was at work. This spontaneity, so simple, in a trice won for him the liking of the young mine workers. 'He is not proud, that one there at least.' For many years after they recalled this detail." Roger on his part wrote:

Mr. P fender was awaiting me at the station. I knew him even at a distance. We had been at the Grand Chasseron together [allusion to an excursion made in common when at the conference of Sainte- Croix]. What a dreary country! I am a few steps from Courrieres. There was something gloomy in passing the little stations of Sallaumines, Billy-Montigny, and Menicourt. How many unhappy memories and what gloomy scenery! As soon as I arrived, I broke the ice by helping with the Christmas tree. To these honest miners, young and old, one is immediately like a brother. A student who speaks to them as a comrade is listened to with open mouth. Thus I became acquainted with all the members of the church ; we talked together a great deal and they taught me many things. The thing that touched me was the way in which the parents came to shake my hand. I spent an hour and a half in chatting. I already know quite a bit about mining.