August 19, 2025 • 12 mins
Discover the compelling insights of Pierre Loti [Julien Viaud] (1850-1923), a French naval officer and novelist, in War. This captivating work of non-fiction features a selection of letters and diary entries that reveal his thoughts and experiences during the tumultuous times of war. Loti not only reflects on his involvement in World War I but also shares his perspectives on the preparations leading up to the Turkish Revolution of 1923, a significant event that inspired the naming of a famous hill and a beloved café in Istanbul after him. Join us as we explore the mind of a man who witnessed history firsthand. (Summary by Carolin)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter nineteen of War. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or the volunteer pleases at LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Anossimon War by Pierre Lotti, translated by Madria Loauri, Chapter nineteen,
The Death Bearing Gas, November nineteen fifteen. It is a
(00:24):
place of horror, conceived it might be thought by Dante.
The air is heavy, stifling, two or three night lights
which seem to be afraid of shining too brightly, scarcely piers,
the vaporous, overheated darkness, which exhales an odor of sweat
and fever. Busy people are whispering there anxiously, but the
(00:46):
principal sound that is heard is an agonized gasping for breath.
This gasping comes from a number of cots in rows,
touching one another, on which are lying human forms, their
chests heaving with rapids and labored breathing, lifting the bedclothes,
as though the moment of the death rattle had come.
This is one of our advanced field hospitals, improvised as
(01:10):
best might be. The day after one of the most
damnable abominations committed by the Germans. The nature of their
affliction made it impossible to transfer all these sons of France,
from whom seems to come the noise of their death rattle,
without hope of recovery, to a place farther away. This
large hole, with dilapidated walls was yesterday a wine cellar
(01:32):
for storing barrels of champagne. These cots, about fifty in number,
were made in feverish haste of branches which still retain
their bark, and they resemble the kind of furniture in
our gardens that we call rustic. But why is there
this heat in which it is almost impossible to draw
a natural breath pouring out from those stoves. The reason
(01:55):
for it is that it is never hot enough for
the lungs of persons who have been asphyxiated. And this darkness, wherefore,
this darkness, which gives a danteesque aspect to this place
of torment, and which must be such a hindrance to
the gentle, white gowned nurses, it is because the barbarians
are there in their burrows quite near this village, with
(02:16):
the shattering of whose houses and church spire they have
more than once amused themselves, and if, at the gloomy
fall of a November night, through their ever watchful field
glasses they saw a range of lighted windows indicating a
long hall, they would at once guess that there was
a field hospital, and shells would be showered down upon
the humble coots. It is well known this preference of
(02:38):
theirs for shelling hospitals, Red Cross convoys, churches. And so
there is scarcely light enough to see through that misty
vapor which rises from water boiling in pans. Every minute.
Nurses fetch huge black balloons, and the patients nearest to
suffocation stretch out their poor hands for them. They contain oxygen,
(03:00):
which eases the lungs and alleviates the suffering. Many of
them have these black balloons, resting on chests, panting for breath,
and in their mouths they are holding eagerly the tube
through which the life saving gas escapes. They are like
big children with feeding bottles. It adds a kind of
grisly burlesque to these scenes of horror. As Phyxia has
(03:22):
different effects upon different constitutions and calls for variety in treatment.
Some of the sufferers lying almost naked on their beds
are covered with cupping glasses, or painted all over with
tincture of iodine. Others, even these alas, are very seriously affected. Indeed,
others are all swollen chest, arms and face, and resemble
(03:44):
toy figures of blown up gold beater's skin, toy figures
of gold beaters skin, children with feeding bottles. Although these
comparisons alone are true, yet indeed it seems almost sacrilege
to make use of them when the heart is wrung
with anguish, and you are ready to weep tears of
pity and of wrath. But may these comparisons, brutal as
(04:07):
they are, and grave themselves all the more deeply upon
the minds of men, by reason of their very unseemliness,
to foster there for a still longer time indignant hatred
and a thirst for holy reprisals. For there is one
man who spent a long time preparing all this for us,
And this man still goes on living. He lives, and
(04:28):
since remorse is doubtless foreign to his vultureine soul, he
does not even suffer, unless it be raged at having
missed his mark, at least for the present, before thus
unloosing death upon the world. He had coldly combined all
his plans, had foreseen everything. But nevertheless, supposing he said
(04:48):
to himself, my great rhinoceros like onrushes, and my vast
apparatus of carnage, whereby some impossible chance to hurl itself
in vain against the resistance, too magnificent. In that case,
I should dare, perhaps, calculating on the weakness of neutral nations.
I should dare perhaps to defy all the laws of civilization,
(05:11):
and to use other means at all hazards. Let us
be prepared, and to be sure. The onrush failed, and timidly,
at first, fearing universal indignation, he tried asphyxiation. After exerting
himself he had understood to mislead public opinion, accusing, with
his customary mendacity France of having been the originator. His
(05:35):
cynical hope was justified. There has been, alas no general
arousing of the human conscience, no more at this than
at earlier crimes organized polity, destruction of cathedrals, outrage, massacres
of children and women have the neutral nations stirred. It seems, indeed,
as if the crafty, ferocious, deathly look of his gorgon
(05:58):
like or meducile lie head had frozen them all to
the spot, and at the present hour in which I
am writing, the last to be turned to stone by
the medusa glare of the monster. Is that unfortunate King
of Greece, inconsistent of bungling, who is trembling on the
brink of a precipice of most terrible crimes. That some
nations remain neutral from fear, that indeed is comprehensive enough,
(06:23):
but that nations otherwise held in the highest repute can
remain pro German in sentiment passes our understanding. By what arts?
Have they been blinded? These nations? By what slanders or
by what bribe? Our dear soldiers, with their seared lungs
gasping on their rustic cots, seem grateful when following in
(06:44):
the major's footsteps, someone approached them, and they look at
the visitor with gentle eyes when he takes their hand.
Here is a man, all swollen, doubtless unrecognizable by those
who had only seen him before his terrible turgidity. And
if you touch his poor tended cheeks, however lightly, the
fingers feel the crackling of the gases that have infiltrated
(07:05):
between skin and flesh. Come. He is better than he
was this morning, says the major, and in a low
voice meant for the nurse's ear, he continues, this man too, nurse,
I'm beginning to think that we shall save. But she
must not leave him alone for one moment on any account. Oh,
what unnecessary advice. For she has not the smallest intention
(07:28):
of leaving him alone, this white gowned nurse, whose eyes
have already black rings around them, the result of a
watch of forty eight hours without a break. Not one
of them will be left alone. Oh. No, to be
sure of this, it is sufficient to glance at all
those young doctors and all those nurses somewhat exhausted, it
is true, but so attentive and brave who will never
(07:49):
let them out of their sight, And thank Heaven, nearly
all of them will be saved. Footnote of six hundred
who were gassed that night, more than five hundred are
out of day, and footnote, as soon as they are
well enough to be moved, they will be taken far
away from this gahanna at the front where the kaiser's
shells the light to hurl themselves upon the dying, they
(08:11):
will be put more comfortably to bed in quiet field hospitals,
where indeed they will suffer greatly for a week, a
fortnight a month. But whence they will emerge without excessive delay,
better advised, more prudent, in haste to return once more
to the battle. It may be said that this scheme
of gas attacks has failed, like the other scheme of
(08:32):
attacks in great savage on rushes. The result was not
what the Gorgon's head had expected. And yet with what
accurate calculation the time for these attacks has been selected,
always at the most favorable moment. It is well known
that the Germans, past masters of the art of spying,
and always informed of everything, never hesitated, choose for their
(08:53):
attacks of whatever kind, days of relief, hours when newcomers
in the trenches opposite to them are still in the
disorder their arrival. So on the evening on which the
last crime was committed, six hundred of our men had
just taken up their advanced position after a long and
tiring march, Suddenly, in the midst of a volley of
shells which surprised them in their first sleep. They could
(09:15):
distinguish here and there little cautious sibilant sounds, as if
made stealthily by sirens. This was the death bearing gas,
which was diffusing itself around them, spreading out its thick,
gloomy gray clouds. At the same time their signal light
suddenly ceased to throw out through that midst more than
a little dim illumination. Then distracted. Already suffocating, they remembered
(09:39):
too late those masks which had been given them, and
in which in any case they had no faith. They
were awkward in putting them on. Some of them, feeling
the scorching of their bronchia, urged by an irresistible impulse
of self preservation, even yielded to a desire to run.
And it was these who were most terribly affected. For
breathing deeply. In the effet of running, they inhale vast
(10:02):
quantities of chlorine gas. But at the time they will
not let themselves be caught in this way, neither these
nor any others of our soldiers. Wearing masks hermetically clothed,
they will station themselves immovably around piles of wood prepared beforehand,
when sudden flames will arise, neutralizing the poisons in the air,
and the upshot of it all will be hardly more
(10:24):
than an uncomfortable hour, unpleasant while it lasts, but almost
always without fatal result. It is true that in those
accursed dens which are their laboratories, Germany's learned men, convinced
now that the neutral nations will acquiesce in anything, are
making every effort to discover worse poisons still for us.
But until they have found them, as on so many
(10:46):
other occasions, the gorgon gaze will have missed its mark.
So much is certain. We alas have as yet found
no means of returning them as sufficiently cruel equivalent. We
have no defense other than the protective mask, which, however,
is being perfected day by day, and after all, in
the eyes of neutral nations, if they still have eyes
(11:07):
to see, it is perhaps more dignified to make use
of nothing else. At the same time, how very different
our position would be if we succeeded in asphyxiating them too.
These plunderers, assassins, aggressors who broke into our country like burglars,
and who, despairing of ever bursting through our lines, attempt
(11:27):
to smoke us out ignominiously in our own home, in
our own dear country, of France, as they might smoke
out rabbits in their burrows, rats in their holes. No
language of men had ever anticipated such transcendent acts of
infamy which would revolt the most degraded cannibals, And so
there are no names for such acts. Our poor victims
(11:50):
of their gas, panting for breath in their cots. How
ardently I wish that I could exhibit them to all
the world, to their fathers, sons, and brothers, to excite
in them a paroxysm of sacred indignation and thirst for vengeance. Yes,
exhibit them everywhere, to let every one hear the death rattle,
(12:11):
even those neutral nations who are so impassive, and to
convict of obtuseness or of crime all those obstinate pacifists,
And to sound throughout the world the alarm against the
barbarians who are an eruption all over Europe. End of
Chapter nineteen
Chapter nineteen of War. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or the volunteer pleases at LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Anossimon War by Pierre Lotti, translated by Madria Loauri, Chapter nineteen,
The Death Bearing Gas, November nineteen fifteen. It is a
(00:24):
place of horror, conceived it might be thought by Dante.
The air is heavy, stifling, two or three night lights
which seem to be afraid of shining too brightly, scarcely piers,
the vaporous, overheated darkness, which exhales an odor of sweat
and fever. Busy people are whispering there anxiously, but the
(00:46):
principal sound that is heard is an agonized gasping for breath.
This gasping comes from a number of cots in rows,
touching one another, on which are lying human forms, their
chests heaving with rapids and labored breathing, lifting the bedclothes,
as though the moment of the death rattle had come.
This is one of our advanced field hospitals, improvised as
(01:10):
best might be. The day after one of the most
damnable abominations committed by the Germans. The nature of their
affliction made it impossible to transfer all these sons of France,
from whom seems to come the noise of their death rattle,
without hope of recovery, to a place farther away. This
large hole, with dilapidated walls was yesterday a wine cellar
(01:32):
for storing barrels of champagne. These cots, about fifty in number,
were made in feverish haste of branches which still retain
their bark, and they resemble the kind of furniture in
our gardens that we call rustic. But why is there
this heat in which it is almost impossible to draw
a natural breath pouring out from those stoves. The reason
(01:55):
for it is that it is never hot enough for
the lungs of persons who have been asphyxiated. And this darkness, wherefore,
this darkness, which gives a danteesque aspect to this place
of torment, and which must be such a hindrance to
the gentle, white gowned nurses, it is because the barbarians
are there in their burrows quite near this village, with
(02:16):
the shattering of whose houses and church spire they have
more than once amused themselves, and if, at the gloomy
fall of a November night, through their ever watchful field
glasses they saw a range of lighted windows indicating a
long hall, they would at once guess that there was
a field hospital, and shells would be showered down upon
the humble coots. It is well known this preference of
(02:38):
theirs for shelling hospitals, Red Cross convoys, churches. And so
there is scarcely light enough to see through that misty
vapor which rises from water boiling in pans. Every minute.
Nurses fetch huge black balloons, and the patients nearest to
suffocation stretch out their poor hands for them. They contain oxygen,
(03:00):
which eases the lungs and alleviates the suffering. Many of
them have these black balloons, resting on chests, panting for breath,
and in their mouths they are holding eagerly the tube
through which the life saving gas escapes. They are like
big children with feeding bottles. It adds a kind of
grisly burlesque to these scenes of horror. As Phyxia has
(03:22):
different effects upon different constitutions and calls for variety in treatment.
Some of the sufferers lying almost naked on their beds
are covered with cupping glasses, or painted all over with
tincture of iodine. Others, even these alas, are very seriously affected. Indeed,
others are all swollen chest, arms and face, and resemble
(03:44):
toy figures of blown up gold beater's skin, toy figures
of gold beaters skin, children with feeding bottles. Although these
comparisons alone are true, yet indeed it seems almost sacrilege
to make use of them when the heart is wrung
with anguish, and you are ready to weep tears of
pity and of wrath. But may these comparisons, brutal as
(04:07):
they are, and grave themselves all the more deeply upon
the minds of men, by reason of their very unseemliness,
to foster there for a still longer time indignant hatred
and a thirst for holy reprisals. For there is one
man who spent a long time preparing all this for us,
And this man still goes on living. He lives, and
(04:28):
since remorse is doubtless foreign to his vultureine soul, he
does not even suffer, unless it be raged at having
missed his mark, at least for the present, before thus
unloosing death upon the world. He had coldly combined all
his plans, had foreseen everything. But nevertheless, supposing he said
(04:48):
to himself, my great rhinoceros like onrushes, and my vast
apparatus of carnage, whereby some impossible chance to hurl itself
in vain against the resistance, too magnificent. In that case,
I should dare, perhaps, calculating on the weakness of neutral nations.
I should dare perhaps to defy all the laws of civilization,
(05:11):
and to use other means at all hazards. Let us
be prepared, and to be sure. The onrush failed, and timidly,
at first, fearing universal indignation, he tried asphyxiation. After exerting
himself he had understood to mislead public opinion, accusing, with
his customary mendacity France of having been the originator. His
(05:35):
cynical hope was justified. There has been, alas no general
arousing of the human conscience, no more at this than
at earlier crimes organized polity, destruction of cathedrals, outrage, massacres
of children and women have the neutral nations stirred. It seems, indeed,
as if the crafty, ferocious, deathly look of his gorgon
(05:58):
like or meducile lie head had frozen them all to
the spot, and at the present hour in which I
am writing, the last to be turned to stone by
the medusa glare of the monster. Is that unfortunate King
of Greece, inconsistent of bungling, who is trembling on the
brink of a precipice of most terrible crimes. That some
nations remain neutral from fear, that indeed is comprehensive enough,
(06:23):
but that nations otherwise held in the highest repute can
remain pro German in sentiment passes our understanding. By what arts?
Have they been blinded? These nations? By what slanders or
by what bribe? Our dear soldiers, with their seared lungs
gasping on their rustic cots, seem grateful when following in
(06:44):
the major's footsteps, someone approached them, and they look at
the visitor with gentle eyes when he takes their hand.
Here is a man, all swollen, doubtless unrecognizable by those
who had only seen him before his terrible turgidity. And
if you touch his poor tended cheeks, however lightly, the
fingers feel the crackling of the gases that have infiltrated
(07:05):
between skin and flesh. Come. He is better than he
was this morning, says the major, and in a low
voice meant for the nurse's ear, he continues, this man too, nurse,
I'm beginning to think that we shall save. But she
must not leave him alone for one moment on any account. Oh,
what unnecessary advice. For she has not the smallest intention
(07:28):
of leaving him alone, this white gowned nurse, whose eyes
have already black rings around them, the result of a
watch of forty eight hours without a break. Not one
of them will be left alone. Oh. No, to be
sure of this, it is sufficient to glance at all
those young doctors and all those nurses somewhat exhausted, it
is true, but so attentive and brave who will never
(07:49):
let them out of their sight, And thank Heaven, nearly
all of them will be saved. Footnote of six hundred
who were gassed that night, more than five hundred are
out of day, and footnote, as soon as they are
well enough to be moved, they will be taken far
away from this gahanna at the front where the kaiser's
shells the light to hurl themselves upon the dying, they
(08:11):
will be put more comfortably to bed in quiet field hospitals,
where indeed they will suffer greatly for a week, a
fortnight a month. But whence they will emerge without excessive delay,
better advised, more prudent, in haste to return once more
to the battle. It may be said that this scheme
of gas attacks has failed, like the other scheme of
(08:32):
attacks in great savage on rushes. The result was not
what the Gorgon's head had expected. And yet with what
accurate calculation the time for these attacks has been selected,
always at the most favorable moment. It is well known
that the Germans, past masters of the art of spying,
and always informed of everything, never hesitated, choose for their
(08:53):
attacks of whatever kind, days of relief, hours when newcomers
in the trenches opposite to them are still in the
disorder their arrival. So on the evening on which the
last crime was committed, six hundred of our men had
just taken up their advanced position after a long and
tiring march, Suddenly, in the midst of a volley of
shells which surprised them in their first sleep. They could
(09:15):
distinguish here and there little cautious sibilant sounds, as if
made stealthily by sirens. This was the death bearing gas,
which was diffusing itself around them, spreading out its thick,
gloomy gray clouds. At the same time their signal light
suddenly ceased to throw out through that midst more than
a little dim illumination. Then distracted. Already suffocating, they remembered
(09:39):
too late those masks which had been given them, and
in which in any case they had no faith. They
were awkward in putting them on. Some of them, feeling
the scorching of their bronchia, urged by an irresistible impulse
of self preservation, even yielded to a desire to run.
And it was these who were most terribly affected. For
breathing deeply. In the effet of running, they inhale vast
(10:02):
quantities of chlorine gas. But at the time they will
not let themselves be caught in this way, neither these
nor any others of our soldiers. Wearing masks hermetically clothed,
they will station themselves immovably around piles of wood prepared beforehand,
when sudden flames will arise, neutralizing the poisons in the air,
and the upshot of it all will be hardly more
(10:24):
than an uncomfortable hour, unpleasant while it lasts, but almost
always without fatal result. It is true that in those
accursed dens which are their laboratories, Germany's learned men, convinced
now that the neutral nations will acquiesce in anything, are
making every effort to discover worse poisons still for us.
But until they have found them, as on so many
(10:46):
other occasions, the gorgon gaze will have missed its mark.
So much is certain. We alas have as yet found
no means of returning them as sufficiently cruel equivalent. We
have no defense other than the protective mask, which, however,
is being perfected day by day, and after all, in
the eyes of neutral nations, if they still have eyes
(11:07):
to see, it is perhaps more dignified to make use
of nothing else. At the same time, how very different
our position would be if we succeeded in asphyxiating them too.
These plunderers, assassins, aggressors who broke into our country like burglars,
and who, despairing of ever bursting through our lines, attempt
(11:27):
to smoke us out ignominiously in our own home, in
our own dear country, of France, as they might smoke
out rabbits in their burrows, rats in their holes. No
language of men had ever anticipated such transcendent acts of
infamy which would revolt the most degraded cannibals, And so
there are no names for such acts. Our poor victims
(11:50):
of their gas, panting for breath in their cots. How
ardently I wish that I could exhibit them to all
the world, to their fathers, sons, and brothers, to excite
in them a paroxysm of sacred indignation and thirst for vengeance. Yes,
exhibit them everywhere, to let every one hear the death rattle,
(12:11):
even those neutral nations who are so impassive, and to
convict of obtuseness or of crime all those obstinate pacifists,
And to sound throughout the world the alarm against the
barbarians who are an eruption all over Europe. End of
Chapter nineteen
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