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[Illustration:

  COCO's ITINERARRY
  BATTLE of the MARNE
  BATTLE of the AISNE
]


WAR THE CREATOR


[Illustration]




  WAR~THE
  CREATOR
  BY~GELETT
  BURGESS~~~

  [Illustration]

  New York      B. W. HUEBSCH      1916

  COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON, INC.

  COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY B. W. HUEBSCH


  WAR THE CREATOR was first printed in
  _Collier’s_. Acknowledgment is made to that
  weekly for permission to publish the story
  in volume form.


  PRINTED IN U. S. A.


WAR THE CREATOR




I


Because he was my friend, because he was so lovable, because he
suffered much, I want to try to tell the story of a boy who, in
two months, became a man. My hero is Georges Cucurou, the son of a
shoe-maker of Toulouse. I happened to see him first just before the war
began, and not again until after he had been wounded; and the change in
him was then so great that I could not rest until I had learned how it
had been brought about. Georges is but one of the thousands who have
gone into that furnace of patriotism; in France such experiences as
his are commonplace now, but when I heard his story I got a glimpse
of war in a new aspect. Before, I had thought of it only as stupid,
destructive, dire; now, in his illumined face, I saw the work of War
the Creator.

His narrative is concerned with only the first six weeks of the
fighting, and mostly with that terrible retreat from Belgium, so bitter
in its disappointments, so trying to the flamboyant courage of the
French. Hardly had they rallied along the Marne and begun to pursue
the enemy when Georges was wounded and invalided home. It was there
in the hospital that I got his history; and from those talks, and his
notebook, and his letters to his aunt, I have reconstructed the trials
and emotions of this lad of twenty.




II


Georges, having commenced his regular three years’ military service in
October, 1913, got leave to visit his aunt who was keeping a _pension_
in Paris.

How shy and confused he was when I came down to the dining-room that
day and surprised him while he was examining his too-faint mustache
with great seriousness before the mirror! Charming, I thought him,
instantly; a clean, jolly sort of boy, quite too young for that
ridiculous soldier’s uniform.

His aunt introduced him (with her arm about his shoulder and a tweak of
his ear) by his nickname, “Coco”; and, after he got used to my being
a foreigner, he began to talk, using his big brown eyes and his free,
expressive hands quite as much as his tongue. Knowing a little of the
Midi, I attempted an imitation of the _patois_. Coco threw back his
head and laughed with abandon. That broke the ice, and we became great
friends.

He was so curious about everything American that I took him up to my
salon to see my typewriter; also my neckties and fancy socks.

“But what’s this?” asked Coco, reading with his funny French
pronunciation, “A-mer-i-cain Pencil Compagnie.” It was a novelty, a
“perpetual” pencil of the self-sharpening sort, with a magazine filled
with little points like cartridges. When I gave it to him, it pleased
Coco immensely.

“Just like a rifle!” he exclaimed, as he amused himself by pressing the
end and ejecting the bits of lead. He went through the manual of arms
with it, laughing; he did a mock bayonet thrust or two, and then aimed
it at me in fun, like a child. “_Pan!_” he cried; “_that’s_ the way we
shoot Germans!” The contrast of his red pantaloons and blue coat with
the round, innocent face and lips parted like a girl’s was absurd. Why,
he was more like those doll soldiers you see at toyshops with curly
hair! With his fresh pink cheeks and big brown eyes he seemed no more
than sixteen years old.

In the evening we all went out on the crowded Boulevard, where, it
being a fête day, they were dancing in front of the open-air band
stands. It was a long time before I ceased to think of Coco as jolly,
flush