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340 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
For his own part he thought that Catholics and Protestants,
however strictly they each adhered to their own particular
tenets, yet well understood each other. The German Catholics
had most fervently taken to heart the situation of their common
fatherland in the face of the war, and their sentiments were as
genuine, sincere and true as those of the Protestants. Perhaps
one of the results of the war would be that the two creeds
would have learnt to esteem each other and to abstain in
future from dwelling on those points in which they were most
strongly at variance. Already it had been realised in German
evangelical circles that, although the Roman Catholic Church
comprises all nations, yet the German Catholics were fighting
with unshakable consistency and conviction for German
national interests.
A sanguinary reminiscence of the Franco-German war is
connected with Bapaume. On January 3rd, 1871, impelled
by the precarious situation of Paris, General Faidherbe
attacked, with the French Northern Army,—the 22nd and
23rd Army Corps—General Goeben’s forces, collected in and
about Bapaume, whose nucleus was the 15th Division of the ,
8th Army Corps. The Germans held their main position
j
though outnumbered by more than two to one, but at the
end of the day were totally exhausted, and moreover short
of ammunition. General Faidherbe, on the other hand, saw
his best troops badly spent and the Gardes Mobiles demoralised
by the fatigues undergone. He would not venture another
blow, and fell back on Arras and Douai. The deficient military
training and discipline of the French militia rendered it im-
possible for the General to take advantage of the otherwise
favourable situation.
Forty-four years have now passed since then, and Bapaume
is once more in German hands. The French have erected, in
the centre of the market place, a statue of Faidherbe—
a
worthy memorial to a brilliant career. Time after time this
brave man had been entrusted with the solution of important
tasks at home, in Guadeloupe, in Algiers, Senegal and Kabylia,
until in the end he was appointed by Gambetta, in November,
1870, to the command of the Northern Army. He was by no
means lacking in courage, confidence, initiative, patriotism
and fervent zeal, but with his militia troops he was like a
general without an army, in the face of the thoroughly and
carefully trained Germans.
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