The Ethics of Total War: Edith Wharton’s Fighting France

Edith Wharton is most popularly known as an American novelist, though she has also written many memoirs, poems, and travel writings. Wharton was living in France when World War 1 began and decided to put all she could into the war effort. Because of her exclusive connections to Walter Berry, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris, she was one of the few foreigners permitted to travel along the front lines to witness firsthand the transformation of Paris and France as war slowly took over the lives of soldiers and civilians. While visiting hospitals, trenches, and abandoned villages, Wharton experienced not only her own personal ethical dilemmas, but also those of soldiers, nurses and civilians, and recorded these experiences into a series of articles first published in the American periodical Scribner’s Magazine, and later brought together in 1918 to be bound into the book Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort.

            Before Wharton sets out on her journey around France, she is in Paris the day before mobilization is declared. She talks about the Parisians being against the war, not because of moral reasons but because it would be an inconvenience for the laid back attitude of the city. However, even though many disregarded the declaration of war as a “rumor”, Wharton describes Paris as a whole being “threaded with noiseless invisible currents of preparation” (Wharton 6). The question of why men go to war varies for every individual, as Wharton states: “All these lads and young men seemed to know what they were about and why they were about it. The youngest of them looked suddenly grown up and responsible: they understood their stake in the job and accepted it” (Wharton 8). Morals are often questioned in deciding what part to play when war is on your doorstep, but the men of Paris, according to Wharton, seem to have a subconscious understanding of what the right thing is, being to protect one’s country and one’s pride. During the night before the declaration of mobilization, Wharton describes the people of France as follows: “If diplomacy could still arrest the war, so much the better: no one in France wanted it. All who spent the first days of August in Paris will testify to the agreement of feeling on that point. But if war had to come, then the country, and every heart in it, was ready” (Wharton 7). The declaration of war has disrupted the Parisian way of life, but as said before, if Paris had to fight, then fight it would.

The whole scene Wharton witnesses after mobilization has been officially declared shows that the aforementioned morals of the Parisians stand true. She watches the people of Paris rushing towards railways with their luggage trailing behind them, these same people who only hours ago were living their daily lives as though no threat of war existed and life was just as normal as always. Some men idling behind were seen singing patriotic war songs through the windows of pubs and the “steady stream of conscripts” were seen trudging through the streets to train stations with their wives and families, “carrying all kinds of odd improvised bags and bundles” with “the stare of driven cattle” on their faces (Wharton 8). The simple fact that the people of Paris would so quickly come to arms for the overall good of the country shows their morals lie with the greater good.

            The declaration of mobilization in Paris is the first taste Wharton gets of the ethics of total war. She realizes that “it is not only the fighters that mobilize: those who stay behind must do the same. For each French household, for each individual man or woman in France, war means a complete reorganization of life” (Wharton 10). Two days after the declaration of mobilization, all of the railways were being used solely to move soldiers, so the civilians who could not bribe their way out of town were forced to return to a solemn Paris, full of “porter-less halls, waiter-less restaurants, [and] motionless lifts” (Wharton 9). All of the transportation, cars, taxis, cabs, vans, had vanished from the streets; even the canals laid motionless with the complete lack of unloading and loading. The streets were empty of people, parks and gardens left untended, “sparrows fluttered unfed”, and “vague dogs roamed unquietly, looking for familiar eyes” (Wharton 9). The only movement the town sees is the “steady stream of conscripts pouring along” (Wharton 8). This transformation of the once lively Paris shows the distressing effects of total war on the noncombatants. This being only the beginning of the war, the worse was still to come, but for Wharton this “gradual paralysis” of Paris was just as devastating as everything she encounters later during her travels. Wharton states, “Paris, so intensely conscious yet so strangely entranced, seemed to have had curare[1] injected into all her veins” (Wharton 10). On this day, through Wharton’s eyes, the beautiful city that she had romanticized about all of her life had been poisoned by the lethal injection of mobilization and left to die.

             This metaphor of curare is an interesting choice made by Wharton. The idea of lethal injection is one of the larger ethical dilemmas still reigning high on the list of moral debates. Today, the lethal injection is considered by some to be one of the more ethical forms of execution, but that is also because with the advancements of technology, when injected the recipient dies rather quickly afterwards. However, curare is simply used for paralyzing its victim, leaving it motionless until death from starvation or some other form of execution (since it is typically used for hunting animals). So through Wharton’s eyes, the radiant and innocent Paris was attacked by this declaration of war, leaving it unable to return back to its previous state of liveliness and leaving Wharton no other choice but to abandon it.

            The next step of her journey takes her all around France as she travels with a group of other volunteers to visit as many hospitals as possible; their job is to provide menial things the hospitals may require, such as clothing, blankets, or first aid materials. Wharton was so affected by the transformation of Paris that she no longer wished to stay there, and decided to put her life in jeopardy by traveling around on dangerous roads, extremely close to German trenches and occupied towns, just to help with the cause. Wharton states that “the permission to visit a few ambulances and evacuation hospitals behind the lines gave [her], at the end of February, [her] first sight of War” (Wharton 24). While riding along with her companions, Wharton continuously comments on the state of each passing village. Halfway between Châlons and Sainte, Wharton comes across her “first evidence of invasion: the lamentable ruins of the village of Auve” (Wharton 28).  This is not the only ruined village she comes across, for almost every town that is not either occupied by the Germans or overflowing with French soldiers from the trenches has been burned down and destroyed by some “random act of malice”(Wharton 25).  By persistently describing the “streets after streets of murdered houses” and the “black holes that were [once] homes”, Wharton indirectly questions the ethics of total war. By personifying the homes by using the adjective “murdered”, Wharton shows that, in her opinion, the destruction of towns is just as cruel as the destruction of human life. When the enemy bombs these towns, they are not only abolishing houses, but indirectly ending the lives of those who call these stone buildings home. Those inhabitants that managed to escape with naught but their lives no longer have anything to return to once the war is over, so, for Wharton, the Germans are destroying memories and happiness along with the towns of France.

One of the most powerful passages that gets the message of invasion across the strongest is when Wharton describes the once beautiful town of Gerbéviller. She says the town now looks as though it was “simultaneously vomited up from the depths and hurled down from the skies”, saying that “the poor little garden-girt town was shelled like a steel fortress” where a fire was built in every home and the fearless “Teuton”[2] threw his “explosive tabloids” onto each hearth, executing his “lane-Lusitanias” (Wharton 44-45). She ends the passage by saying: “It was all so well done that one wonders – almost apologetically for German thoroughness – that any of the human rats escaped from their holes; but some did, and were neatly spitted on lurking bayonets” (Wharton 45). Wharton draws for the reader her definition of the line of innocence in war. She makes this clear by comparing the bombing of villages to the sinking of the Lusitania, a well-known symbol of civilian war casualties. Also by referring to the Germans by their ancient name of “Teutons”, she indirectly makes the statement that what these people are doing to the innocent civilians and their once beautiful homes is, simply put, barbaric and moral-less.

Wharton’s comparison of humans to rats in the previous quote shows that the people of France, when attacked by German soldiers, were forced to turn to animal instinct just to survive. During her stay at Gerbéviller, Wharton records the story of Mr. Liégeay, the former mayor of Gerbéviller, and how he survived the German invasion of his town. He tells Wharton about having to live in the cellar with his wife, his niece and his niece’s babies for three days while his house burnt to the ground above them. During the third night, they decided to make an escape attempt. Because the home was on the edge of town, the women and children got away, but Mr. Liégeay was spotted by a German soldier and chased into a cemetery where the former mayor was forced to wedge himself behind a giant stone cross covered with “hideous wire and glass wreaths dear to French mourners” and remained there from “three in the afternoon till night” (Wharton 46). This is a perfect example of the animal instinct used for survival: once life is immediately threatened, the instinct to survive kicks in, and morals are sometimes left behind.

Towards the end of the articles, Wharton gets the chance to visit the trenches first hand. She does not experience much while trudging through the “bowel leading to the first lines”, but she does get a feel for what the broken soldiers she saw laying in the hospitals dealt with on a daily basis (Wharton 53). One of the main themes of her record of the trenches however is the idea of an invisible enemy, not only literally, but figuratively as well. The First World War was a confusing one for everyone who was involved; many wondered why or whom they were even fighting. At one point during their walk through the trenches, “a sharp noise broke on them: the rap of a rifle-shot against a tree-trunk a few yards ahead” (Wharton 58). This was caused by the hidden enemy, lurking away in a nearby tree, listening for any sign of life to destroy. Towards the end of their walk, Wharton gets the chance to look through a peephole at the vast field beyond. She spots a dead German who had, according to a soldier in the trench, been lying there for days. She comments on this, saying “it was almost a relief to find it was after all a tangible enemy hidden over there across the meadow…” (Wharton 60). Wharton was one of the few noncombatants who was able to get a up close view of who the enemy actually was and the devastating things they were doing to those around them, excluding those civilians immediately caught in the line of fire. This relief she feels is not something for her to feel guilty about: many others living at the time would have definitely liked to see the war justified by having some image of a real enemy and give them some piece of mind.

In the series of articles Fighting France, Edith Wharton gives her audience a fresh, female perspective on the effects of total war on France during World War I. She describes not only the immediate change of Paris when given the news of mobilization, but also the devastating effects of invasion and a day in the life of the soldiers fighting in the first-line trenches. After viewing the many images of war, Wharton sums her opinion of total war perfectly with the following quote: “War is the greatest of paradoxes: the most senseless and disheartening of human retrogressions, and yet the stimulant of qualities of soul which, in every race, can seemingly find no other means of renewal. Everything depends, therefore, on the category of impulses that war excites in a people” (Wharton 27). For Wharton, war is an inevitable part of human life that is necessary to bring about a certain state of being, and without it, the human race would not be humbled enough to be able to see life for as valuable as it really is.

[1] Poisonous plant found in South America; used as a paralyzing poison for hunting animals

[2] A member of any of the ancient Germanic peoples

"Curare." The Macmillan Encyclopedia. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 31 March 2013.

"Teuton." The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Geography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Credo Reference. Web. 31 March 2013.

Wharton, Edith. “The Look of Paris.” Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2011. Nook Edition. Downloaded January 22, 2013.