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THE SOUL OF THE "C. R. B. 
 
German thefts of factory equipment in northern France. 
 Boiler-rcx>m in a factory at Chiry-Ourscamp, Olse. 
 
THE 
 SOUL OF THE "C. R. B." 
 
 A FRENCH VIEW OF THE HOOVER 
 RELIEF WORK 
 
 BY 
 
 MADAME SAINT-RENfi TAILLANDIER 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 MARY CADWALADER JONES 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1919 
 
i'' 
 
 CormioHT, X9i9t by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published August, 19 19 
 
 • • • •. • « • 
 • • •* • • • 
 
 • • • • 
 ... • •, 
 
 • • • • 
 
LETTER PREFACE 
 
 TO MR. HOOVER AND THE DIRECTORS AND 
 DELEGATES OF THE COMMISSION FOR RE- 
 LIEF IN BELGIUM AND NORTHERN FRANCE 
 
 My DEAR Friends: 
 
 This little book may perhaps surprise you. 
 It is a true story, and accurate concerning 
 your work, but in regard to your personalities 
 I have allowed myself some freedom. Will you 
 bear me malice if, in order to show the whole 
 scope of your attainment, and to make it 
 stand out clearly to our own people, I have 
 simplified some of the details .? 
 
 These details were your own selves, with 
 your names, all of them. How much I should 
 have cared to have known each of you, to 
 have been able to distinguish between you, 
 and not, therefore, to attribute to one what 
 was perhaps, in fact, done by another — ^but 
 what is most deeply impressed upon my mind 
 was that you had but one heart, one brain, 
 one leader. You offered yourselves in a body 
 to starving Belgium and France, and no sooner 
 
 ^ 1 1 
 
vi DEDICATION 
 
 were you freed from that task than you threw 
 yourselves into other work, under your own 
 flag of the stars, without giving us a chance to 
 meet you and to clasp your hands. 
 
 Do not be hard on this little book, because 
 it is you who have written it; it is made up 
 from your own official reports and your own 
 narratives, added to the personal recollections 
 which some of you have given me. Hunt will 
 see that I have read closely his striking book 
 "War Bread,'' and I have also studied the 
 "Head-Quarters Nights" of Mr. Vernon Kel- 
 logg, and Mrs. Kellogg's "Women in Bel- 
 gium." I have taken my facts from you, and 
 sometimes also my ideas. Si quid boni tuum, 
 I have given, if not every root and branch, at 
 least the sad and wonderful flower of your 
 work, and from the perfume of goodness and 
 of pity which it breathes my French readers 
 will know the stem on which it grew. 
 
 In speaking of you, workers of the begin- 
 ning, I must do so in the same modest tone in 
 which you speak of yourselves. It always 
 touched us when you tried to avoid our thanks 
 and when you told us how well the Belgians 
 and the French in the invaded districts had 
 seconded you, and how during their frightful 
 
DEDICATION vii 
 
 ordeal they had proved the truth of the 
 proverb "Help thyself, and heaven will help 
 thee." My dear friends, I seem to hear you 
 repeating, by our stricken hearths, whose de- 
 struction was written long beforehand by Ger- 
 many in the Book of Destiny, the saying of 
 one of our old French masters of the art of 
 surgery. When his patient was cured he said 
 with the modesty of a true Christian: "I 
 dressed his wound — God healed him." 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 An Evening with the C. R. B i 
 
 April, 191 7 — A Franco-American drawing-room — Comments 
 on the entry of the United States into the war — Moving 
 pictures of the war. 
 
 The American delegates to the Commission for Relief in 
 Belgium. 
 
 A delegate's story — His crossing — Eight hundred Germans 
 on board captured by a French patrol boat. 
 
 Berlin in the first days of the war — German theories — Old 
 grievances — The ideal of domination. 
 
 Last days at Antwerp — ^The refugees — Impressive entry of 
 the German armies — ^The strength in numbers of the Ger- 
 mans — Spiritual strength of Belgium and France — The art 
 of Flanders — ^The soul of Flanders — Belgium, a bending 
 yet resisting reed during the war. 
 
 Testimony of French writers as to German thought — Mur- 
 derous idealism — National pantheism — Germany deifies 
 and worships herself. 
 
 To this destructive doctrine the United States opposes her 
 ideal of justice. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Americans in the First Days of the War 78 
 
 Their impressions of Paris — Evening scene — September 8 at 
 Notre Dame. 
 
 History of the Relief Commission — Scarcity of food in Bel- 
 gium and France — First appeal to London — Mr. Hoover — 
 Formation of the commission — Propaganda — Installation 
 of the American delegates in Belgium and France — Their 
 relations with the Belgians, the French, and the Germans 
 — Discussion as to the method of relief. 
 
 Life of the American delegates in the invaded districts — 
 Forced labor — Deportations — ** Punitive measures.** 
 
 Last interviews between German officers and American del- 
 egates — ^The United States declares war. 
 
 The American delegates leave the invaded districts. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 With Our Friends in the Liberated Country 170 
 
 Mr. Hoover visits Noyon after the German retreat in 191 7 — 
 Journey to Senlis — Memories of the German occupation — 
 The death of M. Odent — Breakfast at Noyon — ^The mayors 
 of the liberated communes thank the committee for sav- 
 ing the people of the invaded districts from famine — Visit 
 to the liberated communes — Destruction of trees — Ruined 
 landscapes — How the Germans fell back — Carrying off of 
 the last men able to work, and of women and young girls. 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 The battering-ram — Systematic destruction of villages — Old 
 Eustache's story. 
 
 The cemetery — ^Thoughts on the dead — Visit to the ruined 
 chateau of B. — Impressions of the Americans — ^They recall 
 their faith in justice, liberty, and peace, and oppose it to 
 the idea of domination by force — How principles so differ- 
 ent grew in two great nations, and necessarily came to an 
 issue — Return to Noyon — Night in the forest of Ourscamp. 
 
 Mr. Hoover goes back to the United States to take charge 
 of the apportionment of food — Farewells at Havre — Mr. 
 Hoover announces speedy and powerful aid from America. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 German thefts of factory equipment in northern 
 
 France Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Herbert Hoover, President of the C. R. B 44 
 
 Distribution of rations to the civil population in a 
 
 town of devastated France 88 
 
 Steamship South Point in the North Sea, February 27, 
 
 1915 no 
 
 Trees cut down by the Germans at a crossroads at 
 
 Champien, Oise 154 
 
 Pines cut down by the Germans in the park of the 
 
 chateau of Pont-Saint-Mard, Aisne 174 
 
 Battering-ram for knocking in the walls of houses, 
 
 found at Margnies-les-Cerises, Oise 198 
 
THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B, 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF AN EX-NEUTRAL 
 
 I 
 
 T was two years ago — ^let us go back in 
 order to be sure of our starting-point, and 
 be able to judge how much we have accom- 
 pHshed — ^yes, it was two years ago, in April, 
 1917. That spring of 1917 weighed heavily 
 on French hearts. From its outset the char- 
 acter of the Russian revolution showed clearly 
 that we had nothing to expect from it but 
 disaster, and we were still in suspense as to 
 the final decision of the United States. 
 
 For the third time Spring, as she passed 
 over the fields of France, felt her wings 
 weighted down by blood. 
 
 But one evening, in the pretty blue-and- 
 
 gold drawing-room of our American friend, 
 
 Mrs. Felder, the tension was relaxed; we hela 
 
 out our hands to each other cordially and 
 
 1 
 
THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 there was gladness in all our eyes — the United 
 States had finally decided to go into the war. 
 
 There were about thirty of us there, Ameri- 
 cans and French; yesterday friends and to- 
 day allies. These Thursday teas of Mrs. Feld- 
 er's were a meeting-ground for some French 
 men and women who knew America, and 
 some Americans who knew and loved France. 
 Writers, journalists, lecturers, professors, sent 
 from one shore of the Atlantic to the other, 
 charitable women, apostles of American gen- 
 erosity, found there an opportunity to ex- 
 press themselves and to reach each other. 
 
 Why were we all at war ? What had caused 
 it ? How had France, occupied with social 
 and labor problems, and fairly fermenting 
 with pacifism, been able to spring to her feet, 
 all differences forgotten, and face her foe.^^ 
 Why had the United States been merely ob- 
 servant for so long, watching and judging the 
 blows as they fell ? 
 
 We had much to learn, on one side and the 
 other. Like Narcissus bending over his own 
 image, the old peoples of the world, looking 
 into the old rivers of history, saw only their 
 own reflection. 
 
 That evening Mr. William Sharp, the 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 3 
 
 American ambassador, came in for a few mo- 
 ments. I can see him now, leaning on the 
 chimney-piece; his grave smile was even 
 graver than usual, and his eyes, always se- 
 rene, seemed brighter; they shone with quiet 
 satisfaction. And, alluding to other meetings 
 when we French had endeavored to impart 
 to our American friends our own fervor 
 of conviction, he said in his even, courteous 
 voice: '^Well, the time of the propaganda 
 is up." 
 
 The expression of his face was slightly iron- 
 ical, although full of sympathy. He perhaps 
 felt that our impatient zeal had sometimes 
 doubted the motives of the United States, or, 
 rather, had misunderstood that long course of 
 serious thought during which the great nation 
 had weighed its duties, not its opportunities. 
 And yet, all through that autumn and winter 
 of 1916--1917 our guests and our friends had 
 repeated: *'You will see — ^America will go 
 into the war within six months" — or four, or 
 three. They were never tired of making for 
 our benefit an exact and almost astronomical 
 calculation, to prove that their intervention 
 was inevitable. 
 
 "It will come," said John Felder. "Good 
 
THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 God!" he cried, striking the table hard with 
 his fist, "within three months you will see 
 American regiments in France!" 
 
 I may acknowledge now that there were 
 those among us who doubted, who thought 
 his words a sympathetic opinion, but nothing 
 more. How could it be possible that Amer- 
 ica, leaving her own rich and peaceful coun- 
 try, would side with French ideals rather than 
 with German realities, and would come to 
 our desolate fields, where death was the only 
 harvest ? Was it possible that any mere 
 order could improvise an army from one day 
 to the next, and transport it in a mighty fleet 
 across the ocean despite the menace of Ger- 
 man ruthlessness ? 
 
 We were like unbelievers to whom a com- 
 ing miracle has been announced. We hoped 
 and at the same time we doubted, both hope 
 and doubt springing from our infinite longing. 
 Yes, America would help us — ^from afar — ^but 
 would she not be like that other admirable 
 neutral, the moon, which shed her light on 
 our night-watches and our sorrows ? 
 
 And yet the fateful hour had struck — Jus- 
 tice has her dial as well as her scales. 
 
 Our friend, John Felder, beamed with 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 5 
 
 silent satisfaction. (When one speaks of 
 Americans the word "silent" comes often to 
 one's lips.) His charming wife, from one of 
 the Southern States, offered us tea with ges- 
 tures and movements even more graceful and 
 rhythmical than usual, and an almost mys- 
 terious friendliness shone in her eyes, while 
 her little Southern feet, in their gold slippers, 
 peeped from under her short black frock, 
 tracing upon the carpet a suggestion of some 
 sacred triumphal dance. 
 
 As the April afternoon drew toward its 
 close the scent of horse-chestnuts and acacias 
 was wafted up into the room from the street 
 below, together with the subdued noises of 
 Parisian life in spring — ^the muffled roll of 
 automobiles, bearing belated pleasure-seekers 
 toward the budding foliage of the Bois, the 
 happy cries of children playing under trees 
 starry with flowers. A small group of us were 
 leaning on the balcony, filled with new 
 thoughts and, notwithstanding the war with 
 all its mourning, feeling the peace of the ap- 
 proaching evening, and of the great golden 
 clouds sailing slowly across the clear sky; lis- 
 tening to the children's voices — ^the voices of 
 our hopes for the future — ^becoming less and 
 
THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 less frequent as the shadows fell, like the twit- 
 tering of birds in the branches when twilight 
 closes in. 
 
 Our talk was of the one great fact. Like 
 all other French people, we took possession of 
 it as if it had been a victory. America had 
 entered the war ! The distant beautiful moon 
 had come down to our bleeding earth and was 
 going into battle by our side — ^but why ? 
 
 The old butler, Jean, long past the age of 
 any possible mobilization, went to and fro 
 among us with his tea-tray, his thin lips 
 parted in a beatific smile : he looked discreetly 
 proud, like a family servant at a wedding- 
 feast. 
 
 "Well," said a voice, "do you believe 
 at last ? America is as she was in Christo- 
 pher Columbus's day — she was foreseen and 
 guessed at then, and you will see that she 
 will again re-establish the equilibrium of the 
 world." 
 
 It was a woman's voice, clear and full, with 
 a ringing American accent. It was Daisy 
 Folk — "our Daisy," as we called her, who 
 had been in France for two years, one of the 
 first emissaries from the friendship of America. 
 
 And if we had sometimes doubted, she, 
 Daisy, had always believed. 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 7 
 
 Her mission lay in a little French village, 
 destroyed by fire, a tiny village of Lorraine, 
 on the edge of the forest of Parroy. A gen- 
 erous friend had said to her, "Choose for me, 
 in devastated France, the poorest and most 
 badly wrecked village that you can find," and, 
 as she might in former days have sought our 
 most precious ornament for this same Cali- 
 fornian friend, she had now sought out and 
 chosen the village of Vitrimont, and was re- 
 building it, stone by stone, living meanwhile 
 among our Lorraine peasants. 
 
 "Yes," said this philosopher, "the Old 
 World made us, and now you will see the re- 
 flux of the New World upon the Old, in 
 strength, in mental energy, and in affection. 
 And since you have spoken of the moon in 
 referring to us, you will have the phenomena 
 of the tides. You will be sorry that you ever 
 doubted," she went on, "and you will see 
 that, thanks to us, this mystery of war and 
 death will be cleared up." 
 
 A flame of faith shone in her eyes. "But 
 it is thanks to you," she added, "that we feel 
 ourselves to-day a nation. Time and history 
 are the only judges who can tell how much 
 each of us has given to the other." 
 
8 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 While she spoke I saw again the last eve- 
 ning which I had spent with Daisy, in the 
 rough chamber which she had improvised for 
 herself in the little charred village. We had 
 dined out-of-doors, under a slight shelter of 
 planks which our peasants had put up for 
 her, and as we talked we looked out at the 
 line of the forest waking to life at the touch 
 of Spring. She wore that evening a thin cloak 
 of red gauze over her dark dress, and with 
 her shining black hair, folded close to her 
 head, her clear-cut features, and her deter- 
 mined black eyes, she seemed a strangely pic- 
 turesque shepherdess for her little Lorraine 
 flock ! She took her violin and played an old 
 tune, an air by Rameau; she looked very 
 happy as she said, "I like to play this French 
 music on French soiV* while her foot pressed 
 the earth as if she wished to take root. "I 
 love everything in France, her past, her pres- 
 ent, and," pointing to the charred and crum- 
 bling stones, "the hope which springs from 
 these ruins.'' And again she said: "I am 
 building new houses for my good people here 
 on the places where their old ones stood; they 
 say I bring them something, but on their side 
 they give me a treasure. I have my heart's 
 desire,'* 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 9 
 
 By going into the war would America have 
 her heart's desire? It was permissible to 
 think so as we watched the look of rejoicing 
 and almost of relief on the faces of our new 
 allies. Our hosts on that April evening, who 
 had seen and known the war, had felt neutral- 
 ity to be an oppression. 
 
 Just then Jean appeared at the door with 
 his proud and timid smile, asking us if we 
 would be pleased to go into the long room. 
 There the lantern was being lighted to show 
 the moving pictures, for propaganda by this 
 means was one of our war institutions. We 
 could not claim to have invented it, but dur- 
 ing the winter those who had organized the 
 service tried out in the Felders' apartment the 
 films which were to give America true pic- 
 tures of the war and of France. The long 
 room was already full, the ladies seated, while 
 the men were patiently resigned to standing 
 against the wall. It was a mixed audience, 
 both French and American: young officers 
 and professors just returned from their mis- 
 sions overseas; American nurses, of widely 
 different types — some of them very striking 
 in their military uniforms. 
 
 Mrs. H. was there, in a long cape of the 
 same horizon-blue as our soldiers; a very long 
 
10 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 veil of the same shade fell in straight folds 
 from a linen band around her head, and from 
 under it her hair made a golden haze on her 
 brow; her full red lips smiled with the pride 
 of youth; she was an archangel of nurses. 
 
 Near her were more modest mortals. There 
 was Miss D., hidden in a shadowy corner. 
 "You know her," said Daisy. Yes, I recog- 
 nized her sweet, ascetic face, with its clear, 
 soft eyes. "You know,'' Daisy went on, 
 "she has rented and left her delightful house 
 and has come to France to offer herself, with 
 all her resources, for war work, but don't ever 
 speak to her of it, or you will displease her; 
 she only wants to be an anonymous * sister.'" 
 Here is a young woman journalist, much to 
 the fore, who has, by her own account, mil- 
 lions of readers whom she instructs as to our 
 social work; she is a pronounced and redoubt- 
 able feminist, and has made the round of the 
 Mediterranean — Italy, Roumania, the Greek 
 islands during the campaign of the Darda- 
 nelles; she has almost fought, and has been 
 torpedoed, swimming for her life (and for her 
 newspaper) in the eddies among the wreckage 
 of her steamer. She wears a Napoleonic 
 cocked hat, is dressed in dark cloth of a sim- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 11 
 
 pie and masculine cut, and carries a stout 
 stick in her wiry hand. She is very different 
 from the beautiful archangel, but still it is 
 another form of energy. Close to her is one 
 of her colleagues, a very white and meagre 
 little creature, with pale eyes and a sharp 
 profile; she has sometimes bored us by her 
 obstinate wish to go to the front — she is cer- 
 tainly thinking of it now. 
 
 One thing always strikes us in our new 
 allies: one American woman is not in the 
 least like another, except for a trait which 
 they all have in common — their determination 
 to reach the goal which they set for them- 
 selves. These birds of passage have strong 
 wings; they know where they are going. 
 
 Suddenly it is dark and silent, save for the 
 sharp click of the machine; one scene follows 
 another, as we rehearse, for the benefit of our 
 friends in America, their simple object-lesson. 
 First of all comes Alsace, and let us hope that 
 our friends will trace with a finger, as children 
 do, the outline of the pictures we show them. 
 But, after all, what can they know of our 
 mourning for Alsace and Lorraine, and of our 
 just claim to them ? Here is the landscape — 
 forests of young pines smothered in snow, 
 
12 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 mountain streams leaping and bounding down 
 into the valleys; villages, one just like another, 
 crowding piously around their churches, cha- 
 lets with their high cross-beams, and on the 
 steeples and the roofs of the' houses, stiffly 
 upright on their nests, those faithful and dear 
 friends, the storks. 
 
 Then glimpses of the old French life of 
 Alsace; the entry of the kings of France into 
 Metz, and afterward into Strasbourg; other 
 time-honored proofs that Alsace and France 
 were one; old French names graven on the 
 stones of their cemeteries. After the dead, 
 the living; we see Alsatians who had lived 
 through the rending apart of their country in 
 1870. From its hiding-place behind the panels 
 of the old wardrobe they take out the flag of 
 France, which has been waiting there through 
 four and forty long years; they shake out its 
 sacred folds, and, almost blinded by emotion, 
 they see it float upon the breeze of France 
 over their liberated valley. We see an old 
 woman, all bent and wrinkled, taking from 
 its worn case the likeness of her husband, a 
 French soldier killed in the war of 1870. She 
 gazes on it, seeming to be listening the while 
 to the deep growling of the cannon disput- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 13 
 
 ing over her frail life and her little chalet, 
 scarcely more solid than the stork's nest on 
 its roof. And now we have the entry of the 
 first detachment of French troops into the 
 village; happy groups embrace each other 
 under the exultant flag, and we can almost 
 hear their joyful shouts. The crowd parts, 
 the soldiers are drawn up in line, and General 
 Joffre appears. He salutes the flag, and gives 
 the kiss of France to the little Alsatian girl 
 who comes forward timidly, her face shad- 
 owed by her big black head-dress. 
 
 The machine still turns, and now we have 
 pictures of the war: the chasseurs Alpins in 
 the Vosges, sliding over the snowy slopes on 
 their skis, or leading long lines of sleds, har- 
 nessed to teams of dogs who seem to delight 
 in their work. On the outskirts of a wood 
 big guns lift their heads as if they were trying 
 to get the enemy's scent. It is an impressive 
 sight when two of them belch forth their 
 shells at the same moment. After a quick re- 
 coil they slide forward again on their carriages 
 to their former positions, and far away we 
 see a terrific explosion; the earth heaves vio- 
 lently upward and falls back again, while 
 dense, black smoke rises slowly in thick 
 
14 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 spirals until it is gradually dispersed and ab- 
 sorbed into the heavy air, where the clouds 
 hang low under a brooding sky. This forward 
 leap of the guns is like the bound of some 
 huge, keen-jawed hound — it is equally supple, 
 equally alive and dangerous — and also equally 
 obedient. 
 
 The pictures go on, one after another, until 
 the sharp click of the machine gets upon one's 
 nerves. Now it is a dreary sequence of ruined 
 villages, wrecked churches, dead towns, deso- 
 late fields; at a spot where three roads meet 
 a Christ hanging on his cross is alone in the 
 uptorn and deserted countryside. After that 
 we have the sea — ^the Atlantic Ocean, with 
 its long, slow swell. On the horizon a black 
 dot appears, very small at first, but growing 
 gradually larger, and followed by a trail of 
 smoke; we can make out a steamer, rolling 
 and pitching, but steadily going on. It is the 
 Rochester, the first vessel to leave America 
 after the infamous German announcement 
 that every keel afloat, without exception, 
 would be torpedoed. All the German sharks, 
 warned of her sailing, are lying in wait for 
 her under the waves, but she manages to 
 elude their jaws, going on and on until at last 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 15 
 
 she enters the port of Bordeaux, to be 
 greeted by cheering, and formally welcomed 
 by an official committee, largely made up of 
 bright-faced girls bearing great bunches of 
 roses. The young captain stands smiling, evi- 
 dently amused, and shakes the hands out- 
 stretched to him vigorously; we can see him 
 laugh. To him the sensational crossing has 
 clearly been good sport. 
 
 All this passes quickly, with the jerky stac- 
 cato movement of the cinema, and now we 
 have Salonica, a white city crowned with 
 cupolas, and, to all appearance, smiling and 
 happy, as all Mediterranean cities are when 
 seen from that enchanted sea. On its water- 
 front French and English regiments are march- 
 ing to the music of their bands. And now we 
 are in the valley of the Vardar, and in the 
 olive-orchards and under the huge cork-trees 
 the big guns recoil, leap forward and bark, 
 as they did under the pines of Alsace. The 
 same explosion, the same black spirals, the 
 same acrid smoke slowly dispersing in the 
 clear eastern light; the dry Greek earth shows 
 the sinuous line of trenches. How much alike 
 all war is ! Always the same soldiers, in blue 
 or in khaki, working at the same tasks, like a 
 
16 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 new order of humanity, devoted only to the 
 new world-business of warfare; always the 
 same holes in the ground, the same growling 
 of guns, near or distant, the same proud 
 groups around generals who give decorations 
 to their men and kiss the flags. 
 
 The earth is a great globe turning at our 
 touch as the show goes on. Here is a crowd 
 of diminutive Japanese, working like ants in 
 one of their munition factories; again we have 
 myriads of shells, neatly piled, while the guns 
 roar over the heads of small soldiers belonging 
 to a race which we used to look upon as the 
 most astonishing playthings in the world, 
 often diverting and sometimes mysteriously 
 menacing. Now they are our allies, working 
 and creating with us the mighty rhythm of 
 the European War. In the little wooden 
 houses, behind the paper windows, the women 
 of Nippon, crouching on their spotless mats, 
 follow the story of the war in the English 
 newspapers. 
 
 Now the landscape is all white; there are 
 ice-floes in gray water; the sky is pale and 
 cold, and again we see steamers, this time 
 pitching and rolling in a heavy and half-frozen 
 sea. They will land shells, always more shells, 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 17 
 
 on the Murman coast, the black smoke 
 rises lazily from the engine waiting for them 
 on the little railway. And at the end we are 
 back again in America; in the virgin forests 
 negro wood-cutters sing as their blows fall; 
 the mighty trunks, which have held their 
 own against the storms of centuries, shiver 
 throughout their length and bow themselves 
 with a sound of cracking and rending, until 
 at last they crash to the ground, as if aston- 
 ished that they must die. It is war carried 
 into the very sanctuaries where we were used 
 to worship the silent and everlasting forces 
 of nature. 
 
 Memory carried me back to Africa. I saw 
 again the wide yellow sands, the sun-baked 
 fields, hedged with cactus, the stretches of 
 plain where a scanty growth of corn strug- 
 gled for life, the welcome groups of trees, 
 so few and so beautiful that one saw them 
 from afar across the rolling stretches of bare 
 earth, waiting to soothe the weary traveller 
 in the purple shade at their feet. In the still 
 air, palpitating with heat, the great aloe plants 
 lifted their fantastic flowers, as tall and reg- 
 ular as Jacob's ladder; flocks of storks sailed 
 by; biblical shepherds played on slender pipes, 
 
18 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 making a sound as thin and clear as a bird's 
 call. 
 
 Yet war is there also, arousing a people 
 who seemed to us to be sunk in a never-ending 
 slumber, dreaming only of the joys of their 
 paradise. These scenes, as I say, were repro- 
 duced for me by the cinema of my memory. 
 Could it be that in those remote Moroccan 
 villages, whose inhabitants seemed as igno- 
 rant of the mighty drama of history as a hive 
 of bees, there was weeping and lamentation 
 over sons and bridegrooms summoned to the 
 war in far-off France, from which they might 
 never return ? Would little Ladife never see 
 her Miloud again ? Was the Musulman ceme- 
 tery not to be the everlasting resting-place of 
 the Moroccan soldier fallen in the fields of 
 the Ourcq ? And yet he wore a powerful tal- 
 isman around his neck, and his old mother 
 had made long pilgrimages on foot, and had 
 hung bags full of prayers on the branches of 
 the sacred olive-tree. The majestic Lebanon, 
 which we had seen in other days bathing its 
 historic slopes in the Mediterranean, and lift- 
 ing its triumphant crest against the Asian 
 sky — ^was it also shaken by the convulsion of 
 war ? Could it be true that the smiling and 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 19 
 
 gentle tribes, smoking their narghilehs while 
 they waited confidently for the aid of France, 
 had been forced to feel the choking grip of 
 Turkey and Germany, and to suffer famine 
 and death ? Was it possible that all around 
 this flower-garden of the Mediterranean, in- 
 tended for the world's delight, men and 
 women were in the grasp of sterner emotions 
 than those caused by the sudden enchant- 
 ment of spring, or the heavy perfume of 
 orange-flowers and tuberoses ? 
 
 Happy are they who have seen, or at least 
 imagined, the real face of our Mother Earth — 
 to whom the names of oceans, of rivers, and 
 of countries are not merely words printed on 
 a sheet of colored paper. What we have seen 
 our eyes possess forever, and can enjoy until 
 all light goes out from them — and perhaps 
 thereafter. 
 
 The cinema has stopped; the object-lesson 
 of the war is over; we have seen what it was 
 well for us to see, as children are told as much 
 of life as is good for them to know; in both 
 cases the darker secrets are withheld — ^we 
 have not seen death, nor even acute suf- 
 fering. The lamps are lit again. There are 
 newcomers, women and girls in khaki, with 
 
20 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 short skirts and felt hats, masculine even to 
 the chin-straps. Strength, strength again — 
 their eyes meet ours as frankly and coolly as 
 those of young soldiers; their hand-shake is 
 short and businesslike. Miss S. tells me that 
 she has charge of a motor ambulance belong- 
 ing to a hospital where all the staff, both 
 surgeons and physicians, are women — ''all 
 women — ^no men," she repeats, with a touch 
 of pride. Yes, a touch of pride — and yet I 
 could not help feeling within myself a slight 
 and half-unconscious resistance. I could not 
 help thinking: ''They may all be 'women' at 
 the hospital, but there is something not quite 
 'woman' in the clean-cut features at which I 
 am gazing; they seem to have been turned 
 out, at one stroke, by the hand of a skilful 
 artist. Miss S. has the impeccable precision 
 of an instrument which is well-made, carefully 
 polished, and adjusted to form part of a great 
 machine — ^but it is an instrument after all." 
 And so we men and women look at one an- 
 other; our hearts are open to a new friendship, 
 we stretch out our hands — and then some- 
 times, for no real reason, from the merest 
 trifle, a chance word, even a glance, we come 
 up against some old prejudice, some ancestral 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 21 
 
 idea, reaching back to the twilight of time. 
 In our minds we have long exalted two differ- 
 ent types of womanhood — ^the woman capable 
 of loving with all her heart, and the Madonna 
 — each on her own altar. These modern girls 
 have stepped down from the altars on which 
 sacrifices were offered to women — and on 
 which they were often themselves sacrificed. 
 All is broad daylight in these young heads, 
 full of democratic and liberal ideas, and yet 
 this new type is in its turn dragging and push- 
 ing the ponderous machine of life in time of war. 
 "Will you introduce me to Mrs. B. ?" said 
 a young French priest, the Abbe F. He wore 
 around his neck the chain and cross of the 
 French military chaplains, and on his head a 
 police cap with two rows of braid. Of Irish 
 extraction, he is to start to-morrow for the 
 United States, in order to speak to Irishmen 
 on^ behalf of France. He is taking down the 
 names of bishops to whom he may have ac- 
 cess, and makes a special note (with a view to 
 his possible conversion) of a dignitary of the 
 church, who, being under the influence of 
 Bernstorff's agents, denounced France in the 
 Catholic cathedral of New York City as "the 
 sink of the world."' 
 
22 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 The Irish question, according to the Abbe 
 F., does not concern England only, for in the 
 United States the Catholic clergy, whose 
 ranks are largely recruited from the Irish, are 
 active and influential. During the two years 
 and a half that American neutrality lasted, 
 German propaganda had the field almost to 
 itself and sowed many mines therein, trusting 
 to their exploding later; there is great need of 
 mine-sweeping, which is not an easy job, as 
 the Germans were careful to foment the politi- 
 cal and racial hostilities which have existed 
 between England and Ireland for centuries, 
 while France was condemned as irreligious, 
 being represented to Catholic Americans as a 
 light woman, who had thrown her Phrygian 
 cap to the winds, and renounced the princi- 
 ples and traditions of her family in order 
 to plunge into vice. The chastisement which 
 awaited her, according to these good prophets, 
 was that of Don Juan. Her courage was not 
 to be denied, but it was the courage of the 
 atheist before the Commander's statue, mock- 
 ing and defiant. To corroborate this verdict 
 a few of our loosest novels (largely written 
 for the foreign market) were distributed as 
 tracts and our Puritan judges were virtu- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 23 
 
 ously shocked. The Commander (who was, of 
 course, the Kaiser) would force the atheist, 
 step by step, to his death. The picture was 
 easy to draw, and at a distance of three thou- 
 sand miles all the complicated strokes which 
 go to make up a true image are invisible. 
 
 Just there the door opened again, and a 
 dozen young men came in, one after another, 
 so young that they looked like a band of 
 students. After speaking to our hostess they 
 were introduced to us as a group. All Ameri- 
 cans, they appeared to resemble each other 
 because of the look in their faces, which was 
 uniformly bright and careless, with the ready 
 smile of youth. They had come that very day 
 from Belgium and the invaded districts of 
 France, where they had been stationed for 
 more than two years. 
 
 "The delegates of the C. R. B."Thus they 
 were presented to us, "C. R. B." standing for 
 "Commission for Relief in Belgium," and, by 
 extension, the invaded north of France. 
 
 At that time the melancholy processions of 
 refugees had not yet brought home to us the 
 overwhelming impression of our invaded coun- 
 try. These few Americans were among the 
 first to bring us their testimony; some had 
 
24 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 lived for months, even for years, in our oc- 
 cupied provinces, others had actually seen the 
 invasion, followed the resistance made to it, 
 and touched with their fingers (unable to do 
 more than give a little nourishment) the gag 
 thrust by our enemies into the throats of nine 
 and a half millions of Belgians and French, 
 which would have stifled even their cries of 
 hunger if the C. R. B. had not been or- 
 ganized, and had not taken up the task of 
 making it possible for these people, if not to 
 live, in any proper sense of the word, at least 
 to endure. 
 
 "The C. R. B.," said Harder, introducing 
 himself, "only represents initials in the com- 
 plicated alphabet of war, for I don't believe 
 you have read the statistics given in our big 
 blue reports/V 
 
 "No," said the beautiful archangel, "there 
 are too many figures." 
 
 "Well," said Harder, "the story of the C. 
 R. B. is almost as long as the war. Some of 
 us were already in Belgium when it began, 
 and others came there in the first days. We 
 were neutrals then, and the great and tragic 
 spectacle attracted us. We had a chance to 
 see the famous German organization, and 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 25 
 
 also to see the Belgian resistance; we could go 
 from one side to the other, counting and judg- 
 ing the strokes and counter-strokes like um- 
 pires. We had mingled feelings, but curi- 
 osity and love of excitement were uppermost. 
 To like the sight of combatants, whether they 
 be bulls or cocks or men, is a natural mascu- 
 line appetite, and so is a taste for danger. 
 Besides that, we felt great pity, and we hoped 
 to be able to make ourselves useful in trans- 
 porting and caring for the wounded. But 
 above all was the longing to see and to know 
 what was happening in Europe, where the 
 nations were devouring each other. I sailed 
 from New York with eight hundred Germans 
 who were going back to Germany to take 
 their places in the army. They all looked ex- 
 actly alike; they had the same sporting 
 clothes, the same cassowary feathers in their 
 felt hats, although they came from all the dif- 
 ferent States; they all sang the same patriotic 
 songs, as if they had all left the same school 
 that very morning. One saw immediately 
 what was meant by the German military sys- 
 tem, and — since I am giving you the first im- 
 pressions of a neutral — ^let me say that the 
 effect was rather fine. They came, thus unit- 
 
26 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 ed, from large and small towns in all our 
 States; from banks, factories, and shops, like 
 a regiment hastening, with colors flying and 
 music playing, to answer the first appeal 
 of the Fatherland. Being Germans and sol- 
 diers, they purposely ignored every one on 
 board who was not a German and a soldier; 
 the student scars on many of their faces 
 made them seem to wear the stigmata of war 
 already, as if they were dedicated as a race to 
 bloodshed. But the war was short so far as 
 they were concerned. We saw them exchange 
 uneasy looks when the wireless telegraph 
 crackled overhead, for they well knew that 
 English and French patrol boats were watch- 
 ing the liners for such passengers as they. 
 One day a delegation of them went to ask our 
 Dutch captain if he would not go back to 
 New York. He had told them honestly that 
 French and English cruisers were drawing un- 
 comfortably near, and they preferred to re- 
 turn to their counters and desks rather than 
 take the chance of an internment camp for 
 the duration of the war. I saw the delega- 
 tion coming out of the captain's cabin, and 
 they did not look happy. The steamer had 
 a cargo for Rotterdam, and could not turn 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 27 
 
 back. On our seventh day out the warriors 
 and ourselves were waked by what we civil- 
 ians thought was a clap of thunder — I was 
 not yet familiar with gun-fire ! A French 
 patrol boat was so close to us that I could 
 read her name, La Savoie, The signal to stop 
 floated from her mast, and her eight pretty 
 little guns were turned on us. A French offi- 
 cer came with the utmost politeness to take 
 possession of us. As he stepped on the deck 
 he gravely saluted the ladies, who were sit- 
 ting, considerably excited, in their deck chairs, 
 and this salute amused me so much that I 
 made a note of it, for since the eight hundred 
 Germans had started on their campaign not 
 one cassowary plume had bowed itself before 
 the feminine sex. 
 
 "The affair was soon over, and we had only 
 to follow the little patrol boat as a whale fol- 
 lows a sardine which he cannot snap up. 
 That was our sudden entrance into war; the 
 Savoiey with the eyes of her guns looking at us 
 all the time, led us to Brest, and all along the 
 coast of France we saw mysterious and intelli- 
 gent signal-lights sending the news from one 
 station to another of the capture and of our 
 passing. At Brest our eight hundred fellow 
 
28 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 passengers, now prisoners for as long as the 
 war should last, left us. We saw them going 
 off toward the shore, still singing; song is one 
 of the forces drawing them together. We were 
 told that they were to be interned in a little 
 Breton fishing village. 
 
 "A few days later," Harder went on, '*I 
 was In Berlin, for I went into the war from 
 the German end, and I am glad of it, for I 
 am sure now of what I know" — and he 
 clinched his hands. "In Berlin I saw the 
 joyous side of war; It was a sword-dance, if 
 you choose, but the rhythm was lively, if 
 somewhat fierce, and I say again without hesi- 
 tation that it was imposing. The joy was 
 universal; every German seemed to be fulfil- 
 ling his destiny. There was no need for them 
 to read Treitschke or Bernhardi, whose for- 
 mulas had been mixed with their mothers' 
 milk and with the first meat of their child- 
 hood, and had become part of their flesh and 
 blood. The pride of war was everywhere. 
 Officers with measured tread and heads held 
 high superintended the departure of the 
 troops from the railway-stations, like noble- 
 men who had not only the authority of their 
 rank In the army but that of the ruling class 
 to which they belonged. One saw the prole- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 29 
 
 tarians of war led by its rulers — the proletariat 
 being glad to obey and trained to enthusiasm. 
 The streets were gay with banners, flags, and 
 patriotic posters, the crowded theatres glori- 
 fied the Fatherland and the war. To be sure, 
 as the trains went off one did see women's 
 faces drawn with anguish.'' 
 
 "Yes," said Daisy, "I also have seen that. 
 When the war began I went from London to 
 Berlin in order to take home some German 
 girls who had been staying in England, and 
 to bring back English girls who had been 
 studying in Berlin. Germania was like an 
 old mother whose sons are leaving her in 
 order to make splendid marriages; they were 
 sure to return to her richer than they went, 
 bringing beautiful brides of high lineage." 
 
 "We all of us felt as if we were in a pre- 
 cocious springtime," Harder went on. "I 
 cannot express the sensation in the language 
 of war or of politics; one has to use terms 
 descriptive of life, of nature, in order to ex- 
 plain the excitement throughout Germany. 
 The people were like bees who had been 
 waiting until it was time to swarm: at last 
 the earth was covered with flowers ready to 
 be plundered. 
 
 "And if one tried to talk at a table d'hote, or 
 
30 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 in one of the private houses in which I was 
 received, this first impression was confirmed 
 and strengthened; collective enthusiasm is 
 strange to us Americans, because as a nation 
 we are independent and even self-contained. 
 
 "Officers,, professors, shopkeepers, all recited 
 in the same manner their lesson from the 
 Bible of War. Some had taught, others had 
 learned it, but the matter was the same. The 
 sacred book of their national life was open, 
 and in it were inscribed their animosities, 
 their claims, and their hopes. Every one had 
 his own historic view of the war, if I may- 
 call it so, looking back for centuries over the 
 life of the many little German states which had 
 been in the shadow, made unhappy by jeal- 
 ousies, and oppressed by unjust wars. 
 
 "Nobody mentioned Serbia, nor the Russian 
 mobilization, nor even the French air-raids 
 over Nuremberg — ^the casus belli, real or 
 imaginary, did not lie there. In the taverns, 
 thick with pipe-smoke, we talked of the 
 Thirty Years' War with rapier-scarred stu- 
 dents or professors, while the foam on our 
 tall beer-mugs sank down, its bubbles softly 
 breaking. Each speaker was the mouthpiece 
 of a Germany both strong and vindictive. 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 31 
 
 which had been for centuries deprived of a 
 seat at the banquet of civihzation through 
 the injustice of fate. They had long been 
 metaphorically hungry and thirsty within the 
 limits of Prussia; there were black pages in 
 their chronicles to be effaced. During the 
 Thirty Years' War, to which they constantly 
 recurred, their population had been reduced 
 from twenty millions to four. If you had 
 seen their frowning brows and the gleam of 
 hate in their eyes, the eyes of men used to 
 poring over books and seeing life through the 
 medium of printed words, you would have 
 said that they themselves had seen and suf- 
 fered in this time of misery and humiliation; 
 they were like men who have been cheated 
 out of their youth and want revenge in their 
 later years. And then they spoke of Napo- 
 leon and Jena, trembling with anger; they 
 might have been the students who sharpened 
 their sabres in 1806 on the steps of the French 
 Legation. In 1870 Germany soldered to- 
 gether the fragments of her broken sword, 
 *Nothung,' or Necessity, a blade of divine 
 origin. Now, at last, this sword would cut 
 its way through the forest which awaited it, 
 full of spring and the singing of birds. Their 
 
32 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 myths were always present to their minds, as 
 well as their history; they thought equally of 
 the Rhinegold and of the Basin of Briey. I 
 saw them in their beer-halls, terribly real- 
 istic and also often terribly poetic, justifying 
 Truth by Fable. And with all that, biblical; 
 the idea of the 'chosen people' was in their 
 heads, clouded by symbolism and by the hope 
 of revenge. The German nation were the 
 children of Israel, chosen and cherished by 
 the God of vengeance, and their vocation was 
 to conquer the Promised Land. They be- 
 trayed themselves without meaning to, and 
 were not careful to conceal that they spoke as 
 aggressors. There was no question then of 
 *the war that was forced upon us'; war was 
 the outward flowering, so to speak, of their 
 inward growth, with roots deep in the soil 
 and full of sap. War justified and explained 
 itself by their convictions as to the past and 
 the future. 
 
 "The air grew blue and heavy with pipe- 
 smoke, mingled with the fumes of annals and 
 fables; there were long silences, while the beer 
 was slowly digesting. I watched these strong, 
 ruddy German faces grow more peaceful and 
 almost sleepy; I'm thinking particularly while 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 33 
 
 I speak of two professors, who gradually be- 
 came kind and even sympathetic. 
 
 "Yes, this affair of Belgium was certainly 
 very sad, but one must make up one's mind 
 to it. In order to build up the wonderful new 
 Germany some old nests had to be destroyed; 
 there was some shooting, of course — ^that was 
 war; there were outcries from women and 
 children and from fanatical and superstitious 
 priests — ^but why did these birds, with their 
 useless chirping, attempt to stand angrily on 
 the edges of their nests ? Poor little Belgium, 
 poor France; they gasped, they suffered, but 
 they were not meant to die. They would only 
 undergo a metempsychosis; the soul of Ger- 
 many would replace their own. The Germans 
 did not hate them; it was a case of *Nothung,' 
 Necessity, leading the German nation on. 
 German politics became, in their own words, 
 a 'Weltanschauung,' religious as well as po- 
 litical. Sprung from the old Teutonic gods, 
 the Germans laid claim to the earth, and 
 their bellicose reveries were accompanied by 
 German orchestras, giving them that splendid 
 German music, where the most vehement 
 passion Is curbed by the most exact rhythm, 
 and where the incomprehensible and the in- 
 
34 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 expressible are explained with a logic which 
 borders on inspiration." 
 
 "Confess," said Mrs. Felder, tapping the 
 floor with her little golden foot at this tribute 
 to German music, "confess that you admired 
 these men." 
 
 "Certainly," replied Harder. "I was not 
 a judge, I was only an investigator, come 
 from another planet, and this mixture of 
 reality, poetry, prophetic spirit, and calcula- 
 tion interested me greatly. And as I was 
 then a war correspondent, I was filled with 
 desire to see the oncoming of the mighty tidal 
 wave. By October I was in Antwerp. Only 
 we neutrals were able to see, in such a short 
 lapse of time, both of the faces shown by the 
 war. Brussels was already occupied, but Ant- 
 werp not yet, and I was there when the at- 
 tack came. At first the sound of the great 
 German marine guns, as they hammered at 
 the outer forts, sounded dull and far off, but 
 it grew nearer and louder, until they seemed, 
 like Jupiter Tonans, bent on deafening us. 
 The confidence which the city had placed in 
 the 'indestructible' forts gave way to anx- 
 iety and distress. I remembered what my 
 tavern-prophets had said over their beer- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 35 
 
 mugs. They must have been reminded of the 
 walls of Jericho falling when the trumpets of 
 the ^chosen people' were blown before them. 
 *'The defense of the Antwerp forts was as 
 unavailing as that of Jericho's walls. You 
 have all heard and read of the exodus of the 
 population, but I may speak of it, for I have 
 not read of it, but have seen it. Ought I not 
 to say, as a good newspaper correspondent," 
 he added with a smile, "that I have 'lived it' ? 
 But it was enough to see it, and if I had not 
 been so recently in Berlin I should have had 
 only one side of a great experience. The noise 
 was like the cracking of a world falling to 
 pieces — I thought of what the professor had 
 said about the old nests — ^but one did not do 
 much thinking. Fires had broken out on 
 every side, and although our eyes were full 
 of horrors we were curious to see the great 
 reservoirs of petroleum burning in the red 
 night. Huge black columns of smoke rose in 
 the sharp October air, and billows of purple 
 flame blotted out the sky. One saw only des- 
 olation and flight — ^the flight of a whole peo- 
 ple." . . . Here Harder interrupted himself, 
 as if he feared to show personal feeling. 
 Americans are always on their guard ! It 
 
36 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 was growing late; the windows were closed 
 and old Jean's careful hands had drawn the 
 blue curtains over them; the only lamp in the 
 large room threw its white light over the 
 turquoise-blue of the chairs; a tapestry show- 
 ing a fantastic hunting-scene hung on one of 
 the walls, and in the shadow its figures seemed 
 to come to life; an impatient stag thrust his 
 antlers into an autumnal tree. 
 
 "Please stay where you are/' said Mrs. 
 Felder, in a tone of authority, "and Jean shall 
 bring tea and sandwiches if we are hungry.'* 
 And at the same time, in her very gracious 
 and feminine manner, with her sad and some- 
 what enigmatic smile, she bade good-by to 
 some of her guests. Five or six of us, includ- 
 ing John Felder, stayed with Daisy around 
 the hearth, which in this mild evening was 
 full of flowering azaleas. With her light and 
 measured step she went to the door and closed 
 it, as if to show that we were her prisoners. 
 Then she sat down, her slender hands beating 
 a measure on her knees. 
 
 "Go on," she said. 
 
 "I obey," Harder answered, yielding with 
 his young smile to her feminine insistence. 
 He hesitated for a second, and then went on. 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 37 
 
 *' You know our mothers used sometimes to 
 tell us of the end of the world, and what a 
 noise it would make, and we sometimes 
 thought of it; but what nobody could imagine, 
 and what it is impossible to tell, is the suffer- 
 ing. For my own part I had no idea of what 
 this war was, and was going to be, until I saw 
 that exodus of poor people flying with Death 
 behind them, striking at them as they went. 
 On the 28th of September the Forts of 
 Waelhem and Wavre fell, and on the 29th 
 Fort Lierre, then Fort Koningshoyckt, and 
 on the 7th of October the King, the Belgian 
 government officials, and the foreign legations 
 went across the Scheldt and made their way 
 to the coast of France. From all the vil- 
 lages lying between the forts and the city 
 fugitives came pouring in with their cattle 
 and their carts. They had faith in Antwerp, 
 their citadel, so they camped in the open 
 squares or wherever they could find shelter. In 
 the evening of the 7th notices signed by Gen- 
 eral Guise were posted on the walls of the 
 town, to warn those who meant to leave that 
 they had better start, and that those remain- 
 ing should take refuge in cellars. The fugi- 
 tives made for the Scheldt. Rafts, lighters. 
 
38 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 ferry-boats, fishing-smacks — everything which 
 could float upon the water was soon danger- 
 ously full, and the river, with all its branches, 
 was covered in a few hours with these frail 
 floating houses. 
 
 "The Belgian army crossed the bridges, go- 
 ing to the west, toward Waes; in the intervals 
 between black darkness and sudden light, be- 
 tween sinister silence and explosions, followed 
 by the sound of crumbling walls and cries ris- 
 ing from the river, the danger became more 
 and more imminent. Only the imagination 
 of painters has ever given any idea of such 
 terrors. The boats, knocking one against the 
 other, made their way heavily to the Dutch 
 shore, but they could not carry all the crowd; 
 there were tangled masses of fugitives on foot 
 on the east bank of the river. They hurried 
 along, pushing before them their carts, their 
 cattle, and an extraordinary number of baby- 
 carriages, laden with packages, with the fine 
 Flemish babies perched on top, frightened, 
 astonished, but quiet. There were frequent 
 stops for a moment, and then I could hear the 
 cooing and caressing murmur of the young 
 mothers as they bent over these strange 
 cradles of the exodus. I recognized the lint- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 39 
 
 white hair and the placid look of the Flemish 
 infants who are shown in their mothers' arms 
 in pictures of the kermesses. These babies 
 were just like them — ^fair, rather heavy and 
 unwieldy, with big heads under tight-fitting 
 caps. I did not then understand Flemish, and 
 the mingled voices only meant to me a cry of 
 fright. In the crush some mothers had lost the 
 children who were clinging to their skirts: 
 ' Mudder ! Mudder ! Brennen ! Gebrannt ! ' 
 Those were the only words at all like German 
 that I could distinguish. With their flying yel- 
 low hair the young women seemed to have 
 around them a reflection of the flames which 
 had driven them from home. The road to Hol- 
 land was still bordered by its tall poplars; 
 little mills on the flat fields still stretched out 
 their idle sails; there were corners of the 
 countryside still untouched, like an old en- 
 graving which has been saved from a fire. 
 
 "Next day was the 9th, and the silence of 
 death was over Antwerp; it was a broken and 
 empty shell. One heard only the howling of 
 hungry dogs, forgotten in the deserted houses. 
 Then I saw the great German parade, the 
 tidal wave — I had missed it at Brussels. I 
 watched it with the curious eyes of a neutral 
 
40 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 and a war correspondent; it pleased me to 
 make myself a judge between the irresistible 
 onrush of a plethoric body which announced 
 that it was cruel and unjust after the manner 
 of divine nature and the little nation which 
 was covering with its neutral and almost 
 naked body its neighbor, France. 
 
 "I went with a companion, an American 
 like myself, to a window from which we could 
 see the advancing Germans. The impression 
 of numbers and force was overpowering. As 
 far as we could see the same gray flood was 
 spreading, uninterrupted, regular and silent, 
 like all other great floods. I thought of those 
 mystic words which I had heard pronounced 
 at Berlin, about the Vocation' of the Ger- 
 man people, and their Mestiny.' Their day 
 had come — ^they were advancing like a great 
 brazen' serpent, with all its folds uncoiled, 
 slipping forward to take possession of the 
 earth. In speaking of themselves the Germans 
 showed their overweening pride by using the 
 mighty Bible images to describe their own 
 ambition. They liked to think they were Mes- 
 sianic figures, but their Messiah was force. 
 
 "Having seen them at a distance we saw 
 them later close at hand, as they passed, regi- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 41 
 
 ment after regiment, down the broad streets 
 of Antwerp. Except for the heavy rumbling 
 of trucks and ammunition-wagons, the only 
 sound was the heavy tramp of men's boots, 
 pounding on the pavement. One gray pack 
 after the other they went forward, stopped, 
 turned the corners of streets, obeying the stri- 
 dent orders which tore through the air like a 
 whip-lash. 
 
 "The whole army passed, the men and 
 their complete equipment: guns, caissons, 
 camions, each regiment followed by its mov- 
 ing kitchen, with smoke coming from the 
 chimneys. After the odor of burning houses 
 we were to have the smell of German soup. 
 That was meant for a humorous touch. The 
 soldiers sat on the kitchen-wagons, swinging 
 their legs, laughing and pretending to offer 
 the unctuous steam of their meat to the closed 
 windows above them. Their officers, whether 
 on horseback or afoot, directed their men with 
 the stiffness of automata, and this was accen- 
 tuated by the unusual number of belts and 
 straps with which they were accoutred. Al- 
 most all had on their chests an electric lamp 
 connected with a little electric battery in their 
 saddle-bag, and when night fell they amused 
 
42 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 themselves by making its light blaze out from 
 their bodies. Perhaps they thought them- 
 selves modern replicas of the Cyclops, and 
 that this uncommon eye was at the same time 
 fabulous and original. 
 
 "For two whole days the wave rolled on. 
 Here you call the invaders Huns and Barba- 
 rians, but if you had seen them as we did 
 it would be enough to say Germans. It is a 
 mistake to think that they are primitive 
 hordes, with a lust for slaughter; with them 
 relentlessness is a calculated result, methodi- 
 cally taught and reduced to rule, as torture 
 was in the Middle Ages. Their conception of 
 war is an amazing combination of an almost 
 candid idealism and a realism which is nothing 
 short of voracious, and they carry it out by 
 applying the same exact method to vast 
 masses of men, and by inculcating in these 
 masses, when they are formed into armies, a 
 national egotism which amounts to a cold 
 and systematic fanaticism — a fanaticism kept 
 in order by a corporal." 
 
 "When we say Boche or Barbarian or Hun," 
 interrupted Daisy, "it is because we are try- 
 ing to find a new name for an invisible enemy 
 who seems to be everywhere, like evil or 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 43 
 
 pain. In 1870 the soldiers and the people 
 called the Germans 'Prussians.'" 
 
 "And when we say Huns," said Mrs. 
 Felder, "we are only giving them the name of 
 something accursed; we speak of them as the 
 old Egyptians did of the locusts and the pes- 
 tilence — ^they are a plague." 
 
 "Well," Harder went on, "let us say that 
 they are a plague, and it is quite correct that 
 their dense gray masses are like a swarm of 
 fierce migrating locusts. I call the insects 
 fierce because their vast numbers and their 
 voracious appetites make them formidable; I 
 have more than once taken two or three of 
 them in my hand and found them quite harm- 
 less. Our duties in the C. R. B. brought us 
 into contact with some officers who were al- 
 most good-natured. We had to arrange with 
 them about feeding the starving people; you 
 should have heard them, fathers of families 
 themselves, talk genially about 'my popula- 
 tion,' as if there was no cause for anything 
 but good-will between the inhabitants and 
 the invaders. They were only carrying out 
 orders, and we felt that they would have 
 shown the same zeal — indeed, they acknowl- 
 edged it — ^if the command had been to shoot 
 
44 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 the same people; or else at the sound of a 
 whistle, without changing countenance, they 
 would have * ordered the sack.'" 
 
 "'Ordered the sack,"' said Mrs. Felder, 
 tapping the blue carpet with her impatient 
 foot, "I don't know that French expression." 
 
 "You will find it in all the memoirs of the 
 sixteenth century," said Harder, "and you 
 may be sure that the Germans have neat lists 
 in their files of all tl c sacks which have taken 
 place in the terrible wars of past centuries. 
 To 'order the sack' is to turn over a city or 
 village to the cupidity and bestiality of the 
 soldiery. The sack was ordered at Malines, 
 at Louvain, and at Aerschot. Those who gave 
 the abominable order did not themselves carry 
 it out, and those who did could always plead 
 that they were obliged to obey, and in this 
 way the German theory of collective irrespon- 
 sibility was upheld." 
 
 "But then," said Mrs. Felder, "if they are 
 going to search through old books to find 
 examples of cruelty in the past, they might 
 just as well burn women as witches, or con- 
 demn people to the stake if they happen to 
 hold different opinions." 
 
 "That is pretty nearly correct," Harder 
 
Photograph copyright by Underwood and Undencood. 
 
 Herbert Hoover, President of the C. R. B. 
 
 (Commission for the Relief of Invaded Belgium and France.) 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 45 
 
 answered. "It is perfectly true that if we 
 look hard enough we can find justification for 
 almost anything in some old record or other/' 
 
 "Let us go back to the locusts/' said Mrs. 
 Felder, "and tell us more about them. 
 When once they had descended on Belgium, 
 did they eat up all the food there was?" — 
 and she spread out her fingers nervously, as 
 if to avoid touching the insects. 
 
 "Exactly,'* answered Harder, looking at 
 his excited questioner with the characteristic 
 little smile which drew up the corners of his 
 lips. "And that is where the story of our 
 C. R. B. begins.'' 
 
 "Oh, but we don't want to hear it yet," 
 cried Mrs. Felder. "We want more of your 
 confession as a neutral, that is much more 
 interesting this evening. We want to know 
 what you thought of the Belgians after you 
 had seen the people whom you call Germans, 
 but which I shall continue to call Huns, Bar- 
 barians, and locusts." 
 
 "Ah," said Harder, "that's a long story, 
 and I'm afraid I shall be obliged to speak of 
 the C. R. B., for without it there would have 
 been no more Belgians — ^they would have been 
 exterminated by famine. And since we have 
 
46 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 mentioned old forms of torture, I may say 
 that Belgium and the north of France were 
 confined in an iron cage; the Germans held 
 the padlock, and nothing could get through 
 the bars, not even a letter or a bit of bread. 
 
 "Draw a line around the front, extend it 
 along the length of the German frontiers, and 
 within it you will have the prison district of 
 the war. Almost no one was allowed to enter 
 or to know it except the delegates of the 
 C. R. B., and within that circle of steel ten 
 millions of living souls asked themselves every 
 day the heart-sickening question: 'Shall we 
 die of hunger?' Supplies arrived constantly 
 from Germany for the troops, but they were 
 sacred; they were to feed the chosen people, 
 the armies of the Lord of Hosts. Not a 
 grain of German wheat went into a French or 
 Flemish mouth; we were only able to arrange 
 that the inhabitants should have what was 
 grown on their own soil. You may imagine 
 how much could be raised in an invaded coun- 
 try, and on ground over which the German 
 armies marched forward and back all the 
 time. In Belgium the armies moved on, but in 
 France they remained and grew ever larger; 
 millions of combatants overspread the occu- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 47 
 
 pied provinces. How the French managed to 
 keep alive until our food supplies could reach 
 them must remain one of those mysteries of 
 French vitality to which we are only too apt 
 to apply the comfortable word * miraculous/ 
 "Belgium was the first to suffer; the first 
 requisitions squeezed her dry. Her industrial 
 riches were very great, but for that very reason 
 she did not produce much; she was a factory 
 hand, buying her bread instead of baking it. 
 All the Belgian industries stopped at once. 
 The miners no longer went down into the 
 bowels of the earth and in a few days the 
 evil of enforced idleness was added to all the 
 others. It is true that Germany suffered, or 
 was going to suffer, from the blockade, but 
 she put her utmost energy into making the 
 most of her resources, and at the same time 
 she exhausted or ruined the territory which 
 she had seized. At one time she asserted the 
 right of the strong when she requisitioned 
 supplies, and at another she pleaded weak- 
 ness, in order to get out of dealing with the 
 food problem. The argument was simple; 
 since England had blockaded her ports Ger- 
 many was like the garrison of a besieged for- 
 tress; she had barely enough for herself. It is 
 
48 THE SOUL OF THE C. R, B. 
 
 true that she opened stores for the sale of pro- 
 visions, but only Germans were allowed to 
 enter and buy, and in the autumn of 19 14, as 
 the unemployed Belgian workmen stood in 
 line waiting their turn at the municipal can- 
 teens, they could see piles of sauerkraut and 
 garlands of sausages behind the brightly 
 lighted windows of the German stores. But 
 these delicatessen were not for Belgians. They 
 were, it is true, helped by their own country- 
 men — ^landowners, bankers, merchants, man- 
 ufacturers — all the rich Belgians, to sum them 
 up in a word. And they were splendid; they 
 led their people through the desert, as Moses 
 did the Hebrews of old. You know how much 
 civic pride this little Belgian nation has al- 
 ways had. It is a historical tradition with 
 them. 
 
 "At Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Malines, 
 Liege, and other towns, down to the smallest, 
 well-organized charitable associations were in 
 existence long before the war, supported and 
 harmoniously administered by members of all 
 classes and creeds, nobility, bourgeoisie. Cath- 
 olics, and liberals. Therefore, when it became 
 necessary, their canteens and soup-kitchens 
 were speedily enlarged, in order to give relief 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 49 
 
 to the ever-increasing number of the unem- 
 ployed. And when I use that term I do not 
 mean only factory hands and miners; the in- 
 vasion stopped a whole population short in 
 whatever work it was doing, whether profes- 
 sional or manual. 
 
 "It was not only the working classes who 
 suffered, but out of respect for the misery 
 which shrinks from notice I will say no more. 
 Conditions were entirely different from those 
 of a strike in time of peace, for which a work- 
 man or artisan might be supposed to be more 
 or less prepared. In many cases the man was 
 in the prime of life, and usually the father of a 
 large family. He lived in one of those Belgian 
 villages which we can all remember, with little 
 houses pressed close together beside the broad 
 highway, each with its glossy roof, shining 
 windows, and tiny garden gay with holly- 
 hocks, geraniums, or tulips. These houses rep- 
 resented Flemish cleanliness, healthfulness, 
 and a certain amount of leisure. What was the 
 daily life of the families who lived in them ? 
 Early in the morning the father went off to 
 his work in factory or mine by one of the little 
 tramway lines which held the industrial life of 
 Belgium together. His wife, the * housewife,' 
 
50 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 who had also been up since daylight, pulled 
 her provision of vegetables from the little gar- 
 den and prepared the soup. Milk, eggs, and 
 meat were all reasonably cheap, and the 
 chubby children could have their fill of thickly 
 buttered bread. Clothing was warm and shoes 
 substantial; life in Belgium had long been com- 
 fortable, and the winters, with their gray skies 
 and steady rains, made comforts necessary. 
 To be prosperous was the national habit of 
 Flanders. If Flemish art is redundant, giving 
 us a picture of national manners which is al- 
 most always gay, and sometimes overvigor- 
 ous, it is not from any tradition or preference 
 on the part of the artists. These rollicking jun- 
 keters of Teniers, with their rubicund noses; 
 the crowds at a kermesse pressing around a 
 table piled with succulent victuals; the shouts 
 of laughter which we can almost hear, the uni- 
 versal jollity — all show the delight in life of a 
 healthy and well-fed people. 
 
 "I remembered all that as I watched the 
 Belgians of to-day, menaced with starvation 
 as if they were so many famine-struck Hin- 
 doos. At Antwerp especially, when I saw the 
 unemployed workmen standing on their door- 
 steps still smoking their pipes but with their 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 51 
 
 hands hanging idly at their sides, I thought: 
 'These are of the same race as the men who 
 saw Rubens/ The signs of suffering had al- 
 ready begun to show; their clothes hung 
 loosely on their stout bodies, they dragged 
 their feet as they walked, and their eyes were 
 dull and listless. The 'rich,' the masters of in- 
 dustry, had ceased to be able to support the 
 soup-kitchens and canteens. It was no longer 
 a question of money; the circle had closed 
 around Belgium, and her stores were used up. 
 The time had come when it was absolutely 
 essential to make an opening through which 
 foodstuffs could come, no matter how much 
 they cost. I will not tell you how we managed 
 it, for that would make me talk too much 
 about ourselves," he said, looking at his com- 
 panions. "The Germans were always ready to 
 explain just why they had gone to war. The 
 Belgians said little, but, as we shared their 
 imprisonment, we grew to appreciate the no- 
 bility of their resistance and the extent of 
 their sacrifices. We remembered their past 
 history, with its obstinate struggles for free- 
 dom; we saw the glorious records of their 
 national art in the churches and the Hotel de 
 Ville of Antwerp, and understood as we had 
 
52 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 never done before what an inspiration it is to 
 a country to have been capable of producing 
 great art. It is rather characteristic of us 
 Americans/' with another glance at his fellow 
 countrymen, "and a curious and enlightening 
 experience, to begin to know a country through 
 its art. When we go to Europe we have already 
 in our minds an idealized consciousness of 
 what your old countries gave to history while 
 we were yet unborn, and we are even more 
 acutely aware than you are, if you will allow 
 me to say so, of how great a part so small a 
 country as Belgium has had not only in mak- 
 ing history but in adding beauty to the world." 
 
 "Belgium is like a little shell which has pro- 
 duced a splendid pearl," said Daisy. 
 
 "Indeed, yes," said Harder. "Of course I 
 was obliged to admire the German armies and 
 the German administration, but this pearl, 
 gleaming with the iridescence of centuries, 
 which they wished to crush, seemed to me in- 
 finitely more beautiful and precious. I loved 
 Antwerp, and as I wandered about its old 
 quarters I thought all the time of Rubens, for 
 Antwerp is his city. Four of his large engrav- 
 ings hung on the walls of my father's study, 
 and he also had many prints in portfolios. 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 53 
 
 When I was a schoolboy, many a time he 
 showed and explained them to me during the 
 long hours of orthodox Protestant Sundays, 
 and as he passed his fingers in a light caress 
 over their flowing lines I could hear him say 
 to himself: * There is nothing greater.' That is 
 one of the memories of my childhood. 
 
 "At the time I did not know just what he 
 meant, but when we are grown we understand 
 what in childhood we only feel. I hope I shall 
 not offend my compatriots by saying that 
 there is not much artistic beauty in America; 
 we are, therefore, all the more appreciative of 
 whatever brings us, from afar, visions which 
 are lacking in our daily life. I was especially 
 attracted by Flemish art because it could be 
 either dashing and impetuous or tenderly sim- 
 ple and homely; and the Belgians whom I saw 
 overwhelmed by misfortune were not to me 
 only a small nation almost annihilated by 
 heavy artillery, as ants might be by a heavy 
 foot; they belonged to a people who had had 
 a soul, and who had it still." 
 
 ** What do you mean by their ^soul' ?" asked 
 Mrs. Felder. 
 
 "The soul of a people," said Harder, "is 
 that spirit which enables them, whether great 
 
54 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 or small, to create something which is their 
 own, and only theirs. If a nation has done that 
 it acquires thereby a grandeur, in a spiritual 
 sense, which is a sort of consecration." 
 
 "It is true," said Daisy, "that we speak 
 more often of the soul of a small nation than 
 of a greater one — ^we say 'the soul of Greece' 
 more often than 'the soul of Rome.'" 
 
 "That is because a great nation," said 
 Harder, "has usually absorbed various con- 
 flicting elements which have tended to hamper 
 the development of its particular spirit. But 
 at every turn we felt the soul of Flanders, and 
 we who come from vaster countries, where we 
 have been used to space and strength, cannot 
 fail to respect, and I may even say to venerate, 
 the spirit which has labored so diligently and 
 has given so much beauty to the world. Those 
 long lines of unemployed Belgian workmen 
 waiting in the freezing dusk of autumn and 
 winter for the soup doled out to them by 
 charity — ^how unutterably dreary they were ! 
 I watched them often, and recognized the 
 same quality of flesh, the coloring of skin, the 
 shades of fair hair, the glistening eyes, which 
 have been fixed in our minds forever by the 
 power of a great art. . . . One more recol- 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 55 
 
 lection — it shall be the last. It is of a winter 
 evening in a church at Antwerp. A group of 
 women and children who had taken refuge 
 from the cold outside were huddled close to- 
 gether, reciting the rosary before an image of 
 the Virgin. A cluster of burning tapers made 
 a zone of golden light around them among the 
 icy shadows of the church, revealing at the 
 same time a large altar-piece of the Nativity 
 by Van Eyck. Little trembling flames threw 
 their uncertain gleams over picture and wor- 
 shippers, and I scarcely knew which Belgians 
 were painted on the canvas and which were 
 kneeling on the cold marble, cheating their 
 gnawing hunger by reciting the rosary in 
 Flemish with their patient voices. It was noth- 
 ing, if you like — only the impression of a mo- 
 ment. But when one has felt such impressions 
 every day, at a time when the question ^to be 
 or not to be' is pressing on a whole nation, one 
 comes to understand that such a people, from 
 what they are themselves and from what their 
 history has been, have a reason and a right to 
 live. Their claim to justice shines from the 
 eyes of the smallest and humblest — ^those soft, 
 frank eyes of the Belgian children. Of course 
 as a liberal and a neutral I knew this before- 
 
56 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 hand, but when I came to live among those 
 defenseless, silent, patient Belgians, my knowl- 
 edge became less abstract." 
 
 "'It is certainly true," said Daisy, "that 
 there is one lesson which we Americans can 
 only learn in Europe, and that is how much a 
 country stands for which we call 'little,' but 
 which has a long past behind it to which it 
 has been true. You have learned that in Bel- 
 gium, and I am learning it in France. In fact," 
 she added with an amused smile, "I learned it 
 in one day in my little Lorraine village." 
 
 Harder bowed with slightly ironical cour- 
 tesy. '* Women always learn so much faster 
 than men." And then he added seriously: 
 "You ladies are inquisitive. You want to know 
 what are the impressions of a man who has 
 spent two years and a half among the Ger- 
 mans, having been thrown more particularly 
 with their officers, the famous German 'organ- 
 izers,' and also among the Belgians. Let us 
 put it that he has known what are at present 
 the victors and the vanquished. His impres- 
 sions must necessarily be complex, and at 
 times even puzzling. It is true that we admired 
 the German army as it flowed past us, appar- 
 ently as inexhaustible as a mighty river, but 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 57 
 
 at the same time our hearts were filled with 
 admiration of a different sort for the Belgians. 
 In reading the other day an old volume of 
 Montaigne which belonged to my father, I 
 came across a sentence which reminded me of 
 what the neutrals felt who were shut up in the 
 invaded districts with the Germans. Mon- 
 taigne said, playing with an intellectual truth 
 in his liberal fashion: 'I could readily find 
 myself at home among those who have a mind 
 to light one taper to the Virgin and another 
 to the Dragon.' The dragon, the brazen ser- 
 pent, was splendid in his pride when he came 
 down from the heights upon Waelhem, Con- 
 tich, and Waerloos, raising clouds of dust and 
 spreading abroad his infernal odors of sulphur 
 and naphtha. Hell must smell like burning 
 villages. Our hearts were wrung with pity 
 for the Belgians, but they were as little hunted 
 animals beside the great Beast, and the Beast 
 was a magnificent monster.'' 
 
 "So that day," said Daisy, "the taper 
 would have been lighted for the Dragon ?" 
 
 "Well," answered Harder, "if I must con- 
 fess the truth, I will admit that on that day 
 the dragon would have had his taper." 
 
 "What was it made you feel most for the 
 
58 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Belgians?" went on Daisy relentlessly. "Was 
 it that you admired their moral strength or 
 that you pitied their weakness ?" 
 
 **I can answer you/' said Harder, "in the 
 words of old Montaigne. The next taper would 
 be for the Virgin with her sandalled foot upon 
 the Dragon's head. And now it is my turn to 
 ask a question: Which do you admire most in 
 the little virgin, her strength or her weak- 
 ness ?" 
 
 "If the little virgin with her soft eyes and 
 fair hair is Flanders," said Mrs. Felder, "we 
 will fall on our knees to light her taper, which 
 is more than Montaigne thought of doing." 
 
 "Very true," said Harder, "but Montaigne 
 was not thinking of Belgium. What we may 
 be sure of is that the resistance of a small and 
 weak nation, whose very life is threatened, 
 who is dragged to the pillory because she dares 
 to say, *I exist and I have a soul,' has a sacred- 
 ness to which mere strength can never attain. 
 Belgium confessed her belief in herself. She 
 was like the bending reed — ^but a reed en- 
 dowed with the power of thought." 
 
 "When I was among them I often thought 
 of the blatant manner in which the Germans 
 proclaim their 'biological superiority.' It is 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 59 
 
 a well-known theme, the leit-motiv of the war. 
 They reason like naturalists, as if we human 
 beings were governed by the laws of the ani- 
 mal world, in which one species preys upon 
 another, from the highest to the lowest, in a 
 sort of hierarchical progression. How many 
 times, after our conversations with the officers 
 who went with us on our rounds of inspection 
 as delegates of the C. R. B. I asked myself 
 the question which they have answered so 
 boldly, and one day I said to one of them: 
 *But look here — after all, you know, we are 
 not insects.' 
 
 "Is the history of nations really no more 
 than what we call natural history? That is 
 their war dogma; they have framed it upon 
 the cruel laws of nature, and by a strange and 
 inadmissible contradiction they constantly 
 call upon God to carry out a plan from which 
 the very idea of God is left out.'' 
 
 "That is because they give to their leaders," 
 said Daisy, "the manual of the materialist, 
 and to their people the gebetbuch of the pietist. 
 I have seen these little gebetbuchs of the Ger- 
 man soldiers; little black books, all alike, 
 picked up in the trenches, stained with blood. 
 They would be touching in their fervor of 
 
60 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 obedient love toward the Kaiser and their 
 princes if one did not know that the 'military 
 caste/ as you say, had composed them as a 
 sort of drug, a pious elixir to sweeten the sol- 
 diers' sacrifice/' 
 
 "You have seen the gebetbuchsj" said Har- 
 der, " and when we were rolling in motor-cars 
 along the roads where the lines of dead vil- 
 lages stretched out like a street of tombs, I 
 have often seen German officers take out of 
 their pockets noxious pamphlets in which 
 these theories of biological superiority were 
 presented in various forms, sometimes the 
 most unexpected, in order to justify destruc- 
 tion and . . ." 
 
 "And cruelty," said Mrs. Felder. 
 
 "They made us read these new gospels, and 
 we discussed them; it was interesting to under- 
 stand them and to be allowed to hear them 
 explain their inmost convictions coolly, quiet- 
 ly, and almost intimately. A little German 
 hauptmann who has that cerebral dynamite in 
 his pocket will burn a city, and make a bon- 
 fire of the old books of Louvain as unconcern- 
 edly as he has seen his father smoke out a 
 swarm of bees. The honey of the world has 
 been made in order that Germany may enjoy 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 61 
 
 it. You know their formula — ^you have heard 
 it a hundred times. Their might gives them 
 the right, and the right of others is subject to 
 perpetual revision by this might of theirs. 
 But I do not want to weary you with these 
 axioms, which are old stories here; they only 
 surprised us Americans so much because our 
 own national structure is so liberal." 
 
 He went up to the large rosewood bookcase 
 in front of which a row of little green baskets 
 of various shapes, made of Indian grasses, 
 gave out their strange scent, and, taking out 
 a volume, said: "I saw this book, which I 
 have read. Don't be afraid, I will only read 
 one line, the first, because I have often ap- 
 plied it to myself. Here it is. Heine says: 
 'Formerly the most complete ignorance ex- 
 isted in France in regard to intellectual Ger- 
 many — an ignorance which was disastrous in 
 time of war.' " And he shut the book quickly, 
 as if in fear of being caught delivering a lec- 
 ture. "This book is now nearly eighty years 
 old, and I don't know that we have made 
 much progress since. We did not know how 
 Germany had come to put herself in the 
 place of God, to deify and worship herself; 
 her appetites are only a manifestation of her 
 
62 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 strength. She is the Old God, to be sure, but 
 still she is God, the living God, whether 
 pervading the German army, or in the gebet- 
 buchsy the biological pamphlets, the history, 
 philosophy, and poetry of Germany, in the lit- 
 tle blue flowers which bloom in every German 
 heart — even down to German beer in German 
 stomachs, and the imposing number of the 
 herds of German hogs on their farms. It is 
 part of the religious training of every German 
 to worship Germany in his own person, and 
 Germany worships herself in each of her 
 creatures." 
 
 "Then in that case," said Daisy, "it is a 
 sort of national pantheism V^ 
 
 "Yes, more or less," answered Harder. 
 
 Daisy went on: "But where did this doc- 
 trine originate ? Did the philosophers make a 
 nation of fanatics ? Or did ambitious political 
 leaders make use of the philosophers ?" 
 
 "That is hard for me to answer," said 
 Harder. "It is an old secret of national chem- 
 istry, which has been working itself out slowly 
 through the ages. We did not know Germany," 
 he repeated sadly. "She was protected against 
 us by her nebulous philosophy, which we be- 
 lieved to be entirely speculative, as a beast of 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 63 
 
 prey is protected by the mystery of the jun- 
 gle. Remember the many university centres 
 throughout Germany; I am incHned to think 
 that it was there, among those purely intel- 
 lectual surroundings, that this doctrine was 
 born. Even the most savage idea seems inno- 
 cent while it is only an idea, a sort of violent 
 exercise of the mind. And for all their self- 
 worship there was much that the Germans 
 failed to understand. They had their rich 
 poetry, their incomparable music, their his- 
 tory, so old that its beginnings were lost in 
 fable, their language, which eluded us even 
 when we thought we understood it, in which 
 we pursued a thought, a verb which hid itself 
 away, or an idea which burrowed in the earth 
 like a mole before we could grasp it. Ah," said 
 Harder, stamping his foot, "we were not able 
 to fathom them. They lived within them- 
 selves; what they did not understand they 
 ignored, not only from lack of comprehension 
 but from pride. They were self-sufficient, self- 
 adoring. It was a sort of metaphysical perver- 
 sion, and, as they are practical, they proceeded 
 naturally from brutal metaphysics to brutal 
 deeds." 
 
 *'And that was the way," said Daisy, "in 
 
64 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 which * Weltanschauung' became *WeItzer- 
 storung/" 
 
 She spoke in a pedantic tone, and Harder 
 looked at her with surprise. "Some ideas can 
 only be expressed in the language which cre- 
 ated them/' she said. "I have never tried to 
 translate that word 'Weltanschauung/ so fa- 
 miliar to all Germans, and when one pro- 
 nounces it one must look as though one under- 
 stood philosophy." And speaking again in her 
 natural voice she added: "All of which re- 
 minds me that I read the othei day a letter 
 which is very old now, from a traveller who 
 was young when it was written. The date was 
 1 84 1, and he was twenty. He had gone to 
 make a poetic and philosophic pilgrimage to 
 Heidelberg, standing among its lime-trees on 
 the bank of the Neckar. He loved German 
 poetry and German thought, and he wanted 
 to drink them at their source, but In writing 
 to his friend Quinet he spoke with bitter dis- 
 illusionment of the 'murderous idealism which 
 fills this country with phantoms.' He went to 
 lectures given by peaceful professors in spec- 
 tacles, and heard them say that 'life had 
 withdrawn from France, and had entered into 
 the Germanic body.' " 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 65 
 
 ''Notice those words, 'the Germanic body,"' 
 said Harder. "For a long time they have ex- 
 pressed what was the greatest aim of the 
 nation." 
 
 "This traveller, who was a friend of my 
 family, delivered his letters of introduction to 
 certain hospitable families. He was invited to 
 dine, and after evenings of intimacy during 
 which (as with your professors at Berlin) the 
 sincere convictions of his companions came 
 out with the smoke of their pipes, he wrote 
 again to his friend: 'German society has be- 
 come a mob of fanatics.' " 
 
 "Society!" said Harder. "You see the 
 poisoned current, coming from far off, did not 
 slacken. Society," he repeated, "that is to say, 
 the company in the drawing-rooms and sitting- 
 rooms of the little German ladies, the women 
 whom we praised as candid and naive Char- 
 lottes and Gretchens, with neatly braided 
 tresses and eyes like forget-me-nots; society — 
 the poets, the musicians, the young officers 
 who danced with the Charlottes to the lan- 
 guid and enchanting rhythm of the German 
 waltzes; a mob of fanatics ! I can understand 
 it — and I too," he went on, "have seen in old 
 portfolios the correspondence of French fami- 
 
66 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 lies; only a few days ago I was reading some 
 letters of a Frenchman, also written from 
 Heidelberg, but this time the date was 1870. 
 His notes, intimately jotted down, are inter- 
 esting. He came and went, he asked questions 
 and talked, without any misgiving, and was 
 disagreeably surprised one evening, when he 
 had been invited to dine and hear his hostess 
 sing some *lieder,' to receive a stunning blow 
 from his host. The war of 1870, which fell like 
 a thunderbolt in France, was part of the 
 every-day thought of the 'intellectuals.' It 
 bubbled up in their talk like the froth in their 
 beer-mugs. And, oddly enough, it was the 
 'intellectuals' in other parts of Europe who 
 refused to believe that there could be a war 
 until it had broken out. There was a contra- 
 diction of ideas; the German brain had been 
 pursuing a dream for a century — and when 
 Germany dreams, it is a nightmare for the 
 rest of the world. 
 
 "It was a dream which was misleading, be- 
 cause with your thinkers, as with ours, intel- 
 lectual speculations are disinterested. Your in- 
 tellectuals rejected the idea of war, while the 
 German intellectuals were hatching it. French 
 thought is universal; in a certain sense it is 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 67 
 
 Catholic; German thought had become schis- 
 matic; it was only German. ... I remember 
 my father's love for Germany; he also would 
 willingly have gone there on a pilgrimage. He 
 knew nothing of Germany except her poetry, 
 and when he was tired, at the end of a hard 
 day, he would take up his Uhland and his 
 Schiller. When he said 'Germany' it was with 
 a pleased and restful smile. It seemed to me 
 that he thought of her as an old goddess who 
 was very close to nature, full of legend and 
 of song. . . . But those who made the pil- 
 grimage and brought flowers to the old god- 
 dess only found her high-priest, who explained 
 her divine right to devour mortals." 
 
 "I can give you another saying of a French- 
 man," said Daisy. "He was not altogether an 
 intellectual, but rather a man of action, a 
 diplomat who has still a hard task on his 
 hands. I met him just ten years ago in a draw- 
 ing-room; I can see him now, standing up to 
 take his leave; I was astonished to hear him 
 say in a grave tone, and as one speaks who 
 has authority: 'You may believe me when I 
 say that Germany is advancing upon France 
 with the weight and regularity of a glacier.' 
 I was much struck by the impression of 
 
68 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 amazement, and, if I may say so, of fatality, 
 which these words left upon their hearers, 
 when spoken so gravely by a man whose 
 whole business in life was to know what was 
 happening in the world." 
 
 "If we look back from one landmark to 
 another, across wide intervals, we may per- 
 ceive that it is as if an illness had been com- 
 ing on for a century, or even longer; it would 
 be interesting for a political physician to fol- 
 low its course more closely. He could distin- 
 guish forces made from a combination of pride 
 and humiliation. If we look back now on these 
 premonitory symptoms, it is because we have 
 had but little time for psychological study 
 during the last two years and a half spent in 
 France and Belgium as guests of the Germans. 
 Now that America has come into the war it 
 will be our turn, and good for us to think 
 things out and to look our enemies dispas- 
 sionately in the face; I say dispassionately, 
 because the more calmly we undertake this 
 war, being aware in our inmost consciousness 
 of the formidable thrust against which we are 
 prepared to throw our weight, the stronger we 
 shall be, and the more fruitful, therefore, our 
 aid. If only we could also look in the same 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 69 
 
 way at Germany — ^if we could see into the 
 depths of her mind !" 
 
 "Tell us something, Mr. Harder," said Mrs. 
 Felder quickly. "You said that you had been 
 in *a tragic engagement.' Did you see any 
 atrocities V She looked at him with her wide- 
 open eyes; they were gray, flecked with gold, 
 reminding one of the hush and mystery in the 
 great eyes of nocturnal birds. 
 
 "I have seen — ^we have seen," said Harder, 
 "the atrocity of a system. But remember that 
 saying of Macbeth's: 'I have supped full with 
 horrors.' Now that our country is going into 
 war our sight must not be obscured by blood. 
 I have been a neutral, a neutral who was 
 obliged more than once, in order to do his 
 duty, to be blind, deaf, and dumb. We were 
 only hands, which had to be steady in order 
 to distribute food intelligently in districts 
 threatened day by day with starvation. If we 
 had seen what we were not meant to see, said 
 what we were not meant to say, heard what 
 we were not meant to hear, our mission would 
 have come to an end at once." 
 
 "But hands speak sometimes," said Mrs. 
 Felder, looking at Harder with her mysteri- 
 ous eyes. 
 
70 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 "Now Nettie Bell," said Daisy, speaking of 
 Mrs. Felder by her Christian name, "is going 
 to make us guess one of her riddles." 
 
 "Not at all," said Mrs. Felder impetuously. 
 "Mr. Harder," she repeated in an even voice 
 and with a quiet smile, "don't you remember 
 the hands — ^I think they were invisible — ^which 
 traced certain words on a wall — and old Bel- 
 shazzar trembled when he saw them. The 
 words were written in letters of fire — I remem- 
 ber that when we had that lesson in our Bible 
 class we had to underline those words, 'in 
 letters of fire.'" And she raised her hand, with 
 its shining nails, and made the gesture as if 
 writing in the air. 
 
 "We Americans, we are going to write those 
 words!" she said. Taking from one of us a 
 lighted cigarette, she repeated her gesture as 
 if writing on the blue-silk wall of the room. 
 "In letters of fire," she said again passionately. 
 
 The quick light way in which she moved 
 and her short black dress shadowed with airy 
 tulle made her look almost like a spirit her- 
 self. "Well, Mr. Harder," she said, "now that 
 you have supped full with horrors you are 
 going back to the United States." 
 
 "No," said Harder, "my travelling is over; 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 71 
 
 and he added in a lower tone, blushing a little, 
 "I am going to join the colors. We are not free 
 to speak; a whole people is still there, hostages 
 for any imprudent words, but fortunately we 
 may fight." 
 
 "You are going to join the army? Well, 
 then, I am going to sing," she said in a whim- 
 sical tone, yet her voice sounded as though she 
 were making an effort to refrain from tears. 
 She opened the piano and her hands wandered 
 over the keys in vague harmonies. Then she 
 began to sing under her breath a strain which 
 began uncertainly, as if stammered in a dream, 
 and then suddenly developed into a song which 
 filled the room with what seemed the monoto- 
 nous and piercing cry of a child wakened from 
 its sleep in a night of terror. 
 
 It was the *' Christmas of the Belgian Chil- 
 dren," by Debussy. She went through it with- 
 out accompaniment, standing up. All at once, 
 with one of those rapid and rhythmical move- 
 ments which always suggested dancing, and as 
 if she were made nervous by being looked at, 
 she turned off the electric light and finished 
 her singing in the dark. There was nothing to 
 be seen of her save the shining of her eyes and 
 the gleam of her little gold shoes. 
 
72 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Into the pitiful cry of alarm she put all the 
 horror and pity which filled her soul, and 
 could not be expressed in any calmer fashion. 
 Then, as she turned on the light and stood 
 once more under the familiar glow of the white 
 lamp-shade, she said with a sad smile: "I 
 don't know how to discourse, and I don't 
 know how to work; that is all I know how to 
 do for the war — ^to sing, like the ^cigale' in the 
 fable." 
 
 At that moment the door opened and old 
 Jean's perplexed countenance appeared again. 
 Harder rose quickly to his feet, and bowed 
 before Mrs. Felder to take his leave. 
 
 "Au revoir, soldier of the right," she said 
 smilingly, but with a touch of emotion in her 
 voice. 
 
 "Oh," said Daisy, with her somewhat aus- 
 tere fervor. "Soldier of the right — ^but also 
 soldier of justice." 
 
 No one spoke. She went on insistently: 
 "The triumph of right implies victory, but 
 that of justice implies and calls for punish- 
 ment." Then she added, her voice low and 
 constrained : " Men have established right, but 
 it is God who does justice." 
 
 "Bravo!" said Mrs. Felder. "Our Daisy is 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 73 
 
 becoming epigrammatic. Daisy, if you begin 
 to enunciate formulas, you will marry a 
 Frenchman!" 
 
 "Well," said Daisy, "that will be yet an- 
 other way of making war !" And as she broke 
 into her clear laughter, the little close white 
 teeth fairly shone. "I am in love with France !" 
 
 How beautiful the night was, after the se- 
 rene ending of the day ! We walked up the 
 Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne with Daisy, 
 and with the same Harder whom I had met 
 for the first time only an hour ago. The acacias 
 shed the pungent perfume of their first blos- 
 soming, and high up among dense masses of 
 foliage the horse-chestnut flowers stood out 
 like white tapers in the twilight of a church. 
 The wide avenue was almost empty, and 
 slowly falling into the silence which gives to 
 night its dignity. The heavy mass of the Arc 
 de Triomphe reared its exact lines in the pearl- 
 gray shadows, the arch itself full of a deeper 
 black. We passed on; the ground sloped gently 
 downward, and, like a quiet river between its 
 banks, the avenue stretched out, dotted with 
 its lights on either side. 
 
 "When one comes from where I have been. 
 
74 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 and is going where I am to go/' said Harder, 
 "the beauty of Paris seems almost unimagina- 
 ble." 
 
 "You are leaving us soon ?" I said. 
 
 "Most probably/' he answered. "For my 
 part, I am not like public opinion in America 
 — ^I do not need to be prepared. When one has 
 spent two years and a half in Belgium and in 
 your invaded provinces, one may not know 
 how to make war, but at least one knows the 
 reason for making it. For conscience's sake — 
 and with us each man likes to reason with his 
 own conscience, by himself — and that, after 
 all, is the essential point. I wish," he added, as 
 he led us with his brisk walk, "that all my 
 compatriots at home, on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, could have seen what we have. It 
 would be like having permission to go into the 
 beyond before taking one side or another in 
 life. They would all have the faith that moves 
 mountains — and they would stand in need of 
 it. 
 
 "I think of my country — and although I find 
 Paris beautiful — so beautiful ! — ^I should very 
 much like to be transported to-night to one of 
 our great farms in the West. To the men out 
 there, in those vast spaces where they have 
 no longer to struggle against nature, any more 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 75 
 
 than against mankind, war will be a new 
 idea ! Here you have always been threatened; 
 there are globules of defense in all French 
 blood. But with us it is different. You have 
 found us slow to awaken, slow to come, but 
 you cannot know how faint and feeble the rip- 
 ples of war have become by the time they 
 reach our shores. The New World has pros- 
 pered out there, between its two oceans, by 
 following an ideal of labor and of peace. 
 
 "And the European wars — old quarrels 
 reaching back into centuries of which we 
 knew little or nothing — did not interfere in 
 the least with either our toil or our tranquilli- 
 ty. I have relatives who until a few years ago 
 knew almost nothing about Europe. The 
 portion of the earth which has fallen to their 
 share is quite sufficient to take up all their 
 energy — and a lack of energy is not among 
 their faults. They can walk for days on their 
 own land without meeting an 'enemy,' or 
 even a neighbor. I wish they were here al- 
 ready, but I also wish you could see them in 
 their own homes, for then you would under- 
 stand what a stupendous adventure it is for 
 them to come here to fight on this little 
 checker-board of the French departments." 
 
 "And they will come, they all will," said 
 
76 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Daisy. "A sentiment is born in them which 
 owes its life, as you say, to conscience, and it 
 will grow and become as powerful a motive as 
 the indignation felt by other fighting nations." 
 
 "That is true," said Harder. *' Germany has 
 established a code of political ethics which is 
 revolting to conscience as well as reason. 
 There is a shade of madness in their dream. 
 You have lived in Germany, Miss Folk. Do 
 you remember the saying of the old man of 
 Konigsberg: 'Political morale begins where 
 political morality stops'? It has often come 
 into my mind while we were talking with the 
 German officers. As we sat quietly drinking 
 Moselle wines we often discussed the probabil- 
 ity of America's going into the war. Well, the 
 young men of my country mean to defend 
 political morality against political morale J' 
 
 "There is only one morality," said Daisy, 
 "for there is only one God." 
 
 "That is what every one of our men will 
 think as he goes into the fight. At first they 
 were ignorant — ^then they hesitated, doubted 
 . . . they were slow, I know, but the long 
 sleep of peace makes the eyelids of a prosper- 
 ous nation heavy. However, they are awake 
 now, and coming." 
 
AN EVENING WITH THE C. R. B. 11 
 
 "It is the return voyage of the Mayflower ^^ 
 said Daisy. 
 
 "Yes," said Harder, "and it is in the coun- 
 tries which we found so small that the new 
 passengers will find the New World." 
 
 He stretched out his hand, saying "Good- 
 by," shook our hands vigorously, lighted a 
 cigarette, and in a moment his slender outline 
 was hidden by the night. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE AMERICANS IN THE FIRST DAYS OF 
 THE WAR 
 
 "And, if they should be unwise or unjust, a flame would rise from 
 our tombs, and the blood of our enemies flow in unavailing expia- 
 tion." — Goethe, Egmont, Act II. 
 
 w 
 
 E were a party of five one evening at 
 the house of Louis Chevrillon. 
 
 There was Morton, a delegate of the C. R. B. 
 for the north of France; Hke Harder, he had 
 come through the German Hues after the 
 United States declared war, and to get from 
 Lille to Paris (a journey of four hours ordi- 
 narily) had been obliged, like his compatriots, 
 to make long stages through Belgium, Ger- 
 many, and Switzerland. 
 
 (The Germans were anxious that the dele- 
 gates should drink a little of the water of 
 Lethe; they had seen the army lines — and had 
 been in the country behind them.) 
 
 A charming American, Mrs. Vernon, was 
 also newly arrived from the invaded districts. 
 She had lived in Belgium, associated with all 
 the work by means of which the Commission 
 
 78 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 79 
 
 had managed to keep order and sustain life in 
 spite of the dire distress. 
 
 I met her then for the first time; she 
 spoke of some of our fellow countrymen, ac- 
 tually near us and yet far removed, because 
 they were on the other side of the front. She 
 gave us the names of some of the stout-hearted 
 Frenchmen who had remained on the invaded 
 soil, and had been able, with the help of the 
 C. R. B., to become organizers and providers 
 in the haphazard life, made up of a little good 
 and much ill fortune, which all led while under 
 the German yoke. 
 
 Our hearts warmed to her as she spoke of 
 our own people with such affection. Her ex- 
 pression betrayed strong emotion, although 
 she smiled calmly; she was evidently a woman 
 of energy, made up also of sympathy, zeal, 
 and goodness; capable of taking a helpless 
 multitude into her heart and working for 
 them as a mother works for her children, put- 
 ting intense feeling into the simple tasks of 
 daily life. 
 
 When Mrs. Vernon said "I had the privi- 
 lege" ("privilege" was her favorite word) "of 
 helping the French in their horrible trial," she 
 seemed to us to represent a Veronica saying. 
 
80 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 with the accent of another land: "I had the 
 privilege of wiping the bleeding face of the 
 Saviour." 
 
 She was spending her last evening with us, 
 on her way to the United States to show her 
 countrywomen, with infinite pity and respect, 
 the sacred veil. 
 
 It does not hurt to be pitied in such a man- 
 ner! 
 
 The third American was named Rivards, 
 and impressed me as being much like Morton; 
 one is apt to think that foreigners are more or 
 less alike, and these young men had at least 
 one trait in common — ^they never spoke 
 of themselves individually. They said "the 
 C. R. B." — Commission for Relief in Belgium 
 — as the members of a secret society might 
 speak of it, and seemed to have lost all recol- 
 lection of any life led before they joined the 
 C. R. B. "Some of these days I must go and 
 see if the United States is still there," said 
 one of them. Was this taste for almost anony- 
 mous privacy a matter of education .? Did it 
 come from a happy gift of altruism .? Or was 
 it because what they had seen during the war 
 had really made " new men " of them ^ They 
 never said: "Such a thing happened to me.'' 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 81 
 
 They were imperturbably cheerful, willing to 
 help, polite without being too effusive or too 
 ceremonious. It was really hard to make out 
 whether they had just come from living among 
 the most tragic scenes of the war, or whether 
 they had been making a profound study of 
 chess or bridge. But it was clear that they had 
 brought to the work which they had accepted 
 all that was in them of strength, intelligence, 
 exactness, and discipline. 
 
 The only time when they showed no trace 
 of this slight tinge of puritanism (for such self- 
 possession verges on the puritanical) was 
 when they spoke of their chief, Mr. Hoover, 
 the chairman of the C. R. B., and then they 
 were anything but Puritans; they laughed, 
 and let themselves go: 
 
 "Hurrah for Hoover!" 
 
 On the table the portrait of Hoover re- 
 mained unmoved by this sudden outbreak of 
 enthusiasm, in the midst of formidable piles 
 of reports and magazines in which the work 
 of the C. R. B. was recorded. It was the like- 
 ness of a man of few words; the brow low 
 and unwrinkled, under strongly growing hair; 
 the eyes deep-set in their sockets and very 
 bright, as of a man quick to observe; the lips 
 
82 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 thin and tightly closed, without even the 
 shadow of a smile; the head slightly bent, as 
 if, even while in the hands of the photographer. 
 Hoover was thinking of some obstacle to be 
 quickly and silently removed. 
 
 That was the impression produced on us by 
 the chief of this new little neutral power, the 
 C. R. B., as he looked out from his frame. The 
 name of Hoover was continually on the lips of 
 Mrs. Vernon and of our young imperturbables. 
 These workers of the first hours interested us 
 greatly, for their quiet exactness was a prom- 
 ise, as surely as a swallow promises spring, 
 that the American intervention would be 
 prompt and well thought out. 
 
 Hoover in his frame seemed to be think- 
 ing: "They will strike hard." 
 
 As I said before, there were five of us, two 
 women and three men — ^three Americans and 
 two French. We had just had a little war din- 
 ner in a dining-room which would be delightful 
 on a yacht — ^very small, well ventilated, and 
 with two windows set in angles. As we went 
 up the stairs to the apartment, its owner 
 rushed past us, fresh from the offices of the 
 C. R. B. He flew up the five stories at a head- 
 long rate, for he bore, swathed in the august 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 83 
 
 pages of the TempSy the chief dish for our 
 dinner — ^two superb soles, which he had bought 
 at the great Prunier's on his way home. 
 
 We had eaten the soles, preceded and fol- 
 lowed by a lot of the odd little things which 
 delight the mistresses of ordinary common- 
 place houses when they dine with brothers, 
 cousins, or friends who are eccentric and im- 
 penitent bachelors. 
 
 Mrs. Vernon threw a slight shadow over 
 our innocent mirth at this modest feast by 
 taking in her hand a piece of bread. Bread was 
 still good in Paris, and the crisp crust made a 
 sort of golden case for the soft white crumb 
 inside it; she turned it over and caressed it 
 tenderly with her fingers, as if it had been 
 some precious thing, saying: 
 
 "Rivards, what would we have given, a 
 month ago, to have been able to take a piece 
 of bread like this to the table of a French 
 family?'' 
 
 "Don't reproach me on account of my 
 bread," said Chevrillon. 
 
 "It is not in the least a reproach," answered 
 Mrs. Vernon. "I was only thinking that this 
 is the promised land, and of the people whom 
 we have left behind in the desert; the very 
 
84 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 ordinary and every -day words for food have 
 become almost sacred to me" — and she still 
 held the bit of bread in her dainty fingers. 
 
 "One day in our district of Peronne/' said 
 Rivards, "I saw on the desk of one of our 
 Americans five little flasks full of grains and 
 powders; I recognized rice, and wondered if 
 our friend were secretly keeping turtle-doves. 
 He saw me looking at the bottles, and said: 
 'In each one of those I have put the daily 
 allowance of wheat, rice, sugar, and coffee 
 doled out to a Frenchman. It is my daily les- 
 son, and when I find myself inclined to think 
 that our diet in the invaded territory is some- 
 what frugal, the sight of those little bottles 
 ekes out my meal. No,' he said, as if guessing 
 my guilty thought, * that is not food for birds, 
 but the rations of French men and women.'" 
 
 "That is called the life-sustaining allow- 
 ance," said Morton, "and millions of human 
 beings work hard for it and thank God when 
 it is given them. It is nine o'clock," he said, 
 looking at his watch; "in a few hours, at dawn, 
 or even earlier, the lines will begin to be 
 formed and to grow outside our canteens in 
 the invaded country." 
 
 At Chevrillon's signal we left the table, and 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 85 
 
 as the evening was mild we crowded out upon 
 the balcony. From our fifth story we were on 
 neighborly terms with the tops of the plane- 
 trees as they swayed rustling in the light 
 breeze, and we could watch the shining course 
 of the Seine far below, for just here, at the 
 Quai Debilly, the river makes a graceful and 
 indolent curve between its stone-lined banks. 
 The plane-trees and poplars planted on either 
 side, alike in height and growth, leaned for- 
 ward a little to follow it in its course, like a 
 row of suitors when their lady-love passes by. 
 
 Seats were brought out for the ladies — two 
 narrow deck chairs, over which were thrown 
 roughly woven Mexican blankets, broadly 
 striped in black and white. 
 
 There we were as if seated on primitive 
 thrones. The night landscape was full of 
 beauty. The quiet river shone through the 
 trees, and as far as we could see towers and the 
 spires of churches lifted themselves into the 
 transparent air. In front of us the Eiffel Tower, 
 a filagree of light and dark, was a fairy ladder 
 waiting for sprites to climb moonward, while 
 from its lantern, crowned with glowing stars, 
 search-lights threw their rapid and furtive 
 rays into space, like the glances of anxious 
 
86 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 eyes. To the right, a great mass of undefined 
 shadow, lay the Bois de Boulogne. 
 
 "Although I have often been in Paris," said 
 Mrs. Vernon, "it seems different now in war- 
 time. I have never seen the city so broadly 
 mapped out under the stars; it looks like a 
 very dark print." 
 
 "I am very fond of this war Paris," said 
 Morton. He was playing with a little cat 
 which he had snatched up on his knees; it was 
 like a tiny ghost of a cat, gray as a shadow or 
 a wreath of smoke. In winter, when it was 
 lazily curled round, asleep on the hearth, close 
 to the dying embers, it looked like a little 
 heap of ashes. We called it Cendret. 
 
 "I am very fond of this war Paris," repeated 
 Morton. 
 
 "Paris has around it and above it space 
 and sky," said Mrs. Vernon, leaning over the 
 balcony, "and it has also silence. One hears 
 the water sliding past, and the trees breath- 
 ing." And she stretched out her hand with a 
 prettily earnest gesture, saying: "May war 
 never touch, nor even menace any one of your 
 beautiful stones." And she added: "I appre- 
 ciate this symmetry all the more because I 
 have seen so many lovely and venerable things 
 perish. I have witnessed frightful and wide- 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 87 
 
 spread destruction, but I have never seen a 
 stone fall from a cottage in your ravaged land 
 without being conscious of the feeling of order 
 and of attachment which had placed and kept 
 it there. I was in a church one day, at Saint 
 Omer. Shells had pierced it through and 
 through; bits of sky showed through the rents 
 in the vaulted roof; crows had built their nests 
 in the capitals of the pillars, and flew scream- 
 ing and cawing in the place which formerly 
 had only heard the murmur of prayers. Grass 
 grew between the flagstones. As I looked a 
 large stone became detached from the roof and 
 fell into the choir . . . and then another . . . and 
 yet another. They fell, one by one, and the 
 sound of their falling was repeated sonorously 
 from the arch overhead. How I thought that 
 day of the hands that had set those stones in 
 place ! I love France so dearly that I even love 
 the hard-working hands of the men long dead, 
 who mixed the mortar and held the trowel . . . 
 and to come where all this beauty is intact 
 makes more poignant the contrast with the 
 desolation we have left behind." 
 
 A brisk current of air made us turn our 
 heads; the door opened, and in came our 
 friends Daisy and Nettie Bell. 
 
 We left the balcony, as it would not have 
 
88 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 held us all, and as Daisy was shaking hands 
 with her compatriots she said : 
 
 "I am sure you must have been speaking of 
 the C. R. B." 
 
 "Not at all/' said Morton. "We were say- 
 ing that Paris in the moonlight, swathed in 
 her dark war-veils, seems to us a new city/* 
 
 "Everything is new," said Daisy. "We our- 
 selves," and she looked at her companion, "we 
 are also new." 
 
 "As for me," said Mrs. Felder, "I feel as if 
 I had only really been born on the day when 
 my country went into the war. I am youth 
 itself!" And as she stood smiling before the 
 mirror she twisted around her fingers the little 
 curls, shining with silver threads, which had 
 strayed from under her toque. 
 
 "We have known the French," she went on, 
 "as people do who have often met, but only 
 at masquerades, with masks and in dominoes. 
 And, face to face, we have gone through the 
 complicated steps of the dance which calls 
 itself international life." 
 
 "That is precisely the reason," said Daisy, 
 "that neither of us has been able to see the 
 national life of the other. We demanded of 
 Paris that she should make a display of pre- 
 tentious frivolities for us." 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 89 
 
 "'The France of foreigners," said Mrs. 
 Felder, "was not at all that of the French." 
 
 "In fact," said Daisy, "we have often been 
 amused by the ignorance of Parisians about 
 the only side of Paris known to us. We liked 
 to see a light which was only phosphorescence. 
 After thousands of years, we are still interested 
 in the phosphorescence of Athens and of 
 Rome." 
 
 "The most attractive thing in a really 
 strong being is his weakness," said Nettie Bell. 
 
 "We did not see the fire," said Daisy; "we 
 were only looking at its reflection." 
 
 "It was not the torrent," went on Nettie 
 Bell quickly; "it was the froth on the stream, 
 which dissolved between our fingers." 
 
 "It was not the forest," Daisy answered at 
 once (they were both evidently amused by the 
 duet), "but the creepers which flowered and 
 nodded around the old trunks. All the winds 
 of the earth seemed to come together here, 
 sowing good and bad seed broadcast. Do you 
 remember, Nettie Bell, the big orchids in our 
 Southern woods .? They swayed to and fro, 
 dazzlingly beautiful, under the branches of 
 our oaks, but they had no roots." 
 
 "Yes," said Nettie Bell, "I remember them; 
 I have often gathered them in a wood which I 
 
90 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 knew well. I loved the long evenings when we 
 used to cut their greedy clusters." 
 
 "They perished when the cold winds blew/' 
 said Daisy, "and were strewn on the ground, 
 exquisite in death." 
 
 "And then/' said Nettie Bell, "the great 
 trees, stripped of their smothering ornaments, 
 showed their strength as they held their own 
 against the blast which had raised the long 
 waves of the ocean." 
 
 "Is this an apologue.?" asked Morton 
 gravely. 
 
 "Of course it is," said the pair, glancing 
 meaningly at each other. 
 
 "Our friends are very poetical this eve- 
 ning," said Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 "It is not we who are poetical," said Daisy, 
 "all France is a great tragic poem. Have you 
 noticed that every one says: 'It is impossible 
 for me to do any reading' ? Imagination has 
 never conceived anything so portentous as 
 what we are living through." 
 
 "I have not been in Paris since 1914/' said 
 Mrs. Vernon, "and then only for a day. It was 
 in September. I had come from Brittany, and 
 was trying to get to London. It was on a Sun- 
 day, and the German menace hung over Paris 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 91 
 
 like a malevolent cloud. The government and 
 the administration had moved to Bordeaux. I 
 looked with anxious curiosity at the Parisians, 
 as one looks at children who have been left 
 alone. They were all evidently under a great 
 strain. I remember one woman's saying to me 
 that afternoon: 'I don't know whether I can 
 hear cannon very far away, or whether it is 
 only my heart beating.' I was all alone, trying 
 to get through a long Sunday of waiting. I 
 took a cab, and wandered rather aimlessly 
 along the quays; I wanted to see Paris with 
 her beauty still unharmed; it seemed an un- 
 imaginable calamity that within twenty-four 
 hours it might be destroyed. Almost without 
 knowing it I found myself at the He de la 
 Cite, and there I heard what sounded like a 
 powerful yet calm and rhythmical murmur. I 
 left the cab, and went as far as Notre Dame. 
 An immense crowd was gathered in the great 
 square before the cathedral. The three deeply 
 recessed doors of the church were wide open, 
 and at the end of these long avenues of shadow 
 I could see the interior, all aflame with can- 
 dles. The worshippers who thronged the nave 
 and aisles were singing; their voices came out 
 to us deadened and distant, as if from another 
 
92 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 world, almost drowned by the rolling of the 
 mighty organ. In the great square the immense 
 crowd, with one voice, chanted the responses. 
 The children who had been left alone sang — 
 and prayed. 
 
 "It was a peculiar experience for a stranger 
 to be thus thrown, almost by accident, into 
 the intimate life of a whole city on a day of 
 sore distress. I had never t sen the cathedral 
 church of Paris literally overflowing with life 
 and echoing to prayers. It was for that, and 
 not to be a precious and half-deserted monu- 
 ment, that the mighty church had been reared. 
 On her island, with the river flowing around 
 her, she was like a great mystical vessel laden 
 with pilgrims, coming down with the current 
 toward the plain. It seemed as if the great 
 metal statues on the roof were for the first 
 time set free from their hierarchical align- 
 ment; as if the saints were going freely to and 
 fro, like anxious mariners watching the heav- 
 ens and the sea. Some of them seemed to go 
 down narrow stairs, almost like rope ladders, 
 outside the turrets, swiftly and calmly, speak- 
 ing one to the other. As I was looking at them 
 with amazement I saw another strange sight 
 in the open space around the old vessel girdled 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 93 
 
 with the waters; more statues were moving in 
 an undulating manner, as if they were being 
 borne on invisible shoulders above the crowd. 
 They were the patrons and saviors of France; 
 I heard the people near me call them by name 
 — ^Saint Denis; Saint Genevieve, tali and erect 
 in her silver robes; Saint Louis; Jeanne d'Arc, 
 carrying her banner. They had been brought 
 out of old reliquaries; they prayed with the 
 people and the people prayed with them." 
 
 "Our friend is even more poetical than we 
 were," said Daisy. 
 
 "It is only that I have never forgotten that 
 vision," said Mrs. Vernon. "Perhaps the love 
 inspired in me by France dates from that day. 
 Those myriads of people, pouring from every 
 quarter, were communing with their past; 
 they sought a means of escape from the 
 dreaded morrow by going deep down in their 
 history, back toward their forefathers, on 
 the same little island where Saint Genevieve 
 had watched over the ramparts threatened by 
 the same foe; it was a vision of the fifth cen- 
 tury. So much for your Babylonian Paris!" 
 And she added, with emotion: "To belong to 
 an old nation is a noble inheritance. We shall 
 all have, like young crusaders, the recollection 
 
94 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 of some particular date, that of the day on 
 which we first understood what this war really 
 meant. Do you remember, Daisy, at the time 
 of the presidential election in the United 
 States, six months ago, the big posters in 
 every street of every town, in all the States ? 
 One saw the thin, cold face of Mr. Wilson, 
 with his light, observant eyes behind their 
 glasses, and underneath were the words: 'He 
 kept us out of war.'" 
 
 "Yes," said Daisy, "I remember those 
 posters; they corresponded to the feeling of 
 that day. We had not then begun to under- 
 stand the inner meaning of the war. Our young 
 and sensible country was perhaps rational in 
 holding back from the convulsion called war; 
 we thought ourselves safe from the periodic 
 eruptions of the old European volcano." 
 
 "Besides, war was not a volcanic eruption 
 for the United States," observed Morton. 
 "We came into it without a shock, with no 
 surprise, through internal processes due to 
 conscience and intelligence. The same likeness 
 of the same President Wilson might be still 
 shown on every wall of every city in all the 
 States, with the same eyes, as cool and observ- 
 ant as ever, and we should take off our hats 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 95 
 
 while we wrote under the portrait: *He de- 
 clared war/ He spared us a period of opposi- 
 tion, discussion, and disagreement, and the 
 whole nation, turning completely round from 
 the idea of peace to that of war, went forward 
 at the pace set by him. After such lucid and 
 methodical reasoning the necessity for war 
 was as clear as the demonstration of a math- 
 ematical problem/* 
 
 "Yes," said Daisy, "and the rational young 
 continent will make war strongly and logi- 
 cally; I see my country, her decision once 
 made, resolved to go on to the end, and put- 
 ting forth all her strength to back her will. 
 We seem very unlike, springing as we do from 
 such different stocks; our flowering may be 
 widely different, but all our roots are struck 
 deep in American soil; we all stretch upward 
 toward the sun with the same energy — ^toward 
 what we will to do. We shall see that the war 
 will be a sort of 'fiat lux' for the nation. We 
 were saying the other day that we had not 
 known Germany, nor did she know us. We 
 were amazed by England, and we may con- 
 fess now that we did not really know how 
 much mysterious and magnetic force there 
 was in France. You will acknowledge some 
 
96 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 day that you had only crude and fragmentary 
 ideas about us." 
 
 "What will surprise the French more than 
 anything else," said Mrs. Vernon, "is the sim- 
 plicity, amounting almost to candor, of our 
 men. What have they known of us, for the 
 most part ? The so-called American women 
 represented in their novels or plays, and the 
 little gilded crowd that was to be found in 
 Paris between the quarter of the Etoile and 
 that of the Opera, or in the various 'Palaces.' 
 However" (and her sensitive face showed her 
 relief), "we shall now see each other as we 
 really are — ^we shall know what your religion 
 so rightly calls 'the inner life.' The inner life 
 of a people is ordinarily hidden, and only re- 
 veals itself in times of trial. I have felt it so 
 strongly in France ! We at home are still mak- 
 ing speeches, taking diplomatic notes, expand- 
 ing in the verbal enthusiasm of people gener- 
 ously stirred by a great cause. It will be 
 different when our troops get here; when you 
 know what my contemporaries have never 
 known; when American blood begins to be 
 shed. It is then that you will know us for 
 what we really are, and until that time comes, 
 do not speak of us at all. I thought I loved 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 97 
 
 France," she went on, "but I did not know 
 her until I saw her suffer and bleed during 
 my long stay in the invaded country. I had 
 the happiness — ^yes, the happiness — of passing 
 many months shut up with the French, and 
 facing the Germans. All that I had read about 
 France previously, and all that I had myself 
 seen, counted for nothing. We shall always 
 consider that it was our privilege — ^I hold to 
 that word * privilege' — to enter thus into the 
 life of a people during their trial, to be in in- 
 timate relations with them, and to see their 
 wound. 
 
 "That wound was the scarcity of food — ^hun- 
 ger. One may manage to accept the usual idea 
 of war, that of men fighting among themselves, 
 but when we knew, while I was still in Amer- 
 ica, that the Belgian and French population in 
 the invaded districts was threatened with 
 famine, we were all shaken by emotion. Mor- 
 ton, you were in London — ^you heard the first 
 cry for help." 
 
 "Yes," said Morton, "it came from Brus- 
 sels. My compatriot, Millard Shaler, who was 
 sent by Belgian committees, brought the first 
 message, and our ambassador in London, Mr. 
 Page, received it. It was an historic moment 
 
98 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 for us/' he said, looking at his companions, 
 **for it was then that the C. R. B. was organ- 
 ized — on the 2Sth of September, 1914. The 
 invasion of Belgium had somewhat slackened 
 — the breach had been made, and the German 
 armies were pouring into France. In Belgium 
 the Germans were beginning to install them- 
 selves — ^you know how ! They were forming an 
 administration, appointing a governor-general 
 and governors of the different provinces. But 
 this administration chiefly concerned itself 
 with feeding the German armies, that is to 
 say, with gathering in the foodstuffs and 
 requisitioning the cattle. As well as we could 
 count, 215,000 Belgians took refuge in France 
 during August and September, 1914; 80,000 
 went into Holland after the capture of Ant- 
 werp, and there were about 100,000 in Eng- 
 land. If you saw these multitudes leaving or 
 arriving, you felt that you were witnessing 
 the exodus of a whole nation. Large num- 
 bers are always impressive. But, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, the reality was different. Only 
 a minority had fled — ^they who had happened 
 to be in the blood-stained path of the armies. 
 There still remained seven millions of souls 
 rather of mouths — to be fed in a country 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 99 
 
 whose agricultural and industrial riches had 
 been destroyed or confiscated, and which was 
 constantly overrun by German armies going 
 or coming, by the German wounded, by tired 
 troops who were resting before being sent to 
 the Russian front. And all of them ate and ate. 
 
 "I think it was the great burgomaster Max, 
 now revered the world over, who was au- 
 thorized by the Central Committee to enter 
 into negotiations with the Germans in order 
 that some thousands of tons of food supplies 
 might be admitted into Belgium. 
 
 "This Central Committee was made up of 
 rich and influential men, accustomed to han- 
 dle large business transactions, without regard 
 to their political opinions. They were, there- 
 fore, not 'officials'; they did not represent the 
 government with which Germany was at war; 
 they represented only the hungry millions, and 
 sought to feed them. 
 
 "M. Solvay gave his great name to this 
 national committee; M. Janssen also joined it, 
 and M. Francqui became its managing di- 
 rector. It is only bare justice to name the Bel- 
 gians before speaking of ourselves. Their coun- 
 try had no more money and no more wheat. 
 Only one thing was left — its men. 
 
100 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 "The committee addressed itself in the sec- 
 ond instance to the diplomatic representa- 
 tives of the neutral powers who had remained 
 in Brussels: the American minister, Brand 
 Whitlock, and the Marquis of Villalobar, who 
 represented the King of Spain. 
 
 "It was thus that the first few links of a 
 double chain were forged. It was necessary, on 
 the one hand, to fill the empty granaries of 
 Belgium from the reserve stocks of Europe 
 and America, and, on the other, to reach the 
 German authorities, such as the governors of 
 provinces, or even the general government, as 
 without their consent the vessels loaded with 
 wheat from the United States would hasten in 
 vain to the docks of Rotterdam. The manna 
 would not fall from heaven of itself; it could 
 only come through a door in the wall of fire 
 and iron enclosing Belgium, and unless that 
 door were opened by German hands, famine 
 would take possession of the beleaguered 
 land." 
 
 " Villalobar,'' said Daisy. "Was he the same 
 who had been Spanish minister at Lisbon?'' 
 
 "Why, yes,'' answered Mrs. Vernon, "and 
 if you had known him you would think as I 
 do, that there could not be two Villalobars." 
 
' 1 'I 
 
 THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 101 
 
 "To be sure !'' said Daisy. "He is a remark- 
 able man. And when one has met him it is 
 impossible to think of Spain and the Span- 
 iards without calHng to memory his strikingly 
 Spanish face. Love of old Spain was deep- 
 rooted in his heart. He loved her, and yet he 
 also had visions of a new young Spain, casting 
 off the fetters of tradition and custom to move 
 freely in the modern world. If I were to see 
 him again, how I should like to remind him of 
 the days which we spent together in the Por- 
 tuguese back country, when we both used to 
 dip into the great pots in which the foundation 
 of rice was mixed with a varied assortment of 
 Spanish peppers, crabs, shell-fish, and skinny 
 little pullets. It was then, in those hostelries 
 which might have sheltered Don Quixote, that 
 Villalobar used to speak of his sovereign and 
 of his dreams for Spain, until his every 's* 
 seemed full of energy." 
 
 "That is indeed he," said Morton. "He has 
 not changed, and he earnestly and nobly in- 
 sisted that his sovereign should play a great 
 part in this matter of feeding a whole country. 
 Do you follow the thread.?" he went on. 
 "First came the appeal from the famished 
 people, and the Belgian Control Committee 
 
102 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 was formed. Even before the war there was 
 a well-organized system of charitable rehef 
 throughout Belgium. In a small country, liv- 
 ing and thriving by its industry, the classes are 
 not widely separated; the rich man is nearer to 
 his poor neighbor, the employer to his work- 
 men, the landowner to those who till his soil. 
 Besides that, the two great political parties. 
 Catholic and Liberal, were equally concerned 
 with the problems of relief. It must also be 
 remembered that the country was not central- 
 ized in its capital. We found, as Harder was 
 saying the other day, that the Belgian people 
 are full of civic as well as of national love and 
 pride. That is a natural result of their past 
 history; each city — Liege, Antwerp, Malines, 
 Ghent — ^had already its own charities, worked 
 for and helped by its citizens. It was as though 
 the working drawings had been made for a 
 great building which should shelter the refu- 
 gees from the country, and the indigent and 
 unemployed in the towns. The old spirit of 
 local pride, whether in cities or in villages, 
 sprang up more strongly than ever, and you 
 must bear in mind that each town was iso- 
 lated from other towns, that each village stood 
 by itself. It should never be forgotten that 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 103 
 
 this system of separate cells was enforced 
 throughout the whole of the occupied dis- 
 tricts, and the suffering which it entailed will 
 never be fully known. Nobody had heard of it 
 when Millard Shaler came to London with 
 his German safe-conduct, to hoist there his 
 signal of distress. Popular feeling was deeply 
 stirred. Could it be possible that a whole na- 
 tion was faced with famine ! You know that 
 very many English people were most hospita- 
 ble to the Belgian refugees, not only giv- 
 ing them food and shelter in various buildings, 
 but also inviting them to private houses; I 
 know of a number of English homes in which 
 the guest-chamber was occupied by a Belgian 
 couple who in every way shared the life of 
 their hosts. Acquaintance and friendship had 
 already sprung up, and when the news spread 
 that Belgium was suffering from hunger, the 
 English were still more drawn toward their 
 refugees; when they looked at the little foreign 
 children among their own in the nursery of 
 an evening they could' well imagine the suffer- 
 ing which was hanging over Belgium. But the 
 American ambassador, a neutral, was the only 
 man who could act in the matter, and on the 
 1st of October Mr. Page received Mr. Hugh 
 
104 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Gibson, secretary of our legation at Brussels, 
 who had come in order to confirm Mr. Shaler's 
 message officially. Mr. Page at once set to 
 work to solve the difficult problem in the only 
 sensible, indeed the only possible, manner — ^by 
 finding a man — ^not a potentate, nor a philan- 
 thropist, nor a sociologist, nor a generous mil- 
 lionaire — ^but just a man." 
 
 "A man capable of inspiring enthusiasm," 
 I said. 
 
 "Not altogether enthusiasm," said Mrs. 
 Vernon, "or at least not enthusiasm only; a 
 man who should be able to make other men 
 respond to his energy and to his devotion to 
 duty." 
 
 . "That man," continued Morton, "was 
 Hoover. The Hoover of to-day you all know, 
 but at that time he had scarcely been heard 
 of, except in the business world. All of us in 
 the United States have to look for our ances- 
 tors somewhere in Europe. Hoover is a name 
 of Flemish origin, and the man himself was 
 well known in London as a mining engineer. 
 His family had at one time been Quakers, and 
 from them he derives his look of reserve, his 
 tightly closed lips, and his taciturnity. His 
 work as an engineer had led him to Australia 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 105 
 
 and China, as well as all over America; half 
 of his life had been spent in rapid travel; he 
 went from London to Hanoi as a business 
 man in London goes from his house to his 
 office in the city, and he had looked at the 
 world wherever he went with his gray, sa- 
 gacious eyes — ^the observant eyes of an engi- 
 neer. He was a man who saw and was not 
 afraid to act. 
 
 "He had very vivid recollections of the Ger- 
 mans, whom he had seen in China at the time 
 of the Boxer troubles. Some German troops 
 were quartered in a Chinese village, and one 
 evening the men became, as the report put 
 it afterward, * slightly drunk,' broke into the 
 little native houses, and violated the women 
 whom they found. Now you know that when 
 a Chinese woman loses her honor it is her duty 
 to die, and the morning after the German 
 soldiers had amused themselves in their fash- 
 ion. Hoover saw the bodies of hundreds of 
 Chinese women drifting down a narrow 
 stream; they had all thrown themselves into 
 it together. 
 
 "Hoover told us how the gayly colored 
 gowns and the black sashes with their big 
 bows full of water came slowly floating be- 
 
106 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 tween the reeds; a close procession of drowned 
 women, looking as if a flock of bright-hued 
 birds had alighted and were being borne along 
 by the current. 
 
 "He said sometimes that when he remem- 
 bered that sight it was easy for him to imagine 
 what the German occupation, even of a civi- 
 lized country, would mean; the words German 
 forces, requisitions, scarcity, famine, had ter- 
 rible significance for him. 
 
 "Page sent for Hoover and told him that 
 the Belgian committees (and six months later 
 it was the same story from the French com- 
 mittees in the invaded districts) were in great 
 distress, having neither supplies nor money. 
 If a neutral committee could be formed to 
 import and control food, the Belgian and 
 French organizations would see that it was 
 properly distributed. 
 
 "Hoover knew our planet. He knew where- 
 abouts on the earth gold, copper, tin, or dia- 
 monds might be found; he had even rediscov- 
 ered, in a crevice of Mount Sinai, the old mine 
 from which the Egyptians took the greenish 
 turquoises that we believed to have been dis- 
 colored by time in the tombs. He would be 
 able to find in other mines wheat, bacon, 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 107 
 
 beans, shoes, woollens, and cottons, as well as 
 the ships to carry these stores to Holland, 
 and, above all, money to start the work. He 
 could be at the same time in London, New 
 York, San Francisco, Brussels, and Berlin; 
 his genius for ubiquity was unrivalled. 
 
 "Hoover listened to his ambassador silently; 
 then he went to his engineering office, shut up 
 shop, and I don't know whether he has ever 
 been back at his office. The different mining 
 companies saw no more of their consulting 
 engineer. 
 
 "Hoover's first committee was made up of 
 men of his own profession. He had confidence 
 in them as a body; they had been all over the 
 world, and knew it well; they also knew the 
 reverse of the medal as well as its face; they 
 were familiar with material difficulties verging- 
 on the impossible; they had often foreseen 
 and witnessed accidents and catastrophes — 
 they had also often averted them. 
 
 "The Belgians and French were in the posi- 
 tion of a large gang of miners overwhelmed 
 by a landslide. It had happened, on a smaller 
 scale, to men before. Their calls for help could 
 be heard; the would-be helpers knew that the 
 prisoners were still alive, that they were calm 
 
108 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 and strong in their patient waiting. It was a 
 question of getting them out without making 
 a false move which would bury them more 
 deeply, and of managing to feed them until 
 they could again see the light of day. A prob- 
 lem of this sort naturally interested the engi- 
 neers. 
 
 "The committee met in London on October 
 22, 1914, and the most pressing questions with 
 which it had to deal were set forth in the fol- 
 lowing order: 
 
 "To find money for the purchase of food 
 supplies. 
 
 "To come to an agreement first with the 
 British Government, in order that the block- 
 ade of the German ports and of the invaded 
 territory should be suspended at a place to be 
 determined upon. 
 
 "To obtain from the German Govern- 
 ment subsequently a guarantee that the food 
 brought into Belgium should be used for the 
 benefit of the civilian population only, the 
 same guarantee to apply later to France. 
 
 "Finally, to make distribution certain and 
 effective, an agreement to be reached allowing 
 the American delegates to live behind the 
 German lines in Belgium and northern France, 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 109 
 
 and to have sole and entire control of all sup- 
 plies imported. The foodstufifs were to be re- 
 ceived by the delegates at Rotterdam (for all 
 this class of freight came, and still comes, to 
 that port), allotted by them to their agents 
 in different regions, and sent off under seal, 
 to the various centres of distribution. There 
 they were to be counted, reallotted, and fol- 
 lowed step by step in their dispersal until at 
 last they should reach the village depots 
 where they were to be sold or given away; 
 the Belgian or French women would dole 
 them out to the very poor, to hospitals, to 
 schools, and even to the houses of the in- 
 habitants, where the meagre rations would 
 keep famine away from the family table. 
 
 "This comprehensive plan was carried out 
 with great rapidity; the first meeting of the 
 committee was held, as I have said, in London 
 on the 22d of October. Not many days later 
 an old deep-sea captain of an American 
 steamer bound for Liverpool with a cargo of 
 wheat was quietly smoking his pipe on her 
 deck when he received a message by wireless 
 telegraphy: 'Take your cargo to Rotterdam.' 
 His astonishment was great, but the message 
 came from the company which employed him, 
 
no THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 so he changed his course forthwith, and on 
 the 5th of November the first vessel laden 
 with wheat for the C. R. B. came into the 
 Dutch port, where one of our members. Cap- 
 tain Lucey, was impatiently awaiting it. He 
 took over the cargo at once, and sent it on to 
 Brussels, where our minister, Mr. Whitlock, 
 and our delegates began its distribution." 
 
 "But I want to follow the plan more 
 closely," I said. "Where did the money come 
 from ? Who paid for the wheat ?" 
 
 "The money!" said Mrs. Vernon. "The 
 money came from everywhere; after the first 
 days of November it poured into the coffers of 
 the C. R. B.; Hoover and his Central Commit- 
 tee made a general appeal through the press, 
 and throughout the world committees and 
 auxiliaries were formed to raise the funds 
 needed. These committees sprang up in Eng- 
 land, America, Australia, even in Japan and 
 China. To open the mail of the C. R. B. at its 
 offices in London, which I have done many a 
 time, was to witness the working of a magic 
 spell; checks from all the quarters of the globe 
 were piled up in heaps. Belgium will know 
 some day, if she does not already, what burn- 
 ing sympathy and compassion her plight 
 

THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 111 
 
 aroused in every land. We Americans espe- 
 cially felt that it was an immense satisfaction 
 to our consciences to be able to give at least 
 money to these outraged countries. Each fam- 
 ily wished to be something more than inquisi- 
 tive neutrals, making their own flesh creep by 
 reading horrible stories in the newspapers. In 
 London one daily paper pledged itself to raise 
 a hundred thousand pounds a month by pop- 
 ular subscription. That was a wonderful time 
 for us women ! We left knotty questions, such 
 as the British blockade and the German guar- 
 antees, to be settled by the men; our business 
 was only to provide money. We had to or- 
 ganize committees without end: large com- 
 mittees in the great cities, smaller ones in 
 small towns, and even committees in the agri- 
 cultural districts, to reach the big farms. 
 
 "Daisy, you must remember, for you were 
 there, the market for flowers and vegetables 
 which was organized by our San Francisco 
 committee. We set up our booths on the great 
 square, facing the bay; and those of us who 
 were members of the committee wore the cos- 
 tumes of one or other of the Belgian or French 
 provinces. We all had tucked away in our port- 
 folios pictures of your old national costumes 
 
112 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 which perhaps had been brought over by your 
 emigrating ancestors; we were familiar with 
 the head-dresses, the ribbons, the short, full 
 skirts; to us they were full of charm, perhaps 
 because we have no such thing as a peasant 
 among us. With us a farmer is a gentleman 
 who sells wheat, a business man like any other, 
 and the word 'peasant' and the Old World 
 costumes have therefore an almost poetic at- 
 traction which would be hard for you to 
 understand. 
 
 "We sold our wares all day in the big square 
 — our California guava, our muskmelons, our 
 cherries, our yellow eschscholtzia — and our 
 roses. All our bankers and merchants, our 
 millionaires and billionaires, came themselves 
 as early as seven o'clock in the morning to 
 make their purchases at our booths, and we 
 had to laugh as they went back to their 
 motor-cars, carrying huge cauliflowers, great 
 baskets of pears or apples, or armfuls of 
 chrysanthemums and roses. As for me, I sold 
 for a big price — oh, a tremendous price, to a 
 banker who was not supposed to be in the 
 least sentimental — a little linen bag embroi- 
 dered with a lily-of-the-valley; in the bag was 
 a handful of earth which a refugee woman 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 113 
 
 from the north of France had brought with 
 her as Orientals carry tahsmans. 
 
 "All day long we sold to men who were sup- 
 posed to be hard and practical all sorts of im- 
 possibly foolish little trifles, such as you would 
 sell here to children. A button from a French 
 general's uniform made a great hit. Our men 
 out there are at the same time realists and 
 sentimentalists. They will not take time to 
 read a pathetic story, but their hearts are 
 moved by what they can see with their own 
 eyes. They belong to the family of Saint 
 Thomas, and the more you know of them the 
 more you will be conscious of this quality; you 
 must give them something visible and tangi- 
 ble. 
 
 "I have told you about San Francisco, but 
 it was the same story everywhere. For in- 
 stance, at Denver, in the Rocky Mountains, 
 a committee had been formed in order to get 
 up a club. Hoover was then making a cam- 
 paign in America; he stopped at Denver, as- 
 sembled the committee, spoke to them of Bel- 
 gium for a quarter of an hour — and when he 
 left, all the money which had been collected 
 for the club was in his pocket. It was a matter 
 of a change of heart, of a couple of words and 
 
114 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 a couple of signatures, and that Rocky Moun- 
 tain city had to do without its club. I don't 
 want to seem to boast of our having given 
 money — I didn't mean that — ^I only meant to 
 show Hoover's quick and compelling magnet- 
 ism. It was not the mere money — ^that would 
 not have been worth mentioning — but the giv- 
 ing of it, so instantly, so spontaneously, meant 
 that the picture of Belgian distress had aroused 
 pity and wonder in every heart. In the most 
 remote little towns of the United States, where 
 the war seemed infinitely far away, there was 
 the same thrill of wonder and compassion for 
 Belgium and France — and people gave and 
 gave. That encouraged us, for we also, as 
 Daisy can tell you, made a campaign of our 
 own. In French we should be obliged to say 
 that we made addresses or gave lectures — ^but 
 in English, luckily, we can say more simply 
 that we spoke. We went about from town to 
 town in our own California; sometimes the 
 meeting was held in a theatre, but often out- 
 of-doors, if the weather was fine. We simply 
 said, 'This is what we have seen,' and a few 
 weeks later the checks came pouring into 
 London. When we first began we were some- 
 what doubtful as to the result. The war was 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 115 
 
 so far off — and then it seemed as if an atmos- 
 phere of inviolable peace surrounded our Cali- 
 fornian country, our splendid gardens, our 
 parks, our orchards covered with domes of 
 blossoms under which one may drive in spring. 
 When their working day is over our men seem 
 to absorb peace as they sit in the large, fine 
 houses which they love to build, and look out 
 over lawns where the great cedars stand up 
 like temples of silence. Some among us have 
 pride of peace, as in Germany there is pride 
 of war; peace means freedom won by moral 
 striving toward justice and mutual tolerance. 
 We had among us many who called them- 
 selves 'haters of war.* Some went so far as to 
 refuse to hear anything about 'the raving 
 madness of Europe.'" 
 
 "Yes," said Daisy, "but they listened to us, 
 and when we told them of the suffering in 
 Belgium and invaded France they loosened 
 their purse-strings. They asked nothing better 
 than to give money, and by so doing they 
 drew nearer to the great questions of the war. 
 Moved by pity, they asked themselves the 
 reason of this frightful injustice, and already 
 their hearts had begun to take sides. 
 
 "You are such a logical and reasonable race 
 
116 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 that you have no idea of the strength of sen- 
 timent in our country. Our men are pecuHar; 
 they are sharp at a bargain, and sometimes 
 hard to get on with; business with them is a 
 game in which their energy is strained to the 
 utmost. The more money they make the more 
 enjoyment they have, the more they feel their 
 power and their superiority over their rivals. 
 But once away from their offices they are 
 extraordinarily human, almost sensitive — ^I 
 should like to say tender, but in your over- 
 sensible and somewhat mocking country that 
 would sound ridiculous. 
 
 "It cost them nothing, absolutely nothing, 
 to give; if they were cautious as to anything 
 more it was because they did not want to 
 take part in the European dance of death. 
 The ocean which washes their shores is well 
 named the Pacific, and they were pacific as 
 well." 
 
 "That is not the same thing as being paci- 
 fists," said Daisy. 
 
 "Not at all," said Mrs. Vernon, "and the 
 pacific 'haters of war' will very likely send 
 you some day troops who will fight obstinately 
 until they conquer. Their conversion is being 
 prepared by stories of the nameless sufferings 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 117 
 
 inflicted on a people who were only defend- 
 ing the soil of their country. 
 
 "Sometimes money was given us and at 
 other times wheat or flour. 
 
 "Once at Philadelphia we saw a steamer 
 sail with an entire cargo of flour, the gift of 
 the flour-dealers of Minneapolis. A crowd had 
 gathered on the dock. The steamer looked as 
 if it had been powdered all over; flour was 
 dusting about everywhere; the captain, white 
 as a miller, was laughing, and the sailors 
 laughed too; every one was in high spirits, 
 and when the anchor was weighed and the 
 flag hoisted there was great cheering. Nova 
 Scotia also sent cargoes of provisions, at her 
 own expense. Such vessels were called 'gift 
 ships,' and on their subscription lists were 
 names of many people who had but little to 
 give, and also of many children. And then 
 later I saw another steamer go off; it was 
 about Christmas time, 1915, and it was called 
 *the Christmas ship' — ^I told you we were 
 very sentimental ! Her cargo was made up of 
 toys and playthings for the Belgian children, 
 little clothes for them, and ornaments of tin- 
 sel, glass, and gilt or silver paper for their 
 Christmas-trees. We actually had a president 
 
118 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 of a maritime company, its stockholders, the 
 captain of a ship and its crew, who were willing 
 to risk their boat and the lives of all on board 
 in order that the little Belgians might be able 
 to keep their traditional holiday. 
 
 "Notwithstanding all stipulations, the Min- 
 neapolis gift ship was sunk by a submarine 
 on her return voyage. But that was only one 
 out of many; the other ships went their way, 
 and arrived at Rotterdam. They were rather 
 like the rich man in the gospel who had to 
 pass through the eye of a needle; they did not 
 exactly enter into the kingdom of heaven, but 
 they did enter by the narrow way of Rotter- 
 dam into the kingdom of the poor. Hoover was 
 pleased. To be sure, America was not alone in 
 generosity, and he has often told us that the 
 American contribution was even small com- 
 pared to that of Australia. It seemed as if the 
 farther countries were removed from the war, 
 and the more they felt, or fancied themselves, 
 secure, the more they were moved to pity. 
 
 "We had to travel a great deal in the course 
 of our work,'* said Mrs. Vernon, looking at 
 her friend Daisy. "How often we saw, far off, 
 the smoke from the vessels of the commission, 
 and watched them come into the harbor at 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 119 
 
 Rotterdam. The C. R. B. had its offices on the 
 docks; its little steam-launches went to and 
 fro in the estuary of the Meuse; they had 
 the commission's own particular flag — ^indeed, 
 they have it still, but one is always tempted 
 to speak in the past tense of something in 
 which one no longer has a part. 
 
 '*Yes, how many times we have watched 
 with the director, Captain Lucey, the mooring 
 of one of these ships. While he gave his orders 
 I looked at the Meuse; its gray, fast-flowing 
 stream had passed by Verdun, Dinant, Namur, 
 and Liege; and as I thought of the peaceful 
 harbors of the Pacific Ocean from which the 
 ship had come, I remembered words I had 
 heard in a hospital from a little French sol- 
 dier: 'The evening that we passed through 
 Dinant the Meuse was red because so many 
 bodies stabbed with bayonets were bleeding 
 in it.' The Meuse was red no longer; it was 
 a dull gray, under a low-hanging sky. Weeks 
 had passed since the bleeding corpses had 
 rolled and drifted out to the eternal oblivion 
 of the ocean; the river had forgotten them. 
 
 "While the unloading was going on the 
 masters of the Dutch lighters sat waiting on 
 benches smoking their long pipes, their feet in 
 
120 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 white wooden shoes. Captain Lucey had to 
 come to terms with them, for it was on their 
 great flat boats that supphes could get into 
 Belgium and France, by way of the canals. 
 Little by Httle the C. R. B. had to lease three 
 hundred of these barges, as it had been 
 obHged, after the first gift ships, to form its 
 own fleet. It thus became a little neutral 
 power whose merchant marine was protected 
 by. international agreements. In the harbor of 
 Rotterdam there was always a crowd to see 
 the boats of the commission come in, largely 
 made up of boys and girls full of curiosity 
 about the war, for whom these supplies which 
 were to go into the forbidden country be- 
 hind the barbed-wire barriers had a some- 
 what fearful attraction. The Dutch fisher- 
 men, also curious, stood silently on their 
 fishing-smacks, stopping their work and look- 
 ing gravely on, as if the big vessel, bedecked 
 with streamers, was part of a funeral. In- 
 vaded Belgium and France were so near 
 that it was as though a dead body lay in an 
 adjoining room. 
 
 "On the day of our arrival at Rotterdam a 
 ship had just been unloaded in two days and 
 a half, and we saw the lighters being filled. 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 121 
 
 The Dutch masters and our delegates counted 
 and verified the sacks together, then the 
 barges were covered with big tarpauHns, with 
 the well-known initials of the commission 
 painted on them in huge letters. The tarpau- 
 lins were then sealed, the seals to remain in- 
 tact until the load should arrive at its destina- 
 tion, and then only to be broken in the pres- 
 ence of one or several of the thirty young 
 Americans who were divided between the cen- 
 tres of distribution in Belgium and France. 
 
 "And so, the next day, we saw thirty light- 
 ers going peacefully up the Meuse, one after 
 another. The Germans allowed food to enter, 
 but they kept the railways for the transfer of 
 troops and munitions; they were the arteries 
 of their formidable war circulation. They al- 
 lowed us, however, to make use of the canals, 
 and we liked to think of their beneficent net- 
 work — Dutch, Flemish, and French; the trac- 
 ery of tranquil waterways, bordered by elms, 
 poplars, and aspens, reflecting from one gen- 
 eration to another the placid life of ancient 
 countries. Later, when we were living in the 
 dreary invaded districts, it gave us almost an 
 illusion of peace to see the barges come float- 
 ing down.'' And here Mrs. Vernon stopped 
 
122 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 and looked half-timidly at Morton, as women 
 sometimes do when they have betrayed emo- 
 tion in speaking of a subject which men are 
 in the habit of treating with composure, as a 
 matter of business. 
 
 "You don't say anything, Morton," she 
 went on. "Do you think I am too sentimental 
 about our C. R. B. ?'' 
 
 "Not in the least," said Morton. "Quite the 
 contrary. After all, is not the whole of this 
 war a question of sentiment .? And is it possi- 
 ble for us, who know what we are talking 
 about, to call attention too often to the dan- 
 ger which still threatens the invaded coun- 
 tries .? There are no longer any Americans to 
 take charge of and distribute supplies; Dutch 
 and Spanish delegates have taken our places 
 since America went into the war. That change 
 in itself is not very important; but a change 
 is possible which would make an incalculable 
 difference. If there were any lack of money to 
 buy the food, if the vessels of the C. R. B. 
 could no longer go to Rotterdam, if the canals 
 should freeze over in winter, and if then, for 
 instance, the Germans refused to allow the 
 railways to be used, the immediate result 
 would be not hunger alone but famine. Death 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 123 
 
 would hover over the whole of Belgium, and 
 even more especially over the invaded parts of 
 France. The life of the inhabitants of those 
 regions hangs by a thread. It is certainly 
 allowable to speak of sentiment," he continued 
 with warmth, ''when one has seen that possi- 
 bility as we have. Those who have to live in 
 the invaded country are still perforce mute; 
 you will only know later all that they have 
 had to undergo. In order to help them to keep 
 the little spark of life which is in them still, we 
 have been forced to be very calm and cold, 
 forced to inject clearness and method into our 
 dealings with problems which called primarily 
 for sentiment. Hoover said to us over and 
 over again: 'There is only one way in which 
 you American delegates can do your duty, 
 and that is by ignoring the war. You are only 
 stewards of grain, of bacon, and of dried peas. 
 It is your business to see that they arrive 
 safely, to count and weigh them accurately, 
 and to make sure that they reach the mouths 
 for which they were intended.' And what 
 looked so big when, as Mrs. Vernon says, 
 fleets of ships left American ports and strings 
 of barges went up the canals, looked very 
 little when the seals were taken from the tar- 
 
124 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 paulins, the sacks opened, and the manna 
 had to be distributed among nine millions of 
 hungry mouths. And we had to be very stingy 
 stewards; if we had brought into the invaded 
 district more than what was called *the ration 
 necessary to sustain life/ our work would 
 have been looked at askance, and we should 
 have given offense." 
 
 "But to whom ?" said Daisy. 
 
 "To every one. It happened to us what in- 
 evitably happens to those who are called upon 
 to play a part in a great conflict, without being 
 on one side or the other. The Germans, with 
 whom we had necessarily frequent relations, 
 reproached us bitterly for sending munitions 
 to the Allies; when they saw our depots full 
 of stores, our soup-kitchens and canteens, our 
 supplies for the sick poor in the hospitals, 
 they spoke of the hunger in Germany because 
 of the British blockade. They said: 'You are 
 no longer neutrals; you are keeping alive hos- 
 tages whose sufferings might otherwise affect 
 the hearts and the fighting power of our ene- 
 mies; by keeping the conquered alive you are 
 hindering us from making the war hard and 
 therefore short. It is you who are prolonging 
 it.' 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 125 
 
 "And when we went to England or France 
 to beg for money and for vessels — ^for after a 
 time it became necessary to ask the govern- 
 ments to take a hand in the vast business — 
 well, we found that the Allies also looked at us 
 coldly. Here in France they said to us : ' By all 
 the laws of war it is the Germans who should 
 be called upon to feed the inhabitants of the 
 districts which they have invaded. The enemy 
 has installed himself in part of our country, 
 and governs it. Everything which we send into 
 those districts is like a present given outright 
 to the Germans, for if we feed nine millions 
 of Belgians and French, there is just so much 
 more food left for nine millions of Germans. 
 You are interfering with the blockade, and 
 taking ships which might be used to bring us 
 munitions — ^you are only delightful philan- 
 thropists.' And they said what the Germans 
 had done, only with infinitely more grace and 
 polish, holding out their hands in sincere 
 friendship: 'You are delightful philanthro- 
 pists, but you are prolonging the war.' 
 
 " Prolonging the war ! The same bitter and 
 disturbing criticism came from both sides; 
 both parties had come to the same conclusion. 
 Doubt sometimes entered our own minds — 
 
126 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 was it really true that we were making the 
 war last longer ? If we had not intervened, 
 would the Germans have fed the people under 
 their yoke ? Was it true that our barges on 
 your canals were bringing relief to the Ger- 
 mans and not to the French civilians ? We 
 heard many heated discussions upon the sub- 
 ject, many theories as to the war which 
 seemed almost convincing. ... But when we 
 had come away, and were facing realities, in- 
 stead of merely talking about them, our own 
 conclusion was always the same. The Ger- 
 mans would not have fed either the Belgian 
 or the French population. If there had been 
 no blockade they might perhaps have ob- 
 served the 'laws of war,' but as it was, they 
 said : 'What ! we ourselves are short of food as 
 we have never been before; famine is one of 
 the weapons used against us, and our enemies 
 have more faith in it than in the strength of 
 their arms — and shall we deprive ourselves of 
 what was grown on German soil, and is our 
 own, in order to feed our enemies ? Is that the 
 way to make war — or, at any rate, this war of 
 ours ? Are civilians not to be allowed to die, 
 although German soldiers must ?' 
 
 "We repeated this German reasoning in 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 127 
 
 London, and sometimes in Paris; in the offices 
 of cabinet ministers and also in drawing- 
 rooms. You have many very charming young 
 women here, and their hearts are not hard, 
 but their love of country made them feel that 
 we were in the wrong, and they usually said : 
 'In the end it is the Germans who are the 
 gainers by your work/ 
 
 "Well!'' said Morton energetically, "I 
 know it — ^we all know it" — and he looked at 
 his companions. "The Germans would not 
 have fed the civilians of France and Belgium 
 from their slender store — or, rather, to be 
 more accurate, I will agree that they would 
 have fed those who were willing to work for 
 them, for their war — they would have been put 
 in the same class as the German civilians; but 
 as for supporting the men and women who 
 resolutely refused to work — never ! Here you 
 do not know the whole situation; there are 
 many things that could not be real to you un- 
 less you had actually seen them. For instance, 
 you cannot picture the brutal irritation of a 
 German officer when he is met by the passive 
 resistance of a refusal to work. We have seen 
 — or, rather, we have heard of (for we were 
 not allowed to see them) — men who had so re- 
 
128 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 fused being brought to the Kommandatur, and 
 from there ordered off to be kept in ditches 
 half full of water until their spirit was broken 
 and they were willing to go to work. Ask the 
 men and women who have been repatriated ! 
 You will hear direct testimony then. Women 
 who refused to do manual labor for the Ger- 
 man officials were obliged to stand upright in 
 empty and unheated rooms until they also 
 were willing to give in. Through uncurtained 
 windows they could look into an adjoining 
 room; sewing-machines stood ready there, a 
 chair in front of each. It is needless to multi- 
 ply instances. Your ears will be filled with 
 them as soon as your repatriated people come 
 back, and you will believe them more readily 
 than you would me, for you will see in their 
 faces how much they have suffered. The set- 
 tled conviction of all of us who have lived 
 with the Germans, and who do not look upon 
 them as altogether the Beast of the Apoca- 
 lypse, but just as Germans with two legs like 
 ourselves — our conviction is that the daily 
 bread which we brought, and which is still 
 being given every day in Belgium and in 
 France, is in a manner the last bread of a 
 final last freedom. Can you believe that a 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 129 
 
 man is really free to give or to refuse his work 
 to his masters when he lacks even the humble 
 daily loaf, when he has to see the faces of his 
 wife and children pinched with hunger ? There 
 is one sort of hunger that one does not often 
 see because it is soon put an end to by death. 
 All that is a tragic fact which crowds out of 
 our minds the various theories as to the cus- 
 toms and even the Maws' of war. The Belgian 
 and Frenchman, if kept alive by us, was free 
 to work or not as he chose. Even if he had to 
 stand in the ditch half full of water, he knew 
 that his wife and the children would have 
 some bread and rice, and a little bacon. Here 
 at home when you have given war allowances, 
 when you have been slow in enforcing restric- 
 tions (I mean no reproach), when you have 
 not wanted to disturb but keep the families 
 of soldiers contented, was it not because you 
 wished that your soldier might be free ?— free 
 of soul, to fight without a backward look. 
 You have given allowances to the wives and 
 mothers of your fighting men; why is that i 
 Because the man under arms is sacred to you, 
 and that is only justice to him. His wife and 
 family may stay in lodgings for which they are 
 not forced to pay; you give them fuel and food." 
 
130 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 "Do you remember," said Mrs. Vernon, 
 "that in the gospel Our Lord rebuked the 
 young man who looked behind him ? When I 
 was in Belgium and France I often thought of 
 how Christ had put into the Lord's Prayer 
 the words 'Give us this day our daily bread.' 
 He himself fed his disciples, now by the mira- 
 cle of the wine at the Marriage of Cana, now 
 by the bread when the crowd hearing him was 
 anhungered, and again by the miraculous 
 draft of fishes which Peter and John took 
 from the Sea of Galilee. It is the part of the 
 master to feed his people — and he who would 
 win the heart must also care for the body's 
 needs. There is a spiritual bond between the 
 giver of bread and the man to whom it is given 
 — ^we did not say that to those who disagreed 
 with us; they might have called us * delightful 
 evangelists,' after having called us 'delightful 
 philanthropists.' But these are points of view 
 which we may acknowledge as we sit here by 
 the fireside, friends together, resting after a 
 long task, and wishing, as we look back on 
 what is past, to see clearly and comprehen- 
 sively." And then she added, with a shade of 
 timidity: "Please excuse my evangelical di- 
 gression. " 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 131 
 
 "It was very welcome/' said Morton. "We 
 cannot have too many points of view. But to 
 go back to what I was saying — the Germans, 
 once their army was fed, would not have taken 
 bread out of the mouths of German women 
 and children to hand it over to French chil- 
 dren whose fathers refused to work. They 
 would have carried out a final 'atrocity' with 
 the complacency of Pharisees, justifying it in 
 their own eyes, as they had done in other cases, 
 by saying: 'It was the fault of the people 
 themselves — ^we offered them plenty of food 
 if they would work, but they refused.' This 
 refusal to work was the outward manifesta- 
 tion of a resistance which forced their masters 
 to be continually aware that their power had 
 a limit. Even if, in particular cases, the will of 
 an obstinate 'rebel' broke under the sufferings 
 to which he was subjected, the general resis- 
 tance continued. 
 
 "We have seen the women who would not 
 sew sacks to hold earth for the protection of 
 the German trenches; poor 'rebels,' with hag- 
 gard looks and colorless lips; their only rebel- 
 lion was to fold the thin hands which had 
 once worked so diligently and were now weak 
 from hunger. It gave them new courage to 
 
132 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 know that they and their children would not 
 be obHged to eat German bread. 
 
 "And, after all," Morton went on, appar- 
 ently somewhat afraid lest he might have 
 been too much carried away by what he was 
 saying, "those differences of opinion seem al- 
 most as remote as the old scholastic disputes; 
 it matters little now how the supplies came; 
 we had many anxious moments, but the 
 C. R. B. managed somehow to find the neces- 
 sary millions, the ships, and the supplies. In 
 the darkest hours, when we had begun to 
 whisper 'famine' to one another — as you 
 know we did, Chevrillon — ^the tension broke, 
 and the wheat arrived." 
 
 "Then your C. R. B. is the phoenix of the 
 war," said Daisy. 
 
 "You may well say so," said Morton. "She 
 sprang up from her ashes not once but a 
 dozen times, and, as Hoover has told you, we 
 were able to see that the flour, or rather the 
 bread, reached the mouths for which it was 
 intended. Then the Germans blamed us again, 
 turning their grievance another way round by 
 saying: 'Since you feed these people who will 
 not work for us, you are taking their part 
 against us.'" Morton rose and stretched his 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 133 
 
 arms with a gesture of infinite relief: "Thank 
 God we are neutrals no longer ! — ^neutrality is 
 a poor job for any man/' 
 
 He sat down again and took from his pocket 
 a small printed sheet, which he unfolded care- 
 fully and laid upon the table. 
 
 "You have all seen facsimiles of the posters, 
 meant to terrorize the French and Belgians, 
 which the Germans stuck up on the walls of 
 the Town Halls wherever they went; the words 
 'Death,' 'Shooting,' were always conspicuous, 
 and we became quite used to their threats. 
 But perhaps you may not have seen this little 
 notice; it is very small, modestly white, and 
 altogether mild-looking; it speaks with the in- 
 sidious voice of Mephistopheles, breathing 
 temptation in a whisper. It is addressed to the 
 workers in the Belgian mines, and invites 
 them to go to Germany, to work in factories 
 there. Each workman is promised twenty 
 francs before he starts, all his expenses are to 
 be paid, and on his arrival he will receive the 
 same wages as German workmen of the same 
 class. Furthermore, sums varying from eighty 
 to a hundred and twenty francs a month, ac- 
 cording to the number of his children, are 
 promised to his family during his absence. 
 
134 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 His household is to be protected and looked 
 after by the Kommandatur, the first payment 
 to be made three days after the head of the 
 family has left." 
 
 We passed the crumpled bit of paper from 
 one to the other. It looked as deadly as the 
 big green and red posters which used to glare 
 at the Belgians and French like bale-fires 
 from the doorways of the Kommandaturs. 
 
 On the table, scattered among blue reports 
 bristling with figures, were various proclama- 
 tions, valuable as testimony, which had been 
 smuggled out of France and Belgium by trav- 
 ellers whose names, for obvious reasons, were 
 withheld. The first, dated from Brussels in 
 October, 1915, announced that death-sen- 
 tences had been pronounced by a court mar- 
 tial on three men and three women, for "or- 
 ganized treason" on their part, and after the 
 list of the condemned came the words: "In 
 the cases of Bancq* and Edith Cavell, sen- 
 tence already has been carried out." 
 
 "It is an unheard-of use of the word 'trea- 
 son,' " said Daisy. "One only * betrays' one's 
 country or a friend. Are you sure the word 
 * treason' was correctly translated ?" 
 
 * Wrongly spelt in proclamation; his name was Baucq. 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 135 
 
 "You forget," said Morton, "that these 
 proclamations were printed in French." 
 
 "So they were," said Daisy. "Sometimes I 
 ask myself whether I am awake or dreaming, 
 whether I have not Hved another life before 
 this one, and if these Germans can really be 
 of the same race as those whom I have seen at 
 the theatre in Berlin, aroused to enthusiasm 
 over the old-time independence of Flanders. I 
 remember the applause when Egmont, wak- 
 ened at dawn in his prison-cell at Brussels, sat 
 upright, Hstened quietly to the sentence con- 
 demning him to death *for treason,' and then 
 said to Silva: *Go tell thy father that he 
 neither deceives me nor the world' — 'das er 
 weder mich noch die Welt belugt.' And we 
 learned Egmont's last words at school. When 
 he was about to die he said: 'I give my life 
 for the cause of liberty. Enemies surround you 
 on every side, but be of good cheer, my friends, 
 for your fathers and mothers, your wives and 
 children, are behind you. A cruel edict of their 
 masters may oppress their bodies, but it can- 
 not crush their souls. For the sake of all you 
 hold most dear, follow my example and die 
 with a high heart.'" 
 
 She quoted these words in a low voice, as 
 
136 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 if sending her memory back to her school-days 
 in order to recollect what Goethe had put into 
 the mouth of another prisoner at Brussels, 
 and added: "Goethe and Schiller, the true 
 heroes of German thought, bore witness long 
 ago in Germany, and for the German people, 
 to the greatness of the men and women who 
 are waked in their prisons to-day to hear that 
 they are to die 'for treason.' " 
 
 PROCLAMATION 
 
 The Tribunal of the Imperial German War Council, 
 sitting at Brussels, has pronounced the following sen- 
 tences: 
 
 Condemned to death, for organized treason: 
 Edith Cavell, teacher at Brussels. 
 Philippe Bancq, architect at Brussels. 
 Jeanne de Belleville, of Montignies. 
 Louise Thuiliez,* professor at Lille. 
 Louis Severin, pharmacist at Brussels. 
 Albert Libiez, lawyer at Mons. 
 Condemned to fifteen years' hard labor for the same 
 reason : 
 Hermann Capiau, engineer at Wasmes. 
 Ada BoDART, at Brussels. 
 Georges Derveau, pharmacist at Paturages. 
 Mary de Croy, at Bellignies. 
 During the same session the War Council pronounced 
 * Her name was Thulicz. 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 137 
 
 sentences of imprisonment and of hard labor, varying 
 in length from two to eight years, on seventeen other 
 prisoners accused of treason against the Imperial 
 Armies. 
 
 In the cases of Bancq and Edith Cavell, sentence 
 has been already carried out. 
 
 The Governor-General of Brussels calls the atten- 
 tion of the public to these facts, in order that they may 
 serve as a warning. 
 
 General Von Bissing, 
 Governor of the City, 
 
 Brussels, October 12, 191 5. 
 
 PROCLAMATION 
 OF THE German Military Commander of Lille 
 
 The attitude of England makes feeding the popula- 
 tion increasingly difficult. 
 
 In order to lessen suffering, the German authorities 
 recently asked for volunteers to work in the fields. 
 This offer did not meet with the success which was 
 expected. 
 
 It is therefore ordered that the inhabitants shall be 
 evacuated and moved into the country. They will be 
 sent into the occupied territory in France, far behind 
 the front, where they will be engaged in agriculture, 
 and not in work for the armies. 
 
 By this means they will have an opportunity to pro- 
 vide for themselves. 
 
 In case of necessity they may be fed from the Ger- 
 man depots. 
 
 Each person evacuated may take with him 30 kilo- 
 
138 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 grams weight of baggage (kitchen utensils, clothing, 
 etc.), which he will do well to prepare at once. 
 
 I therefore order that, until further notice, no one 
 shall change his domicile. Furthermore, no one shall 
 leave his legal domicile between 9 o'clock at night and 
 6 o'clock in the morning (German time), unless he is 
 provided with a proper permit so to do. 
 
 As this measure is irrevocable it will be for the inter- 
 est of the population to remain quiet and submissive. 
 
 The Commander. 
 Lille, April, 1916. 
 
 "Goethe and Schiller," said Morton, "be- 
 longed still to the small Germany of separate 
 states. It was by their thought, and not by 
 force of arms, that they wished to influence 
 the world. But do not let us consider the 
 poets; there is no question of poetry now, nor 
 of an heroic past. Everything is 'the present' 
 and 'reality.' Here is something else," he said, 
 taking from among the scattered papers a 
 large green poster, quite new, as if it had only 
 come from the printer that morning. "Here is 
 a 'notice' of which you have heard a great 
 deal; a 'notice' does not seem very important. 
 This one was posted up at Lille; look at the 
 date," and he pointed to it: "'April, 1916.' It 
 was on Easter Sunday that this paper was 
 placarded on the doors. In the suburbs of 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 139 
 
 Roubaix the German soldiers were sticking 
 it up hurriedly on almost every door." 
 We read: 
 
 NOTICE 
 
 All inmates of this house, excepting old men and 
 women, and children under fourteen with their mothers, 
 must get ready to be deported within an hour and a half. 
 
 An officer will have the final decision as to those who 
 are to be taken to the assembly camps. In order that 
 he may do so, all the inmates of the house shall stand 
 together outside it; in case of bad weather they will be 
 allowed to stand in the entry, the house-door to be 
 kept open. No protests will be considered. No inmate 
 of the house, including those who are not to be de- 
 ported, may leave it before eight o'clock in the morn- 
 ing (German time). 
 
 Each person shall have the right to 30 kilograms 
 weight of baggage; in case of overweight, that person's 
 baggage will be rejected without further consideration. 
 The baggage of each person must be in a separate par- 
 cel, with a legible address firmly affixed thereto; such 
 address to consist of the owner's name in full and the 
 number of his identification card. 
 
 It is absolutely necessary that each person shall pro- 
 vide himself with utensils for eating and drinking, as 
 well as a woollen blanket, stout shoes, and undercloth- 
 ing. Each person must wear his identification card. 
 Any one attempting to avoid deportation will be rigor- 
 ously punished. r- x^ 
 
 ^ Etappen-Kommandatur. 
 
 Lille, April, 1916. 
 
140 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Morton put the two notices side by side, so 
 that we could see them at the same time, the 
 one promising good wages and the fostering 
 care of the authorities for the household of 
 the absent worker, the other ordering whole- 
 sale deportations. 
 
 "You see both their methods,'' he said. 
 "They were followed at the same time, and 
 by the hardship of one you may judge of the 
 temptation offered by the other." 
 
 "But they must be demons," said Mrs. 
 Felder, and she pronounced the word as if it 
 came from the depths of her soul. It was the 
 first time she had spoken during the evening; 
 her soft eyes, which were sometimes those of 
 a seeress, had been fixed on Morton. 
 
 "This, then," she went on, "is what you 
 have seen in France, in the country which we 
 have considered as our brother, in the coun- 
 try of liberty ! Did you actually see these de- 
 portations .?" 
 
 "Certainly," said Mrs. Vernon. "For my 
 own part, I had seen one day, a long time 
 ago, at Marrakech, in an out-of-the-way cor- 
 ner of the bazaars, a trader bringing in his 
 new riches — a troop of slaves, men, women, 
 and young girls. I thought then I had never 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 141 
 
 in my life seen anything more inhuman; but 
 now it seems to me only like a sort of biblical 
 vision of primitive Oriental life, since we have 
 seen, in a great industrial city of France, Ger- 
 man officers, with waxed mustaches and pol- 
 ished boots, dragging Frenchwomen toward 
 the railway-stations — Frenchwomen who had 
 been torn from their families and homes on 
 that Easter night. 
 
 "In the country we sometimes met a little 
 procession of these deported ones. The poor 
 souls were very quiet, very simple — ^it was 
 from them we learned to speak calmly when 
 our hearts were on fire. Their heavy feet shuf- 
 fled in the dust; their backs were bent under 
 the weight of their burdens; their thoughts 
 were only of their misery. Some of the women 
 were crying. We stopped our motor-cars, and 
 they looked at us anxiously as they went by, 
 as if hoping that we might be able to help 
 them. They could not know, as they saw us 
 watching them with calm curiosity from our 
 carriages, that we, the witnesses of their woe, 
 would raise a cry of horror and condemnation 
 which would for the first time intimidate their 
 oppressors and check this revival of slavery. 
 
 "For it was an American named Poland, 
 
142 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 one of the heads of our C. R. B., who was the 
 first to shame the German military leaders 
 out of these deportations. When he first pro- 
 tested against them to one of the generals 
 high in authority at the General Head- 
 quarters, this chief pretended that he did not 
 believe such tales. 'They were due to the 
 heated imagination of neutrals; all philan- 
 thropists were alarmists; we saw persecution 
 everywhere.' The general ordered an investi- 
 gation, and Poland saw the officers who had 
 taken part in the deportations and signed the 
 'notices' deny them pointblank, or else have 
 conveniently hazy recollections. When Poland 
 finally pushed them to the wall, and they had 
 to confess what they had done, the general 
 was, or made believe to be, very angry, and 
 not long after that the order was revoked both 
 in the occupied zone and in that where the 
 army was in movement. Freedom within their 
 own households, that last treasure of the op- 
 pressed, was given to your fellow country- 
 men; the mother might keep her daughter, the 
 daughter stay with her mother. But when the 
 sons reached the age at which all mothers, at 
 all times, have been proud of their boys, then 
 for them came deportation." 
 
 "We have been so absorbed in watching 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 143 
 
 the sudden turns of fortune in the fighting," 
 said Daisy, "that we have thought less about 
 what we could not see, what was going on 
 behind a wall; we have not known enough 
 about the suffering back of the lines/' 
 
 "The wall is forbidding," said Morton, "for- 
 bidding and well guarded, and once within 
 the walled territory there are yet other en- 
 closures. In going from Belgium to Holland, 
 as one crosses a strip of empty land, fenced on 
 either side with a latticework of barbed wire 
 and electrified cables one feels already a 
 prisoner. For those of us who were newcom- 
 ers, having only landed at Rotterdam that 
 same morning, the impression was very strik- 
 ing. German sentinels, carrying their rifles, 
 and with pistols in their belts, paced to and 
 fro in the strip of flat, damp country, guard- 
 ing the wires charged with instant death to 
 any touch. It is a hunting-ground which is 
 uncommonly well preserved; the sentinel, who 
 comes with his hand at the salute to examine 
 our passports, will open the barriers for us if 
 he finds them in order, but one has left free- 
 dom behind." 
 
 "And yet," said Mrs. Vernon, "that is only 
 occupied territory." 
 
 "Yes," said Morton. "It is a bit of Belgium 
 
144 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 which is still divided into provinces. Fifty- 
 thousand Germans are enough to 'hold' the 
 country; they 'occupy' it, they keep watch, 
 they arrest patriots and condemn them to 
 death. To them the young Belgians who try 
 to pass the barriers in order to fight are 
 game-birds of war, to be slain with the deadly 
 electric current. We have known of boys 
 caught like sparrows in a net — ^that happens 
 every day. All this is terrible enough, and yet 
 it is only 'occupation.' If one goes from 
 Belgium into France, as we did each week, 
 the impression was different again. Near the 
 frontier there was another zone to be passed, 
 more sentinels pacing the fields. There we 
 came into the 'zone of action,' in which 
 two millions and a half of German soldiers 
 prepared for and made war in a territory in- 
 habited by two millions and a half of French 
 people. The numbers were even. In Belgium 
 a gap had been made in the beginning, and the 
 track of the invasion was marked by ruins, 
 but it was on the land of France, divided into 
 as many compartments as there were German 
 armies holding them, that the torrent over- 
 flowed. Etappen-Gebiet — ^the word sounds like 
 the crack of a pistol. The air of liberty is so 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 145 
 
 rarefied that one can scarcely breathe; just 
 think of it — of all the German armies in- 
 trenched or fighting, with their van and rear 
 guards, crowded into this broken-off corner of 
 France. There is not a village, no matter how 
 small and how far behind the German lines, 
 which has not its German cantonment — ^its 
 German soldiers billeted on Frenchmen — or on 
 Frenchwomen. They are everywhere. For each 
 Frenchman there is a German under arms — 
 the count is easily made — and this at a time 
 and in a war in which every method of pres- 
 sure has been carefully studied and pitilessly 
 applied. Belgium could sometimes mock her 
 'occupiers' with the brave laugh of the weak- 
 ling who turns the giant into ridicule — ^but in 
 the 'zone of action' in France no one evef 
 laughed. Let us put it in another way — ^there 
 were two suspicious German eyes spying on 
 every French man, woman, or child. Those 
 eyes saw everything — ^in that, as in everything 
 else, the German thought himself godlike — and 
 punishment might follow a laugh, a smile, or 
 even a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 "We ourselves were not free in the zone of 
 action. We found friends among the Belgians, 
 and the close community of our work allowed 
 
146 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 US to know them well. They used to ask us to 
 dine with them sometimes at the week-ends, 
 and when our work was done we sometimes 
 played tennis on their lawns with their daugh- 
 ters. Even during the most tragic experience 
 every hour is not sad. 
 
 "But in the French zone of action we could 
 have no friends. Various sign-boards showed 
 us that we were in the empire of destruction 
 as soon as we came into it. For instance, a 
 very polite German officer got into our rail- 
 way-carriage and took possession of us. It 
 had been agreed that we were to superintend 
 in all centres of distribution, but we were 
 superintendents who were superintended — ^we 
 were suspects. Each of us had a German officer 
 as a constant companion. We called him our 
 * nurse'; we also called him our 'man Friday,' 
 for we felt like Robinson Crusoe on his desert 
 island. We could never speak to a Frenchman 
 freely or alone; the big ears of the German 
 officer were always wide open. In the course 
 of our rounds we passed the night in the same 
 hotel with him, and sometimes in the same 
 room; we took our meals at the same table; 
 at the meetings of the French committees the 
 German officer never left our side. We were as 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 147 
 
 inseparable as a man and his shadow. We 
 were young, and we were not there to grum- 
 ble. As long as the Germans kept their word 
 and did not lay hands on any of the imported 
 wheat, it was our business to keep silent. It 
 was also part of our instructions from Hoover: 
 'You have nothing to do there except to see 
 that the wheat arrives, that it is made into 
 bread, and the bread eaten by those for whom 
 it was meant. If it is hard to say nothing, 
 remember that silence is the price of food for 
 those people.' 
 
 "I remember arriving once in the little vil- 
 lage of . When I had last seen it, a month 
 
 before, it was intact beside its river, but when 
 our motor-car stopped that morning in the 
 square in front of the church, I saw that three 
 houses had just been burned down; their cal- 
 cined walls had fallen in. Some women who 
 were beating their linen at the public washing- 
 place turned their heads away when they 
 caught sight of the German uniform. With my 
 'Friday' we made our visits to the president 
 of the French committee, at the communal 
 storehouse. We counted the sacks of flour 
 which had been received the night before, and 
 we looked into houses here and there to see if 
 
«<1 
 
 148 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 our distributions had been regularly made. 
 Everything took place as if the village did not 
 bear the marks of recent violence. I tried to 
 surprise some expression on the faces of the 
 French committee, but they were gloomy and 
 strained; they only spoke of trifling matters 
 relating to the food supply. As for me, I had 
 no right to put any questions; I was restricted 
 to a vocabulary which would go Into two pages 
 of a Berlitz manual: 
 
 Have you received the supplies ?' 
 'How many sacks were there .?' 
 "'Have you returned the sacks ?* 
 "'Have you destroyed the tin boxes ?' 
 "There were some moments of silence which 
 seemed suffocating. Through the window I 
 could see the breaches in what had been, but 
 a month before, a charming square of houses 
 around the church. That particular day 'my 
 oflS^cer' did not leave me for an instant, and 
 when we met some women, as we went out, I 
 saw his blue eyes looking hard at them. His 
 glance was like the glint of a bayonet. The 
 women passed silently, and I felt that they 
 were like wounded animals who are unable to 
 tell why they suffer. 
 
 "When we were back again in the motor, 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 149 
 
 between the two soldiers with their loaded 
 rifles who occupied its corners, my officer lit a 
 cigar. He had become affable and altogether 
 human again. The fresh air, the swift motion 
 of the car, the ending of a task, all combined 
 to put him in a good humor, and he said to 
 me: 'If you are not on duty to-morrow we 
 might have some shooting, if you like. Thanks 
 to our excellent organization, the game has not 
 been molested; there are plenty of partridges 
 in these fields.' 
 
 "'Perhaps,' I said; 'but tell me, W., what 
 happened at ?' 
 
 "'Oh, only a punitive measure,' he an- 
 swered, and his face again assumed the hard 
 expression that it had worn during our visit, 
 as he puffed hard at his cigar. I never found 
 out why those three houses were set on fire, 
 but later I became familiar with such 'acci- 
 dents.' Now it was a house, or a little group 
 of houses, which were miissing in a village; 
 again it was a few men, or women, or priests. 
 ... In the small town of N. we found the 
 room empty in which the president of the 
 local committee, who was also the mayor, 
 usually received us. Our meeting took place 
 in a neighboring room, without any allusion 
 
150 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 to the absence of the president, but there, at 
 any rate, we found out through a notice 
 posted on the wall of the town hall that he 
 had been condemned to death 'for treason/ 
 The time is not yet come when we may speak 
 more openly, but let us remember that in that 
 part of the world men and women are only 
 hostages. Sometimes as an act of clemency the 
 penalty of death is commuted to hard labor. 
 "I heard afterward that Monsieur X. was 
 already serving his sentence in Germany, 
 among common criminals, with his head 
 shaven and wearing the convict's jacket and 
 cap, marked with his prison number. He was 
 plaiting baskets for German shells, and at 
 night he was locked into a cage made of iron 
 bars. But we only knew that later; the only 
 answer at the time was 'a punitive measure.' 
 Another time it was a cure who had disap- 
 peared; for those who are invaded have their 
 'missing' as well as the troops; he also had 
 been condemned to death by a court martial 
 'for treason,' the sentence being commuted 
 into penal servitude in Germany. In his spir- 
 itual capacity he had helped his parishioners 
 to solve a difficult case of conscience — ought 
 one to take one's copper to the Kommandatur 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 151 
 
 or not ? The old cure said from the pulpit at 
 high mass: 'Resistance is impossible; when 
 they come to your house, let them take what 
 they can find — ^but/ said the old man gently, 
 *do not let them find more than you can help/ 
 His flock understood him, and during the night 
 all their saucepans and ancient warming-pans 
 were buried or thrown into the Meuse. The 
 old priest was caught in the act of wheeling 
 his own coppers through the woods on a bar- 
 row, in the path to the river. I knew that 
 through my 'Friday,' who was so indignant 
 about the 'traitor' that he spoke out for once. 
 Riveted as we were to each other, sometimes 
 by night as well as by day, we used to talk; 
 we only escaped from this Siamese life on 
 Thursdays, when we went to make our report 
 at our committee meetings in Brussels, which 
 left us six days of the week in which to hear 
 and discuss German theories about the Ger- 
 man race. The 'Fridays' might be changed 
 but the theories never; our officers loved to 
 intoxicate themselves with their own beliefs, 
 as a fanatic repeats his formula to himself 
 over and over. By finding the same ideas in- 
 cessantly reiterated in their newspapers, their 
 pamphlets, their books, and their conversa- 
 
152 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 tions, one comes to know that the German 
 brain is an anvil for German thought. 
 
 "You say in your newspapers that they are 
 barbarians, but you are mistaken, as our 
 friend Harder told you the other day; this war 
 has taught us that they are Germans. The 
 difference is great. The barbarian was a big 
 child in a world of shadows, but these men 
 see very clearly what they destroy and why 
 they destroy it. First it is the riches of a 
 country, then the source of that riches, men, 
 land, and machinery. We have seen them 
 calmly seated, resting themselves and reason- 
 ing about the war, their future zukunfty their 
 harshness and their punitive measures, while 
 they drank the wines of France temperately 
 and with appreciation. I have watched them 
 as they followed up their forecasts, striking 
 the table with their fists until the glasses 
 danced upon the trays. They would say to us 
 in English: ^And if it is not this time, it will 
 be next time, and if not next time, then the 
 time after.' You may as well be prepared, for 
 they have plenty of patience. If man is a vague 
 and changeable being, then the German is not 
 a man. 
 
 "During our table-talk we Robinson Cru- 
 
THE AMERICANS IN -THE WAR 153 
 
 soes became fairly satiated with their ideas 
 of the selection and superiority of the Teu- 
 tonic race. Nothing could be feebler than 
 these bold paradoxes strained through ordi- 
 nary German minds, always followed by abuse 
 of the Americans: 'We were furnishing France 
 with munitions'; *we were no longer neutral'; 
 *we were prolonging the war.' There were 
 some lively arguments at our dinner-tables. 
 We have seen the entry of the United States 
 into the war; we have also discussed it before- 
 hand. They would never believe in it; until the 
 very last day they thought it was only our 
 American bluff. 'It would be a crime/ they 
 said; 'it would make the war last indefinitely.* 
 They were gamblers who thought they had 
 won the game; they were quite ready to make 
 peace, and to embrace Belgium and after- 
 ward France, both of whom they loved, after 
 their fashion. They loved France especially, 
 but evilly and covetously, as a brutal man 
 loves a charming woman who flies from him 
 when he comes near her. It was a mixture of 
 love and anger. I have often seen them, when 
 it was time to rest at the end of one of our 
 day-long journeys in summer, taking their 
 bitters in front of one of your cafes. They 
 
154 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 seemed to breathe the air of France with sen- 
 sual deHght, while they said : ' Poor France ! 
 when will the war come to an end ?' During 
 our stay with them we often saw long lines of 
 carts pass by, drawn by slow and heavy-footed 
 Russian prisoners, and surrounded by German 
 soldiers. It was a familiar sight on your east- 
 ern roads. The carts were laden with tree- 
 trunks, smooth and shiny, made green or 
 golden by the mosses still clinging to them. 
 
 "Your French forests went to Germany in 
 gangs, under guard, like prisoners, and the 
 German officers would repeat: 'Poor France !' 
 They spoke sincerely, as an executioner who 
 knows that nothing will make his hand trem- 
 ble might speak of a woman whose beautiful 
 hair he has just seen cut off, and who is to be 
 delivered to him for torture. Poor France ! 
 Sometimes, while these loads of recently felled 
 trees were going by, the air was full of the 
 smell of their fresh sap, and one could see the 
 old French wood-cutters going hurriedly into 
 their houses and shutting their doors. . . . 
 Then, as if to dispel any unpleasant feeling, 
 our officers would call the children who were 
 always dawdling on the door-steps, tell them 
 funny stories in French, give them bright new 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 155 
 
 pfennigs, pull their ears gently, or pat their 
 thick hair. And then, as if to say, *How easy it 
 would be!' they would point to the German 
 soldiers off duty and resting, who were grin- 
 ning sheepishly at the young women as they 
 passed, or even — ^we may speak out, may we 
 not ? — dandling paternally in their arms big 
 solemn-looking babies . . . the sad children of 
 invasion." 
 
 Morton stopped suddenly, as if he were 
 afraid he had wounded the intimate national 
 feelings of the French people who were listen- 
 ing to him. The subject dropped. Mrs. Felder's 
 eyes were full of tears; Daisy, usually so ready 
 to talk, kept silence; Chevrillon got up to light 
 the alcohol lamp in time for tea. 
 
 There was an awkward pause for a moment, 
 broken by Mrs. Vernon, who said : 
 
 ''My dear friends, we should not feel that 
 we had the right to touch your wounds if we 
 had not by coming into the war pledged our- 
 selves to heal them. We have been made part 
 (I am using one of the expressions of your 
 church, but when one speaks of France all 
 thoughts become religious) — ^we have been 
 made part of your suffering, but now we have 
 come to unite ourselves with France militant. 
 
156 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Is it not true, Daisy, that this is the day for 
 which we have longed ? and — I will speak 
 again in terms of religion — ^in order to receive 
 the reward of our Redeemer we must have 
 shared his Passion. Very many of our boys will 
 go into this war as true Christians, feeling 
 that a work of redemption must be accom- 
 plished, and the whole world delivered from 
 evil. You have spoken often of our material 
 civilization — ^you will be surprised at the 
 amount of idealism to be found among the 
 strong and well-grown young men who are 
 coming to fight for you. It is strange," she 
 went on, as if talking to herself, and trying 
 to make a vague idea clear, "it is just the 
 reverse of the German conditions, where 
 transcendental idealism has led to material- 
 ism of the most ferocious kind. But then,'* 
 she went on, as if pushing away a puzzling 
 problem, "we also are contradictory. We came 
 out here as haters of war, as physicians who 
 had been made immune to some terrible 
 plague, and were bringing remedies to its 
 victims. And now the war has entered into 
 our very blood — ^yes, even I, a woman, have 
 felt it," and she raised the hem of her sleeve 
 from her slender wrist with an instinctive 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 157 
 
 movement, as if to show us the mark of an 
 inoculation. "It came to me in invaded 
 France; it came to others as they sat here by 
 their firesides; it will come to still others in 
 America. The haters of war now say to-day: 
 *If war can only be destroyed by war, then let 
 us throw ourselves into the fight at once.' " 
 
 It was growing late, but we found it hard 
 to part. Mrs. Vernon was sailing for home 
 the next day, to continue her untiring cam- 
 paign for invaded France and Belgium, and 
 teach her friends the new gospel of adversity. 
 
 Daisy was going back to her nest in Lor- 
 raine. ... At this moment, and while Chevril- 
 lon was making tea, Mrs. Felder went to the 
 piano. There was a sort of magnetic attrac- 
 tion between her and it; she did not sit down, 
 but as she passed she stooped over the keys, 
 and drew from them very faintly an adagio 
 by Cesar Franck. 
 
 Mrs. Vernon turned round quickly, saying, 
 "Ah, Nettie Bell, do play the first bars !" and 
 being gentle and always attuned to music, 
 Nettie Bell played them. 
 
 "I heard that for the first time at Lille," 
 said Mrs. Vernon. "We had arrived that 
 morning, having gone through dead villages 
 
158 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 the day before, those villages of the French 
 countryside from which no smoke ever rises 
 now. The wind whistled over the bare plain 
 and on the roads where it no longer shook 
 white poplars — ^they had also been carried off 
 into Germany. I was sad . . . One feels the 
 tragic absence of all personal liberty in that 
 region more on some days than on others. We 
 had stopped before the storehouse of the 
 C. R. B., and my husband discussed some 
 detail concerning the supplies with a German 
 officer. While I was waiting I could look into 
 a room on the ground floor of a large house 
 across the street; the window-curtains were 
 drawn back, so that I saw a young woman 
 seated at her piano. 
 
 "She was reading from the open sheet be- 
 fore her as she played; I could have drawn her 
 profile, which was very delicate and almost 
 too sharply defined. She was in mourning, 
 with a small crape scarf drawn around her 
 shoulders and crossed on her bosom. A little 
 girl about three years old was playing near 
 her, and every now and then she interfered 
 with her mother's music by tapping on the 
 piano with tiny obstinate fingers. It was just 
 an ordinary every-day household scene, and 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 159 
 
 yet I understood its inner meaning as I saw 
 the wedding-ring, too loose for its wearer's thin 
 hand, and the beautiful face which only the 
 chisel of suffering could have made so spiri- 
 tual. I was sure that in playing what she did, 
 and as she rendered it, she was pouring forth 
 a prayer of love and sorrow; sometimes she 
 played the movement you have just heard 
 with force and passion, and then wearily, like 
 some one who falls and struggles to her feet 
 again; she seemed almost like an angel walking 
 uncertainly under a weight of distress. 
 
 "All at once, as the child persisted in 
 drumming with her fingers upon the keys, her 
 mother stopped playing for an instant and 
 very gently pushed the Httle thing away. 
 
 "She caught sight of me as she did so, and 
 noticed that I was looking at her. She was 
 evidently frightened. And then I did the only 
 thing unbecoming a neutral with which I 
 have to reproach myself, I think, during all 
 my stay in those sad countries — I pressed my 
 finger to my lips and gravely sent her the 
 shadowy ghost of a kiss. 
 
 "She started, and for the first time I saw 
 her full face. Her large gray eyes, widely 
 opened, were two chalices full of tears. I 
 
160 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 looked at her hand, where her wedding-ring 
 hung so loosely, and it was as though she had 
 said to me in words: 'This war has made me a 
 widow.' 
 
 "She saw the German officer (a very decent 
 fellow, by the way, who gave himself no end 
 of trouble to help my husband in feeding what 
 he called 'my population') and drew herself 
 on one side, at the same time pulling the mus- 
 lin curtains across the window. 
 
 "That evening, as we were returning in our 
 motor along the dark road, we came to the 
 crossing of two highways, where there had 
 been fighting in 1914; eight French soldiers 
 lay buried there, some beside one road and 
 some by the other, and their graves were in 
 the form of a cross. I could not help thinking 
 of the eyes I had seen that morning brimming 
 with unshed tears, and I said to my com- 
 panion: 'Poor invaded France — we shall have 
 seen nothing of her soldiers except their 
 graves.^ 
 
 ''He answered: 'It Is almost impossible to 
 believe that fighting is going on all the time; 
 a different France is over there, close to us, 
 on the other side of the zone of action.' And 
 he stretched out his hand. The car rolled on, 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 161 
 
 and we found ourselves close to trenches cut 
 across gardens — they always look strangely 
 like the sunken roads of Brittany. I thought 
 again of the young woman seen only for a 
 moment that morning, and I stood up in the 
 car in order that I might have a better view 
 of the forest of the Argonne on the horizon, 
 as if it were possible to see from that distance 
 what we Americans in invaded France have 
 never yet seen, and what the French people 
 who live there never, never see — French 
 troops." 
 
 "I have often had the same feeling," said 
 Morton. "Sometimes we could not help suf- 
 fering from a dreary delusion that there was 
 no more real France, only men who were old 
 or ailing, in the midst of a multitude of women 
 and children. When its young manhood is 
 drained out of a country it loses all vitality — 
 and when I say 'young' I mean between a 
 period which begins at sixteen and ends at 
 forty-five. If only we might have seen, as we 
 toiled at our never-ending task of counting 
 and weighing sacks of wheat and flour for the 
 poor and the sick, for women and children, 
 for infirm old people — even for the insane — if 
 only we might have suddenly seen a young 
 
162 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 French soldier, all in horizon-blue, his steel 
 helmet on his head, his rifle on his shoulder, 
 looking at us with bright eyes " 
 
 "It would have been a wonderful vision," 
 said Daisy. 
 
 "Better far than that," said Mrs. Vernon. 
 "To those poor French people who are waiting 
 there, in the Valley of the Shadow, oppressed 
 by a cruel old god — it would have been the 
 passing of a young god in his glory." 
 
 "It is perfectly true," said Morton, "that 
 the greatest privation of these people immured 
 in a German jail is that they can never see 
 their own soldiers. They saw the mobilization, 
 the movement of their armies toward the east 
 and the north — ^they saw them retreat — and 
 then night fell — ^the outer darkness — and they 
 were left to be the guardians of graves. 
 
 " I was at Lille one night when French avi- 
 ators dropped bombs on one of the suburbs. 
 When all their bombs had been used up the 
 airmen flew over the centre of the city, taking 
 no notice of the enemy airplanes which were 
 after them. They had thrown bombs to the 
 Germans, but on their own French they show- 
 ered down myriads of little papers, bright with 
 the national colors. It was strictly forbidden 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 163 
 
 to open any windows, under severe penalties, 
 but as I stood there in the city square I saw 
 them all opened at the same time. The mitrail- 
 leuses were crackling, and the women leaning 
 out of their windows tried to see their Mes- 
 siah in the heavens — the airplane soaring on 
 its French wings in the cold moonlight. There 
 was an old woman whom I had come to know 
 well because I used to see her in one of our 
 workrooms, always bending over her sewing 
 with a patient, tired face. I saw her that night, 
 on the fourth floor of the house where she 
 lived; she was carrying a little sleeping child, 
 and showing him to the bird of France, the 
 blessed bird of fire, a shining star in the dark- 
 ness, shedding a mystical blessing among the 
 din of the mitrailleuses and the droning of the 
 planes. Shells were falling and shrapnel was 
 scattered in the square, but one felt that a 
 universal rejoicing, only half-subdued, was 
 flowing from every window into the night." 
 
 "I was right," said Mrs. Vernon. "It was 
 the passing of the young god." 
 
 "The next day there were German posters, 
 German punishments; women had opened the 
 shutters of their windows, allowing rays of 
 light to stream out, for which they must be 
 
164 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 fined. But the French people had had their 
 hour of gladness, and they paid their fines 
 without a murmur; then the darkness, which 
 had Hfted for those blessed moments, closed in 
 again, and the long night went on. 
 
 "That is one of the last recollections of my 
 stay there," said Morton, "and one of the 
 most striking; even now I sometimes recall the 
 old woman as she held the sleeping child for 
 the airplane to see, when it was only a spark 
 of light, scarcely distinguishable among all 
 the others. A few days afterward we went 
 away; the premonitory symptoms of our entry 
 into the war had begun to show themselves, 
 and the thirty Americans who ran from one 
 end to the other of the territory which held 
 six German armies soon became 'undesirable.' 
 Our situation was peculiar. Negotiations had 
 been begun by which the Dutch and the 
 Spanish governments were to take over our 
 work and insure the importation and delivery 
 of supplies, but in the meantime, and until we 
 should be actual belligerents, we went on with 
 our inspections, always accompanied by our 
 German officers, who were even more closely 
 attached to us than before. When I was in 
 Morocco I used to amuse myself by watching 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 165 
 
 the white birds which dehberately and pa- 
 tiently followed in the track of the laboring 
 oxen as they turned up the furrows. The ox 
 and the bird — an odd association seen all 
 through that country; the birds feed on the 
 flies which swarm around the beasts and are 
 scattered by the lashing of the ox's tail. No 
 white bird was ever more faithful to his chosen 
 ox than the German officer was to his particu- 
 lar delegate ! The last days of this enforced 
 intimacy were rather trying. After our endless 
 discussions about the war, the endless German 
 theories, and the endless complaints as to our 
 having supplied munitions to the Allies, our 
 entry into the struggle was dramatic, to say 
 the least. The Germans had never really be- 
 lieved in our intervention. They knew how 
 deep the roots of American life were struck 
 into peace and prosperity, and they had 
 counted on their influence in the United States, 
 on their propaganda, and on the inoculation 
 of Germanism which would be 'biologically' 
 developed by the dissemination of ten mil- 
 lions of Germans throughout the length and 
 breadth of our country. Even when our inter- 
 vention became certain, even at the present 
 time, it is hard for them to admit to them- 
 
166 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 selves that we are really going in for serious 
 fighting with artillery and rifles. President 
 Wilson's action when he declared war seemed 
 to them as if a far-away Supreme Being, ab- 
 sent-mindedly holding the scales in which right 
 and wrong are weighed, had frowned on mor- 
 tals as a sign of his displeasure, without mean- 
 ing to descend to earth in order to follow his 
 condemnation by chastisement. That would 
 all be settled in some other world. Neverthe- 
 less, although they could not believe in the 
 possibility of improvising American armies, as 
 it had taken them forty years of preparation 
 to get their own ready, they knew that the 
 United States had decided against them, and 
 they felt the weight of this moral judgment. 
 They were quiet up to the end, and so were 
 we; it was their duty and ours also, but we 
 discussed and argued persistently, and when 
 the last evening came, we drank with calm 
 solemnity the health of him who should be the 
 first among us to be made a prisoner of war. 
 "After that our work was turned over to 
 the Dutch delegates who were to take our 
 places. The last time that I met with a French 
 committee was in a village on the banks of 
 the Meuse. Everything went on just as it had 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 167 
 
 done before; I am not even sure that the 
 French knew we had gone into the war, for the 
 German newspapers kept the announcement 
 back as long as they possibly could. The presi- 
 dent of the committee declared the meeting 
 adjourned in the usual words, which had be- 
 come a sort of ritual, and when I went back to 
 
 I saw our barges once more coming 
 
 slowly down the canal in a long line. One of 
 the features of our administration was its ab- 
 sence of noise and fuss; those barges, with their 
 sealed tarpaulins, gliding silently along the 
 waterways, keeping their own secrets and 
 going quietly to their destination, were fitting 
 symbols of the system by means of which we 
 had managed to sustain life in the suffering 
 bodies of those who trusted us. 
 
 "And so one day, very calmly, without any 
 leave-taking, we passed through the guarded 
 lines, like the doors of a jail, where invaded 
 France begins and ends. We left the prisoners 
 behind us, but only to return to set them free 
 by force of arms. From the sinister zone of 
 action, swarming with German armies, we 
 passed to the zone of occupation, and came to 
 the barriers of barbed wire, charged with their 
 lightnings. It was evening, and for the last 
 
168 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 time the German sentinels examined our pa- 
 pers by the hght of their red lamps. 
 
 "We were in Holland, and could breathe 
 the air of freedom. I looked again at the wide, 
 flat meadows, shining with moisture, gay with 
 blossoming clover and sainfoin, and diversified 
 by little thickets here and there. This little 
 strip of land would have looked like any other 
 in a free country except for the sentry-boxes, 
 painted with the German colors, which were 
 strung all along the enclosure. The pair of sen- 
 tinels, with their hands at the visors of their 
 helmets, their stiff, automatic gait, their silent 
 politeness, the candid indifference of their 
 china-blue eyes, seemed to me like the German 
 machine personified." 
 
 "You say 'machine,'" said Daisy, "and 
 they say that they are * nature ' — ^nature which 
 cannot be repressed, and which is impelled by 
 its inward vitality to become a devouring 
 force." 
 
 "They have a lot of fables and myths for- 
 ever in their mouths," said Morton; "argu- 
 ments which would become the Lernaean hy- 
 dra, paradoxes which are both cynical and 
 pagan, and yet they always lay claim to God's 
 especial favor. I stick to my word — ^they have 
 
THE AMERICANS IN THE WAR 169 
 
 a machine — ^I admit that it is formidable, but 
 only a machine after all, and sooner or later it 
 will explode in their hands. 
 
 "The end had come. We passed the last 
 sign-posts . . . there were only our two selves 
 in our carriage." 
 
 He rose suddenly and drew a deep breath, 
 as if he needed all the air left in the room by 
 the many cigarettes which had begun and 
 ended their lives there. "Thank God," he said, 
 "the C. R. B. still carries on its work — ^but 
 we are no longer neutrals !" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WITH OUR FRIENDS IN THE LIBERATED 
 COUNTRY 
 
 Ti 
 
 HE Germans have fallen back. Now we 
 shall be able to see with our own eyes the 
 country which they overran. The footprints of 
 the Beast are still fresh; we shall look into his 
 dens, and smell his evil stench. We shall find 
 stains of the blood shed by him, and witness 
 the destruction he has wrought. It will be an 
 intimate satisfaction to our souls to be able 
 to hate and curse him more even than before; 
 it makes us happy now to be able to hate, as 
 happy as we once were in being able to love. 
 We were again with our American friends, 
 for they wished to see, or rather to revisit, the 
 regions in which their work had lain, and with 
 which they were once so familiar. Morton and 
 Rivards were with me in the automobile, and 
 we were going first to Noyon. We reached Sen- 
 lis at five o'clock in the afternoon, and an- 
 other motor-car, coming from Paris, stopped 
 near ours. Two men got out of it; I saw Chev- 
 rillon first, as he came toward me with a tall, 
 
 170 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 171 
 
 man, who, although young, looked terribly 
 grave. Under his thick hair his brow was 
 almost stern; his eyes were keen, his lips un- 
 smiling — and, I repeat, he looked terribly 
 grave. I had never seen him before, but I knew 
 him at once by his photographs; the thin- 
 lipped, obstinate mouth, the expression of reti- 
 cence and silent strength were eloquent of his 
 ancestry. It could only be Hoover, the grand- 
 son of Quakers. 
 
 We shook hands without the usual civil 
 effusion; I had not even time to get out the 
 customary phrase of French politeness: "Mr. 
 Hoover, we have heard a great deal about 
 you in France." We felt that even those few 
 words would have been too many, and were 
 quick to take our tone from him. Notwith- 
 standing his taciturnity his manner was ex- 
 ceedingly courteous; his eyes spoke for him, 
 and we understood their language. We were 
 at once conscious of the tie that bound us to 
 him for what he had done in the past, and felt 
 that it would make us one with him and his 
 workers in the present and for the future. 
 
 Hoover was only in France for three days, 
 on his way to the United States to assume 
 control of the food supply; in the meantime 
 
172 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 he meant, like us, to see some of the French 
 towns and villages which had been set free 
 by the German retreat. 
 
 Our observations began at Senlis, where the 
 traces of invasion, although not recent, were 
 still plainly to be seen. The Germans held the 
 town for ten days in September, 1914, and 
 here began the ruins which were to mark 
 their passage everywhere. I watched Mr. 
 Hoover as he went quickly through what was 
 once the rue de la Republique; we counted as 
 many as one hundred and seventeen houses 
 which had been burned down as a "punitive 
 measure" on the 3d and 4th of that September. 
 Hoover, as usual, said nothing. He had already 
 seen many ruined cities; he knew Louvain, 
 Malines, and Aerschot, and had witnessed 
 the result of "punitive measures" throughout 
 invaded France. For him and his companions 
 Senlis was the end of a Via Dolorosa which 
 had its beginning at Vise. 
 
 We were able to count the one hundred 
 and seventeen houses because their walls were 
 still standing, but their only roof was the sky, 
 and scraps of its blue were framed by their 
 empty windows. The street looked as if it were 
 dead and had been buried deep in the earth 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 173 
 
 for hundreds of quiet years, only to have its 
 skeleton given back at last to the light of day. 
 
 The look of intelligent pity in Hoover's face 
 was like that of a physician who sees in a 
 corpse the signs of a plague whose ravages he 
 has studied elsewhere. The German troops 
 came in by the northern end of the rue de la 
 Republique; they were drunk with vainglory, 
 shouting hymns, thanking the Old God who 
 was giving them the victory, even rolling over 
 each other like mad dervishes as they cried 
 "Nach Paris!'' 
 
 The men and women of Senlis well remem- 
 ber those shouts; the German hordes saw 
 Paris in a sort of ecstasy, as the dervishes see 
 paradise; they had almost reached their goal; 
 a few hours more and their grip would be on 
 the heart of France. 
 
 And here we can begin to study their "pu- 
 nitive measures." A German officer asked the 
 mayor of Senlis, Monsieur Odent, whether all 
 the French troops had withdrawn from the 
 town, and he, in perfectly good faith, knowing 
 that his life hung on the truth of his word, 
 answered that they were all gone. He could 
 not see that a rear-guard of French and Sene- 
 galese infantry was still at the southern end 
 
174 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 of the street, retreating toward Paris. These 
 men saw the first German soldiers coming in 
 and fired at them. Then the flood-gates of Ger- 
 man wrath were opened. All day long the 
 town was heavily shelled, as the German offi- 
 cers insisted that it was the civil population, 
 "the cifilians," as they pronounced it, who 
 had fired; eye-witnesses have still a lively rec- 
 ollection of a corpulent German major stand- 
 ing upright in his stirrups and swearing at 
 them until he was purple in the face. 
 
 The "cifilians" had fired, and almost as if 
 by reflex action the major suddenly drew his 
 pistol and blew out the brains of an old 
 "cifilian^' who was standing patiently and 
 quietly outside the door of a hospital. The 
 officer gave a hoarse cry like that of a wild 
 beast when he saw him fall, and on the instant 
 his soldiers fired a volley through the hospital 
 windows into the ward where the French nuns 
 were tending their wounded. That was the 
 first prompt ''punitive measure." Soon after- 
 ward cyclists rolled along the rue de la Repub- 
 lique in orderly line, bearing tins of petrol 
 and compressed tablets of naphtha, and set 
 fire to every house. From one after another 
 thick black smoke arose, followed by fierce 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 175 
 
 flames; all night long they mounted into the 
 still September air, blotting out the full moon 
 and the quiet stars. 
 
 That is how an old street in an old French 
 town became a skeleton of stone. Let us exam- 
 ine this "punitive measure" calmly and coolly 
 — ^let us try to see how and why it all hap- 
 pened, for we shaU surely come across the 
 same system again and again; it is simple — 
 the mere alphabet of a method; through it we 
 shall learn to love the Creator who made the 
 world and to hate the German who has done 
 his best to destroy it. 
 
 But the job at Senlis was not quite finished; 
 Monsieur Odent, who had staked his life when 
 he said the French had left the town, had lost 
 and was not yet dead. The forfeit had to be 
 paid. He was able to send his wife and chil- 
 dren to a place of safety, and he did not be- 
 tray any emotion as he and six other hostages 
 were led away by a file of German soldiers, to 
 be judged under a cluster of oak-trees on the 
 edge of a wood, near the village of Saint Cla- 
 mant. A cluster of oaks for a judgment-seat, 
 like that of Saint Louis ! The mayor was 
 obliged to listen to his death-sentence, which 
 was long; then he turned toward his friends, 
 
176 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 the other hostages, saying to one of them: 
 "Good-by, my poor Benoit; we shall not 
 meet again in this world, for I am to be shot." 
 He took out his crucifix and his pocketbook, 
 asked that his watch might be given to his 
 wife, clasped the trembling outstretched hands 
 of his friends, and turned toward the judges 
 who awaited him under the cluster of oaks. 
 Two soldiers shot him from a distance of ten 
 paces, thus carrying on a tragic and glorious 
 family tradition, for his father, also mayor of 
 Senlis, had been shot by the Prussians in 1870. 
 
 This story was told to us and to our Ameri- 
 can companions by one of the six hostages 
 who were there on that day. He added : "While 
 our friend's body was being thrown into a 
 shallow grave before our eyes, we could see 
 the light of incendiary fires spreading over 
 the night sky." 
 
 An old cure met us in the cathedral, and he 
 also had a story to tell. A German officer had 
 held a pistol to his head, and shouted that 
 he must have the key of the belfry, as there 
 were mitrailleuses on the platform of the 
 tower. The priest gave up the key and led the 
 German to the top of the belfry, where they 
 found only the bells, that during hundreds of 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 177 
 
 years had rung for the birth, the prayers, the 
 love, and the death of sons and daughters of 
 France. 
 
 A week later an armored car came down the 
 road from Paris at full speed. Monsieur Odent 
 was not there to hear "The German troops 
 are falling back!" but his body must have 
 thrilled with joy under its thin covering of 
 French earth. Scattered shots still rang out 
 from the square, but as the car sped back the 
 men in it stood up, crying out: "Keep your 
 courage up — ^we're coming back !" 
 
 It is an old story now, as war-stories go, 
 and a simple one. Senlis and Chantilly mark 
 the extreme edge of the German invasion. 
 Now German prisoners are at work in the 
 fields, getting in the first crop of hay under 
 the May sunshine; the invasion is checked, 
 the hymns of triumph are heard no more, 
 and the cry "Nach Paris !'* sticks in the 
 throat of the German armies. 
 
 From Senlis we went rapidly to CompiSgne, 
 and our way this morning lay through the 
 forest of Ourscamp. Lilies-of-the-valley, stand- 
 ing straight between their blade-like leaves, 
 made all the air sweet with their fragrance, 
 and above their white beauty the great trees. 
 
178 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 beeches, oaks, and birches, stretched out their 
 branches glossy with their new leafage, pro- 
 tecting the mysteries of many nests. Suddenly, 
 in the heart of the forest, we came upon a sort 
 of frontier — ^the line of trenches which shel- 
 tered the Germans for two years, and where 
 Fate, thought by them to be their servant, 
 began to turn against them. 
 
 We went down into their dugouts, empty 
 ant-hills with a labyrinth of passages cut deep 
 in the earth, all leading to the hiding-place of 
 the murderous master-spirit, the German 
 officer who worked, ate, drank, and slept, bur- 
 rowed deep under our beech-trees. Above 
 the door of his sheltered bedroom some one 
 had drawn a clock, and under the figures on 
 its face these words were carefully written : 
 
 '*Im Gleichmas die Stunde in scharfen 
 Wacht bis in Frauen Armen uns in Friede 
 lacht." ("During our keen vigil one hour is 
 like another, until Peace shall smile at us in 
 women's arms.") 
 
 "While the world was at peace they only 
 thought of war," remarked Hoover, "and 
 during the war they dreamt of peace." 
 
 So this is the fatal border-line behind which 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 179 
 
 France suffered and waited. It is a mere line, 
 not wider than a ditch or the bed of a brook; 
 workmen were busy getting material out of it, 
 and rolling the strands of barbed wire into 
 great balls. 
 
 We went fast, for we were expected at 
 Noyon — or, rather, to be accurate, Mr. Hoover 
 and his companions were expected there, as 
 they had just left one side of the invaded dis- 
 tricts to see what war had done on the other 
 border. We had only time for a glimpse of the 
 ruined villages of Carlepont and Cuts, but 
 what struck us most, as at Senlis, was the gap- 
 ing emptiness of the windows, the unscreened 
 daylight streaming in where our eyes had been 
 accustomed to see the soft shadow behind 
 which lives had a right to privacy. Now noth- 
 ing was hidden nor was there any life to hide; 
 weeds were already growing in the gaping 
 holes of the ruined walls, and we could see the 
 gleaming eyeballs of famished cats as they 
 prowled about in the piles of rubbish. It was 
 still possible to distinguish the way in which 
 the little villages had been laid out, and where 
 the streets had crossed, but the houses with 
 their blank squares, and light streaming in 
 where there was no longer any life, made us 
 
180 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 think of dead bodies whose staring eyes have 
 not been closed by pious hands. In these ruins 
 there was neither peace nor forgetfulness. 
 
 Although Noyon had only been liberated 
 for a few days, everything was quiet, and the 
 work of reparation went on busily. Some of our 
 soldiers were loading trucks with beams, while 
 others were using them to run up a makeshift 
 bridge across the Oise. As we passed a camp 
 of negro troops we heard their guttural African 
 songs, with a very rudimentary accompani- 
 ment on the guitar; the men smiled as we ran 
 by, and we saw the light flash on their white 
 teeth. The old church in the square, its 
 arches a little sunken with the weight of cen- 
 turies, was happily uninjured; it still sheltered 
 the figures of apostles and saints, and seemed 
 to shed the blessing of ancient France on the 
 national life beginning anew in its shadow. 
 
 I could not help saying to my travelling 
 companion, "You are in one of the old centres 
 of French history," but our friends from the 
 New World did not need to be told, and were 
 often more sensitive than we ourselves to the 
 subtle influences of our past. They felt the liv- 
 ing poetry of old France as we should feel if, 
 instead of finding only tombs and empty tem- 
 ples on classic ground, we were allowed to 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 181 
 
 know the life, the thoughts, and the manners 
 of the beings who once inhabited those won- 
 derful lands. Our American friends used even 
 to say to me: 
 
 "Why do you draw such a marked and al- 
 most hostile line between the present and the 
 past? You say 'the past' sometimes as if it 
 were not a part of the present. When we look 
 back across the ages France to us always *is'; 
 in the world's history it is the Word." 
 
 "France *is.'" Those words, spoken by a 
 foreigner, touched me deeply, for it is true that 
 there are traces of our past through the hours 
 of our daily life, as there have been through 
 the long hours of war. Noyon ! It was here that 
 Charles, not yet Charlemagne, was crowned 
 while still only planning his great empire; it 
 was here that Hugues was proclaimed rex 
 francorum; near here Clovis the Frank con- 
 quered Alaric the Visigoth, and just now, as 
 we passed Compiegne, we might have seen 
 traces of the ditch where Jeanne d'Arc stum- 
 bled and was taken prisoner. All the past is 
 indeed present in our lives to-day; the mighti- 
 est river that sweeps along is, like the hum- 
 blest brook, made up of all the water that has 
 been poured into it. 
 
 We were glad, after a solemn fashion, to 
 
182 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 take possession again of the old streets of 
 Noyon, to hear the footfalls of our young offi- 
 cers as they went about the business of instal- 
 lation, and, above all, to be able to bring there 
 a little group of the Americans who had seen 
 the invasion and whose hands had dealt out 
 the food that kept our people alive. We were 
 also excited at the thought that we had taken 
 a step, even if only one, into the invaded ter- 
 ritory, and we knew that there was still a 
 superhuman task to be done before the coun- 
 try could really live again. 
 
 An officer showed us the way to the sub- 
 prefecture, where Major B. was waiting for 
 us. Mr. Hoover went in before us, and I was 
 able for the first time to see the singularly 
 sweet expression of which his stern and obsti- 
 nate face is capable. Major B. said a few 
 words to him in a low voice; I saw Hoover 
 stop suddenly and almost recoil, as if he were 
 surprised by an emotion to be mastered before 
 he went any further. He had taken off his hat, 
 and his smooth, thick hair made a close frame 
 for his stubborn and intelligent head. 
 
 He went forward quickly into the open 
 room, where a large and uncommon group of 
 men was waiting for us, or, rather, for him. 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 183 
 
 They were all civilians, for the most part old 
 peasants of our countryside, and as the oldest 
 came toward him holding out both hands as 
 if bearing a message from all the rest, Hoover 
 understood very well what it meant; his lips 
 quivered slightly, and even he, the president 
 of imperturbables, could hardly keep back 
 the tears which sprang to his eyes. 
 
 These old civilians — ^for there were no young 
 men in the invaded country — ^were not stran- 
 gers to Rivards and Morton, who had lived 
 either with these same men or with others 
 just like them. They were the mayors of the 
 ninety liberated villages, and when they had 
 heard, the day before, that Hoover was com- 
 ing, they had all started to meet him, some on 
 foot and some in country carts; although the 
 roads were still almost impassable, they had 
 somehow managed to come. Now that these 
 old Frenchmen were once more free, it was 
 the wish of their hearts to thank the chair- 
 man of the C. R. B. 
 
 And they knew how to do it. We had heard 
 the stories of Harder, of Morton, and of Mrs. 
 Vernon, but had we really seen ? Had we any 
 idea what the collaboration of these Americans 
 had really meant, voluntarily imprisoned as 
 
184 
 
 they were with our people, working with them 
 for months and years to receive and distribute 
 that humble thing — daily bread ? 
 
 These men who came from the liberated vil- 
 lages knew and remembered; gratitude, affec- 
 tion, and confidence shone in their eyes; they 
 were like wounded men who, once well again, 
 hold out grateful hands to those who have 
 carried them to safety, healed their wounds, 
 and tended them back to health. One after 
 another Hoover, Morton, and Rivards shook 
 the hands (some of them very old and gnarled) 
 of the mayors and their deputies, and for us, 
 who had not witnessed the gradual formation 
 of a strong tie, it was very interesting to see 
 this cordiality and, so to speak, "family feel- 
 ing" between strangers and the old-fashioned 
 country people of our old land. 
 
 "Now confess," said Morton to one of them, 
 laughing, "that when you first heard that 'the 
 Americans' were coming you expected to see 
 us wearing beads around our necks and 
 feathers on our heads." 
 
 "Oh," answered the old man, "it was the 
 women who did not know any better." 
 
 At last the time had come when every one 
 might relax, and they began to exchange recol- 
 
WITH OUR FRJ^DS 185 
 
 lections as to rice, bacon, peas, beans, and the 
 little bills of the paper currency. One of the 
 Frenchmen summed it all up by saying: 
 
 "The American bread was as if it had been 
 French," and another added: "And if we 
 hadn't had it there would have been nothing 
 of us left but our bones; the Americans were 
 like Providence, which doesn't desert the 
 house of misfortune." 
 
 " But France gave the money for the bread," 
 said Morton. 
 
 "I know," said the old man; "but without 
 you the money would not have turned into 
 bread." 
 
 They were all familiar with the complicated 
 organization of the food supply, and the old 
 Frenchmen and young Americans talked about 
 business matters, and told stories which both 
 sides understood without any explanation, as 
 people do who belong to the same family. It 
 would not have taken much to make us new- 
 comers in the liberated regions feel like out- 
 siders, French though we were. They spoke of 
 their last accounts, of what had happened to 
 the last sacks of flour and the last tins of food. 
 "Above all, be careful not to let the Germans 
 get any tin — ^not so much as the lid of a sar- 
 
186 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 dine-box/' was the order. It was understood, 
 and every precaution taken, up to the last 
 minute. *'They wouldn't have found that!'* 
 was followed by the familiar gesture of the 
 thumb-nail against the teeth. 
 
 Then their thoughts went to those who were 
 absent. If the mayors were almost all old and 
 "near the earth," as we say, it is because when 
 the Germans were obliged to fall back they 
 took with them their prey from many villages, 
 in the shape of the younger men and those of 
 most importance, whose chateaux or factories 
 were in the neighborhood. The mayors of Fol- 
 embray and Candor had been carried off as 
 hostages; the day of deliverance had dawned, 
 but they had been swept off by German offi- 
 cers in the retreat. The mayor of Ognolles, 
 who had been taken as a hostage in 1914, had 
 been repatriated, after two years — and he told 
 us what the German prison-camps were like. 
 
 We lunched quickly, as is fitting in time of 
 war, and just as we were about to leave, the 
 oldest of the Frenchmen rose to his feet, his 
 sunburnt hand holding a glassful of the gen- 
 erous red wine of France. His bushy eyebrows 
 stood out like white thickets over his eyes, 
 which, although faded with age, were still 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 187 
 
 bright — ^the eyes of one who sees more than 
 he dreams; his broad face bore the mark of 
 privations, and Hfe had wrinkled it with deep 
 furrows, like those of his own fields, for the 
 peasant grows to resemble the land he loves. 
 His thin lips were parted in a smile which had 
 once been merry, and as he stood up we saw 
 that he stooped a little and that his thin 
 shoulders drooped under the folds of a velvet- 
 een coat which had evidently been made for 
 a larger frame. He looked Hoover straight in 
 the eyes and thanked him in the name of all 
 the others and in the name of the liberated 
 villages. His words were few, for when one has 
 suffered much, one loses the power of speech, 
 and the golden tongue of France is not yet 
 unloosed. The sinews of his thin neck swelled 
 with emotion as the old man recalled the long 
 days of trial, and gave the names of some who 
 should have been there . . . but had been laid 
 low by German bullets. Then with the same 
 gesture that Mrs. Vernon had made the other 
 evening, he took up a morsel of bread rever- 
 ently in his fingers, as if it had been blessed, 
 and said in a voice that broke a little : 
 
 "This is the bread of France, and thanks 
 to you American gentlemen our sweat has 
 
188 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 never moistened the bread of slavery; we and 
 our wives and our children have eaten the 
 bread of France." 
 
 Hoover answered him very briefly; it was a 
 fine sight to see the peasant from the Ile-de- 
 France and the great citizen of the United 
 States speaking to each other, almost with 
 religious solemnity, each looking full in the 
 other's face, as one equal looks at another. 
 
 "We have left invaded France, because we 
 are coming to fight for the France that is 
 free," was the substance of what Hoover said. 
 The time is past when America gave only 
 her wheat; now American hearts, American 
 wills, and American lives are offering them- 
 selves and coming to us in their legions. 
 
 Hoover, as he spoke to this son of our soil, 
 seemed to be pledging America to the relief of 
 our invaded and tortured country, and we all 
 rose instinctively, as men did in the old days 
 when they broke Easter bread together. 
 
 We thought of all the prodigious work 
 undertaken on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 While we stood here on the border of the 
 region just set free from invasion, over there 
 young men who have never trodden the soil 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 189 
 
 French meadows, were crowding into the re- 
 cruiting offices, signing their names in regis- 
 ters, binding themselves to us for Hfe and 
 death. I remembered our doubts only a few 
 weeks ago, when we said: "Is it possible that 
 an army can spring in a day, like helmeted 
 Minerva, from the brain of Wilson ?" 
 
 The impossible had come to pass, the great 
 crusade had begun, and from one side of the 
 Atlantic to the other messages were flying to 
 and fro like passionate outbreathings — ^mes- 
 sages of hope, of battle, of life, and of death. 
 
 Hoover left us in a hurry, to run through 
 the liberated villages which he wished to see. 
 We went after him to the same villages, which 
 are indeed liberated, but only as prisoners are 
 whom the enemy has mutilated before he was 
 forced to give them up. 
 
 Love, pity, reparation — ^those are the words 
 which spring from the depths of the heart 
 after seeing what we have seen. 
 
 * 
 
 How shall I write ? What I shall say will be 
 
190 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 like words spoken at the tombs of the beloved 
 dead — it will be hard to stop. 
 
 * 
 
 Let us smell the almost imperceptible fra- 
 grance of a branch of green leaves, or the per- 
 fume of this bunch from the lilac-bushes which 
 grow triumphantly beside the ruins; let us 
 look at the trees cut off near the ground, los- 
 ing the life-blood of their sap, and lying like 
 dead things along the roads. Nature rejoices, 
 birds are singing, and larks shower down from 
 the sky their tribute to the joy of living. 
 
 But the earth mourns; the delicate grace of 
 the flowers which bloom among the desolation 
 moves us like the innocent smile of a baby 
 found alone by the cold hearth of a house 
 where his father and mother have been put 
 to death or torn away. 
 
 This bunch of flowers was picked at Mar- 
 gnles, as we and our friends followed the road 
 from Noyon. They knew it better than we, and 
 Morton drove the car. It was four o'clock in 
 the afternoon, and as soon as we left Noyon 
 we began to pass the first rows of trees cut 
 down beside the roads. When we reached 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 191 
 
 Margnies-les-Cerises (such a pretty name !) 
 we thought we had come into a place given 
 over to death. The tiny houses, all crumbled 
 into little bits, made us think of a city of ants 
 on which some powerful and ill-natured beast 
 had set his crushing foot. 
 
 We had sounded our horn from time to 
 time in the dead silence of the countryside, 
 and as we did so again in the village two old 
 men came out of a deep hole in the earth be- 
 side the church, close to the graveyard. They 
 looked at us quietly, with faces used to adver- 
 sity; mildly astonished to hear and see us, 
 they seemed to be inquiring what we wanted, 
 as they might have done when the village was 
 prosperous, and tourists came there to buy 
 cherries, on the strength of its name. 
 
 They saw our eyes fixed on a sort of gibbet 
 which reared itself, like another deity, in front 
 of the church; it was made of two smooth 
 newly felled tree-trunks, with the bark taken 
 off, connected by a stout truss reinforced by 
 iron bands. 
 
 A third huge trunk hung loosely by a chain 
 from this truss, so that when pushed it would 
 deliver a shattering blow to the frail walls of 
 the village houses. 
 
192 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 "That was their battering-ram," said one 
 of the two ghosts. Yes, they had revived the 
 battering-ram of antiquity; it did not tap at 
 doors furtively and discreetly, like death, but 
 struck with heavy and repeated blows, goring 
 our houses like a mighty bull. A sinister and 
 silent job ! There were no flames to show 
 against the night sky, no twisting smoke to 
 rise in daytime, and the dull sound of the 
 blows was lost before it reached our lines. It 
 was as if living bodies had been kicked to 
 death; the houses fell in little bits which were 
 scattered over the ground. 
 
 The two old men told us their names — ^I can 
 only remember that their Christian names 
 were Eustache and Julien. It appeared that 
 they were not alone; from other holes other 
 ghosts suddenly came to life; some even 
 showed their heads, like spectres, through the 
 opening of a shattered tombstone, for the 
 Germans had disturbed the k:^ sleep of the 
 dead by breaking open their graves in order 
 to take shelter in them as though they had 
 been ditches. 
 
 The spectres came up to us, all of them old, 
 with incredibly dilapidated clothes. They were 
 looking in these *Mitches," they explained, for 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 193 
 
 what had been left there; odds and ends of 
 furniture taken from the village, mattresses, 
 bedding; stuff with which the German crows 
 had made their nests in our graves. With these 
 remnants our old people meant to make them- 
 selves beds, in some corner less funereal and 
 less profaned. 
 
 The churchyard wall was furrowed and 
 pierced by shell-fire; we sat down on part of 
 it, and Eustache and Julien stood before us, 
 smoking their pipes with an air of satisfaction. 
 The soldiers, they said, had given them to- 
 bacco. 
 
 Their hollow faces showed the hardships 
 they had undergone, but their eyes were clear 
 and steady, and the light of a smile came into 
 them as our American friends held out their 
 hands. As Morton well knew, a French peas- 
 ant rarely smiles suddenly and amiably at a 
 foreigner; one would have said here, as at 
 Noyon, that it was a meeting of old friends. 
 Those two years and a half were equal to a 
 lifetime of suffering spent together. 
 
 "The American gentlemen will find changes 
 here," said Eustache laconically, spitting ener- 
 getically on one side, and shaking his old head 
 in the direction of the battering-ram. 
 
194 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Those few words were enough. We stared 
 together at the creature, a daughter of Ash- 
 taroth, a diaboHcal invention, the ram; and 
 we understood it all; the ram had battered at 
 all the doors; as the Germans could not take 
 the little French village as a hostage, they had 
 murdered it. 
 
 The pipes were finished, and the last whiffs 
 of their smoke exhaled, almost in silence; a 
 few laborers, scattered here and there in what 
 they still called the fields, came to join us. 
 There were twenty-three of them, all old in- 
 habitants of Margnies, still sheltering them- 
 selves underground at night, and in daytime 
 trying to recover their belongings from the 
 ditches, or occupied outside the village in try- 
 ing to cultivate their little market-gardens. 
 
 This is what old Eustache told us of the 
 last days of the village, a few words at a time, 
 and shaking his pipe more often than I could 
 count. 
 
 "On the 6th of February, two months ago, 
 we had not known for two years about any- 
 thing that was going on outside our village. 
 Every morning the Germans used to stick 
 their orders up at the Kommandatur" (the 
 German word sounded oddly in a French 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 195 
 
 mouth). "That morning they warned us that 
 at four o'clock in the afternoon they would 
 take away the 'able-bodied men' still left 
 among us; there were not many, for we had 
 already seen deportations; there were just 
 half a dozen, and their names were posted up. 
 
 *'At four o'clock the six men went off be- 
 tween ten soldiers, carrying their clothes in a 
 bundle on their backs; they were much upset 
 because they could not get any decent shoes, 
 and we did not know where they were going; 
 they went off toward the north, on the road 
 which goes uphill behind the church. 
 
 "The next day there was another notice on 
 the door of the Kommandatur. 
 
 "This time it was an order to all the women 
 of Margnies between the ages of seventeen 
 and sixty years, who had not children under 
 fifteen, to be at the open doors of their houses 
 at four o'clock that day, also ready to go 
 away. 
 
 "They were ordered to take with them a 
 parcel with a change of shoes and a blanket — 
 no other baggage. 
 
 "It was the first time that any of our 
 women had been deported, and as we did not 
 know what had been going on anywhere else. 
 
196 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 it was a blow. In a farming country like this, 
 where every one works in the fields, the 
 women's help had been needed. In winter they 
 were employed to break the ice which was 
 put in the cellars, in spring to nip the extra 
 buds off the fruit-trees, and in summer to pick 
 the cherries and help with the harvest. 
 
 "We were always working under orders, 
 and not for ourselves, but in a certain way we 
 got the good of our work, because the Ameri- 
 can gentlemen had made arrangements so that 
 we had our potatoes, and we were paid for 
 our crops in bread. 
 
 "So it was the first time women were taken 
 away from us; that was kept for the last day. 
 Nothing was to be left behind but old crea- 
 tures like us, and rubbish. We did not know 
 that it was the last day of the occupation. 
 
 "Look there," said the old man, and he 
 pointed to the other side of the graveyard, 
 where a heap of stones was half sheltered by 
 a dislocated roof whose broken tiles hung down 
 like red autumn leaves on a trellis — "that was 
 my house, and that long stone was the thresh- 
 old; I put it back into place. 
 
 "On that stone my daughter and my daugh- 
 ter's daughter stood in the doorway, waiting 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 197 
 
 for it to be four o'clock. We could not speak; 
 in the room behind us the clock was ticking 
 off the seconds, and that made our hearts beat. 
 We were waiting for the church-clock to strike 
 four. I am a widower and my daughter is 
 forty-four years old; her husband had been 
 taken away the day before; my granddaughter 
 is twenty-five years old. Twenty-six women 
 were taken away as if they had been cattle 
 bought at the market. They went off by that 
 road; our trees were still standing then, and 
 only the day before the women had been busy 
 nipping off cherry-buds. 
 
 "The officer who had charge of the job was 
 a young lieutenant; he did not like to look us 
 in the face, and kept whistling one of their 
 tunes, and flicking his boots with his riding- 
 whip. 
 
 "I was the oldest man, and I asked him if 
 he would allow me to load a donkey with 
 some bundles of clothes, some more blankets, 
 and shoes. 
 
 "He grunted out that it was Verboten,* 
 and hit harder at his boots. 
 
 "So they went away like thieves, between 
 German soldiers with fixed bayonets. I can't 
 tell you how we felt." 
 
198 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Old Eustache took out his pipe, looked at 
 his companions, spat upon the ground, and 
 was silent. 
 
 In a moment he went on: 
 
 "Then we men went into the fields. From 
 a corner of my cherry-orchard there was a 
 good view of the turn in the road, and some 
 of my friends who are here now will remem- 
 ber" — and he looked at his companions — 
 "that they joined me there. We said to each 
 other: 'We shall see them once more, at the 
 turn of the road, although the daylight is 
 failing.' We stood there watching for them, 
 but not close together, because we were for- 
 bidden to stand in groups, and all at once we 
 thought we must be dreaming, for we heard 
 them singing. They were far away already, and 
 it sounded sweetly, like chanting in church. 
 
 "Do you know what our women were sing- 
 ing, with the German bayonets all around 
 them? The ^ Marseillaise^ !^^ The old man 
 laughed, showing his yellow teeth, where the 
 pipe had made a gap. He laughed for sheer 
 pride and satisfaction, as parents do when 
 they tell you some exploit of their children 
 which they think very clever. And he summed 
 up his impressions by saying: "They certainly 
 went off bravely." 
 
w 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 199 
 
 After a pause he went on: 
 
 "But that wasn't all. That same evening 
 another notice was stuck up, ordering us to 
 make bundles of all the clothes and linen 
 which we still had, and to take them to the 
 church. It was a queer order, but for two 
 years and a half hardly a day had passed 
 without a placard telling us to do or not to do 
 something. 
 
 "This order made it easier for them; if we 
 took all our clothes to the church, they 
 wouldn't have the trouble of going to our 
 houses for them. Then came still another 
 order; it was our turn to go, all of us; the vil- 
 lage was to be cleared out, and we were to 
 load a donkey with all the food we had on 
 hand. You know we received our supplies from 
 the American committee every fortnight; 
 those who had any money paid, and those who 
 were too poor were given vouchers by the vil- 
 lage, so they were not left out. Every one got 
 something, and when the order came to go, 
 we had provisions for a week ahead. They 
 took us to a farm ten kilometres away and left 
 us there; there were sixty-six of us, counting 
 the children. We heard the noise of firing, and 
 knew the French must be coming and the 
 Germans clearing out. As the French and 
 
200 TBE^W^Jh OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 German shells went about their business they 
 crossed over our heads. We were between the 
 two firing-lines. We lived on the food we had 
 brought with us, but we couldn't tell how long 
 we might be there, and we began to count the 
 grains of coffee and rice. We slept, if we could 
 get any sleep, all crowded together on some 
 straw in a barn. One night we heard a shell — 
 it was a French one — coming through the air 
 with a noise like a locomotive; it fell on a 
 woman who was lying there, and crushed both 
 her legs. We had no linen, nothing to help her 
 with, but the women had washed their che- 
 mises at the fountain, and they tore them up 
 to make bandages. The woman couldn't help 
 crying out, and her old man, who was next her, 
 said: 'Don't scream so loud, or else the others 
 may be afraid.* 
 
 "The eighth day was a Thursday, and we 
 were as if we had been on a raft after a storm. 
 The rice was used up and we had no more 
 bread, but we knew the French were coming 
 nearer. By noon they were so close that we 
 could see their uniforms, but we didn't know 
 what all that light blue meant, and we didn't 
 recognize their helmets. We hadn't any French 
 flag, so we tied a white cloth to the end of a 
 
WITH OUR FPI OS 201 
 
 pole, and then we saw one soldier, and then 
 two and then three, running toward us, run- 
 ning fast, because the Germans behind us were 
 still firing. Sometimes we thought we saw our 
 men fall, but it was only because they would 
 drop into a hole to take shelter for a minute, 
 and then their helmets and heads would show 
 again as they went on. 
 
 "We went on waving our pole, and they 
 knew what we meant. Then you said, Julien " 
 — and he looked at the other old man — 
 *''Why don't we do as the women did, and 
 sing the ^'Marseillaise^' ?^ We were like mad- 
 men, but the little soldier who was running 
 toward us understood, and he waved his rifle 
 at us. When he and his two comrades got to 
 where we were they were all out of breath. 
 The women were heating them some coffee 
 when another French shell struck quite close 
 to the farm. Then the first soldier started up 
 — he was a sharpshooter; I wish you had seen 
 him — and he cried out, 'This won't do!' and 
 he ran back again under fire, calling out to 
 the men who were coming on : * They're French 
 people here! Stop firing!' In about an hour 
 the troops came up and we were free. I tell you 
 I think we were all out of our heads. And then 
 
202 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 we wanted to go back to the village; we had 
 seen from the farm that there had been neither 
 smoke nor flames over it, so we knew it had 
 not been set on fire, and we were glad. We got 
 back on a Friday, sixty-five of us, for the 
 woman whose legs had been crushed was dead. 
 This is what we found" — and he pointed to 
 the ruins. "The battering-ram was here, as it 
 is to-day; it's a sort of curiosity. And all our 
 trees were cut down, as you see them now. 
 There was not a single roof left; we sent the 
 women and children to Noyon, and we men 
 have stayed on, getting things together as far 
 as we can, and the army feeds us. You may go 
 wherever you like in this part of the country, 
 you will find the same story everywhere." 
 
 The old man had spoken without any heat, 
 and now he was silent again, as if his thoughts 
 were in the past. 
 
 Around us, along the road, in the orchards, 
 even in the graveyard were the cherry-trees, 
 all cut down, all fallen the same way, showing 
 their fresh white wounds, and all crowned 
 with their white blossoms in honor of Spring. 
 The sap had risen in them before they were 
 murdered, filling the branches, pushing out the 
 buds, only to crown the dead. All that was 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 203 
 
 most precious and most alive in spring was in 
 a fragrant foam of white and pink, flowering 
 for the last time above the ruins and beside 
 the open graves. 
 
 We had oftfen before seen orchards in May 
 ravaged by hail or tempest; we had lamented 
 that so much beauty and promise should 
 strew the ground, and had felt as if the drip- 
 ping and denuded branches must be weeping 
 ifor what they had lost, but that was nothing 
 compared to seeing these trees lying on the 
 ground, hacked to death, and yet still wearing 
 their lavish beauty. It was almost as if one 
 should see a smile on the face of a child whose 
 head has been severed from its body. 
 
 "One would never have thought of that,'* 
 said the old man with a twisted smile, which 
 drew his lips until they showed the gap in his 
 teeth. With his foot, shod with a dilapidated 
 boot, he gently touched a branch where the 
 buds were still rolled into little pink balls 
 under the shining lacquer of their encasing 
 leaves. The air was full of a smell like honey, 
 and some of the groups of blossoms hung down 
 into the desecrated graves. Death was all 
 death no longer, nor was life really life. These 
 three-and-twenty men had been shipwrecked 
 
204 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 upon deep waters of misfortune; the profes- 
 sors in the science of devastation had known 
 just how to lift the flood-gates. 
 
 All around the churchyard walls were rows 
 of wooden crosses, and these had been re- 
 spected. There were so many more than the 
 enclosure could hold that they had overflowed 
 through a gap in the low wall, and spread out 
 toward the open fields. Old cities have been 
 obliged to submit to breaches in their encir- 
 cling walls in order that modern life may flow 
 out into their suburbs, but here it was not the 
 living which needed more room, but the dead. 
 All these graves were of men who fell in 1914; 
 we may have seen them as they went off sing- 
 ing in the crowded trains that followed one 
 another as closely as flower-decked carts in 
 autumn, laden with grapes for the wine-press. 
 The crosses were surmounted by kepis, once 
 red but now faded and discolored by sun and 
 rain; the bodies of their wearers were picked 
 up in the neighboring roads and fields, where 
 their red caps and trousers had made them 
 conspicuous targets. 
 
 The association of the "Souvenir Frangais" 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 205 
 
 had already placed its emblem in the centre of 
 each cross, and in a line with it new rosettes 
 of the sacred colors shone like marks of honor. 
 The arms of the crosses touch at their ends; 
 they kept orderly ranks, like unflinching 
 soldiers. 
 
 O graves of our fighting men, O wooden 
 cross, crux lignis, when our hands touch you 
 in these liberated villages, when we shall em- 
 brace you later in the France not yet set free, 
 what other word can come to our lips but that 
 by which we hail the cross of the Saviour: 
 
 Crux Ave . . . Spes unica. 
 
 Worship — ^that is to say, love and prayer, 
 the spontaneous impulse to give our puny 
 selves to France — ^is what alone will preserve 
 us from the vanity of words and the weakness 
 of tears. 
 
 Crux Ave . . . Spes unica. 
 
 Have we then set our hopes on the dead ^ 
 Yes, for some of our dead are more alive than 
 men who still breathe. "He who loseth his life 
 shall save it" were the words of our Lord. 
 
 The Old Testament comes down to us from 
 men of times long gone, but these new men 
 who lie here have also left us a testament, 
 which is a symbol. 
 
206 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Crux lignis, humble and magnificent cross, 
 cut from the wood of our forest-trees, we shall 
 see thee on the days when we commemorate 
 the Passion, and the priest lifts as far as his 
 arm can reach the symbol of our redemption 
 — ^the Cross. We shall see the body and the 
 blood of our dead, as we loved them while 
 they were living and our own, each time when, 
 in the Canon of the mass, the sacred offering 
 of the Host is renewed, held high in silence 
 above our bowed heads. 
 
 The old man was right; the story was the 
 same as we drove about the country; one scene 
 of devastation followed another. We met 
 hardly any living men, but here and there on 
 the edge of the road, or by itself in a field, we 
 saw a spot of color like a fading poppy, the 
 red kepi and the cross that marked a grave. 
 
 First it was Candor, then Champieu, where 
 we found by actual count that nine ghosts had 
 come back. Ognolles, Beaulieu, les Fontaines 
 (a market-town); these were the last villages 
 invaded, and the first set free; all this border 
 was swept by gun-fire, and only given back to 
 us because another line was formed in the rear 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 207 
 
 — ^for the France already freed is only a part 
 of the France still invaded. The highway was 
 red, because it was mended with tiles torn 
 from the roofs of houses, and all the roads 
 were marked by prostrate trees. Here, in this 
 orchard, a cure was shot, as the Germans 
 charged that he had communicated with our 
 men by means of machinery hidden in his 
 cellar. Our priests everjrwhere were accused 
 of a sort of magic; they were said to give our 
 soldiers warning by signs from their church- 
 towers, or through their church-bells, or else 
 underground, from their cellars. 
 
 A newly made grave at the corner of a 
 house bore this inscription: "To my dear 
 papa, shot by cowards," and another, not far 
 off: "To my son, shot in his mother's house." 
 We were also shown the four stone steps where 
 a child stood at his father's door, shaking his 
 fist at his new masters as they marched into 
 the village, and pretending to throw stones 
 at them. On that very spot, outside the house 
 where he was born, on the door-step where as 
 a schoolboy he had played marbles only a 
 month before, the men in gray caps tied him 
 to the little iron railing; the marks of the 
 bullets that killed him may be seen on the 
 
208 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 wall. I remember seeing in Lorraine, two 
 months ago, the bullet-marks on a wall where 
 some women who had taken refuge in a cellar 
 were dragged out and shot. 
 
 The little boy's grave was all covered with 
 lilies-of-the-valley, as pure as the little vic- 
 tim's soul. While they held the village the 
 Germans tried to conceal it, even set a watch 
 over it, but every one knew where it was, 
 and now it has been remade and lovingly 
 planted with white flowers, to be held in ever- 
 lasting remembrance. 
 
 But all the invaders have not left the vil- 
 lage; here are the pompous graves of German 
 soldiers, their marble headstones covered with 
 grandiloquent inscriptions. ''Tapferer Held'' 
 (brave hero) is the most frequent term, and 
 one that would never be found even on the 
 most illustrious grave in France. ^^Tapjerer 
 Held'' is the language of Walhalla. How much 
 finer by comparison are our simple and truth- 
 ful words "Killed in battle" ! 
 
 In the cemeteries the French and German 
 graves stand facing each other in close lines, 
 as if still ready for the fight. I heard the foot- 
 steps of Morton and Rivards behind me; they 
 stood a little apart, each absorbed in his own 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 209 
 
 thoughts; it was easy to see that these graves 
 of French soldiers were full of meaning for 
 the Americans, who had just come into the 
 war. They both sat down on the trunk of a 
 tree, evidently somewhat depressed, although 
 the air was soft and balmy; their minds were 
 following the same train of thought as our 
 own. 
 
 "The day will soon come," said Morton, 
 simply and gravely, "when we also shall make 
 pilgrimages to the French cemeteries to visit 
 the graves of our dead — of our men who are 
 not yet even soldiers, who have grown to 
 manhood without having ever dreamt of 
 war,'' and he murmured in a low voice, as if 
 speaking to himself: "They will be in a field 
 like this, a French field, and it may be that 
 their crosses will be made from one of these 
 apple-trees which have been cut down ... it 
 is very extraordinary." 
 
 "Yes," said Rivards, "it is extraordinary, 
 but also logical. The war provoked by Ger- 
 many is an aggression against our ideals. She 
 would grind the nations to powder, as she has 
 ground these villages. Her aggressiveness is 
 the most extraordinary thing of all; in the 
 present state of our civilization we had never 
 
210 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 ■ I I II I III II I » I II 
 
 imagined that a whole people would deUber- 
 ately and wiUingly turn back to barbarism. 
 ... It is only logical that we should rise against 
 her, and that one result should be that we 
 shall lie here, side by side with you, because 
 we have all fallen in defense of our common 
 faith.'' 
 
 *'Do you remember," said Morton, "the 
 political doctrine which used to be taught in 
 our universities ? It was that of Washington 
 and Jefferson. We were enjoined to stand aloof 
 from the old quarrels which have burdened 
 past centuries, making a turmoil the echoes of 
 which still resound through European coun- 
 tries. We were exempt, so to speak, from the 
 original sin of nations — ^war which breeds war. 
 We were born spotless; there was no ignorant 
 barbarism in the background of our history, 
 no debt of blood to be paid, no age-long retal- 
 iation to be carried out; our New World had 
 never known childhood; it was the result of 
 deep and deliberate study on the part of those 
 who constructed it; they desired that it 
 should be as near perfection as was possible, 
 and, above all, that it should stand always 
 for the right. We were taught to feel the 
 moral beauty of a peace which should allow 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 211 
 
 each man and each group of men a full share 
 of liberty, and this during a period when 
 Germany was inculcating the moral beauty 
 of war, because through it came strength able 
 to master the world. Those diametrically op- 
 posed principles each developed inmiense and 
 contradictory forces; it was inevitable that 
 they should sooner or later come into violent 
 conflict. We had believed that we could escape 
 war, as the alchemists of former times, de- 
 voted to the discovery of the philosopher's 
 stone, believed that if they found it they 
 could escape death. But if those who deliber- 
 ately resolve on war refuse the benefits of 
 peace, those who are deliberately resolved to 
 have peace do not refuse their share of the 
 suffering induced by war. We are faithful to 
 our own souls and to our worship of liberty 
 when we take up arms against the Germans 
 who are endeavoring, in the name of their in- 
 sensate pride and their former barbarities, to 
 exterminate what has been slowly created 
 during the centuries by the higher thought 
 and by brotherly love. The spirit of Wash- 
 ington will lead our first armies overseas. 
 
 *'I agree with what you say as to the Ger- 
 mans invoking their former barbarities," said 
 
212 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Morton. "They are intolerably ostentatious 
 in dragging out of limbo spectres which were 
 the horror of the ancient world. History for 
 them is nothing but a series of reprisals. 
 
 "Do you remember, Rivards, how often 
 they acknowledged this ? How many times 
 they spoke of the Thirty Years' War, which, 
 according to them, had made their country a 
 desert ? But it was they themselves who, like 
 quarrelsome ants from neighboring ant-hills, 
 had devoured each other without mercy, and 
 when France took any part it was for Ger- 
 many against Gustavus Adolphus. The Thirty 
 Years' War is only a word to conjure with. It 
 was the German mercenary bands who could 
 be bought and sold in any market who pil- 
 laged, killed, burned, and laid waste. The 
 Thirty Years' War was really a great civil 
 conflict, but that they prefer to ignore. I re- 
 member very well a great hulking German 
 officer, whose red face was seamed all over 
 with rapier scars; we were dining together at 
 Charleroi after going our rounds in a district 
 where all the French factories had been gutted 
 of their machinery. We had seen their whole 
 equipment on its way to Germany in heavily 
 laden trains. We were discussing this, when 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 213 
 
 suddenly he looked full at me and said, with 
 such vehemence that the scars on his face 
 turned purple: 'You don't know what Ger- 
 many suffered while you were singing your 
 Puritan hymns beside your new rivers and 
 elaborating your ideal constitutions.' I can 
 see him still, as he repeated a grim saying of 
 the Kaiser's, while he passed his big hand 
 rapidly over the wood of the table, 'We will 
 give you back invaded France, but not until 
 we have razed it to the ground,' and again 
 his hand made the gesture of a mower mak- 
 ing a clean sweep with his scythe. 
 
 ''Then, going back to our eternal argument, 
 he added: 'Look here, Morton, we are not 
 any crueller toward France in taking from 
 her what we need than you were toward Ger- 
 many in sending munitions to France and 
 England. We must all live, my dear fellow, 
 and we Germans have not always been able 
 to live as we should have done. We need new 
 machinery for our new factories, we need 
 able-bodied men and also women and young 
 girls; we are short of hands as well as of 
 machines. Germany is a god, and gods must 
 have sacrifices.' And I recollect the singular 
 tone in which he added: 'You Americans are 
 
214 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 not human; you were not born in the ordinary 
 way; you are the children of a constitution.' 
 He laughed as he emptied his glass, and the 
 veins stood out on his temples. 'As for war, 
 it was not taught us at school, nor in the uni- 
 versities, nor even the barracks — ^we learned it 
 in our mother's womb.'" 
 
 Morton stopped speaking. The day was 
 drawing to its close. We all looked silently at 
 the ruins, and thought of the "able-bodied 
 men'* and of the women and young girls who, 
 on the very eve of their deliverance from their 
 long agony, had been forced to set their faces 
 toward Germany as prisoners. The cattle and 
 the carts they once drew had all disappeared; 
 ploughs and scythes, broken beyond mend- 
 ing, lay among the rubbish, and in front of 
 the church the battering-ram, with its iron 
 tusks, reared its gibbet-like shape. Over the 
 broken-down wall we saw the heads of some 
 horses; they shook their manes and looked at 
 us with their ignorant bright eyes. Their coats 
 shone with metallic reflections in the waning 
 sunshine; they were annoyed by the flies 
 buzzing around them, and we could hear the 
 ring of their shod hoofs as they stamped on 
 the stones. Their halters were fastened to 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 215 
 
 the branches of the felled trees; two children 
 were playing near them, and the golden sun- 
 light fell on their hair and eyes; bees were 
 busily humming among the flowering 
 branches, alighting, taking their tribute of 
 pollen, and flying off triumphantly with their 
 booty, while on the cross-bar of the gibbet a 
 robin sang his heart out to his mate. 
 
 In order to take our motor-car again we 
 had to go the whole length of the village 
 street, and it seemed strange to find human 
 beings among such indescribable destruction. 
 For there were both old men and old women 
 at work, especially old men; I could hear the 
 sharp tapping of their hammers. These ghosts 
 did not seem to be any longer particularly 
 astonished; they had acquired the calm indif- 
 ference which nature displays before her 
 greatest disasters, and, like her, they had 
 begun to repair the damage done. One of them 
 had collected a lot of unbroken tiles, with 
 which he was putting a roof on a shed, and 
 he said his old wife would be able to come 
 from Noyon the next day, as he had a shelter 
 for her. He picked up his tiles, selected and 
 
216 THE ]^OUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 placed them, stooping and standing upright 
 again with the regularity of a pulse that can 
 only be stopped by death. Another was plan- 
 ing boards at an improvised carpenter's bench; 
 the yellow shavings hissed and curled as he 
 made a door for the gaping blank above his 
 threshold. It was death, and yet already the 
 renascence; although the little gardens were 
 in disorder, and held great bristling balls of 
 barbed wire, left behind by the invaders, 
 branches of foliage were set out in regular 
 rows, and in their shelter tufts of peas and 
 beans were coming up, twisting around their 
 poles, and holding up the rings of their first 
 tendrils toward the sunlight. 
 
 We went into one of these makeshift lodg- 
 ings, where everything, doors and their fast- 
 enings, roofs and window-casings, had had 
 to be made out of whatever came to hand. An 
 old woman was lying on a mattress on the 
 ground; the German soldiers billeted in her 
 house had made her get out of her bed and 
 had taken it with them, together with her 
 wardrobe, her crockery, her linen — even down 
 to her chests and stools — ^nothing was left of 
 all her humble and dear belongings. A pho- 
 tograph of what had been the family was still 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 217 
 
 hanging on the wall, a fine group of country 
 people. The old woman's skinny finger pointed 
 out its different members: "My son — he was 
 taken off as a hostage; my son" — ^again — ^''he 
 died during the occupation; my daughter-in- 
 law — deported with her two girls ''; and the 
 shaking finger touched the likeness of two 
 young faces, scarcely to be told apart, with 
 braided hair above their girlish brows — and 
 then the old hand pointed through the 
 broken window-frame to show the road by 
 which they had disappeared. 
 
 We dined that evening with our friends in 
 an underground shelter dug by the Germans 
 in what had been the park of a French cha- 
 teau. There was nothing left now but a 
 tangled disorder of felled and mutilated trees, 
 and all that remained of the chateau was a 
 few side-walls and a heap of rubbish. When 
 the men who had lived in it for two years 
 were obliged to leave, they mined it and blew 
 it up. 
 
 Before we arrived the soft spring night was 
 closing in, and a storm was coming. Heavy 
 purple and reddish clouds were piled up, and 
 
218 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 then over them was drawn a dark mist; a 
 slight shower ran across the sky, bent low 
 above the earth. When the shower had passed, 
 the spaces of the air opened again, and the 
 fantastic architecture of the clouds moved in 
 golden glory over the desolate and silent land. 
 The earth was humble with the humility of 
 death; the heavenly purple refulgence fell only 
 on devastation. 
 
 As we went along the road, which was red- 
 dish where the holes and ruts had been filled 
 in with crushed bricks, we met a column of 
 troops. We heard their marching-song before 
 we saw them, for the wind carried their voices 
 across the silent fields. Suddenly the head of 
 the column swung round a turn in the road, 
 and our eyes were dazzled by the slanting 
 rays of the setting sun striking on their hel- 
 mets. The first impression was strangely as if 
 all the blue of French horizons had been 
 made into men, and was pouring itself be- 
 tween the divine glow of the heavens and the 
 dingy red of the earth. 
 
 It was only a momentary vision, and the 
 men had passed by. The land was humiliated, 
 but they, its soldiers, were proud and cheer- 
 ful as they sang, each with field-flowers stuck 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 219 
 
 in his rifle, for the Germans, who had sowed 
 and tilled our fields, could not carry away 
 our clover and sainfoin. 
 
 The men passed by; all of the same age, 
 their bright eyes somewhat sunken, and the 
 same war-hardened expression on every young 
 face; their packs weighed heavily on their 
 shoulders, but their step was firm and elastic. 
 We held out cigarettes, or, rather, threw 
 them, for the men were marching so fast 
 that they could hardly catch anything, nor 
 could they break step, as the imperious 
 rhythm of the bugles led them on. 
 
 "Where are you going?" we cried. They 
 answered by pointing vaguely toward the 
 west, in the direction of the border of a little 
 wood. Their task here was done; this part of 
 France was again free; they were going on- 
 ward to the new frontier of invaded France. 
 The crimson glow in the heavens chased the 
 clouds from over their heads, and seemed to 
 follow them. The blue wave went on; the earth 
 still vibrated to the regular cadence of their 
 march, and the air to that of their song — and 
 then silence fell again; the gold and crimson 
 faded over the fields, and the column melted 
 into the grayish blue of the horizon. 
 
220 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 A few women, standing on their desolate 
 thresholds, looked dreamily after the blue 
 files as they grew smaller and smaller, and 
 then turned back quietly into their nonde- 
 script shelters. The gray of the evening cov- 
 ered the destruction as if with ashes, and the 
 ruined houses were as empty shells tossed 
 upon a beach by a careless wave. 
 
 As we hurried toward our halting-place we 
 said to Morton : 
 
 "We have seen the old god. It is the crea- 
 ture in the village square before the church, 
 the gibbet, the battering-ram, with its iron 
 tusks, to tear open and beat down peaceful 
 French homes. And then just afterward we 
 have seen what Mrs. Vernon spoke of the 
 other evening — ^the young god as he passed 
 
 by." 
 
 * * 
 
 It was almost dark by the time we reached 
 B. I did not recognize the place; the very 
 look of France is changed — ^I mean where it 
 has been invaded by the Germans. Land- 
 marks have disappeared, and the horizon line 
 is not the same. I knew that the chateau had 
 been destroyed, and yet I was amazed to see 
 only vacant space where I had known it 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 221 
 
 standing four-square on its solid foundations. 
 I had expected to see what we call ruins — 
 empty arches framing only the familiar land- 
 scape, the thicket of birches, the stream flow- 
 ing under banks bright with Bengal roses, 
 the smiling meadows where the cows lay 
 ruminating in lazy quiet. And to the right 
 there used to be the factory, with its big 
 chimneys never tired of vomiting out their 
 black spirals. ... 
 
 I recognized only the curve of the stream, 
 running drearily between its torn and de- 
 nuded banks. An old keeper and his wife had 
 remained during the invasion, and I walked 
 about among the piles of rubbish with them. 
 He told me that just before the Germans fell 
 back, one morning when he and his wife were 
 silently rejoicing within themselves because 
 the enemy was preparing to go and leave the 
 place empty, they saw the old house seem to 
 start up for an instant, and then fall back 
 upon itself. Dull subterranean rumblings went 
 with this phenomenon, arid when at last the 
 thick clouds of acrid smoke which hung for 
 a long time about the spot had cleared away, 
 they could only see the empty space which 
 had bewildered me. 
 
222 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 Here, as everywhere else, it is the monotony 
 of these occurrences which makes them so 
 terrible; able-bodied men, women, and young 
 girls were carried away with the cattle and the 
 machines. Human beings and inanimate things 
 were equally prey, and went together to make 
 up the booty. Under the tall and fragrant 
 lime-trees is the wrought-iron gate, of old 
 French workmanship, where our friend Count 
 B., the master of the chateau, stood to wel- 
 come us in those days of a former life that we 
 used to call peace. He stayed in his house, al- 
 though it was occupied by the staff of Prince 
 E., because he was the mayor of the village, 
 and our American friends recollect that he 
 took charge of the food supplies. 
 
 He also was carried away as a hostage, 
 while his house rose from the earth and then 
 subsided upon its old foundations. He was 
 part of the baggage of the staff, borne off as 
 wild beasts, chased out of their dens, drag 
 their prey with them. Where was he ? No one 
 knew, and the few old people who are still 
 here spoke of his disappearance with a sort 
 of terror. "They took him away," they say, 
 and always with the same gesture, pointing 
 to the road. One expected to have them make 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 223 
 
 the sign of the cross, as if they had seen the 
 devil and his angels. 
 
 Nothing is so monotonous in nature or in 
 life as that which is excessive; the heart and 
 mind both become exhausted from gazing 
 into an abyss. Here there was no varied and 
 complex play of thought, no shade of mean- 
 ing to be discovered; everywhere there was the 
 same unchanging and funereal gesture of de- 
 struction wherever old people, or men, or 
 children have lived and loved and believed in 
 life, drinking from its brimming cup gladly. 
 Words failed before this barren repetition, 
 and a dull amazement crept over mind and 
 heart; thought stopped in confusion, and one 
 despaired of humanity. 
 
 They have written "Nicht aergern, nur 
 wundern," and they are right, because for a 
 moment our ideas of our divinely appointed 
 destiny, of justice, and of an overruling Prov- 
 idence withdraw behind the veils which hide 
 the face of God. 
 
 Here, outside the park, in the path leading 
 to the public washing-place, was the tree 
 against which the cure leaned and waited, 
 with his eyes fixed upon his breviary, and 
 with a calm countenance, the bullets which 
 
224 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 were to pierce his heart; his last breath mur- 
 mured a prayer. 
 
 And this was the road, between the fallen 
 poplars, over which the women and young 
 girls were driven, like some new sort of 
 cattle, toward the German stables. As they 
 started on the same day, at the same signal, 
 the files of captives from different villages 
 must often have met and recognized each 
 other, as they had done before on holidays, 
 on the feast of Saint John, for instance, when 
 the people went, laughing and gossiping, 
 from the hamlets to the market-towns, to 
 sing at vespers and dance the bourree in the 
 evening. 
 
 For this part of the country is not merely 
 France, it is the oldest France of all, the Ile- 
 de-France, where the joy of living found its 
 highest expression, in labor and in love. No 
 other soil on the earth has been kinder or 
 more faithful to those who lived by it; no- 
 where else have men so burst into song, as 
 they have in this heart of our old life, amus- 
 ing themselves by playing with villanelles, 
 matching the rhymes of tiercets, and polish- 
 ing the flowing lines of sonnets, to garland 
 the beauty of French existence. The walls of 
 our churches were a network of stone stretched 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 225 
 
 between the sapphires and emeralds of their 
 glowing windows; the passage of the centuries 
 and the vicissitudes of the most cruel wars 
 had left them untouched. Every house, every 
 cottage, had its own air, its own look, its own 
 expression of continuity; here there might be 
 a dwelling with gables on the street, and 
 muUioned windows, divided by graceful col- 
 umns, and there a humble abode with rough- 
 cast walls on a narrow alley, an old nest shel- 
 tered by its old roof on the old soil. Every- 
 where one found traces of the fine distinctions 
 which our forebears, although living side by 
 side, had been careful to establish, as mark- 
 ing the shades of difference which gave life 
 its variety. 
 
 The haggard face of the moon, once veiled 
 by branching trees, shone on a desert as we 
 picked our way through the ruins, and every 
 now and then our feet would strike some 
 fragment of sculpture, where our artisans had 
 wrought a vine-leaf, a spray of bindweed, 
 the sheath of a buttercup, or an acorn and 
 the notched outline of the oak-leaf. If I picked 
 up a bit of broken stone, the cold light showed 
 me the careful and loving work of an old 
 craftsman's hand. 
 
 We dined underground, in the shelter which 
 
226 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 the German prince had taken pains to make 
 comfortable. The old chairs of gilded wood 
 and the ebony table were still there, and when 
 the growling of the French cannon sounded 
 too near, the prince and his staff took refuge 
 here, twenty-six feet down. The earth of the 
 floor and walls was hidden by round billets of 
 birchwood, and Bible texts were scrawled in 
 Gothic text on this wooden sheathing. A 
 frieze, painted on unbleached linen, showed 
 the classic German landscape; a wide river 
 between hills and, perched on the crest of 
 each hill, a town bristling with turrets and 
 watch-towers. This was the lair into which"the 
 beast retired to think out his plans of de- 
 struction. 
 
 The evening was a sad one. Our American 
 friends, Morton and Rivards, had been here 
 three months ago to distribute food, as the 
 barges bringing it came up a canal between 
 two bends of the Oise, not far away. The 
 women waited their turns patiently at the 
 communal depot, and then went off together, 
 carrying their scanty bags of rice and coffee 
 and little boxes of bacon and lard. They were 
 still in prison, but a ray of hope had filtered 
 in. They dared not speak to the Americans in 
 words, but their faces, haggard with fasting 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 227 
 
 and waiting, spoke for them when the rolHng 
 of the French guns passed over their heads. 
 The enemy had no power to stop that ap- 
 proaching thunder; Hps might be forbidden 
 to speak, but eyeUds could not be sealed, and 
 the women's eyes spoke and hoped. 
 
 "What an ignoble idea it was," said Morton, 
 "to carry off the women and girls ! I wonder 
 what German head thought of it first ! It pro- 
 fanes humanity!" he added gloomily. 
 
 " It came from the frenzy of gamblers who 
 had staked all they had upon what they 
 thought was sure to win, and who found they 
 had lost the game," said Rivards. "They were 
 playing for the 'Zukunft,' a word to which 
 they are much attached. The 'Zukunft,' the 
 future — ^they had made a bargain with her, 
 as they might have done with the devil; they 
 sold their souls and the lives of a million and 
 a half of their men, who lie here on the bor- 
 ders and in the heart of France, and whose 
 bones will mingle with the stones of the land 
 they invaded. They invented cabalistic words, 
 and offered them as fetiches to a fetich-loving 
 nation. Ask any German with an ordinary 
 education for the reason of this war, and he 
 will answer 'die Zukunft,' as the ignorant 
 soldier, turning his gray cap in his hands, 
 
228 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 will say 'der Kaiser/ There are also certain 
 words to which they have given a force that 
 is almost dynamic, by dressing them up with 
 the prestige of religion. They say 'it is the 
 word of Redemption, the "Losungs-Wort."' 
 It is all very well for them to tell us that 
 'theories are gray, and life a green tree'; they 
 have stuffed themselves with gray theories, 
 and it is here that the green tree will be 
 planted. 
 
 "They have a great many ideas, most of 
 them false; they have a great deal of religion, 
 but it has been perverted. Never have there 
 been so many arguments as to the advisa- 
 bility of putting more fertilizers around the 
 green tree, never has there been so much cal- 
 culation, ending in a hopeless tangle of figures, 
 never has so much dogmatism made so many 
 sophistries. They confess it when they speak 
 of 'those delusions of life of which men can- 
 not be deprived without depriving them also 
 of life itself.' I have heard them say 'Truth is 
 not in the light which illumines, but in the 
 eye which sees' — and then they look through 
 a glass which distorts everything; they have 
 opticians who make the spectacles that you 
 may behold on the noses of German soldiers. 
 * Excelsior Gedanke' — ^they invoke the super- 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 229 
 
 human thought of their superman, who calls 
 upon them all the time to grow, as if they 
 were some monster which would never stop. 
 And in order to 'grow,' they hatch and turn 
 out troops by the million, as much alike as a 
 regiment of tin soldiers. They have taught 
 falsehoods * useful to life,' and they have said: 
 'We have reorganized the blind forces of 
 nature; now it is for us to wield the thunder 
 that will shake the world.'" 
 
 It was late when we got back to Compiegne. 
 The night was mild, with many stars, and 
 the moonlight lingered on the ruined land- 
 scape. We drove slowly, for fear of running 
 into fallen trees, until at last we found our- 
 selves again in the forest of Ourscamp, a liv- 
 ing forest, with the wind rustling in its oaks 
 and beeches, with delicate odors from its 
 damp earth, and the throng of its tree-trunks 
 still dimly to be seen in the shadows, upright, 
 orderly, and numerous as armies. Armies . . . 
 the word is ever in one's mind. 
 
 Two days later we stood on the deck of an 
 ocean liner at Havre — the Espagne, Hoover 
 
230 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 was sailing for the United States; sovereign 
 over wheat in his great repubhc, he was going 
 to take possession of his kingdom. Two of his 
 young delegates were going with him; others 
 were beginning to organize the services of the 
 American Red Cross, while others again were 
 preparing to incorporate themselves into the 
 first small nucleus of officers and men around 
 whom the American army would gather. 
 
 It was some weeks since Mrs. Vernon had 
 left us, and we were beginning to receive her 
 first letters. What a born missionary she was ! 
 Even we ourselves, children of France though 
 we were, felt that she was urging us to greater 
 effort. 
 
 "France is the soul of the world," she said. 
 "Write to us, let us hear your voices; we are 
 like Saint Thomas, we must see and feel as 
 well as believe. Send us something of your 
 true soul, of the fire whose sparks are in your 
 soldiers and your peasants, and hidden on the 
 hearths of your homes. It is from your torch 
 that the mighty flame must be kindled which 
 will sweep over all our land." 
 
 So the little group was to be scattered, to 
 undertake new tasks. We had come to say 
 farewell, and as he walked up and down the 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 231 
 
 ship's deck Hoover spread before us a com- 
 prehensive view of what might be expected 
 from the effort of the United States. 
 
 Although this modern Moses had already 
 demanded, obtained, and distributed manna 
 to the people during a time of sore trial, I 
 confess that we were still somewhat incased 
 in incredulity, like the Hebrews of old. 
 
 "You are mistaken," said Hoover (and he 
 showed his impatient faith by walking faster). 
 "I assure you that it will not be long. The 
 movement which is now taking place among 
 our people belongs to the order of moral and 
 religious phenomena, the action of which, as 
 you know, is instantaneous. Under other cir- 
 cumstances, how shall I express it ^ We should 
 have had to go through a rotation of feelings 
 before throwing our armies into Europe; we 
 should have had to drag our men away from 
 their settled faith in peace and accustom 
 them gradually to the idea of war. You know 
 it is one of your old writers who has said 
 'Peace fills the mouth with honey.' But now 
 an alarm has been given in the United States 
 which has aroused our national conscience. 
 Love for France has become a vital force in 
 millions of brave young hearts. 
 
232 THE SOUL OF THE C. R. B. 
 
 "An intolerable wrong is being committed 
 in the world, and we cannot allow it. 
 
 "It is true that we have neither the tradi- 
 tions nor the habits of a military nation; we 
 shall not feel the war in our body and our 
 blood, but we shall feel it in our souls, and 
 our action will be all the more rapid. 
 
 "We have no warlike traditions nor habits," 
 he repeated, and he added with one of his 
 quick, thoughtful smiles: "I know you are 
 thinking that, but, on the other hand, we 
 have none of the old wheels which turn on 
 themselves without going on. We shall profit 
 by the lessons and also by the faults of every 
 one . . . yes, of every one, and on the whole 
 we shall turn out something new — something 
 new founded on old methods, as we did in 
 our beginning." 
 
 He went back over what he had seen in the 
 course of the war, and spoke of men whom he 
 had known in Belgium and France, speaking 
 of them with deep feeling. Some were hidden 
 in jails or prison-camps, some had been shot 
 to death as "traitors," because even in their 
 agony they had been true to their country, 
 and he added in a low voice, as if speaking to 
 himself: 
 
WITH OUR FRIENDS 233 
 
 "This war has become a religion, for it has 
 had its martyrs." 
 
 A bell rang; it was the signal for us who 
 were not sailing to leave the ship. 
 
 Two hours later we stood on the heights 
 of Sainte Adresse and watched the steamer 
 as she went down the channel, until the smoke 
 from her funnels had faded against the sky. 
 
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