MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 AN ENGLISH GIRL IN PARIS 
 MY FRENCH FRIENDS 
 FELICITY IN FRANCE 
 A DAUGHTER OF FRANCE 
 MISTRAL'S MEMOIRS. (From 
 
 the French. With a Preface by the 
 
 Translator) 
 
 ANGELIQUE (LE P'TIT CHOU) 
 THE RISING GENERATION 
 NO SURRENDER 
 
 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN 
 
 WAGNER'S HEROES 
 WAGNER'S HEROINES 
 HEROINES OF POETRY 
 SHAKESPEARE'S STORIES. (In 
 collaboration with MARY MAUD) 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 BY 
 
 CONSTANCE ELIZABETH MAUD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 'AN ENGLISH GIRL IN PARIS,' *A DAUGHTER OF FRANCE,' ETC. ETC. 
 
 WITH 16 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 
 
 49 RUPERT STREET 
 LONDON, W.i 
 

 Published December 1919 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 fy Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh 
 
TO 
 
 MY THREE FRENCH FRIENDS 
 
 MADAME DERODE 
 
 (n& TOURANGIN) 
 MADAME BOISSIERE 
 
 (n6e ROUMANILLE) 
 MRS H. FLOYD 
 
 (nte DE NEUFVILLE) 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK, WITH -THE 
 
 HOPE THAT IT MAY BE AN ADDED LINK 
 
 IN THE ENTENTE CORDIALE ' 
 
 "5728 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN bygone days I have known and loved my French 
 friends in the happy times of Peace times which now 
 seem to belong to a past as remote as the days of 
 Greece, when the Gods dwelt on Olympus and nymphs 
 and shepherds danced to the pipes of Pan. But the 
 love and sympathy which had grown up with me 
 from childhood, and which I felt, as one united by 
 far-back ties of race and kindred, has deepened 
 immeasurably with every year of the War. 
 
 For in the supreme ordeal my French friends have 
 shown themselves at their finest, their noblest, their 
 sublimest. To those of us who had the happiness of 
 knowing France and the French this has been no 
 surprise. We always knew that the roots went down 
 very deep of that fair flower of French character 
 which showed so gay, so fine a wit, so happy a facing 
 of life, so brave and buoyant a spirit in adversity. 
 But there were those, and they were the British 
 nation as a whole, who judged the French with as 
 little true psychology as they judged the Germans, 
 whose war-books planned so neatly the occupation 
 and subjugation of France in less than three months, 
 keeping Christmas in Paris such a happy German 
 Christmas ! To find the light-hearted, " frivolous " 
 
viii MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 French more serious, grim and purposeful than any 
 Scotsman, tenacious as the English bulldog himself, 
 enduring as the miners of Durham or Yorkshire. 
 This has been a revelation to their neighbours 
 across the Channel. And French women no less than 
 their men have shown these fundamental qualities 
 of strength, courage, endurance and steadfastness, 
 together with a cheerfulness which never failed. A 
 the call of their country the women of France arose 
 in the selfsame hour as the men. The President 
 appealed to them to mobilise for National Service the 
 week that War was declared. How they answered 
 the call has been shown during the long drawn-out 
 years of the most fiery ordeal through which any 
 nation has ever passed. 
 
 From the first my friends in France kept me in 
 touch with their lives. Those letters what a record 
 they were of the wonderful spirit animating France ! 
 Many of them, alas too soon, came edged with the 
 deep border of black announcing the death of husband 
 son brother mort pour la patrie. But it was 
 not till the autumn of 1917, when I went to France 
 as a delegate of the Croix Rouge Britannique, that 
 I saw, with my own eyes, France in the Great War. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE .... 
 
 PART I 
 
 MY PASSPORT . 1 
 
 THE CROSSING 5 
 
 BOULOGNE n 
 
 NINETTE 18 
 
 SHIPS THAT PASSED 26 
 
 A NOYON HOME ."32 
 
 FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE .... 48 
 
 LES JEUNES QUAQU^IRES . 71 
 
 THE ANGEL OF NOYON 80 
 
 THE POILU 94 
 
 PARIS IN WARTIME . . . . . . 125 
 
 FEAST OF THE TOUSSAINT 129 
 
 THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR ... 138 
 
 THE WOMEN OF FRANCE . . 150 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 PART II 
 
 PAGE 
 
 169 
 
 1919 
 
 A VlA DOLOROHA 
 
 THB KHAKI GIRLS 
 
 NOYON ONCE MORE 
 
 MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 
 
 THE DAMES ANOLAISSS . 238 
 
 PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALS . . .261 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 MARSHALS JOFFRE AND FOCH LEADING TRIUMPHAL 
 
 PROCESSION Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 CATHEDRAL OP ST QUENTIN . 44 
 
 CAUMONT IN 1917 54 
 
 DESTROYED CHATEAU AT VERNEUIL, 1917 ... 67 
 
 ANGEL AMID RUINS 80 
 
 POILUS' GRAVES IN CLOISTERS OP NOYON CATHEDRAL . 94 
 
 BIG BERTHA'S " EMPLACEMENT " NEAR COUCY-LE- 
 
 CHATEAU, 1918 168 
 
 PALAIS DE JUSTICE AT MONTDIDIER DATING BACK TO 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE 176 
 
 CROWN PRINCE'S DUG-OUT AT RUINED NAMP$EL . . 182 
 HOME OF L'ANGE DE NOYON IN RUINS, 1918 . . 212 
 NOYON, 1918 215 
 
 THE LITTLE WHITE HOUSE AT NOYON . . .221 
 
 * 
 
 AMERICANS' GRAVES, PIERREFONDS, 1918 . . .235 
 
 AT PlERREFONDS. A DAME ANGLAISE GIVING OUT STORES, 
 
 1919 239 
 
 BABY CLINIC EN FETE. PIERREFONDS, 1919 . . 247 
 
 AVENUE DE LA GRANDE ARMEE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION, 
 
 1919 272 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 PART I 
 
 MY PASSPORT 
 
 IT was August (1917) when my passport photograph 
 was taken, but red-tape required from five to six 
 weeks before all its tortuous intricacies were unwound. 
 For it was not only English red-tape but an interwoven 
 skein of English and French with which I had to 
 grapple, a combination enough to make an ordinary 
 brain to reel and heart to quail. 
 
 Many weary times I trod the well-worn road to 
 Bedford Square to interview " Jacks in office," 
 big and little. At last came the really final visit. 
 Having passed safely before what I had been led 
 to believe were the Supreme Authorities I learnt 
 to my dismay my troubles were not over, and was 
 directed to a table where sat three sombre, pre- 
 occupied looking gentlemen, there to show my 
 passport, " ordre de mission," etc., and obtain their 
 stamped approval. These Three, " drest in the 
 little brief authority " of the Three Fates, had just 
 been dealing with a gentleman of such dignified 
 and withal impeccable appearance, a passport 
 seemed almost superfluous. But the Three were 
 
MY .FRENCH YEAR 
 
 not to be deceived by the camouflage of a mere 
 outside, they dispatched him with a parting re- 
 primand suitable to a detected impostor. He uttered 
 no rejoinder, but gathering up his papers fled 
 was it guiltily? from the place. 
 
 This was not reassuring. If such an one had been 
 found wanting, how should I fare with my mission 
 to the French war zone, for which it was essential 
 my journey should be via Boulogne that jealously 
 guarded route. I handed my papers to the male 
 Clotho with a finely indifferent air, but beating 
 heart. He levied small suspicious eyes upon me, 
 and then upon my passport. 
 
 " Is Maud a surname ? " he began searchingly. 
 I assured him in my most conciliatory tones that it 
 was, and he would find this borne out by the 
 Army List and Clergy List, not to mention Madame 
 Tussaud. After reading my passport and punctu- 
 ating his study with snorts of disapproval, which 
 filled me with an apprehension only experienced 
 by the innocent, he suddenly fixed me with a 
 penetrating gaze and asked : "Is this your photo- 
 graph a recent one ? " I wondered where the 
 doubt came in, whether he considered it erred 
 on the side of flattery or the reverse, but mindful 
 that any extraneous remark might be used against 
 me, I replied reassuringly, "It is mine, taken a 
 
 month ago " and nearly added before the ageing 
 
 experience of getting a passport. 
 
 He gave a reluctant stamp and passed the 
 
MY PASSPORT 3 
 
 papers to his collaborator, already lying in wait 
 to seize the frail thread of my fate. The precious 
 little blue paper from Paris roused his instant 
 suspicions : 
 
 " What has this got to do with the passport ? " 
 he asked sharply. 
 
 " That is my ' ordre de mission ' for the French 
 war zone," I explained. " It is from the French 
 Foreign Office to the Croix Rouge in London." 
 Again he inspected my passport. What his train of 
 thought was I could not divine, but suddenly he 
 pounced again : 
 
 " Where were you born ? " he asked in a tone 
 that reminded me of the game we played as children 
 called " Earth, air, fire and water," and auto- 
 matically I was replying with the old lightning 
 rapidity, " Water," when I pulled up in time with, 
 " Brighton." There is something evidently reassuring 
 about Brighton ; to my surprised relief he bestowed 
 the decisive stamp and I was now safely past both 
 Clotho and Lachesis. But Atropos remained. As 
 he drew my papers before him his attention became 
 suddenly fixed like that of a setter who has found 
 the scent. 
 
 " Why is this made out via Boulogne I should 
 like to know ? " he demanded in hectoring tones. 
 
 " Because that is the nearest point to the country 
 I wish to visit," I replied pleasantly. 
 
 "I'm by no means satisfied with that reason," 
 he sneered. My heart stood still. I saw my six 
 
4 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 weeks' toil wasted the stone rolling to the bottom 
 of the hill my task to begin all over again. 
 Fortunately, however, Lachesis interposed at this 
 juncture for, having passed me himself, he was 
 not going to have any reflections cast upon his 
 judgment by his brother Fates. He pointed to 
 the " ordre de mission " and an altercation took 
 place, during which I kept a discreet silence. 
 
 "It is not in order I am by no means satisfied," 
 maintained Atropos. At this moment a high person- 
 age passed and Lachesis appealed to him. Three 
 heads bent over the blue French paper the suspense 
 was acute. Other people were waiting to be stamped 
 someone mentioned it was nearly one o'clock. 
 The Daniel called to judgment looked up sharply : 
 "Then I must be off," he said. "Oh that's all 
 right," to the Fates, " you can pass it." With a 
 cheerful smile at me he was gone. My choicest 
 blessing following him to that happy lunch party ! 
 
 Shorn of his scissors by this Jupiter-Daniel, with 
 an air of gloomy foreboding Atropos gave the third 
 necessary stamp. I snatched up my papers and 
 escaped into the fresh air where I drew a deep breath, 
 wondering why such invaluable material as went 
 to the make-up of the fateful Trio should be thrown 
 away on straight-forward British passports, when 
 with their endowments they might be turned on 
 to ridding this poor infested country of the Hun 
 and Hunins who still swarmed in every corner and 
 on every coast where they ought not to be. 
 
THE CROSSING 
 
 CHARING CROSS station. No luggage except what 
 could be carried by hand. It is remarkable, however, 
 what some people manage to take with them under 
 this restriction, thanks to the assistance of other 
 people's hands. 
 
 The station was crowded with khaki, officers and 
 men, with nurses, V.A.D.'s and canteen workers for 
 the Church Army and Y.M.C.A. huts. One lady 
 with bright, eager face, wearing the badge of the 
 Y.M.C.A., was saying good-bye to her husband. He 
 stood by the carriage door and announced to us all 
 in firm tones that he " utterly disapproved of it." 
 
 "It's only for four months, Arthur, dear," said 
 the bright-eyed little lady, laying a soothing hand 
 on his. He turned to her companion, another 
 Y.M.C.A. : 
 
 " What business has a married woman to leave 
 her home for four months ? It is a preposterous 
 idea I maintain." 
 
 " Oh ! well you see . . ." began the friend. 
 
 " Arthur, darling," interposed his wife leaning 
 out of the carriage. " I beg you don't talk like 
 that it's so unpatriotic. Remember I must do my 
 bit like you and everybody else." 
 
6 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " Your bit ! " Arthur gave a short bitter laugh. 
 " Well you women are the limit. It's all very well 
 for Miss Smith, but here you are with a husband 
 and five small children left to shift for themselves, 
 while you hook off to France for four months to do 
 your bit. Who's going to do your bit at home I'd 
 like to know ? " 
 
 " Only for four little months, Arthur, darling ! 
 And I'll write every day." The little hand stroked 
 his. 
 
 " Well I utterly and entirely disapprove of the 
 whole thing, Miss Smith," reiterated Arthur, with- 
 drawing his hand from the soothing stroke. They 
 had no time for more, we were already moving, 
 and with that parting malediction the train whirled 
 away the bright- eyed little mother of five deserted 
 babies to do " her bit " serving hot coffee and buns 
 to British Tommies in a Y.M.C.A. hut at Etaples. 
 
 There was an hour to wait before we were allowed 
 on board at Dover, so I sat on the quay with 
 the canteen ladies and watched the troops march 
 past to the three transports sailing with us. Six 
 thousand of them, some fresh recruits, boys with 
 pink and white cheeks like girls, but the vast 
 majority well-seasoned soldiers carrying battered 
 helmets, and wearing war-stained uniforms. English, 
 Irish, Scots, kilted Highlanders, Anzacs, a sprinkling 
 of dark-faced Maories with gleaming white teeth 
 shown in a wide smile ; here and there a Flying 
 man with keen bird-like face and far-seeing eyes. 
 
THE CROSSING 7 
 
 All looked cheerful, and many sang snatches of popular 
 trench songs " Back to Blighty" and " Little Grey 
 Home." 
 
 Some as they passed smiled and said " Good-bye." 
 I answered, " Good luck, we're crossing too." 
 
 The little Y.M.C.A. lady added, " See you again 
 at the canteen." This produced such merriment : 
 she tried it several times. 
 
 The New Zealanders were much the finest 
 specimens of manhood, tall and fit, bronzed by the 
 sun, supple and muscular, walking as though fatigue 
 were unknown to them, yet with nothing of the 
 machine-drilled air of the big Uhlan, the pride of 
 the German Army, who in the good old days always 
 turned one off the pavement in his native city. 
 The little British Tommies, the men of Kent 
 and Middlesex, even the town bred Cockney, looked 
 sturdy, wiry, and well-toughened by their two 
 years', some three years', service in France. But 
 the fresh recruits, mostly boys in their 'teens, gave 
 one to think furiously to think. We heard many 
 of these had only had three or four months' training. 
 
 " Oh ! the pity of it ! " sighed Miss Smith, " they 
 are only schoolboys ! " 
 
 " Yes," agreed a grey-haired official standing near, 
 " that's the evil result of the voluntary system, 
 that's what these lads are paying for they didn't 
 dare look at their birth certificates while the others 
 hung back. They just had to take 'em " 
 
 One thing was noticeable their good spirits had 
 
8 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 nothing " Dutch " about them. In all the long 
 procession of six thousand there was only one who 
 did not walk quite straight, and he poor fellow was 
 no doubt just recovering from influenza. 
 
 By five o'clock we were off. The sky had clouded 
 
 over and a stiff wind blew, but I fled from the 
 
 stifling cabin reserved for me on the lower deck, the 
 
 floor of which was entirely covered with troops 
 
 sitting tightly packed together. Upstairs I found my 
 
 baggage and made a seat of it, till a kind blue-eyed 
 
 seaman brought me a deck-chair just in time to 
 
 prevent a fall from this most insecure perch. The 
 
 deck was crowded with officers, great and small, 
 
 from the General with his golden oakleaves to the 
 
 newly fledged " sub." Here and there might be seen 
 
 a small knot of women and girls, each wearing some 
 
 distinctive badge of national service. Three sturdy 
 
 little khaki-clad girls stood the whole time leaning 
 
 over the rail laughing and talking eagerly while a 
 
 row of pale, spectacled youths in the civilian garb 
 
 which struck so false a note in those days, sat near 
 
 them firmly glued to their raft chairs, rugs tucked 
 
 round their knees, evidently conscientiously objecting 
 
 to offering their seats to a woman. They were a 
 
 strange contrast to the breezy young girls and the 
 
 vigorous bronzed men in uniform who surrounded 
 
 them. I wondered what subterranean strings they 
 
 had pulled to get their papers made out via 
 
 Boulogne by the three Fates of Bedford Square. 
 
 Everyone was obliged to put on life-belts, if you 
 
THE CROSSING 9 
 
 can so call the strange cubical object which is fastened 
 round your neck like a chest preserver, both back 
 and front. It entirely precludes any position of 
 ease or rest to the head, and I could imagine nothing 
 more unpleasant than having this incubus around 
 one in the water, indefinitely prolonging a very 
 trying situation. I reasoned that wearing this must 
 be an optional affair. But a stern voice roused 
 me : 
 
 " Madam, you must put on your life-belt." I 
 explained my views about life-belts. He smiled 
 grimly. "That's not the point, you see. Some 
 one might risk a valuable life trying to save you 
 whether you wished it or no." 
 
 This was unanswerable and I hastened to put 
 my head through the collar, my admonitor kindly 
 assisting me to fasten the strings and seeing to it 
 that they were firmly done. I felt as though the 
 
 Scavenger's Daughter had me in her grip. 
 
 
 
 Gradually the daylight faded. The queer-shaped 
 figures and their piled-up luggage all mingled in 
 fantastic outlines. The officers of the watch and 
 the man high up in the crow's nest kept constant 
 look-out on the grey waters, out of which any moment 
 might start up the Boche's periscope. 
 
 On either side of us kept pace a destroyer and 
 we were accompanied besides by two other troopships, 
 each with their freight of some two thousand men, 
 and an empty returning hospital ship. We passed 
 
10 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 patrol vessels now and then with their friendly 
 lights ; and once a large lumber boat loomed up 
 in the twilight, appearing stationary, we were going 
 so fast in comparison. The boats on our steamer 
 were made ready for lowering at a moment's notice, 
 and all the deck chairs were fitted with rafts. One 
 felt the cold water very near, yet without any dis- 
 turbing fears. Such small emotions found no soil 
 in which to grow in those big days. 
 
BOULOGNE 
 
 BOULOGNE at last. The darkness had fallen as 
 we slowly threaded our way up the long winding 
 quay crowded with vessels of every description. 
 The rain had begun in good earnest with our arrival, 
 adding umbrellas to the general confusion of dis- 
 embarking. I came to the rescue of the two canteen 
 ladies whom I found struggling desperately with a very 
 limited vocabulary, never before put to a real test 
 with French officials the latter wonderfully amiable 
 mellowed by the war and our Entente no doubt. 
 A telegram announcing their arrival to the head- 
 quarters of the Y.M.C.A. was found reposing in Miss 
 Smith's lunch basket. They had lost the last train 
 to Etaples, and had no alternative but to spend 
 the night in Boulogne. 
 
 As there was no train for my destination till next 
 morning} we threw in our lot together and, hiring 
 a fiacre, started on a search for rooms. Beginning 
 with the Hotel Devereux we made the grand tour, 
 while the rain made sport of us in our half -sheltered 
 conveyance. From one door to another we drove 
 in vain. "In the whole cityful rooms there were 
 none ! " A bench at the station loomed ahead as 
 
 our only prospect of rest that night. I appealed, 
 
 11 
 
12 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 with the rain running down my face, to Madame 
 la Proprietaire of our last frustrated hope her 
 predecessors had been too curt to encourage any 
 hope of assistance, but her cheery face bespeaking 
 initiative and energy gave promise of a kind heart 
 also. 
 
 "Could she offer any suggestion? Our case was 
 desperate pitiable," I pleaded. 
 
 She viewed us seriously, as a medical man the 
 patient who has come to him six months too late 
 for effective treatment, but her brain sought rapidly 
 for relief in palliatives. 
 
 " Ah ! Mesdames, see you, Boulogne, it is crowded 
 to that point one may truly say there is not a chink 
 to admit a sardine. For a room one must give 
 one week, two weeks' notice. But hold ! I will 
 ask my sister-in-law, she at the caisse. It is just 
 possible that she may know of a little hole some- 
 where in the town." And away bustled the kindly 
 little woman to return shortly with an address 
 scribbled on a piece of paper. 
 
 " Let these ladies try here," she said hopefully. 
 " This is the cousin of my sister-in-law. She has 
 two or three nice rooms, which to increase her rentes 
 she occasionally lets to boarders. It is possible 
 she may have one vacant where she could squeeze 
 these ladies for the night. If they mention the name 
 of Madame Troulard be sure she will do her utmost 
 possible for our English allies," she added cordially. 
 
 Again we plunged into the dark wet streets, the 
 
BOULOGNE 13 
 
 rain slashing at us viciously under the hood of our 
 fiacre. 
 
 " It is long past the time for my horse to sup 
 me also ! " remarked our driver in gloomy tones 
 as he was directed to the new address. Feeling 
 the justice of his complaint and our desperate 
 situation I promised him a " supplement," a " bonne 
 main," " un bon pourboire," a life pension if he 
 would make this last effort, and added his horse also 
 should be richly rewarded ; if this journey failed, 
 the next would be only to the station waiting-room. 
 
 The horse had evidently been trained at Elberfeldt 
 where M. Maeterlinck tells us they learn the language 
 of men, for hearing this he started off with the utmost 
 cheerfulness, and we were soon presenting our paper 
 to two pleasant ladies, a mother and daughter. 
 The magic name of Madame Troulard opened to us 
 a small room au troisieme wherein we found an 
 enormous bed and a sofa at the foot, which furniture 
 fitted the room as a walnut its shell. 
 
 This, Helas ! was all Maman could do for 
 us, explained the daughter. Could we arrange 
 ourselves ? 
 
 With the station bench as the alternative and 
 the rain hissing on the quay outside, we answered in 
 a grateful chorus that we could arrange ourselves 
 admirably. 
 
 Miss Smith's spirits went up with a bound. " I 
 have been thinking of your husband," she said 
 to her friend, " how terribly anxious he would be if 
 
14 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 he could have seen you dripping wet and going from 
 door to door seeking shelter in vain." 
 
 " Anxious ! " laughed the mother of five, " not 
 a bit of it. Arthur would chortle with glee and say 
 4 Serves you right.' Don't you ever tell him about 
 this first night, Adela I trust to your honour." 
 
 " I shan't tell him he would only blame me. 
 I have noticed what cowards married men are," 
 said Adela. 
 
 " Je suis tres faim," remarked the bright-eyed 
 lady emphatically to our landlady's daughter, and 
 we all turned to her appealingly. 
 
 " Helas ! Mesdames, Maman, she cannot nourish 
 these ladies," she replied regretfully. " Since the 
 war Maman and me we make the kitchen ourselves, 
 and the little bonne she makes the menage. But 
 these ladies can eat at the restaurant at the corner. 
 One eats very well there." 
 
 We found this true. The war had raised prices, 
 but it had not produced the extraordinary deteriora- 
 tion in every article of food as in England. Bread 
 we found was still bread, though darker in colour. 
 Butter was real butter, not the soft greasy stuff, 
 oozing drops of water, which passed for the same 
 in England, while cheese remained cheese instead 
 of soap masquerading as such. The hand of the 
 chef had not lost his cunning, and even at this small 
 restaurant of the people the food was as well cooked 
 as at Prince's. 
 
 Our upper chamber looked over the quay a busy 
 
BOULOGNE 15 
 
 scene of ships and motor transports. The night 
 was as lively as the day. Not much sleep to be got, 
 though I had no fault to find with my " canape." 
 
 Next morning we looked out on a bright sun and 
 
 wind-swept streets. From our windows we could see 
 
 the German prisoners, a red band on their caps and 
 
 large P.G. on their backs (" Prisonniers de Guerre "), 
 
 working on the barges in the quay waters, a fence 
 
 round the edge to prevent their landing. Viewed 
 
 afterwards more closely the type of face struck 
 
 one in marked contrast to the French coarser 
 
 and more elementary. They looked well fed and well 
 
 clothed, but were slow and surly in their movements, 
 
 which perhaps was hardly surprising, as no doubt 
 
 they had heard of their more fortunate comrades 
 
 taken to England, that Paradise of the Hun, where 
 
 they led, at all events at first, if they so desired, 
 
 a life of " dolce far niente " in pleasant internment 
 
 camps flowing with milk and cheese, and liberal 
 
 rations of bread and meat. In France the P.G. 
 
 did not stand for Privileged Guest but " Prisoner 
 
 of War," an ever-present fact of stern import to 
 
 the Boche. And he did not like it, after being 
 
 promised that he should be in Paris in three months 
 
 and loot every province down to Toulon before New 
 
 Year's Day of 1915. His " frau " was still waiting 
 
 for the Frenchwoman's nice fine linen and the elegant 
 
 garments he promised her, waiting with a sore heart, 
 
 for she knew the Herr Hauptmann's lady had 
 
 six " wonderbeauty " trunks full to overflowing 
 
16 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 when they entered Lille. Ah ! things are most 
 disappointing for the poor German sometimes ! No 
 wonder he looked surly when he had to toil for 
 his French captors, before he could enjoy his 
 " gesegnete Mahlzeit " (blessed mealtime). 
 
 It was a strange new Boulogne. Nothing remained 
 of the familiar gay little town of one's youth 
 the bains de mer and bright coloured tents of the 
 plage, the casino with its bals masques, bals d'en- 
 fants and concerts, the lively market-place where one 
 bought huge baskets of fruit for a few francs and an 
 armful of flowers for a few sous. The whole place 
 spoke of the British occupation. Everywhere one 
 felt the pulse of the war. All public buildings, 
 casino, colleges, chateux, convents were re- 
 quisitioned. The notices posted up were in English 
 -Military "Telegraph Office," "British Soldiers' 
 Institute," and so on. Regiments from England 
 were arriving all day. The streets were crowded 
 with transports and motor ambulances, men of 
 the British, Overseas, and at last, thank God, the 
 American armies, whose appearance has raised the 
 barometer everywhere to " Set Fair." 
 
 All Boulognais could say a few words of English 
 and understand the difference between " too much " 
 and " how much," and other vital questions. I 
 passed some Tommies newly arrived near the station. 
 One put his arm as he went by round a fresh, trim- 
 looking maiden and greeted her as " bel fil," which 
 
BOULOGNE 17 
 
 she seemed to understand in spite of the accent, 
 and in no way to resent. 
 
 Boulogne was often visited by the Boche airmen, 
 we were told, and in every street were numerous 
 notices stating how many could be accommodated 
 in the cave-abris in case of a raid. Only a week 
 before a Taube had flown over and dropt bombs 
 which killed thirty civilians and injured many more. 
 But the inhabitants, as a rule, took these visits in 
 the same philosophical spirit as we on the other 
 side of the Channel. Of course there were occasions 
 on which philosophy was blown so to speak to the 
 winds, as for instance the deliberate bombing of a 
 maternity hospital at Calais and, later on, the 
 ghastly affair at Staples, where the German airmen, 
 having found the big hospital encampment with their 
 flares, descended to close range and turned the 
 whole ambulance into shambles, sweeping it again 
 and again with their machine guns. A Canadian 
 who identified his sister's body among the nurses 
 (many bodies could not be identified) swore that 
 never would he take another German prisoner. 
 The Huns no doubt excuse themselves that they 
 did this unspeakable deed by order of their High 
 Command, but could any men save Germans be 
 found to carry out such orders ? British or French 
 would have been shot in preference. The verdict 
 of Thomas Atkins was just this : " They're not 
 white men ! " 
 
NINETTE 
 
 HAVING parted with my canteen friends who took 
 an early train to Etaples I started out accompanied 
 by the pretty little widow daughter of the house 
 to see her own special ceuvre, the " Goutte de Lait." 
 
 The small red cross on my coat had proved a pass- 
 port to the affection of all the family. They found 
 it " tres chic " that an Englishwoman should give her 
 services to their Croix Rouge Society, for had I not 
 also my own wounded and prisoners of war and 
 " un tas de choses " besides ? 
 
 I pointed out that we three homeless dripping 
 wanderers had found our French hosts also "tres 
 chic" the previous night. To be taken in at that 
 hour when the house was already full, to have nice 
 aired linen sheets and pots of hot water, to say 
 nothing of delicious cafe au lait in the morning 
 we found that altogether charming. 
 
 " Ah ! but that was nothing, nothing at all," 
 laughed little Madame " Ninette." " Maman is 
 only desolated that she could not nourish these 
 ladies." 
 
 " But she nourished us admirably with that 
 excellent cafe au lait" I assured her. 
 
 " Ah ! but that was a little nothing," she reiterated. 
 
 18 
 
NINETTE 19 
 
 The family consisted of Monsieur and Madame 
 Carron, their daughter Ninette and her little girl 
 Pauline, aged six. Monsieur had owned a merchant 
 vessel and made good affairs. Having retired from 
 the sea he now worked in his house of commerce 
 on land. His keen kindly face had the clean breezi- 
 ness of the sea, and when he talked it was always 
 with a wide horizon in his view. Ninette and her 
 child were the pivot round which revolved the lives 
 of both parents, yet " pour la patrie " was inextricably 
 interwoven with this devotion and when, on the 
 declaration of war, the young husband of Ninette, 
 to them a beloved son, was called up and fell among 
 the first in those early days of disaster, they lifted 
 their heads proudly in their grief, " pour la patrie." 
 
 Ninette, in her widowhood, returned to her parents' 
 house and helped with the pensionnaires, generally 
 some Englishman or American engaged in war- work 
 in the town. A doctor and a professor at the Radium 
 Institute were the present boarders. Ninette is a 
 model "Maman," acting both as nurse and governess 
 to her daughter, whose studies, now that she is 
 nearly seven, must, she declares, be serious. Her 
 many talents are the joy and pride of her parents, 
 for Ninette is not only domesticated but highly 
 artistic. 
 
 " She can sing both the classic music of the Opera," 
 said her mother, " and also the gay melodies of the 
 cafe chantant, while accompanying herself on the 
 piano to a marvel. To make pleasure to our English 
 
20 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 guests she sings also the " Omesweetome " and 
 " Loflyheyes." 
 
 I admired an embroidered frock it was Ninette's 
 work. And not only all the clothes for her child, 
 but her own dainty toilettes and the costumes de fMe 
 for her mother, all were made by her dexterous hands. 
 
 The " Goutte de Lait " was Ninette's war- work. Two 
 mornings in the week she gave her services there. 
 I agreed that, of course, I must visit an ceume so 
 beneficial to the children of the country, "and see 
 how well one arranges for the babies." 
 
 This Society has existed for many years in France, 
 long before Maternity Centres were thought of in 
 England. It has depots in every town, and has 
 accomplished splendid results in saving child-life 
 and improving child-health. Everything was spot- 
 lessly clean and the last word in hygiene. The 
 mothers brought their babies every morning for 
 milk and medical advice, both given gratis up to the 
 age of two years. A weighing machine tested the 
 progress made. Not only did wise counsels on the 
 walls meet the eyes of the young mother, but friendly 
 hands were there to help the lame dog over stiles. 
 
 From the "Goutte de Lait " we went to visit a cousin 
 of Ninette's at the Military Hospital installed in 
 the former Ecoles des Beaux Arts. It was curious 
 to read on doors and passages, " Cours de clarinette," 
 "de Haut-bois," " Salle de Dessin," " Cours Solfege," 
 and realise what different sounds filled those halls 
 now sad sounds of suffering groans of the 
 
NINETTE 21 
 
 wounded sobs of the bereaved the grim, tragic 
 music of war. 
 
 Ninette's cousin was a returned prisoner from 
 Germany. Even six months in Switzerland had 
 failed to restore his crushed spirit and emaciated 
 body. The Germans had tried to force him to work 
 in the mines, but being a sous-officier, i.e. a corporal, 
 he had persistently refused, since every man who 
 yielded made it worse for the others. To punish 
 him and break his spirit the Boches had stopped 
 at nothing. For weeks he was brought to the verge 
 of starvation and never at any time received enough 
 to keep a man alive. Like our own men they de- 
 pended for life itself on the parcels from home. 
 
 ic But the worst was," he said, " when they kept 
 us there were seven of us, sergeants and corporals 
 sixty hours without food or water in a dark cell, 
 in solitude. To be without water, ah ! Madame ! 
 you cannot figure to yourself what that is one 
 fears to lose the senses. When we came out into 
 the air and light once more we regarded one another 
 all bewildered. It was a pitiful sight, which made 
 the heart to tighten. We were but six instead of 
 seven the Boches for that reason let us out, they 
 feared the vengeance for we others, we French, 
 we are not as you English, when we know for sure 
 what those devils arrange for our poor boys, we 
 say "good! so we will arrange also for you." In 
 this manner some improvement has been achieved. 
 But though we punish them no Frenchman can be 
 
22 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 guilty of the cowardly cruelty of the Boche it is 
 not in his temperament, see you." 
 
 " That poor seventh prisoner ? " I asked. " Was 
 he dead ? " 
 
 " He was dead. They said he had a malady of 
 the heart it was a lie. A strong heart is capable 
 of failing, lacking water sixty hours, food and 
 oxygen also. He was a fine boy that one from 
 Provence always he had lived in the full air in 
 the sun. He had but twenty-two years ! " 
 
 " Think no more of these sad things," said Madame 
 Ninette. " Thou must take courage and think of the 
 future, that good day soon coming when we and 
 our English Allies will chase the accursed Boche 
 back to his own pigstye." But as we left the ward 
 she sighed, " When I hear what they endure, those 
 poor ones in Germany, I thank God my Henri fell 
 rather on the field of battle." 
 
 And this I found was the general sentiment of 
 the poilu himself, far rather death than to be taken 
 prisoner by the Boche, for that often meant not only 
 death but before that release untold suffering, mental 
 and physical. 
 
 This hospital belonged to the poorest of the three 
 Croix Rouge Societies, the " Femmes de France." 
 They were unable to afford luxuries such as pianos, 
 gramophones, games and flowers, but the patients 
 all looked happy and content, for at least they had 
 plenty of cigarettes and took life easy, the rule being 
 rather that of home- life than of an Institution. I 
 
NINETTE 23 
 
 noticed though the windows were all shut, every 
 man, even some in bed, wore his little blue uniform 
 cap for fear of catching cold should anyone have the 
 imprudence to leave a door open. The poilu clearly 
 considered the only place for fresh air was out of 
 doors, and the nurses appeared to share this opinion. 
 
 All Croix Rouge hospitals are a free gift to the 
 country, so are also the services of their matrons 
 and nurses. If the latter are unable to work year 
 after year without any payment, a small salary is 
 paid by the Croix Rouge society itself to defray 
 their expenses. 
 
 On our return to the house Madame insisted on 
 my joining the family dejeuner, if I would excuse 
 a very simple repast which she had prepared in 
 our absence just an omelette aux fines herles, a 
 ragout, des pommes de terres sautes and des petites 
 Suisses. When I complimented her on the excel- 
 lence of her cuisine, again it was of Ninette's talents 
 I heard : " A far better dejeuner she would have 
 made, for she was a veritable cordon bleu. Ah ! 
 but there was a wife for any man Ninette ! No 
 matter what she did, it was with a delicacy of touch, 
 a precision, a capability. He would be the fortunate 
 one who should marry Ninette ! " 
 
 This being said in her presence, Ninette protested 
 laughing and blushing : 
 
 " Maman she does not understand that in England 
 one says not such things, one is how shall I say 
 more reticent." 
 
24 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " More reticent ! How then ! it is but the truth 
 what says thy mother," pronounced the Papa Carron, 
 his blue eyes twinkling. 
 
 And the small Pauline chimed in : " But yes, 
 it is the pure truth that and in England says one 
 not the truth ? " 
 
 Upon which Ninette told her daughter that in Eng- 
 land the children they conducted themselves always 
 well, and preserved a discreet silence during the repasts. 
 
 Pauline rejoined with the reflection that in that 
 case England would never be her affair ! A remark 
 which drew from all her family in turn a stern 
 "tais-toi, Pauline," as unbecoming in the presence 
 of an English ally. 
 
 While Ninette prepared the cafe noir her mother 
 drew me aside and confided that her dearest wish 
 was to see Ninette remarry herself. " She has taken 
 the idea to espouse an Englishman ; she likes them, 
 both the English and the Americans, which to her 
 is the same thing. They make no compliments, 
 but they sit there and regard you with honesty and 
 steadfastness," declares Ninette. 
 
 I enquired if there was anyone in particular whose 
 steadfast and honest gaze had found favour with 
 Madame Ninette. 
 
 " Not precisely perhaps as yet " hesitated her 
 
 mother. " My daughter she is eprise with all the 
 English the entire nation, see you ! also she desires 
 to travel to see the world in that she resembles 
 her father. He loves the movement, that one there." 
 
NINETTE 25 
 
 French women can rarely bear the. thought of 
 uprooting themselves from France ; when they do 
 so it is generally only under the compelling influence 
 of personal devotion to a specially favoured one. 
 I wondered if the professor could not have shed 
 some radio illumination on this problem. Madame's 
 next remark, however, shook this idea, for she en- 
 quired whether I happened to know of some nice 
 Englishman an American she did not desire on 
 account of the Atlantic desiring to marry himself, 
 whom I could thoroughly recommend ? well-ranged, 
 good-tempered, indulgent with children. There was 
 the little Pauline, and it is not every man who is 
 prepared to take to the heart the child of a previous 
 husband solid, but provided he had a good position 
 and the good health the fortune need not be colossal. 
 Ninette could bring a pretty little dot to the marriage ; 
 and Ninette, she was a girl serious as well as gay of 
 temperament a good heart and an admirable head 
 for the affairs. 
 
 I replied that for the moment I could not, so to 
 speak, lay my hand on just the right man, but I 
 certainly would not forget her wish, and no one 
 could doubt that he would be both happy and fortunate 
 who married pretty little Madame Ninette. That 
 professor of radium already had my sympathy. 
 
 It was with feelings of warmest entente cordiale 
 that I made my adieux to Madame, and parted from 
 the family with a promise to visit them again if my 
 way back to England lay via Boulogne. 
 
SHIPS THAT PASSED 
 
 ACRES and acres of camps, tents, hospitals and 
 huts this is Etaples the once quiet little town 
 with its cobble streets and fish market, where in 
 old days of peace one was wont to debark for the 
 plage of Berck or the golf links of de Touquet. From 
 the train I saw some German prisoners engaged 
 on the artistic work of camouflaging a group of 
 wooden buildings daubing on the greens and greys 
 and browns in bewildering patches which merged 
 the walls and the roofs into the landscape to the 
 confusion of brother Boche in the sky a singularly 
 aptly chosen occupation for brother Boche on the 
 land he had so wantonly invaded may it teach 
 him in future to keep his big feet on his own soil ! 
 
 In the train to Compiegne I found myself with 
 an officer of the artillery, very smart in his dark 
 blue uniform and many decorations. In spite of 
 the warning posted up in every carriage, " Taisez 
 vous, mefiez vous, les oreilles enemies vous ecoutent," 
 we soon began to talk, and he, as they express it, 
 " with the open heart." No doubt he felt that an 
 Englishwoman, sufficiently in sympathy with his 
 country to be working for the Croix Rouge, need 
 cause him no misgivings as to the friendliness of the 
 
SHIPS THAT PASSED 27 
 
 ears which listened to his sad story. For poor fellow 
 his was a tragic case for all his brave and gallant 
 bearing, and it seemed a relief to him to speak to 
 anyone who could sympathise. 
 
 A citizen of Lille, when called up for service he 
 had only a few hours in which to prepare for leaving 
 his wife and child, and an important business in the 
 town. It was arranged his wife should follow him 
 her passport was promised. This happened more 
 than three years ago, and since then no word had 
 reached him from his wife, nor was she permitted 
 to receive any news from him. The people in the 
 occupied regions are enveloped in the silence of the 
 grave. "It is far worse," he said, " than to be 
 a prisoner in Germany, for there at least one knows 
 if they live or die one can send and receive letters 
 food also can be sent in packets. But we others 
 endure a torture of suspense which drives one to 
 the despair." 
 
 He took a photograph from a small case which 
 he said was a portrait his wife had contrived to 
 send him, not long since, through some unknown 
 hand, that of a neutral leaving the town no doubt, 
 strictly forbidden of course to carry letters. Though 
 showing that she and the child were alive it had 
 filled him with anxiety, they were depicted as so 
 thin and ill the boy, now thirteen, grown very 
 tall " He resembles a telegraph pole," said the 
 poor father, " he is starving my little son, there 
 is not a doubt and if he starves, ah how much 
 
28 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 more my wife, for she would deprive herself of the 
 last crumb for the child." 
 
 The bitterest thing of all was that he had dis- 
 covered the passport made out for his wife had 
 been obtained fraudulently by another woman, an 
 alien who had escaped from Lille with it ; through 
 a Society which traced the refugees he found that 
 his wife's name had been so used. Being a man 
 of influence he had appealed to all the authorities 
 to the Pope, the President, Cabinet Ministers, 
 Mayors and Councillors, but all in vain. His business 
 was ruined, the bombardment having destroyed 
 all buildings where it stood. For him "everything 
 was finished ! " Yet one more terror still remained 
 that when the Allies drove the Boches out of Lille 
 and bombarded the city as they surely must, French 
 guns, his own perhaps, might kill his wife and child ! 
 
 What comfort could one dare offer ? To say 
 with Pippa, " God's in His Heaven, all's right with 
 the world," was manifestly impossible. Browning 
 was never a Frenchman living in the days of the 
 great and terrible War. Yet deep and eradicable is 
 the conviction in most of us, and as we talked 
 I felt it was there, unconsciously perhaps, but there 
 deep down like a well from which he was drawing 
 strength that some day all would be "right with the 
 world," and with himself. Pierre Loti says that the 
 war has killed atheism " There are no atheists at 
 the front," and the gallant bearing and courageous 
 face this French officer presented to the world had 
 
SHIPS THAT PASSED 29 
 
 a far deeper significance than merely that of the 
 conscripted fighter. 
 
 Two English officers joined us at Etaples. They 
 were going on to Paris and so was the Frenchman. 
 After saluting each other with a friendly glance 
 'they settled down to an impregnable silence. I 
 asked one of my countrymen if he spoke French? 
 He regretted that neither he nor his companion 
 could get beyond Ollendorf s first pages. 
 
 " I learnt French at Eton you know what that 
 means," he explained. 
 
 The French officer had already told me he knew 
 no English except " Owyoudo," and " aw' right," 
 but he intended his boy should learn if 
 ever . . . 
 
 What a reflection on our so-called civilisation 
 and education ! Here were three of the finest 
 specimens of English and French gentlemen unable 
 to exchange an intelligible idea, though fighting 
 side by side for the civilisation of the world and 
 brought up within a few miles of each other, divided 
 only by the Channel and the narrow but impassable 
 gulf of speech a bridge so easy to construct, yet 
 not considered necessary. Even the dumb dogs 
 can do better ! Let us hope that one result of the 
 Great War which has bridged so many gulfs and 
 broken down so many barriers, may be to open the 
 doors of a common speech between at least the 
 friendly and civilised peoples of Europe. 
 
 It was dark when I got out at Amiens, and again 
 
30 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 pouring with rain. This was a new aspect of a 
 French October this greeting of tearful skies, but 
 no doubt like everything else, having its origin in 
 the war. " Que voulez-vous c'est la guerre," is 
 the prompt explanation for everything of a contrary 
 nature, and it is remarkable how even the most 
 remote happenings can be brought into line with 
 this theory by an ingenious system of long distance 
 connections, such as the relation worked out between 
 " The House that Jack built " and " The Cock that 
 crowed i' the morn." 
 
 Having heard the same reasoning in England for 
 three years, however, one was well seasoned. 
 
 Amiens, like Boulogne, had been transformed into 
 an English town. The streets were brown with 
 khaki when I went out early next morning. It 
 was good to see the beautiful towers of the Cathedral 
 still soaring up unscathed into the blue instead of 
 sharing the fate of Rheims, of Ypres, and the long 
 list of other consecrated shrines whose charred ruins 
 mark the trail of the destroyer. 
 
 The little waitress who brought my breakfast was 
 a Bretonne from Quimperle, that quaint old town 
 of bridges where I spent some happy days in a former 
 existence before the war. That I knew and loved 
 her remote native place was an instant bond. She 
 had come to Amiens to be near her brother, become 
 insane from shell shock. 
 
 They had put him in an asylum for lunatics 
 the poor boy, but he was able now and then to 
 
SHIPS THAT PASSED 31 
 
 recognise his sister, so, "surely le bon Dieu would 
 restore him soon his senses." 
 
 She had beside this care on her heart another 
 her unknown filleul, i.e. adopted godson, a Breton 
 prisoner of war in Germany, to whom she sent parcels 
 and wrote regularly. For some months past no word, 
 alas, had come from him. She feared he must be dead. 
 " Ah ! so many died down there in that accursed 
 country of an accursed people." 
 
 These working-girl godmothers to unknown god- 
 sons are to be found all over France. It is not 
 only their own particular " brave boys " they care 
 for, but their hearts go out to those others who have 
 nobody no homes from where the cheering letters, 
 and the parcels which alone keep life in them, 
 can come. To this Society of " Marraines " belong 
 thousands of French women of all classes from the 
 richest lady to the poorest working-girl. They adopt 
 not only the prisoners of war but the homeless poilu 
 in the trenches. That the latter are quite unknown 
 to them personally is no matter " one writes with 
 a full heart when it is to one of our ' brave boys,' 
 see you." In many cases when the " poilu- filleul " 
 gets his seven days' leave his godmother opens her 
 doors to him, and he knows the joy of a home welcome 
 he who has nowhere to go, for thousands in the 
 devastated provinces have been rendered homeless 
 and their families scattered as refugees. 
 
A NO YON HOME 
 
 ON arriving at Noyon I went to the principal hotel, 
 the only one which I had been told was "possible." 
 It hardly deserved even that qualified recommenda- 
 tion. The original proprietors had long since flown ; 
 it had fallen into alien hands, and the bedrooms 
 were a choice of evils. Great holes gaped in the walls, 
 and the floors were as dirty as though the sales 
 Boches had just evacuated. These holes were caused 
 by the stove pipes being torn out by the Boches 
 on their departure six months ago. Impossible 
 to mend them said the proprietor there were no 
 workmen. 
 
 All stoves and gas pipes, electric wires, main 
 drains and sewers, had been cut throughout the 
 town the latter to ensure an epidemic of typhus. 
 But in this pious hope the Boche was doomed to dis- 
 appointment, the Noyonais being inoculated from 
 long use in somewhat imperfect hygienic arrange- 
 ments an ill wind that blew them a distinct gain 
 on this occasion. 
 
 In the dining-room, at the table next mine, I 
 found a French lady wearing the small red cross 
 which proclaimed us of the same fellowship. She 
 had come to these devastated regions to assist in 
 
A NO YON HOME 33 
 
 the work of reconstruction on which the Croix Rouge 
 and numerous other societies were at work, supple- 
 menting that of the Government which gladly accepts 
 their aid and their reports. 
 
 Having arrived the day before, she had with strong 
 misgivings engaged one of the holey bedrooms, 
 trusting it would at least ensure plenty of fresh air 
 the holes were so placed they certainly ensured a 
 draught. On hearing that I brought an introduction 
 to the Military Administrator of the district she 
 offered to accompany and, present me. The little 
 Croix Rouge is like the Masonic sign between strangers 
 in a crowd, or the sound of your native tongue in the 
 desert. Finding we were both engaged on the same 
 work under the same banner, we threw in our lot 
 together to our mutual pleasure and advantage. 
 
 Monsieur 1'Administrateur Militaire was a very 
 much occupied gentleman installed in an old chateau 
 near the town. When ushered into his presence, 
 after waiting some time for previous arrivals, I was 
 glad of the support of my new friend in vouching 
 for my bona-fides, which she did with the readiness 
 of an old and valued friend, tested by the wear and 
 tear of years. 
 
 I presented Monsieur le Capitaine with the intro- 
 duction I brought from the Presidente of the Croix 
 Rouge Britannique, requesting he would of his 
 kindness facilitate my mission to that region by 
 enabling me to see as much as possible the needs 
 of the hospitals, canteens and inhabitants of the 
 
34 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 destroyed and ravaged villages so that the English 
 funds might go where most needed. 
 
 He read with contracted brows twice during 
 his perusal an orderly came in to announce another 
 visitor and was dismissed curtly with " qu'il attende." 
 Three times the telephone's demoniacal little ting- 
 a-ting forced him to lay down the letter, and so 
 distracted him by the mental switching off and on 
 that he began it over again each time. 
 
 Finally he looked up and enquired with a worried 
 look : 
 
 " Et dans quel but etes-vous venue ici, Madame ? " 
 (" With what object are you here ? ") 
 
 I repeated the contents of the unhappy letter, 
 my friend putting in a helping word at intervals. 
 At last his poor distracted brain having admitted 
 the new claim on its activity, I am bound to say he 
 lost no time in setting to work. 
 
 Hearing we were at the Hotel, " A real hole " he 
 pronounced. " I can arrange for you better than 
 that." Giving us an address for rooms he told us 
 to call again next morning, and promised to see if 
 a military car could be put at our disposal to visit 
 some of the ruined villages where reconstruction was 
 going on and help needed. 
 
 We made our way at once to the address he gave. 
 It was a dignified little white house, green shuttered, 
 standing back in its own garden, overshadowed 
 by the protecting wings of the cathedral. A sort 
 of Cranford-looking house, with a perfect old French 
 
A NOYON HOME 35 
 
 Cranford couple inside, waited on by a faithful old 
 bonne twenty-five years in their service. 
 
 " Entrez entrez, Mesdames," said the frail little 
 white-haired lady, opening the doors of the best 
 salon as we introduced ourselves. " Monsieur le 
 Capitaine has reason I shall be pleased to receive 
 these ladies if they will excuse that I give them 
 but little service, also that I nourish them not. The 
 coal it is very scarce, and the Boches they have 
 deprived us of all the gas, even as of the 
 electricity." 
 
 We agreed to take our repasts out. No one seemed 
 anxious to supply us with food. The best salon 
 contained a big Empire bed, also a large armoire 
 and washstand, while still retaining its character 
 of best salon, with Louis XVI. canape and fauteuils 
 in brocaded silk, like the curtains which hung from 
 the tall French windows. We engaged this and 
 a room of the same spacious proportions overhead, 
 and very thankfully moved from the Hotel, willingly 
 paying for the night we had had the good luck not 
 to spend there. 
 
 " For two years and eight months we had in this 
 house eight Boches," said the old lady. "The 
 Boche Colonel he occupied this room he slept in 
 that bed. The commandant he took the room 
 adjoining. Three other officers slept in the rooms 
 upstairs, and besides these we had also to lodge their 
 three orderlies. They left us but one room for our- 
 selves. They burrowed in every corner. Ah, but it was 
 
36 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 terrible ! You cannot figure to yourselves, Mesdames, 
 what we endured for those long years never we 
 thought it would finish waiting, hoping always for 
 succour which came not ! In the purgatory one could 
 not suffer more." 
 
 We agreed that she would certainly need no further 
 purgatory after such severe soul discipline. 
 
 I looked doubtfully at the bed. " You said the 
 Boche Colonel slept in that bed ? " 
 
 " Ah, but I have had it thoroughly purified," she 
 hastened to reassure me. ' The mattresses remade. 
 Have no fear, Mes dames, the entire house has 
 been cleansed from floor to ceiling. My beds they 
 remember no more the Boches. Many good French- 
 men have slept in them since, and this salon where 
 the dirty Boches they eat it has been cleansed with 
 the most strong disinfectants. Have no fear." 
 
 She spoke the truth. The Boche had been so 
 effectually obliterated that my dreams were of 
 old French life in the days of Eugenie Grandet 
 of peaceful and sunny sleepy days when Monsieur 
 le Cure's visit for a game of chess in the evening 
 was the great event of the week. But my first 
 waking thought was of the Boche, for on the wall 
 of the salon hung a large engraving in a massive 
 gilt frame, on which the eye of the successive Boche 
 Colonels must often have rested in displeasure. 
 The wonder was that one of them had not sent some 
 missile flying through the glass, for the subject was 
 Rouget de Lisle singing "The Marseillaise" to an 
 
A NOYON HOME S7 
 
 applauding audience. You could hear the words 
 " Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons." 
 
 The faithful old bonne Hortense when she brought 
 my hot water loved to linger and recount her own 
 personal sufferings under the sales Bodies, whom she 
 "conspued" with a heartiness worthy of Rouget de 
 Lisle himself. The orderlies were her special trial. 
 
 " Ah, the cochons, and each one imagined himself 
 to be the Kaiser ! Figure to yourself, Madame, 
 not alone five officers in this unhappy little house 
 but three soldier servants ! One set they would go, 
 only to be at once replaced by three worse. They 
 all treated you as if you were the mat on which 
 to wipe their great boots. And they dared to seize 
 for their use all the fine bright saucepans and frying 
 pans of Madame which never anyone was permitted 
 to touch. Pouah ! the dirty canaille, and how they 
 maltreated them with their greasy messes their pigs' 
 flesh. Ah ! Madame, but their habits and customs 
 were of the most filthy imaginable words could not 
 describe it." Nevertheless Hortense made a very 
 good attempt, and her memory was extraordinarily 
 faithful for details which made one shudder. 
 
 Hortense and her mistress occupied the only room 
 the family were permitted to retain, and were 
 graciously accorded the use of the kitchen. Monsieur 
 Besnard was obliged to live at the house of commerce 
 on the Place, and see to the business and supervise 
 the employees young girls apt to have the head 
 light and get into mischief if left too much alone, 
 
38 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 said Hortense. Sharing your kitchen with sales Bodies 
 is not an easy situation. There were times when 
 Hortense confessed she was tempted to take up the 
 long knife even as Charlotte Corday, and finish off 
 the interlopers with " a good stroke," a deed of which 
 she would have felt no shame before le bon Dieu 
 or the Blessed Virgin herself quite the contrary ! 
 But there was her poor little Madame, so delicate, 
 crippled with the rheumatism, subject very often 
 to a crisis of the nerves in these terrible days of 
 horror and violence. Without her old bonne, for of 
 course they would have shot her on the spot, what 
 would Madame do ? Hortense who understood all 
 her little tastes, " also the little tastes of Monsieur 
 just the turn to his omelette, the degree of heat 
 for his filet, see you ! " 
 
 So Hortense had renounced the heroic role of 
 Charlotte, with deep regret she had renounced it, 
 and with a mighty effort at self-control she played 
 the duller part, enduring the daily insults and coarse 
 jokes in which men of German Kultur and their 
 aping menials are past masters, above all when a 
 woman old, homely and defenceless, is the target. 
 
 "Me I understood very well their language," 
 said Hortense. "It is not only with the tongue one 
 speaks the laugh, loud and insulting the grimaces 
 the gestures, ugh ! But only once did one of 
 those animals dare to spit on me. They will spit 
 on the curate. They will strike their mothers who 
 bore them, those there ! Ah ! but I paid him well. 
 
A NO YON HOME 39 
 
 He was the cook, the fat Hans. His soup just ready 
 to serve I made to upset. I make pretence it is by 
 an accident. It flowed on the floor, not a drop was 
 saved. Me I shriek like a lost one ! The Boche 
 he stands rooted, the face all purple, spluttering 
 words terrible to hear. Then he seizes a large frying 
 pan to strike me, but I save myself and enter quickly 
 the room of Madame, turning well the key of the door. 
 For such a thing one would surely have deported 
 me to Germany, like others never more to be heard 
 of, had that soup been for the dinner of the officers, 
 but those gentlemen had fortunately already dined, 
 it was therefore the soup for the domestics. And 
 when that cochon he recounts the affair to Monsieur 
 the Boche Colonel, who demands of him what is the 
 cause of the tapage, the Colonel and the other officers, 
 they who had dined and drunk well, they laughed 
 from a full stomach. It amused them much that 
 the good bacon-soup of the fat Hans it flows on the 
 earth, and they chase me not as he desires. But 
 my poor little Madame she had great fear that those 
 Boche servants they kill me, and she permits no more 
 that I shall enter the kitchen. So I make all the 
 repasts of Madame in the bedroom on a miserable 
 little stove of oil ; but it tore me the heart to renounce 
 my kitchen and to know nothing of what that canaille 
 they made there with my beautiful saucepans ! " 
 
 Though our hostess had declined cooking for us, 
 when we produced our English tea at five o'clock 
 and begged for boiling water, she hastened to bring 
 
40 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 out a delicate little tea-service of First Empire 
 and all requisites for our indispensable " Fife- 
 o'cloak," without which she had heard no English 
 people could endure their lives. Each one to his 
 taste ! For her own part she took the tea as a 
 medicine only for which it served well. ' These," 
 said Madame, showing off the little urn-shaped 
 teapot, sugar basin and cups, " were the only things 
 we contrived to hide from the Boche officers. Every 
 other article they burrowed out. All we possessed 
 they took. Argenterie china linen blankets - 
 covers of embroidery and cushions of lace. All, 
 all, they seized some to send away to Germany- 
 great cases full the rest for their use here. But 
 all they used they quickly destroyed even as vermin 
 destroy. Only this little tea-service, a wedding 
 present which I possess now forty years last month 
 of June this, I vow they shall not take. And I 
 pray to the good Saint Joseph, he who protects 
 the houses of all good Catholics who offer to him 
 a candle on his feast day, and he inspires me with 
 the happy idea where to hide my Empire cups, so 
 that never the Boche he shall find them." 
 
 " Where did you put them ? " I enquired eagerly. 
 
 But she shook her wise old head with a secretive 
 smile, and would reveal no more even to a friendly 
 ally. Who knows, perhaps lurking deep down was 
 the nameless dread (prophetic, alas !) that the 
 enemy hordes might one day return, and that secret 
 hiding-place, if revealed to another, be wrenched 
 
A NO YON HOME 41 
 
 out under threats of torture. Who could tell ? 
 Prudent to run no risks. 
 
 The Boche appeared to be a very destructive 
 animal, even when not out on destruction bent. 
 Everything he had in daily use rapidly " came in 
 two in his hands " as the breaking servant describes 
 it. Legs came off tables and chairs, handles off jugs 
 and cups, towels and tablecloths tore like paper, cigar 
 ends burnt holes in everything burnable, sheets, bed- 
 covers, carpets, tablecloths and sofas. The Louis XVI. 
 furniture had been utterly ruined by the spurs on their 
 boots ; only that in Madame's own room had survived. 
 
 14 The Boche officers have habits altogether gross 
 and disgusting," said Madame Besnard. "They are 
 not civilised as we others. Everywhere they have 
 the custom to spit. Though I place for them four 
 crachoires in the salon think you that they make 
 use of them ? Ah, but no, they prefer the carpet 
 the tablecloth, never mind what. Always after the 
 dinner of midday it was not as our dejeuner but 
 a dinner very solid they slept for two hours here 
 in the salon, installed in the armchairs, the legs 
 raised on another chair. Thus they reposed them- 
 selves, pushing forth snores of such a force one could 
 hear them on the Place. Me, I feared they suffered 
 from a false digestion by too much eating, till I 
 found this also it was a custom of Germany. Ah, 
 mon Dieu ! but to dwell with such animals, and 
 to see them as the masters in your own house, these 
 odious enemies of France the desecrators of our 
 
42 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 country, of our homes ! Ah, Mesdames, you cannot 
 imagine to yourselves how it made one bad blood." 
 
 Poor little old lady ! Her home had been her 
 pride and delight. Ever since she came to No yon 
 as a bride she had dwelt in the dignified little green- 
 shuttered house. Here her two children had been 
 born. From this house the daughter Lucette had 
 married, returning often with her babies to make 
 the old home blossom with another spring. The 
 only son also lived there all his life, a day boy in 
 the town school, later at college, and even making 
 his military service near by. When he married, 
 adding another daughter to the happy home circle, 
 it was only to move to the house on the Place., where 
 he took over the family business. 
 
 All the quiet serene years of happiness and duty, 
 recording a simple, useful life, were embedded in those 
 four walls as in a casket. With the Frenchwoman's 
 genius for home-making she had added year by year 
 to her stores. Making her little economies to purchase 
 always what was good and durable, with an eye 
 to the future when the children would inherit. The 
 linen, the china, the silver, even the copper stew 
 pans all were of the best. And then, like a bolt 
 out of the blue came the war, and before any one 
 had time to realise what the grim word signified, 
 like a sea of rushing waters when the dams have 
 given way, came the enemy the Huns flooding 
 all the country side, burning, killing, destroying, 
 SchrecJclichJceit their watchword. " They come ! 
 
A NO YON HOME 43 
 
 They come ! " cried the terror-stricken population 
 as they fled before them, clutching their children 
 in their arms and dragging with them in handcarts 
 and barrows anything they chanced to seize in the 
 hurried departure. 
 
 To save the children was the first thought of the 
 grandparents in the white house. Already Louis, 
 the son, had been mobilised, leaving his wife and two 
 little ones at the house on the Place. The train 
 service was all disorganised, fugitives in every sort 
 of conveyance streamed along the roads, flying 
 before the advancing hordes. Hiring a cart and 
 horse, the poor old grandfather, endowed with a 
 sudden superhuman strength and energy, packed 
 in the children and their mother with necessaries 
 hastily collected for their journey, and sent them 
 fleeing down the road to Creil. As he returned 
 home, at the garden gate he found his wife awaiting 
 him in her wheelchair pushed by the faithful Hortense. 
 It was piled up with provisions. " Come, my friend," 
 she said firmly, " the order has been given by Monsieur 
 le Maire for all to quit the town without delay." 
 
 Her husband would have preferred remaining 
 to guard his property, but the habit of a lifetime 
 prevailed. 
 
 So the three old people took to the roads. That 
 night they slept in a barn about three miles from 
 Noyon. They could go no further. 
 
 " During those hours of the night," said Madame 
 Besnard, " while my husband and the poor Hortense 
 
44 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 they slept bruised with fatigue and emotion, me I 
 reflected. I made my decision. With the daylight 
 I say to my husband, ' M on ami, you have reason- 
 it is the folly pure that we leave our house to the 
 Boche brigands. They occupy the town they invade 
 our house. Well at least they shall not find it 
 deserted, left to them to make what they will.' 
 Hortense, I say, we return even as Monsieur counsels 
 let us eat at once and depart. So we return to 
 Noyon, and many also follow our example for 
 where could we go, everywhere we hear the cry 
 the Boches come. They arrive ! One cannot go on 
 foot for ever ! This house we found, thank God, 
 still as we left it. The Boches were streaming into 
 the town, but had not yet penetrated every corner. 
 It was not long they left us in peace however. Every 
 house was commandeered, and we received our orders 
 to accommodate the enemy to our utmost possible 
 capacity. 
 
 For two years and eight months Noyon belonged 
 to the Germans. Like a great machine working 
 with the regularity and implacability of factory 
 wheels the Hun occupation was organised. Monsieur 
 Besnard came round when he could spare time 
 to see his wife during the day, but always had to leave 
 her before seven o'clock curfew rang, after which 
 no French person might leave their houses or show 
 a light on pain of heavy penalty and imprisonment. 
 The business on the Place went on, for a drapery 
 store had its uses for the Boches, but they paid 
 

 r 
 
 f 
 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF ST. QUENTIN 
 
A NO YON HOME 45 
 
 only in German paper money which, though it passed 
 currency at the time, is now valueless. Poor Monsieur 
 Besnard was left with three thousand francs worth 
 of their paper on his hands. 
 
 On one occasion when Madame Besnard came 
 to my room for the little talks in which we both 
 took great pleasure, I asked whether she had ever 
 had any decent Germans billeted on her, or whether 
 they were all of the same brand. 
 
 She replied that all had a curious similarity of 
 bearing and manner. "It is a part of the German 
 uniform," she remarked impartially. " For that 
 I blame them not, though it is not agreeable. I 
 have known those who were well conducted and 
 those also who were badly conducted. The most 
 of them I will concede were correct that is in this 
 house they were correct. Only on one occasipn a 
 Colonel he brought here two women of bad reputa- 
 tion. Then me when I saw enter those cocottes 
 I felt all indeed was finished. Never, never would 
 my poor little house again be clean it was disgraced ! 
 I wept, and my poor Hortense she wept so loud, 
 the Boche Colonel he sent to enquire if my husband 
 was deceased. Then I required that he should 
 come and hear what I should say to him, and very 
 plainly I told him why I wept. He replied nothing, 
 but presently I hear from the salon they all laugh 
 to make crack the ceiling. Nevertheless, they 
 invited no more those cocottes, and the Colonel he 
 tried to make amends the day after by offering 
 
46 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 me a concert. Yes, he had the cool blood to invite 
 me to enter my own salon to listen to some music 
 which an officer would make who was a famous 
 violinist, said he. Ah ! but I should hear how it 
 was beautiful the music of Germany ! ' Merci, 
 Monsieur,' I reply, ' the music of Germany I prefer 
 never to hear it already I have heard too much 
 of your music of Germany.' ' As you please,' he 
 says, and lifts the shoulders as he would say, ' The 
 old fool ! ' But he determines all the same that 
 I shall hear his music, for in the evening they open 
 wide the doors of the salon, and that violinist he 
 played for more than an hour. I must confess he 
 played well very well though me I refused to 
 make attention, for it was the music of Germany. 
 They called out always, ' Now, Madame, listen 
 this it is Beethoven ' ' this it is Brahms ' only 
 when they call, ' this it is the music of Mozart,' 
 then I permit myself to listen, for Mozart he is a 
 good Frenchman, our Mozart." 
 
 Her face shone with such innocent satisfaction, 
 I left it at that. After all is there not a long street 
 in Paris the Rue de Mozart ? And are not all 
 the great artist-spirits of the nationality of those 
 who comprehend their language, in whatever country 
 they may chance to dwell ? In this sense Mozart 
 is as truly French as German. " La musique n'a 
 pas de nation, c'est une langue universelle." 
 
 Poor little Madame Besnard ! Though her home 
 is cleansed and purified once more, and she and 
 
A NO YON HOME 47 
 
 her husband dwell again together in the green- 
 shuttered white house with their faithful bonne, 
 and the children are re-installed with their mother 
 on the Place yet they have not yet the security 
 of peace. Still they take up the daily paper with a 
 beating heart. Still they dread what the postman 
 may bring. The number of casualties are never 
 published in the French papers, but they know 
 no family in Noyon where death has not claimed 
 its toll. Lucette's husband has lost a leg thank 
 God it is no worse. Louis also has been wounded, 
 yet still spared, but for how long who knows ! 
 Anxiety for him has eaten deep into their hearts. 
 Through all those years of the occupation no word 
 reached the parents from the outside. Sometimes 
 a daring aviator flew over the town and dropped 
 a newspaper. The penalty for picking it up or 
 reading it was two months in a prison cell, in solitude 
 and starvation. But this never prevented it being 
 seized with alacrity, and passed from one to another 
 like a loaf among the starving, before any Boche 
 could prevent it. 
 
 The war was very near on every side. Hardly a day 
 or night that one did not hear the distant boom of 
 guns. Hardly a day that the call to take cover 
 did not sound while a Boche machine flew overhead 
 at that moment only on observation bent, but 
 the anti-aircraft guns made you pause and gave 
 you to think, very anxiously to think, with the 
 little ones over there on the Place. 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 
 
 MONSIEUR L' ADMINISTRATED was true to his promise 
 to assist us in visiting the devastated regions. 
 
 Most gallantly putting himself as well as his car 
 at our disposal, he took us first to see the village 
 of Blerancourt, the centre of a work of reconstruction 
 undertaken by a society of American ladies. We 
 crossed the river Oise and the canal where the 
 bridges had been blown up by the Germans when 
 retiring the previous March and built up again in 
 three weeks by the French. Occasionally we saw 
 Boche prisoners, P.G.'s, at work in the fields, or, 
 with poetic justice rebuilding the not too hope- 
 lessly shattered houses and barns their own handi- 
 work of a few months before. For the most part 
 they were young, ruddy and sturdy-looking, well 
 fed and well clothed, but like those at Boulogne 
 by no means of an amiable countenance. They 
 saluted our Captain very promptly seemed aware 
 of his presence through the backs of their heads 
 I expect it was woe betide them if they didn't. These 
 men knew better than to beguile the days of their 
 captivity with " Songs of Hate," and " Deutschland 
 iiber Alles," for the benefit of their French captors, 
 as did their brothers in England. Neither were 
 
 48 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 49 
 
 they provided with motor lorries to drive them to 
 their work. Even a walk of two miles was only 
 regarded as salutary. 
 
 " If they desire to eat well, must work well, ces 
 Messieurs Id," remarked the Administrator drily. 
 " As soon would we give them champagne for break- 
 fast as waste petrol to conduct them to their work." 
 
 This remark was called forth by my Croix Rouge 
 friend having said that when in England she had 
 seen the Germans from the camp on Salisbury Plain 
 driving daily to their work, jeering as they passed the 
 foot passengers and lifting the while their cheerful 
 voices in songs of Hun triumph. To her French 
 ears it had struck a jarring note on the morning air. 
 
 Though I assured Monsieur 1'Administrateur there 
 were also English ears which suffered acutely from 
 the curious phenomenon of this jarring note, I could 
 see he was not prepared to regard me as wholly 
 blameless in the matter. Studiously polite, there 
 was, nevertheless, a chill in the atmosphere. His 
 conversation showed him as a man of highly-strung 
 nerves and of a fierce patriotism. Talking with him 
 even as an ally strengthened by the bonds of cordial 
 understanding was like stepping delicately, Agag- 
 wise, from one red-hot brick to another. It is not 
 an easy position to find yourself held answerable 
 for the policy of twenty-two members of a 
 Government you have had no choice in appoint- 
 ing yet unable to repudiate any of their deeds 
 lest one should be deemed lacking in patriotism. 
 
50 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 Scylla and Charybdis are a reposeful alternative in 
 comparison. 
 
 We found the Settlement of American ladies 
 busily at work giving out boots and clothes at 
 their depots for relief, stocked with shiploads from 
 America. They had taken over a number of villages 
 in the devastated regions of this part, and as the 
 inhabitants flocked back to the ruined homes from 
 which they had been driven by the Huns, they 
 helped them to start life again. In their well- 
 tailored uniforms of the French " horizon bleu," 
 short skirts, high boots and blue felt hats, they 
 looked both smart and business-like, with due regard 
 to losing none of their feminine charm, as was evident 
 by the complete capture of the heart of the gallant 
 Military Administrator. 
 
 " They are not only charming women they are 
 also real great ladies " (de males grandes dames), 
 said he in a burst of enthusiasm. "Their dashing 
 motor cars with the little flags of stars and stripes, 
 their American shiploads of stores, their inexhaustible 
 funds, from which they were ever ready to draw, 
 these attractions, combined with charming manners 
 and good looks, formed a constellation of starriness 
 sufficient to make any man an astronomer," as 
 George Meredith has it. To the refugees of these 
 ruined villages and homesteads they appeared in 
 the light of wondrous radiant beings from a far 
 distant world. " Les dames Americaines," was 
 uttered in the tones in which the ancient Greeks 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 51 
 
 must have spoken of the Olympians when in beneficent 
 mood they descended to the earth. Driving through 
 many of these villages we saw a great deal of 
 their excellent work. The comfortable little wooden 
 houses (barraques), where the homeless families are 
 being installed for the winter. The restocking of 
 the farms with live stock, seeds and vegetables, and 
 the orchards with fruit trees. Everywhere the return- 
 ing inhabitants were setting to work with courage 
 renewed and hope revived by this timely, friendly help. 
 They were supplied also with agricultural implements 
 and garden tools so difficult to obtain in any part 
 of France, all such factories being used now for mak- 
 ing munitions. UAmerique was the wonderful store- 
 house, the land of plenty, from which came food 
 and clothes, boots and stoves, pots and pans, even 
 spades and ploughshares. Many a poor destitute 
 victim of the Boche lifted up the heart in gratitude 
 that le bon Dieu had made America, and Christophe 
 Colombe had the good luck to discover it. But 
 though Americans and English have done much to 
 help them, the people best able to raise the stricken 
 inhabitants of the devastated regions are naturally 
 those of their own nationality, their own faith, their 
 own speech. The Frenchwoman, who has lost her 
 husband, her son, whose home has also been burnt 
 to the ground, who uses the same speech and finds 
 comfort at the same altar she can speak to her 
 poorer sister from che depths of a common suffering. 
 To these other sufferers she can say, " I understand, 
 
52 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 for I too am French. I too have given all have 
 lost my heart's treasure have found comfort in 
 the faith of our fathers." 
 
 Though she may have but little money to give, 
 and few of the gifts of the generous Americans, 
 she gives what is of infinitely more value, the 
 sympathy which stimulates without danger of 
 enervating, the example which engenders hope and 
 courage. Such workers are found living among 
 their people, teaching them how to build up a new 
 life amidst the ruins, literally out of the ruins, 
 showing the quickly adaptable women how to turn 
 their hands to new and unaccustomed trades, holding 
 little extemporary schools for the children and 
 cliniques where the babies and sick people can 
 receive medicines and advice. 
 
 " Just to see Madame la Comtesse, it warms one 
 the heart, see you," said one brave old body. " Like 
 the good red wine of the country which fortifies 
 we others more than all the other kind gifts. She 
 has the right word for everyone she divines just 
 what you want some baby clothes will be needed 
 for this one a big saucepan for that one for me 
 and my old one it was a little stove impossible 
 to obtain, one declared yet Madame la Comtesse 
 she obtained it. There are of course many things 
 we need she cannot give, but always she gives the 
 courage she lifts up the heart which has fallen 
 into the despair crushed by the sorrow, see you, 
 for she has also known what it is to be crushed by 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 53 
 
 the sorrow. Her three sons they have been killed 
 in this cruel war ' My friends,' she says, ' they 
 have given their lives for France, our brave boys 
 yours and mine let us show by our courage and 
 our faith in God that we are worthy of them.' It 
 is like that she speaks, Madame la Comtesse, and 
 it consoles, it warms the heart, more even than the 
 good words of Monsieur le Cure." 
 
 Going through these villages where the Huns have 
 left their most deadly trail, there were many where 
 hardly one stone remained upon another. Chauny, 
 for instance, is only a heap of ruins though still 
 periodically shelled, no doubt in memory of the fact 
 that there were once aniline works there. Some 
 villages still have a few walls but half burnt, and 
 wherever it has been possible the courageous French 
 have set to work repairing and reconstructing. 
 In the fields the soldiers have rendered important 
 assistance. When resting at the back of the lines, 
 and often during their few days' leave, the poilus 
 have devoted their time to helping the old men and 
 women who alone are left to do the work of re- 
 claiming the devastated land clearing, ploughing 
 and sowing. One of the most Hunnish of all the 
 Hun deeds has been the wholesale deportation of 
 all the able-bodied women under fifty, and the cruel 
 tearing from their families of all young boys and 
 girls over the age of fourteen, leaving only those 
 they considered useless. The scenes that took place 
 were heart-rending, many mothers who would have 
 
54 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 followed their children but unable to leave the 
 babies at home, becoming nearly insane fighting 
 desperately to defend them when their screaming 
 children clung to them in a frenzy of terror. 
 But the Huns showed no pity, no mercy, even in- 
 sisting on separating brothers and sisters, mother 
 and daughter, when deported together. These deeds 
 were nearly always perpetrated at night, thereby 
 adding to the general terror and dismay. 
 
 The little village churches are almost all blown 
 up, lying prone in a melancholy heap upon the 
 graves of the once peaceful God's acre. The only 
 thing surviving here and there is a tall crucifix 
 emerging from the chaos as if triumphing over all 
 the efforts of the Boche. Most of the chateaux also 
 have been " made an example of ' either reduced 
 to a pile of ruins, or the walls alone left standing, 
 gaunt, charred and blackened with gaping holes 
 and sightless windows a spectacle for all the 
 countryside to behold and shudder, as at a grim 
 gallows set on a hill. 
 
 Neither were the orchards spared in which this 
 country abounded. Acres of bleeding stumps 
 marked the deadly trail of the Boche. He has 
 hacked down even the long avenues of poplars whose 
 friendly whisper was such an indispensable accom- 
 paniment along all the country roads, and is now 
 silenced for^ twenty years to come. 
 
 
 
 And this was once a smiling land flowing with 
 
CAUMONT IN 1917 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 55 
 
 milk and cider, glowing with fruits of the earth, 
 cornfields and orchards heavy laden ; happy little 
 villages crowned with an ancient church spire, where 
 dwelt a people, industrious, frugal, sunny-hearted 
 and content. 
 
 Here in his happy wanderings journeyed the 
 "Arethusa" with his friend the "Cigarette," 
 paddling their canoes down the canals and the rivers 
 Oise and Aisne tramping over the hills and resting 
 at night in the friendly woods or agreeable little 
 villages nestling among the folds of the fertile valleys 
 and open pastoral country. 
 
 What would that devout lover of France say and 
 feel could he see the Golden Valley now ! That 
 air once so sweet with the breath of " rejoicing 
 trees " and growing things, now laden with the dust 
 of burnt-up villages and farms, the smoke of exploding 
 shells and poison gas. Instead of the glowing 
 stretches of corn and the green beauty of the fields 
 and fruit trees, nothing far as the eye can reach, 
 nothing but grey stony desolation the earth so 
 scarred, so mutilated, so dry and arid, it seems 
 impossible Nature can ever heal such wounds and 
 restore poor Mother Earth to life and greenness. 
 The bodies of France's defending sons are sown 
 in that desolate waste among the gaping trenches, 
 entanglements of barbed wire and charred woods, 
 scene of such repeated battles. Sometimes a tiny 
 green enclosure, or a little wooden cross with the 
 tricolour rosette marks a solitary grave, but whole 
 
56 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 armies lie there barely hidden from sight, sown 
 not in weakness or defeat but an honourable death, 
 duke et decorum, to be raised in power and undying 
 glory. 
 
 The churchyards and cemeteries were full of soldiers' 
 graves. One of the most pitiful sights was the long 
 row in a newly-made cemetery, of open graves 
 ready, waiting. . . . 
 
 All along our route were traces of the battles so 
 recently fought. 
 
 The village of Bailly was completely razed to 
 the ground, like Chauny, no habitation left. At 
 Ribecourt the people had suffered from the depreda- 
 tions of the wild boar as successor to the Boche. 
 Not having been hunted for three seasons he had 
 grown so bold as to dare to come into the gardens 
 and take off all the vegetables newly planted. At 
 this village a good deal of reconstruction was going 
 on, many houses half demolished being repaired 
 and little wooden barraques erected. Often the 
 returning refugees lived in the remains of a cowhouse 
 or barn, any shelter if only to be on their own " foot 
 of earth " once more. One family consisting of a 
 grandmother, her daughter and a small boy were 
 living in the only building not destroyed a damp 
 and disused stable. Around them were the ruins 
 of their once prosperous farm, a comfortable house, 
 barns and sheds. 
 
 " No less than one hundred Boche soldiers were 
 planted on us at first," said the farmer's wife. " They 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 57 
 
 lay one over the other, there was no place for us 
 except this old stable where we had ceased to lodge 
 the horses it was too damp for them. When they 
 left, the enemy burnt all to the ground, even the 
 trees of the orchard they cut : there were no apples 
 like ours in all this country, and see now ! " She 
 pointed to the melancholy stumps in what had 
 once been an orchard. It gave one almost the feeling 
 of looking on mutilated human beings to see those 
 bleeding tree stumps. 
 
 " For two seasons they lived here. The Boches 
 liked well our poor apple trees, they eat all the 
 fruit all the chickens all the milk. They left 
 us only the beetroots ! " she added bitterly. Yet 
 the spirit of home-making was unquenchable, and 
 once back on their own land they had set to work 
 with a will to remake, even to re-beautify if possible. 
 This was shown by some drawings made by the 
 little boy which decorated the walls of the poor stable. 
 
 " He has the idea one day to become an artist," 
 said the grandmother with pride. In the garden 
 was still the deep trench made by the Boches when 
 they were fighting over this ground, but the potager 
 or kitchen garden had already been restored to some- 
 thing like order and profit by the energetic work 
 of the women and boy who lived chiefly on the 
 produce beans, potatoes, cabbages and beetroots. 
 One most invaluable assistant they had & goat ! 
 A French landowner of that country presents one 
 of these useful and unexacting animals to anyone 
 
68 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 applying to him, and there are few who do not apply. 
 We have yet to learn in England what a friend the 
 goat can be, especially to children, and how modest 
 are her demands. 
 
 Right close up to the grey hordes the returning 
 inhabitants were settling down in any shelter they 
 could find clearing the ground, sowing and planting 
 just as though they had now nothing to fear. It 
 reminded me of the way the villagers on the slopes 
 of Vesuvius return to their homes destroyed by the 
 molten stream of lava, and rebuild and settle down 
 again before the volcano has ceased rumbling. The 
 German guns were often heard rumbling in those days. 
 Yet even the French Government encouraged the 
 return of the inhabitants by giving compensation 
 for their losses in cows, pigs and goats. Many 
 however were utterly destitute. In one village I 
 met a poor bent old woman who, while my friend 
 was talking to the postmistress and enquiring of 
 the latest arrivals, begged me to come and see how 
 she was lodged. We walked down a dreary street 
 of ruins on either side ; among them she showed 
 at length a roofed-in shed. 
 
 " That is where we live, my old one and me," 
 she said. "At the back there stood our farm a 
 fine farm it was, the neighbours will tell you. The 
 sales Boches have made of it a heap of black stones ! 
 My old one has become quite foolish from the miseries 
 we have suffered often he speaks badly even to 
 me. He understands nothing, the unhappy one ! " 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 59 
 
 Great as were her material woes it was those 
 of the heart which evidently hurt most. That her 
 " old one " should be so changed that he spoke badly 
 even to his vieille ! 
 
 They were living in the former hen-house. Les 
 jeunes Qudqueres had supplied beds and Le Bon Gtte 
 a small oil stove and pot for cooking, " So one 
 manages," she said philosophically. But when she 
 spoke of her vieux the poor old voice quavered, 
 and when she told of her son from whom no news 
 had come for two years, the tears coursed slowly down 
 the poor old furrowed parchment cheeks. 
 
 " He and his wife and two children all had been 
 deported to work for the Boches in their accursed 
 land. The poor boy he was lame with a malady 
 of the hip, or of course he would have been serving 
 as soldier like everyone else. The Boches they care 
 not who they take ! They drag a dying one from 
 his bed to work in the coal mines. Ah, my poor 
 boy my Charles, does he live still ! " 
 
 The only comfort I could give was to write down 
 all particulars and put her in touch with the Society 
 which makes the repatriation of the deported their 
 special business. Already they have achieved some- 
 thing by getting the intervention of the Pope and 
 the King of Spain. The Huns have been obliged 
 for diplomatic reasons to restore some three hundred 
 of the women and girls carried off to slavery the 
 previous March. Thousands were seized in the 
 occupied territory, and this it was hoped was only 
 
60 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 a first instalment of those soon to be restored. 
 One thing however seemed but too certain, that many 
 would die before their rescue came. There was the 
 young sister-in-law of the postmistress of where we 
 stopped on our way. She was among the fortunate 
 three hundred if you can call anyone " fortunate " 
 who looks like poor Clemence so lifeless, so hopeless 
 " as yellow as a lemon! And that girl had six 
 months ago the cheeks colour of apples the sun 
 has kissed," said her sister-in-law. " But there, 
 what will you, she has lived for four months on 
 
 beetroots and soup of cabbage- stalks " 
 
 " It was not alone the hunger, it was the dirt 
 the misery the agony of mind," said the girl 
 suddenly, and then relapsed into silence. Evidently 
 she could not talk of that time in Germany. It 
 was too recent. But when she left the room, we 
 learnt how they had been sent back in cattle-trucks 
 herded together to suffocation. During the journey 
 which lasted nearly seven days and nights they had 
 gone through such torment that three of their number 
 had succumbed, and with their dead companions 
 they had continued to the end of that journey. 
 
 In these villages occupied for so long by the 
 enemy many a drama, many a tragedy has taken 
 place. For though the Boche was here under strict 
 discipline, and the terrible outrages impossible which 
 took place at the outbreak of war in Belgium and 
 the North of France, when mad with drink they 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 61 
 
 raided the convents and the girls' schools, sparing 
 no one, old or young, still the Hun is always a 
 Hun and does not change his spots even when obliged 
 to hide them. The misery and starvation of their 
 children drove many of these village women into a 
 terrible situation. Sometimes the victim had as 
 little voice in the matter as the nuns in Flanders, 
 but often it was to save her children from starvation 
 and cold in the awful winter months, food and fuel 
 being nearly all seized by the German, that the 
 young wife of the absent poilu sold herself. 
 
 There was one such a case round which the whispers 
 of the neighbours still centred she who dwelt in 
 the cottage standing back from the road apart 
 like herself. " Ah, the miserable one what will 
 you ! The Boche he paid her well he was well 
 behaved, that one. The good God knows one could 
 not say this of many of those animals there ! She 
 had three children, see you, and to give them enough 
 to eat with the few francs she gained by washing, 
 it was not possible. At first she refused to act 
 badly la malheureuse then the eldest child he 
 began to cough and to grow so thin one could count 
 every bone, the others also like all the little ones, 
 became pale as parsnips. Ah ! but it tore one the 
 heart to see the children, the babies, who died in 
 those days. One day then at the end of her forces, 
 Madelon in despair she became the mistress of the 
 Boche the miserable one to give to eat to the 
 little ones she did it not from lightness, you under- 
 
62 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 stand ! She said to herself if he comes back, my 
 Francois, he will surely pardon me when I show 
 to him the children who are well and strong. Then 
 at last arrives the time when we gain a victory and 
 our army it pushes the Boche out of this village. 
 So quickly our brave boys they advance, the enemy 
 had no time to burn the village and to make jump 
 the church, as in other places. Then one day there 
 comes to the door the husband of Madelon, the brave 
 Francois. Six months before the Boche he had 
 departed leaving her with a gros bebe. Strange it 
 may appear but Madelon she felt for that bebe a sincere 
 affection. Francois he takes in the arms his wife 
 he embraces his little ones when suddenly he 
 looks ! There in the cradle he sees a child, fat, 
 rosy, of perhaps ten months old. It must be remem- 
 bered for two years and a half he had not seen his 
 wife nor heard any news. c Whose is that child ? ' 
 he asks all trembling. ' Helas \ my poor Franois,' 
 cries la malheureuse, ' I will not lie to thee it is 
 my child to save the life of Pierre it was that I 
 consented at last. The Boche already six months 
 he has departed, without doubt by now he is killed in 
 all the cases never we shall see him again.' She wept 
 she excused herself she reproached herself never 
 had she loved any man save her husband of that 
 she was incapable. But to all she said he replied 
 nothing. Like a stone he regarded her, as though 
 the heart had ceased to beat. Then without a 
 word he picked up his knapsack and his helmet 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 63 
 
 from the floor, and he turned away. Down the 
 street out of the village he went, and never again 
 has the unhappy Madelon heard of him." 
 
 Will Franois ever return ? Has he gone back 
 to seek death, or to inflict it on as many of the Boches 
 as possible. That abhorrent people who have taken 
 all all that made life worth living. Better a 
 thousand times had their guns killed her and all 
 the children that he could have borne as others 
 have had to bear it. Le Ion Dieu would have kept 
 them safe and clean in His Paradise till he too should 
 depart and be reunited to them. But now, what 
 was left to him ! Not only the hideous fact that 
 she, his well-loved wife, his beautiful Madelon, 
 had belonged to a vile Boche, but in his home con- 
 fronting him daily, the child of that Boche calling 
 his wife " mother." And she, loving the young 
 Boche, as a mother must love her innocent helpless 
 child, caring for him as for the others. And this 
 daily going on under his very eyes, so that never for 
 one hour would he be able to forget ! Poor Franois. 
 Poor, poor Madelon ! 
 
 One day we had as our guide another Commandant 
 of the district. His life was not so harassed as 
 that of his confrere at Noyon, and his temperament 
 far less highly strung. The very car in which he 
 was wont to drive on his rounds would have been 
 enough to produce a crisis of the nerves with the 
 former, whereas this gallant and genial gentleman 
 seemed quite oblivious that he was seated upon a 
 
64 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 quivering corkscrew, and so beguiling was his con- 
 versation we were enabled to sit on corkscrews 
 likewise with smiling faces as he told us of his ex- 
 periences with the British Allies and his partiality 
 for the English officers. The Scotch too with their 
 uniforms so amusing, so original, he liked " Oh ver' 
 moch." Once he had been to a Scotch church- 
 that also was "very original." He had heard there 
 " an excellent discourse " evidently rather a surprise. 
 
 " But I will confess," he said, "that I received at 
 first a shock to hear that preacher treating the good 
 God with such familiarity addressing Him c thou ' 
 as if He were a comrade of the trenches ! But after 
 a time it becomes clear to me that the bonhomme 
 he had no intention of blasphemy quite the con- 
 trary, this mode of address was merely a Scotch 
 custom even as the kilt uniform the whisky 
 the bagpipe ! And to say truth I approved very 
 much of that discourse given with such sincerity 
 such eloquence which his costume of black draperies 
 rendered profoundly impressive." 
 
 Jolting over the broken roads our guide pointed 
 out how thorough had been the work of the Boche 
 even where his retreat had been a positive scuttle. 
 Not a bridge but had been blown up not a carrefour 
 (crossroads) but had been mined one of these, 
 an important junction of main roads, had been 
 mined with a time fuse, deferring the explosion one 
 month, by which time it was calculated there would 
 be constant transports along this route. But the 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 65 
 
 Angels, whose guardianship has been experienced 
 on many occasions besides that of Mons, saw to it 
 that nothing disastrous resulted save a huge cavity. 
 
 " The fashion in which the Boche executed his 
 plan of destruction was always the same," said the 
 Commandant. " It was perfectly simple, and of 
 the thoroughness of the Car of Juggernaut. When 
 the order came to retreat, already some days before, 
 every horse and cow had been driven away. This 
 made little difference to the inhabitants, for the 
 Boches had appropriated them from the moment 
 of their arrival. The villagers were summoned to 
 assemble in the church on pain of death every 
 man, woman and child must obey. The church 
 doors were then locked. The people inside looked 
 at each other fearfully as sounds of explosions, of 
 falling things, reached them from time to time. On 
 the outer walls of the church too could be heard 
 ominous, tapping sounds. 
 
 " ' What is it ? ' asked the women, and the old 
 men answered : ' They take out the stones they 
 make holes Why ? In order to insert mines or 
 bombs and make jump the church ! ' The unhappy 
 ones like rats in a hole they found themselves 
 impossible to escape, for outside the Boches kept 
 guard ready to shoot any who even showed the nose 
 at a window. After two, three hours, suddenly the 
 church door is flung open and the Boche Commander 
 shouts : ' Out with you pigs ! Go back now to your 
 nice little village and each find his house if he can.' 
 
 E 
 
66 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " In truth," went on our guide, " it was often 
 difficult to recognise a single house. All was by this 
 time in a blaze. Walls were falling, broken windows 
 smashing orchard trees cut down, leaving only 
 bleeding stumps. The Boches had cleared away 
 all things of value which could be taken in their 
 lorries all the animals for food, pigs, fowls, etcetera. 
 What they could not take they destroyed and then 
 set fire to all. As they left the church matches were 
 applied to the incendiary pastilles and mines, and with 
 a loud report the church lay prone upon the graves. 
 ' Vor warts,' then cries the gallant representative o! 
 Kultur, and they proceed to the next village." 
 
 For some time we drove on in silence. The idea 
 of reparation, of reconstruction seemed so hope- 
 lessly inadequate, so utterly futile. And the de- 
 struction was on such a vast scale the whimsical 
 words of Lewis Carrol kept singing in my head 
 
 " ' If seven maids with seven mops 
 Swept it for half an year, 
 Do you suppose,' the walrus said, 
 ' That they could get it clear ? ' 
 
 ' I doubt it/ said the carpenter," etc. 
 
 I, too, doubted it ! As hopeless as the seven mops 
 to clear away the sands of the sea- shore appeared 
 the task of clearing away the debris of the Boches 
 les sales Boches / Yet as our friend the Commandant 
 observed when I tried to express this depressing 
 thought, " II faut faire ce qu'on peut ! " 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 67 
 
 We had not finished with the Boches that day, 
 for having seen how they treated the country people, 
 their homes and their churches, our guide explained 
 we must now see what they did for the aristocracy 
 and their homes. 
 
 " Here we see how the Boche he arranges a 
 chateau ! " said the Commandant as we drew up 
 before some stately, iron- wrought gates. It can only 
 have been owing to a deplorable oversight that these 
 had not been battered out of shape. 
 
 Through the gates we looked in vain for any sign 
 of human habitation. A gigantic heap of rubble 
 out of which occasionally stuck a broken window 
 frame, the corner of a carved cornice or the sugges- 
 tion of a marble mantelpiece that was all. 
 
 "The country people come and search for wood 
 to light their fires for which the window frames 
 still serve," remarked the Commandant. " This was 
 once a charming chateau, style of Frai^ois I er . 
 Many a pleasant hour have I passed with the 
 hospitable hostess my old friend. Now, alas ! 
 robbed of all. The Boche has taken her sons, 
 her grandsons, her home, her village with the little 
 church she lived all. Her love for France, her 
 faith in God these alone remain to her. Her 
 only daughter has died in childbirth, she could not 
 support the agony of mind or body she succumbed. 
 But we old ones sorrow does not kill, or where would 
 any of us be ? '' 
 
 Surrounding the chateau must once have been a 
 
68 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 lovely park. One could picture the happy, peaceful, 
 dignified life of that old lady. With her dainty 
 Louis Seize furniture, her old satinwood spinette 
 and Boucher fans, her powdered grandmothers 
 smiling serenely from the panelled walls. Her 
 ordered, pleasant, useful life among her family 
 and her villagers. And then out of the blue a 
 horrible cry which forty-four years before had rung 
 through the land so long ago it had been relegated 
 in her memory to a past existence War ! And 
 before one had time to realise the haste and hurry 
 of the rapid mobilisation the hordes of grey vermin 
 were over the frontier sweeping everything before 
 them. " They come, they come ! The Boches ! Save 
 yourself ! " 
 
 " She was old and without force, my poor friend, 
 or she would have remained to confront the enemy 
 and to help the wounded, but they insisted she 
 should escape while yet there was time. And in 
 the night she left. When she returned, six months 
 
 ago, it was to this ! " 
 
 
 
 Another chateau we passed standing high on the 
 hillside. In the distance one had the illusion that 
 it had escaped the universal destruction, but on 
 coming nearer one saw its sightless eyes and roofless 
 walls. It was but a charred shell, a crucified monu- 
 ment left standing as an example of Schrecklichkeit 
 a warning to those who dare " stand upright in 
 the path of the German," as Bernhardi said. 
 
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BOCHE 9 
 
 " In the private chapel there they broke open 
 the tombs, and threw out the bodies. They enraged 
 themselves very much, the Boches, because the 
 ancestors of the Comte had omitted to be buried 
 with some of their valuable jewels. The Boches 
 found nothing to repay them for their trouble. It 
 appears that some very High Personage took part 
 in this pillage it was really very inconsiderate 
 of those old French counts and countesses to be 
 buried with fine monuments which contained nothing 
 but their miserable old bones ! " 
 
 Our guide chuckled gleefully as he thought of 
 the disappointment of the High Personage and his 
 minions. 
 
 But as we drove on from one wrecked village 
 to another through the scarred, arid country of many 
 battles, the amazing madness of the Hun impressed 
 one more and more profoundly. To loot chateaux, 
 to steal cows, even to annex provinces who was 
 the better for it ? And the price paid in millions 
 of Huns, leaving widows and mothers mourning all 
 their days. Would a cow or a farm full of stock make 
 up for a beloved son ? And the price in taxes, in 
 hardships, even suppose them victors ? What, then, 
 was it all for ? What was it all about, this incredible, 
 overwhelming world war of the German making ? 
 
 Are they such fools as to wish to take over France 
 or England ? In what respect would it add to their 
 happiness the happiness of the German people ? 
 
70 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 The pride and greed of the High Command it might 
 gratify no doubt, but would Hans and Fritz be the 
 better for it ? The prouder grows Fritz's master 
 the worse for Fritz. Was he ever one whit the better 
 for the filching of Alsace and Lorraine ? Does Hans 
 or Fritz go home, if perchance he ever does go home, 
 a happier or a richer man because he has assisted 
 in killing two million Frenchmen, destroying their 
 peaceful, prosperous homesteads, and three thousand 
 beautiful churches in ten Departements of France, 
 inflicting torture and death on the inoffensive in- 
 habitants, men, women and children, who bore 
 him no ill-will, and were wholly guiltless of any desire 
 to possess anything belonging to him? Even in 
 the matter of loot, was the game worth the candle ? 
 True, Hans brought home the clock he stole from 
 Pierre's kitchen, and he fought Fritz for a big copper 
 stewpan, but it was only the officers and the High 
 Command who got the valuable things. The Crown 
 Prince, for example Ah I for the trainloads that one 
 carted away from the chateau of the old Marquise 
 with whom he passed a week, for such abundant 
 booty it might perhaps be worth while to make a 
 world war ! But from the standpoint of Hans and 
 Fritz when they came to reflect on the net result 
 to themselves, surely aggressive war (and all their 
 wars have been aggressive, planned deliberately), is 
 raving lunacy. 
 
LES JEUNES QUlQUERES 
 
 IN these devastated regions a settlement of some 
 young men of the Society of Friends were also do- 
 ing most helpful work. Everyone spoke well of les 
 jeunes Qudqueres, though some regarded them rather 
 in the light of natural curiosities. 
 
 ' Young men of good health, of good disposition, 
 of intelligence even ! and yet they obtain exemption 
 from making their service to their country. What 
 droll young men ! What a droll Government ! " 
 commented one of our military friends. " But then, 
 of course," he added by way of explanation, " for 
 you others this war is not serious as for us. We 
 have the enemy here planted upon our soil. For 
 us there can be no question of indulging in the 
 fantasies of the excellent young Qudqueres. But 
 at least we can make them very welcome here it 
 is an excellent work they accomplish, aiding the 
 returning inhabitants to cultivate their lands and 
 replant their orchards." 
 
 The headquarters of the settlement was a farm- 
 house which they had made very comfortable, and 
 where they kindly invited us to share their midday 
 meal of simple but excellent fare. 
 
 Though within sight of the German sky sausages 
 
 71 
 
72 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 and within sound occasionally of the German guns 
 there was a note of the peaceful idyllic life among 
 this community of young English and American men ; 
 rising at dawn from their low beds in the wide 
 attic to tend the cattle, milk the cows and plough 
 the fields ; busy all day bringing order out of 
 chaos, erecting temporary shelters for the homeless 
 inhabitants and helping the scarred and stricken 
 earth to regain her blessed fertility and serenity. 
 As they gathered round the board with healthy 
 outdoor appetites, their few remarks showed their 
 interests and concerns were solely for the weather, 
 the crops, the beasts. It was difficult to realise 
 that we stood in the heart of the war zone on the 
 ground of recent battlefields, and not on a ranch in 
 California or a farm in Dalacarlia. 
 
 Yet the family for whom they were working this 
 very farm were among the victims whose wrongs 
 cried aloud to Heaven for retribution ; the women 
 having been seized and carried off as slaves to 
 Germany, while the men were fighting and dying 
 to defend their homes from the wanton aggressor. 
 The hordes of invading Huns had been driven only 
 a few miles back after three years' colossal effort. 
 Things were so critical that any day they might 
 sweep back again over all this countryside, destroy- 
 ing the newly-sown fields, burning, pillaging, mutilat- 
 ing not only houses, barns and cattle, but women, 
 old men and little children. 
 
 The industrious young Friends had succeeded 
 
LES JEUNES QUlQUtiRES 73 
 
 in filling the big barns with grain and hay, and 
 stocking the place with pigs and fowls. They seemed 
 to have no misgivings as to the power of the allied 
 armies to hold the foe at bay. It never appeared 
 to strike their simple, unreasoning souls that their 
 peaceful rural work was absolutely conditioned by 
 the readiness of these other men to give their lives 
 in the firing-line. 
 
 To my French friend with not only three brothers, 
 seven nephews and some two dozen cousins at the 
 front, but every fit man of her acquaintance, this 
 group of stalwart young men were such a problem 
 that she could not resist the impulse to thresh out 
 the subject with one of their number whose kindly 
 intelligent face encouraged her to believe in his 
 capacity to enter into a fair and reasonable dis- 
 cussion an optimistic spirit I could not share, 
 long experience in the arenas of social, political and 
 religious reform having taught me that any reason- 
 able and fair discussion, on any subject whatever, 
 is impossible when one person is viewing it from a 
 small side window and the other from the roof. 
 
 The Frenchwoman from her high level of patriotism, 
 of individual life merged in that of the nation, could 
 not conceive of the restricted outlook obtained from 
 the narrow window of the individual conscience, 
 held as supreme arbiter even when at variance with 
 highest ideals of self-sacrifice for the human family. 
 She began with gentle insistence : 
 
 ' Tell me, I beg you, Monsieur, you whose con- 
 
74 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 science dictates it is a sin to fight for the defence 
 of your country, what would you do for the defence 
 then of your family your mother, your wife, 
 your little child, if the Boche, bayonet in hand, 
 stood on your threshold ? ' ! 
 
 " Madame, I have never been placed in that position 
 I am glad to say," the young Quaker replied, satis- 
 fied that this was conclusive. Bui the Frenchwoman's 
 logic was not so easy-going. 
 
 " That you individually have not been faced with 
 the problem is no answer, Monsieur. When one is 
 dealing with conduct based on a question of principle 
 one must face circumstances which others have to 
 face at this moment daily. This ground on which 
 we are standing is soaked with the blood of French 
 victims to Boche savagery women ravaged, little 
 children mutilated and bayoneted while clinging to 
 their mothers. If a Boche seized your wife what 
 would you do, I ask ? " 
 
 " I would endeavour to deter him from violence 
 with moral suasion," answered the young man 
 earnestly. His simple belief in the power of his 
 tongue was very curious one wondered on what 
 foundation it rested. 
 
 " Moral suasion with a mad hyena ? And if it 
 had no effect, your moral suasion, my good 
 Monsieur ? " 
 
 " Oh, then," said the poor young man driven 
 into a corner, " then I should give him ... a 
 push ! " 
 
LES JEUNES QUlQUilRES 75 
 
 " Mon pauvre Monsieur ! " said my Croix Rouge 
 friend with a shrug of her shoulders, "it is well 
 indeed that you have no wife and no child to 
 defend." 
 
 She turned away and the young man appealed 
 to me. "It is not that I should fear being killed," 
 he said pathetically, " but we think it wrong to 
 take life, you see " 
 
 " Would you not think it even more wrong to stand 
 by and see a hideous cruelty perpetrated on a defence- 
 less woman or child whether your own wife and child 
 it does not seem to me to matter ? " I could not help 
 asking. 
 
 " No," he said, " I should pray, but I would not 
 kill. It is contrary to our creed to use violence 
 or to take life." 
 
 I could not resist asking him if he was not thinking 
 rather too much of mere bodily life and not enough 
 of the soul life whether honour was not a far more 
 precious thing to keep alive than the body ? " Besides," 
 I went on, in spite of my convictions as to arguing, 
 " in standing by while a Boche takes the lives of 
 half a dozen French children you might save, you 
 are really participating in their death. The fact is 
 you want to be a neutral, and there is no such position 
 tenable in the great spiritual conflict which this 
 war stands for." 
 
 He looked at me in surprise. 
 
 " A spiritual conflict war a spiritual conflict ? 
 I could never regard personal violence as a weapon 
 
76 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 in a spiritual conflict," said he. "I regard this 
 as war man's war and all war is wrong because 
 it takes human life." 
 
 I was tempted to ask him, but forbore, whether 
 his Society of Friends extended their objection to 
 the taking of human life by other and far more 
 protracted and painful means than guns and fire- 
 arms for example the deadly trades flourishing 
 in the north country city where he himself lived, 
 claiming their toll of thousands yearly, many of the 
 victims children in their teens ; or the white slave 
 traffic which before the war engulfed in its deadly 
 maw a vaster number every year than had been killed 
 at Verdun. But I felt from his window he had 
 never seen these battlefields he was among that 
 vast majority who accept conditions as they find 
 them in spite of his Quaker scruples, which also, 
 come to analyse them, had been accepted without 
 much deep boring in the well spring. He lit his 
 match without asking the fate of the match girls 
 working with phosphorus. He wore his corduroy 
 suit ignorant of the deadly lime solution essential 
 to its manufacture. He turned on the tap to his 
 bath without a qualm as to the appalling conditions 
 under which women were making those brass fittings. 
 Human life being sacrificed recklessly all around 
 him and in such a way as made death by a gun 
 duke et decorum indeed. 
 
 I would have left the subject here, finishing it 
 with these silent reflections, but the young Quaker 
 
LES JEUNES QU1QU&RES 77 
 
 desired to justify not so much himself I believe, as 
 his sect, the honour for which he was jealous. 
 
 " You see," he went on, " we believe in turning 
 the other cheek, we endeavour to follow the teaching 
 of Christ He deprecated violence. ..." 
 
 Here my French friend returned to the charge. 
 Being of an old Huguenot Protestant family she was 
 as ready with quotations from the Bible as a good 
 Catholic would have been from the Church Manuals. 
 She reminded our Quaker that it was his own cheek 
 he was to turn, not his wife's or child's " Nothing 
 so easy as to bear the wrongs of others with toler- 
 ance," said she, " but the Christ never taught this 
 far from it. He said, He came to bring a sword and 
 as to stern action, violence if you will, did He not take 
 a whip of small cords and drive those dirty, corrupt, 
 desecrating tradesmen from the Temple when He 
 knew talking was useless talking would have meant 
 throwing pearls before swine. What have you to 
 say to that, Monsieur ? " 
 
 But the young man remained of the same opinion 
 still, and said so. Though a Christian, it did not ap- 
 parently follow that he considered Christ knew better 
 than the Society of Friends. " I do not approve of 
 violence in any form," he repeated immovably. 
 
 " It is a colossal conceit from which those young 
 men suffer," remarked my friend when we were 
 alone. "They think their little human intelligence 
 and half-baked consciences are more to be heeded 
 than the divine teaching of the Christ Himself." 
 
78 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 But it was not quite that, it was the need for 
 leaving his Quaker window and going up another 
 floor from which to take in more of the view, as 
 indeed many of these same Friends have done, with 
 the result that they have given their services as 
 stretcher-bearers, orderlies in field hospitals, etc. 
 The young Friends regarded such service as violating 
 the principle of " doing nothing to help the war," 
 even indirectly, as would be the saving and restoring 
 men for the fighting army. Yet they themselves 
 were refreshingly inconsistent, for when I spoke of 
 two young cousins of old Quaker stock who had 
 laid down their lives in this war among the first 
 volunteers, I was at once told of this one's brother 
 and that one's nephew in the hottest part of the 
 fight, and this without any regret, but quite the 
 contrary, with a truly saving grace of inconsistency 
 which made one's heart warm towards the speaker ! 
 
 In the stables we found a horse who had proved 
 that for quadrupeds at least conscientious objec- 
 tions were not workable on a farm. He had even 
 forced his pacifist masters into the inconsistency of 
 using physical force. The Quaker's rule required 
 obedience from those working under them, but this 
 horse had strong ideas on the subject of freedom 
 of individual choice he conscientiously objected to 
 having his will crossed and to being put into 
 harness, " Live and let live " being his motto. He 
 had signified his protest against compulsory service 
 by dealing a nasty kick at his master, and as a con- 
 
LES JEUNES QUlQU&RES 79 
 
 sequence was deprived of liberty to repeat the action. 
 Physical force had put a halter round his neck and 
 punished him with isolation and short commons. 
 He looked round as his sins were rehearsed, showing 
 an angry gleam in the corner of his eye. It was 
 evident he was of the same opinion still ready 
 for another, and even better placed kick, should 
 his masters lapse into pacifism with him. He 
 had the typically militant soul of| the Conscientious 
 Objector. 
 
THE ANGEL OF NO YON 
 
 NOYON, like every other town throughout France, 
 was full of hospitals many with their two, three 
 thousand beds, long miles of wounded yet all 
 this suffering kept quietly and unobtrusively in the 
 background. No wounded or convalescent men were 
 ever seen in the streets, rarely even a nurse ; one 
 had to seek out the hospitals, they did not " jump 
 one in the eye." But they were there. Just outside 
 the town spread the great evacuation ambulance of 
 tents and huts, and in the town nearly every large 
 building had been converted into rows and rows 
 of beds whereon lay the victims of the Boche's 
 SchrecklicKkeit. 
 
 Among many French nurses calling forth my ad- 
 miration, there was one I shall always remember 
 with special affection a charming young Croix 
 Rouge infirmiere, giving voluntary service at one of 
 these vast military hospitals. 
 
 Not only her poilu patients, but matron, nurses 
 and doctors, spoke of her as " the Angel " ; they 
 said the first to do so had been the English Tommies 
 she remained, under German rule, to nurse in 1914. 
 She accepted the name as a term of affection, not 
 in any way as signifying a pedestal of virtues setting 
 
ANGEL AMID RUINS 
 
THE ANGEL OF NO YON 81 
 
 her apart from her kind, though in her spotless white 
 uniform and coif of the Croix Rouge she was fittingly 
 garbed as a ministering angel. Her soft brown 
 eyes and dark brown hair parted over serene level 
 brows recalled the San Sisto Madonna, a human 
 angel of the Mother type rather than the winged 
 angelic being, too far removed for human nature's 
 daily food. 
 
 It is certain one could picture no vision more 
 healing and heart-warming to a wounded man re- 
 gaining consciousness in hospital than the strong 
 
 sweet young face of Mdlle Claire L , sister in 
 
 charge of the long ward of sixty beds in the Military 
 Ambulance. This hospital, like all others in Noyon, 
 was terribly understaffed, and Mdlle Claire had no 
 one to help, even at night, with her sixty patients 
 except the convalescent men, not one of whom 
 but was ready to give his service to the utmost of 
 his powers. The difficulty was to choose among 
 the many volunteers, whether for scrubbing the floor, 
 serving the meals, dressing the wounds or sitting 
 up with the dying at nights. As she passed down 
 the ward the dark heads on the pillows turned 
 towards her as the wounded fifty years ago once 
 gazed after " The Lady with the Lamp." 
 
 " She is my right hand," said the matron, also 
 a Croix Rouge lady giving her service btntvole in this 
 Military Hospital. " She is capable of taking my 
 post to-morrow the head so strong and the heart 
 so tender, so sympathetic. Never she thinks to 
 
82 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 spare herself that child ! And with that she is of a 
 courage to face an army of the Boches. In effect 
 she faced them, the enemy hordes, when they swept 
 into the town that day of August which one can 
 never forget." 
 
 It was on the 29th of August 1914 the dread report 
 flew round Noyon " The Boches are advancing." 
 The authorities desired all nurses to leave with the 
 transportable patients. But Mdlle Claire, together 
 with several other infirmieres of the Secours aux 
 Blesses Militaires, refused to quit those who could 
 not be moved, among them some poor British 
 Tommies as well as French wounded. The week 
 before many had been brought in from the 
 trenches at Commines, and day by day others had 
 followed to be transferred to base hospitals with all 
 speed. 
 
 The French nurses' brave decision to stay and 
 face the dreaded foe was justified that very night, 
 and twenty more British wounded had cause to bless 
 the fate which bestowed such a boon as a French 
 Red Cross nurse in what next day became a German 
 hospital. Early the following morning, like a plague 
 of grey locusts devouring all as they passed, the 
 Huns swept over Noyon. Terrible stories preceded 
 them, stories from eye-witnesses, scared villagers 
 fleeing they knew not whither, like leaves before a 
 gale. They told of ruthless savagery, fire and sword 
 and pillage, and a fate for women and girls which 
 made a clean death by fire or sword a grace to be 
 
THE ANGEL OF NOYON 83 
 
 prayed for. Yet, realising all, the French nurses 
 stood to their guns, refusing to desert the wounded. 
 
 Any and all nurses were urgently needed in those 
 first weeks before the arrival of the German army 
 nurses, and the French infirmieres were overwhelmed 
 with work day and night as the wounded poured 
 in. The Hun doctors were not pleasant to work 
 under, their attitude being that of the triumphant 
 conqueror dragging his captives at his chariot 
 wheels, but the lives of the French nurses became 
 far more insupportable when the Hun army nurses 
 arrived and took over the reins of government. 
 These women, of a common rough type, made it 
 their special business to insult and persecute the 
 French ladies not only because they belonged to 
 a hated nation let no one imagine the Hymn of 
 Hate is reserved solely for the English but by 
 reason of the ingrained hostility the pot de fer 
 experiences always for the pot de terre. To drag 
 down the pride, so-called, of the Frenchwomen, to 
 subject them to every indignity, was in strict accord 
 with the Hun standard of patriotism. With this 
 object in view they had recourse to a favourite German 
 expedient ; driving the matron, a lady of noble 
 birth and noble soul, together with her staff of young 
 nurses, into a long ward, they obliged them to strip 
 and stand in a row for inspection, under the pretext 
 of searching them. Marching up and down, the 
 female Huns then examined each garment as if 
 expecting to find bombs and poison concealed in 
 
84 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 the folds. The scene was prolonged with truly 
 German thoroughness, appearing to afford an endless 
 source of German wit and merriment of the pot 
 de fer quality. 
 
 " It was part of the price we paid in order to tend 
 and comfort our poor boys," said the young nurse, 
 " but it is difficult to think of those gross creatures 
 and the ordeal they made us suffer without a feeling 
 of abhorrence." 
 
 Mdlle Claire was fortunate in having her own home 
 in Noyon, to which she could retreat when not on 
 night duty. In an old house guarded by tall sentinel 
 pine trees and flanked by a convent she lived with 
 her widowed mother and an old uncle a priest, an 
 atmosphere which would have seemed likely to 
 guarantee peace and security. But neither widows 
 nor white-haired priests were spared by the Boche. 
 They were brought under the iron heel and gripped 
 by the mailed fist like the rest. The old priest 
 was arrested, and after being roughly handled, packed 
 off in a cattle truck to Germany "as a hostage," 
 together with all other priests except those of 
 extreme age and infirmity who were left to officiate 
 at the Cathedral. Priests of military age had, of 
 course, been mobilised on the declaration of war. 
 In France a man is not held exempt on account of his 
 priesthood from what is considered the first and 
 highest duty he rather leads the way ; and the 
 manner in which the French priest has fulfilled his 
 twofold duties on the battlefield has done more 
 
THE ANGEL OF NO YON 85 
 
 to restore religion and faith, and strengthen the 
 Church, than all the miracles of Lourdes. 
 
 Mdlle Claire had only had a few months' pre- 
 paration for the tremendous task that awaited her. 
 Like many young girls of the educated classes she 
 went in for a course of Croix Rouge instruction, 
 not only with the desire to know something useful 
 but as a pleasant way of meeting her friends and 
 getting up concerts and entertainments to obtain 
 funds for the Society. To be a member of the Secours 
 aux Blesses Militaires, to pass your examination 
 with distinction, was a fashion for some years before 
 the war, and fortunate for their country that it 
 was so, for when the sudden call rang out for women 
 as well as men to mobilise for National Service, 
 thousands of efficient, well-equipped young women 
 were ready to come forward, eighteen thousand 
 of the S.B.M. alone, and this number before long 
 was doubled. 
 
 During those terrible years of the German occupa- 
 tion, when Hun tyranny ground down the lives of 
 the inhabitants to starvation and misery, and deeds 
 of gross injustice and violence went unpunished, 
 Mdlle Claire, from her comparatively protected position 
 as a Croix Rouge nurse, with mother and home near 
 by, did her utmost to extend a sheltering wing to 
 other girls. In the hospital the French nurses 
 formed a bodyguard to each other. After their 
 first experiences of the manners and customs of the 
 Boche army doctors they always went in couples 
 
86 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 to the private interviews to which these gentlemen 
 so often summoned the young and good-looking 
 nurses. Every device was used to break up this 
 united front, but only in rare cases with success, 
 chiefly no doubt because of the protecting influence 
 erected on their behalf by the Swiss Croix Rouge, 
 who, realising their danger, kept in constant touch. 
 The Swiss could be of service to the Hun prudent 
 therefore to stand well with them. 
 
 Out of one hundred German doctors with whom 
 she was brought in personal contact during those 
 years, Mdlle Claire's verdict was that she had 
 met but three who stood out conspicuously from 
 the rest as "of good conduct " a lower record 
 than those of Sodom and Gomorrah. She was 
 unable to concede even this percentage, however, 
 in favour of the Boche nurses. It would seem as 
 if the effect of German Kultur was signally dis- 
 astrous on the women of the race, the male, by 
 his denial to his womenkind of all claim to liberty, 
 equality or fraternity, crushing out all that makes 
 for self-respect or any noble ideal of her place in 
 the universe. The result is, that like a plant deprived 
 of light and space, the German woman, if not utterly 
 crushed, throws out contorted branches and develops 
 perverse and tyrannical qualities, when opportunity 
 offers a victim, essentially unwomanly and un- 
 feminine. It is not surprising they proved anything 
 but sympathetic nurses even with their own men. 
 " A man who found himself weak and ill they rather 
 
THE ANGEL OF NO YON 87 
 
 despised," said Mdlle Claire. " Only when the men 
 swore and spoke with coarseness and roughness 
 they admired them." 
 
 The Boche wounded were not slow to realise the 
 advantage of a gentle, well-trained hand and soft, 
 low-toned voice. They had no scruple in showing 
 their preference even at the risk of hurting and 
 offending their countrywomen. " The Boche, he 
 makes no attention to the sentiments of others," 
 said Mdlle Claire. "As to the feelings of a woman, 
 as soon would he consider those of the oysters he 
 was eating." 
 
 I asked her if it was not a difficult task even for 
 one of angelic disposition to nurse the Boche. 
 
 She admitted that there were times when it 
 certainly was so. " But," she went on, " when they 
 are greatly wounded a poor one who suffers mortally 
 oh then one thinks only how to help him he is 
 of no nation he is only a patient. The Boche 
 nurses they are not so careful of the wounds as 
 we others they have the hand heavy, and always 
 they hurry to get through the work it was but 
 natural the wounded preferred those who caused 
 them the least suffering. But when he commenced 
 to recover, Ah ! then it was difficult to have patience 
 with the Boche, for he became odious. He would 
 boast to us how many French men he had killed 
 with two words of bad French and showing on 
 his fingers, he made us understand. And not only 
 soldiers but civilians little children, old men and 
 
88 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 women, young girls ' SchreckliMeit,' he would shout 
 and laugh. And soon they would punish all of us, 
 the bad French people, who dared to oppose the 
 good German, and they would show their big hairy 
 arms getting strong and muscular for this fine work. 
 Then it was I found it hard to approach those animals 
 to give them food to dress their wounds. Ah, 
 my God, to make them recover in order to kill 
 our brave boys, our poor defenceless civilians. Only 
 by telling myself that this miserable one he is de- 
 ceived, he thinks to do his duty, he obeys his officer 
 and has no choice only so could I continue to 
 attend him." 
 
 As she said this her brown eyes were lit with such 
 a divine understanding of the deep roots of things 
 that I understood how it was they called her " the 
 Angel." 
 
 Like our little old lady of the green-shuttered house 
 she described life in Noyon under German rule as 
 a terrible ordeal for the inhabitants in one respect 
 worse even than for the poor prisoners in Germany, 
 since they at least received occasional letters and 
 parcels, and were permitted to write to their friends, 
 whereas no word, no sign of life was permitted to 
 reach these occupied regions, no word to be sent 
 out from them. 
 
 " For nearly three years," said Mdlle Claire, " we 
 had no news of my brother who is aviator. My 
 poor mother, ah how she suffered not to know even 
 if he lived or died. The dangers to which the aviator 
 
THE ANGEL OF NOYON 89 
 
 is exposed are so great few survive a year. Hardly 
 it seemed possible we should ever see him again. 
 Yet the miracle has happened and he has been spared 
 to us- never even a wound up till now. He too 
 suffered the tortures of anxiety and suspense, fearing 
 our fate, yet hearing no word- only reports sinister 
 and fearful of the cruel Boche rule. It is the suspense 
 which tears the heart to give our lives we are all 
 prepared the mother who sees her son depart has 
 already made the supreme sacrifice." 
 
 All through these long drawn-out months and 
 years, though cut off from all news, the French captives 
 never lost hope, never wavered in the sure conviction 
 that the Allies would ultimately be victorious. Even 
 should Paris fall, Heaven would not fall, and no 
 reverse was going to quench their high courage. 
 They had often little ground for hope, and things 
 looked black enough. Their boasting captors fed 
 them on the lies they themselves more than half 
 believed, and though their prophecies and dates 
 were never correct, the fact of many fair provinces 
 being under German rule was a grim reality not to 
 be denied. Whenever they had any pretext for 
 proclaiming a victory the Boches paraded the streets 
 shouting songs of German triumph or glory, filling 
 the cafes and drink-shops all night, and flying German 
 eagles from every window. When they first swarmed 
 into Noyon they boasted loudly that in three days 
 they would be in Paris, and it appeared at the time 
 only too probable. From there they would march 
 
90 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 south, sacking and pillaging very province till they 
 reached Toulouse. So in three weeks the war would 
 be gloriously finished ! Their rage against the 
 French knew no bounds when this admirable pro- 
 gramme somehow miscarried. /The Boche wounded 
 in the hospitals found a vent for their outraged 
 feelings by an increased attack of spitting, even 
 in the faces of the French nurses, while others bit 
 the hands which dressed their wounds. One shining 
 example of patriotic vengeance begged for a cup 
 of boiling milk three times he peevishly rejected 
 it as not up to the heat he required. At last he 
 expressed himself satisfied and therewith turned 
 and flung it in the face of the patient Croix Rouge 
 nurse. A chorus of bravos from his brother Boches 
 followed on her cry of agony. 
 
 Hearing that an English soldier had died in hospital 
 I expressed a wish to visit his grave. It might 
 perhaps comfort some one at home to know it was 
 cared for. The Angel of Noyon volunteered as my 
 guide, ad we set out one day for the little cemetery. 
 
 At the entrance was a large enclosure gay with 
 flowers ; at each corner waved the French standard 
 over a long list of those who had laid down their lives 
 on the field in those first terrible days. I found on 
 the grave I sought only a little wooden cross bearing 
 the brief inscription " Smith, Soldat Anglais. Mort 
 le 30 Sepbre 1914." Not even a Christian name 
 to guide one through the vast throng of patriotic 
 
THE ANGEL OF NOYON 91 
 
 Smiths who have given their lives in the great fight 
 for right. The date showed he had died just in time 
 to be spared capture by the Huns, thank God. 
 
 A little corner was reserved for the Mohametans 
 of the Senegalese regiments, their graves marked 
 by the Crescent and Star together with the French 
 colours and a verse of the Koran. The Great War 
 has gathered into one fold all nationalities, all 
 religions, all classes, the Cross and the Crescent, 
 the white and the black races. Monsieur le Due 
 lies side by side with the peasant poilu, the same 
 flag and the same inscription mark their simple 
 graves " Mort pour la patrie." 
 
 My guide led me to the grave of the first Boche 
 to be laid among that worshipful company. He 
 deserved the honour even less than the generality 
 of his comrades, it appeared, for when I translated 
 the inscription for the benefit of Mdlle Claire, who 
 knew no German, and desired to know none, she 
 gave a little laugh of fine scorn. 
 
 " Hans Grobt," it was writ large, " died a hero's 
 death (Heldentod) for his Fatherland." " A hero's 
 death ! I will tell you how he died, that one," 
 she said. " He was killed by his comrade one 
 night in a drunken brawl. Both tried to enter an 
 empty cab to pass the night the one endeavouring 
 to prevent the other from getting in a revolver 
 settled the affair for this hero. All the town talked 
 of it but this is the way the Boche renders facts 
 such are the typical Boche heroes." 
 
92 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 All the same for the sake of some poor mother 
 somewhere in Germany I felt glad of that German 
 lie. 
 
 On leaving the cemetery we made a tour of the 
 old town, and my guide pointed out the huge pits 
 prepared for mining and utter destruction before 
 the Boche retreat in the previous March. Only 
 the rapid advance of the French had saved the 
 town. 
 
 " An advance patrol of our brave boys arrived 
 just two hours before they were expected by Messieurs 
 les Boches," said Mdlle Claire. " They came just at 
 the good moment. A Boche officer and his six men 
 were in the Cathedralalready they had removed 
 the flagstones and made a great hole into which 
 they were about to lower the mine which would 
 make of our sacred shrine, our beloved Cathedral, 
 a deplorable ruin, like so many others. Our soldiers 
 descended upon them like the judgment of God. 
 There outside, against the wall, they shot those 
 destroyers, those desecrators and it was well finished 
 with them ! " 
 
 Even an angel of mercy has moments of righteous 
 indignation and satisfaction in the execution of 
 justice. But as she spoke the familiar sinister 
 sound of the " Take cover " signal tore the peaceful 
 air. A German wasp soared overhead buzzing 
 spitefully, and a chill feeling clutched one at the 
 heart. The wasp overhead dropt no bombs ; he 
 
THE ANGEL OF NO YON 93 
 
 was merely out taking observations, such an every- 
 day occurrence no one paid any attention to the 
 warning. Noyon nevertheless was on the very 
 fringe of the German front a precarious position. 
 If ever the Huns got the chance how would they 
 deal with that grand old Cathedral after being so 
 ignominiously baulked ? Verily there will be a terrible 
 bill to pay for those six Bodies shot against the 
 wall, in strict accord though it was with the stern 
 laws of warfare. It was difficult to suppress the 
 fear that Noyon had not finished with les sales 
 Boches. 
 
THE POILU 
 
 THOSE two French classics " Le Feu " and " Gaspard " 
 had already made the poilu known to me in so far 
 as it is possible by means of printed book, vibrating, 
 throbbing with life, while Sir William Orpen and 
 Mr Herbert Ward had made familiar his outward 
 aspect many varieties of type, but all stamped with 
 the unmistakable yet half elusive characteristics 
 of the gallant, irresistible, irresponsible, unquench- 
 able, unconquerable French poilu. But no portrait 
 either in word or paint is equal to an hour in 
 the train with Monsieur Poilu, half an hour in 
 the hospital, or even ten minutes at the station 
 canteen. 
 
 The poilu is of course of every class, of every 
 vocation, of every variety of temperament, from 
 the impulsive, emotional, talkative Tartarin of the 
 Midi, to the taciturn, moody, emotional Jans of 
 Brittany. And think of the gamut of tones between 
 these extremes of gaiety and gravity ! The Parisian 
 of nimble wits, highly strung nerves and artistic 
 tastes, the solid, steady, commercial bourgeois of 
 the manufacturing districts, the quiet, contented 
 peasant proprietor of the rich corn and vine lands, 
 at the call of France their Mother, all these sons 
 
POILUS' GRAVES IN CLOISTERS OF NOYON CATHEDRAL 
 
THE POILU 95 
 
 take on with their uniform of " horizon bleu " a 
 family likeness which is undeniable. 
 
 The qualities which actually "jump one in the 
 eye " are a quiet restrained cheerfulness, an entire 
 absence of boasting and flourish, together with a 
 resolute, almost grim purposefulness, to fight, to die, 
 pour la patrie, to which end drive out, and kill, 
 the sales Baches. 
 
 As they pressed round the canteen of the dames 
 Anglaises at the station, where many thousands 
 passed daily, changing trains to and from the front, 
 one met the poilu of every type, including the dark- 
 faced Moroccans and Senegalese. It was heart-warm- 
 ing and delightful for those dames Anglaises to see 
 how their services were appreciated as they dealt out 
 the hot coffee, soup and chocolate, not forgetting the 
 Petit Caporal and Woodbine. ' 4 C'est rudement chic les 
 dames Anglaises," as I heard one of them express it. 
 
 Often it is only a passing glimpse, a chance 
 word you get with Monsieur Poilu on these 
 occasions, for generally the time is short and the 
 crowd great. But he does not forget the dames 
 Anglaises whose cheering cup was accompanied by 
 a good smile and a few words, none the worse, 
 perhaps the better, for the strong English accent. 
 " Nos bons Allies Vive TAngleterre ! Oh yes, 
 awright," he sings out as he disappears into the 
 waiting train. But often a week later, his precious 
 seven days' leave being over, he is there again remind- 
 ing the dame Anglaise of a message she sent his 
 
96 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 wife, or a bet she made that the petit gosse would 
 know him even before he cleaned off the mud of 
 the trenches. At the slightest opening his face 
 lights up, he is ready to make a joke of his wounds, 
 his frozen or blistered feet, the accursed mud, the 
 accursed cold, and the pest of the trenches, the 
 thrice accursed totos. Of all he makes nothing 
 " Que voulez-vous ? C'est la guerre ! " 
 
 Sometimes the dames Anglaises have seen pretty 
 deep down into the simple heart of the French soldier, 
 for not only at the canteen, but at the rest camps 
 behind the line, where the men spend several days 
 at a time, they have a unique opportunity of getting 
 in touch with him. Monsieur Poilu in repose has 
 two passions, la manille, a card game in which big 
 piles of sous change hands with lightning-like rapidity, 
 and letter-writing. You see him in the recreation 
 room, where paper and pen are provided, covering 
 sheet after sheet his head bent low over the page, 
 intent and absorbed. Some there are, however, who 
 have not attained this enviable proficiency, and then 
 it is that the canteen lady comes in as a good angel. 
 She is as safe as the confessional, you see, and if 
 only the feelings with which you are bursting can 
 find words she will fix them on paper for you. Many 
 is the love letter the dame Anglaise has penned, 
 often eloquent with unwritten things between the 
 lines. Those four little words for instance, "Ne t'en 
 fait pas " what condensed meaning they hold. " Ne 
 t'en fait pas " when the heart it is cracking the 
 
THE POILU 97 
 
 anxiety it tears you when you get no news or 
 even bad news or, well, suppose even the news 
 after which there is no more news " ne t'en fait pas, 
 ma vieille," or u ma 'tite femme." With an in- 
 expressible tenderness which you try to press into 
 the pen " ne t'en fait pas ! " 
 
 Of these letters to wives, fiancees and mothers, 
 it is generally the mothers who get the most fervid 
 love letters. She is the first love, and among all 
 classes she often retains this first place throughout 
 life. And because the wife desires one day this same 
 devotion from the fat cherub at her breast, she accepts 
 the situation in a spirit of poetic justice. 
 
 In the little poste de secours behind their canteens 
 the dames Anglaises are often called upon to give 
 first aid to the frequent ills of the war- weary poilu, 
 an aching tooth, an unbandaged wound, a blistered 
 heel. A little timely remedy earns a great reputa- 
 tion as a doctor and a touching amount of gratitude. 
 This is expressed in many ways little odd souvenirs 
 of the trenches a German button, a bullet or piece 
 of shrapnel extracted from one of his own vital 
 organs or one of those mascots which form such 
 a feature of life in the trenches, sometimes left as 
 a sacred charge till he shall return for it. To console 
 him in the wearisome trenches for the absence of 
 his home objects of affection, Monsieur Poilu will 
 adopt any substitute at hand, and, failing a dog 
 or a cat, a rat often fills the part, and becomes a 
 cherished little friend and companion, sharing his 
 
98 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 rations and sleeping up his sleeve when weary of 
 running races over his face. Magpies and doves 
 have also joined this auxiliary army of the brother- 
 hood of St Barnabas, in which the dog holds from 
 time immemorial the first place. 
 
 There is one malady to which the canteen lady 
 sometimes gives " first aid " without knowing it, 
 for it is a complaint which the poilu would never, 
 could he help it, allow her to suspect and that is 
 le cafard. Without doubt le cafard is a microbe just 
 like the influenza microbe, the enteric microbe or 
 any other virulent abomination. It is particularly 
 attracted to the gallant and high-spirited, and a 
 Croix de Guerre is no safeguard against it. It makes 
 its insidious attack just at a moment when, having 
 said good-bye to all you love, you are feeling about 
 as elated as a pricked bubble. A deep depression 
 and silence fall upon you like a pall. Then with 
 the suddenness of an air raid you explode, and 
 expressing yourself with violence, with bitterness 
 you hear yourself * saying curious things for which 
 you are not the least responsible. 
 
 So had the symptoms been described to me. When 
 therefore I and my Croix Rouge friend were travelling 
 one day in a crowded train to Lyons, in company 
 with a number of permissionaires (men on leave) 
 we recognised a victim of le cafard without difficulty. 
 The poilus swarmed into the first-class carriage 
 all classes alike being open to them great round 
 loaves of home -baked bread on their backs, their 
 
THE POILU 99 
 
 pockets bulging with provisions crammed in by 
 loving hands as they went off again to face the German 
 guns and gas. 
 
 Laughing, singing, smoking, munching cheese, 
 they did not at first notice one of their number who 
 had dropped into the furthest corner, silent and 
 sombre, his bent head in his hands. The Croix 
 de Guerre showed on his breast. The man next him 
 was taken up by troubles of his own which even the 
 great hunk of cheese could not assuage ; he fidgeted 
 continually, murmuring at intervals " C'te sacree 
 vermine " a remark which produced a sympathetic 
 echo from several others, and apprehensive shivers 
 from my friend and myself. All at once he of the 
 Croix de Guerre opened the flood-gates : 
 
 " Next time, me, I cross the frontier ! Yes, I 
 finish with this accursed game ! " he announced to 
 the company. 
 
 " Dis done, mon copain ! " said his opposite neigh- 
 bour, leaning forward and patting him on the knee. 
 
 " Let them send those of sixty, and seventy 
 it is their turn now," he went on, " after three years 
 one has had enough of it, I say." 
 
 His comrades did not laugh. His neighbour shook 
 him by the shoulder as he would a man talking in 
 his sleep : " T'en fait pas ! T'as pas honte ? " he 
 glanced in our direction, but we both looked as 
 unconcerned as the round loaves. 
 
 The victim of le cafard muttered gloomily like 
 distant thunder. 
 
100 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " Dis done c'est de la quitter t'a donne le 
 cafard," said the big fellow opposite, with an indulgent 
 smile. Had he been his mother he could not have 
 put more understanding into those few words, which 
 being interpreted by Thomas Atkins would be, 
 It's leaving *er as giv' you cold feet." 
 
 The case diagnosed, another of the party instantly 
 came forward with the remedy : 
 
 " Ben ! Va te faire une cuite y'a que c,a pour 
 le cafard," and he forthwith hauled out a huge 
 evil-looking bottle, greeted with loud approval by 
 all the company. In accordance with their unfailing 
 politeness they first passed the healing potion to my 
 friend and me. With profuse thanks and apologies on 
 the score of temperance vows, we excused our sad 
 lack of conviviality. The colour was ominous, the 
 smell staggering, what the taste must have been 
 could be dimly surmised from the effects on those 
 who partook the first result being a heavy drugged 
 sleep, lasting alas ! but too brief a time. Over 
 what followed it is best to draw a veil. We left at 
 the first opportunity. 
 
 Le cafard, however, was cured there seemed no 
 doubt on that point, but it was like curing you of 
 toothache by setting fire to your bed attention was 
 absorbed by the matter in hand, every faculty being 
 strained to cope with the immediate claims of the 
 
 situation. 
 
 
 
 It is difficult to say where the poilu is seen at 
 
THE PO/ ; 101 
 
 his best. He is always such a gallant fellow, so 
 human, so humorous, such a bewildering combina- 
 tion of the simplicity of six years old and the 
 wisdom of sixty. Those who have stood side by side 
 with him " going over the top " declare that then 
 is his superbest moment, and that the Frenchman 
 is a born soldier of the best fighting type all the 
 world acknowledges and past history testifies. " He 
 plays the game." His rules of warfare like those of 
 Mr Atkins, are based on fair play, and he is endowed 
 by nature with an innate chivalry. Both in ideals 
 and practice he is the exact opposite of the Teuton, 
 that drilled machine of blood and iron, whose watch- 
 word is Schrecldichkeit, and whose courage waxes 
 most tremendous in face of helpless girls, white- 
 haired cures and wounded men. 
 
 To his beaten foe Monsieur Poilu is always mag- 
 nanimous, and should he detect one spark of his own 
 gallant spirit even in the Boche who has desecrated 
 his soil and burnt his home, he is ready to take him 
 by the hand. A typical instance was an occasion 
 on which a company of Uhlans, having all except one 
 decamped in face of overpowering numbers, the 
 French soldiers surrounded this remaining one, 
 standing to fight to the last, and, attacking him not 
 with bayonets but cheers, cried : " Tu es un chic 
 type toi ! " And then, to the grim Boche 's amaze- 
 ment, carried him off to give him, instead of the 
 bullets he expected, a feast of the best they could 
 offer. The Teuton's war- book rigorously excludes 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 such wayside flowers of chivalry and it is doubtful 
 whether the Uhlan did not despise them for it. 
 
 " So it is not written in our great text-book but 
 so makes one not war." The more easy-going Saxon 
 might have appreciated such a spirit, but then he 
 would never have stayed behind to face the foe 
 single-handed. " Kamerad," he would have cried 
 with both hands up and I for one don't blame him. 
 
 That le cafard is a comparatively rare complaint 
 is greatly owing to the extraordinarily stimulating 
 influence of the officers on the men. There is com- 
 bined with a good deal of military etiquette a spirit 
 of camaraderie, even of affection, rarely found except 
 in the French army. 
 
 The picturesque orders issued by the General 
 Commanding the 12th Division at one time, when 
 saluting was tending to get slack in some places, 
 could only have been possible in France. 
 
 Clause 1 states, among other equally humoristic 
 instructions, that the salute should be given " with 
 true chanticleer spirit," while inwardly saying, "I 
 am proud to be a poilu ! " " Imperceptibly lower the 
 chin," goes on Clause 2, " carry a smile in the eyes 
 and say to yourself having your superior in mind 
 ' You also are a poilu you rate and swear at me 
 sometimes, but never mind, you can depend on me.' ' 
 
 The third Clause calls for the drawing up of oneself 
 to full height, and the expansion of one's chest accom- 
 panied by the inward cry of " On les aura, les salauds ! " 
 
 Clause 4 applies to officers. " Envelop the soldier 
 
THE POILU 103 
 
 in an affectionate look while returning his salute, 
 then with your eyes gazing frankly into his say in- 
 wardly " Thanks to you, comrade, we'll master the 
 German pigs ! " 
 
 The spirit of chivalry in the French soldier, 
 and the spirit of levity irrepressible levity char- 
 acteristic of the British Tommy, are traits which 
 always completely baffle the Hun. Neither the one 
 nor the other is provided against in his War- 
 book. He begins by disbelieving in their existence; 
 and when therefore forced to face these abnormal 
 characteristics in so-called men of war, he regards 
 them as camouflage, disguising treachery and trickery 
 of the subtlest description. This also leads him 
 into false situations, for, notwithstanding his chivalry, 
 the French soldier kills. Oh yes, he is out to kill 
 Boches as many as possible, and as effectively 
 as possible. He is not too anxious to take prisoners 
 either, after three years grim struggle with his remorse- 
 less, treacherous foe. He is fighting for his life, 
 for the life of France, for all he holds dear inch by 
 inch driving the foe off his soil, holding the grey 
 swarms at bay with a living wall of the sons of France. 
 As he leaps over the top, the poilu gives his life gladly 
 for the noblest idea that has ever possessed his simple 
 soul. Under such an inspiration undoubtedly he is 
 superb as a soldier. 
 
 Personally, however, never having had the chance 
 of seeing him in the trenches and in the firing-line, 
 my experience can only take him up a few hours 
 
104 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 later upon a stretcher in the sorting station, gravely 
 wounded or in the ambulance, awaiting another 
 fiery ordeal. And seeing him under these latter 
 circumstances it seems to me that nowhere does 
 the poilu show a finer fellow than in hospital. His 
 courage never fails. He never grumbles, however 
 bad things are, and only those who have had to cope 
 with the awful difficulties of receiving the wounded, 
 as they arrive at the field hospitals in their 
 thousands, know what those sufferings, of necessity, 
 are. Scarcity of nurses, of doctors, of chloroform, of 
 beds, of bandages, of pillows, of everything. Yet how 
 wonderful those wounded are ! Ignoring suffering, 
 a grievously wounded giving place to a comrade 
 whose case is worse even than his, a one-legged 
 helping the blind and through it all, joking and 
 smiling. Oh ! that wonderful smile of the wounded 
 poilu ! The courage of it is almost heart-breaking. 
 For it is a smile without effort, coming just as straight 
 from the heart as light from a lamp. Most inner 
 lamps get dimmed by the wearing pain of sleepless 
 nights, of train journeys which are sheer torture 
 to shattered limbs and gaping wounds, but as the 
 Croix Rouge nurses or English V.A.D.'s help Monsieur 
 Poilu out of the train, he assures them he is getting 
 on famously, and as they lay him on the floor-bed, 
 with a straw traversin under his head, to wait for 
 the doctor, he will assure them he does not suffer 
 " too much " (pas trop) and will smile an au revoir 
 full of gratitude and cheerfulness. 
 
THE POILU 105 
 
 His reluctance to give trouble is another lovable 
 trait. He will often disguise his wounds and his 
 sufferings like a veritable Spartan boy, and this in 
 spite of loving to be spoilt and cosseted as much 
 as any baby. Especially this is the case at night, 
 when the business -like military nurses, or efficient 
 Croix Rouge ladies retire, and the night duty will 
 be taken by a gentle sister of St Vincent de Paul 
 or the Augustine nursing-order. On these occasions 
 Monsieur Poilu shows himself a pastmaster in the 
 gentle art of malingering. 
 
 I know one hospital where the signal for the night 
 nurse's appearance was a chorus of piteous sighs 
 and moans, many of the patients drawing the sheets 
 over their faces as if their last hour were at hand. 
 The night nurse was an English woman of sympathetic, 
 and it was hoped, equally unsuspecting disposition, 
 " A hot compress " for one, " a cold compress for 
 another," " a little lemonade for that one," and " a 
 little massage." Oh, just two little moments to 
 keep her near him for this big child ! 
 
 Going from one bed to another she gave to each 
 one what he needed namely, the feeling of being 
 mothered, which sometimes included a maternal 
 scolding, producing in Monsieur Poilu the happy 
 sensation of being once more just seven years old. 
 
 One night a voice called to her from among the 
 new arrivals. 
 
 " Mademoiselle speaks with an English voice ! 
 Me, I know many English people." This of course 
 
106 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 drew her to his bedside. " All the English they 
 visited our hotel at Mont St Michel. My mother she 
 was well known famous even ! No one like her 
 for the omelettes ! " 
 
 " Madame Poulard ! " cried the V.A.D., as a 
 recollection of that high-priestess of the omelette 
 rose before her, standing by the wide, open fireplace 
 in the old inn, manipulating with consummate 
 dexterity the largest omelette in the largest frying- 
 pan ever seen on this globe, tossing the golden, 
 bubbling, flapping thing of eggs and butter, without 
 breaking it, like the conjuror she was, while the 
 firelight played on her beautiful, glowing face. 
 
 " She was famous not only for the omelettes, 
 but for a face so beautiful, so charming, Madame 
 your mother," said the English V.A.D., "that no 
 artist could see her without desiring to paint her. 
 Many would travel to Mt. St Michel to taste the 
 famous omelettes just in order to see that lovely face." 
 
 " Ma foi, oui ! " said her son, " the English, the 
 Americans, as well as the French, all made pictures 
 of Maman, but the omelettes they were superb and 
 alone worth a visit." He could not allow a second 
 place to those omelettes, and no doubt felt this also 
 had been Hainan's view. 
 
 He was the envy of the whole ward, he who had 
 known how " to invent " as they maliciously called 
 it, this " history of mothers and omelettes," a history 
 so interesting as to keep the night nurse quite ten 
 minutes by his bedside the cunning scoundrel ! 
 
THE POILU 107 
 
 A chorus of sighs and moans began to echo round 
 the ward again. It was wonderful to see how the pain 
 seemed to be wiped out of his face as the wounded 
 man talked of his beautiful Maman, and he turned 
 to sleep with a happy sigh no doubt to meet her 
 in his dreams that night. 
 
 The V.A.D. found herself beset with questions 
 as to other parts of France which, perchance, she had 
 visited, and other Mamans she might have met. 
 Deep were the sighs when she had to confess the 
 
 limitations of her travels. 
 
 
 
 The poilus' devotion to the nurse shows in 
 the keen rivalry displayed to serve her. She has 
 only to ask for another convalescent to act as orderly 
 to have an embarrassment of choice. Shattered 
 legs and arms, pierced lungs are impetuously for- 
 gotten. Firmly the nurse has to refuse the offers 
 of help. " Thou for example ! convalescent indeed ! 
 scrub the floor ! not just yet mon petit for a week 
 it is forbidden even to sit up, do you hear ? ' And 
 when the doctor asks for volunteers to give blood 
 for exhausted veins, or skin to grow over torn 
 flesh, those who press forward in eager competi- 
 tion with their offerings, cause even the doctor 
 sometimes to turn aside with "a stupid something 
 in his eye." 
 
 Rene Benjamin's "Gaspard," slipping out of bed 
 at midnight to go out of doors and imitate the 
 cock-crow for which his dying comrade was longing, 
 
108 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 is a typical act of the devotion the poilu is always 
 ready to show to his wounded copain. . . . 
 
 The scene is in hospital at night. They have drawn 
 the screen round the dying young soldier. His 
 life is ebbing painfully, but he feels if only he can 
 pass through the ordeal of this long night all will 
 go well with him. Anxiously, he asks the nurse : 
 " Say then, my sister is it soon four o'clock ? r 
 
 Knowing this longing of the dying for the dawn, 
 she answers, prompted by a divine pity : ' Yes, 
 mon petit a little more courage and soon the night 
 
 is over." 
 
 The dying man groans. " But there's a cock 
 a cock who crows at four o'clock. . . ." 
 
 All his soul is listening for that sign of the coming 
 dawn. 
 
 Then "Gaspard," lying in the next bed, wounded 
 in the thigh, sits up, draws on his trousers, and on 
 all-fours, manages to reach the door unseen. In 
 two minutes a cock is distinctly heard a somewhat 
 quavery, hoarse, not to say human, cock-crow, to 
 anyone listening with critical attention ; but the dying 
 man drinks in the sound, as one parched with thirst 
 a cup of spring water. 
 
 " Sister, do you hear ? " he cries joyfully. 
 
 " Did I not tell you," she answers, " it is four 
 o'clock." 
 
 Calm and confidence descend upon his spirit. 
 The dreaded night has passed. He closes his eyes 
 and gently, almost smiling, he dies. 
 
THE POILU 109 
 
 The effort costs " Gaspard " dear. His wound 
 reopens, and fever sets in. The doctor is furious, 
 but what matter, the cock had served his purpose. 
 
 It is only because I fear no translator will be found 
 to undertake the impossible task of Anglicising the 
 idiom of " Gaspard " that I have ventured to quote this 
 little gem for the benefit of those who are debarred 
 from the joy of making " Gaspard's " acquaintance. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest test of the poilu's serene 
 cheerfulness comes when he is convalescent, and 
 realises that for the rest of his life he is maimed, 
 crippled, or blinded sometimes even a more terrible 
 fate has to be faced disfigurement. If one would 
 learn to what sublime heights of courage the man 
 who " does his bit " can rise, it is necessary to go 
 among these latter. Very gently, these most piteous 
 cases are led back to life. In the ateliers attached 
 to many of the military hospitals, they learn first 
 of all to be able to face each other and their teachers, 
 and gradually the outside world. Interest in learning 
 a new trade after a time not only diverts, but merci- 
 fully absorbs their thoughts. They find happiness 
 in their companions in misfortune, and so strong 
 is the youth and power of enjoyment within them, 
 that they take up their lives with courage and keen 
 interest, even when the disfigurement is so terrible 
 that at first one questions if it would not have been 
 more merciful to let death come, instead of using every 
 means to avert it. Those who work among them, 
 however, have no doubt or misgivings on the question. 
 
110 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 This splendid branch of hospital work was first 
 started by Mme Viviani, wife of the former 
 Prime Minister, and many French ladies assist in 
 teaching and amusing the wounded and maimed 
 in these curative ateliers, for the employment is 
 chosen with the view of helping recovery. 
 
 It was with one of these workers I visited the 
 ateliers attached to the big Military Hospital of 
 Val de Grace, in Paris. We were accompanied by 
 a rich lady of Brazil in whose sumptuous, white 
 satin car we drove to the hospital, the idea being 
 that some of the superfluous Brazilian dollars might 
 be induced to flow into this beautiful channel. 
 Whether they did so I never heard. We found 
 every variety of work going on, carpentering, carving, 
 saddle-making, typewriting. Legs requiring muscular 
 development were set to work on sewing machines 
 with treadles, arms needing vigorous exercise were 
 supplied with bales of flannel to cut up into shirt 
 lengths with a sword very popular work this, 
 recalling no doubt reminiscences of the German 
 trenches. So much less dull than doing gymnastic 
 exercises, for, in this way, you are killing, not only 
 two birds but three, with one stone, the work being 
 useful, medicinal, and remunerative. On arriving 
 at the atelier of "the disfigured," the Brazilian 
 lady paused before the door and remarked that 
 she trusted she was not going to see any terrible 
 sights to that she could not consent "her heart 
 was too tender and it would affect not only 
 
THE POILU 111 
 
 her stomach but her sleep." Such an unthinkable 
 calamity was of course not to be contemplated for 
 a single moment, and she was begged to repose herself 
 in the satin-lined car, while we of sterner stuff entered 
 that domain of heroic suffering and victorious 
 achievement. 
 
 The impulse to protect her interior from malaise 
 and her sleep from haunting dreams was not without 
 justification. The difficulty in dealing with her 
 had been a doubt whether, without some such in- 
 sistent haunting, the dollars could be induced to 
 flow from her pocket. Oh those tender hearts ! So 
 tender they cannot bear sight or sound of suffering 
 lest it should hurt themselves by even so much as 
 a vibration " visiting them too roughly." The grim 
 doctrine of re-incarnation combined with the ex- 
 cellent regime of Mrs Be-done-by-as-you-did is a con- 
 soling thought when one is confronted with these 
 " tender hearts " and tight purse strings. 
 
 Many of those tragic cases of disfigurement in- 
 cluded loss of sight. These, as soon as their wounds 
 are healed, are specially provided for in other houses. 
 One of the many schools for the blind is at Reuilly, 
 formerly a large convent, standing in its own grounds. 
 It is one of twenty French " St Dunstans." 
 
 Like the blind Tommy who blesses Sir Arthur 
 Pearson for his Braille watch on arriving in hospital 
 at home, so the blinded poilu rejoices in the first 
 gift to greet him this same little friend who helps 
 him through the long nights of sleeplessness, from 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 which so many of those blinded heroes at first suffer. 
 For when there is no day to alternate the night, 
 the night ceases to be a repose, and becomes often 
 an intolerable weariness a menace to sleep. And 
 the little watch Oh how he blesses the little watch 
 as he passes his fingers over its face, and it tells him 
 the night is passing, and the dawn coming ! Even 
 though he cannot see the glory of the rising sun, the 
 colours that are flashing over the horizon, he feels 
 the light and rejoices in the day. Blessed is the 
 inventor of that little watch, whose friendly tick 
 and steadily moving hands give the blinded man 
 a sense of companionship all through those long 
 nights. 
 
 " It takes on a veritable personality as of a human 
 friend," said one of the^e blinded victims, lovingly 
 stroking the disc. 
 
 " The best teachers of the blind are the blind 
 themselves," said an instructor at Reuilly, who 
 spends his life among the blinded poilus, teaching 
 them diamond- cutting, a trade from which one would 
 think of all others blindness must debar them 
 yet in which many excel. 
 
 " They acquire fingers of a precision, of an exacti- 
 tude, so fine, one may truly say the sense of touch 
 has replaced that of sight," said their teacher. 
 
 It was interesting to see how the first steps were 
 taken on pieces of steel on which they learnt to cut 
 the many facets of the diamond, gradually reducing 
 
THE POILU 113 
 
 the size till the pupil learnt to feel and actually 
 see, with his sensitive finger-tips. 
 
 In another workroom a very cheerful party were 
 doing basket work and rushing chairs, under the 
 direction of a blind teacher. One of them, hearing 
 that in English villages it is difficult to find anyone 
 who can do rushing almost a lost art now 
 volunteered to come over as soon as he had found 
 a nice little wife to go with him, about which he 
 anticipated no difficulty. 
 
 " I should like to travel to see other countries 
 it gives to think it enlarges the ideas at Commines 
 I saw many English and I liked them well sont de 
 chics types les Anglais" he added cordially. 
 
 I told him he and his petite amie must begin learn- 
 ing English at once, for no one in the English village 
 I feared could speak French, and a picture of the 
 utter isolation and desolation which would overtake 
 the sunny-hearted children of France in the damp 
 mists of a long English winter rose before me. 
 
 " Ah, that is not difficult ! " he cried hopefully. 
 " The English language it is very amusing I know 
 already some words, and one time I could even sing 
 that drole canticle of Saint Tipperaire which in 1914 
 sang all the English army." 
 
 He evidently regarded it as the national anthem. 
 I wondered how far it would take him in the English 
 village ; in Ireland, perhaps, it might go quite a 
 long way towards opening doors and hearts to the 
 " furriner," but what of Suffolk or Surrey ? 
 
114 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 He refused to give us a verse of Saint Tipperaire, 
 but they struck up some trench songs real poilu 
 songs, both grave and gay. " Rosalie c'est ton 
 histoire " " Verse a boire," etc. and the ever 
 popular "Aupres^dx, ma Belle," and "Ma 'mie." 
 Mostly they revolved around ma 'mie that day, perhaps 
 because started by our friend whose mind was clearly 
 working round that idea. All have a little " promised 
 one," or hope soon to have her une petite femme 
 being as necessary a part of daily life as daily bread, 
 and daily sun. Fortunately there is always a girl ready 
 in France as in England to marry a blind soldier. 
 
 Yet home life, however happily he may be mated, 
 is not enough for the blind poilu. He needs the 
 comradeship of his brothers in affliction. Only so 
 does he lose that sense of loneliness and isolation, 
 which means feeling the darkness. To be the one 
 blind man at the table, in the workshop, the yard, 
 this places him apart, but where all are blind there 
 is no loneliness. Together they can even joke over 
 their blind blunders the stumbles and falls. They 
 will play tricks, set traps for each other like school- 
 boys, our guide told us. 
 
 " You see that little fellow with the curly head 
 over there the wag of that group where he is 
 there is always a joke. He returned home in July, 
 he was cured, he had learnt well his trade and could 
 make a living. His parents are small proprietors 
 in Touraine there is a large family of whom he is 
 the eldest adored son. After two months I receive 
 
THE POILV 115 
 
 a letter praying me to take him back here he will 
 do any work only to be agaizi among his camarades 
 down there with all those who have their eyes, it 
 is too triste for him he can no longer bear his life 
 sooner would he finish it." 
 
 And this our guide assured us was no exceptional 
 case but the rule, and to make a possible life for 
 these blinded men, working centres should be 
 established where, while living in their homes, they 
 could spend their working hours together. 
 
 It would seem too that music should be made a 
 special feature in their lives, for there is no doubt 
 that to the blind it takes on a new power and sig- 
 nificance. Even to those who have always loved 
 music where linked to song and dance, it opens 
 up new fields new vistas of unsuspected joys and 
 emotions. One has only to take some of these 
 blind soldiers to a really good orchestral conceit 
 to realise this fact. Music which would undoubtedly 
 have been far over their heads before the darkness 
 fell upon them, now admits them to a new world. 
 They discover a hitherto unknown faculty for mental 
 picturing, the distracting physical vision of audience 
 and performers being removed. However plain, 
 commonplace, or unintellectual those young faces 
 may be, while listening to such music as a Beethoven 
 Symphony or a Wagner overture, I have seen a 
 sort of shining intelligence so transfigure them that 
 one hardly misses the eyes over which the lids are 
 closed in absorbed enjoyment. 
 
116 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 "It is as though the music seems to chase away 
 the darkness into which one is accustomed to gaze, 
 it fills all with colour and movement," explained 
 one whose temperament was only by slow and painful 
 steps adjusting itself to that same physical blackness. 
 It is a blessed fact that colour does in a mysterious 
 sense still exist for the blind. One man learning 
 the trade of flower-making, most suitably, since he 
 had formerly been a gardener, declared he could 
 feel the difference between a white and a crimson 
 carnation and when tested proved it. We talked a 
 good deal about the mysterious side of this wonderful 
 sense of sight. I told him of my old friend, Sir 
 Edwin Arnold, who bore like a soldier-hero the four 
 years' darkness which struck him at the end of life- 
 struck him yet never felled him, for paralysed and 
 blind he worked and wrote and studied up to the 
 last. One night he had a strange experience often 
 repeated afterwards. 
 
 He woke, and found on opening his eyes that he 
 could see. He sat up and gazed round in amaze- 
 ment the room was filled with a soft light. He 
 was in his accustomed bedroom, but the walls were 
 hung with beautiful oriental draperies, and pictures 
 bearing inscriptions in Sanscrit and Japanese letter- 
 ing. Amazement and joy almost overcame him, he 
 could see again ! For that this was sight restored 
 he did not doubt at first. Only when as a test he 
 put up his hand in front of his face, and could not 
 see it, did he realise this vivid picture was a vision 
 
THE POILU 117 
 
 in which the physical eyes had no part. Yet he was 
 not sleeping or dreaming, that he proved by calling 
 his servant and making him write down all he saw 
 still at the moment of describing it. This seeing 
 without the aid of physical sight proved a great 
 consolation to Sir Edwin. It suggested a glimpse 
 of other possibilities, of faculties belonging to another 
 plane of existence, of senses not necessarily limited 
 to the orthodox five. 
 
 It appears without doubt in the case of the 
 blind that the remaining senses compensate them by 
 an extraordinary access of activity, specially those 
 of touch and hearing. Even taste and smell play 
 their extra part ; a blind man will detect an escape 
 of gas by both these latter senses, long before the 
 average person with sight. 
 
 The garden at Reuilly was a source of great delight 
 to the blind poilus. They felt the beauty of it 
 the scent and touch of a rose opened out a vista 
 of all the glories of summer. It was touching to see 
 the extreme care and tenderness with which they 
 passed their fingers over flowers and plants as though 
 fearing to hurt them. Many were training to be 
 gardeners and learning horticulture. It seems to give 
 them special joy to be with living, growing things. 
 Perhaps they get a subtle sense of companionship 
 out of the sprouting plant, the growing tree, the 
 little living tip piercing up through the soil; for 
 it is companionship the blind soldier perhaps all 
 the blind are always seeking. Having this one 
 
118 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 boon it is a constant source of wonder to all those 
 who visit them to see their courage and serenity, 
 even their high spirits and joy in life. Dancing, 
 singing, swimming, boating there is nothing they 
 will not do and do well. To anyone needing courage 
 to go on with life and show a brave front to the 
 world, there is nothing like a visit to Reuilly or 
 St Dunstan's. 
 
 Before tearing myself away from the beloved 
 Monsieur Poilu there is one variety of him whose 
 praises I must not leave unsung the poilu priest. 
 It is difficult to estimate what he has done to revivify 
 the religious life of France, and to re-establish the 
 waning influence of his Church. For it is undeniable 
 that before the Great War there was a general feeling 
 of stagnation and decay about the Church in France, 
 she seemed to be losing her hold over the people 
 while the franc-mapon, the free-thinking materialist, 
 was gaining ground. But the war gave the priest 
 a great opportunity, and he took it. Here was 
 his chance to show that to be a Christian priest did 
 not make a man either a weak-kneed soldier or a 
 lukewarm patriot. It was of course no question of 
 choice for those of military age, the priest coming 
 under the Military Service Act precisely as every 
 other fit son of France, and serving as simple 
 soldat, those who attained officer rank being 
 aumdniers, those picturesque medieval-looking figures 
 in black, mounted on their dignified chargers who 
 are seen not only passing up and down among 
 
THE POILU 119 
 
 field hospitals and rest camps behind the 
 lines, but in the firing-line and trenches at the 
 front. 
 
 Monsieur I'Aumonier bears no arms, but on his 
 breast gleams a big cross which must often have been 
 a good mark for the enemy sniper. His duties are to 
 bring the consolations and ministrations of the Church 
 to her fighting sons. Kneeling by the wounded 
 and dying he may be seen while the shrapnel bursts 
 all round him, hearing a last confession and administer- 
 ing the sacred rites. Before going into action in 
 the dim hours at dawn he holds the solemn early 
 mass in the little barn or outhouse extemporised 
 as a chapel. Those services have sent out the poilu 
 to fight and die with a soul washed clean, in a white 
 heat of faith and self-sacrifice. Between two poilu 
 priests we met in the train an interesting discussion 
 took place as to the effect of obligatory service on 
 the position of the priest. Both men were about 
 thirty on the rising side nel mezza Cammin del 
 nostra vita. They were coming from the front on 
 their seven days' leave. One wearing the uniform 
 of the Chasseurs Alpins had the air of a scholar, 
 borne out by a little leather-bound volume from 
 which he read passages now and then to his com- 
 panion, a powerful, bearded brancardier (stretcher- 
 bearer) decorated with the Medaille Militaire. 
 
 Something in the little volume gave the text, and 
 the Chasseur priest began : 
 
 " I have nothing to say against the priests serving 
 
120 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 in the army as aumbnier as officer that is well- 
 very well one is mounted on a horse. . . ." 
 
 " That raises you at once above your fellows," 
 laughed the jolly brancardier. 
 
 The other went on without heeding this levity : 
 
 ;t The uniform is distinctive impressive the 
 cross on your breast marks you as one set apart 
 an officer in the army yes the army of the King 
 of Kings. But to wear the uniform of the simple 
 poilu " he cast a deprecating glance at his own 
 legs "to share his life in closest intimacy to be 
 under orders to any young officer a pert boy of 
 twenty Non, par exemple! a thousand times no 
 this is to lower the high prestige of the priesthood." 
 
 ' Well, mon ami, that is not my experience and, 
 after all, the experience it is which convinces more 
 than arguments or reason," replied the brancardier. 
 " I find on the contrary that a priest he remains 
 always a priest for all, even those without religion, 
 whether his costume be that of the soutane or the 
 poilu's " horizon bleu." To share the lot of the simple 
 soldat that it is which makes one to know his heart. 
 As officer there is a barrier always the aumonier 
 never can he be as a brother." 
 
 The Chasseur shook his head and smiled: "Ah, 
 my friend you are democrat socialist almost ! Me, 
 I believe in retaining a little barrier, having around 
 one a certain atmosphere, so to speak, of mystery 
 and awe which appeals to the imagination. It is 
 this which gives to us the power to counsel to guide. 
 
THE POILU 
 
 We must be not only brothers in Christ remember, 
 but fathers in God. The Kingdom of Heaven is not 
 a democracy it is a hierarchy." 
 
 And looking at the clean-cut, refined, ascetic face, 
 the high-bridged nose, penetrating, close-set eyes 
 and determined chin of the Chasseur, the broad 
 brow, kindly eyes and gallant bearing of the bran- 
 cardier, one realised that both these types have found 
 a sphere of invaluable service in the armies of France, 
 both have exerted in their distinctive ways, in- 
 calculable influence for good. It is true, as many 
 have testified, that in the trenches there were no 
 atheists. Undoubtedly one reason for this might 
 be found in the regenerating effect of that gallant 
 figure of the poilu priest "running like a spark 
 among the stubble," sharing the hard life, the 
 same rations or lack of rations the same pests, the 
 same dangers, meeting the same grim form of suffering 
 and death with cheerfulness, courage and faith a 
 faith amazingly contagious in that it restored to the 
 poilu something he had learnt at his mother's knee, 
 and never quite forgotten. One who has no doubts, 
 no fears, no misgivings as to the righteousness of his 
 cause, of the Angels fighting with him, and his military 
 service being, as Krishna said to Arjuna, " a sacrifice 
 of arms demanded of the gods," creates around him 
 without any word of preachment an atmosphere in 
 which faith germinates and courage takes heart of grace. 
 
 When volunteers have been needed for special 
 danger work, an advance patrol, a reconnoitring 
 
122 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 expedition, a rescue party, stretcher-bearers to cross 
 a barrage of fire, the poilu priest has been ever to 
 the fore, " first over the top " his motto. The 
 unusual proportion of awards for valour, Croix de 
 Guerre, Medailles Militaires, Citations, awarded to the 
 priests serving in the ranks, bear witness to this. 
 
 Those who had formerly been wont to regard 
 priests as " eaters of the poor," proud prelates whose 
 perfunctory washing of the beggars' feet on Maundy 
 Thursday was the one travesty of service and 
 humility of which they were capable, were amazed 
 to find that there positively existed priests occupy- 
 ing high positions in the Church ready to live up 
 to their precepts quite literally, and to be in deed, 
 not word only, the servants of all. It revolutionised 
 the popular idea of the priest and the Church. 
 
 Imagine the effect in the British army if not only 
 all the curates of the Church of England had served 
 as Tommies but if, say, the Archdeacon of Westminster 
 and the Dean of Durham had been found working 
 as orderlies, scrubbing the floors and emptying the 
 slop-pails at the Second London General and the 
 Military Hospital at Durham. Yet these are but 
 everyday occurrences in France. 
 
 There was the Vicaire- Generate of the Archeveque 
 
 de C . a dignified and splendid personage even in 
 
 the uniform of the poilu, black-bearded and bronzed, 
 with a voice which involuntarily called up a cathedral, 
 even when making a joke. He was known as 
 44 Monseigneur," and his influence was compelling 
 
THE POILU 
 
 as that of the Pied Piper. But when I first saw him 
 he was wielding a broom, and in a way that pro- 
 claimed him no novice in the art of sweeping. 
 
 After watching the thoroughness of his work I 
 complimented him on his mastery of a job so outside 
 his profession. 
 
 " It is not quite in vain I have heard my good Jose- 
 phine, she who takes care of me and my little presbytere, 
 instructing and correcting the femme de menage these 
 fifteen years past," said he. " Ah, but I much doubt 
 whether I have yet attained to her standard of cleanli- 
 ness it is a woman of high ideals, the old Josephine ! " 
 
 I enquired whether she approved of her master's 
 present employment. He looked round nervously 
 and lowered his voice : 
 
 " She knows not that I have attempted to under- 
 take this work, I live in fear she may descend 
 suddenly upon me and discover it. She would 
 regard it with displeasure." 
 
 i4 Finding it was beneath your dignity of course ? " 
 
 " All to the contrary," he laughed. " Josephine 
 she would fear that I might in this metier descend 
 to the mediocre that which she abhors. She 
 requires of me, see you, that I should merit the gold 
 medal in everything that I perform nothing less 
 satisfies her ; that I obtain not the gold medal is 
 merely by reason of the injustice of a wicked, envious 
 world. If I write a book she is convinced no man 
 ever wrote a book so remarkable if I give a discourse 
 on theology it is superior in wisdom to all the dis- 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 courses of the year when I join the army and 
 shoulder a rifle the soldiers will now see how to kill 
 the sales Boches as they ought to be killed. The same 
 will apply to this broom with this difference that 
 in this work she is in a position to criticise. Ah, 
 but it is a great effort to maintain the Alpine heights 
 of the standards of Josephine ! " 
 
 He "turned to his broom with renewed energy, 
 the voice of old Josephine clearly ringing in his ears. 
 
 His first year's service had been in the trenches 
 weeks together, knee-deep in mud. Frozen feet 
 and severe rheumatism had driven him to the rear. 
 But so soon as he could stand he found work in the 
 big evacuation hospital and sorting station at the 
 back of the lines ; sometimes doing clerical work, 
 by which was meant taking copies of the wounded 
 men's fiches name, regiment, and nature of wound, 
 as they were brought in, sometimes giving first 
 aid by cutting off boots or applying drops to gassed 
 eyes and giving anti-tetanus injections when the 
 convoys come in so fast doctors and nurses could 
 not cope with them. At other times he worked in 
 the wards as orderly, while on Sundays he became 
 a priest, bicycling to a far distant village to take 
 early mass for a flock left without a shepherd. 
 
 " Les cures, sais-tu, c'est rudement chics les 
 cures " was the verdict of an anti- clerical poilu 
 surprised out of his pre-war prejudices by coming 
 up against the Vicaire- Generale in his many and 
 divers capacities at the evacuation ambulance. 
 
PARIS IN WARTIME 
 
 IT was a strange new Paris, as wholeheartedly given 
 up to war as she had in other days been to pleasure. 
 The Ville Lumiere was in twilight, but in no way 
 depressed on that account. Dancing, singing, and 
 feasting were replaced by untired zealous work. 
 Everyone shoulder to shoulder uniting in the one 
 supreme task, ready to sacrifice everything many 
 having already done so pour la patrie ! 
 
 Visitors to London were often heard to say that 
 except for the air raids in the darkened streets they 
 would hardly have known there was a war on in which 
 England was fighting for her existence. In Paris 
 from the day of the mobilisation, there was no room 
 for doubt It was curious to walk down the Champs 
 Elysees and note the transformation the long avenue 
 on both sides given up to ceumes (works), the nature 
 of which was indicated by flags of every nationality, 
 British, American, Belgian, Italian, Serbian, Monte- 
 negrin, hanging out their colours. There was an 
 ceuvre for Blesses, Mutiles, Eclopes, Reformes, for 
 Orphelins Franpais, Beiges, etc., for Prisonniers and 
 Refugies. The Grand Palais was converted into 
 huge workshops where all sorts of trades were being 
 taught to the wounded, sufficiently convalescent to 
 
 125 
 
126 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 come daily from their hospitals and attend the 
 classes where they could become blacksmiths, saddle- 
 makers, carpenters, glassblowers, tailors, anything 
 they fancied, and from the start have the satisfaction 
 of earning money. 
 
 Service and official cars. Red Cross lorries and 
 transports were the only conveyances to be seen 
 racing up and down the broad avenues. Gone were 
 the smart equipages and autos gone the smart 
 Parisiennes and the smart dandies who watched 
 them admiringly gone even the laughing children 
 and their gay-ribboned nou-nous (nurses). 
 
 In the theatres and restaurants one saw mostly 
 strangers, English and American officers with only 
 a sprinkling of horizon bleu on leave no doubt because 
 the latter preferred their own homes when near 
 at hand, and their womenfolk were in no mood 
 for going out. In the year 1917 it was difficult 
 to find a family that was not in mourning. The first 
 thing which struck one in the streets of Paris was 
 the number of black-robed figures, with the long 
 black veil which to English eyes makes every woman 
 look like a widow. In France the veil is worn equally 
 for a son or a parent. 
 
 If you wanted to find a concourse of the women 
 of Paris, however, you had but to go into the churches. 
 There you would see them not only flocking in crowds 
 on Sundays and feast-days but at any hour every day, 
 passing in and out, women of every class, from the 
 great lady, very plainly garbed, to the market woman, 
 
PARIS IN WARTIME 
 
 basket by her side, kneeling at the side altars absorbed 
 in prayer. 
 
 I went to the Madeleine one Sunday morning. This 
 new Paris showed an impressive assembly crowded 
 with these black -robed women anyone in bright 
 colours was sure to be a foreign bird of passage. 
 There were even more men than women men in 
 every variety of uniform, Chasseurs Alpins, Aviateurs, 
 Zouaves, Staff officers and poilus, side by side a 
 true democracy as the Church should be. 
 
 The war had touched the tongue of the preacher 
 as with a coal of fire. His sermon was of the one 
 great subject aims and ideals of the war, service 
 and self-sacrifice, comfort for the bereaved, reality 
 of the supernatural all around us. So different 
 from the old doctrinal discourses of other days 
 the dreary hammering in of theology only the 
 real things mattered now. 
 
 Among my own special friends there was hardly 
 one whom the terrible war had spared none of course 
 whose menkind were not in hourly danger. All 
 were working, either in hospitals or war workrooms, 
 teaching, amusing the wounded, or engaged in one 
 of the endless ceuvres of which Paris was the centre. 
 Not only was their work urgently needed, but for 
 themselves it was their salvation. As one gallant old 
 lady of seventy-eight said to me, for two years going 
 every day to her war workroom, never missing a day : 
 
 " When one has lost all, and is quite alone in the 
 
128 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 world, then is the time one must not lose courage. 
 Oh no ! For the sake of those who have given their 
 lives, we too must have courage to the end." 
 
 One rarely saw any wounded in the streets of Paris 
 the ambulance cars went by night I was told. 
 The killed and wounded were so numerous it was a 
 significant fact that, unlike our English papers with 
 their daily " Roll of Honour," the French papers 
 never published the figures. It would have appalled 
 the nation had they done so, and caused a depression 
 which might have had disastrous effects ; for the 
 French losses it must be remembered were, in pro- 
 portion, infinitely greater than our own great losses. 
 
 But in spite of the individual sorrow and loss 
 from which no one was exempt, there was a quite 
 extraordinary atmosphere of quiet confidence, of 
 equilibrium in the French capital. When good news 
 came, no burst of joy and boasting, when reverses 
 were announced, no depression or loss of courage, 
 rather an addition of grim resolve, a greater output 
 of steadfast faith in ultimate victory. Undoubtedly 
 the presence of the Americans aided in producing this 
 effect. Though but a small number were yet actually 
 in the firing-line, it was the moral rather than the 
 material help which proved of such value. They 
 realised that victory was only a question of time. 
 
 Still the noble figures of " Lille " and " Strasburg " 
 in the Place de la Concorde wore their draperies of 
 crape, but with the eye of faith we saw them before long 
 garlanded with flowers holding high the flag of France. 
 
FEAST OF THE TOUSSAINT 
 
 THIS has always been kept as a solemn feast day 
 throughout France, but the war has made it the great 
 Day of the year to remain so always for all those 
 who have lived through the great ordeal. 
 
 Formerly it was to all, whether orthodox Catholic 
 or unorthodox Freethinker, the Day of Remembrance 
 dedicated to nos chers morts. To the devout Catholic 
 it was besides a tryst, a day of special meeting, 
 when, on the ladder of love, uniting this earth and 
 the heavenly spheres, the beloved departed and 
 the mourning earth- dwellers met and held sweet 
 communion, prayer ascending and descending like 
 the angels of God. 
 
 The war has made this Day of Days of an added 
 significance to all. It has become impossible to 
 think of that great company of splendid youth, 
 gone over in the full tide of buoyant joyous life and 
 vigour, as the " dead." Nos chers morts is unthink- 
 able as applied to them. There was " no dying " 
 in their case no sickness or decay, no age and waning 
 powers. Death touched them so swiftly with " the 
 might of his sunbeam " that it was a translation 
 like Elijah they were caught up living to continue 
 the fight for Right on the spiritual plane, where 
 
 129 
 
130 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 the real war was being waged of which the earthly 
 conflict was but the physical manifestation. 
 
 To us also, in Anglican England, this Day has 
 taken on a new meaning with the spiritual awakening 
 of the Great War. To pray for the " dead " was a 
 custom which met with little favour in England 
 or Scotland in pre-war days, but to pray for 
 the living departed, those beloved ones so vitally, 
 buoyantly alive only yesterday how could any 
 Church regulation or theological doctrine prevent 
 the anguished heart going forth in prayer which must 
 pierce the walls of jasper and storm the gates of 
 heaven itself. Though they do not pray for the 
 dead in English and Scotch churches the war has 
 taught us to pray for the departed whether they set 
 out on duty for Salonica, Mesopotamia, Flanders, 
 or the longer journey " Whereabouts Unknown." 
 
 And so we now see in one street after another 
 in our austere, beloved old London, the strangely 
 touching, foreign-looking little shrines with the long 
 " Roll of Honour " where many of us have learnt 
 for the first time to pray for the so-called dead, 
 and some of us have learnt for the first time to pray 
 at all. 
 
 Irresistibly the little London shrines seemed 
 linked to the Paris cemeteries that day, as the songs 
 of love and praise rose for that glorious company 
 of young warriors of both lands. In France it 
 would be hard to find a single home which has not 
 one member often alas many, marts pour la patrie. 
 
i 
 
 FEAST OF THE TOUSSAINT 131 
 
 The losses of France outnumber all others the 
 nation is truly decimated. Yet it is not as among 
 the dead but the living that France thinks of her 
 slain sons. Morts pour la patrie, yet not dead, 
 but living, more vitally, truly living than we who 
 remain. In Paris, as throughout the length and 
 breadth of the land, the day is observed as a solemn 
 feast. Shops are shut, churches are crowded all 
 day long. Carrying wreaths and pots of flowers, 
 never-ending processions wend their way to the 
 cemeteries. Women in long black veils, little children, 
 old men bent and white-haired, here and there 
 an old couple arm in arm. " Que de fleurs ! Que 
 de pleurs ! " as Pierre Loti says in his beautiful 
 " Jours des Morts au Front " ; for there too they 
 were keeping the tryst with the departed, all along 
 that grim line where the Four Horsemen of the 
 Apocalypse Sword and Sickness, Famine and Death 
 rode up and down, and back and forth unceasingly. 
 At the entrance to the Passy Cemetery I paused 
 a moment at the big tomb and chapel of Marie 
 Bashkirtseff, wondering to see she was still affection- 
 ately remembered, with fresh flowers and little words 
 of loving regret. Strange, after all these years in 
 a foreign land and at such a time of recent mourning 
 in every home. Her name " immortal " says the 
 inscription by Andre Theuriet. How absurd it 
 sounds ! Her gallant spirit no doubt but her poor 
 little name ! 
 
 Concession a perpetuite," on more than one 
 
132 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 imposing tomb, struck another false note curiously 
 false in those days of real things, of rapid convulsive 
 changes, when Paris was holding herself ready for 
 anything, when the guns of the Hun any day might 
 hammer on her gates, the bombs of the Hun liable 
 any moment to create a huge crater where that 
 consecrated spot stands with its " Concession a 
 perpetuite." 
 
 " Hommages aux Soldats tues a Fennemi," was 
 inscribed on the flags, mounting guard over a big 
 enclosure, covered with a mountain of fresh flowers. 
 In a cemetery near by this homage was rendered 
 also to the British soldiers. Many a French mother 
 brought her offering and whispered a prayer for 
 the English boys who had died so far from home ; 
 that enclosure where the Union Jack waved was a 
 garden of flowers brought by French hands. With 
 these links forged by mutual sympathy in sorrow 
 and aspiration the entente cordiale has become a 
 very living reality. Mothers all over the world 
 speak the same language, and nothing has drawn 
 the French so near to the English as this suffering 
 of the mothers. Perhaps the women of Britain 
 have not so vividly realised what the overwhelming 
 losses of France have been how could they do so 
 since the French papers never published their losses ! 
 And we English do not visualise easily we need 
 facts in concrete form. The French had the war 
 in concrete form on their own soil. They knew 
 what the mothers and wives of England were endur- 
 
FEAST OF THE TOUSSAINT 133 
 
 ing. They saw the British wounded and dying 
 the pathetic little graveyards at the back of the 
 lines with the crossed sticks and the little Union 
 Jacks. They saw and they said : " Ah, the poor 
 English mothers. They suffer even as we others ! " 
 And their hearts warmed towards those mothers 
 across the Channel. 
 
 The prevailing note of the cemeteries that day, 
 however, was not one of gloom. Sorrow there was 
 of course, but, mingled with such an uplift of faith 
 already passing into vision, of mourning which has 
 found consolation, that one felt a kind of serene 
 peace descending like dew, as one passed down 
 those avenues of acacia- shaded tombs. 
 
 Only one sad grave, I remember, chilled the 
 atmosphere of that sunny autumn day a great 
 slab of granite no name no date only a shower 
 of fresh chrysanthemums, golden, crimson, pink, 
 and purple. But deeply engraved on the stone, 
 as without doubt on the heart from which sprang 
 the thought, were the words : 
 
 
 " Tout est mystere 
 Hormis notre douleur." 
 
 Yet the mystery of suffering is the greatest mystery 
 of all ! And when that is realised in all its signi- 
 ficance, then, through the mystery of suffering pierce 
 faint rays, showing colours in the darkness which 
 seemed so unrelieved, so impenetrable. For mystery 
 engenders the spirit of enquiry, of discovery ; it is not 
 
134 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 a final state but a fluid changing condition, and the 
 first discovery one makes, the first ray that pierces 
 our sorrow is that there may be a meaning at the back 
 of it. The mystery of suffering is perhaps still un- 
 solved, but not unsolvable. 
 
 Standing by this sad slab of granite I thought 
 of one stricken family among my French friends 
 of whom these words were tragically true. Of a 
 happy circle of boys and girls just opening out 
 in their first bloom and promise three years before 
 so joyously, so brilliantly, all thought of war as 
 far removed from their visions and projects as the 
 wars of Charlemagne. And now, what is that home ? 
 Two young sons have been killed in action, the third 
 and sole remaining one is a prisoner in the hands 
 of a brutal foe, whose war code enjoins him to wreak 
 his hate and spite on his defenceless prisoners of 
 war. One young daughter is a war widow serving 
 in a hospital at Salonica, another a nurse in the war 
 zone at an ambulance constantly bombed by the 
 enemy. The father fills every hour of the anxious 
 days as they pass with incessant work, but the poor, 
 poor mother, an invalid for many years, she who 
 cannot drown her sorrow in work the war like 
 a flood has swept over her soul and loss loss is 
 the only thing of which she is as yet capable of being 
 hourly conscious. Truly these words are engraved 
 upon her heart : " Tout est mystere Hormis notre 
 douleur ! " 
 
FEAST OF THE TOUSSAINT 
 
 135 
 
 Many young aviators rest here. Their own pro- 
 pellers, quiet at last, keep watch over the hands 
 that so skilfully, daringly, guided their flights across 
 the sky. A chapel was dedicated to a whole group 
 of fallen aviators of the Third Company Mort pour 
 la patrie. 
 
 Pour la patrie ! You cannot go a step in France 
 without being brought up sharp against this one 
 absorbing, all engulfing aspect of the war. Herein 
 lies a difference between England and France, wide 
 as the poles apart. Nine out of ten of our brave 
 Tommies would tell you that they " were blest if 
 they knew what they were fighting for " it never 
 made them fight one whit less well, fortunately 
 so well no men fought better. But here in France 
 there was no question in the mind of the simplest 
 poilu as to what he was fighting for pour la patrie 
 is written not only on his grave but in his heart. 
 And so no doubt would it have been on British 
 hearts, Sinn Feiners included, had the savage hordes 
 of the Hun taken possession of Lancashire, Yorkshire 
 and a large slice of the Emerald Isle, with a Von 
 Bissing and his kinsmen dispensing the law. Oh ! 
 men know what they are fighting for when the green 
 beauty of their sunny land, their peaceful, well-kept 
 homes are turned into a grey wilderness of charred 
 ruins and bleeding tree-stumps, when the familiar 
 church of their childhood lies in a heap upon the 
 surrounding graves, and the white-haired cure has 
 been shot against the wall when their girls have 
 
136 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 been dragged from their beds at dead of night and torn 
 screaming from their agonised mothers to be deported 
 to Germany to " work " for their savage captors. 
 Pour la patrie is no sentimental poetic phrase, such 
 as is very often conveyed by " King and Country v 
 on English lips. The latter is a toast, pour la patrie 
 is a dedication of life itself. Duke et decorum est 
 pro patria mori breathes a high-souled ideal appealing 
 to the Sir Philip Sidneys and their chivalrous 
 descendants who volunteered in their thousands, 
 forming an army of a spirit so invincible they saved 
 the civilisation of the world in those first crucial 
 days. For them it was sweet and seemly to die 
 not only for their own country but even for another 
 man's country, in her need. But pour la patrie 
 expresses a sentiment at once more elementary- 
 more fundamental, it sounds an imperative claim, 
 a prior claim, on the heart's blood of every French- 
 man. He draws in the significance of these words 
 with his mother's milk. He is France and France 
 is his the very soil is his, her noble traditions, 
 her sacred shrines, her glorious past, her long roll 
 of immortal names of heroes, statesmen, artists- 
 all are his, and in return she claims his sword to 
 defend her in her hour of need. The man who 
 would not die proudly, eagerly, is no true son, there 
 is no place not even the miserable " objectors' ' 
 internment camp for him in France. 
 
 Down the long avenues of fallen leaves I followed 
 
FEAST OF THE TOUSSAINT 137 
 
 with the black-robed crowd, turning off where I could 
 into the little paths less frequented. Here and 
 there the solitary figure of a young widow or an old 
 man knelt by a newly- made grave with as yet nothing 
 to mark it but the little tricolour starting out brightly 
 among the wreaths and flowers. And suddenly the 
 distant boom of guns broke the stillness of the 
 place, and made the subdued whispers change to 
 anxious questionings. One realised that even at 
 that moment Frenchmen were laying down their 
 lives in thousands as their bodies formed a living 
 rampart against the oncoming Hun a wall that 
 will never be broken down, a wall whose breaches 
 are filled up as fast as they are made, a wall that 
 finally will fall upon and crush the accursed grey 
 swarm of invaders, desecrators, destroyers, once 
 and for ever rid the land of them ; for that wall 
 is composed not only of the bodies of young France, 
 but welded together by the unconquerable spirit 
 
 of the entire nation. 
 
 
 
 " The booming it is probably practice," said the 
 sentinel at the entrance gate. " It is the voice of 
 the War." The voice of the War the ever-present, 
 all-absorbing War ! 
 
THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 
 
 ON All Saints' Day in whatever direction I went in 
 Paris it was to meet Cesar Franck with his message 
 of courage and consolation. 
 
 The Great War called up not only its naval and 
 military forces, but its statesmen, inventors, scientists, 
 writers and artists, all those who could truly serve 
 in the great hour of need. And so it came to pass 
 that the call reached Cesar Franck, and he came 
 into his own at last, though his body had lain in the 
 earth nearly thirty years and he had changed his world 
 for one in which Conservatoire Directors cease from 
 troubling and the weary are at rest. 
 
 While here he was ahead of his time, and like all 
 great spirits with a message for the world he sang 
 to deaf ears and to ears untuned, who hearing, resented 
 his inspired music as "an innovation." 
 
 At Notre Dame the beautiful uplifting strains of 
 " Les Beatitudes " rang through the dim arches of the 
 old cathedral, falling like a benediction on the kneeling 
 crowds of black-robed people. 
 
 " Blessed are they that mourn blessed, blessed 
 for they shall be comforted." 
 
 France was like Rachel, mourning for her slain 
 children, but further on the winding road than poor 
 
 138 
 
THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 139 
 
 Rachel, heard the divine promise, brought to her on 
 the wings of that inspired music, and found comfort. 
 The tears which were falling from many eyes all 
 round one, were healing tears that day, and many a 
 sad face among the mourners as they streamed out, 
 positively shone with a great peace, a quiet confidence. 
 I was with one such, a French mother, whose firstborn, 
 the light of her eyes, had been killed by German guns 
 in the opening onslaught one of those fine specimens 
 of young France, chivalrous, noble, stainless, leaving 
 a blank never to be filled in his home or in public 
 life. It was at her request I went with her to hear 
 the music which possessed such wonderful power to 
 console the mothers of France. And hearing it as 
 given that day I understood why Csar Franck was the 
 chosen musician of the Jour des Morts. 
 
 Not only in the churches but everywhere he was 
 to be heard. At the Grand Palais a vast throng 
 attended a " Festival Franck " where his " Ruth," 
 "Panis Angelicus" and "Choral Symphony" were 
 given, while at the Salle Gaveau was another concert 
 entirely devoted to his works. 
 
 Whether his versatile genius manifested itself in 
 oratorio, symphony or opera, it had this quality it 
 radiated a kind of serenity and light which uplifted 
 the soul, bringing not only comfort and consolation 
 to the bereaved, but giving strength and vision to 
 the fighting man strong in a righteous cause, and faith 
 in ultimate triumphant victory to the wounded and 
 dying. 
 
140 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 That such a gift as Franck has left to the world 
 should be practically still unknown in England is only 
 in accordance with past tradition. How long I wonder 
 will it be before the arches of Westminster Abbey will 
 thrill to the sound of the glorious " Redemption " 
 and " Beatitudes." No doubt it is true of music as 
 of governments, that " every nation has that which 
 it deserves," and we in England have not yet deserved 
 these great masterpieces left to the world by the 
 organist of Ste Clotilde. 
 
 Sainte Clotilde ! How often I have stepped inside 
 the quiet spacious church, standing aside from the 
 noisy thoroughfares in its little green garden where 
 his statue now presides, and listened if perchance I 
 might hear some far-off, faint echoes of that divine 
 music still clinging to the walls and arches which 
 rang with it for thirty years. So steeped is the place 
 in his memory, and so identified with his personality 
 that marvellous organ, that it would never have 
 surprised me had the instrument begun to speak of 
 its own accord. 
 
 When Franck was appointed to Ste Clotilde he 
 was just recovering from a severe illness brought on 
 by overwork and many worries. Ste Clotilde came 
 to him as a ray of light at a dark, depressing time, 
 a calm haven ensuring him not against toil, that 
 he always had but a small and certain means of 
 livelihood. It was here that his art grew and unfolded 
 year by year to ever greater beauty and perfection, 
 but absolutely unrecognised in his lifetime except 
 
THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 141 
 
 by a small band of brilliant disciples, many of them 
 now famous throughout the musical world, such as 
 Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Paul Dukas, Henri 
 Duparc, Augusta Holmes, Charles Bordes and many 
 others. Like Walther von der Vogelweide he was 
 despised and rejected by the Meistersanger of the 
 Conservatoire and all the official heads and directors 
 of his art. When bidden to the feast prepared for 
 them at his own house on the completion of his 
 life's great work, the chef d'ceuvre, " Les Beatitudes," 
 thinking in the naive simplicity of his heart it would 
 give them pleasure to greet a work in which an artist 
 had put his highest endeavour, his best and noblest 
 thought, with one accord they all made excuse. The 
 Minister of Fine Arts sent " sincere regrets," the 
 Director of the Conservatoire had " another engage- 
 ment," one had the grippe, and another a sick aunt. 
 
 Standing before the statue in the garden I thought 
 of that deserted feast, and how twelve years after 
 his death those same gentlemen who refused him 
 recognition in his lifetime had all met there, heads 
 uncovered, to do him honour for not to have been 
 present on such an occasion would have reflected on 
 their own glory. 
 
 It was in Ste Clotilde he found that friend whose 
 companionship blessed his daily life for thirty years 
 his wonderful organ an instrument which even after 
 fifty years retains its full freshness of tone and rich 
 timbre. It was constructed by that master-builder 
 Cavaille-Coll, when at the zenith of his fame. To 
 
142 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 Cesar Franck it became as a living being, a responsive 
 friend calling forth the tenderest affection, the most 
 intimate understanding. The tie between him and 
 his organ was like that between Orpheus and his 
 lute. 
 
 " Si vous saviez comme je Taime," he said to a friend. 
 " II est si souple a mes doigts et si doux a mes pensees." 
 
 And who can venture to say whether some soul did 
 not in truth come into being born of the union of the 
 two great artist spirits, builder and composer, who 
 threw into the instrument so much of their own 
 creative essence, even as Siegfried welded into his 
 sword " Nothung " so much of himself that it became 
 alive with his spirit. 
 
 This theory is quite in keeping with the testimony 
 of those who had the joy of hearing the master's 
 inspired improvisations a spontaneous creation of 
 music which impressed the listener with a feeling 
 of being in the presence of some power almost super- 
 natural, and gave to the spirit an uplift into serene 
 spaces of light and beauty never to be forgotten. 
 M. Vincent d'Indy declares when on rare occasions one 
 of his pupils was called upon to replace the master 
 detained by other work " it was with a kind of super- 
 stitious awe that pupil would venture to touch with 
 his profane hands the quasi- supernatural being accus- 
 tomed to vibrate, to sing, to weep, under the a compelling 
 influence of the great genius of whom it had become, 
 so to say, an integral part." 
 
 His improvisations were one of the marvels of 
 
THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 143 
 
 his many-sided genius. Liszt himself, that great im- 
 proviser, on one occasion his sole auditor in the 
 empty aisles of Ste Clotilde, speaking afterwards 
 of that hour in which he sat enthralled, and wrapt, 
 listening to the music which passed spontaneously 
 from the soul of the great artist through his organ, 
 declared he had " no peer save Bach." 
 
 It was to his organ, this unfailing friend, Franck 
 was wont to rush with the inspirations that frequently 
 came to him during the night. Whether these in- 
 spirations were due to what R. L. Stevenson describes 
 as " the little grey men " who carry on their silent, 
 subliminal, creative work while the body sleeps, or 
 whether the spirit, while still attached by the silver 
 cord, rises in the night to the plane where dwell its 
 kindred souls, holding sweet communion and bringing 
 back to the earth like trailing clouds of glory some 
 of the music of those spheres, who can say ? Cesar 
 Franck himself clearly held that he was but the 
 medium, the organ pipe as it were, through which 
 these celestial messages passed. 
 
 A friend recounts how early one morning he met 
 Franck dashing out of his house in the Boulevard St 
 Michel oblivious of the world around him. The friend 
 threw himself across his path, insisting on recognition. 
 
 " Ha I mon ami " cried Franck, seizing his arm, 
 " have you a moment to spare ? Then come with me 
 to Sainte Clotilde, I have heard last night such celestial 
 harmonies I must go at once and try to render them 
 on my organ. Come with me." 
 
144 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 The friend records that the gates of heaven swung 
 open as the organ pealed forth under the compelling 
 touch of the master. It was characteristic of his 
 genial nature that Franck sought eagerly this human 
 sympathy and understanding, gratefully accepting 
 wherever he found it, though he was equally incapable 
 of seeking popularity or writing to please the public 
 as incapable as a well of changing the water springing 
 from its source. 
 
 Even to please his wife, between whom and himself 
 there existed a lifelong, devoted affection, he could 
 not alter a passage when once it had taken form as 
 he heard it spoken by that inward voice. Mme Franck 
 was a good musician and often helped him by 
 preparing his young pupils for him. Following his 
 work with keen interest she would listen from the 
 adjoining room. Certain of his compositions would 
 draw her like a magnet, and she would softly open a 
 crack in the communicating door. But she was no 
 blind or uncritical admirer, and any unusual passage, 
 even of unusual beauty, met with her disapproval, 
 her mind being of the conventional and slow-moving 
 type. No pioneer, her temperament was for the 
 beaten paths, and where she found herself there to 
 remain. Any passage stamped with the cloven hoof 
 of over- much originality would invariably bring her 
 kindly, anxious face to the door with the remark : 
 " Decidement, Cesar, je n'aime pas a." 
 
 And Cesar would, by way of reply, just regard her 
 with gentle serenity, and proceed quietly on his way, 
 
THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 145 
 
 being as powerless to oblige her by altering the offend- 
 ing passage as he would have been to alter the rather 
 peculiar shape of his nose, had she proffered the 
 request. 
 
 To the wide circle of his own family he was the sun 
 and centre. All came to him whatever their needs. 
 He lived in the midst of his boys and girls, working 
 often under conditions which would have baffled 
 any composer. His family circle comprised not only 
 his own children, but Brissaud and de Monvel re- 
 lations. During the summer vacation a large family 
 party would take a small country house together at 
 Grez or Nemours, within reach of the forest of 
 Fontainebleau. There in the little salon overrun 
 by young Brissauds, de Monvels and Francks, he 
 would pace from the piano to the table jotting down 
 his music, while at another table sat Dr Edouard 
 Brissaud equally absorbed in his great Treatise on 
 the Brain, both completely lifted above the din of 
 cache-cache or la chasse as the cyclone of laughing 
 children dashed in and out. 
 
 It was under such conditions one summer that he 
 composed the exquisite little Organ Pieces for a 
 young girl cousin engaged to play for the service in 
 church, and unable to find anything " easy enough." 
 
 There is a portrait in the home of a member of his 
 family which shows Franck to have borne a curious 
 likeness to Beethoven the same breadth of brow 
 and general outline of head, but the expression of 
 troubled spirit, fighting through obstacles, which 
 
146 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 characterises Beethoven is replaced by an expression 
 of wrapt aloofness with Franck. He too met lions 
 in the way, but he had not the terrible trial of deafness 
 to battle with, and he heard, both with soul and body 
 senses, the divine music which lifted his spirit into the 
 " serene spaces." 
 
 Perhaps nowhere can the loved presence and 
 influence of the great master more vividly be felt 
 than in the home of Mdlle Cecile de Monvel, the well- 
 known pianist and teacher, sister of the famous 
 artist Boutet de Monvel. She loves to tell how it 
 was to the " Cousin Franck's " fostering care of her 
 talent she owed everything in her early musical life. 
 It was to this young cousin Franck dedicated his 
 " Prelude Aria and Final " for piano. 
 
 " Another name appears on the cover," she smiled 
 sadly. " Ah, how well I remember that day, as though 
 it were yesterday, when he came to me with many 
 excuses and explained how a great lady pianist had 
 signified her royal wish to play the piece in public. 
 What, alas, could he do ? He was desolated to make 
 a disappointment for his petite cousine. Of course 
 I was obliged to pretend it made me nothing that 
 I was pleased about the great pianist, and the simple- 
 minded Pere Franck he never suspected that the music 
 was soaked with my tears when he left I was very 
 young," she added apologetically. 
 
 Franck wrote but little for the piano,. which all 
 pianists deeply regret, but Mdlle de Monvel is a 
 great artist, and with wonderful skill makes her piano 
 
 

 THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 147 
 
 act as a miniature orchestra or an organ in reproducing 
 the works of Franck. She can give her fortunate 
 guest a veritable Festival Franck in that charming 
 home of hers in the Rue Saint Honore. Asked to 
 play the music she loved best she began with her own 
 special " Prelude Aria and Final." Before beginning 
 the triumphant opening of the Final she observed, 
 ic This is what I should like to hear played when 
 victory to our arms is at last proclaimed." The 
 theme has in fact the same victorious ring sounded 
 in Mrs Ward Howe's battle song, " Mine eyes have 
 seen the coming of the Glory of the Lord." 
 
 An interesting feature of the master's music, of 
 which she pointed out many instances as she played 
 one thing after another from Symphonies, Chorales 
 and Beatitudes, is his use of the same theme to 
 express exact opposites. In the third Beatitude, 
 for example, the melody of " Oh ! Reine implacable 
 Douleur," expressing the profoundest melancholy, 
 suffering and sorrow, is the same which later on, with 
 other harmonies and tempo, arises with an uplift 
 into regions of divine consolation and hope, as though 
 he would show that out of the dire sorrows and trials 
 themselves God draws joy and peace passing human 
 understanding. Again and again Franck uses this 
 method in a significant manner, showing the under- 
 lying thought in all his musical creations. 
 
 On one occasion, in accordance with a promise 
 to play me the famous Sonate for violin and piano 
 dedicated to M. Isaye, Mdlle de Monvel was assisted 
 
148 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 by a boyish young officer who had passed eight 
 months in the fiery ordeal of Verdun. While lying 
 severely wounded he had been taken prisoner by the 
 Germans, but had managed to escape from his Hun 
 captors, falling out of the ambulance in the dark. 
 A first prizeman of the Conservatoire, he promises, 
 if his life is spared, to be in the foremost rank of 
 violinists. I asked him if he could have played the 
 Sonata just like that before Verdun. 
 
 He answered slowly : " Nothing is quite the same 
 after one has passed through the experience of Verdun. 
 One is not studying music down there and yet one 
 is learning how to play the violin how to express 
 such thoughts as Franck has here as never before 
 one could have expressed them." 
 
 The Sonata as he played it was the story of a soul 
 descending into a veritable inferno of anguish, yet 
 never succumbing, but made strong by the purifying 
 fires and rising at last into regions of light and joy 
 unspeakable. 
 
 For Franck never leaves the soul in Hell, and the 
 last movement of the Sonata opens with all the 
 serenity and hope of the new life, hope justified in 
 victorious resurrection as surely as the dark drear 
 winter is justified by the miracle of spring. Franck 
 was the prophet of that hour. Out of his own 
 heart's knowledge, sufferings, struggles and victories 
 he wrought his own imperishable works, and because 
 he had known his Dies Irce, yet never lost the vision 
 of the beyond, but heard through all the din of hostile 
 
THE MUSICIAN OF THE GREAT WAR 149 
 
 voices, all the disappointments and bereavements of 
 life, the voice of Him who uttered the Beatitude, 
 " Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be 
 comforted," for this reason he came to be the musician 
 of France, stricken yet unconquerable, in her Dies 
 Irce. 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 
 
 IN Paris it was brought home to me as never before 
 what French women were doing the part they were 
 playing in the Great War. I had seen them in the 
 provinces acting as mayors of towns and villages, as 
 postmistresses, college and school teachers, and heard 
 of many taking the place of their absent husbands 
 as heads of commercial houses and working large farms, 
 but it was in Paris I got in touch with the mainsprings 
 of women's work all over the country. 
 
 " And what are French women doing ? " asked a 
 recently arrived American lady wanting to know all 
 about it. 
 
 " They are keeping the country going," answered 
 an English officer whose business it had been to travel 
 the length and breadth of France for three years 
 of wartime. And this verdict has been unanimously 
 confirmed by their own countrymen of all professions. 
 
 When the call to mobilise rang like a thunderclap 
 through France, it was answered not only by the men, 
 but also by the women, to whom a similar call was 
 addressed by the Prime Minister through the Press. 
 Women of all ranks and of every occupation, whether 
 among the noblesse and bourgeoisie, the professional, 
 commercial or agricultural classes, rose up and 
 
 160 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 
 
 151 
 
 responded with a burst of patriotic enthusiasm, an 
 ardent desire to serve, only to be found in a demo- 
 cratic country where national service is regarded as 
 the highest duty of every man, and to give ungrudg- 
 ingly her dearest for such service, the imperative duty 
 of every woman. And more, not only to buckle on 
 the sword of her departing sons with words of high 
 courage, but promptly to take his place at the desk, 
 the plough, the task of whatever kind, which the man 
 has perforce had to quit. This is a duty for which 
 the Frenchwoman is always partially prepared, by 
 her custom of sharing the life of her menkind in a 
 daily comradeship quite unknown in any rank of 
 life in England. The Frenchwoman not only takes 
 part in her husband's recreations the British work- 
 man's beanfeast has no equivalent in France but 
 she shares his business life, counsels him in his enter- 
 prises, is conversant with les affaires and more often 
 than not in small households, shops, hotels and cafes, 
 she keeps the accounts and holds the purse. Also, in 
 all agricultural life, as Millet's pictures have made 
 familiar to English eyes, she shares the daily toil, 
 man and woman sowing and reaping, side by side, 
 in the fields, the vineyards and orchards of their 
 beloved land. 
 
 First in the ranks of Frenchwomen answering the 
 call to mobilise were the members of the Croix Rouge, 
 comprising the three great societies Secours aux 
 Blesses Militaires, V Union des Femmes de France, 
 and V Association des Dames Franpaises. The war 
 
152 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 of 1870 had shown Frenchwomen their heartrending 
 helplessness and ignorance, natural consequence of 
 lack of training and organisation. To realise was to 
 remedy. ' ' Never again, ' ' vowed the women of France. 
 The Society of the Croix Rouge was founded, and from 
 an acorn rapidly grew into a vigorous widespreading 
 tree " whose leaves were for the healing of the nation." 
 
 Long before the supreme hour struck in 1914 the 
 Society numbered its thousands in every province, 
 and the three main branches were doing splendid 
 efficient work, not only among the wounded and sick 
 of the army at home and wherever French troops 
 were stationed abroad, but also going to the assistance 
 of neutrals at war, and the victims of catastrophes 
 such as the earthquake in Sicily, and epidemic in 
 Italy. 
 
 An important work undertaken by the Secours aux 
 Blesses Militaires was at the railway stations, bring- 
 ing food to the trainloads of wounded, dressing their 
 wounds and receiving those unable to continue the 
 journey in the dortoirs attached to their station 
 canteens. 
 
 With one of the pillars of the Croix Rouge whose 
 wife was a Presidente and his daughter infirmiere 
 at the front, I spent an interesting time visiting some 
 of the station canteens. He was a strong advocate 
 of the entente cordiale as I found all Frenchmen to 
 be who had spent even a few weeks of their youth 
 in London. He brought out his long unused but 
 treasured words of English, as a woman takes out some 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 153 
 
 ball dress of her youth laid by in lavender. What 
 baffled him was my English replies, so much so that 
 the conversation turned into our speaking each other's 
 languages, by which means we got on famously. 
 
 The old familiar Gare du Nord was changed past 
 recognition. Everywhere hung flags of the Allied 
 nations. British troops, Canadians, Australians with 
 their feathered hats, Americans newly arrived, 
 Italians and flying men of all nations, Indians 
 turbaned and dignified, dark-faced Moroccans and 
 Senegalese, and thousands of the horizon bleu arriving 
 and departing all night and all day, together with 
 trainloads of wounded, made one feel at the very 
 heart of the great machinery of war. 
 
 Huge bales covered about an acre of the station, 
 supplies just come from America for their army, 
 which was pouring in daily to the great satisfaction 
 of everybody. Here the Croix Rouge had a hundred 
 and fifty beds and a free canteen for the French army. 
 The Women's Emergency Corps ran a canteen in 
 the great basement of the station for British and 
 Belgians. It seemed a pity to see these comrades in 
 arms sitting at separate tables and their fare kept 
 rigidly distinct to meet their respective tastes, the 
 British paying one franc twenty-five cents for their 
 repast and the Belgians fifty cents only, to meet their 
 respective purses. My guide and I agreed we should 
 like to see a free canteen for all the Allied troops no 
 separate tables, no barriers, but a complete entente 
 even in the matter of food the British Tommy 
 
154 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 learning what an excellent thing is the Frenchman's 
 pot au feu instead of shunning it as though it were 
 concocted in Germany, and the Belgian learning the 
 satisfying joys of plum- dough. The pot au feu, 
 however, is a counsel of perfection only to be attained 
 I fear when the Englishwoman has learnt to cook. 
 
 At the Gare St Lazare we found a charming lady 
 of the S.B.M. in charge of the Croix Rouge equipment. 
 She had spent three strenuous years at her post, often 
 taking British soldiers as well as French poilus under 
 her care. Many she had come to know well, for they 
 passed to and fro frequently in the course of the long 
 war, and not only M. Poilu but Mr Atkins too, eagerly 
 looked out for her friendly smile and hearty welcome 
 as something almost as good as " Blighty," this was 
 evident when we visited the canteen. 
 
 " The influence of such a woman is incalculable," 
 said my guide, " she is good as bread " than which 
 on French lips no praise can be higher. She had a 
 large staff of assistants, all of the S.B.M., and all giving 
 their services benevoles to their country. 
 
 Recently twenty-eight British wounded had passed 
 through her hands from the Italian battlefields 
 on their way to England via Le Havre. Here the 
 comfortable Poste de Secours, with its good beds as 
 well as free canteen, offered kindly hospitality to the 
 wounded Tommies. The directrice showed us also 
 a douche bath, a gift of the London Committee of the 
 Croix Rouge, much appreciated and which she said 
 had such an irresistible attraction for " Mr Atkins " he 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 155 
 
 uld never be got out of it but by main force, while 
 it constantly needed repairs after his aquatic sports. 
 
 It would be difficult to estimate what these women 
 of the Croix Rouge have done for their country the 
 enormous burden they have borne, giving not only 
 unpaid service in military hospitals as well as their 
 own Red Cross but equipping hundreds of hospitals, 
 canteens and rest camps all over the country. In 
 Rumania, Salonika, Serbia and Italy, wherever there 
 are French troops, they have opened hospitals also, 
 and these matrons and nurses have stuck to their 
 posts by the wounded while the enemy shells have 
 fallen on their buildings, and the hordes of barbarians 
 have poured into the invaded town. Many have laid 
 down their lives like the brave young nurse Mdlle 
 Gille, killed in the Luneville hospital, after refusing 
 to leave the wounded who could not be removed. 
 
 Many have received the Croix de Guerre, Croix de 
 la Legion d'Honneur and Citations a I Or Are de VArmee, 
 but the vast majority have worked equally devotedly 
 without any recognition or reward, quite content that 
 their services have been accepted and acceptable. 
 
 The nuns of France have also played their part 
 nobly, and I was told of one community after another 
 who had shown a courage and fortitude equal to any 
 early Christian martyrs ; laying down their lives for 
 the wounded whom they took in and refused to desert, 
 opening their doors to the fugitives, though knowing 
 the penalty if discovered would be death. 
 
 This courage of the Frenchwoman has been one of 
 
156 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 her most conspicuous traits. It has continually 
 taken the German so by surprise he has had nothing 
 with which to meet it. I noticed this when my old 
 lady at Noyon told me of the dressing- down she gave 
 to the Boche Colonel who brought disreputable 
 women to the little green- shuttered house. " He 
 regarded me without replying," she said triumphantly. 
 And Mme Latour when she arraigned the Hun officer 
 for blasphemy came off victorious, for he retired 
 worsted from the field from sheer surprise at a creature 
 he was accustomed to regard more as a neuter 1 than 
 the female of the race, presuming to stand up to him 
 fearless and unashamed, arguing with and even rating 
 him. Madame Macheres seems to have had a similar 
 effect upon the Boche General she confronted when 
 acting as Major of Soissons. " Le Maire, c'est moi," 
 she informed the invader who asked for the Mayor, 
 and though he threatened to have her shot she boldly 
 remonstrated with him at the violence and excesses 
 of his troops and was not shot. 
 
 The first thing that struck me on getting in touch 
 with the work of my friends in Paris was the clever 
 way the Government had made use of all the Suffrage 
 Societies. From the very beginning they had mobil- 
 ised their services, converting the various organisations 
 into centres for starting branches of national service. 
 These societies, with their staffs of trained women, 
 their offices and their Press departments, proved 
 invaluable. At Le Havre and many other centres 
 the Feminist Society became a Bureau ^Assistance 
 
 1 Das Weib noun neuter the wife. Das Madohen noun neuter the girl. 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 157 
 
 functioning with municipal funds. At Rouen the 
 Commission of Succour and Aid was presided over by 
 the Mayor, assisted by six women of the National 
 Union for Women Suffrage. When the Government 
 wanted a powerful appeal to the moral influence 
 women must exert on the soldier it was the Presidente 
 of the French Union for Women's Suffrage who 
 voiced that appeal and issued a pamphlet which 
 was distributed throughout the length and breadth 
 of France. For it was decided at the beginning of 
 the war to grant, whenever possible, seven days' leave 
 every four months to the men at the Front, and it 
 was realised that much depended on the wives and 
 mothers in what spirit those men returned to their 
 grim duty. If the women kept their faith and 
 courage high, all would be well, as the Suffragist 
 leader told them in her simple and stirring words : 
 
 '' By the effect of this leave on our soldiers, the 
 manner in which we receive them, and above all the 
 way in which we send them back to their duty, we 
 shall show whether we are women worthy of France, 
 or merely poor loving creatures without courage or 
 noble ideals, unworthy to be wives and mothers of 
 French soldiers. . . . Our responsibility towards 
 them is overwhelming, for the attitude of the women 
 may be a decisive influence. . . . Let us never 
 forget that our inner thought reflects itself upon the 
 face and in the speech, and that ignoble thought, like 
 noble emotion, will find an echo in the hearts of our 
 men. ." 
 
158 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 The Government were wise indeed to mobilise 
 such a moral force as this. Curious to think that the 
 men who could go so far could not go the logical step 
 further and give these women the political freedom 
 which would enable them to extend incalculably their 
 uplifting influence. Perhaps they considered it un- 
 necessary since they achieved so much without the 
 vote, and no doubt a fear of the influence of the priest 
 in politics made the anti-clerical party vote against it 
 to a man. 
 
 Frenchwomen did not rest content with exercising 
 moral influence in their own homes. They rose in 
 their strength to combat not only the Germans in the 
 field, but those internal foes more to be dreaded than 
 the Boche vice, drink, child-mortality. Recognising 
 the terrible menace of the growing evil of alcohol, 
 a special danger to a nation at war, the women of the 
 Conseil National des Femmes Franpaises, a federation 
 of one hundred and fifty feminist Associations, together 
 with the great Suffrage Unions, inaugurated a vigorous 
 campaign, holding meetings all over France, getting 
 up petitions and publishing pamphlets giving 
 statistics. They roused the nation, and with the help 
 of military authorities and medical men, brought 
 such pressure to bear on the Government that certain 
 measures were passed controlling liquor traffic and 
 forbidding absinthe. Much more would have been 
 achieved but for the same powerful influence exerted 
 by Vested Interest, which prevented effective reform 
 in England. 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 159 
 
 Another enterprise created by the women of France 
 for fighting the evils of drink, and in which I found 
 many of my friends in Paris actively engaged, was 
 the Foyer du Soldat i.e. soldier's clubrooms providing 
 healthy foods, temperance drinks, and a cheerful, 
 bright atmosphere where the poilu could find news- 
 papers, writing material, music and games, or rest 
 and quiet, according to his taste. These proved such 
 a success that wherever troops were stationed there 
 was an urgent demand for a foyer, and the Munici- 
 pality in many towns inaugurated this same boon for 
 civilians. In connection with these foyers the women 
 worked that other scheme of filleuls or godsons 
 the adoption of the homeless poilu into a family who 
 receive him when on leave and send him parcels when 
 at the Front. 
 
 What Frenchwomen are doing is such a wide subject 
 it is only possible just to touch on the limited aspect 
 offered by what I found my own friends and their 
 friends to be doing. 
 
 Several days I spent in the company of that familiar 
 and beloved friend of the poor, Madame Jules Siegfried, 
 for years a leading suffragist and President of L' Union 
 pour le Suffrage des Femmes. She is a true " Semeuse 
 de Courage," and those words of hers, " Si nos cceurs 
 aspirent a la paix, nos consciences nous le dependent 
 aujourd'hui," were the Frenchwomen's answer to all 
 Pacifists. She was the moving spirit of the meetings 
 of V Union des Families held in a populous part of 
 Paris, where on Saturday evenings crowds of men and 
 
160 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 women assembled in the big hall to hear conferences 
 on the war, religion and social subjects, given by 
 distinguished Generals and members of the Govern- 
 ment, who recognised the vital importance of holding 
 up constantly the ideals for which the war was waged, 
 and the reasons for the tremendous sacrifices the 
 nation was called upon to make. This constant fuel 
 was needed to keep bright the flame of courage and 
 faith in a nation so sorely tried, where every family 
 was in mourning, and the long black veil the pre- 
 vailing note in every crowd. One evening I passed at 
 the Union des Families Madame Siegfried herself gave 
 us a charming little address, taking as her subject 
 the poilu's horizon bleu uniform and all it symbolised. 
 A leading tenor of the opera sang stirring patriotic 
 songs, and a first-rate choir gave us glees and part 
 songs. The audience was entirely composed of work- 
 ing people, and many brought their children the 
 regular family party you so often see in France taking 
 their pleasures all together. 
 
 On another occasion I went with Madame Siegfried 
 to one of her Maternal Canteens, branches of which 
 exist all over Paris. They are gratuite, and open to 
 all married and unmarried mothers, Catholic, Jew 
 or pagan, no questions asked, the only qualification 
 necessary being a doctor's certificate. Two excellent 
 meals are given every day, and the results of the food, 
 rest and sympathy are such that these women undergo 
 a transformation not only of body, but mind and 
 character. 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 161 
 
 Certainly they looked a most happy and pleasant 
 company sitting round their well-served dejeuner. 
 Several to whom I spoke to had husbands at the 
 Front one had two brothers who were prisoners in 
 Germany. They sorely needed boots, and by a great 
 effort she had saved money and sent some to " the 
 poor boys." They were stolen at once by the Boches, 
 also from the parcels they stole all they wanted. 
 Working in the salt mines without boots, they would 
 soon lose the feet from a returned prisoner she had 
 heard of many poor boys who had done so. Other 
 women joined in with their experiences. All had 
 something to say of the sufferings of the prisoners. It 
 is not only the English who have experienced the 
 brutal treatment of the Hun. 
 
 Another use the Government made of the Women's 
 Suffrage Societies, and in which Mme Siegfried took 
 an active part, was the finding of lost relatives in the 
 devastated regions. She told me of two little girls 
 separated from their mother when driven out of their 
 burning village. For months no trace of them could 
 be found, the mother, with a baby and another small 
 child, being nearly crazy with grief and suspense. 
 At last they were found to have been rescued by some 
 kind people in the Midi who were trying every means 
 to discover the mother the Society restored them 
 to each other. The office is flooded with letters of 
 gratitude for this humane work. It was found to be 
 too vast an undertaking for any State department, 
 so was handed over to the National Council of French- 
 
162 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 women. They employ 650 persons at the head 
 office in Paris alone to work in connection with the 
 Prefects of the provinces and the Feminist organisa- 
 tions which exist in every department of France. 
 The work was so admirably organised that already 
 in 1915 as many as 400,000 investigations had been 
 taken up and no less than 50,000 proved successful. 
 It was the women of this Society who by appealing 
 to the Pope and the King of Spain to interfere, got 
 the Germans to return 300 of the deported young 
 girls to their homes only a small percentage, it is 
 true, but they hoped for more before long. 
 
 Another of my friends I found working unceasingly 
 for the welfare of the munition girls. A small group 
 of Frenchwomen having heard of the splendid work 
 done by the English women factory superintendents, 
 they laid their scheme before the Minister of Munitions 
 and the Minister of Works. It had been proved in 
 England that attention to health and hygiene, good 
 food and a good moral influence, greatly assisted the 
 output of the munitions. This was a trump card- 
 it was no question of sentiment, of philanthropy, it 
 was good business, or the practical British would never 
 have taken it up ! The directors of the State factories 
 were slower to convince, but after a lead from the big 
 munition factory at Bourges the rest followed quickly, 
 and Surintendantes d?U sines de Guerre were a fait 
 accompli. These superintendents were trained with 
 classes, lectures and examinations, and generally 
 spent a few weeks working themselves at the muni- 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 163 
 
 tions with the girls so as to get better in touch with 
 them. 
 
 The Frenchwoman's record as munition worker is 
 second to none. M. Bourillon, Inspector of the 
 Ministry of Works, said in his report that they were 
 " far above the average man, their previous training 
 of eye and hand in such industries as lace-making, 
 dressmaking, porcelain work, having given them a 
 dexterity, a fine precision and exactitude, which made 
 them irreproachable makers of shells, and gave to 
 their artillery work the most exact execution." He 
 stated that " out of 80,000 shells verified in a workshop 
 of 850 women only one shell failed to pass the test." 
 
 At Aubervilliers, where thousands of women are busy 
 night and day making munitions, I visited another 
 interesting work accomplished by a French lady 
 a Cantine Alri on a big scale for the women workers. 
 Before she started this canteen the women had no- 
 where to go except the evil cabarets where they were 
 forced to buy bad wine and spirits if they took food. 
 This enterprising French lady, up to three years before, 
 had lived entirely in the brightest and gayest world 
 of the Ville Lumiere ; then came the war, and showed 
 her the other side of the shield and revealed to her 
 another self. The call for service she answered by 
 showing such a talent for running a business concern 
 she might have been trained to do nothing else. 
 Beginning with meals for 350 she soon had to double 
 the number, and even then the demand for admittance 
 so greatly outstripped all capacity for supply that only 
 
164 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 those living at a distance could be admitted, and that 
 by ticket. 
 
 The effects of this canteen on the women and girls 
 in raising their moral tone and manners, and improv- 
 ing their physical health, resulted in such an increase 
 of their output that the Director of the factory him- 
 self offered to contribute so much a head to the upkeep 
 of this beneficent institution, on the principle of 
 " a sprat to catch a salmon." 
 
 " Soon it is to be hoped he may start a similar 
 canteen himself, for the women are crying out for it," 
 said Madame. As we walked down between the 
 avenues of long tables where an excellent meal was 
 being served, everyone tried to catch her eye and a 
 smile. One young girl with whom she stopped to 
 speak was a mark of envy. Though there were seven 
 hundred she seemed to know all personally, and asked 
 after their husbands and babies by name. She had 
 also a creche near by for the babies, run at very small 
 cost. For their dinner they paid one franc twenty-five 
 cents. I should like to have sat down and joined 
 them at their tempting potage, ragotit and vegetables, 
 compote of fruit and long rolls of bread, beer and 
 coffee included. These women were high explosive 
 workers, very satisfactory work, we agreed, for those 
 keen on doing their bit. They were both interested 
 and surprised when I told them English girls were 
 doing the same, and how lately when a sad accident 
 occurred, and several were killed by an explosion, 
 not a woman moved from her post, and others 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 165 
 
 instantly volunteered to take the place of their dead 
 companions. 
 
 ic Tiens ga c'est chic ! " said the French girls with 
 a nod of approval. It made one feel what a pity it 
 was we did not know more of each other. 
 
 Munition workers have the reputation of being 
 somewhat rough and reckless, but the care they had 
 taken of their canteen was an example to girls of any 
 class. Though in use for more than a year the toile 
 dree which covered the tables was spotless, the chairs 
 in perfect condition, and a broken plate rarer than an 
 explosion at the factory. " They take a pride," said 
 their friend, " in their restaurant that it shall look 
 chic. They themselves also they desire to have the 
 appearance chic. We are not the same we were a year 
 ago there is a wonderful transformation. A year 
 ago these poor children of mine were not at all chic 
 that word so popular now had not even a meaning for 
 them." 
 
 I found my friends working for the refugees, both 
 French and Belgians, who have poured into France 
 like a flood we thought the latter all came to England, 
 the French thought they all came to France and 
 with as good cause. They had also their own millions 
 from the devastated regions lodging, food, clothes, 
 all had to be found for them. 
 
 Then there were the war orphans which made a 
 special appeal to the women of France of all classes. 
 Offers to adopt them poured in from abroad, but all 
 
166 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 were refused if it involved taking them out of the 
 country. France needs everyone of her children, and 
 they were all provided for by the different Societies 
 for Orphelins de la Guerre. 
 
 Other activities of the women in Paris were educating 
 and entertaining the wounded and the reformes, those 
 unable to serve again and the clothing of these latter 
 organised by the Society of Vetements du Soldat, 
 where I spent an afternoon seeing heroes with one leg, 
 one arm, sometimes both gone, trying on coats and 
 boots with the keenest interest, delighted as children 
 when they lighted on something which took their 
 fancy. I helped one who had suffered considerable 
 losses in limbs into a greatcoat which he said " fitted 
 him to a marvel." He could now face the cold winter 
 with his one arm and one leg and a hole in the lung, 
 and " make famous shells to kill more sales Boches," 
 said he with a happy smile. 
 
 Though I have limited my account to what my own 
 friends were doing, it would need a volume to tell 
 even that. As an example, I will just take two or three 
 typical families. 
 
 " Madame " went daily to a war workroom and 
 stitched away for hours. Her three young daughters, 
 one married to a doctor, all served in hospitals, one 
 near the Front, constantly under fire, wore the Croix 
 de Guerre. The two sons were both at the Front, one 
 an " ace " in the Flying Corps. 
 
 Another lady and her daughter, who volunteered 
 at the outbreak of war for services in a hospital 
 
THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 167 
 
 clerical and domestic work, being untrained as nurses 
 have both died at their posts from pneumonia, caught 
 in the bitter cold of the draughty, unwarmed building 
 the daughter leaving two little children. 
 
 Another member of this same family, having lost 
 her husband and two sons in the war, spent her life 
 in doing domestic work of the most arduous kind at 
 a needy hospital. 
 
 But one could go on indefinitely with these examples 
 answering that question, often asked in England, 
 " What are French women doing? " meaning of course 
 the educated women, for everyone knows French- 
 women of the agricultural classes share that work 
 with the men even in peace time, and that French 
 working women were doing precisely the same war 
 work as English women. 
 
 Morally and materially the women of France 
 " kept their country going," while their men were 
 at the Front. As to their attitude towards a pre- 
 mature peace, the manifesto sent by the women of 
 France to the Women's Congress at the Hague ex- 
 presses their position and their ideals, when they 
 refused to take any part in that Congress to which 
 German women were invited. 
 
 6 We in France nursed the dream of a peace and 
 understanding, if not universal, at least European. 
 We refused to believe those who pointed out to us 
 the growing menace on the other side of the frontier. 
 How we have been awakened to the reality you know, 
 and history will keep the record for ever. Since 
 
168 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 events have proved the futility of a one-sided pacifism, 
 we shall only resume our propaganda when the peace 
 to come has given us efficacious guarantees against 
 the domination of one nation. But is this the moment 
 to discuss peace ? With sorrowful amazement we 
 read your programme for an Armistice. How can 
 we think of such a thing while our provinces are 
 still subject to the enemy's yoke, and Belgium stands 
 martyred before all eyes ? Do you ignore what 
 France demands of this peace ? She requires the 
 freedom of the future, and that her enemies forced 
 by defeat shall be made to recognise that their material 
 strength has been crushed by the heroic defence of 
 their victors. ... To think of peace to-day, before 
 peace can consecrate and establish the principles of 
 right, would be to betray those for whom we are so 
 many of us proudly mourning. It is in order that 
 future generations may reap the fruit of their splendid 
 self-abnegation and death that the women of France 
 will continue the combat as long as needful, united 
 with those who are fighting and dying for their country 
 they will not associate themselves with one gesture 
 of peace." 
 
 It was this spirit in the women which made the 
 men unconquerable. That is what Frenchwomen did. 
 
PART II 
 
 1919 
 
 THE spring was unfolding into summer and the 
 voice of the mock-turtle of Peace Conference was heard 
 in the land when again I crossed the Channel and 
 found myself in France. 
 
 No lifebelts or rafts, no anxious watch for peri- 
 scopes or mines but still a steamer crowded with 
 troops, khaki red tabs, Tommies and Indians, besides 
 civils, Red Cross and Croix Rouge, smart women and 
 dowdy women, and a group of Tommy's children 
 going out to see " Daddy in France." 
 
 Boulogne is still practically an English town, and 
 American prices are the order of the day. France is 
 going to take a long time to get straight. If in 
 England we feel the dislocation and disorganisation 
 caused by the Great War even in the smallest details 
 of daily life, we who have only had the enemy blacken- 
 ing our skies and polluting our air, it may be imagined 
 what it must be for France who has had him on her 
 soil for over four years, laying waste six million 
 acres of what was originally the most highly cultivated 
 and productive land in Europe, making of it a barren 
 wilderness, a waste of ruin and devastation, with its 
 villages, towns, cities, farms, homesteads and factories 
 
 169 
 
170 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 of all descriptions demolished as if by an earthquake, 
 and Maurice Barres tells us that more than three 
 thousand churches have been sacrificed on the fields 
 of battle. Over one million acres of forest have been 
 utterly destroyed, and miles of orchards cut down. 
 Out of 213 sugar factories 145 are wrecked, and the 
 sugar industry reduced to one-third of what it was 
 before the war. The coal mines will take five to 
 ten years to restore to working conditions. To heal 
 the soil and bring it back to cultivation will in some 
 districts, experts say, take twenty-five years, the 
 land for miles being poisoned with gas and explosives, 
 sown with millions of live shells and grenades, and 
 graves scattered broadcast over the whole desolate 
 scene. 
 
 France- will take a long time to " set her house " 
 even " in order." As to being restored to former 
 prosperity one cannot measure the time, for no one 
 can foresee the great changes in physical, mental 
 and spiritual life which may shortly usher in a new 
 era for mankind. But the man- power of France is 
 terribly depleted, the official figures state that 58 
 per cent, of men in the French army between the ages 
 of eighteen and thirty-five have been killed. The 
 women and children, too, have died and suffered 
 terribly throughout the thirteen occupied Depart- 
 ments. The race itself has had a blow, for 
 thousands of children who survive are permanently 
 injured. 
 
 Travelling is not yet either easy or pleasant in 
 
1919 171 
 
 France. What with military, diplomatic and civil 
 passports all vises at different places, " great baggage " 
 going by one train and " small baggage " by another 
 trains that don't stop anywhere and trains that do 
 nothing but stop trains that will condescend to 
 take you in consideration of your Red Cross, but 
 under no condition your luggage, added to the ex- 
 treme difficulty of securing a porter who will con- 
 descend to assist you, one is apt to wonder at times 
 whether any reason could justify leaving one's happy 
 home where doubtless, however, things are just as 
 bad for the travelling stranger. 
 
 Waiting on the Amiens platform a joyful strain 
 broke through the din a train full of British Tommies 
 just starting set up a chorus of " Back to Blighty." 
 They were packed into covered cattle-trucks, standing 
 in the doorways and seated on the steps, swarming 
 all over like bees outside a hive. The various trucks 
 were inscribed in big chalk characters : 
 
 " Remnants from Salonika Mesopotamia 
 Palestine," " Balkan Harriers," "Sardine Villa," 
 " Tommie's Rest House," " Sussex and Devon bound 
 for Blighty," " Vive la France," " Au devoir ! " 
 
 The French cheered them heartily as they steamed 
 out. 
 
 There is a feeling in the air that France is longing 
 to " speed the parting guest," both British and 
 American. And no wonder, for it is impossible to 
 get straight while they remain causing abnormal 
 prices and impossible conditions for the French 
 
172 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 purchaser. Only the profiteer benefits, and he has 
 made, like his brother in England, quite as much, 
 or more, than is good for him. 
 
 "It is the politicians at Versailles," said Madame 
 of the hotel at Amiens where I stopped the night. 
 " They talk too much those gentlemen there. Better 
 for all if they left those who have won the war, our 
 great Foch and the Generals, to arrange the affair. 
 Since November they have talked, nothing like the 
 men for talking ! Once they begin nothing arrests 
 them but the roof falling." 
 
 " I think the roof will fall if they don't settle some- 
 thing soon," I replied. " Even in England we become 
 tired." " Tiens ! " said Madame, " that surprises 
 me. I imagined that in England one was not much 
 affected by the war." 
 
 This I found was quite a general opinion England 
 having escaped the horrors of invasion. 
 
 Amiens was full of khaki and horizon bleu. All 
 night they came and went, and the trains whistled 
 and screeched a perfect pandemonium. I got up 
 and watched the tramping soldiers. A long line of 
 blue- clad poilus were passing with big loaves on their 
 backs showing them to be permissionaires coming 
 from home. Then a squadron of cavalry came out 
 of the shadows and went with regular, muffled tramp 
 down the street in the moonlight. The Cathedral 
 chimed out the hours as they sped through the brief 
 summer night. Dawn came early, long before the 
 bells sounded four, and with it the sweet persistent 
 
1919 173 
 
 song of a thrush or was it a blackbird ? Before I 
 had settled the question I was asleep in spite of the 
 screaming trains, which caused me to wake at last 
 with the conviction that the bird was a cockatoo. 
 
 I went out early, Amiens Cathedral was still drest 
 in her war uniform of sandbags and planks, protecting 
 the monuments and windows. Only here and there 
 a rose window like a jewel gleamed out among the 
 dim grey arches. 
 
 An old man and his wife just leaving St Joseph's 
 Altar a saint who protects the home did the honours 
 of their Cathedral and pointed out to me the wonderful 
 escapes it had had a bomb having made a gaping 
 hole in the roof. Having thus found the range it 
 was indeed wonderful that the Cathedral still stood 
 there in all her beauty with that marvellous fagade 
 of Apostles and Saints and Martyrs serenely intact. 
 The old man declared it was His Holiness the Pope 
 who suddenly intervened and arrested the Boche 
 wave of destruction with a " so far and no farther." 
 
 But his wife was of the opinion that it was plutot 
 la Sainte Vierge who had saved the Cathedral. 
 
 One thing seems certain, when the Huns after a fort- 
 night's occupation in 1914 moved on towards Paris, 
 they said not " adieu," but " au revoir," to Amiens. 
 
 " We shall come again in three weeks at most," they 
 declared with the cocksuredness which characterised 
 all their utterances at that time. 
 
 Amiens prepared for the worst took down her 
 
174 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 city clocks hid her bells and removed as much as 
 she could of her old stained glass. Everyone stowed 
 away their treasure, and many left the city. In 1918, 
 that darkest hour before the dawn, there was a general 
 exodus. The man of the antique shop on the Place 
 told how he put all his antiquities into a cart, and many 
 alas, were so damaged from that journey that the rest 
 of his life would be spent in repairing. 
 
 Celine, the chambermaid at the Hotel, was from 
 Soissons. " Amiens is the fortunate one," she said. 
 " These people they murmur if they have some 
 furniture broken let them only see what the enemy 
 has made of our poor Soissons ! " 
 
 Celine had experienced war in all its aspects. She 
 was fileuse in a cloth fabric for khaki, and supported 
 an invalid mother. Then came the bombardment. 
 
 " It was of a severity terrific," said Celine. " The 
 English officer he advised all to descend into the 
 cellars, but many who descended never came out! 
 For the Boches they sent on Soissons not only the 
 bombs and shells, but the poison gas, and the gas 
 it descends and it searches you and then it takes you 
 the eyes ! " 
 
 For months Celine had been in hospital, gassed 
 badly and fearing to lose her sight. At another time 
 she was struck by shrapnel in the shoulder and again 
 had to be operated on in hospital. 
 
 " Just as well to have been at once in the trenches, 
 and had the satisfaction to shoot some sales Bodies" 
 she remarked regretfully. " My brother he also was 
 
1919 175 
 
 gassed and wounded, but he at least killed those 
 animals there, and had his reward ! " 
 
 All the factories in Soissons had been destroyed, 
 so Celine took a place as chambermaid, for " one 
 must gain one's life, though one's house is burnt, 
 and the poor mother she has to live in the cellar." 
 
 A German-made train with red plush seats, one of 
 the spoils of war, which took the pace of a tank and 
 rather the same gait, conveyed passengers over a 
 circuitous route once a day to Compiegne. One had 
 to be thankful for even this mercy, for many railways 
 were not yet in working order in these parts. We 
 stopped everywhere, even in the middle of a field, and 
 took a look round. When leaving this lovely country 
 of woods and gardens, meadows and orchards, we 
 suddenly came on the trail of the Hun, there was 
 every reason to look round. Stark ruin met the eye 
 on every side. Where he had retreated the Hun 
 had burnt down all human habitations, blown up the 
 village churches, cut down the orchards, and even 
 felled the poplars, just as in the Somme and Oise 
 in 1917. Every living thing had ceased to grow. 
 Charred stumps and sticks showed where pleasant 
 little woods once stood. And all along this dismal 
 route the earth was scarred with trenches, shell holes 
 and trails of rusty wire. One exquisite touch there 
 was, one ray of returning life and hope amid the 
 devastation wherever a little stream, a little green 
 moisture appeared in the ground there had risen* up 
 
176 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 clusters of golden iris, the fleur de lys the flower of 
 France. The Huns' poison gas and shells had been 
 powerless to destroy the delicate roots of the 
 triumphant fleur de lys. Here and there an old 
 woman in white cap, or a couple" of children, were 
 digging at small patches of vegetables, but there was 
 no sign of any house with four walls their lodging 
 must have been some cellar among the ruins. 
 
 At length we came upon the climax of desolation 
 and destruction Montdidier. Fair Montdidier crown- 
 ing the heights so proudly for centuries, and now, 
 showing a spectacle of such hopeless ruin as to make 
 the angels weep. 
 
 I remembered how at that time of acute anxiety 
 a year ago, one read day by day, " Montdidier has not 
 yet fallen," " Severe bombardment of Montdidier," 
 etc. Now one realised what those short statements 
 really meant. Like a picture hanging on a wall, so 
 Montdidier faces you as the train crawls along the 
 valley a picture gashed, torn, defaced by a ruthless 
 
 hand. 
 
 ...... 
 
 Compi^gne was all in bustle and movement prepar- 
 ing for the Feast of Pentecost in England the Whit- 
 suntide holiday. At the station no conveyance was 
 to be had all being engaged at high tariffs for holiday- 
 makers even the porters had knocked off work at six 
 o'clock. Some friendly poilus waiting for a midnight 
 train came to my aid and carried my small baggage 
 to the hotel. Compiegne had had a severe bombard- 
 
PALAIS DE JUSTICE AT MONTDIDIER DATING BACK TO CHARLEMAGNE 
 
1919 177 
 
 ment, guns and Gothas having united to give the 
 poor little town a hot time. Of the houses twenty- 
 five per cent, were destroyed, but the Boches never 
 succeeded in setting foot here, try as they might. 
 That fortnight they spent in 1914 was the first and 
 last. 
 
 Compiegne was crowded to overflowing, everyone 
 keeping high holiday in motors and carriages in the 
 forest. The townspeople had saved up the occasion 
 for long deferred weddings and confirmations. On 
 Sunday the streets were filled with funny little figures 
 in full white dresses down to their toes. We had 
 wedding breakfasts and confirmation feasts ; all day 
 one danced and made music in the Hotel salon, 
 portly grandparents and small boys and girls in festal 
 array all making merry together and rejoicing over 
 some "horizon bleu" on leave. 
 
 A carillon of joyous bells at six in the morning 
 woke one with the idea that the Great Four must 
 have proclaimed Peace on earth during the night. 
 This was repeated at frequent intervals till nine 
 o'clock. 
 
 " One rings the bells very much now because for so 
 many years one never rang them by reason of the 
 enemy they would have served as a guide," said 
 Madame the proprietress, who had remained through 
 all the air raids secure in her deep cellars. 
 
 The bells brought home to one, as no salvo of guns 
 could ever do, the fact that the war was over. In 
 spite of the ruins, in spite of hospitals still full of the 
 
 M 
 
178 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 wounded and dying, in spite of the train loads of soldiers 
 still coming and going all day and all night, the war 
 was over. This land was free at last from the accursed 
 Boche. Rejoice and be glad, Oh Daughters of 
 France ! 
 
A VIA DOLOROSA 
 
 THERE are many such roads in the devastated De- 
 partments of France. From Compiegne you have a 
 choice for round here are some of the Germans' 
 principal lines of defence, and on the road to St Quentin 
 the famous Hindenburg Line. Whichever way the 
 car bumps along over holes and ruts imperfectly 
 repaired, it is the same panorama of desolation which 
 meets the eye. 
 
 Very early one morning I started down the road 
 to Maignelay in a rickety Ford car with a member 
 of the Society of Friends I love the quaint appellation 
 of Quaker, but they do not appear to share my feeling 
 as driver and guide. 
 
 It was a radiant day in early June. How in pre-war 
 times the birds would have sung, and the air have 
 been full of joyous sounds. The busy happy people 
 would have been in their fields and gardens since 
 sunrise, for in France they never needed a daylight 
 saving bill to get them up early. " When le bon Dieu 
 supplies the light, must make use of it," says the 
 thrifty French peasant. 
 
 But down the Via Dolorosa one hears no birds 
 for there are no trees wherein to nest, no little woods 
 to refresh the eye on the Hindenburg Line. Instead 
 
 179 
 
180 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 of poplars and fruit trees there are blackened stumps, 
 tortured twisted branches which seem to have passed 
 through some dread agony and cry to Heaven for 
 vengeance. 
 
 Great heaps of shells, live shells, are piled up along 
 the roadside, huge coils of rusty wire and barbed 
 entanglements, slowly and with infinite difficulty 
 being cleared from the surrounding battlefields. 
 
 Instead of orchards and cornfields there is a barren 
 waste, scored with craters, shell holes and yawning 
 gulfs, which it will take years to fill up and level. In 
 these fearful upheavals and explosions thousands of 
 the sons of France were blown to bits or buried too 
 deep to unearth. No names can ever mark these 
 graves. They are of that great company, the " miss- 
 ing." Year after year always, for ever, " missing " 
 on this earth. 
 
 Instead of happy smiling little villages down this 
 road to Maignelay, you see only a heap of low laid 
 ruins with the name on a board showing this once 
 was Beaupres or Rouny. Here and there was the 
 trace of a village street with a few walls still standing, 
 perhaps a room, a stable, or cellar ; in such cases there 
 was always a patch of cultivation, showing a returned 
 owner, having found a shelter, was setting to work 
 restoring a tiny corner to order out of the surrounding 
 chaos. A small hayfield, a strip of potatoes and beans, 
 and a bent figure of an old man or a woman in bonnet 
 blanc, told its tale of patience and courage. All 
 workers carry their lives in their hands, for the soil 
 
 
A VIA DOLOROSA 181 
 
 is thickly sown with shells and hand-grenades. Any 
 tap from the spade or hoe may prove fatal. 
 
 The country was much as the Germans had left it 
 seven months before, and as we sped along the road 
 unwound beneath us, like a rapidly moving cinema, 
 showing vivid pictures one after another of the Great 
 War. Tattered remnants of a gigantic wire screen, 
 on which were sown bits of green cloth made to imitate 
 distant trees and moving leaves, lay all along the 
 roadside, and the telephone cords followed us for 
 miles. Here and there lay overturned a monster gun, 
 rusty with last winter's rain, harmless at last like 
 some huge devastating beast with its vital organs 
 pierced. Little railway lines for transporting 
 ammunition still intersected all this region, and great 
 gaping holes along the side of the road showed how 
 deep and strong the Boche had dug himself into 
 French soil. Like some horrible parasite, burrowing 
 beneath the skin and eating away the life of its victim, 
 so the Boche bored deep down his dug-outs to which 
 he descended often by some forty or fifty steps. 
 Comfortably he lined his underground house with 
 wood, making snug beds in the walls and warming 
 it with stoves torn out of the French cottages around. 
 A labyrinth of corridors and tunnels communicated 
 one with another, and a whole regiment could be 
 concealed underground to spring out for surprise 
 attacks. How different from the damp mud holes in 
 which the poilu and Tommy lived for months and 
 years ! 
 
182 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 On the line near St Quentin this system of tunnels 
 was extensively used by Hindenburg, who made use 
 of tBhe long canal tunnel passing under the hill to 
 conceal a whole army of many divisions. At any 
 point along his famous Line he could spring out of 
 the ground 10,000 men and as suddenly cause them 
 to disappear. One can picture the old rascal working 
 out his glorious plan how carefully he had studied 
 every inch of that ground it seemed as if every- 
 thing played into his big German paws. Here was 
 the fine canal uniting the Seine and the Scheldt, 
 which at a given point he could easily dam. All the 
 barges and boats, however, he would first steer into the 
 waters of the tunnel, for, left high and dry when the 
 tunnel was drained, they made a nice lining for his 
 great dug-out. How the Square Heads chuckled as 
 they thought of the wonder- surprise in store for their 
 victims ! 
 
 The dug-outs of the officers were not only com- 
 fortable but luxurious. 1C The Boche loves much the 
 luxury though he is curiously lacking in refinement," 
 was a characteristic little trait often pointed out 
 to me by the French who had come into unenviably 
 close contact with him. On the hillside at Namp^el 
 was a palatial dug-out constructed for " Little Willy " 
 during his sojourn in these parts, when, besides his 
 military duties, he was doing quite a business in art 
 collecting from the surrounding Chateaux. It was a 
 veritable fortress, faced with stone, built on two 
 floors with a broad stone staircase leading to a flat 
 
CROWN PRINCE'S DUG-OUT AT RUINED NAMPCJEL 
 
A VIA DOLOROSA 183 
 
 roof from which a wide survey could be taken unob- 
 served, for it was so cleverly thrust into the hillside 
 and screened by overhanging trees as hardly to be 
 noticed. Many corridors and exits provided means 
 of escape should a scuttle be deemed advisable, " for 
 though on conquest he was bent he had a cautious 
 mind" (with apologies to Mrs Gilpin !). The place 
 was fitted with electric light, hot water, heating 
 apparatus, and telephones. The walls were papered 
 in the best German taste, but most of this had been 
 torn off. Remains of a scarlet and gold paper pointed 
 to one of the largest rooms as evidently being the 
 Sleep-Chamber of Little Willy himself. What dreams 
 and visions he must there have enjoyed ! dreams of 
 ill-gotten gains, when he and his All-Highest-War-Lord- 
 Father should have carried out their fine programme 
 " Deutschland uber alles " flattening out the whole 
 of France with their steam roller, like this sample of 
 desolation, Nampgel, on which his eyes then feasted. 
 But like the old lady of the fairy tale, "Vinegar Bottle," 
 he and his All-Highest parent asked just a little too 
 much, even of the lenient Mr God of the Germans 
 and so lost all ! And there -stands his fine dug-out 
 in the hillside as a vestige historique, a warning to 
 
 the Grab-Allers to the end of time. 
 
 
 
 Along the road to Maignelay, as along all these war- 
 worn roads, are dotted little crosses marking isolated 
 graves. Sometimes they bear the tricolour rosette 
 and just the words Soldat Franpais showing the fallen 
 
184 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 was one unidentified, but generally these are German 
 graves, respected by the chivalrous French though 
 they belong to the foe who has desecrated so ruthlessly 
 French shrines and tombs. Many of the German 
 graves are marked only by a short stick on which hangs 
 a big grey helmet. Those German helmets are of a 
 cruel weight, twice that of the French or British ; with 
 such an apparatus pressing on his brain it must be 
 difficult for any poor creature to think clearly or to 
 act sanely no doubt the High Command had this 
 in view when designing them. 
 
 Most pitiful graves these of the wayside uniden- 
 tified! How many of our English lads have lain 
 like this on foreign soil, unidentified, while those at 
 home waited year after year, hoping, despairing, long- 
 ing to know something, anything, for certain, even 
 if it should be only that the beloved young body lay 
 at rest in a French field with the scarlet poppies 
 standing sentinel above. 
 
 Nature had everywhere done what she could to 
 mitigate the melancholy scars and wounds of the 
 poor earth. With her healing touch she had spread 
 a gay little mantle of colour here and there on these 
 arid battlefields ; red poppies, white marguerites, and 
 blue cornflowers proclaiming the triumphant French 
 flag, while for the English Allies I noticed little bushes 
 of sweet wild rose. 
 
 The people who trudge along these roads are always 
 glad of a lift, their eyes brighten directly they see the 
 Red Cross car, and my kind-hearted driver often picked 
 
A VIA DOLOROSA 185 
 
 up a passenger. Among these were two women toiling 
 out to visit a little village where their homes had been. 
 The Germans had packed off all these villagers in 
 cattle trucks to Belgium when they retreated. They 
 had been sent back in March 1919 only to learn, of 
 course, that nothing remained of their village except 
 ruins. 
 
 " But one can sometimes live in the cellar," said 
 the elder woman, " and we are going to see." 
 
 " Nous allons beaucoup pleurer," said her com- 
 panion. ("We shall weep much.") 
 
 Two families they knew had returned and found 
 a stable where one could lodge. They were going to 
 stay with them two nights, to see to weep. The 
 husband of one was a mason : " There was plenty 
 of work for him Yes indeed ! And in time one would 
 rebuild all the petit pays as well as the towns. They 
 told me of an old lady they knew. Her pays was the 
 Chemin-des -Dames. One recounted to her that there 
 existed nothing any more but shell holes nothing ! 
 She, however, was not to be shaken in her resolve. 
 " She must return must die in her own pays, even 
 though she had to sleep in the shell holes." And this 
 is what all these war victims feel. 
 
 Later on we picked up a man of prosperous appear- 
 ance, a cultivator. He was growing chiefly oats on 
 his land as he could no longer grow beets, the Boches 
 having wrecked all the sugar mills. The Government 
 were anxious all cultivators should return at once, and 
 gave grants to those who did so nothing to those 
 
186 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 who stayed away. They are paid according to the 
 hectare they work. 
 
 " But it is not amusing," he said, " to clear the 
 earth of live.obus and rusty wire yes, and dead corpses 
 also." 
 
 " The Germans should be made to do it all," said 
 the Friend in a thoroughly militant voice. 
 
 The cultivator agreed heartily : " One obliges them 
 to assist in the work, many of them from the camp 
 over there, but they murmur much and say that it is 
 too dangerous often there arrive accidents, sometimes 
 to the Boche, the same as to us." 
 
 " The only way to teach the Boche is to do to his 
 country something of what he has done to these," said 
 the man of peace sternly. " A few devastated villages 
 and towns in Germany with an occasional mine and 
 sugar mill stopped working would have had more 
 effect than all Mr Wilson's Notes and Points." 
 
 This was said in English, so was lost on the cul- 
 tivator, but if a member of the Society of Friends 
 can be so stirred out of his fundamental pacificism 
 one can make a good guess at that cultivator's 
 sentiments. 
 
 Going through Tricot we passed some thirty Boches, 
 prisoners in charge of one guard. They looked 
 remarkably fit, ruddy and well-fed, but very sulky. 
 No doubt as they carried spades they had been 
 clearing the fields of the live shells their brother 
 Boches had sown for the benefit of French peasants. 
 This kind of poetic justice does not appeal to the 
 
A VIA DOLOROSA 187 
 
 Boche ; neither poetic, nor any other kind of justice, 
 is to be found in his War-book. 
 
 One thing we never saw as we drove all over these 
 regions once so rich in pasture land, and that was a 
 cow. Perhaps they, too, were living in the cellars, 
 there was certainly not much of a meal to be got off 
 poppies and ruins. I did hear of one man who had 
 two cows, " but such skeletons, just to see them one 
 crossed oneself to keep off ill-luck." 
 
 And I thought of a meeting at the Albert Hall I 
 was ill-advised enough to attend, lured there by the 
 camouflaged announcement, " A Peace of Concilia- 
 tion." One of the many amazing statements 
 at that meeting was that a monstrously , unjust 
 and unchristian clause had been secretly inserted 
 in the Peace terms requiring Germany to hand 
 over 140,000 (I think was the figure) of her milch 
 cows to the French, thus robbing the poor innocent 
 German babies of their scanty diet. Cries of " shame " 
 echoed through the hall not a voice was raised in 
 defence of the true facts, namely, that this was merely 
 a question of restoration, and part restoration only, 
 of stolen goods, and came under the clause for restitu- 
 tion not much secrecy about that ! 
 
 Tours are being arranged everywhere for visiting 
 the devastated regions, notices of these are to be seen 
 posted up in all the railway stations, and occasionally 
 a crowded touring-car would race past us in a cloud 
 of dust. The idea is to enable all men to see what is 
 
188 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 the nature of that foe lying ever watchful on the other 
 side of the Rhine, " lest they forget," those sons and 
 daughters of France who did not themselves come 
 under the heel of the invader ; those who did, and 
 their children after them, are in no danger of " for- 
 getting." 
 
 There are many unimaginative people this side of 
 the Channel, together with those criers of " shame " 
 at the Albert Hall, to whom such a tour would be 
 most beneficial. In their case not " lest they forget," 
 for they have never begun to know, but that they may 
 learn and see something of the Via Dolorosa other 
 feet have had to tread. 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 
 
 AMONG the many wonderful things to be seen in France 
 at this supremely interesting moment of her history, 
 while the beaten Boche cowers at her feet and still 
 her Allies are in her midst, are the regiments of 
 English khaki girls, and nowhere can you see a greater 
 variety than at Compiegne. They are of every 
 uniform and taken from every class but they are 
 all alike in this they are a revelation amazing, 
 amusing, splendid and soul- stirring. 
 
 The Great War has been their great opportunity 
 and they have taken it just precisely as it has been 
 that of millions of their brothers, who otherwise had 
 drudged or lounged, according to their station, through 
 life, without ever realising their latent manhood. And 
 what a marvellous unfoldment of capacity, courage, 
 strength, resource and even genius, it has been. Five 
 years ago suddenly one brilliant summer's day, with 
 the great boom of guns, Life opened wide its gates 
 hitherto so jealously closed against the whole sex. 
 
 Just here and there a daring forceful spirit of un- 
 quenchable virility, unable to get in through the gates, 
 had climbed the high walls, and had met with the rough 
 fate of all who climb walls instead of going through 
 orthodox openings many a bruise, many a blow, and 
 
 189 
 
190 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 the isolation that is the sorest penalty of daring to 
 be " not like other people." 
 
 But the first British guns of 1914 proclaimed the 
 new era for women. Incredibly swiftly it became 
 clear that not only men but women were needed to 
 win the greatest war, in the greatest cause, the world 
 had ever known. 
 
 French women were mobilised by a call from their 
 President the same week as their men. Britain's 
 women came in more slowly, but just as surely. I 
 remember a funny conversation with a motor- bus 
 conductor who said he would be joining up were it 
 not that no one could fill his job. Just back from 
 Paris I suggested an able-bodied woman might fill 
 the gap as in that city. He regarded me with scorn : 
 
 " A woman conduct a bus ? Why they 'aven't 
 the nerve, let alone the strength I'd pity the bus 
 as was conducted by a woman ! " 
 
 This gentleman voiced the opinion of his class, and 
 that also of the majority of every other in England. 
 And not only was it a fixed idea on the part of men 
 that women had their narrow limitations fixed by 
 Nature and sanctioned by the immutable law of the 
 Creator, but the same idea obtained to a great extent 
 among women themselves. It is to women, above 
 all, that the great revelation has come of their own 
 powers. 
 
 The first amazing fact that stirred the girl of the 
 educated classes, not obliged to earn her living, was 
 that there was something definite for her to do more 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 191 
 
 that she was actually being urgently called upon 
 to do it. To be needed, not just as a pretty or amus- 
 ing girl for a dance or house-party, but needed to help 
 win the war. Her men-kind were going, life was shaken 
 to its foundations, and they actually wanted women, 
 wanted girls not only as nurses, which meant 
 vocation and training, but as V.A.D.'s, as canteen 
 workers at home and abroad, as clerks, as bus-drivers, 
 postmen, policemen, ploughmen, printers, bank clerks, 
 secretaries in the War Office, and every other office. 
 They were wanted to make shells, to make guns, to 
 make uniforms, to make food to make, in fact, the 
 Wheels of War go round. As time went on wider 
 and wider swung the gates, and the British girls in 
 the khaki uniforms trooped through, thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands abreast. 
 
 Over to France they sailed as V.A.D.'s, W.E.C.'s, 
 Y.M.C.A.'s, W.A.A.C.'s, as Penguins, Wrens and Fanys 
 to say nothing of matrons, and nurses who served 
 the innumerable hospitals not only for British troops 
 but French, Serbian, Greek, Roumanian, Egyptian. 
 
 Nurses, military and Red Cross, were familiar 
 figures all over France, but the khaki girls were a 
 species so novel to our French neighbours that, 
 having once realised the surprising phenomenon, 
 nothing they did caused any surprise though wonder 
 undoubtedly and admiration tinged with awe, not 
 without secret thanksgiving that their amazing 
 qualities were not contagious. 
 
 Talking with a charming old Comtesse and her 
 
192 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 son who had been watching with keen interest the 
 khaki girls, two among them Lieutenants in the 
 French army, passing to and fro at the hotel, I 
 gathered something of their attitude and that of their 
 friends. 
 
 " She is altogether different the jeune file Anglaise 
 from our jeune fille, said the old lady very gently: 
 " One must not apply to her our French ideas, though 
 we can give to her our admiration for her courage." 
 
 Her son remarked gallantly : 
 
 " For me I regard the jeune fille Anglaise like a kind 
 of Valkyrie as perfectly equipped by the mere fact 
 of her English maidenhood as though she wore, in 
 effect, chain armour and carried a revolver. My 
 cousin, who is Colonel in the 3rd Army, regards those 
 young girls who have served under him in the firing- 
 line absolutely in this light. They are altogether 
 admirable, heroic, astonishing, he declares ! " 
 
 The old lady enquired with a puzzled air to what 
 class of society these young girls belonged. 
 
 I fear I only succeeded in bewildering her, for I 
 answered they represented a great many classes, and 
 every variety of walk in life. Her son endeavoured 
 to elucidate matters by explaining to his mother that 
 the English modern noblesse was largely recruited 
 from successful commercial gentlemen grocers, soap 
 manufacturers, and brewers " So, in England every- 
 thing is, you see, rather mixed," he concluded. 
 
 I agreed heartily, everything was extraordinarily 
 " mixed," but for her comfort I assured this Comtesse 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 193 
 
 of the old regime that these khaki girls were all ires 
 lien elevees even those of the modern peerage and 
 there were to my certain knowledge, in the khaki ranks, 
 daughters of generals, of admirals. . . . She cheered 
 up at this, and I went on, " Yes, of Ambassadors also, 
 and even of Bishops," but at this last I noticed an 
 involuntary shudder, so hastened to add, " of the 
 Anglican Church, of course. All," I continued, " even 
 the most emancipated, those two lieutenants, for 
 example, who had so intrigued her, were irreproachably 
 brought up." 
 
 She raised her lorgnettes on a group near the door 
 of the salon : "Tiens " she said, thoughtfully ; " it is 
 curious and interesting what you tell me. It makes 
 me feel I am becoming old, very old I belong to a 
 world which soon will exist no more." 
 
 I told her she belonged to a beautiful world which 
 we could not spare, and there was plenty of room for 
 all. But even as I said it I knew she was right, and 
 that as well might men try to talk in the language 
 of Chaucer in the House of Commons as attempt to 
 keep old world ideas, however picturesque, in the era 
 which gave birth to the khaki girl. 
 
 Yet the attitude of somewhat breathless wonder 
 of our French friends, contemplating the feats of the 
 jeune file Anglaise during her years of war service in 
 France, is scarcely to be wondered at. In her trim 
 business-like uniform, with every variety of badge, 
 they have seen her come and go in the war zone as 
 though she were to the manner born. Wherever there 
 
 ' 
 
194 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 was danger and death, a bombardment or an air raid, 
 she was sure to be on the spot. Sleeping in barns or 
 stables, dug-outs and trenches, fearless and uncon- 
 cerned, going out alone at night " on her job," serving 
 canteens at the back of the lines when bombs were 
 raining around her, taking on night duty in the 
 field hospitals, one young V.A.D. alone with a hundred 
 wounded poilus, driving her great heavy lorry laden 
 with wounded, or filled with stores, from one end of 
 the country to the other. 
 
 The French girl of the educated classes has worked 
 gallantly too, but, with a few conspicuous exceptions, 
 always within strict limits. She has made bandages 
 and hospital requisites at the various war workrooms, 
 and nursed devotedly in the Croix Rouge and military 
 hospitals. But the young nurses did not take on night 
 duty, their parents knew where they were, and what 
 they were doing. Those of the khaki girls abroad did 
 not know, whatever they fondly imagined. As one 
 of them said when I asked whether her parents knew 
 of her solitary night expeditions to pick up wounded : 
 
 "No, the old dears haven't the very dimmest- 
 after all, I'm out here to do my job, and it's no earthly 
 disturbing the old Dad's peace of mind I just write 
 home, ' very busy, O.K.' ' 
 
 The English parents knew they could trust their 
 girls and most of them made a virtue of necessity 
 even when anxious. But W.E.C., Women's Emergency 
 Corps ; F.W.E.F., French Wounded Emergency Fund : 
 C.B.C.R.F., Comite Britannique Croix Rouge Fran- 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 195 
 
 $aise ; F.A.N.Y., First Aid Nursing Yeomanry ; 
 W.C.C., Women's Convoy Corps, and other corps, 
 societies, and units, whose names were legion, re- 
 presented activities little realised by those at home. 
 
 A girl wearing the French cock with the letters 
 F.W.E. told me how an old lady on board, after a 
 puzzled scrutiny of the badge on her sleeve, remarked 
 with a gleam of satisfaction, " You I see by your little 
 cock supply the French wounded with eggs." 
 
 Endless varieties of the modern girl passed before 
 one in a series of vivid moving pictures at Com- 
 piegne the headquarters of so many societies and 
 units. The streets were full of their Red Cross lorries 
 and cars, their ambulances and transports. The 
 American women too, with their smart blue uniforms 
 and the gay stars and stripes flying at the head of 
 their swift going cars, were often over from their big 
 settlement at Blerancourt. At the hotel on the 
 outskirts of the forest one met them all, and the little 
 Red Cross acted as a masonic sign between us. 
 
 Among the first to come out to France were the 
 F.A.N.Y., First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. They had 
 been started in 1910, not only to render service in 
 wartime but to give quick first aid in cases of mining 
 accidents, fires, and other catastrophes. Trained to 
 ride, and to drive motors besides bandaging and 
 medical first aid, they were ready equipped for service 
 when war was declared in 1914. But it was not their 
 own countrymen who first welcomed their offer of 
 help, on the contrary, the War Office emphatically 
 
196 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 gave them to understand they were not wanted. So 
 many able and efficient women received this curt 
 squashing that the Fanys, finding themselves in such 
 good company, were in no wise depressed. They 
 knew that those nearer to the heart of the war would 
 not share this British view. The Belgians first, and 
 then the French, welcomed them only too gladly, and 
 right into the war zone went the gallant young Fanys 
 ready for any perils, any hardships. First Aid Nursing 
 by no means covered their qualifications, though they 
 were trained to give such aid to those they bore on 
 their stretchers and picked up on the field, rescued 
 from burning buildings, or dug out of shell holes and 
 trenches, buried by explosions. But the one chief 
 essential was that every Fany should be an expert 
 driver of car and lorry, able also to repair any damage 
 and attend to any sudden attacks the complicated 
 machinery might be taken with en route. No child's 
 play this, but work calling forth a high standard of 
 mechanical skill, dexterity, nerve, and self-reliance. 
 This latter work, it must be remembered, being 
 generally in the dark, at great risk driving along the 
 exposed roads riddled with shell holes, to and fro 
 between the dressing stations and the firing line. 
 
 Many and various were the duties of the fearless 
 Fanys. For the Belgians they ran hospitals, one at 
 Calais entirely at their own expense for two years, for 
 wounded and typhoid cases. At Ruchard Camp they 
 had a canteen for seven hundred convalescent 
 Belgians, at Ypres a motor kitchen and a wonderful 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 197 
 
 motor bath which not only gave two hundred and fifty 
 baths a day, but also disinfected the men's clothes. 
 They worked with the doctors of the 3 me Chasseurs 
 a Pied at Oostkerk and with the officers of the 7th 
 Artillery Regiment, establishing aid posts and can- 
 teens. Their motor ambulances were attached to 
 the hospitals close up to the firing line at Hoogstadt 
 during 1916 and 1917. Their services for the French 
 army were no less valuable, and their motor ambulances 
 and lorries were unceasingly at work round Amiens, 
 Chateau-Thierry, Epernay, Chalons, Bar-le-Duc, and 
 St Omer. 
 
 When Foch entered Alsace with his triumphal 
 army he was accompanied by a detachment of twenty- 
 five youthful Fanys, each driving her own camion 
 (lorry). They were attached to the 3rd Army, and 
 their work among other things was to collect the 
 French wounded prisoners in the various internment 
 camps at Stuttgart and other German towns, and take 
 them back to France. A real Valkyrie's task this and 
 with considerably more difficulties and dangers than 
 carrying one dead hero on your saddle-bows. 
 
 A youthful Fany whom I met at Compiegne told 
 of an adventurous journey when, owing to a break- 
 down of her camion camions are always breaking 
 down it appears at critical moments she got separated 
 from her party, and found herself late in the winter's 
 afternoon alone in the streets of Stuttgart, surrounded 
 by an ugly hostile German crowd as she tried to find 
 her way to the nearest internment camp. She spoke 
 
198 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 no German and very little French. She was about 
 as frankly English with her blue eyes, rosy sunburnt 
 cheeks and nutbrown short-cropped curls, as a 
 Union Jack, though she was attached to the French 
 army and wore the small red grenade on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 She faced the hectoring officials, who gathered 
 threateningly round her car, with a lordly air and the 
 information that she " had no time to waste ! was 
 there anyone there sufficiently in touch with civilisa- 
 tion to speak English ? If so, let him step out, and 
 the rest step back, if you please." 
 
 A tall German officer answered the summons of 
 this, no doubt to him, most extraordinary young 
 specimen of the female persuasion ever before en- 
 countered. Its age was obviously of the most tender, 
 its figure tall and slender as a youth of seventeen, 
 its voice in spite of the imperious tone unmistakably 
 tinged with that of the childhood still within bowing 
 distance. Something of a paternal and protecting 
 chord was evidently touched in the heart of the 
 German, for Germans there are among the eighty 
 million who have escaped the poison virus with which 
 the vast majority of their nation has been inoculated. 
 He mounted by her side in the camion and directed 
 her to drive with him to the Police Station, saying in 
 good English that she was in great danger in the public 
 streets, and it was essential to get her into safety at 
 once. Though she had no option but to trust him 
 she felt not unlike a trapped bird when he conducted 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 
 
 199 
 
 her into the presence of three big, important, lowering 
 Hun officers behind closed doors. These gentlemen 
 looked at her with no lenient, paternal, or fraternal, 
 eye. The chorus of guttural discussion in which they 
 all joined angrily, sounded to her uncommonly like 
 the old Hymn of Hate, and it would not have surprised 
 her to hear the verdict of, " off with her head," at 
 any moment. Who would have been the wiser? 
 A girl got separated from her unit in the dark, lonely 
 roads, missed her way, no trace to be found, etc. She 
 realised the situation poignantly, and her momentary 
 helplessness in the hands of the enemy, the newly 
 beaten enemy, thirsting for vengeance. She did not 
 realise the other side of the picture the danger to 
 the foe of touching a hair of her head. But she made 
 a good bluff of sang-froid, and requested the gentlemen 
 to put her in touch as quickly as possible with the 
 French army and the C.O.'s of the various internment 
 camps, in order that she might find her unit. 
 
 The big bosses blustered and swore at the coolness 
 of the Frauenzimmer (i.e. the " crittur "), but, with the 
 assistance of her first friend and the telephone, she 
 found herself in about a couple of hours safely united 
 again to her comrades who had not yet discovered her 
 aBsence, arriving, as they did, in different parties and 
 by various routes. 
 
 The freight the Fanys bore back to France in their 
 cars were in piteous plight. Many of these poor 
 victims of Boche Kultur were mere skeletons, all 
 were emaciated from starvation. Many were dying 
 
200 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 of tuberculosis brought on from cold, insufficient 
 clothing, and exposure. One poor boy was kept alive 
 during the drive only by frequent doses of brandy and 
 died before reaching France, his one prayer all the 
 way being to live till he touched French soil. The 
 girl driver had no doctor or nurse with her on that 
 terrible journey only another sick man to lend a 
 hand. 
 
 All through December back and forth went the five 
 and twenty Fany- drivers, wishing, as did the rescued 
 French prisoners, that they could multiply themselves 
 by a hundred. For there was work for any number, 
 and nothing as yet organised for removing the many 
 thousands interned from these awful camps of suffer- 
 ing and slavery into light and freedom, back to their 
 own beloved France, which most of them had feared 
 never to see again. 
 
 Another singular task allotted to the Fanys, by the 
 French military authorities, in those early days after 
 the Armistice, was that of removing German prisoners 
 near the frontier, further back into France. As 
 some eight stalwart Boches apiece were entrusted 
 to the English girls they requested they might be 
 accompanied by a French guard, pointing out that 
 the unarmed driver of a heavy camion could scarcely 
 undertake to prevent any, or all, her precious charges, 
 alighting en route had they a mind to do so. 
 
 The French officers in command made answer that 
 there were no men who could be spared for this 
 purpose. A curious reply when it is remembered 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 201 
 
 how carefully shielded is the young French girl of the 
 same class even an unarmed man would have asked 
 for a guard. The French C.O.'s evidently regarded 
 the Fanys as supernatural and invincible. Could they 
 otherwise have seen these young girls go off gaily 
 with their cargo of eight big surly Boches prisoners, 
 for whom they were held responsible, alone, un- 
 protected, unarmed, and generally just as darkness 
 was setting in, owing to the invariable delays and 
 postponements with which they had to cope, however 
 much they tried for an early start. To keep together 
 was absolutely impossible owing to mishaps by the 
 way. 
 
 One girl I know found herself, on a dark December 
 night in 1918 crossing the Vosges mountains, obliged 
 to draw up and deal with a carburetter which suddenly 
 and resolutely struck work. As the last of her unit 
 flew past her she sang out an S.O.S., but it faded away 
 into the night air, and she was alone with her eight 
 Huns on the mountain side. She heard them laugh 
 what would they do ? Murder her drive off with 
 the car ? Escape ? She was only twenty-two, 
 but, as she said to herself, quite old enough to take 
 command of eight big Boches men who had been 
 taken with whole skins, holding up fat hands and 
 crying " Kamarad ! " After carefully examining the 
 machine and finding what had gone wrong she went 
 round to the door of her caged beasts. 
 
 " Here, one of you, come and give me a hand with 
 this job," she said in firm tones. There was a general 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 movement and a brief discussion of which she did not 
 understand a word, it might have meant : " Now is 
 the moment to fall upon this absurd female thing and 
 take over the car." Some of them had faces quite 
 in keeping with such sentiments. 
 
 " One of you," she said, with her most official 
 manner, holding up one finger for their better compre- 
 hension. " All the others stay put ! " 
 
 This order had a German sound about it which 
 quite pleased her. One of the eight thereupon jumped 
 out of the camion and followed her. Those " staying 
 put " raised a curiously discomforting roar of 
 laughter. 
 
 " Never mind let 'em laugh Fatheads ! " said 
 our heroine, and proceeded to give her mind wholly 
 to the matter in hand. She reports that it took her 
 and the Boche assistant one whole blessed hour before 
 that devil-possessed carburetter would start work 
 again. The Boche came out well working both 
 diligently ^and intelligently, as is his custom when 
 under strict orders, and having calculated carefully 
 that more is to be gained along those lines than others. 
 It is as " top dog " that the Boche invariably comes 
 out at his worst, and the leopard shows his spots a 
 bully and a tyrant, intriguing and deceptive. This 
 is the verdict of all who have had dealings with him. 
 
 Though their services were at first scorned by their 
 own country, a time came when the Fanys were asked 
 by the British army to send a detachment to Calais. 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 203 
 
 One of this number told me something of their strenu- 
 ous duties while there. It was the young Fanys 
 who were sent out night after night when the German 
 bombs fell on Calais, to rescue the wounded, to ex- 
 tricate the shrieking burning victims from the 
 wreckage, to carry back the dead, even to collect the 
 human debris and try and identify their remains. 
 
 In the snow and darkness and storm out they sallied, 
 generally each one alone, driving her camion. On 
 one occasion she who told me had a curious escape, 
 with her precious freight just rescued from a bombed 
 and burning house. As they were starting an old 
 man begged to be allowed to return to the house and 
 fetch his money. The driver hesitated, for shells were 
 exploding all round, but at his entreaty she gave way 
 and went herself to fetch his treasure. These few 
 moments' delay saved them all, for a huge shell burst 
 at the end of the road in her absence, just where the 
 car must have passed had it started. 
 
 Sometimes these Fanys were out for thirty- six hours 
 at a time, drenched to the skin, frozen stiff with cold. 
 " It made one realise what those poor boys have to go 
 through in the trenches," she said. 
 
 One of the most terrible tasks had been taking dead 
 bodies out of the canal, many of which had been 
 there two or three weeks. As she spoke of this I could 
 not help feeling it was work which might have more 
 suitably been set to some of those young gentlemen 
 permitted to wear khaki, yet who bore the letters 
 N.C.C. on their caps. But the girl felt differently. 
 
204 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " I shouldn't want a man who wouldn't fight for his 
 country, and yet dared to put on the soldier's uniform, 
 to pick up my body, even when it had been three 
 weeks in the water," she remarked. 
 
 This Non- Combative Corps must have been equipped 
 with pretty thick skins under their protecting khaki, 
 for I know some of the canteen ladies who viewed 
 them in much the same way as this young Fany. 
 One newly arrived, on being told that a party were 
 approaching, received the spokesman, who demanded 
 hot coffee and refreshments, by enquiring what exactly 
 signified those letters on his cap N.C.C. ? Very glumly 
 he replied : 
 
 " Non-Combative Corps." 
 
 " Do you mean that you refuse to fight for your 
 country ? " asked the lady incredulously. 
 
 " We have a conscientious objection to doing so," 
 answered another of the party with a superior air. 
 
 " Have you ! " said the lady of the hot coffee and 
 buns. " Well, I too have a conscience, and it makes 
 me have a conscientious objection to serving men 
 like you. Please leave this canteen it is not for you 
 we women come out here." 
 
 And no hectoring or blustering remonstrance could 
 induce her to reverse this decision. In the end, I 
 was told, gentlemen of this persuasion were obliged 
 to have a special canteen run for them by their own 
 Society. 
 
 The Fanys were often cited for conspicuous valour 
 by the French army, and many have been awarded the 
 
THE KHAKI GIRLS 205 
 
 Croix de Guerre. I think it is safe to say all have 
 deserved it. 
 
 It was at Compiegne I met that gallant little officer 
 Lieutenant H. of the H-L unit. Across her breast 
 was a perfect rainbow of decorations " Cette 
 Demoiselle a ete beaucoup decoree," said Madame 
 
 la proprietaire. But 2nd Lieutenant H reserved 
 
 all her pride for her unit, not herself personally. 
 And good cause she had, for during two and a half 
 years of hot fighting this gallant band of about twenty- 
 five Englishwomen took part in the front line work 
 of the French army. At first the High Command 
 refused to let them go to the actual front line of 
 battle and used them for divisional work, the respon- 
 sibility, said the French General, was too great, he 
 did not want English women killed, "the front line 
 was only for the most fit men" They had to content 
 themselves therefore with stretcher bearers' work 
 in the war zone. By dint of persevering insistence, 
 however, they got their hearts' desire at last, and in 
 1916, till the end of the war, they served as a fighting 
 unit, not as a Red Cross, for the French have no Red 
 Cross actually in the front lines. They wore the 
 same cap as the French soldier and his blue steel 
 helmet under fire. They shared the poilu's life in 
 the trenches, and the two heads received their 12 
 francs 50 cents a month as the pay of sous-lieutenants. 
 They served under many generals, Humbert, Debeney, 
 Mangin, de Fonclar, and their unit was twice decorated 
 
206 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 with the Croix de Guerre and received the regimental 
 yellow fanion with the cock of France in one corner 
 and the lion of England in the other. They were in 
 Compiegne during its severe bombardment, and with 
 the French army both in the retreat and the victorious 
 
 advance of 1918. A proud record truly ! 
 
 
 
 Another familiar little khaki warrior often to be 
 seen passing and repassing at Compiegne was " Tim " 
 of the Emergency Corps. A more cheery and heart- 
 warming sight than her little sunburnt face and bright 
 twinkling brown eyes could not have been met with 
 on the fields of France. And she had gladdened them 
 with that sight since August 1914, when, the day 
 after the declaration of war she booked a passage for 
 Europe, sold her pack of beagles and with an ambu- 
 lance car set sail, waving a cheery " so long " to the 
 statue of Liberty the liberty she was going to do her 
 bit to defend, being one of the first Americans to 
 recognise that this was her country's war every 
 man's war, who cared a jot for Right. Determined 
 not to waste a minute, Tim turned her hand to any 
 job that came along; the first she could find after 
 landing in England being packing hay all day, and 
 recruiting at night, in which latter occupation she 
 was remarkably successful. Under her fusillade the 
 Waverer ceased to waver, the Conchy ceased to conche. 
 " To the front ! " cried Tim, and to the front they 
 hastened with all speed, to remove the reproach of 
 Tim's " skunk ! " from their scorched ears. 
 
ca. 
 
 - 
 
 THE KHAKI GIRLS 207 
 
 But it was for the front she herself panted, and her 
 strenuous endeavours were at last crowned with 
 success, for nothing can deter Tim when once her 
 mind is made up no official voice, no red tape, no 
 warnings have power to affect her, except to a greater 
 output of will. 
 
 What she did when she got to France it would take 
 a thick volume to tell. For four years she fought 
 a good fight with death and wounds, disease, and 
 horrors of war in every form. Wherever a case was 
 too bad for anyone else to touch, it was Tim who 
 undertook it a man whom no one could move Tim 
 was sent for a poor boy with his face half gone, trying 
 to speak, Tim could understand him. When one cried 
 out for his maman in his delirium, it was Tim answered 
 the call, and his head resting on her shoulder the poor 
 boy fell asleep with a smile on his dying lips, while 
 Tim crooned to him a little lullaby of comfort all 
 her own. 
 
 In the canteen she sent them on their way with a 
 gay courage and high hope. In the Rest Camp she 
 wrote love letters by the score, and everywhere she 
 radiated joy like the sun at midsummer. Tim tired ? 
 Tim ill ? No one could believe it. Yet Tim could 
 be and was, both, very grievously. In that day she 
 lay at death's door, for all who knew her the sun was 
 darkened and ceased to give light and warmth to the 
 earth. But happily the eclipse was but temporary 
 God's in His heaven," and Tim still on earth. 
 
 And now she has bidden a sorrowful good-bye to 
 
208 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 her poilus, been demobilised and returned to the land 
 of her birth, to which, however, it is doubtful if she 
 ever would have returned had they not " played up 
 at last." She has taken with her an opinion so exalted 
 not only of the French but of the British nation that 
 either she will succeed in inaugurating a quite re- 
 markable Anglo-American entente cordiale, or she 
 will become extremely, aggressively unpopular. She 
 places the British race conspicuously in the forefront. 
 Hearing two French ladies lamenting the fact of many 
 illegitimate births in those districts around Rouen 
 where British troops had been stationed, Tim in- 
 terrupted in her cheery way : 
 
 "Is that so? Why, I call that bully! Some 
 chance for the coming generation in France if they 
 have that strain in them ! " 
 
 French ladies !!!!!!! 
 
 Life will seem a tame thing to some of the khaki 
 girls when they don again their embroidered muslins 
 and suede shoes. Listening to the various adventures 
 and exploits of some of these youthful maidens as 
 we sat over our coffee and cigarettes after dinner I 
 asked one evening : 
 
 " What will you do when you are demobilised ? ' 
 
 A blank look fell like a sudden shadow blotting out 
 the sun. Then one by one went round the half 
 involuntary, murmured thought which held them 
 all: 
 
 " Can't live at home again ! " 
 

 THE KHAKI GIRLS 209 
 
 " Not much ! " 
 
 "The old life! Never!" 
 
 " Wasn't life at aU ! " 
 
 What will they do ? Marry ? Many of them no 
 doubt, but not, as in the old days, because they feel 
 they must. These girls will never marry merely for 
 the sake of entering the " holy (save the mark) estate 
 of matrimony." Some of their number had been 
 engaged, but their betrothed are numbered among 
 the two million who will never come back. What 
 will the unmarried khaki girls do with their lives ? 
 They have most of them been hitherto too busy to 
 think of anything but the strenuous day's work on 
 hand. But we need have no fear for their future. 
 They have had such a training in self-reliance, self- 
 control and self-denial, efficiency, co-operation, 
 courage, obedience and direction of others, that they 
 can but be the better, nobler women, wherever they 
 shall go. Many will doubtless find their way out to 
 new countries where instead of being " superfluous " 
 they are needed, urgently called for. The objection 
 to exile and separation is fast diminishing in these 
 days of rapid transit, soon to develop into something 
 much completer, with the perfecting of short-winged 
 flights which may soon vie with those of the bird, 
 who makes nothing of his summer night's trip across 
 Europe or the Atlantic. 
 
 Others of the khaki girls will throw their energy 
 and courage into rebuilding and reconstructing a 
 better order of things at home, where the doors are 
 
210 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 opening wide for them as doctors, lawyers, chemists, 
 land agents, farmers, school inspectors, Members of 
 Parliament, who knows, before long, even Cabinet 
 Ministers ! The last thing we wish for them is to 
 see these vitally alive, splendidly healthy, vigorously 
 growing young creatures, lop off their wings and creep 
 back into the old cages. I can hear them as an echo 
 reaches them of this pious prayer : 
 " No fear ! " 
 
NOYON ONCE MORE 
 
 THE newspapers had prepared one for a wrecked 
 town. Such reports as " Noyon Cathedral in flames " 
 " The fighting in the streets of Noyon has been of 
 the most sanguinary description " >4 The enemy now 
 occupies what remains of Noyon," and later, "The 
 enemy have been driven out of Noyon " in these 
 brief sentences was told the tragic story of Noyon, 
 the beautiful little old town, which by the merest 
 accident had escaped destruction in 1917, but against 
 which the Boches had a specially black mark. The 
 summary justice visited on that Hun officer and his 
 six men, caught by the advancing French in the act 
 of lowering a mine which was to blow up the Cathedral, 
 was to be avenged tenfold, an hundredfold, in accord- 
 ance with Hun principles. 
 
 But no newspaper accounts, no oral reports could 
 prepare one for the actual sight of ruined Noyon 
 the very " abomination of desolation." 
 
 It was a broiling day in June, the midsummer sun 
 beat down fiercely on the great heaps of stones and 
 bricks which once were streets and houses, as I tried 
 with difficulty to find my way to the home of my little 
 friend, Mdlle Claire, the Angel of the military hospital. 
 All landmarks, save that of the still towering wreck 
 
 211 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 of the Cathedral, had disappeared, and one pathway 
 of ruins looked exactly like the other. At last I found 
 the place where, between a spreading chestnut and a 
 tall pine, her mother and uncle, a priest of the 
 Cathedral, had lived in an old house adjoining a 
 convent. The trees still stood their ground, battered 
 and shelled, but living, to point where the house, 
 now a heap of wreckage, had once been. 
 
 I asked where the owners had gone, and was directed 
 to a little street near by, where, in a much- shelled 
 house but for Noyon quite unusually sound I found 
 my friends, Mme Latour and her brother, the priest, 
 lodging in three small rooms with a few sticks of 
 furniture lent by friends. Claire was away nursing 
 in a distant hospital. She had never ceased her 
 hospital work except for a few months, when all 
 French nurses were turned out by the German army 
 nurses, who became furiously jealous and refused to 
 serve any longer with them. The French ladies were 
 told that either they must work in the fields or give 
 lessons in French to the German officers. Mdlle 
 Claire chose the latter, having some experience and 
 success in teaching, but none in ploughing. 
 
 " And she nursed the sick civilians wherever she 
 found them, even at that time," said her mother. 
 " For when her brother left for the war she made a 
 vow to the Blessed Virgin, if she would protect him 
 and bring him back in safety, never she would cease 
 to give her service. She would nurse all who came 
 her way, the wounded enemy even the 'civils,' old 
 
Bl 
 
 ao 
 
 Ov 
 
NOYON ONCE MORE 
 
 people and young children, all she has kept her 
 vow and the Blessed Virgin granted her prayer. My 
 son who is aviator, for four years in the most great 
 dangers, has ever borne a charmed life and not even 
 been wounded." 
 
 All through the terrible days which fell on her 
 beloved town Mme Latour had remained at her post, 
 as her brother, the white-haired priest, had remained 
 at his. Yes, alas, the Boches had returned, and this 
 time they had finished Noyon ! Like a nightmare 
 had been those months of the second occupation. It 
 was in March they swept into the town after a terrific 
 bombardment, before which Noyon had been evacu- 
 ated. The few who remained endured suffering and 
 privations past description. I asked for news of the 
 poor old couple in the white house. They and their 
 faithful bonne had left in the first rush, together with 
 the children and their mother on the Place. They 
 had not returned, " for the poor ones, there was 
 nothing left to which they could return." 
 
 During the awful months when Noyon was the 
 centre of fighting the roar of guns never ceasing, the 
 streets filled with wounded and dying, there was 
 plenty for the old priest and his sister to do. She 
 had trained with her daughter before the war " in first 
 aid " and gone through a course of chemistry life 
 had taught her nursing. Any skill, any knowledge, 
 any willing hands were urgently needed in the stricken 
 town. 
 
 " Men lay there among the ruins unable to move, 
 
214 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 in the streets dying," said Mme Latour. " No one 
 to care for them they cried out to any who passed 
 for water, the poor boys German as well as French. 
 The wounded one he has no nationality I ran from 
 one to the other. When I found a wounded German 
 I went to the great vaults of the Cathedral which the 
 Boches had turned into their hospital, so safe is one 
 there from the bombardment, no bomb could pene- 
 trate. But the Boches they trouble not themselves 
 for their greatly wounded those who cannot be made 
 well to fight again. The officer he would say with an 
 air indifferent when I told of a poor boy perhaps 
 dying ' If he is caput let him alone we have no 
 time for those there ! ' They left such wounded to 
 die in the street or pushed them in an empty house. 
 Often I heard one groaning and entered Ah ! but 
 it tore one the heart ! When I reported one had 
 died they would set fire to the house ' That is the 
 quickest burial,' they said. Figure to yourself, then, 
 if they treated in such callous fashion their own 
 wounded how they treated our poor boys of that I 
 cannot even bear to speak. Before they were dead 
 they have buried many together in one hole." 
 
 The priest and his sister themselves bore their 
 dead to the cemetery, and with their own hands dug 
 the graves. Where the distance was too great they 
 would seek out some quiet spot and mark it with a 
 cross, till the time should come when all could be 
 laid in consecrated ground we passed several of 
 these wayside graves. Many bodies they found among 
 
NOYON ONCE MORE 215 
 
 e ruins impossible to identify, for they had lost the 
 arm or hand on which the French poilu wears his 
 little disc. Many were blown to bits. 
 
 As we walked round the Cathedral Mme Latour 
 gave vivid pictures of the scenes which had been 
 enacted there. 
 
 " A veritable battlefield was this sacred shrine. 
 Three times it was taken rescued with desperate 
 fighting and retaken. See here, this pillar still is 
 stained with the blood of a poor boy I found here 
 dead, his head supported against the pillar all his 
 shoulder was blown away. Many fell defending 
 the altar. The sacred vessels I took away. In a 
 barrow I wheeled them while the roof was falling. 
 My brother he called to me c Cover thy head ' the 
 pieces, all in flames, were falling round us. But we 
 felt no fear, my brother and I, for we knew le Ion 
 Dieu had given us this work to do, and whatever 
 happened we must accomplish it." 
 
 Of course she was not allowed to keep the sacred 
 vessels a Boche followed and tried to seize them, but 
 she firmly confronted him, and refused to give them 
 up except to the commanding officer. From this 
 one she demanded a receipt after giving him a list of 
 the sacred things. He appears to have been so taken 
 aback by the fearless and calm attitude of the 
 little Frenchwoman, so jealously guarding the sacred 
 tilings of her Church, that he gave her the required 
 receipt, no doubt thinking it mattered little. But 
 a day came, little dreamt of by the Boche, when with 
 
216 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 that piece of paper as witness, the sacred vessels 
 actually were restored, and she showed them in the 
 beautiful side chapel which had marvellously escaped 
 destruction, and where the services are now held. 
 A fine crucifix, however, was never sent back. " It 
 was of a great antiquity and value and the Boches 
 they said it could not be traced." 
 
 Mme Latour's experience of the Boche was " the 
 higher the rank the greater the thief." This would 
 seem borne out by the ample evidence against such 
 exalted personages as the Crown Prince and Prince 
 Ruprecht of Bavaria, who carted off whole trainloads 
 of loot wherever they went. The German officers 
 left their soldiers free hands to pillage as they pleased 
 in Noyon. They themselves lived in luxury in the 
 surrounding chateaux, and never interfered, however 
 monstrous the crime against the inhabitants. 
 
 "As to theft and rape," said Mme Latour, " they 
 would laugh and reply, ' What then do you expect 
 this is war and we are victors.' ' 
 
 " One day I spoke out the truth to one of those 
 boasters," said Mme Latour. " It was the Boche 
 Colonel, and he spoke French after his fashion. Vaunt- 
 ing he said to me, 4 We are now the masters of the 
 world look at the map you cannot deny it.' ' 
 
 ;; The masters of the world ! Where then is le 
 bon Dieu ? '' I reply. " He it is who is the 
 Master of the world, and that you will soon learn, 
 Mr Colonel. Oh yes, very soon, you Germans who 
 boast so blasphemously." 
 
NOYON ONCE MORE 217 
 
 " Ah, your bon Dieu," lie replies, " He can do 
 nothing against the Mr God of the German people ! 
 He it is who fights always on our side and see, 
 we have conquered you all French, English, 
 Americans ! The whole world against us, and we 
 march over the lot of you." 
 
 " How then ! " I cry indignant, " you think you 
 have conquered the English ? Why they only begin 
 to show their strength they who had an army to 
 create. And the Americans, they who have not yet 
 arrived, but who make ready in their millions ! Wait 
 till they come men young, fresh, strong, fully 
 equipped. You think you have conquered France 
 because you have invaded our land and burnt our 
 sacred churches, our peaceful villages. But no ! We 
 shall drive you out before many months, for you 
 have not conquered one Frenchman though you have 
 killed millions. You have not conquered even me 
 one poor woman whose house you have burnt. And 
 not one of you dare touch me as I pass along the 
 streets and tend the wounded and dying." 
 
 He laughed very loud and he said, " In three days 
 we are in Paris ! " 
 
 " Never you will enter Paris," I told him. 
 
 " And why not, since we are almost there already ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 I know not why I spoke with such certainty, 
 but I knew it was so, and I knew also that it was not 
 by human strength but by divine aid. " You will 
 never enter Paris," I said, " because it is guarded 
 
218 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 by the Sacred Heart on Montmartre that Sacred 
 Heart obstructs your passage." At this he regarded 
 me with a scowl. He did not laugh, but went away. 
 Some of these Boches they are Catholics one tells 
 me though very bad ones. It was perhaps so with 
 him." 
 
 But, in spite of her faith and valiant spirit, Mme 
 Latour had moments of terrible suspense, of agonising 
 doubt times when, as she expressed it, she " wept 
 all the tears of her heart " as she heard they were 
 advancing like a flood daily, hourly gaining ground. 
 
 " When I heard they had reached Chateau-Thierry, 
 all that night I prayed for France. Never my faith in 
 the divine help really failed, but I knew we must hold 
 on to our faith with all our forces." 
 
 She made me think of Moses holding up his hands 
 in supplication so long as she and others like her 
 could maintain this attitude of fervent faith, so long 
 the Boche-Philistines were unable to prevail. 
 
 In the enclosure of the Cathedral cloisters were 
 numerous German graves. The French had respected 
 them as they do all the burying-places of the ravaging 
 invader, but to read such names as Speier, Pfeiffer, 
 Schmidt, under the shadow of the beautiful old 
 Cathedral the Hun had reduced to a giant wreck, was 
 an outrage to the Noyonnais, and the sooner these 
 Kriegers* remains are removed to their own country 
 the better for the soil wherein to plant peace and 
 goodwill for the future. , 
 
 A Boche prisoner was working leisurely on a low 
 
NOYON ONCE MORE 219 
 
 roof in the cloister, sorting out tiles, and, as no one was 
 supervising him, doing a lot of smashing, we noticed. 
 As we passed near he flung a lot of debris below with 
 a vicious clatter, sprinkling us with dust. Like every 
 other Boche prisoner I saw in Noyon, he had a cigarette 
 in his mouth. These are given by the French work- 
 men, men who know now something of what their 
 comrades have suffered in Germany, but the poilu, 
 like the Tommy, has a good heart and knows no malice. 
 
 ' This kindly spirit unfortunately does not appear 
 to call forth a similar one in the Boche," said my 
 guide. " He is as yet a very unevolved being. The 
 false teaching one has given him from a child has 
 distorted his mental sight. They feel no shame at 
 their ugly deeds quite the contrary. Many have said 
 to me, boasting, as they point to our ruined homes : 
 
 4 Vos maisons caput Nos maisons non caput nous 
 mieux que vous." 
 
 This, from the beaten foe, is instructive, and shows 
 how much better Foch knew the German than the 
 lawyer politicians, so afraid of " crushing " him ! 
 
 " It gives them much satisfaction," said Mme 
 Latour, " to contemplate the destruction they have 
 wrought in our country, and to think of their own 
 where not a stone is out of place not an industry 
 is injured. For a people so brutal, so primitive, I 
 am convinced that punishment is the only means of 
 teaching. As says my brother, he who is priest, 
 " Punishment, not of a vindictive character, burning 
 and destroying in return their homes, but a punish- 
 
220 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 ment of strict justice which shall prevent a repetition 
 of their crimes against humanity." 
 
 It struck me that this would have made an ex- 
 cellent fifteenth to the famous fourteen Points. But 
 it would never have enjoyed the same popularity 
 in Germany. 
 
 As we threaded our way through the streets of 
 ruins my friend pointed out the homes of her friends 
 the monuments which once stood where now lay 
 only a charred heap of rubble the blackened fa9ade 
 of the once beautiful palace of the Archbishop, and 
 the wrecked Palais de Justice, that gem of the 14th 
 century the pride of the Noyonnais. With such 
 a Cathedral and such a Palais de Justice, though in 
 point of size only a small town, they had felt their 
 Noyon second to none in the beauty and dignity of 
 her ancient monuments. 
 
 We sat down Jo rest on some blocks of stone out- 
 side a garden, whose trees offered some rare and 
 welcome shade. The house appeared deserted, but 
 the garden had been partly cleared and vegetables 
 sown in neat rows in the flower-beds. Suddenly there 
 was a loud report, a roar like that of an explosion, and 
 the large house at the back collapsed like a pack of cards. 
 A crowd collected quickly springing up mysteriously 
 out of nowhere. Fortunately it was found no one was 
 in the place. It had appeared outwardly solid. 
 
 " That sort of thing happens every day," said a 
 man in the crowd. " No house in Noyon is secure- 
 it has been too much bombarded." 
 
THE LITTLE WHITE HOUSE AT NOYON 
 
NOYON ONCE MORE 
 
 We moved away from our resting-place, which was 
 quickly enveloped in a cloud of dust as thick as a 
 London fog. 
 
 Passing the Rue de la Madeleine I turned in at the 
 garden gate to look at what remained of the little 
 white house of my poor old couple. The walls still 
 stood, but the house was an empty shell the roof 
 gone. The staircase lay prone on the floor, and 
 holes gaped at one grimly. Yet with its sightless 
 windows the little house faced the world still, patheti- 
 cally erect, refusing to crumble down on to the heap 
 of stones which covered the garden. Poor little 
 home ! keeping still an air of dignity and seclusion 
 difficult to define an almost human quality of 
 courage, like a garment which has taken on the 
 character of its wearer. 
 
 A group of robust, well-clothed Boche prisoners 
 sat eating and smoking on a pile of logs in the road 
 outside. I turned to them and said in German : 
 
 '' I knew that little house when it was a happy, 
 beautiful home see what you have made of it." 
 
 One of them answered with a laugh : 
 
 " It was not / did it ! What others make that does 
 not disturb me ! " and he went on munching his bread. 
 
 And after all, had he been the one to set the mine 
 he would only have been obeying orders. Had he 
 refused he would have met with the same fate as the 
 house, caput without saving it. Still the sight of 
 those fat, smug, self-satisfied " Blonde Beasts " was 
 peculiarly offensive at that particular moment and in 
 
222 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 that particular place, and I was in no mood for 
 weighing nice questions of responsibility as I thought 
 of my poor old little lady chased from her home, and 
 ending her days in exile and poverty after all she had 
 already endured from the brutal Boches. 
 
 As I went with my guide, Mme Latour, from one 
 desolate scene to another, it was like turning pages 
 of her diary of the war. 
 
 " In this cellar here was my store of potatoes 
 without those potatoes to feed my wounded I know 
 not how I should have arranged. It was from the 
 English army I begged them. They were very good, 
 the English, and gave me all they could. To hide my 
 store from the Boches I visited it only in the dark, 
 and I covered well my potatoes with stones." 
 
 " This house," she pointed to a wall which remained, 
 " five times I saved when it was burning. With 
 incendiary pastilles the Boches set fire to it, and if 
 one can arrive before the fire has gained, with a pail 
 of water it can be extinguished. This I accomplished. 
 But in the end they succeeded. For when they chased 
 us all and sent us in trucks to the north and to Belgium, 
 then everything was burnt our house also we found 
 as you see when we came back." 
 
 That journey to Belgium and the time which 
 followed was an experience of which she found it 
 difficult to speak. Imagine trainloads of people 
 standing packed so closely together they could only 
 sit down in turns without food or water the old, 
 
NO YON ONCE MORE 223 
 
 the sick, the dying, the dead all together. These 
 were the refugee trains sent north by the Germans. 
 At the station where they arrived Mme Latour, the 
 brave, indefatigable little Frenchwoman, improvised 
 a temporary hospital to care for the refugees as they 
 poured in. Every day they arrived in thousands from 
 all parts in pitiable condition. Over 300,000 of these 
 unfortunate people were packed in trains and sent 
 adrift in this way. To dry their clothes, soaked 
 through with rain, to bandage their bleeding feet, 
 to wash and feed them and find a shelter for those 
 unable to continue their journey, these were but some 
 of the services rendered by Mme Latour's temporary 
 hospital. 
 
 Wherever she found herself she at once started a 
 hospital, whether in the refugee train, the station, or 
 the street. But Mme Latour wears no Croix de 
 Guerre, no Palms, no medals- and she asks none. 
 " On fait ce qu'on peut." She just did what she could. 
 These are the real heroines holding a place enshrined 
 in the hearts of the poor, silent and obscure ignored 
 and unrewarded by the Powers-that-Be who require 
 a good glare of limelight before they are able to see 
 those they delight to honour. No reflection this on 
 those who stand in the limelight many of them 
 gallant enough no doubt, but it is a pity that official 
 eyes cannot see also those who stand in the twilight, 
 sometimes the starlight. 
 
 " And will you rebuild your beautiful Noyon ? " 
 I asked Mme Latour before we parted. Her face 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 lit up quickly : " Ah, but certainly ! " she said. 
 " I perhaps shall not live to see it but my children, 
 yes. And no longer will Noyon live with the dark 
 menace which in secret has threatened her all my 
 life for I remember the war of 1870. And we who 
 remembered those days knew for us there was no 
 security, though what was really coming upon us 
 none foresaw the Government less than any. 
 Noyon will arise out of her ruins you think it im- 
 possible as you see it now is it not so ? But le 
 bon Dieu He who worked the miracle of saving Paris, 
 of saving France, He can raise up Noyon out of the 
 dust." 
 
 Such courageous faith is surely of the sort which 
 will remove mountains, even those mountains of 
 wreckage and ruin, but it will take a long time, and 
 only with the eye of faith will any of the sufferers 
 in this war see a restored Noyon. 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 
 
 A STURDY, kinkly-haired little fellow of some eight 
 years old in a white sailor suit took off his hat and 
 said " Bon jour Madame " with a charming grin as 
 I passed him going out of the Hotel at Compiegne 
 one day. His hat bore the black ribbon of H.M.S. 
 "Temeraire." I stopped and spoke of the "fight- 
 ing Temeraire " was he going to be a marin ? 
 
 He thought not, he had other ideas in the head, 
 " not yet well decided ! " I remarked it was a nice 
 cool uniform in any case, and he was wise to stick 
 to it this hot weather. 
 
 From that time he greeted me as an old friend, 
 and repeated that charming grin and a polite bow 
 directly I appeared in the dining-room. Not content 
 with that, from where he sat with his father and 
 mother, I would perceive a little head nodding like 
 a Mandarin, and there was my friend insisting on 
 recognition between every course. 
 
 We cemented the friendship by showing each other 
 picture post cards, and discussing battlefields we had 
 both been visiting. Melchior, it appears, had to be 
 carefully watched lest he picked up a live shell or 
 hand-grenade, with which these regions abound, in 
 his keen anxiety to add to his war museum a 
 
 225 
 
226 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 collection which he is making for his children with 
 instructions that they are to be very careful and 
 leave this historic collection when they die to their 
 children. For " as this is the greatest war that there 
 has ever been in all the world, never must one forget 
 it, or the men who have gloriously died for France." 
 By which it will be seen that Melchior is a good patriot. 
 He has lost many relations in the war, uncles and 
 cousins many cousins. The one he most regrets 
 is the uncle who was the brother of his Papa. " He 
 was aviator that one an ' ace,' and of a courage to 
 make fear les sales Boches ! " 
 
 " One day he said, ' We will go over and drop some 
 bombs on the Boches, hein ? ' And with his squadron 
 of five machines he mounted high into the skies. 
 They did some famous work dropped bombs on to 
 a factory of munitions which exploded finely, and then 
 more bombs they let fall on a big station which they 
 made also jump. But then came the Boche aviators, 
 the sky was all black with them they had a terrible 
 battle, the Boche never he will fight unless he is two 
 to one, or three to one he prefers he knows in an 
 equal fight he has no chance, see you ! Five of them 
 altogether they attacked my uncle, and he finished 
 two down they fell in flames, but the three they 
 ended by piercing him with so many balls, he fell to the 
 earth and was killed immediately it was better than 
 to be taken a prisoner ! " added Melchior with a sigh. 
 
 " Do you desire to be an officer to fight in battles 
 when you are big ? " I asked. 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 227 
 
 " Ah no not at all," he answered fervently. " To 
 make my military service it is my duty I shall make 
 it very surely but I have no desire to fight (de me 
 battre). Imagine to lose the eyes, never more to see, 
 like the poor Jean Barthieu, the son of our chief 
 gardener or to die a prisoner as did the two sons of 
 the forester starved to death in the salt mines of 
 Germany ! Ah no the war I detest it." 
 
 Melchior has seen and heard enough of the horrors 
 of war to have no romantic illusions on that point. 
 Les sales Bodies stands for all that he has seen of 
 hideous brutal, destroying, woe begetting in his 
 young life. He "hopes one has finished well with 
 those monsters." 
 
 Madame, his mother, came up and joined us in the 
 garden where we sat. She trusted her son was not 
 boring me. It would be difficult to be bored by 
 Melchior he is so versatile and so perfectly natural 
 and unself- conscious. At our second meeting I knew 
 most of his family history. His mother had told me 
 he was an only child as yet, she added. Melchior 
 informed me his Maman was very careful not to 
 spoil him, " for you see a unique child who is spoilt 
 that is an annoyance for everybody." He himself 
 knew a boy like that, and everyone found him detest- 
 able. " As for Papa, however, he is not so careful 
 not to spoil me for I see him so rarely. For five years 
 now he has served with his regiment," explained 
 Melchior, " and he is simple soldat from choice." 
 
 kMy Papa he likes to be always with the horses, 
 
228 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 for that reason he prefers not to be officer. The 
 horses he adores them you see. In the country we 
 had many horses, but when the war came the Govern- 
 ment they claimed all so me I cannot mount a horse 
 as yet," he confessed sadly. " But soon now I shall 
 learn to mount, and I know very well how to drive. 
 This afternoon," he went on recovering his self- 
 respect, " I conducted the carriage all over the forest 
 from two o'clock till seven. The coachman I per- 
 mitted him not to touch at the reins alone, I made 
 the turnings, and in safety I conducted my Maman 
 and my Papa to the hotel." 
 
 This story was confirmed by his mother who gave 
 it as a reason for urging her son to go to bed at 
 9.30. But he maintained that to conduct horses 
 was in no way fatiguing when you have the wrist 
 strong as he had. 
 
 Melchior is a great chasseur. He goes out with 
 his father whenever the latter is en permission (on 
 leave). In the country where they live " there are 
 woods and woods and woods, nothing but that 
 it is very amusing ! " Melchior does not yet shoot. 
 His business is to hold the dogs and follow his father. 
 On his next birthday, however, when he is nine, he 
 will have a little carabine, and after one year of 
 practice with this, a real fusil, and then he will be 
 a true sportsman. " One chases the wild boar in the 
 forest. There are many just now one has hunted 
 them so little during the war. Afraid of them? 
 He? Melchior? Ah, but no! They resemble the 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 229 
 
 Boches ! " When they only see Melchoir coming 
 with his fierce dogs they save themselves. " Why, 
 in the winter holidays even at the sight of the bon- 
 homme de neige (snow man) the sanglier he ran ! " 
 
 There is nothing in the world the Papa of Melchior 
 adores like the chase. Directly the day is fine he 
 says "Now for the forest come, we will make la 
 chasse." They start and then perhaps, after an hour 
 or so, down comes the rain. " One gets wet to the 
 skin but that makes nothing one walks seven 
 kilometres, even ten kilometres. Papa he says if one 
 begins very young then never one catches cold or 
 becomes feeble." So Melchior begins very young ! 
 
 Melchior was much interested in hearing about an 
 English boy I know just his own age, called David. 
 How tall was he ? How strong ? In what class ? 
 Had he a gun and a horse ? " Recount to me of 
 that English boy David," he asked one day. "Does 
 he make well le box ? '' And when I told of how 
 David loved so well boxing that he had taught the 
 French poodle, and together they played the boxing 
 scene from Shakespeare of Orlando and Charles the 
 prize-fighter Melchior was delighted. " Ah, but he 
 is an original that one very much I should like to 
 know that boy David." 
 
 He was sorry to hear David had no gun, not even 
 a carabine. " No doubt his father will give him 
 one soon," he remarked hopefully. " Then he must 
 come and stay with us, and together we will shoot in 
 the forest." I was sure nothing would please David 
 
230 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 better. "He can bring with him also that dog," 
 added Melchior hospitably. 
 
 For all the grandes vacances (the long holidays) 
 Melchior goes to the chateau in the country and 
 leaves Paris, and the school " God be thanked ! 
 Ah, then one is happy ! " He has a cousin Alphonse 
 aged eleven years he is old that one. His father's 
 estate is near that of Melchior's father, so they meet 
 every day. Alphonse brings with him quite a troop 
 of comrades sometimes, and then they play the great 
 game of war. Ah, that is a famous game ! Mel- 
 chior he also has three comrades of his age, and all 
 together they organise the battles. The rules of 
 war are severe oh, but very severe and those of 
 the Boche army are forced to obey even as those of 
 the French army. Each man is armed to the teeth, 
 with a revolver and a sword. The ammunition for 
 the revolvers is salt, and the rule is that directly 
 one feels the prick of the salt on one's legs, which are 
 bare, as one wears socks, of course, one falls dead, slain 
 as surely as if a ball had passed through the heart. 
 Any attempt at pretending you are not hit, or at 
 rising after you are a " deader" is visited with summary 
 justice, and you are hauled off to the hut, and placed 
 under lock and key for two deadly hours of solitude. 
 It is pretty exciting this game of war. Each side has 
 an equal number and sometimes the Boches they gain, 
 and sometimes the French. No use the Boches trying 
 their cheating dodges however one is too sharp for 
 them in Melchior's domain. 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 231 
 
 When I asked how they made themselves look like 
 the Boches, Melchior promptly puffed out his cheeks, 
 turned up the brim of his hat all round, saucer- wise, 
 and explained that he wore big spectacles and a green 
 coat a " perfect disguise." 
 
 There is a cavalry which sometimes plays an 
 important part. It is formed by half the troops 
 turning into horses on whose backs the others mount, 
 the horses prancing on hind legs stamping with a 
 martial tread a very good effect ! For the wounded 
 there are stretcher bearers, for it arrives sometimes 
 one has an accident without being shot, one falls in a 
 shell hole, for example. 
 
 The Generals are elected by vote, and on one occasion 
 the great honour of being Foch himself fell to Melchior, 
 while Alphonse he was chosen for the Kaiser with 
 moustaches very ferocious painted on his face, 
 a thrilling role, as that of villain of the piece must 
 always be. 
 
 By great good fortune Foch succeeded on this 
 occasion (a prophetic one truly) in capturing the Kaiser. 
 But do not figure to yourself that it was easy, for he 
 was of a great cunning and strength that Kaiser. 
 Foch, like all good generals, had climbed to the top of 
 a high fir-tree from where he was taking observations 
 of the enemy trenches, dug-outs and telephone wires. 
 And it was from this height he presently observed 
 the Kaiser descend from a similar tree half a kilometre 
 distant, and begin to walk in a crouching attitude 
 through the long grass which almost hid one's head. 
 
232 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 Rapidly Foch laid his plans. Calling his staff together 
 they lay in wait, and as the Kaiser approached to 
 reconnoitre, most imprudently having separated him- 
 self from his troops, they sprang out and fell upon 
 him. It needed three men exerting their full strength 
 to take him captive, but the feat was accomplished 
 at last. He was taken alive kicking furiously, and 
 locked up in prison. All glory to Foch who had 
 no politicians to interfere and filch his completed 
 victory from him. 
 
 I asked whether the Allies ever played any part. 
 
 " Well," said Melchior politely, " we have sometimes 
 the General Haig and one or two of his men in khaki 
 but for the other Allies they have no importance. 
 " When David arrives he will, of course, take the part 
 of the General Haig, and the poodle he can be the guard 
 and defend him from the attacks of the Boches while 
 he sleeps under a tree, also he can be the aide-de-camp 
 who follows him into the battle." 
 
 He hoped David would recognise the necessity for 
 a unified command under Foch the English he knew 
 had made difficulties at first on this point, but all the 
 world saw now it was only so that victory had been 
 achieved. I undertook to answer for David in this 
 respect. 
 
 " You see," added Melchior, " David himself may 
 be elected to be Foch if he shows himself capable to 
 be a great commander." 
 
 I could only commend such a liberal spirit. 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 233 
 
 When in Paris Melchior attends a lycbe every day. 
 At 8 o'clock the classes begin and go on till 11.30. 
 Then there is a break and one goes home for lunch. 
 At 1 o'clock he is back again and works that active 
 little brain of his till 4. Then again there is a recess 
 till 5.30 when come his extra lessons of music and 
 drawing. A pretty stiff day's work for eight years 
 old. 
 
 He was amazed to hear of the comparatively short 
 hours of David's school, and the longer hours given 
 to games. That Melchior thought a most excellent 
 idea. The cricket he adored it, but one never had 
 enough time to play except in the holidays. For the 
 football he had not yet seen that game. 
 
 " David he is the fortunate one very much I 
 should prefer his school to mine," he remarked 
 decidedly. 
 
 But when, having gone through every item of David's 
 day, we came to bed at seven o'clock and omitted 
 dinner altogether, Melchior opened big eyes of 
 astonishment and dismay. 
 
 '' How then that young David, the unhappy one, 
 he goes to bed at seven o'clock every evening without 
 his dinner it is not a punishment one makes him, 
 when he has conducted himself badly ? " he asked 
 incredulously. 
 
 "It is a custom one has in England for all small 
 boys and girls however good and clever they are," I 
 assured him. 
 
 ' What a curious country is England ! For me, 
 
234* MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 I should not like that custom, it is perhaps just as 
 well that I am not living in that country even to attend 
 that agreeable school of David's. All the same," he 
 added, " some day I hope to travel to England all 
 the curious countries I desire to see them, and David 
 he must visit me. I will teach him the custom of 
 dining at eight o'clock," he added with a mischievous 
 twinkle. 
 
 I said they must both learn each other's language, 
 for at present if they met they would look at each 
 other like a pair of dumb boys, and not exchange an 
 idea very dull that ! 
 
 Melchior agreed that would be idiotic for two boys 
 of intelligence, and he would begin English at once. 
 One learnt such languages at his lycee Latin, 
 English and American, which of course is the same 
 thing only a kind of patois spoken with the nose." 
 
 He seemed so certain on this point I enquired if he 
 had ever heard American spoken ? 
 
 " But yes, me I know well the officers of the 
 American army," he replied. " The camp of the 
 General Perr- sheen it was not far from the chateau, 
 and Maman to make them pleasure she gave for the 
 use of the American officers the grand salon and the 
 billiard hall. I liked much to watch how they played, 
 and how they danced and made the music. One 
 American he spoke very well French, and he desired 
 to teach Maman the American tongue but she is 
 slow to learn the strange tongues Maman. 
 
 "One must learn when one is young. With that 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 235 
 
 merican officer I disputed very much about the 
 war. Maman she forbade me to say things impolite, 
 but it was more strong than me you see, when he 
 says to me, ' See here, Melchior, without us you could 
 not manage the affair. It is we Americans who 
 have gained the war.' Then I enrage myself 
 ' How then,' I say, c you deceive yourselves finely 
 you Americans. You count for very little in this 
 great war your value has been to make fear to the 
 Boches. When they heard a million had arrived, and 
 many millions were making ready to come quickly, 
 then the Boche he threw up his hands as is his custom, 
 and cried Kamarad \ we desire to fight no more.' 
 But I say to him, 'You Americans, what did you 
 experience of the real war ? Four months that is 
 all ! and even then you bring not your own guns it 
 is the French guns you are obliged to use.' Maman 
 always she tried to interrupt our disputes, and scolded 
 me but I spoke only the simple verity. I find it is 
 impossible to remember to be always polite with that 
 American who so deceives himself." 
 
 One day I asked Melchior his ideas about his future 
 career. He said there were several which promenaded 
 in his head. One he considered seriously was to have 
 a smelting factory, for la fonte was one of the things 
 most necessary and useful in all the world. 
 
 " You see without it one cannot manage at all," 
 he went on to explain. " For railways, for ships, for 
 autos, for everything in life when one thinks of it 
 
236 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 even the stove to cook your dinner and the gun to 
 shoot game. I do not speak of the munitions of war 
 let us hope we have finished with that." 
 
 I asked if he had ever seen smelting works. Yes, 
 he knew well the usine de fonte, for his aunt pos- 
 sessed one, and he had been all over it with the 
 director, a man very intelligent, who had explained 
 all the things most interesting and most marvellous. 
 
 The other idea to which he inclined was a career 
 in forestry. And I could see the charms of the green 
 wood ran neck to neck with the marvels of machinery, 
 as he told me of the many woods his father had in the 
 country. 
 
 " One cuts the trees every year and one sells them 
 very well, see you. Also," he added with a confidential 
 little grin, " me I like much the hunting and shooting." 
 
 " So, I see you want to combine business and 
 pleasure," I commented. 
 
 " C'est bien 9a," he replied. " And that English 
 boy David, what is he going to choose for a career ? " 
 
 I replied that he also had many ideas which pro- 
 menaded him in the head. Among others he thought 
 of becoming a great writer, a farmer with plenty of 
 horses, an architect and an engineer. There was an 
 idea also of becoming a famous pianist, for he was 
 very fond of music. 
 
 "Tell him that best of all is the forestry," said 
 Melchior. " When he comes to visit me I will teach 
 him how it is done." 
 
 Before we parted it was arranged I must come and 
 
MELCHIOR (A PATRIOT) 
 
 237 
 
 I will describe 
 You know the 
 
 see him when I came to Paris, 
 to you where we live," he said. 
 Avenue X ? " 
 
 Alas I did not, but it was found I knew " Les 
 Invalides " and with that point d'appui he proceeded 
 to make me a plan. 
 
 4 Voyons ! Moi je suis Les Invalides " he patted 
 his chest " puis voila la Rue Franois Premier," 
 
 one sturdy little leg " et voila PA venue X " 
 
 represented by the other. " Here at this corner," 
 pointing to his knee, " you will find our house you 
 cannot miss it." 
 
 With the picture of that charming little map im- 
 printed on my memory I feel sure I cannot. 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 
 
 THE Dames Anglaises are like the green patches of 
 cultivation, the presence of which on the wide arid 
 stretches of the recent battlefields refreshes the eye 
 and spirit, weary and heartsore with the sight of such 
 utter ruin and dumb desolation. Here you feel is re- 
 turning life and green growth, a small centre radiating 
 light and hope. 
 
 These settlements of some fifteen to twenty young 
 women working under their directrice are to be found 
 all over the stricken districts of the Somme and Oise, 
 at Arras, St Quentin, and Pierrefonds. Welcomed 
 by the Prefets and Mayors, the Dames Anglaises settle 
 down where help is most needed, and take within 
 their radius of sweetness and light some forty to fifty 
 of the devastated towns and villages. Directly the 
 Germans quitted French soil, the refugees began to 
 turn their wandering steps homewards. For though 
 home in the sense of a house existed no longer except 
 as an indistinguishable heap of ruins, though the 
 orchard was cut down and sown with shell holes, 
 though the Church whose familiar spire had been the 
 landmark of the country side to generations past 
 now lay prone over the graves of the churchyard, 
 yet it was still home and on this earth no place was 
 
IflBHBBBHBB 
 
 AT PlERREFONDS. A DAME ANGLAISE GIVING OUT STORES, 1919 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 239 
 
 like it even as the face of her son marred and 
 mutilated by the cruel hand of war remains always 
 for his mother the dearest on earth. 
 
 This inextinguishable love of the French peasants 
 for their own soil is one of the most wonderful and 
 incomprehensible of sentiments to those who have 
 no counterpart for it in their own country, where the 
 soil is not owned by the people. With the French it 
 is the source from which spring the cheerful courage 
 and indomitable industry which create a garden in 
 the midst of ruins, and sow a row of beans round a 
 crater. 
 
 The Dames Anglaises will most of them tell you 
 they have learnt more from these French peasants 
 than they could ever teach them, and gained more 
 than they can give. 
 
 " The more I see of these people the more I love 
 them, and stand hat off before their wonderful 
 courage and faith," said the directrice of a settlement 
 in these stricken regions, one who was herself a 
 splendid example of both courage and faith. Having 
 lost all she loved in the war, she gave her service to 
 the cause for which her sons had died. Gave that 
 service so gladly that at the back of all her practical 
 work shone the glowing devotion of a spiritual vision 
 and power. 
 
 With the same devotion she seemed to have ani- 
 mated the sisterhood working under her a gallant 
 band of some fifteen to twenty khaki- clad young 
 women, vigorous and bronzed as their brothers from 
 
240 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 the trenches. Some were drivers and transport 
 officers, some nurses and doctors, others undertook 
 the clothing and feeding, restocking of houses, gar- 
 dens, farms, and assisting the inhabitants to build 
 up their lives anew, not only with material help but 
 with sympathy and comforting counsels, putting new 
 courage into hearts all but crushed by sorrow and 
 suffering past description. 
 
 The Dames Anglaises do all their own work. The 
 prosaic duties of cook and housemaid are undertaken 
 in the same spirit as the rest. And as each one left 
 the hive after their early breakfast together and 
 set out for her day's duty, she seemed to me like 
 a Knight of the Round Table setting forth on 
 a kind of joyous adventure filled with ardour and 
 enthusiasm in which toil and self-sacrifice were never 
 counted. 
 
 Let no one imagine that toil and self-sacrifice are 
 not the daily portion of those who undertake such a 
 work as this. Living in huts or disused houses, 
 often highly unhygienic, putting up with lack of most 
 of the things they have thought essential to civilised 
 life learning, however, they were not so ! With 
 food of the plainest, and often shortage of that when 
 duty takes them on long journeys far afield, braving 
 all weathers, and with scant provision against the 
 cold of winter and heat of summer. 
 
 This is the modern equivalent of the convent. 
 Instead of the cumbersome robes and long veil, a 
 neat, short-cut skirt and coat of khaki, a close-fitting 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 
 
 cap to match. Instead of veiled and downcast eyes 
 which never faced a man, clear, far-seeing eyes, 
 fearlessly, laughingly facing any man, friend or foe ; 
 instead of white bloodless hands folded in prayer or 
 cramped with fine sewing, strong muscular bronzed 
 hands, steadily guiding the heavy motor lorry or 
 dressing the terrible wounds of war. Yet both are 
 aspects of the selfsame spirit, women banded together 
 under one roof for service divine service. 
 
 And even as to the Lady Abbess of old, the people 
 of all the countryside come with their troubles and 
 grievances to the directrice of the Dames Anglaises. 
 And like a wise and loving mother, but with eyes very 
 wide open and in no way blinded by love and 
 sympathy, she deals with each individual. 
 
 It is not in human nature that all should be always 
 good and perfect children. There are occasionally 
 cases to be dealt with of funny little tricks, deceptions 
 and jealousies. One somewhat troublesome child, 
 living amid the wreckage of Montdidier, wrote to the 
 directrice of those parts a long and vehement protest 
 against the injustice of a world in which more was 
 done for others even those in the same street 
 even he might add, and herein lay the sting, his own 
 son than for himself. The Dames Anglaises had 
 proved themselves, in respect of totally disregarding 
 merit and ignoring just claims, no better than the 
 Dames Franpaises yet enclosed was his carnet showing 
 beyond all doubt that his was a case, if ever there was 
 one, for a cooking stove ! A widower for the last 
 Q 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 eighteen years, and the father of twelve children ! 
 What more could he have done ? The wages he gained 
 as a postman were less by far than those of his son 
 who had no children yet to this one had been given 
 a stove, besides many other gifts withheld from 
 himself. 
 
 The letter ended with a somewhat pathetic bitter- 
 ness : "I make no doubt you will now throw this 
 letter of mine into the fire and say nothing of it to 
 anyone." 
 
 The thought that a composition on which evidently 
 much time and thought, as well as intensity of feeling, 
 had been expended, should end without even being 
 widely published and discussed, was the bitterest 
 thought of all to the writer. 
 
 On looking up his name and address it was found 
 that Mr Postman had, however, very little grounds 
 for complaint. 
 
 Quite a long list of goods, including pots and pans, 
 blankets, sheets, boots and shirts, had been bestowed 
 on him, though it was true the much- coveted cooking 
 stove was not among them. Only a very limited 
 number being obtainable, these are given first to 
 families, and Monsieur le facteur, in spite of his twelve 
 offspring, was living alone and had only himself to 
 support, his youngest fledgling having long ago spread 
 wide its wings and left the parental nest. 
 
 Armed with these facts I accompanied the direc- 
 trice on her rounds to Montdidier when she included 
 a call to interview personally this case of complaint. 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 243 
 
 Unfortunately " the case " was out on postman's duty. 
 He had, however, left the key and full particulars 
 of his grievances with his next-door neighbour, and 
 the Dames Anglaises, if any called, were to be shown 
 in and see for themselves the bareness of his habitation. 
 
 The neighbour, a woman of pleasant, humorous 
 countenance, whom not even Montdidier surround- 
 ings could depress, showed us into the two small 
 rooms still holding together on the ground floor, in 
 spite of the collapse of the roof and upper floors. 
 Yellow paper filled in the window panes all glass 
 being shattered in Montdidier, and none as yet 
 obtainable anywhere. 
 
 The place contained a good bed well fitted up. 
 Two chairs, a strong table, and kitchen utensils from 
 the Dames Anglaises. It was obvious that a stove 
 would be a valuable addition to the poor little menage 
 of the old man he was sixty-eight, and the directrice 
 left a message, at once gently reproving and yet 
 consoling, for her difficult child, the more difficult 
 that she found he had the reputation for drowning his 
 troubles in drink too strong for his head and legs to 
 support with steadiness. The neighbour, on the other 
 hand, was discovered to be one of those deserving of 
 every help, who had been so fearful of pushing herself 
 forward she had not even gone through the necessary 
 form of giving her name and address at the Mairie. 
 
 Few of the people returning to Montdidier find 
 more than a room or a wall to mark the spot where 
 their homes stood, and these are the fortunate ones 
 
244 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 whose houses had cellars and deep, solid foundations 
 on the rock. But even where there exists nothing 
 save a heap of ruins, they set to work where it is 
 possible and clear a patch in order once more to be 
 on their own " foot of earth." 
 
 When I said to one woman we visited, what courage 
 and love they all showed to come back to poor Mont- 
 didier, she answered : " Yes, one comes back though 
 the boy is gone but one thinks one hears him 
 whistling down the road." 
 
 " The road " was a pathway among ruins. But 
 still it is the road the same spot where now a family 
 of five are crowded into one poor room roofed in with 
 tarpaulin, was where stood the home " the boy " had 
 loved. And still the echoes of his happy childhood, 
 his laugh, his cheery whistle, can be heard there by 
 the mother's heart. 
 
 Wherever we went it was the same : 
 
 " Quand mSme it is good to be back in one's own 
 pays." 
 
 Another family we visited were in a neat little 
 wooden cabin standing in a well cultivated potager 
 (vegetable garden) among the surrounding ruins. 
 The hut of which the family was justly proud had been 
 constructed by the old man and his son, fortunately 
 demobilised at the right moment for lending a hand. 
 They had had a dangerous and difficult task, for a 
 German gun had taken up its position on the site of 
 their ruined house, and some fifty live shells had been 
 sown in the ground now showing such neat rows of 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 245 
 
 beans and peas, carrots and onions. While digging 
 the foundations the son had escaped by two inches 
 being blown to fragments as his spade suddenly 
 revealed a shell three feet long. These seeds of the 
 Boche had to be removed with great caution, for the 
 slightest unwary tap spells disaster, and tragic accidents 
 occur every day. Inside, the little hut contained a big 
 bed and a stove sent by a brother-in-law living out 
 of the danger zone. The Dames Anglaises had come 
 like angels of succour and brought blankets, sheets, 
 pots and pans, clothes and food for all, all was 
 lacking. The cabin was built near ruins of the old 
 home on their own land. It had been a nice solid 
 house with a good basse cour and plenty of fine fowls 
 no finer in Montdidier ! The mother was in deep 
 mourning for a little daughter of thirteen who had 
 died in exile from an epidemic of typhoid which 
 attacked the refugees owing to the terrible conditions 
 when herded all together in their flight. 
 
 " Yes," said the mother, " the Boches killed her 
 as surely as with a gun our little Marie." 
 
 There are many thousands who like poor little Marie 
 will never come back the old, the young, the sick, 
 just lay down and died on the road, unable after days 
 of weary trudging to go another step. They were 
 sent fleeing from their homes, and took to the roads, 
 dragging the children with them, carrying the pitiful 
 bundle or wheeling a barrow piled with the few things 
 seized in their flight. Like stray leaves blown before 
 a gale, they fled without a goal, without a friend 
 
246 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 in that vast outside world into which they found 
 themselves suddenly precipitated. Some had to 
 this the added anguish of getting separated, the 
 Huns falling upon the village at night and driving the 
 inhabitants hither and thither, in many cases de- 
 liberately separating the older girls from their mother. 
 
 Life in the khaki convents begins early allowing 
 for the daylight saving hour, just about the same time 
 as the ancient Orders. At Pierrefonds as the clock 
 strikes seven one of the sisterhood goes round with a 
 rousing rap on every door. You spring out of bed, 
 and perform your morning rites of washing in fresh, 
 cold water. The breakfast bell rings at a quarter 
 to eight. There is tea or porridge with condensed 
 milk for the Germans took away all the cows long 
 ago a dish of wild strawberries, (one of the very few 
 things the Germans could not take away, though they 
 devoured them like locusts while they were there, 
 employing the babies in picking) a small ration of 
 butter to each plate, and the same of sugar and 
 plenty of bread, good bread made of wheat from which 
 the germ has not been extracted, as in England. So 
 we do very well on our plain breakfast, for real bread 
 is a real staff of life, and each one goes fortified on 
 her several ways the cook back to her kitchen, 
 the housemaid to her linen cupboard or her broom. 
 Every member of the Community makes her own 
 bed and keeps her own room in order, but still there 
 is plenty for the broom to do. Two go off to fetch 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 247 
 
 fresh stores from the depot at Compiegne driving one 
 of the big camions, and two more with another lorry 
 to take round food, clothes, stores of all kinds, in- 
 cluding pots and pans, seeds and garden implements, 
 to the distant villages. 
 
 Two others are visiting nurses, and armed with 
 bandages and medicines have a busy day before them, 
 for there are many sick and bedridden poilus from 
 the hospitals not half cured, bad cases of tuberculosis 
 contracted in exile, little children, nerves broken 
 and bodies wrecked with fits, the result of fear and 
 scenes of horror from which the child mind cannot 
 get free, and women starting new babies on life's 
 journey. 
 
 Three days in the week a long procession of all 
 those within walking distance, troop up the hill, and 
 the big stores are opened out of which come all the 
 heart of woman can desire. Sheets, blankets, pillows, 
 for, after wandering on the face of the earth for two 
 or three years, the first thing you want is a good bed 
 under your own roof. Next, having slept, you want 
 to eat, and for that what so needful, after a stove of 
 course, as a fine saucepan and a big pot for your in- 
 dispensable potage. Without the pot au feu no 
 French menage can walk. Then clothes oh, the 
 splendid stores of clothes for those of all ages and 
 sizes ! One woman came up with a boy of twelve 
 and a baby of a year to be measured for outfits. In 
 between these two ends of the family were five others 
 of both sexes, but as they were even as steps she 
 
248 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 judged the measure of the absent ones could be rightly 
 guessed. No refugees have any clothes but the 
 scanty ones in which they stand. One family just 
 arrived from Brittany found their house a mere shell, 
 walls and roof intact, but the inside bare as an empty 
 nut shell even the doors had been taken for fire- 
 wood. The Dames Anglaises supplied all their needs. 
 The Government allowed something, but quite in- 
 adequate. The gifts were taken in a most matter 
 of fact way. I heard no thanks, just a nod and a 
 smile now and then. 
 
 " Will that fit you ? " or, " Is this what you 
 need ? " asks the Dame Anglaise in her most sym- 
 pathetic tone. 
 
 " Yes that will do well, I think. Bonjour." 
 
 " Come again bring the little one, I have a frock 
 we will try on," responds the Dame Anglaise. 
 
 A cloak was produced for one young woman with 
 a whole history of suffering writ plain on her pale, 
 still pretty, face. 
 
 " Try it on let us see how it goes for you," said 
 the dispenser of the stores. 
 
 " Oh, I can see it goes well enough, thank you," 
 said the woman, not ungraciously, only with a sort of 
 hopeless indifference. But the young khaki knight 
 was nothing daunted. 
 
 " See," she said putting it over the poor thin 
 shoulders, " cloaks are the latest fashion, you know. 
 Why, now you look quite chic," and she turned her 
 round admiringly. " N'est-ce pas, Jacques ? " she 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 249 
 
 appealed to a small boy who had come to help carry 
 the things. 
 
 " Mais oui ! " said Jacques looking at his mother 
 with round eyes. Then came a smile, a wintry smile 
 but there it was, showing the sun was not extinct. 
 The cloak remained on the thin shoulders. The 
 thought of looking chic, of being in the fashion, 
 had gone straight home and proved strangely heart- 
 warming. 
 
 The look on her face was thanks enough as she 
 went off well laden with a nod and friendly " bonjour 
 Mademoiselle." 
 
 The point of view is this, it appears : without any 
 action on their part, a horrible, aggressive war, 
 devastated their lives they lose everything. In the 
 course of time, equally without action on their part, 
 a benign influence swoops down and envelops them, 
 they are glad, oh yes, since one has to continue this 
 curious existence, and le Ion Dieu seems at last 
 to be attending to His world. They will even go 
 to Church if one still remains, and thank the Blessed 
 Virgin, for it is probably Her doing that these 
 strangers have brought such useful tilings along. 
 They are a proud people, however, and do not really 
 like taking presents they would prefer buying, 
 specially if there could be introduced the element of 
 bargaining the feeling of getting a good bargain 
 produces the keenest joy. Many other Societies 
 working in these districts have acted on this discovery, 
 and now sell all their gifts at a moderate sum, leaving 
 
250 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 the money so received in the hands of the village 
 Mayor for the most destitute cases, but the rule of 
 the Dames Anglais es is to take no payment, and they 
 would rather have that nod and smile than any thanks. 
 One enterprise of theirs has, however, called forth 
 most hearty and spontaneous thanks, and that is 
 the Baby Clinique. 
 
 Every Saturday morning as to some sacred shrine 
 a long procession winds up to the Chateau Ste Anne, 
 wheeled in perambulators or carried in their mothers' 
 arms comes a goodly company of fat and rosy- cheeked 
 three year olders and under. 
 
 " Six months ago," said one mother of two 
 sturdy youngsters, " these were mere skeletons 
 white and thin like sticks of celery ! You see 
 them now they could take a prize these two of 
 
 mine." 
 
 The two high priestesses who receive the pilgrims 
 are as popular as any saints, and believed in quite 
 as fervently and with good cause. It was hard to 
 credit the " celery sticks " as one looked at this jolly 
 crowd, crowing, waddling up, one by one to be weighed 
 and tested and commended. Condensed milk and 
 medical care I was assured had worked the miracle. 
 These are the children young enough to save, even 
 born under most harrowing conditions they recover 
 taken young enough. The war stopped just in time 
 for help to be effective in building up their fast dwind- 
 ling little bodies. It is the children a few years 
 older whom the Huns have permanently injured, 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 
 
 251 
 
 little creatures fully conscious from the first of 
 the terror, the horror of that first cry " They come ! 
 The Boches are upon us ! " And the awful scenes 
 that followed : the bloodshed, the fire, the roar of the 
 guns, the breathless escapes, hiding in cellars, the 
 homeless wanderings, starvation and cold, suffering 
 and death on every side. Many of those children 
 who failed to escape were forced to labour like grown 
 people for their brutal captors. If the task proved 
 beyond the child's strength it was cruelly beaten 
 and imprisoned. " They died in piteous numbers," 
 said an old cure who survived the four years with 
 difficulty himself. " Yet," he added, " those are the 
 more fortunate ones, for never can these children 
 who lived through it be otherwise than feeble in mind 
 and body." This is confirmed by the school reports 
 of this year, which say that these children who en- 
 dured the Boche rule in the occupied territories are 
 unable to retain what they learn or to concentrate 
 their attention the whole system is anaemic and 
 the mental growth arrested. 
 
 They are like those poor blighted trees in the war 
 zone, whom poisoned gas has choked so that the living 
 sap is vitiated. The leaves try in vain to push forth 
 and the branches grow all twisted and distorted. 
 There appears to be no doubt from the testimony of 
 the Germans themselves that this was one of the 
 methods of Schrecklichkeit deliberately aimed at, 
 a part of the plan of world domination which, by 
 destroying the French race at its source, should 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 elevate the Teuton and make " Deutschland iiber 
 Alles ! " 
 
 The ladies of Ste Anne included in their household 
 a tiny three months' old baby and a young but 
 enormous refugee dog. The baby's mother had just 
 died of consumption there was no one to take it, and 
 no one to take the dog, so both found a haven of refuge 
 with the Dames Anglais es. 
 
 Ste Anne's is a big chateau on the side of the hill, 
 used as a military hospital till taken over by the 
 Englishwomen in the month of December after the 
 Armistice. Those who have followed in the wake 
 of messieurs les militaires, whatever their nationality, 
 can imagine the condition of that chateau. The 
 wintry blasts swept through freely hardly a pane 
 of glass was unbroken yellow paper here and there 
 attempted to stop the gap. Coal was scarce as gold. 
 Electric light did not work. Water had to be carried 
 up the hill, as also the scanty fuel, whether wood or 
 coal. According to a frequent custom in France 
 a large and most aggressive cesspool adjoined the 
 kitchen. The dirt of the whole place defied descrip- 
 tion. The two heads of the Community, having served 
 as matron and sister in a big Paris hospital, faced the 
 task which would have daunted less valiant spirits. 
 By the time their hospitable doors opened to me Ste 
 Anne's was a very pleasant summer residence, thanks 
 to the wonderful resource and energy of the gallant 
 band of Dames Anglaises, who in their task had had 
 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 253 
 
 no one to assist them but two German prisoners. 
 These latter had proved excellent workers men of 
 peace rather than war by profession, skilled craftsmen 
 of a well-educated class. To be with these ladies doing 
 their gentle behests, rather than with their comrades 
 of the camp under the rule of their own sergeants, 
 was to them a cause of much thankfulness, and by 
 every means in their power they tried to make their 
 presence acceptable, doing all sorts of little works 
 of supererogation, offering little gifts of neatly- 
 carpentered boxes and carved frames. To such men, 
 and there must be a numerous class in Germany, 
 one realised that the Great War will bring the dawn 
 of a real Freedom, the victory of the Allies is their 
 great chance to be rid of a tyranny, an Iron Heel 
 under which their lives were ground down. Had their 
 masters been victorious, their yoke would have but 
 grown heavier, the Mailed Fist and Iron Heel held 
 them down more securely. 
 
 About fourteen kilometres from Pierref onds a greatly 
 needed hospital had lately been opened, and once a 
 week the Dames Anglaises collected their patients and 
 drove them over to consult the American women- doctors 
 and nurses a very efficient and up-to-date company. 
 
 In a big lorry with our girl driver we set out early 
 one lovely morning taking the cases for consultation. 
 We started with an old man with a bad arm, a woman 
 and a child, the latter suffering from what the mother 
 described as " vegetation of the throat," and a boy 
 
MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 going to see his father who had been operated on. On 
 the road at intervals we picked up other patients 
 looking out for our Red Cross lorry, till it was well 
 loaded. A French doctor was of the party, bringing 
 a poor old gran'mere in whom he was interested a 
 grave case about which he felt rather doubtful whether 
 these women doctors would be able to cope. 
 
 The idea of a woman surgeon was as new to him 
 as was our little girl driver, who managed the steep 
 hills, sharp turnings and bad roads with such easy 
 skill. In France women have become doctors only 
 in small numbers though with signal success but they 
 have not yet been allowed to attend the classes and 
 become surgeons. Our French doctor doubted the 
 wisdom of such a step, as men always doubt the step, 
 however inevitable, not yet taken. He himself had 
 just been demobilised. 
 
 " This drive is for me a rather curious experience," 
 said he, as we got about five miles out of Pierrefonds. 
 " These are the battlefields. Not many months 
 ago my regiment was here. There we fought those 
 great battles when we drove the Boches at last from 
 their strongholds." He pointed out his own little 
 paste de secours just off the roadside, which he 
 recognised, for the small weathercock he had fixed 
 up outside was still turning busily in the wind. Just 
 here had been the French trenches and here the 
 German. From the heights of this ridge was to be 
 seen in the distance the famous " Chemin des Dames." 
 We passed the ruins, not even a wall remaining of a 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 255 
 
 big farm round which the fight had raged, la ferme 
 de Queunevers. 
 
 " The owner," said the doctor, " was of our regiment, 
 and he went over one day to see if anything remained 
 but there was nothing nothing he had lost all, 
 the unhappy one." 
 
 Arrived at Blerancourt we unloaded our poor sick 
 " civils " at the American women's fine new tent 
 hospital, and handed them over to the spotless white 
 uniformed nurses of the Stars and Stripes. The 
 French doctor, walking casually into the operating 
 theatre in his workaday coat, was summarily taken 
 by the shoulders and turned right about face by the 
 tall high priestess in white mask and white garments 
 from head to foot. He gasped with surprise, but 
 was clearly impressed profoundly before we left by 
 these women surgeons who so well knew their job and 
 had all equipped with such precision and per- 
 fection. Windows and doors were wide open, but 
 carefully netted over to keep out the flies. Every- 
 thing floors, walls, beds, utensils were of a spotless- 
 ness which, to the man accustomed to the horrors of 
 countless wounded and dying, to be treated in tents, 
 in cellars, on platforms, anywhere, must have ap- 
 peared almost incredible ; even when compared with 
 the military hospital at its best. 
 
 Most of the patients we brought were left at the 
 hospital for treatment. The doctor's old lady was 
 told to come back next Friday for her operation. 
 She looked troubled. 
 
256 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " Ah, my ladies, not Friday, I beg you," she said. 
 " It was Friday that les sales Boches they drove me 
 into exile. Friday for me is a black day ! " 
 
 So they promptly fixed another, these American 
 women, who being psychologists recognised the import- 
 ance of getting the patient's mind to co-operate with 
 the surgeon's hands. 
 
 In less than three weeks they have performed sixty 
 operations. 
 
 " Many very interesting cases," said the medecin 
 en chef. " This hospital is a regular Pandora's box 
 you never know what is coming out of it." 
 
 Many are cases which have been waiting years for 
 such an opportunity as this hospital offers. 
 
 One old fellow we brought over declared that 
 his damaged arm dated from the Franco-Prussian 
 
 war. 
 
 44 
 
 Ah but yes, Madame, me also," he said with 
 evident satisfaction, " I am a wounded soldier ! It 
 was in 1870 I caught this night and day it pre- 
 vents me to sleep." 
 
 He had been a sniper, and had killed many sales 
 Bodies. They had taken him prisoner, but he " had 
 known how to escape." Poor old fellow,, he had 
 suffered many miseries, together with all those of these 
 invaded regions. 
 
 "Without les Dames Anglaises we should all be 
 dead ones," he said. After examining his arm the 
 American women decided to take him in for a week, 
 and his eyes lit up with pleasure at the idea of enter-. 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 257 
 
 ing one of the white cool tents with their rows of 
 spotless beds. 
 
 Under one big tent a number of refugees were 
 taking temporary shelter, having been turned out of 
 their houses by the recent explosion of a huge am- 
 munition dump. It was believed to be the work of 
 the Boche prisoners, for the time chosen was just 
 when the sentinel unfortunately happened to have 
 stepped across the way to the beguiling cabaret " It 
 was but for a few moments, you understand, but those 
 devils they were on the watch, and to put a fuse it is 
 not a long affair ! " 
 
 The Boche prisoners were not popular in that part, 
 having shown themselves lately very restive and 
 arrogant, maltreating little children if they got the 
 chance, and insulting the women they passed on the 
 road. 
 
 " One feeds them too well," said a victim of the 
 explosion, " see how fat and strong they are, and 
 then look at we others who have starved for four 
 years ! " 
 
 Many brought to the hospital were accidents from 
 the live shells which are not only collected in dumps 
 all over the country, but buried deep in the 
 ground wherever the departing enemy got the chance 
 of sowing such souvenirs. Characteristic mementoes 
 " lest they forget," said the Boches already planning 
 some future return. Ah, there is no fear that the 
 people of France will forget this time. They know 
 the foe of their race at last, and recognise him for 
 
258 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 just what he is. Never again will they " forget " 
 and cry an easy-going " Peace, Peace," while the 
 other side of the Rhine the Boche is breathing " War, 
 War." 
 
 Accidents often occur while working the land. 
 We heard of a man ploughing his field with a horse 
 in which he had invested all he possessed, suddenly 
 the plough struck a buried shell and the horse and 
 plough were blown to the four winds, the man only 
 escaped as by a miracle. Little children in these 
 districts are brought in with hands blown off and faces 
 damaged for life by the innocent-looking cedar pencils 
 the Boches specially prepared in Germany, forgetting 
 none. These were dropped by airmen in village 
 streets, gardens, fields, and eagerly picked up by little 
 hands, thinking a treasure had been found. The 
 moment the point was pressed to paper the deadly 
 thing spoke. It was not only children who were 
 repeatedly caught by this mean trick but their 
 parents too, even as the poor fellows in the trenches 
 were trapped to the last by the cunningly fabricated 
 cigarette, which could be smoked halfway down before 
 it exploded and took away half the face of the smoker. 
 
 Blerancourt has been badly knocked about since 
 I was here in 1917. The inhabitants have got accus- 
 tomed to bombardments and demenagements, to 
 say nothing worse, but the capable American women 
 have them under their wing and no one within their 
 radius goes uncared for now. The hut where the 
 people had come for temporary shelter was rather 
 
THE DAMES ANGLAISES 259 
 
 like a gipsy encampment a strange assortment of 
 old people and children. One of the women, seeing 
 my little Red Cross, asked me if I was English " Ah 
 if Madame is English come then and say a ' Bonjour ' 
 to my old mother, I beg you, for she also is English," 
 she assured me. 
 
 I found in a big camp bedstead, propped up with 
 pillows, a very ancient dame most typically French 
 however quite guiltless of a word of English. Her 
 father it appeared had borne an English name, it began 
 with " Gray," but how it ended, the father, long since 
 gathered to his fathers, alone knows a complicated 
 and quite incomprehensible series of sounds followed 
 the Gray, impossible to reproduce with tongue or 
 pen. The old lady, past her 94th year, held my hand 
 with extraordinary vigour, and when on getting it 
 free, I pressed into her palm a small coin as a souvenir 
 of our meeting, she assured her daughter repeatedly 
 that I was her father who had come back to comfort 
 and sustain her ! Evidently my gift recalled the tips 
 of her father, who, being a fisherman, no doubt after 
 a successful voyage, treated his family all round. We 
 parted with difficulty, my hand had again been seized 
 as that of the long departed English parent, but time 
 was up, the camion was ready with another load of 
 patients returning, after treatment, to their homes. 
 Among these a big peasant woman showed a bandaged 
 head from a bombarded roof, and several little children 
 reported a most enjoyable time at the beautiful 
 hospital, pleasure having so predominated over pain 
 
260 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 that their stay is stored in future alongside of memories 
 of Christmas Fetes and Midsummer Fairs. 
 
 This addition to the store of Happy Memories is 
 what I felt the Dames Anglaises had given "me when 
 I bade a reluctant farewell the following morning to 
 the Chateau Ste Anne. 
 
PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 
 
 ONCE more she was the Vitte Lumiere, though not 
 yet emerged into the full light which is hers by right. 
 Gone were the darkened streets, the closely shuttered 
 windows, the anxious watch-out on moonlight nights 
 and the sudden descent from a warm bed to a cold 
 cellar; but in spite of a wonderful sense of relief 
 from strain, of deep quiet thankfulness, conditions 
 retained still much of the aftermath of war. Every- 
 one was weary to death of the long-drawn Conference 
 the Armistice not yet resolved into a signed Peace 
 in spite of nearly eight months' talking. Many were 
 bitterly disappointed at the results of the talking 
 as far as France was concerned, nerves getting ragged 
 at the edge, the cordiality between all entente 
 nations not quite as spontaneously warm as during 
 the war. Questions which would then never have 
 been considered for a moment one heard discussed 
 and disputed with no little heat the papers reflected 
 this spirit in their comments on the scuttling of the 
 German Fleet in Scapa Flow" Ugerete " was the 
 accusation from certain quarters. We were all ex- 
 tremely sensitive, and walking on a path narrow as a 
 razor, and nearly as sharp. It was only war weariness, 
 the fractiousness of tired children, but one could not 
 
 261 
 
262 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 help realising that the time had come to take to heart 
 the advice of Solomon : " Withdraw thy foot (be- 
 times) from thy neighbour's house, lest he weary of 
 thee." 
 
 No one could doubt there would be a real rejoicing, 
 a most cordial and hearty " Adieu " the day that 
 British and American cleared out of France and gave 
 the French a chance to settle down again to normal 
 conditions impossible while profiteering was made 
 so easy by the strangers within their gates. 
 
 The first example of abnormal conditions confronted 
 me on arriving at the Gare du Nord and trying to get 
 a taxi. There was a marked absence of the former 
 ready civility for " nos bons Allies." 
 
 " Where are you going ? " was demanded by each 
 driver I approached, and my " course " refused 
 promptly on hearing the distance. As I could not 
 put up in the Boulevard Magenta outside, to oblige 
 these gentlemen, my prospects looked somewhat 
 depressing till the porter found an enterprising fellow 
 ready to undertake the twenty minutes drive for the 
 sum of fifteen francs : 
 
 " There exists no tarif after seven o'clock," he 
 kindly explained to me. 
 
 This was a piece of pure romance inspired by original 
 sin. But I accepted it, having no choice. I had 
 already looked round vaguely in the direction of a 
 horse fiacre. The taximan intercepted my wandering 
 gaze : 
 
 " That carriage there," said he, " demands the 
 
PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 263 
 
 same payment precisely as we others, but he will 
 require perhaps two hours to make the journey his 
 horse limps the poor beast ! " 
 
 He had me there ! In fact he had me so com- 
 pletely in the hollow of his rapacious hand, I could 
 only be thankful at his moderation in drawing the 
 line at fifteen instead of fifty francs. 
 
 This same spirit was manifested everywhere. (I 
 have heard it is not unknown in London !) The fact 
 of being English had been a passport to a welcoming 
 smile and readiness to serve you in 1917. Alas ! in 
 1919 it no longer strewed your path with these fragrant 
 flowers. " Nos bons Allies " have become foreigners 
 strangers. This does not perhaps apply to the 
 Dames Anglaises or the American women quietly 
 aiding to build up the lives of those in the devastated 
 regions. There, working with utmost tact, always 
 in co-operation with French local authorities, they 
 are at present gladly suffered to remain, but many 
 in a position to judge, believe that the sooner even 
 these " withdraw their feet " and hand over their 
 organisations to French workers with a polite " Bon- 
 soir la compagnie," the better it will be for the growth 
 of that delicate plant, the Entente Cordiale. 
 
 For though the roots of that plant have struck 
 down fairly deep during these years of the Great War, 
 its leaves and blossoms need care, and all plants die 
 without sun and water. 
 
 I saw a nasty "green fly" which I had often 
 come across before, but never in this particular place, 
 
264 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 though I must have passed close to it frequently. 
 On the Place St Augustin, inscribed beneath the 
 statue of Jeanne d'Arc, are these words : " Brulee 
 vive par les Anglais." 
 
 If this were a simple historical fact, we might regret 
 the spirit which put on record for daily remembrance 
 an act so hideous committed by a people in those 
 days of gross superstition five hundred years ago, 
 but we should have no right to protest. If, however, 
 Jeanne d'Arc was, according to history, tried, con- 
 demned and burnt, by order of the Catholic Church 
 under Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, her remorseless 
 foe though the English who handed their prisoner 
 over to this evil priest and heartily concurred in the 
 deed cannot be held guiltless it is a gross misrepresen- 
 tation of facts to say, " She was burnt alive by the 
 English." Why not put, " Burnt alive by order of 
 the Catholic Church ? " and add, to show the evolution 
 from which fortunately even the Churches are not 
 immune, " Canonised by the same Church five 
 hundred years later." But in the interests of truth 
 as well as Cordial Understanding let us kill this 
 mischievous " green fly " eating the leaves of the rose- 
 bush whose health we desire. 
 
 *... 
 
 A true and permanent Entente Cordiale can only be 
 achieved by " desiring more love and knowledge " 
 of each other, not, " hereafter in a better world than 
 this," but right now. For, if we let slip this pro- 
 pitious hour, who knows when another such will 
 
PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 265 
 
 come again. " Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner " 
 " c'est tout comprendre." To this end, however, a 
 common speech is indispensable. How can we begin 
 to know anything at all of each other when the 
 majority of even so-called educated people, either in 
 England or France, speak no language but their own 
 with any ease. Perhaps the Channel Tunnel will 
 help towards this desirable end ; there is nothing 
 like commercial relations for quickening speech it 
 is almost as powerful an inducement as love ! But 
 five years is a long time to wait. The plant needs 
 water daily, lest it wither before the Tunnel is set 
 going. And now is the moment when our men, home 
 from the Front, are contributing their powerful co- 
 operation. The French are no longer strangers to 
 them, they have fought side by side with the poilu 
 and he has won their unstinted admiration and praise. 
 They " didn't know he was like that such grit 
 such a sticker And French women Mr Atkins 
 
 has lived in the villages and often been touched by 
 their kindness " real kind those women were and 
 wouldn't hear of being paid for it," I have heard 
 again and again. Most of them have learnt a few 
 sentences of French and taught an equal number of 
 English words ; but those who have seen the suffer- 
 ings and the courage of the French people have learnt 
 more than the language. The mother of an English 
 Tommy who entered Lille with the victorious armies 
 showed me a letter from her boy. Here is a short 
 extract : 
 
266 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 " . . . I thank God He has spared me to be one 
 of those to make these dear people free, for they will 
 never forget us and we have a good name over it. 
 I now realise that all our pain of leaving our loved 
 ones and the hardships we have been through are all 
 for a great cause, and if ever anything happens to 
 me you should all be proud to think you have given 
 me for such a cause. All you have read is not enough 
 to tell you people at home of how the Huns have 
 treated the people out here. I was talking to a 
 woman and her daughter, they were in tears, and by 
 jove I was mad when they told me how they treated 
 them because they would not let the Square Heads 
 do as they wished to them a dear girl she is too, 
 and I just thought of your being in her place, but 
 thank God England has not been overrun by those 
 pigs and never will be thank God she is free. 
 Keep well, dear, and soon the war will be over and 
 then we shall all burst with excitement French and 
 English too keep up heart ! . . ." 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and of men 
 from the great Dominions have come into close touch, 
 have seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, 
 what the French have gone through. Not all may 
 have the fine sympathy and understanding of the 
 boy who wrote this letter, but the greater number 
 have had their hearts touched and their horizons 
 immensely widened. " I just thought of you being 
 in her place " there is the crux of the whole matter. 
 
 Another incident in connection with Lille made an 
 
PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 267 
 
 unforgettable impression on our French friends. It 
 was the happily-inspired act of the English General 
 who, though arriving first, gave place to the Com- 
 mander of the French army that he and his troops 
 might be the first to enter the rescued city. Again 
 and again I heard the appreciative comment : 
 " Ah ! mais a c'etait un beau geste." The warm 
 glow of that approval was not restricted to the 
 English General himself, it radiated to the whole 
 nation, and I have felt its pleasant rays even on as 
 remote a figure as myself. So quickly do they 
 respond to a gallant action, a sympathetic movement, 
 our warm-hearted French friends. 
 
 Lille ! The name recalled that artillery officer I 
 met in the train in those dire days of stress in 1917. 
 Happily he is now re-united to his wife and child, 
 and that nightmare of French guns his own gun 
 bringing death to his own beloved ones, is over for 
 ever. But . . . who knows ? The fate of the people 
 in Lille does not bear thinking about during the 
 Hun occupation. We read how one hundred women 
 of all classes from Lille and Laon were taken off to 
 Germany on the night of January 12th, 1918 a journey 
 that lasted seventy hours under unspeakable con- 
 ditions, a trumped up pretext of " reprisals," the 
 reason alleged and there endured such treatment 
 as made a French Missionary from Africa write : 
 
 " I know many savage tribes. I know none that 
 would do some of the things that have been done by 
 the Germans in France." 
 
268 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 Let us hope, however, that the poor artillery officer 
 was spared more suffering, he had gone through so 
 much of that worst kind of all suspense and anxiety, 
 and that his wife was among those women who flocked 
 round the rescuing troops as they entered Lille, 
 embracing and blessing them with tears and smiles 
 of joy. 
 
 The statue of Lille on the Place de la Concorde 
 has put off her crape and is garlanded with flowers. 
 In her hand this restored daughter holds aloft the 
 victorious flag of France, her Mother. 
 
 The Champs Elysees is a grand sight a sight for 
 the healing of heart wounds. " Cheeks that are white 
 with weeping Allah paints red again." There is a new 
 light in French eyes now. From the Arc de Triomphe 
 to the Place de la Concorde on either side of the wide 
 avenue stand German guns. Oh yes, the big guns 
 of the Boche are in Paris miles and miles of them, 
 but what a different entry they made from that planned 
 by the All-Highest- War-Lord ! Captives they stand, 
 covered with their grotesque camouflage daubings, 
 while the little street urchins of Paris make sport of 
 them and ride on their dumb muzzles. 
 
 I saw no signs of big Bertha's outrages, except 
 in that loved haunt of other days, the church of St 
 Gervais, scene of the grim tragedy on Good Friday 
 1918. Half the church is boarded up. The destruc- 
 tion wrought by the huge obus from big Bertha is not 
 yet repaired, and still the long black veils are being 
 worn for the hundreds of inoffensive worshippers 
 
PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 269 
 
 who perished that day. A day, be it remembered, 
 when the Boches had appealed to the Pope to inter- 
 vene that they might be exempted from all attacks 
 from the Allies by land or air on account of their 
 own religious observances a petition scrupulously 
 respected by the guileless Allies. How the Boche 
 chuckled! Nothing divides people so much as a 
 different sense of humour. Poor Saint Gervais ! 
 disfigured mutilated like the disfigured, mutilated 
 heroes still under repairs at the " Val de Grace." 
 Though services are again held there she is unable 
 to take her place as of old with her incomparable 
 choir of the famous chanteurs. 
 
 Most churches in Paris it seemed to me were ringing 
 marriage bells and vibrating to the sound of wedding 
 marches every day in the week so many had waited 
 for June ; May, and the season of Lent preceding it, 
 not being considered propitious. At Ste Clotilde I 
 sat and listened again to Cavaill6-ColPs wonderful 
 organ, that " quasi -super natural being," as M. d'Indy 
 truly named it when it drew life from the inspired 
 Cesar Franck, as it pealed out joyous music for a 
 young naval officer and his bride. Just the right sort 
 of bride, pretty as a flower, tall and slender, with a 
 little dark head crowned with orange blossoms, and 
 a fine old lace veil which in no way hid " the sweetest 
 eyes were ever seen " and the smiling happiness be- 
 hind them. These two had waited for this wonderful 
 day apres la guerre, and it had come actually 
 come at last. He had won safely through all those in- 
 
270 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 credible dangers ! No wonder these weddings have a 
 radiance peculiarly their own the brides rejoicing as 
 though receiving their beloved back from the grave. 
 
 The spirit of C6sar Franck must have been hovering 
 very near that day, for after the ceremony, slowly 
 the organ began to breathe out his divine music 
 inspired by the Beatitude : 
 
 " Blessed are they that mourn, blessed ! For they 
 shall be comforted." These had mourned they were 
 comforted. 
 
 It was Franck's message to the bridal pair given out 
 by the very organ on which it had been composed 
 forty years before. 
 
 My friends in Paris I found again as of old. Quite 
 untouched by any atmospheric disturbances, or 
 differences of opinion going on at Versailles. Poli- 
 ticians and Peacemakers may come and may go, 
 but our old friendship flows on like the river, in- 
 creasing in depth and volume as it makes for the 
 sea. To have lived through the Great War side by 
 side has woven still stronger ties between us, and 
 now we share the blessing of Peace and rejoice in a 
 common Victory. 
 
 In a little sky-high flat where, often in years gone 
 by, I have sat and listened to a select group of dis- 
 tinguished musicians who were wont to meet once a 
 week and " make music," literally " faire de la 
 musique," there I sat again in my privileged little 
 corner of the adjoining salon, on the evening of that 
 
PARIS AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE 271 
 
 memorable day when Peace was signed in the Hall 
 of Mirrors. And again those exquisite artists made 
 music. " To-day," they said, " we will play the music 
 of Peace." 
 
 In this category was included a joyous quartette 
 of Mozart, and I thought of my poor little old lady 
 of the green- shuttered house in Noyon, how she had 
 insisted on claiming Mozart as a " good Frenchman." 
 And here he was representing the music of Peace on 
 the great Peace day. 
 
 A very undeniable Frenchman, however, was Ernest 
 Chausson, whose Quarto, among the rare works that 
 can never die, they played at my special request. 
 And so, quite irrespective of nationality, the Peace 
 music flowed on, bringing healing and strength to 
 weary, war-worn spirits and heralding the dawn of a 
 New Day. 
 
 " How much more suitable is music than cannon 
 for announcing Peace to the world," said an old 
 gentleman, a privileged guest like myself. " The 
 sound of those salvos of guns, which rattled round Paris 
 at five o'clock in the afternoon, is so inextricably 
 interwoven with the air-raid that never is it possible 
 to dissociate them from those little black specks of 
 the Boche in the sky. The announcing of Peace by 
 explosions of gun-powder ! The good God did not 
 send a thunderstorm on that first Christmas morn- 
 ing. He sent the Angels to make music announcing 
 Peace on Earth." 
 
 But in spite of the guns Paris was good to see that 
 
272 MY FRENCH YEAR 
 
 night, for without going mad she rejoiced, singing and 
 dancing wherever the crowd was not too great to 
 start a lively ball on the asphalte. Everyone carried 
 a flag and musical instrument of some sort, and all 
 walked together, old and young, with beaming faces. 
 Torchlight processions promenaded the streets in 
 every direction, and gorgeous illuminations made it 
 look like a city in a fairy tale. 
 
 Monsieur Poilu was greatly to the fore. It was 
 his night of honour, for without him where would 
 the politicians and their famous Peace have been ! 
 Honneur aux Poilus written in great stars of light 
 from the Galeries Lafayettes found an echo in every 
 heart. 
 
 And arm in arm with smiling wives, mothers and 
 sweethearts, sometimes a petit gosse perched on their 
 shoulders, were the blind poilus. No faces more 
 shining than theirs in all that throng, seeing the Vision 
 of Peace with that sixth sense so often quickened into 
 being by the loss of bodily sight, and rejoicing that 
 they had survived for this Day of Days. In the street 
 cafes British and American khaki sat side by side 
 with horizon bleu, they at least will never forget 
 the Entente Cordiale they felt that night, sharing at 
 last even as they had shared in past years sorrow 
 and death and all the horrors of war Victory and 
 Peace. 
 
 THE END 
 
AVENUE DE LA GRANDE ARMFE TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION. 1919 
 
MILLS & BOON'S 
 
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 MY SPANISH YEAR. 
 
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 MY JAPANESE YEAR. 
 
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