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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
J
THE FRENCH CENSOR ALLOWED
THE MANUSCRIPT OF THIS BOOK
TO PASS, HAVING ALREADY PER-
MITTED THE PASSAGE OF THE
LETTERS WHICH COMPOSE IT. BUT,
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PRES-
ENT REGULATIONS REGARDING
PHOTOGRAPHS, THE PHOTOGRAPHIC
ILLUSTRATIONS WHICH WERE TO
ACCOMPANY THE MANUSCRIPT
WERE NOT ALLOWED TO
LEAVE FRANCE
-. '*
THE PEAK*/
OF THE LOAD
THE WAITING MONTHS ON THE HILLTOP
FROM THE ENTRANCE OF THE STARS
AND STRIPES TO THE SECOND
VICTORY ON THE MARNE
BY
MILDRED ALDRICH
AUTHOR OF "A HILLTOP ON THE MARNE," "TOLD IN A
FRENCH GARDEN, AUGUST, 1914," " ON THE
EDGE OF THE WAR ZONE "
TORONTO
THE MUSSON ^
LIMITED ' &
Copyright, 1918
BY MILDRED ALDRICH
First printing, October, 1918
Fifteen thousand copies
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO THE BOYS OF THE
* AMEX *
WHO HAVE GONE OVER THE HILLTOP
INTO THE FIGHTING LINE
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Dear Old Girl: At>ril 20>
I HAVE had a rather busy two weeks, dur-
ing which, for many reasons, I have not felt
in the spirit to sit down and write you the
long letter I know you expect in response to
your great epistolary cry of triumph after
the Declaration of War.
Personally, after the uplift the decision
gave me, came a total collapse and I had
some pretty black days. I had to fight
against the fear that we were too late, and
the conviction that, if we were really to do
our part at the front, the war was still to
last not one year, but years. An army can-
not be created in a day, and the best will
in the world, and all the pluck I know our
lads to have, will not make them, inside of
at least a year, into a fighting army fit to
stand against the military science of Ger-
many, and do anything more serviceable than
die like heroes.
Besides, no matter from what point of
view one looks at the case, it does make a
difference to think that our boys are coming
over here to go into this holocaust.
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
You must know that, even among officers
in the army, who welcome with enthusiasm
the entrance of the States into the ranks of
the Allies, there are plenty who are still
optimistic about the war's duration, and who
smile, and say: " Don't fret. Your boys will
march in the triumphal procession. The gen-
erous aid the States have given us earns them
that right, but they cannot get ready to fire
their guns in time to do much at the front."
I hope you'll take it in the right spirit
when I say that I don't want it to end like
that, and I am sure it won't. Personally I
think the end is a long way off, and I can't
tell you how our boys are needed. Besides,
put it at the fact that Fate is to take a pro-
portionate toll from our army — the other
nations will have had nearly four years, if
not quite four, before our losses begin.
Our men are going to leave their women
and children in safety, in a land that can
never know the horrors of invasion. I don't
want to dwell on that idea, but it is a comfort
all the same.
You say in your last that our boys are
coming across the ocean " to die in a foreign
land." Yes, I know. But they are coming
to a country where they are already loved.
Wonderful preparations are going to be
made to care for them, and I do believe the
United States, as a government and as a
people, is going to make the great sacrifice
[ 2 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
— economic, material and spiritual — which
the situation demands of her in a manner
which will make us all proud of her as a
nation and will set a seal of nobility on the
future of the race, and place our sort of
democracy in the front ranks forever.
More than that, I believe that the States
will come out of it more united than they
have ever been, and, I hope, with the many
elements, resulting from our long wide-
opened door of immigration, welded into a
people.
You and I, who love our country, in spite
of, not because of, her faults, can surely at
this stage of the game agree that the lessons
we are going to learn are needed, and that
out of the sorrow we know is before us may
come results that could never have been
achieved otherwise.
I — who have been living so long in the
midst of it, and have seen with what undying
gaiety youth meets even these conditions —
smile even through the certainty of later
tears when I think of some aspects of the
situation. Just reflect, for example, on the
thousands of our boys who never dreamed
of " coming to Europe," who don't even
know its geography or its history, who never
bothered about architecture or archaeology,
who are going to make the voyage across
the big pond. They are going to see foreign
parts, hear foreign tongues, rub elbows with
[ 3 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
races they never saw or thought of seeing
before. They are going to have hard times,
but crowds facing hard times together seem
to get some fun out of it. They are going
to be hardened into fine physical form by
exercise. They are going to learn discipline,
which, if the youth of any country ever
needed, ours does, and they are going to
learn the meaning of obedience, which the
youth of America, accustomed to domineer
over its elders, will be the better for
learning.
You see I always look for the compensa-
tions, and, as I have told you before, if one
looks hard enough, they are to be found.
In my mental vision always hangs the idea,
which so many are fearful to face — death
is the common fate of us all.
However, I never sit up straight at a
thought so ordinary, with such calm philos-
ophy, that a little imp does not, with a mali-
cious gesture, sweep the mists out of my eyes,
and make me realize that, from Macaulay —
with his :
" To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late,
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods? "
To the priest in his pulpit, the orator in his
tribune — and me sitting before my type-
[ 4 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
writer — words are easy. Yet even when I
smile, I know that you and I, and oh ! how
many million others, would rather be out
there " somewhere in France " than sitting
quietly, inactively, at home, looking at the
thick curtain which the necessary censor
hangs before us, and waiting in patient sus-
pense. The helpless looker-on in any
struggle suffers more than those who are
absorbed in its action. Is n't it a mercy that
we believe this, whether it be wholly true or
not? Also, though Macaulay sounds grandil-
oquent, the idea is as true to-day as it was in
the days of old Rome of which he wrote,
for our boys are coming over not to fight
for France, but to fight for Liberty, which
is the very altar of our national existence,
and for the same ideas for which our ances-
tors — the founders of the original Union,
now ashes, — laid down their lives.
I don't mean this to be a sad letter. I am
not exactly sad. My feeling is too big a one
for that. But I think we are all of us learn-
ing to-day to think of death more calmly,
more continually, and more philosophically,
than we have ever done. We are getting
above the sentiment that it is a subject to be
avoided, and arriving, quite naturally, at a
mood which used only to be common to those
who had reached an age at which it was
natural and logical to feel that it might be
encountered at any moment. I think it a
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
great advance anyway. But we will talk
more about that another time.
Things are pretty quiet here now.
After the sunny weather which came in
to celebrate the entrance of the Stars and
Stripes came some pretty cold days, and on
one of them, when I was shivering over a
tiny fire made of green twigs, came the news
that the n8th had been badly cut up behind
Soissons in the last advance, and that of all
the little group who had stood about me in
the library that sunny Sunday morning, but
one was left.
I just put my cap on and went out to walk.
I kept telling myself that " it was all
right," as I tramped along the road — that
in half a century all of us in and about this
great struggle, would be safely au delat and
that though men die, and women, too, the
idea for which they die to-day is immortal.
It looks easy on paper, but — my word! —
it is not. I have to fight for it. You will
soon have to, on your side of the water.
Activity is the only help. I came back
and worked like a dog — my dog does not
work at all — tidying up all the stuff left
over by the cantonnements, making heaps of
straw and other debris on the side of the
road and trying to burn it.
I had given it some weeks to dry? but it
had not done its part very well. The result
is that it is not all burned yet. I light it half
[ 6 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
a dozen times a day, and it smoulders. Some
time I expect it will all be burned, and then
we '11 spread it over the garden. So, instead
of putting any more words on paper, I ought
to go out to rake that brush fire up again.
Incidentally I'll look off at the hill and
down the valley. All the fruit trees are in
flower. Down the hill towards Conde there
are lovely pink clouds which mark the peach
trees, and across the Morin, to the south, the
plum trees are like dainty white mists. The
alleys in the garden at Pere's look like a
millinery show, all wreaths of apple blos-
soms strung on the trellises that border the
paths, and the magnolia parasol, which
marks, with its spreading shape, the middle
of the path, and under which Amelie sits in
summer to darn my stockings, is already
putting on its young green cover. I am
going to send you a photograph of that gar-
den path one day.
Of course we don't talk or think of any-
thing here but the German retreat — Hin-
denburg's famous strategic retreat. No one
denies that the whole thing has been a great
lesson in military science, were it not for its
accompaniment by acts so unmilitary as to
put another blot on the very word " Ger-
man."
Every one has a different way of regard-
ing the fact that — possibly to avoid or out-
[ 7 .1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
wit the threatened Allied spring offensive —
Hindenburg felt it prudent to establish a
new and stronger line of defence thirty kilo-
meters in the rear of the line he had been
holding so long, — a line to-day known as
the Siegfried line. Whether or not we were
outwitted history will tell us some day in
the future — I suppose. The fact from
which there is no getting away is that, al-
though this move was rumoured even among
civilians as long ago as July of last year, he
succeeded in doing it, and that in spite of
the fact that the Allied pursuit was prompt
and more or less harassed his rear, and per-
haps pushed him further and more rapidly
than he at first intended.
Soldiers do not deny the cleverness of the
move, but the acts of no military import
which accompanied the retreat fill us with
horror. To destroy roads and bridges, to
cut down forests and raze houses that could
have served as shelters or military posts,
well, any army would do that. But to poison
wells, to uproot orchards, to carry off young
girls — these are acts of war that are — to
say the least — unmilitary. It is no use talk-
ing about it. But what a ruined northeast
France it is ! Yet, in spite of that, almost
the day after the retreat began the poor
refugees who had left in August, 1914, be-
gan to hurry back, ready to reconstruct their
devastated homes. It is a wonderful spirit,
[ 8 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
and thank God for it ! It is to be the saving
of France.
I wonder if mere words on paper can
make any one realize exactly what has hap-
pened. I am sure that, horror-stricken as
we have been by some of the details, we have
no full sense of it, and how can you, merely
reading it in letters of black and white in a
newspaper, realize what it is hard for us to
take in when it is told us by men who looked
on it? Imagine 264 villages wiped off the
map : towns like Chauny, a big industrial
centre where there were bleach fields and
chemical works, razed: 255 churches and
38,000 houses reduced to mere heaps of rub-
bish. Can you take it in? I confess that it
is hard for me.
I saw an officer who was in the pursuit
who told me that the Boches left groups of
women who had been outraged shut up in cel-
lars in the ruined towns and villages, and
carried off all the girls in their late 'teens.
What a record for " Kultur " ! Does it not
wipe the word out of all decent vocabularies
and inscribe it among those forbidden and
hidden away in pornographic dictionaries?
The demoniac ingenuity of the destruction
really surpasses all the demonstrations of
German efficiency which this war has yet
brought to notice. You have probably read
that they sawed down all the orchards and
did their utmost to render the fertile soil
r"
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
for a long time unproductive. But that was
rather a large order, I am afraid. At any
rate they made inanimate objects their in-
fernal aid. They left hidden mines to ex-
plode. They left large trees standing, along
where roads had once been, sawed almost
through, so that the first strong wind would
send them crashing on engineers at work re-
pairing the roads or convoys passing in pur-
suit. My word ! but these Germans give the
traditional Old Nick all the trumps in the
pack and beat him still in devilishness.
You remember Coucy-le-Chateau, that
marvellous ruin, which Violet-le-Duc con-
sidered the finest specimen in Europe of
medieval military architecture, and which
after two hundred and fifty-six years of ex-
istence was dismantled by Mazarin in 1652,
and has since then been a public monument
— a wonderful ruin? I am sure you have
climbed over it, every one has, and sat in
the shade and looked off at the view. I had
a letter the other day from a cavalry officer
who is now stationed there, in which he said,
'You thought it a ruin when you saw it.
You should see it now. The brutes!"
In the meantime, the English are still out-
side St. Quentin, to the very outskirts of
which the French cavalry pushed in March.
That has always been a fatal spot to the
French. It is rather ironical to remember
that it was near St. Quentin — which was
[ 10 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
part of the dower of Mary, Queen of Scots,
— that the French were defeated three hun-
dred and fifty years ago by the allied Eng-
lish, German and Flemish armies, and that
there, in January, 1871, the French Armee
du Nord was beaten by General Goeben of
the Prussian forces. I shall feel more easy
in my mind once the English are in the town,
although we hear that it is largely destroyed
— another big factory town — a sort of
French Lowell or Lawrence — gone.
In your last letter you reproach me be-
cause I say "nothing about Russia." Yes,
I know — Russia is our "great delusion."
What can one say? I have never known
much about Russia. I used to think I did.
Most of the Russians I knew were revolu-
tionary men who were political exiles here.
But I have been no greater fool about it
than most of the governments of this world.
What can I say except that I suppose they
are going to fail us — and then what? Well,
one thing is certain, the curtain is getting
torn and we are likely to know more about
the Russians than we have ever known — to
our cost. You need not bother to twit me
that I used to say the " Russians were a great
people." Of course I did, and I say it still.
They may not prove it until I have gone on,
but that is not important.
You may have the laugh on me. But is
it worth while ? You have it on a lot of big
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
people. Let that content you. Besides, the
only thing you ever had against the Russians
was that they were " queer," and that their
language was "hard to learn." And then
you did not like the paintings they exhibited
at the Salon. My reasons for liking them
were better than yours for disliking them.
I suppose that I shall find excuses for them
if the very worst that can happen comes to
pass. So don't think you can take any rise
out of me on that subject. There are a
great many other things that I think about
which I do not write to you. To begin with,
the censor would work on my letters with his
ink brush, and you would be none the wiser,
and I would have bothered myself in vain.
II
May /,
I HAD hardly mailed my last letter to you
when things got very exciting here again.
Early in the morning of April 24 — that
was Tuesday of last week — we heard that
the cavalry was trotting into the valley again,
and that we were to have the 32nd Dragoons
quartered on us.
Naturally, the first thing I said was,
"What a pity it isn't the 23rd," which was
so long with us in the winter that we felt it
was really our regiment. When the 32nd
began to ride in we learned that the 23rd
was not far off — only five miles down the
valley at La Chapelle, just opposite Crecy-
en-Brie.
Well, I could not complain, for I had an-
other charming young officer in the house —
another St. Cyr man, a lieutenant with a
" de" to his name — a man a little over
thirty, and very chic.
On Wednesday — that was the 25th — I
was sitting in the library trying to work,
when I heard an unusual movement in the
road, and looked out to see a group of five
officers of the 23rd, followed by a couple of
[ 13 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
orderlies, dismounting at the gate — coming
to make an afternoon call — all booted and
spurred and fresh-gloved and elegant, as if
there were no such thing as war, though they
were burned and bronzed by the campaign
from which they had but just retired.
It was good to see them again, especially
the Aspirant, and though I would have liked
to hear all the details of the famous " strate-
gic retreat," I got only a few, as of course
you know it is forbidden the soldiers to talk
to civilians, and a good thing, too.
However, I did hear a few interesting
things, one of the most striking being that
when the French cavalry dashed through
Noyon, the poor French people did not rec-
ognize them. The population in the invaded
district was waiting for the famous pantalon
rouge. They did not even know that their
army had changed its uniform, and when
they saw the blue-grey cavalry coming they
thought it was still the enemy and ran to
hide again.
They told me that the joy of these poor
people who had been two years and a half
under the German heel, when they finally
realized that it was their own army which
had arrived, was pathetic.
Hardly had the group of officers taken
leave, and ridden up the hill, when Lieuten-
ant de G came in to sit down for a little
chat about home and children. I can't tell
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
you how these men like to talk about home.
In the course of the conversation I made
arrangements with him to have some of his
horses and men help in the fields the next
morning, for the work here is terribly
behind.
When he went down the hill to dinner I
rushed to tell Amelie, and to have everything
ready for next morning, and you can imagine
my disappointment, when, at nine, Lieutenant
de G came in, quite disconsolate, to tell
me that orders had arrived to sound " Boots
and Saddles " at half past six the next
morning.
I ought not to have been surprised for the
officers of the 23rd had told me that it was
not a long stay — only an etape.
The next morning — that was last Thurs-
day— was a beautiful day. I was up early.
I met Lieutenant de G on the stairs,
where he bowed over my hand, and made
me such a pretty, graceful speech of thanks
for my hospitality — you can count on any
French soldier, from an officer down to the
ranks, doing that.
I had hardly got out into the garden after
he left, when a detachment of the 23rd pulled
up at the gate, and the sous-officier in com-
mand, saluted, as he said: "Aspirant B< 's
compliments. The 23rd is cantonning at
Mareuil to-night. I am going ahead to ar-
range the cantonnement. If it is possible
[ 15 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the Aspirant counts on calling on you this
afternoon to make his adieux. We march
again to-morrow," and with another salute
the little troop galloped down the hill.
The 23rd rode away at half past seven,
and they passed the 6th Dragoons riding in,
to take their places.
The little body of cavalry that came up our
hill was in command of a marechal des logis
— a handsome, tall, slender lad of not over
twenty, — who explained that it was only a
twenty-four-hour rest for men and horses.
They carried no kitchens at all, — no revict-
ualment of any sort. Each man had two
days' rations in his sac, and the horses car-
ried their feed-bags and oats.
It was a new kind of cantonnement for
me, and the most picturesque I had ever
seen.
When everything had been arranged the
marechal des logis came to the door and
asked if I could conveniently put him up.
I led him to his room, and you would have
laughed if you could have seen his expres-
sion when I showed him the big freshly
made-up bed.
"Am I going to sleep in that?" he ex-
claimed, and then we both laughed as if it
were a real joke. You see we need so little
excuse to laugh these days.
The weather was beautiful.
The boys sat or lay all along the roadside
[ 16 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
in the sun, and the horses, relieved of all
equipment, and well brushed, were tethered
to the banks and in the courts, wherever
there was a blade of grass — in fact they
were " turned out to grass " for the first time
since last fall, — while the soldiers ate and
smoked and slept beside them, or rolled,
frolicking like youngsters full of springtime
spirit. It was the most unmartial, bucolic
sight imaginable.
There was not much pasturage for the
horses, and I looked at my lawn, and at what
Louise calls the "prairie" under the fruit
trees, and I went out in the road and cere-
moniously invited as many of the best-
behaved horses as could feed there to come
in to lunch.
The marechal des logis was writing letters
in the salon when I led my little cavalcade
along the terrace — they had selected the
most obedient horses who did not even need
halters — and he came out to say that it was
a pity to trample my lawn — as if I cared
for that !
You, who so adore horses, would have
loved to see them. There was plenty of
good feed. There was sunshine and shade,
and they nibbled and snorted, while the sol-
diers who had charge of them rolled on the
grass and smoked. I did wish I could have
got a snapshot for you, but no one had a
camera.
[ 17 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
As it was Thursday Louise was working
in the garden — Thursday is her day. Sud-
denly she shaded her eyes and looked down
towards the Marne, and called out to me
that Aspirant B was coming. Sure
enough, there he was, coming on foot across
the fields as if he had seven-league boots,
and waving his cap. Mareuil, where the
23rd had gone, is only two miles away.
He arrived hot and breathless, to explain
that, while he was not really out of bounds,
still he had not asked permission and so had
come on foot, and dared not stay long, but
that he could not bear to leave the Seine
et Marne without coming to say good-bye,
as orders might come at any moment to
advance, and no one had the faintest idea
what their destination would be.
I had half a moment's foolish hesitation,
as I remembered that the marechal des logis
was in the salon. I did not know what the
military etiquette was, or how officers like to
meet unceremoniously. So I said: " Shall we
sit out here, or will you come into the salon ?
The marechal des logis of the 6th is there."
"Oh, let's join him, of course," replied
the Aspirant.
As I led the way I wondered how I was
going to introduce them. I did not know the
marechal's name. But I need not have
fretted.
I opened the door. The marechal sprang
[ 18 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
erect. The two youngsters both so tall, so
slender and straight — saluted, flung their
names at each other, thrust out their hands
and gripped. Then they smiled, sat down,
crossed their long legs, and fell to. It was
like a drill — so exactly in unison — and so
young and charming, that I just leaned back
in my chair and listened and thought a lot.
Don't you know how there used to be a
tradition about " little Frenchmen " ? I vow
I don't know where they all are now. I
thought of it Wednesday when the group of
officers stood about in my salon — their
heads almost to the rafters — and I thought
of it again to-day as I saw these two twenty-
year olds — both nearly six feet, if not quite.
When the brief visit was over the lads
parted like friends.
As the Aspirant was saying good-bye on
the lawn, and laughing at the idea of my
having " the horses in to tea," as he called it,
although I called it " spending the day," he
directed my attention to the road across the
field by which he had arrived, and I looked
down.
" Hulloa ! " he exclaimed. " Here comes
the 23rd racing to visit its pet cantonnement
at Huiry. You know, Madame, they never
have been so happy anywhere else as they
were in what they call 4 ce joli petit pays de
Sure enough, there came Hamelin and
[ 19 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Vincent, who had lodged at Amelie's, and
Basset and all the rest who had lived about
us in December and January.
So you see we had rather an exciting day.
The result was that I was very tired, and
I slept very soundly.
As a rule when troops are here I always
hear all the night movement. Whenever any
officer in the house received a night message,
in spite of all their precautions, I invariably
heard the cyclist arrive. But that night I
heard nothing. I waked at six. I opened
my shutters. The sun was shining brightly.
The morning was clear and warm. I looked
out, wondering at the silence. I expected to
see the horses being groomed all along the
road. To my surprise all the stable doors
were wide open — no one in sight, — no
horses, no soldiers anywhere.
When Amelie appeared she said the order
had come at midnight. They had marched
at three — and I had not heard a sound.
Am I not getting used to a military life?
But I must give you some evidence that
the race famed for its politeness has not lost
any of the quality in the war, and all its
hurry.
Although Lieutenant de G , who left
Thursday morning, had formally thanked
me for my hospitality, within twenty-four
hours I received the following note from
him.
[ 20 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Madame :
I must again express to you all my gratitude for
the charming welcome you extended to me under
your roof. Our roving life did not allow us to stay
long at Huiry, but, thanks to you, we shall always
cherish a charming recollection of our too short visit.
And, twenty-four hours after the 6th rode
away in the night, I received the following
letter from the young marechal des logis. It
seems to me such a pretty letter for a lad of
twenty that you deserve to see it.
With the Army, April 28, 1917
Madame:
I hope you will have the kindness to excuse me
if, before my departure this morning, I did not have
the opportunity of thanking you for the charming
welcome you extended to me in your pretty home.
It was late when I came in last night, and it was
still dark when we took leave of your dear little
village this morning, and I was therefore unable to
see you, to my deep regret, and to express to you in
person all the gratitude I felt, and my deep joy to
find that the sympathy which the Americans, our
new allies, express for us, is no vain word. Your
kindness to us all was the best of evidence, and I beg
you to believe, Madame, that the sentiment is
reciprocated.
All my men, as well as my two comrades and I,
were deeply touched by the welcome extended to us
in your village, and especially by you in person, and
we should have been only too happy had we been
able to stay with you longer. We are much less
comfortable to-night than we were last night, but
a soldier is forced to consider himself comfortable
anywhere. All the same he is more than happy, now
and then, to find himself among kind people who
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
offer him the comforts of home of which he has
been deprived for nearly three years. Even our
horses are less gay than they were yesterday. This
afternoon they had no green lawn to nibble.
I beg you, dear Madame, etc.
Marechal des logis G .
The politeness of these French boys and
their aptness in writing letters promptly is
remarkable. It is a national characteristic.
It is a great contrast to the American
sans gene manner, which surprises French
people. For example, all the French sol-
diers nursed in our little ambulance write
immediately they get back to the Directrice,
the Sisters, and their special nurse to reiter-
ate the thanks they have so profusely ex-
pressed before leaving, and anyone to whom
I have shown the smallest courtesy while
there writes to me. The little hospital has
never sheltered but one American. When he
returned to his post every one gave him an
address, and every one expected a postcard
from him, at least. Of course he could not
write French, but he could send a picture
postcard with his name, and a line which he
knew I would render into French. No word
ever came back. Dear Soeur Jules is sure
he is dead. I never see her but she asks :
uHave you had news from - -?" And
when I say, " No," she shakes her head sadly,
and exclaims, " Poor lad ! Of course he has
been killed. Poor nice boy ! We were so at-
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
tached to him." I let it go at that. It is
so hard to explain that it is very American.
Lovely day — so good after the terrible
winter.
I am already planting peas and beans and
potatoes. But the flower garden will not be
very pretty this year, I lost so many rose
bushes in the awful long spell of January
and February cold. But what of that? Po-
tatoes are the only chic thing this year.
They are planted everywhere — on the lawn
at the chateau, in the front gardens, under
the fruit trees. I was tempted to plant
them on my lawn, only that would have been
pretentious, as Pere had more land than we
needed, and it would have cost more to turn
up my lawn than the mere patriotic look of
the thing was worth.
Ill
May 18, Jp/7
JUST the loveliest day you can imagine.
When I went into the garden early this
morning I did wish you were here. A soft
puffy breeze was blowing, and a thin haze
veiled the sun. There was only one word
for it — divine. I never see the country
looking as it did at that moment that I do not
long to own a big camera and become an
expert with it. It would only be in that way
one could ever get a proper picture of it.
It is so wilfully changeable that to do it jus-
tice— to catch it at its best — the camera
would have to be on the spot — ever ready.
We have had a week of really hot weather.
It has been good for planting, and I Ve
planted carrots and turnips and beets and
onions, tomatoes and cucumbers, and if this
lasts, I am going to try golden bantam corn.
What do you think of that for a farmer?
Hush — Louise does the hard work, and I
boss it. I sit in the field on a camp chair
with the seeds in a basket, and a green um-
brella over my head, and big gloves on my
hands, while Louise grovels in the dirt and
carries out my ideas. I get terribly tired,
[ 24 ] '
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
and very red in the face, but Louise, brown
as a berry, comes out fresh as possible.
Well, anyway, I am going to have some-
thing to eat — in time — and that comforts
me.
At noon to-day it clouded over, and a cold
wind came up which drove me indoors.
Though it is as cold here as outside, still
I am out of the wind, and that is how it
happens that, though I have nothing much
to write about, I am going to try to make a
letter. Everything in the world is still —
but though we hear no sound of cannon, I
have the thought of it always with me. It
is more persistent than the poor.
I have been looking over some of your
letters, and I find that you have often asked
me questions about my beasties, and because
I have almost always had other things to
write about I have never got to telling you
about anything in the beastie line, except
cats — and you got that, you remember be-
cause you were nasty about my efforts to
" wake up the States," which had been hardly
less successful at that time than dear Lord
Roberts' great " Wake Up, England!"
Well, since you want to hear about
beasties, so be it.
Of course, you remember that in the old
days I never had any beasties in the apart-
ment, except birds. When I came out into
the country to live I did not see any place
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
either in my little house or in my new life
for that huge cage and the twenty birds that
lived in it, in Paris.
I had loved them in the Paris apartment.
High up in the air, with that broad open
space across the Montparnasse cemetery to fill
the wide balcony with sunlight and warmth,
they had seemed quite in the picture. But
the idea of caged birds on this hilltop seemed
to me silly. What happiness could a cage
full of birds have when surrounded by sing-
ing birds in liberty? Also every one out here
kept cats.
In Paris, high up above the street, the
morning concerts had been the only gay thing
in the sad and lonely house. I learned to
love them. I loved giving them their bath
in the morning, doing up their house for
them, and preparing their meals. I loved
seeing them flying about, dancing and singing,
swinging and balancing, and eating.
I loved believing they were happy. But
I could not imagine them happy out here,
so they did not come with me. I gave them
and their gilded palace to some one whom
they had always known, and now and then
I still go to see them.
So when I came out here I had no beasties.
The first one I had was a dog. He was
a beautiful Airedale — a big dog with a dear
chestnut-coloured head and legs and belly,
and a nicely fitting, undulated, black jacket.
[ 26 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
But, alas! I did not have him long, and it
was altogether a sad experience.
When he arrived he was homesick.
Did you ever see a homesick dog? Or,
what is worse, did you ever live with one?
For days, before he learned to love me, he
followed me about in a patient, resigned way
which made me pretty sad. I had not had
much experience in owning beasties, except
birds. I had to get acquainted as well as he.
It was hard on both of us. Besides, the
house was all fresh and clean, and, as I was
determined that he should feel that it was
as much his home as mine, he was allowed
everywhere, and brought in a lot of dirt, and
my habit of having everything in apple-pie
order — by the way, what kind of order is
that? — got a shock.
But I grew used to all that, and reconciled
to it, as he became attached to me, and, even
in the little time he stayed, I got so that I did
not mind when he leaped all over me, and
wiped his muddy paws, and he could not
walk out with me without embracing me
every few minutes. I was so grateful to him
for showing pleasure in my society that for
a while I did not even try to break him of it.
I ended by getting deeply attached to him,
and he to me. I was so proud of him. I
loved walking out with him, carrying his
leash and whip, with a whistle in my sweater
pocket. He was naturally obedient. He
[ 27 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
always walked close to my heels except when
I told him to " go," and then he was off like
a flash. But he never went out of sight. If
he reached a turn, he stopped to look back
and see if I were coming, and if I hid he
dashed back and sniffed around until he
found me. Of course this is all common-
place to people who have always had dogs
of their own. But it was a new experience
to me.
If he saw anyone coming towards me he
retired quietly to my side — not as if afraid,
but as if to assure himself that I was not
going to be molested. For a few weeks that
was all right. He seemed gentle and was as
playful, once he was domiciled, as a small
dog.
I had never had a watch-dog — didn't
know anything about them. I had him for
company. But one day Amelie was sweep-
ing the terrace. Argus was lying in the sun.
I was standing at the gate, which was closed.
The postman came up the road and started
to open the gate. Argus was there in one
bound. He snarled, then growled deep down
in his throat. The man did not come in.
Amelie laughed aloud. Instinctively I
said, " No, no, Argus!" but Amelie simply
screamed at me: " Laissez done" and she
patted him on the head. " At last," she said.
" I was wondering if that dog was anything
but beautiful. Pat his head," she com-
[ 28 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
manded, u and tell him he is a good dog."
I obeyed orders, and Argus wagged his tail,
and strutted, and from that day he was the
terror of the commune. He never passed
anyone on the road without growling, and
he barked at every one who passed the gate.
Personally I thought he carried his ardour
too far, since he could not bear a stranger
near. He barked when they arrived, and
he kept it up. Every one was afraid of him,
though I was always convinced that he was
not a dangerous dog. He never attacked
anyone. On the road he always came the
instant he was called, and patiently allowed
himself to be leashed.
I confess I never got at his psychology —
he did not live long enough. As I say, he
never attempted to attack anyone, though he
did attack a big dog. He never attached
himself to anyone outside of the household.
I had heaps of theories about him. At times
I thought there was a savage strain in him.
At other times I imagined he was as afraid
of people as they were of him. But I don't
know.
When he was ill, and I sent for the veter-
inary, Argus was upstairs lying at my bed-
room door when the doctor arrived. I called
him. He came half-way down the stairs and
stood barking. The doctor said: "As hand-
some an Airedale as I ever saw, but I would
not touch him for a fortune."
[ 29 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
"But, doctor," I said, "he's perfectly
gentle."
" With you, perhaps. I can't touch him."
So I went upstairs with the dog, and he
let me tie up his nose, and I held him while
the doctor examined him.
Well — he died. Never mind about that.
I don't like even now to remember it. I like
to think of him as we used to walk out to-
gether, when he was the first comrade of my
new life.
Oh, yes, I have another dog now, but he
is just a dog to me. I like him well enough,
and play with him, but my heart is not set
on him as it was on my big dog of whom I
was so proud.
This dog's name is Dick. He is a big
black poodle and a perfect fool. He is what
the French call "pas mechant pour deux
sous" just a common or garden fool. He
is a thoroughbred, but he has never been
trained at all, and as he was nearly, if not
quite, four years old when he came — with
his character — training has been impossible.
He was bought when a baby as a plaything
for a child at Couilly. When the war broke
out, his family went to Switzerland and left
Dick a boarder at Amelie's. At Couilly he
left a bad reputation. A child had hit him
with a stick and hurt him, and Dick had
sprung on her — the one naughty act of his
[ 30 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
life, but it was enough to give him a bad
name — so he had to come up here to live.
No one knows everything about a dog
except after long years of experience.
Though he is the silliest, gentlest, most play-
ful dog in the world, though he adores chil-
dren, and the cats sleep all over him, I have
to own that he has never forgotten the child
at Couilly who struck him with the big stick,
and the very sight of her to-day — after more
than five years — brings out a quality of
ugliness in him that he never shows at any
other time. Apart from that one trait he is
a comic, frolicsome dog, whose delight in
life is to " go," and whose dream of happi-
ness is to have anyone, no matter whom,
throw stones for him.
He was boarding at Amelie's when I came
here. While Argus lived he never came near
the house. But after Argus had gone
Amelie used to bring him down here with
her, and I got used to seeing him about.
Neither Amelie nor Abelard had been con-
tent that there was no dog here at night, and
finally I consented to let Dick sleep in the
kennel ; he has been sleeping there ever since.
The only protection he gives is to bark when
anyone approaches the house, and that is
really all that is necessary. When he barks
furiously in the night — as every one knows
his voice, — someone comes to be sure that I
am all right.
[ 31 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
When I say he barks at every one, that 's
not quite true. He used to bark at every
one, but, for some reason, since we have had
so many soldiers cantonned here, he never
barks at a poilu. It is the only exception.
He barks at the children, at the postman, at
the neighbours he sees every day on the
road, but he never barks in these days at a
common soldier. Droll, that, I think! I
have asked him to explain himself, but I am
too stupid to understand.
Of course Melie has a big dog — a black
retriever — who, though he is already huge,
is hardly more than a puppy. He came last
winter, and I named him Marquis, and it
was at once abbreviated into Kiki. Amelie
brought him in her apron one night when
he was about as big as a small cat, and
showed him to Khaki and Didine. Khaki
gave one look at him, and asked for the
door. He shrugged his shoulders as he went
out with very stiff legs and a line of bristling
hair down his back, as much as to say " An-
other? Dear me! " But Didine went up to
him as he lay on Melie's knee, examined
him, and deliberately cuffed him first on one
side of his head, and then on the other, and
hard cuffs, too. Marquis has grown up since
then, but he has no taste for cats.
Although Marquis is still only a puppy, he
is already much bigger than Dick, and Dick
is still just as much of a puppy — and will
[ 32 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
be to the end of his days — and it is lovely
to see them play together — such races and
boxing matches as they have ! They don't
always observe the rules of the Marquis of
Queensbury to be sure, but they never get
cross over their game. Marquis is just as
good a sport as Dick, but though he is heav-
ier he does not tire so easily, and often when
Dick retires to his corner to get his breath
back and lies with his tongue hanging out,
Marquis goes and pulls him into the ring by
his hind leg.
So there you have the dogs that run with
me when I cross the fields. I have to keep
them with me as all dogs must be leashed
or muzzled. I carry muzzles and whip and
whistle when I walk, and, as they are both
obedient to the whistle, I can call them if I
see anyone approaching, and get them on
their leashes if I don't have time to muzzle
them. Some time, if I get a chance, I '11 ask
them to send you their pictures.
Though I don't have birds, I have hens
and chickens. I have four hens setting at
Amelie's now. I don't want anything of that
sort round here. So I have arranged an imi-
tation of a basse cour and hen-house at
Amelie's. You 'd laugh if you could see it.
I began it last summer. I sent Amelie to
town to buy a dozen chickens — ten of them
proved to be cocks, so we fed them to be
eaten, and bought another dozen, with
t 33 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
hardly better luck, except in the matter of
winter food. I began the spring with a
rooster and seven hens, and every one of
those hens shall set if she wants to. Amelie
pulls a long face, and says, " How are you
going to feed them?" Well, if I can't, I
can eat them, or give them to other people
to eat.
Food is a very interesting question in these
days. Besides, hens are about the only
creatures I can contemplate eating with
equanimity. They are amusing enough at
feeding time, but they are ugly, selfish, un-
lovable birds, except when they have a brood
of fluffy little ones about their feet, and then
they are adorable.
The most amusing experience I have ever
had was with goats, — and that one experi-
ence impressed on me the fact that I 'd need
several more years of training to become a
real farmer, or a stock breeder, — perhaps
even another incarnation.
When milk got short it was a serious
dilemma, and the future looked even more
serious. Milk is a very important item in
my diet, and how we were to get through
another winter short of milk was a question.
One day Amelie remarked that if we had
a goat, that it would be some help, as she
and Pere liked goat's milk. So, one day, at
Meaux, I told her I 'd make her a present
of a goat, if she could find one. I was
[ 34 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
amazed when she came back to the wagon
carrying the cunningest little beastie in her
arms you ever saw.
"Why, Melie," I cried, "that won't give
any milk!"
" Give it time," she replied. " It is such a
pretty one."
So I named it Jeannette, and it came to
live " at the farm."
It was as frisky as a kitten and we all
made a plaything of it. It followed Melie
up and down from her house to mine, and
when it got to know the way it came by it-
self to call. I was eternally catching it in
my garden, standing on its hind legs, nib-
bling my rose bushes, and picking it up in
my arms and carrying it home. But it was
so fascinating on its stiff, wooden, peglike
legs, and it side-stepped so gracefully when
I was catching it, and danced on its hind
feet, and butted at me sideways, that I could
not get cross.
Sometimes I 'd hear a rustle in the hedge
as I was reading in the shade, and, going out
to the gate to see what was trying to get
through, would find Jeannette standing on
her hind legs, eating the old hedge with all
her might. I did n't mind that. It did not
hurt the hedge to be trimmed. But when
she began to eat pansies, roses and gera-
niums, I drew the line, and protested. I
drove her home one day, and began to ask
[ 35 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
myself if other goats had as much liberty as
Jeannette, and decided that they did not and
that, in fact, she was being badly brought up.
I looked over the fields and saw goats
nibbling, each with a long rope attached to a
stake.
So I went up to Amelie's to have a serious
talk about the upbringing of her goat. I
found Pere — it was just afternoon — taking
his nap in a big chair with Jeannette hugged
in his arms as she lay on his knees.
I had to laugh. It was not a moment to
argue.
The proper moment came a few days
later.
It was early in the morning. I heard some
one talking angrily in the road, and it only
took a little listening to discover that Jean-
nette had been in a neighbour's garden and
made a good meal of peas. The owner was
angry, and I did not blame her. It was one
thing for Jeannette to destroy my garden
or Pere's, but quite another matter when she
went trespassing and laid us liable to a
proces.
This time I stiffened my lips — I hate to
argue with Melie — and just went at the job.
I emphatically stated that it was absurd to
let a destructive animal like a goat roam at
liberty, that goats were usually attached, and
that there was no reason why Jeannette
[ 36 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
should not be. By the time I had done,
Melie was in tears.
" Poor Jeannette," she sobbed. " She
loves her liberty, and I love mine, and can
sympathize. Poor Jeannette, I know just
how she feels."
Of course I had to say, " Sorry, Melie,
but we did not buy the goat for a plaything,
and you know as well as I do that she can-
not always run free, so one time is as good
as another. There is plenty of place for her
to eat. There is the little meadow out under
the trees where she can be tied up. She will
be near the house, and the grass there is full
of all sorts of good things — dandelions,
chicory, sanfoin, and there is the court here,
and there is the little enclos at the top of the
hill where we put the horse and donkey, and
there is the grass land up the hill, and when
once the cassis is gathered, she can be put
there."
"Oh," replied Amelie, "there are places
enough, if it must be done."
It was done, but it was too late to be done
with comfort to anyone. Jeannette had been
made a family pet. She was used to com-
pany. Wherever we put her she b-1-laated
for hours at a time, unless one of us went
and sat with her. I protested, but I used
to catch Amelie taking her sewing to sit with
Jeannette, and Pere used to go and lie near
her on the ground to take his noon nap —
[ 37 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
and as long as she lived, she would never be
cured of that longing for society, if not for
liberty.
Well, the time came when Jeannette be-
came a mother. It was about the quickest
performance I etVer kndw of. Jt was a
Thursday. Louise was working in the gar-
den, as is usual on all Thursdays. She had
gone to Pere's to carry a wheelbarrow of
grass — we had cut the lawn. I saw her
returning without the wheelbarrow on a
quick run, calling as she came, " Is there
any hot water? Jeannette has got twins!"
I did not wait for Louise to get the hot
water. I just sprinted — in my way — for
the stable. There were the little long-legged
things — walking, if you please, while Jean-
nette looked over her shoulder at them in
wide-eyed surprise. Talk about cunning
things ! They beat all I had ever seen.
They were both white. One had a thin black
line down his spine to his cute little stub of a
tail, and the other had a similar black line
half as long. On the spot I named them —
it 's my way — Pierre and Paul.
For a few weeks those little goats were
my every-day amusement. They were play-
ful as kittens. We used to attach Jeannette
up the road in an open field, and leave Pierre
and Paul with her, but if I dared to heave
in sight, both the little beasties rushed to
meet me. Then Jeannette set up a yell, and
[ 38 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
I had to catch them and take them back.
Then I was as bad as Amelie, for I would
sit in the shade and watch them. The field
was up a bank, and they used to butt each
other down, and dance and do side-steps un-
til I used to call Amelie to come and look at
them, and we would both sit, like a pair of
geese, and laugh. I forgot as much as she
ever had what the goat was bought for.
Pierre was a bit more venturesome than
Paul. He was always the leader. The only
queer thing was that they never varied their
methods. For example, they would both
come close to the door, and turning their
heads sideways, look in. Then Pierre ven-
tured in, and Paul followed. The dining-
room was always darkened in the daytime to
keep it cool, but the door was open. Pierre,
followed by Paul, would come and look, and
then, although there was no sill, bound in
as though over a barrier, and, after a mo-
ment's hesitation, Paul did the same thing.
There was hardly a day they did not come,
and they never varied the antic, nor failed,
when I went to catch them and put them in
the stable at night, to side-step, bound side-
wise on their hind legs, and butt at. me with
such a pretty turn of the head. But no one
ever drew a picture or made an image of a
goat in any other movement, so all goats
must do it. Only these were the first with
which I had ever been intimate.
[ 39 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Well, all country idyls end in tragedy.
Last Saturday — Saturday is market day
at Meaux — after I had taken my coffee,
which I got myself, as Amelie and Pere had
arranged to go to market early on account
of the heat — I went up to the pasture to see
why Jeannette was crying so. I found her
still tied in the stable instead of in the pas-
ture, as I had expected, and there was no
Pierre and Paul.
I had a sort of sudden premonition. I
went back, and sat in the garden until I heard
the wagon coming. I gave one look at
Melie's red eyes. I did not have to ask.
I knew that Pierre and Paul had gone to
market.
Jeannette did not get over crying for days.
Well, as Pere remarked, " She was bought
to give us milk."
You see, next time I '11 know how to bring
up a goat. I can only be thankful I don't
get attached to chickens. I Ve that much
luck.
You can't call this a war letter, can you?
The real absolute truth is that just now it is
hard to believe there is any war, it is so calm
and still here, and the nights are heavenly.
I often sit out until midnight, and I have even
fallen asleep with my head on my arms,
simply hating to come indoors and leave all
the beauty of the night. I wish often that I
had one of those tents in which the Virginia
[ 40 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
boys slept on our common. I think it will
be the next thing I present myself.
You can never realize the wonder of the
nights here until you see them. It is not dark
until after ten, — summer-time, of course.
There is no sound except from the passing
trains, and nothing breaks the line of the
hills, except, now and then, the end of a
searchlight from the other side, a thin line
only, but it visualizes "war," reminding us
that the watch is kept.
Of course we have all been bitterly disap-
pointed again that the push does not go on.
We don't understand, but we must have faith
in those who do, — or we hope, do.
IV
June 15, 1917
I HAVE been so busy learning to be a
farmer that during the last three weeks I
have had no time to write letters. I have
read the newspapers, tried to be patient, and
been up to Paris. That 's my life.
We have had lovely hot weather and
everything is growing well. Still, in spite
of rains in May, just after I wrote to you,
which seemed to me sufficient to wet the
ground, every one is yelling for rain. I con-
fess the ground does look dry.
Yesterday nine chicks came out of a nest
of thirteen eggs. I was delighted, but
Amelie is disappointed. They ought all to
have hatched. I recognized that, when she
called my attention to it. Until then I had
thought it a brave showing. I shall do
better next time, or, if I don't, be wiser in
speech.
I went up to Paris on June 3rd and stayed
a whole week, which was unusual for me, but
I had work to do there and could not seem
to get back. I wish you could have seen my
garden when I did. It was like a wilderness
of flowers. It looked absolutely unkept,
[ 42 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
although it was clean and tidy. But no one
would dream of cutting the roses when I am
not here, and the Gloire de Dijon over the
front door, and the big Pink Rover over the
dining-room, had bloomed and bloomed and
shed their petals until the air was full of
them. The grass was high, the geraniums
and pinks a mass of colour. I would not
have dreamed that a week or ten days could
have done the work it had, although, of
course, it was hot weather.
In Paris no one talked of anything but the
taking of Messines, and now that the Allies
have the three heights — Bapaume taken in
March, Vimy in April, and Messines last
Monday, — every one is hoping for another
phase of a general offensive. Wise and well-
informed people say it is impossible, and the
gospel of patience is preached everywhere.
All the same Messines was a great affair,
one of the most astounding bits of prepara-
tion the war has yet seen.
We surely needed that bit of encourage-
ment, with all the disquieting things that are
going on in Russia, and with the perpetual
disturbances of the Socialists and Pacifists,
who find it so hard to understand even yet
that peace to-day can only be a German
peace, with Germany not only victor, but
conqueror. Before this war can end well
all the hopes of any decency or generosity or
good breeding or justice on the part of the
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Germans must be wiped out of the minds of
every race she is fighting. The Allies must
quit talking, quit explaining their position,
which is clearly known now, and get down to
work. This struggle will never be settled
except by guns and aeroplanes, and it is waste
effort to talk about Germany until she is
beaten to her knees, and until she is, though
this war lasts twenty years, it will never end.
As a well-known American man said to one
of my friends in Paris, " Our boys must not
come over here to get licked," and unless
Germany is licked they will be.
Day before yesterday we began to gather
cherries. They are not very plentiful, and
as for prunes — almost none. However, we
have enough for ourselves, and as we have
almost no sugar, the scarcity is not so dis-
turbing as it would be otherwise. But it de-
prives the pockets here of sous, and they
need them.
To-day is a very hot day. It is so hot that
Pere left for Meaux to take a few things to
market before four, and was back for his
coffee at seven.
You see how we occupy ourselves here in
spite of the war. At this minute, but for the
newspapers, which, in the silence, we read
and try to understand, and but for the sol-
diers in our ambulance — more sick than
wounded just now — and but for such heart-
breaking affairs as the air raids on London
[ 44 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
when school-children were killed, we seem at
times almost as far off from the war as you
are. We do not get used to it. No one
ever will, but more and more we are begin-
ning to understand that if war is to be we
must prepare to meet all the atrocities of a
nation like Germany, fighting for its mis-
taken ideas, and its continued existence on a
wrong road. The world had no right to let
itself be taken by surprise. Germany had
never made any secret of her ambitions.
Apart from all the military and economic
books in which all her ideas of her future de-
velopment and her belief in conquest have
been clearly set down, no German writer on
any subject has been able to escape putting
the national ideas into books of no matter
what nature. Even as long ago as 1861
Hermann Grimm in an article on Emerson,
after prophesying one Church and one State,
remarked : " But what next? The strife will
then be to make this one sovereignty the
Germanic, to which the Slav, the Mongolian,
the Romanic, and whatever other races are
called, shall submit," and less than twenty
years later (1879), James E. Hosmer, a
professor of German literature in St. Louis,
in spite of an intelligent effort to deal justly
with the comparative struggles of England,
Germany and the States, announced his opin-
ion that the world was slowly being German-
ized. After all, who knows, if, but for this
[ 45 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
stupid war, his prophecy might not have
become true? There is no doubt in any of
our minds that the world had been in a way
hypnotized by Germany ever since 1870. If
the Hohenzollerns had not returned to the
methods of the days of Hannibal, there is
no knowing what might have happened.
Listen to what I came across accidentally the
other day, about old times when " upon their
great white shields they slide down the slopes
of the Alps to do battle. They have armour
of brass and helmets fashioned into resemb-
lance of heads of beasts of prey. The
women fight by the side of their husbands,
then, as priestesses, slay the prisoners, letting
the blood run into brazen caldrons that it
may offer an omen. Even the Romans are
terrified, veterans though they are from the
just ended struggle with Hannibal. Papirius
Carbo goes down before them, and Rome
expects to see in her streets the blond North-
men, as she had just before looked for the
dark-skinned Numidian. Caius Marius
meets them, 100 B.C. in southern Gaul, and
again in northern Italy, the front rank of
their hosts — that they may stand firm —
bound together man by man, with a chain,
and the fierce women waiting in the rear with
uplifted axes to slay all cowards. But
Marius comes off conqueror from the corpse-
heaped battle-fields, and Rome has a
respite ! "
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
I have always told you, the world does not
change, — and how more than true it is that
history repeats itself. Our age and time has
been deaf to the warnings of the past, and
blind to the writing on the wall. Yet even
that is the virtue of a failing. It is danger-
ous to think too well of a people, but it is,
after all, a generous fault. Germany's is the
reverse — she thinks too ill of every one but
herself, and knows herself as little as she
knows other people.
If you have handy a book containing
Grimm's essay on Frederick the Great and
Macaulay, do read it, just for phrases like
this:
'That a German should write a history
of France, Italy, Russia, or Turkey would
seem no wise unsuitable, or contradictory,
but imagine an Italian, Frenchman, or Turk
writing a history of Germany ! If the book
by chance imposed on some innocent mind
because written in a foreign language it
would only be necessary to translate it."
Well, by their own acts they have im-
peached themselves — and late as it is, it is
lucky for the world that it is not later.
I suppose it will not be long now before
our boys begin to arrive, but I have no mad
expectation of their being fit for action be-
fore the end of the year, if they are then.
Kitchener's first mob was dressed for the
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
field in eight months, but England is nearer
than the States, and the submarines were not
so active in 1915 as they are now. It is
not only a long way to Tipperary — it is a
mighty long way to New York. The only
prayer I ever feel like saying these days —
and even that is against my habits, for I
don't believe as much in asking for things as
I do in being grateful for them — is : " Hurry
up, America ! May the Allies hold out until
you get here."
Though I say so little about the war, and
although we keep on doing the little ordi-
nary things of everyday life — we must, you
know — our hearts are all out there in the
north, where, since the so-called strategic
retreat some of the toughest fighting in the
war has written Craonne, Tete de Conde
and Chemin des Dames in letters of fire on
our memories. The beginning of these
things happened 'way back in April, but the
news we get is so meagre in details that it
is only now that we realize all the heroism
of the effort, or are able to put a proper
name on the battles. Of course we did get
the news of the wonderful English work at
Messines eight days ago, at once. That
was such a noisy affair that it could not be
kept out of notice, besides it had been pre-
paring for so long, and was so soon over.
I am told they heard the explosion in Lon-
don, when the long-prepared mines were
[ 48 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
touched off. It was one of the things we did
not hear here.
Well, Constantine is off his throne, — an-
other wandering crowned head to be a politi-
cal danger to the future. At any rate it will
protect us from getting a blow in the back
down there, though it comes at a late day.
Next!
[ 49
July $f 1917
WELL, the first of our boys have marched
in the streets of Paris.
I did not see them. I was not able to go
up to town, nor was I in the mood to see such
a procession. So in honour of the day — it
was July 4th — I put up all my flags, and
waited to hear about the enthusiasm with
which the boys were received, from other
people.
The day before, Petain had addressed the
French army in these words :
" To-morrow, the anniversary of the Dec-
laration of Independence of the United
States of America, the first American troops
to land in France will march in Paris. Soon
after they will join us at the front.
" Salutations to our new comrades in
arms, who, without arriere-pensee of money
or conquest, inspired simply by the desire to
defend the cause of justice and liberty, have
come to take their place at our side.
" Other divisions are preparing to follow
them.
"The United States of America is pre-
pared to place at our disposition, without re-
[ SO ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
garding the cost, her soldiers, her factories,
her ships, — the entire resources of her
country. They are inspired by a desire to
pay a hundred-fold the debt of gratitude
they feel to Lafayette and his comrades.
" With one voice, on this Fourth of July,
let the cry go up from every point on our
front ' Honour to the great Sister Republic !
Fivent les Etats-Unis!' "
The order was obeyed with spirit. It was
one great echo of the cheers that split the
air in April, and yesterday America owned
Paris. One of my friends who was there
wrote me last night: " I wonder you did not
hear the cheers on the Hilltop. The walls
of Paris shook with them. And Pershing
had tears rolling down his cheeks as he rode
through the shouting crowds."
I would have liked to know what he
thought of Paris, as the capital of an in-
vaded country. I am afraid it will prove a
terrible temptation to our boys, for there is
no question that Paris has a charm which
few can resist long. I guarantee that before
long the States will hear all sorts of tales
about the unlicensed acts of our boys in their
first encounter with an atmosphere so new
to them, and a people so strange to them.
Don't let that worry you. It is a phase
which was to be foreseen, and was logically
impossible to prevent. A large percentage
of our boys — whose last thought was that
[ 51 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
they would ever be soldiers sent to fight on
foreign soil — know nothing about the
French. They have all heard of Paris as a
" gay city," where wonderful things take
place, and of France as a country where
things are permitted which would not be tol-
erated at home. You know no race belies
itself in its light literature as the French.
And it is the light literature which is the
most known in translations. To judge by
that, women are never virtuous, men are
never loyal, and we all know how often it
has been said that "home" has no equiva-
lent in French because the thing itself does
not exist here. You and I know France
better than that. We know that nowhere in
all the world is home life more beautiful, or
family ties stronger than where the words
" ma mere" are sacred, and where father
and son are not ashamed to embrace in pub-
lic. If there is less hypocrisy of speech and
opinion about some of the natural incidents
of human experience than exists in some
other parts of the world, those who draw
too quick conclusions from that will be liable
to find themselves mistaken. If the French
make less fuss than we do about certain acci-
dents of life, it is to their credit, and they
are only a bit in advance of the rest of the
world — in the vanguard of advance — in
fact the banner-bearers, as they always have
been, of civilization. Then, besides, you
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
know, and the world will know when this is
over, that the so-called "emotional French"
are less hysterical than we are.
So don't you worry over any of the tales
about the American boys in Paris which are
sure to go across by cable and special corre-
spondents. Over here our boys will grow
into self-reliant, self-respecting men. They
will be broken of many of the bad habits
which we have to know exist, and they will
go home — such of them as return — to
build up a new type of American. Hard-
ships will model their faces, which when I
was last in New York looked too round and
pudgy; exercise will harden their frames
which were too molle. In fact, they will be
in every way the better. They will leave a
great heritage to the future and make a race
with a right to pride. Besides, they will com-
plete their education in a way that no uni-
versity could, and, after it is over, no one will
be able to accuse us justly again of being " a
race of provincials."
I felt that I had to say this quickly, as
judging by the letters I got to-day the Ameri-
cans have given Paris a shock, and the ma-
terial is too good to be long neglected by
the space writers. So don't worry. It is
unimportant.
I have another brood of chickens — this
time twelve out of thirteen, — and yet
Amelie is not content. I hope the next will
[ S3 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
be really satisfying, — expect them in a few
days.
I don't need to tell you that I was very
popular here on the Fourth. Every one
treated me as if I were the entire United
States of America. After long years of
doubting, it was a fine feeling. I felt all
warm and comfy about my heart. I had
waited so long for it.
[ 54 ]
VI
July 27, 1917
I WAS surprised on looking in my letter-
book to find that it is already three weeks
since I last wrote to you. But a farmer's
life is a busy one, and we have had strange
weather — so changeable. The seventh and
eighth were hot and muggy, the ninth like a
chilly autumn day, the twelfth and thirteenth
were very hot; on the seventeenth we had a
rainstorm that turned my garden into a lake,
and the road into a brook. Then came one
awfully hot day — just scorching — and since
then it has been beautiful. All this has been
good for our crops. I Ve had peas and
beans, cucumbers and tomatoes, strawberries
and raspberries — in fact I think every day,
as I sit down at noon, that I live just as well
now as I could at any crack restaurant in the
world. Next week I shall have green corn
and all sorts of other dainties. It is a pity
that it is not summer every day in the year.
On the tenth I saw the first camions full
of Americans going over the road towards
Meaux. As I sat in the little cart watching
them go by, I did wish I could tell them that
I was an American, but it seemed best not
[ 55 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
to. They are — for prudential reasons, —
advised not to talk to strangers, and it is
wise. So I contented myself with smiling at
them — every one does that — and feeling a
bit chagrined that they did not recognize in
me a fellow citizen.
All the commune has been busy for a fort-
night picking cassis — the black currants —
and the English are going to risk buying
them to make jelly for the soldiers. It is
always one of the prettiest times of the year,
when little children as well as men and
women are sitting on low stools under the
laden bushes, in the hot sun and the showers.
But it is weary work, and they look so tired,
as at four o'clock they rest for a bite and lie
sprawled everywhere to eat their bread and
cheese.
We have had some trying days, days
when leading a normal life seemed absurd.
On the seventeenth the bombardment was so
heavy that the very house shook, and the
twenty-first was no better. Yet the news-
papers gave no news that would seem to
explain in either case. It simply recalls to
our minds that it is going on always, — this
war.
Last night was a hard one. I was reading
in bed, and, for lack of anything new, I had
taken up Benson's " Lord of the World" —
more interesting now than when I first read
it. Suddenly I was literally made to jump
[ 56 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
out of bed by a terrible explosion — not in
the direction of the front. I went into the
back of the house and looked out towards
Paris. It was a black night, — no moon, no
stars — and deathly still. I was finally
almost convinced that it was a terrible and
solitary clap of thunder. So I went back to
bed.
Half an hour later came a series of terrific
explosions. So I wrapped up and went out
into the orchard.
I could see the light of a fire in the east,
but not in the direction of Paris, and much
nearer. By this time I heard voices every-
where and knew that other people were up.
There was no doubt what it was, of course
— ammunition works. The morning papers
announce the hand-grenade factory at
Claye destroyed. Pity! We need all our
ammunition.
Of course that meant no sleep for me.
Once I am waked up well, no hope of sleep-
ing again these days.
I am amused at your letter about Jeannette.
Glad you enjoyed her, but rather sorry you
ask for news of her. Alas ! her news is not
good. But here it is. Jeannette could never
be cured of the habits of her youth, — for
which she was not to blame, — nor be recon-
ciled to lack of liberty. As long as she re-
mained, she continued to b-l-lart in the most
heartrending manner if she was left alone.
[ 57 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Amelie had something to do besides sitting
with her, and I grew weary, if ever I sent
Amelie on an errand in the afternoon, of
either listening to her heartbreaking calls, or
taking a book and a camp chair and bearing
her company. When we did not go to her,
she cried and would not eat. So pretty soon
she went dry, — then — she went away, too.
I hope she found Pierre and Paul in the
Happy Hunting Grounds.
It was a pretty sore subject for some time.
But one gets used to everything, and the
other day I asked Amelie how much she got
for Pierre and Paul. "Eighteen francs,"
she replied. Then I made a heartless calcu-
lation. " We paid twelve for Jeannette. We
sold the whole outfit for thirty-five. We
were twenty-three francs to the good plus
experience, a few quarts of milk, and some
fun."
I should not have diverted you with de-
tails like that. You brought it on yourself.
These bucolic diversions do not help us to
forget — nothing can — but they sometimes
ease the strain wonderfully.
Incidentally, — I saw a soldier from one
of the ambulance corps the other day, who
was at Arras when the battle ended after a
month of pretty stiff fighting. He tells me
it is a dead city. It was bombarded in the
early days of 1914. It was bombarded in
July, 1915, and now, through the month of
[ 58 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
May, the battle raged round it. It was a
beautiful and historic city — full of wonder-
ful old buildings. It is now a ruin. But as
the stretcher-bearer said: "Talk about
beauty! I stood in the Petite Place, in the
moonlight, one night, looking toward the
once majestic Hotel de Ville above whose
arch-supported Gothic fagade soared, in
October, 1914, that lofty belfry. All about
me was ruin, and through the broken facade
and falling tower the white moonlight
streamed, making one of the most wonderful
pictures I had ever seen. It was the very
majesty and dignity of desolation. No cen-
turies-old Greek or Egyptian or Roman ruin
ever moved me more deeply. I have been
often in the moonlight to look at the Coli-
seum at Rome, and I could not help wishing
that before that ruin is restored all the world
might see it as I saw it that night. Its dig-
nity, its desolation, and its beauty seemed to
me so symbolic of France of to-day."
[ 59 ]
VII
August 14, /p/7
SORRY to tell you that the weather turned
nasty in the last days of July. The leaves
began to turn brown, to dry, and to fall.
The world already looks like autumn. It
fills me with misgivings for the winter. I
have been putting in wood, in the hope of
having something I can call a fire. I have
been buying wood wherever I could get it.
It is slow work, the wood is queer stuff, —
what the trade calls " benefice des boucher-
ons" — that is to say, gnarled pieces, roots,
big chunks, in fact all the wood not consid-
ered good enough for a respectable wood-
pile, and which dealers do not buy. Need-
less to say that I pay just as much for it as if
it were the neat three-feet-long logs my fire-
place demands.
There is no coal in sight.
However, it is not yet winter. It is indeed
two months before, under usual climatic con-
ditions, I should think of needing fires. Yet,
even to-day I could enjoy a brisk fire in the
evenings, which are more like October than
August.
Don't imagine that I am depressed. I am
[ 60 j
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
not. I am simply, by force of habit, telling
you the truth.
I wonder if a full realization of the situa-
tion over here will ever come to you in the
States. I don't yet see how it can. The
ocean is wide. I know myself how difficult
it is to arrive at an actual conception of a
far-off disaster. But I suppose that, next
year, when every day's newspaper will carry
its list of casualties, you will feel quite differ-
ently from what you do now, and have less
taste for the sight of marching regiments and
bands of music.
Just imagine what France is like to-day.
The north-east is a devastated battle-field.
The rest of the country is spread pretty thick
with factories making war materials. The
fields on which we are depending to live are
being cultivated, short-handed, as best they
can be, by women, children, old men, and war
prisoners. The south and west are over-
crowded with training camps, cantines, hos-
pitals and refugees. It is an inconceivable
situation. One has to see it to realize it.
When one thinks of it seriously, isn't it re-
markable to see how, with the entire able-
bodied male population in the war, the work
of the nation can go on at all? It is not as-
tonishing that we lack things. It is miracu-
lous that we get on at all, and that, once the
army is fed, there is anything left for us
civilians.
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Of course we are not just now seeing any-
thing of the war except in our little ambu-
lance— where to-day they are mostly sick
and convalescents — usually boys slowly
coming back to interest in life from having
been gassed. Our roads are quiet. We
rarely hear more than a dull far-off booming
of guns. It often sounds about as much like
horses kicking in their stalls as anything else.
To be sure we only have to cross the
Marne into Meaux to get a different impres-
sion. For Meaux is a military centre, and
always was. Its huge barracks near the ca-
thedral gave it, even in peace time, a military
aspect. There is to-day a big military hos-
pital in the barracks, which are built quite
round the great sunlit inner court, and cover
an immense tract of ground. In the bar-
racks there is to-day one of the hundreds of
English cantines that the British are running
for the French soldiers. It is conducted by
a group of British ladies, one of them a
cousin of Lord French, a lady older than I
am, who works with all the enthusiasm of a
girl, and with the tact and ability that girls
lack.
These wonderful British women are
among the most interesting things the war
has brought to France. The leaders are
often women — wives and widows of offi-
cers— who have seen Indian service. You
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
know the type of horseback-riding women,
used to adventure and danger, with pluck as
well as charm, slender, nervous, and untiring.
Their cantine at Meaux is a model one.
It serves special regimes for six hundred sol-
diers, provides reading matter, teaches them
sports, takes an interest in them when they
go back to the front, and keeps them fur-
nished with all sorts of comforts.
I wish that you, who have such a respect
for order — you know you always were tire-
somely orderly — could see that huge
kitchen, all freshly painted pale green, with
its wide doors opening into the big sunlit
court, where the soldiers sit about, the
horses are exercised, huge army camions are
lined up, and at the far end of which are the
neat freshly built sheds for the German
prisoners.
There is a great range across the back,
and near the open door there is a reading-
table on which there are always fresh flowers,
and groups of rattan chairs stand around it.
At one side is a tiny dining-room where the
directress of the cantine and her aides eat,
and behind it a room with two stoves where
they make gallons and gallons of tea and
coffee in the biggest urns I ever saw.
The service is no glorious one, I can tell
you. There is nothing picturesque about it.
It is sheer hard work — at times it is almost
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
menial. I am telling you about it, because
I want you to realize what war is demanding
of women to-day.
Every day one of these women gets an
order from the head nurse for a certain
number of soups, a certain number of meat
dishes, so many dishes of specified vege-
tables, etc. This list is written on a big
blackboard fixed on the wall beside the stove,
and at a certain hour the men who distribute
the food come to the kitchen to carry away
the trays. Often the only help they have is
from the convalescent soldiers and German
prisoners. They stand over the hot stoves
themselves, unmindful of complexion or
hands.
Whenever I was there I always felt a
great curiosity regarding the mental proc-
esses of the Germans. I watched their quick
way of working, their silence, their docility,
and, as far as I could see, perfect politeness.
I got the idea in my head that, no matter
what they might say, there was not one of
them, judging by their looks, who did not
rejoice that for him, and probably through
no fault of his, the horrors of war were over.
I knew that one at least of the English ladies
spoke German. So I asked her one day
about them. She replied :
"They are the best, the most civil, the
best disciplined help we have ever had.
They are clean about their work, and abso-
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
lately obedient. There is never any ques-
tion about an order. It is given. It is
executed."
That did not surprise me, but that was not
what I wanted to know. So I put the ques-
tion flatly. " But about the war? Do they
still believe in a victory for Germany?"
"Oh, absolutely," she replied. "They
have no doubt about that. They say quite
freely that they can easily hold out three
years longer; that we may hold them, but
we cannot beat them. There are no two
minds amongst them on that subject. They
even agree so well in their manner of insist-
ing that it almost seems as if they were speak-
ing under orders."
I give you this for what it is worth, only
insisting, since you so often write as if you
in the States had the idea that we were soon
to see Germany break. I often wonder
where you get the idea. Here it looks to us
every year as if Germany were stronger, in-
stead of weaker, as if each year, with her
capacity for obedience and her habits of or-
ganization, she was learning in the war new
ways of safeguarding herself. We never
can get away from that forty years of prepa-
ration, for while we are working so hard to
recover from years of foolish idleness, Ger-
many is no more idle than we are. I have
said this to you before more than once, I am
afraid, and if I keep insisting it is only be-
[ 65 ]
>* JL4
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
cause it seems to me a fatal error to ignore
that fact.
These ladies at Meaux, who have never
before known long hours of manual labour,
great responsibility, and absolute negation of
personal tastes, have nevertheless started to
arrange a night cantine at Meaux.
I may have told you before that Meaux is
strangely lacking in restaurants. In spite of
its historical interest, it is not as much visited
as many other towns less famous. There is
no restaurant of any sort in the station.
There is a common tiuvette at one end where
workmen go to get a drink, but where no
other class would dream of entering. There
is a terrace outside where one can sit down
to drink a lemonade. It is just the most or-
dinary buvette with a zinc counter in front
of a sink for washing glasses, and there is
always a crowd — and a very smelly one —
in front of it. There are a few hotels, only
one fairly good, but they are in the town,
at some distance from the railway station.
Of course Meaux is a great military centre
now. Through its big station pass all the
trains from the front from Verdun to the
north which do not pass over the northern
road to Belgium. Military trains are slow.
Hundreds of men from the huge camp of
permissionaires at Vaires have to change
cars, both coming in and going out, at
Meaux, and often they wait hours to make
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their connection. This wait is more often
than not in the night. It is bitter cold on the
long, covered platform, and there is no
chance to get even a cup of coffee.
So these English ladies are setting up a
night cantine there, to be running from mid-
night to four o'clock, and half the little
group is to be on duty every night, ready to
serve hot tea, coffee, or soup.
I often laugh when I see them, over the
fuss that has been made in my time over the
" eight-hour law " for able-bodied men. Of
course I know that you are going to fling
back at me that women are tougher than
men, even harking back that boy babies
are harder to bring through childhood than
girls. But that has nothing to do with the
question. The real thing is, that if only the
world in its development could aid people
to find work to do that they either loved or
believed in, their hours of labour would not
be the hated slavery they now are to the
mass.
I hope you won't mind my talking so
much about the women in this war. I wish
you could come over here if only to see
them. I feel that there has been nothing
more worth while done in the war than the
work of women of all nations. I know you
women in the States are all working, but to
realize what is being done, one has to see it
over here.
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I imagine we have buried for all time
what has for so many years been known as
the "woman question." It has been a long
and bitter struggle, and so often conducted
on unwise lines. It requires a fanatic to
lead a crusade, and the woman cause has
had its fanatics, — and its martyrs, too.
The beauty of the whole matter is that
woman has won by acts, not words. She
has won by doing a woman's work. Best
of all she has, for all time, given the lie to
the argument that she had no right to the
franchise because in case of a war she could
not protect her country. It has taken a war
to prove the falseness of such an argument,
and to demonstrate that, while women could
not, as a sex, carry a gun into battle, there
was work just as important — real war work
— which she could do, and she has done it
well, in a manner which has compelled man
to bare his head before her, and bend his
knee to her just as devoutly as he ever did
in the days of chivalry, even while he recog-
nized in her a comrade and an equal.
Moreover, when she was needed and cap-
able, she has actually gone into the firing
line, and won and worn her decorations for
the same reasons that men have received
them.
In every branch of war work done by un-
armed men, women have appeared and shown
the same courage and the same unfailing
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
patriotism as men. They have worked for
the cause and died for it without in any way
unsexing themselves. I have seen thousands
of these women, and I give you my word
that among no women I have ever met in my
long life have I found " womanliness " finer
than among the women near the front, every
one of whom was doing work that but for
them an able-bodied man would have had to
stay behind the fighting-line to do.
I hope you have heard about the English
Women's War Auxiliary Corps, made abso-
lutely imperative by the need of more men
before the States came in. These are young
women of all classes, enlisted like men for
the duration of the war, dressed in khaki,
living in camps or cantonnements just like
the men, under exactly the same conditions
as the Tommies, and facetiously called by
their friends " Miss Thomasina Atkins."
The big force of thousands is officered by
women. They live behind the lines under
the same conditions as the men, and do all
sorts of clerical work — post-office, tele-
graph, motor-cycle — in fact everything a
woman can do to liberate a man to carry a
gun.
I have a number of young girl friends in
the corps, dressed in uniform, wearing mili-
tary boots, living a soldier's life of hardship
and discipline. No wonder the suffrage ex-
citement is already ancient history. If war
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does nothing but this for Great Britain, it
has done much. Yet we who are looking on
know already that this is only one of the
great things it has achieved.
This is getting to be a long letter. Never
mind. When things are slow, as they are
now, and I am so shut away that I have no
one to whom I can chatter, no one to theorize
with, I have to clear my brain now and then
by talking at a sheet of paper — just to drive
the haze and confusion out of my mind.
Useless to talk to you across the ocean
about the ever-changing and day after day
more threatening Russian situation. I am
afraid nothing can now stop the fatal trend
of events. For the time — and perhaps for-
ever— we are evidently going to lose Russia.
I wonder if you in the States have the faint-
est idea what this means ? Why, if Germany
succeeds in getting Russia disarmed in the
next few months — well, I dare not even say
to myself all that it seems to me to threaten.
Poor Russian people — such dreamers !
They are not wicked. I do not believe that
they have the faintest conception of the dis-
aster they are preparing for France. Of
course Germany does not yet believe that the
States can put any important fighting force
into France before she fetches off the coup
which will liberate a couple of millions of
soldiers now on her eastern frontiers to
march against us. It is a formidable idea for
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us to face. Well, England put a fighting
army into France in eight months, and had
to bring a large part of it from Canada and
Australia. And, alas! in addition to the
hordes that may come to fling themselves
en masse on us before the States are ready,
you must not forget that the middle-Europe
powers can put nearly a million fresh troops
into the field automatically, each year, from
the classes which reach military age — they
are prolific, those Boche races.
Then, also, no means are too low for them.
When a country is without honour and with-
out shame, its means of increasing savage
purposes is tremendously increased. When
the true history of the Russian debacle is
written, it will add another startling page to
the deathless dishonour of Prussianized Ger-
many. If one stops at nothing, one can,
temporarily, accomplish many things. I am
sure the untiring American war correspond-
ent must have already told you of one of the
methods by which the Germans get some of
the Russians to lay down their arms. How,
having, for days, bombarded a discouraged
army, cut them off from their reinforcements
and their commissary trains by a heavy artil-
lery barrage, reduced by hunger, thirst and
panic, they sent out a flag of truce accom-
panied by wheelbarrows full of a special kind
of bread of which the Russians are fond, and
vodka of which they have been deprived
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since the first year of the war. They fed
and inebriated them when their hope and
power of resistance was at its lowest ebb.
Of course, that is not a very encouraging
sign for the Russian race, but after all, as a
people they are only children; not warriors,
but mystics and dreamers, and know nothing
of international affairs. They have never
known responsibility, so how can they know
honour?
It is a tragic situation for us. But we
must be patient with them, even in our dread
of the consequences. It is that, or throwing
that huge, rich undeveloped country —
which in the future is likely to be the El-
dorado of adventurers, and see a stampede
which will surpass California, or Kimberley,
or the Klondike — into the greedy hands of
Germany. If we cannot prevent that at any
sacrifice, I do not see how Europe — or the
rest of the world for that matter — is going
to escape from the domination of Germany
except after centuries of war. Germany
seems able to fight, and organize and com-
mercially invade, at the same time.
This is why I cannot look forward without
shuddering. Germany expects to settle with
Russia in the next six months. Can the
States be ready then?
Don't imagine I am downhearted. I am
not. But I tell you quite frankly, I am ter-
ribly nervous, and the calm about here just
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
now docs not make me less so. I am sure
that there is not an intelligent person here
who does not know what the result of this
struggle is to be, but it is the realization —
ever)7 month more clear — of all it is going
to cost which keeps our nerves a bit over-
strung.
[ 73 ]
VIII
August 24., 1917
I HAVE had quite an active month, for me.
I have been visiting and I have had com-
pany twice. Rather exciting, isn't it?
Otherwise my life has been as usual: — a
little work in the garden, a weekly visit to
the ambulance, and now and then a call from
some of the convalescent soldiers.
My sweet corn came up wonderfully. I
have been eating it almost every day. But
you should see my French neighbours' sur-
prise at the deed. They raise fodder corn
for their cattle. They never heard of such a
thing as eating any kind of corn. Whenever
they pass the garden while I am gathering
it, they always stop to watch me, and when
I come down the bank swinging the bunch
of ears in my hand, they invariably ask,
"What is Madame going to do with it?"
"Eat it," I reply, opening the husks to
show the golden kernels.
"Pas possible!" is the inevitable exclama-
tion.
You see, if there is one thing which it is
impossible to do, it is to change the habits of
these people. I have cooked the corn, and
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shown them how to eat it. Not they ! They
spit it out. I have induced them to eat corn-
bread, but only when it is made with eggs and
milk, and sweetened. They call it " cake,"
and eat it with relish, but corn-meal mush,
hasty pudding, and things of that sort, which
would relieve the bread question, I have thus
far found impossible for them.
Absolutely nothing happens here. After
three years of war almost every day has be-
come an anniversary day. The other years
it was not so marked — this tendency to look
back — but since we entered the fourth year,
it seems as though every one had the same
idea. It is constantly, " three years ago to-
day " such and such a thing happened. First
it was Liege which was on every one's tongue.
Then it was Mons, and so on down the
memories of that opening month of war.
We are already prepared to celebrate, at the
Cathedral at Meaux, and by a pious pilgrim-
age to the graves on the plain, the third
anniversary of the victory of the Marne, a
victory which seems to gain in importance
each year, and which marked the end of the
open field battles and inaugurated the try-
ing trench warfare. Even when the war is
over, I imagine there will have been nothing
to dim the importance of this battle.
In the meantime the weather is annoying,
id we have to support it with what patience
can, and try our best not to dread the
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
winter. It is like late autumn already. I
should so love a blazing fire in the evening.
As it is impossible, I go into my cozy bed
early and read.
We watch, as well as the reticence of our
little newspapers will let us, the terribly slow
and costly gnawing into the German lines —
it looks about an inch a day — of the French
north of Verdun, and the English east of
Ypres. Now and then we get a thrilling
story from some point on the line, like that
of the taking of Cote 70 by the Canadians
on the fifteenth, which nearly accomplished
the encircling of Lens.
Quiet as we are here, we live under the
obsession of the thing going on " out there,"
knowing that every hour is marked by its
acts of personal heroism in a struggle so
gigantic that the individual no longer counts,
and acts of bravery are only valuable as giv-
ing tone and colour to the entire Allied effort
in a war where Man has simply surpassed
himself.
I do hope that you are reading John
Buchan's "History of the War." It will
help you to understand many things about
which I have not been able to write you. It
is not, of course, the final word. Where so
much is concealed, the final word cannot be
said until much later. But it is a sane and a
calm effort, and it helps one wonderfully.
I refuse the bait your last letter holds out.
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As long as I can resist it, I will not talk about
the political situation. For over a hundred
and fifty years we have made a sort of fetich
of what we call "the people." Well, the
justice of that idea is on trial now, and while
I consider that what looks disastrous at pres-
ent is really in the logical march of develop-
ment, I confess that the situation is grave.
Any effort to curb the movement now would
be a direct attack on liberty — liberty of
speech, liberty of opinion. In the advance
of the world " there is no backward step, no
returning," though sometimes ideas that have
served their purpose do get sloughed off, and
progress goes on without them.
The pitiful thing about this war is — I sup-
pose it is true of all wars for an idea — that
the bravest and worthiest have died — the
cream of the younger cultured class, the best
of the youth from the farming districts and
fishing stations of Brittany. The cultivator
has always been the backbone of France.
The workingman has always been the agi-
tator. The young farmers are all in the
fighting regiments. The workmen are in the
factories and on the railroads, and it is the
latter class which predominates in the social-
ists, and has a taste for being " agin the
government." The farmers are filling sol-
diers' graves, along with the students and the
aristocracy. The workingman is filling his
pockets and talking. It is a new proof-
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
if one were needed — of the vitality of
France, the home of real liberty, where it is
difficult to muzzle anyone, that things are
not worse than you choose to think them.
Let that satisfy you. It has to satisfy us.
Besides if you will find any war, in any coun-
try, and in any century, in which some one
did not get rich, from the days of conquest,
even before the great William of Normandy,
down to wars for an idea, like our own Civil
War, I should dearly love to hear about it.
Well, my one English-speaking friend,
who lives over the hill on the other side of
the Grande Morin, is preparing again to re-
turn to the States. You may remember that
she left here before the battle of the Marne,
and returned, to my great joy, the following
summer. She has a little daughter, and this
is no place for a child who can be taken out
of such an atmosphere. It leaves me less
isolated, in a certain sense, than I was in
1914, for, in three years, my French neigh-
bours have all been drawn closer around
me by our common interests and common
troubles. Be sure that I am not, and never
have been at all, lonely, even though I am
now and then nervous, as who is not? Your
letters do not give the impression that you
are absolutely calm.
IX
September 4, 70/7
SINCE I last wrote, I have been travelling.
I have been to Versailles for a week-end. I
can hear you laughing. Well, I assure you
that it was no laughing matter. The days
have gone by when we used to just run out to
Versailles for a few hours in the afternoon.
It took me five hours and a half from my
door to my destination, just at the entrance
of the park, by the Grille de Neptune. It
was a real voyage, and the first one I have
made, — if you except those to Paris, —
since the war broke out.
I went up to Paris by the five o'clock train,
to escape the heat of mid-day. That train,
which is the only one we have in these days
which is not strictly a way-train, only makes
two stops between Esbly, where I change to
the main line, and Paris, instead of the seven
the other trains make, and I expected, at the
latest, to be in Paris by half-past six, with
just time to get a bite, and take the twenty-
five minutes past seven train for Versailles,
and get there by half-past eight, before dark.
No one likes to travel after dark if it can
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
be avoided — dark trains, dimly lighted sta-
tions, no porters, and few cabs, yftu know.
From the beginning all my plans miscar-
ried. The train to Paris stopped and was
side-tracked three times. Once we waited
fifteen minutes, so that it was half-past seven
when I arrived, and I missed my train for
Versailles, and had to wait until nearly nine
o'clock. There were not half a dozen pas-
sengers in the train, and it was already nearly
dark when it pulled out. The familiar little
hour's ride was as strange as though I had
never made it. The train stopped every-
where. All the stations were dark as pos-
sible, and therefore unrecognizable. It was
a queer sensation to run along beside a plat-
form in the still early darkness, see a door
open from the ticket office, a woman, with a
mobilization band round her left arm and a
small cap on her head, come out in the nar-
row stream of light from the half opened
door, and stand ready, while perhaps one
person got out and no one got in, to blow
her little whistle for the train to go ahead,
while I strained my eyes to catch somewhere
the name of the station, and never once did it.
If anyone had told me that anything so
familiar could be so unfamiliar I would not
have believed it.
The result was that instead of getting to
Versailles at half-past eight, when I was
expected, I got there at ten. There was no
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
way of sending word — no telephonic com-
munication is possible, and telegrams take
often forty-eight hours for the shortest
distances.
At Versailles the porter was a quarter of
an hour finding a cab, so I arrived at my
destination; a strange house, whose noble
staircase was pitch-dark — and I had no
electric lamp in my pocket — the concierge
in bed, and very cross at being wakened, and
I groped my way in the strange house up
three flights of stairs to find my hostess lying
awake and worrying. You see there is one
thing to be said for these war times, — the
very smallest effort one makes becomes an
exciting adventure — else what would I have
to write you about?
I never saw Versailles more beautiful.
The house in which I visited had a balcony
overlooking the bassin de Neptune. The
situation was ideal, not only for its beautiful
outlook and its wonderful afternoon lights,
but because of the ease with which one could,
in five minutes, walk up to the top of that
glorious terrace, on the park side of the
palace, and look down that superb vista over
the tapis vert to the glistening canal beyond,
and also because I could sit on a balcony
overlooking the street and that part of the
park, and enjoy such a picturesque and chang-
ing scene as the Versailles of our days has
never known.
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The town was full of training camps,
cantonnements, and cantines. Soldiers of
all nations, all colours, all divisions, and all
grades pass in and out the Park gates all
day. The tower of Babel could have been
nothing to what the Park of Versailles was
that Sunday that I was there. There were
Americans and British, — Canadians, Austral-
ians, Egyptians, Indians, — there were French
and Senegalese, and Moroccans; there were
Serbs and Italians; there were Portuguese
and Belgians and Rastas, and alas! there
were a few Russians, for there are millions
of them just as ashamed of what is happen-
ing out in the east as we are, and just as sad
over it. There were blacks and whites, yel-
lows and reds and browns. There were chic
officers, some of them on leave, still sporting
their pantalons rouges, and much braided
kepis. There were slouching poilus in their
baggy trousers and ill-fitting coats, and smart
English Tommies, and broad-hatted Yanks,
looking as if they wished they could go coat-
less and roll up their sleeves — it was a hot
day — instantly distinguishable from the
wide-hatted Australians and Canadians.
Nothing was handsomer than the Italians
with their smart, half-high hats, or more
amusing than the Belgians' little tassels of all
colours jigging from the front of their head
covering. All day that picturesque crowd
passed in and out of the park, with crowds
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of women and children and all sorts of
civilians.
Just opposite the balcony where we sat
was a shop where they sold all sorts of sou-
venirs of the town — and post cards. From
morning till night the crowd stopped there,
and it seemed to me that pictures of Ver-
sailles must be going over the world, and
surely to many places that had never heard
of it before. I could not help thinking of
the beginnings of culture that all these people
must be unconsciously taking in at the pores,
— at least I hoped there were. Many of the
boys from the States, who in the ordinary
course of normal life could never have hoped
to see the place, and who are able to appre-
ciate it and love it, will at least have that
much to the good — among many other
things — when they go home.
Of course the palace is hermetically closed.
It has to be. All the same, I did wish that
some of the American boys, who had never
crossed the big pond before, could have seen
it. However, for actual eye satisfaction the
outside of the big palace and its parks is
more important. I only regretted the in-
terior because I longed for them to have it
all.
It was wonderful how gay the crowd was,
and how well the soldiers behaved, and how
interested they all were in the children. The
interest seemed mutual. I '11 warrant there
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is not a child in Versailles who does not know
every uniform on sight, or who does not
recognize every nationality and every grade.
I only saw our boys at a distance as they
came and went. But my hostess, who is liv-
ing in Versailles for the summer and autumn,
not only meets and talks with them on days
when the park is not so thronged as it is on
Sundays, she has them sitting by her fireside
to drink tea. She tells me that some of
them are terribly homesick. They miss their
women-folks, and their young girl friends.
That is perfectly natural, for the comrade-
ship between young men and women in the
States is a sort of relation which no other
people have or understand. Even homesick-
ness which will be forgotten as soon as they
are actively " in it " is, I am told, doing them
good. It may console all of you on the other
side of the water to know that the boys speak
of "home" as probably none of you ever
heard them speak, and say "mother" in a
tone quite new to them. So there is gain in
all things.
I did not care to go into the park in the
crowd. It was much more interesting to
watch the moving throng from my high gal-
lery seat, and to wander about the park in
the early morning, when it was practically
empty. That is a chance one rarely gets
unless one is staying there. You have no
idea how lovely it looks then, and one can
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
wander at will, and every turn is a new pic-
ture, all the more beautiful for lacking fel-
low creatures in modern clothes. I never see
it, as I saw it one breezy morning, when
there seemed to be only us two about, with-
out feeling a debt of gratitude to Louis XIV,
great builder that he was. It is a debt that
accumulates. Even Republican France can
afford to be grateful to him, and forgive his
faults for the sake of the grandeur he con-
ferred on them, and which no republic can
ever dare to imitate out of the country's
purse.
I wish you, who know the park so well,
could see it this year. There are no flowers.
Some of the pines and cedars on the terraces
are neglected — the number of gardeners is
insufficient for all the work — and in some of
the more primitive parts of the park the trees
need trimming. Instead of flowers there are
vegetables planted everywhere. All the
flower beds surrounding the grass plots are
planted with potatoes and beans and simple
garden stuff. As the French gardener is in-
capable of doing anything ugly, these beds
of vegetables are laid out just as carefully as
if the choicest flowers from the serres were
there; each bed has its label, carefully
placed, to indicate the variety, bearing the
words, " Planted for Ambulance No. ."
Isn't that a pretty idea?
Several of the fountains were being re-
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paired the morning we walked there alone,
and one of them was playing, just as if for
us. It was delightful to be walking along
a shady alley, with the thick carpet of dry
leaves rustling under foot, and stirring all
one's memories of the historic days of the
ancient regime, and to see suddenly at the
end of the vista a jet of water rise into the
air, and the autumn breeze shake it into
spray. Ordinarily on days when such a sight
is possible, a great crowd prevents one from
realizing that it is beautiful as well as spec-
tacular, and the same crowd and its move-
ment drives away the spectres of the past.
It was lucky I made this brief visit. If I
had not, I don't know what I could have writ-
ten to you about. It is the same old story of
patient waiting, — of trying realization that
we are all used to of the slow movement and
the meagre results. The Allies are holding
the beast by the throat out there, and it
begins to look as if that were about all that
could be done until the boys from the States
are ready to go in and choke him. After all,
it is a pretty big job — and the beast dies
hard. I am afraid he does not yet realize
that he is being choked. All I pray is that
he does not get away, and make another
bound. Not that it will matter except to
make us all mad.
[ 86 ]
X
October 4,
SEPTEMBER was not a bad month, except
that it led us nearer to the winter, which I
frankly dread. In two weeks it will be time
to light up the fires, not for the cheer to my
eyes, but from actual necessity, — and I've
no fuel.
Already the garden is faded. The only
things still flowering are a few brave roses,
zinnias, and Indian pinks. Everything else
has been either cut back, or taken up.
I have done nothing this month — except
the usual thing, studying a map of the front,
or wondering at what date Germany will
choose to fling the concentrated forces the
Russian debacle put at her disposal against
us. You seem to have not the smallest idea
of this possibility, since I note in your last
letter your remark " that Germany is in a
shocking state, and must break soon." I
wonder where you get that impression, and
wait for the moment sure to come, when your
eyes will be opened to the truth, — that time
serves Germany as well as it serves us; that
if we are stronger to-day than we were in
1914, so is she; and that not until the States
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
can actually put fighting men into the line is
there any hope of our doing more than we
have done so far — hold the Boche.
Please God the time does not come when
we cannot.
Since I last wrote you I have made two
trips across the Marne to Juilly, to visit the
American hospital. Many of the nurses over
there have been very neighbourly since, nearly
two years ago, after the first offensive in
Champagne, two of them led Colonel Pelle-
tier over here one dreary rainy day to call.
He is General Pelletier to-day. He gave his
right arm to his country in that autumn fight
of 1915, and you may know him by name in
the States, as he was the first man to greet
General Pershing when he landed in France.
He speaks English as well as we do, — the
case with so many colonial officers. Ever
since that afternoon I have had a sort of sen-
timent for Juilly. The nurses and doctors
have been rather neighbourly, but I have
never got up the energy to return their nice
visits. I liked the idea, that, not far away,
men and women of my race were working for
France, at a place that I could almost see
from my lawn. I can actually, on a clear
day, see Monge, the last town passed on the
road to Juilly.
It was not until I had two reasons to push
me that I made up my mind to go to Juilly.
First, Mademoiselle Henriette, whose
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service in our ambulance had deprived her
of all recreation, was anxious to see a big
modern war hospital, and I had it in my
power to gratify her.
Second, I had an old friend — a priest —
who is a professor in the College de Juilly,
part of which has been given up to the hos-
pital. This Abbe, not unknown in Boston,
— he once taught there, — had marched
away, with a gun on his shoulder, in the days
of September, 1914, but later, being deli-
cate, it was decided that he was more useful
as a teacher than as a poilu, and he sadly
took off his tunic and resumed his soutane.
The first visit led logically to the second.
Mademoiselle Henriette talked so much in
our modest little ambulance at Quincy of all
the wonders she had seen at Juilly, that our
Medicin-Chef, a clever Russian, was anxious
to see it, and I returned to introduce him and
the directress of the ambulance, who is the
wife of our Mayor. I made both visits in-
side of ten days.
You will begin to think that I am always
gadding. Well, it has been rather exciting
for the old lady these last weeks. I am
afraid that I was getting garden-bound, just
as the army is getting trench-bound, and, as
ruling passions are strong in death, in spite
of myself, my visits to Juilly took on a sort
of before-the-war historical-research spirit.
The College de Juilly, which has given
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up its dormitories to the hospital, is an his-
torical university founded by the Orateriens,
and situated in one of the most extensive and
picturesque parks in the department of the
Seine and Marne. It was in that college that
Stuart kings of England educated their male
offspring. There the Duke of Monmouth,
the over-ambitious and popular, beloved son
of Charles II, who made an almost success-
ful attempt to crowd his uncle off the throne,
was brought up, and there, also, the most
brilliant son of James II, — the Duke of Ber-
wick— whose mother, Arabella Churchill,
was a sister of the great Duke of Marl-
borough, got his education, to which he did
much honour. Perhaps it was a pity that he
was the illegitimate son. English literature
would have lost much of the romance that
Charles Edward and Bonnie Prince Charlie
inspired, but then also there would have been
no German blood in the English reigning
family. But perhapses are stupid.
We went out the first time in a rickety
taxi-auto, furnished by the woman at Meaux
who had taken me out on the battle-field in
December, just after the battle of the Marne.
We went by way of Mareuil, through
Meaux, to take a Senegalese, who had been
nursed in our hospital, back to his depot, and
from there, by the route Senlis, across the
battle-field, towards Supplets, where it began
on September fifth.
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It was a lovely day — sunny, under a pale
blue sky, silent, with just a puffy little breeze.
The roads were deserted, as we ran along
through the wide fields. The only signs of
life were the big ploughs turning up the
ground for the winter wheat planting, —
huge ploughs drawn by four and sometimes
six great white oxen, moving slowly in the
foreground, in the middle distance, and sil-
houetted on the hilltops against the sky-line,
guided by tall, sturdy, blond youths, in white
blouses, with a red band about their round
caps — German prisoners. Their air was as
placid as that of the big oxen they were driv-
ing, and the glance they turned on us, as we
joggled by in our shaky taxi-cab, was as
mildly indifferent as that of their beasts.
There was no one in sight to guard them —
there was no need. I am told that, as a rule,
they have no desire to escape — that is to
say, the common soldiers have not. With
the officers it is different. Many of them
would get away if they could on account of
their careers. But the common soldiers are
good workers. They are treated well. The
fields of France are better than the trenches
and butchery.
I am not going to describe the hospital for
you. Don't think it. You, with your fifty-
page Sunday newspapers, and your number-
less magazines, get all of that sort of thing
which is good for you.
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I am afraid that Henriette was even more
impressed by the nurses and the orderlies
and the stretcher-bearers than she was by
the wonders of the hospital equipment. She
thought the American girls " so handsome,
and so smart," and they were, — but, most
of all, at tea in the huge white refectory, she
was impressed by the cameraderie between
the men and women, as they sat together
over their tea. She had never seen anything
like that before in all her life. She thought
it charmingi — wished the French could ar-
rive at it, — and declared the American
women the luckiest in the world, and I sup-
pose that she is not far wrong.
Some time in the future I shall take you to
Juilly. You will not see poilus done up in
bandages, or walking on crutches in the
winding streets of the old village, or lying on
their mattresses in the sun in the gardens,
or sitting about in the park. You will not see
the pretty picture which we saw from the win-
dow of the Abbe's study — a white-robed,
white-coifed nurse, sitting on the pedestal
of the tall statue of Sainte Genevieve, with
her white-shod feet sticking straight out in
front of her, and her young head bent over
a writing-pad, while the setting sun flecked
the white figures with shadows from the
moving leaves of the big trees about her. I
felt as if a sculptor ought to do her as sym-
bolic. Monsieur I' Abbe remarked, " She
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ought to be writing verses, but I presume she
is only writing home." I felt myself that
the home letter was more appropriate, and
felt it a pity that the home people could not
have seen the picture — the tired young
nurse, perhaps just escaped from the operat-
ing-room (into which I had been allowed to
peep, because the doctor I had hoped to see,
and one of the nurses whose visit I was re-
turning, were there, done up in gauze, and
unrecognizable, — ), to write home in the
beautiful, stately, historic park, at the feet
of the patron saint, whose faith had turned
back the Hun of ancient times, and whose
Paris the poilus of to-day defend. But,
though you will not see that, you are sure to
find many reminders of the war days, in ad-
dition to the portrait of the well-known
American woman who founded and sustains
this great hospital, and which will for all
time hang there, with the portraits of the
great men whose names have been associated
with the college since its foundation. The
great park, the wonderful library, the fa-
mous Salle des Bustes, the charming dining-
room with its carved wood walls and heavily
carved doors, and the terraced park, with its
noble trees and historic associations, will be
all the more attractive because it has been
the scene of a fine American effort, because
American doctors and American nurses have
for three years already paced its hall, keep-
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ing vigil by night and day, and rested their
tired nerves in the peaceful alleys of great
trees, adding their mite — and one of the
noblest — not only to the history of the place,
but to the cementing of the entente. I speak
of the Americans, but the nurses are not all
American. There are British, Canadians,
and Australians, and there are Belgians and
French, and I don't know how many nations
represented in the personnel of the hospital.
And as they have served the civilian popu-
lation as part of their work, Juilly will never
again be just the sort of place it was before
the war, — for that matter, no place over
here will.
We made our return by a shorter route,
through Trilbardou, and across the Marne
at He de Villenoy, into Esbly. The bridge
across the Marne was one of those destroyed
in September, 1914. The old bridge was of
stone. The new one is a temporary one of
wood — not wide enough for two teams to
pass. It is in the form of a broken letter Z,
so that when entering on one side it is im-
possible to see whether or not the bridge is
free. There should be a guard there. Once
there was, but there was none that day. It
is not a frequented road. So as we made
the first turn on the bridge, we found our-
selves face to face with a red cart drawn by
a tiny donkey. The donkey could not be
backed, — anyway, he was further across
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the bridge than we were, — so we had to
back off, and let him pass. It was rather a
ticklish operation, but easier with an auto
than it would have been with a horse.
The second visit was rather a repetition
of the first, except that the doctor took us
over in his car, and we went much more
quickly, and that we had two little adven-
tures en route.
The first was laughable, in a way. You
know there is no real hunting season any
more, and the fields are full of game. Part-
ridges and pheasants run about fearlessly.
They have forgotten the gun. Perhaps they
know that Man has too much else to do with
guns to bother them. It is very pretty to see
the partridges running in the fields, and not
flying often, when one is quite on them, —
though it is such a menace to the crops. But
it was a hare that we started just out of
Meaux. It was going to cross the road when
we rounded a corner. I think it could have
made the other side, but it did not try. In-
stead, it started down the road ahead of us
to race the car. We were going about thirty
miles an hour, and the hare beat us for ten
minutes — gaining all the time — until he
got courage to side jump, and disappear in
the field. I never would have believed a
hare could make that pace, if I had not seen
him do it.
The second adventure was tragic.
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Just as we came in sight of Monge we saw
a smashed aeroplane lying in the field to the
south, not far from the road. We slowed
down long enough to make sure that it was
deserted. We knew it was a recent accident,
as there was no one near. It was a French
plane, for one broken wing displayed the tri-
coloured rosette. There was no one in sight
when we reached it but a white-bloused Ger-
man prisoner driving an ox-team in the field
on the other side of the road; but as we put
on speed again, we saw, coming towards us
in a cloud of dust, a French military car,
and as it approached we saw French officers
standing, looking off, ready to spring, and
knew that they were seeking for the machine.
We hurried away, to learn on arriving at
Juilly, ten minutes later, that the accident
had been seen from the upper ward windows,
and that the ambulance had been out, and
brought back the two men — both dead.
Things like that do not upset one to-day
as they once did. But all the time I was
walking through the hospital, talking to the
pojlus, I had the dead aviators on my mind.
It did seem so pitiful to have fallen to death
over the peaceful sunny fields of their be-
loved France, under the bovine eyes of a
German prisoner. To die in an air battle is
a different thing from dying like that, and
I could not but pity them, little as death
seems pitiful to me to-day.
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While I write all this — I think of the
battle in Flanders, and of all that France is
enduring and must endure in the reforming
of her republicanism. Be sure she can do it.
All the pacifist disturbances have only shown
her the necessity, and meanwhile the world
at large is learning how to judge a nation by
the results of its efforts and not by the acts
of its individuals. I suppose those who be-
lieve that the beauty of life lies in the strug-
gle are right, but the trying part for me is
that it looks so much finer in history than it
does in the doing. That is probably because
I have not a great and calm mind.
[ 97 ]
XI
October 10, 70/7
I HAVE just come back from Paris. I
went up to see what could be done to amelio-
rate the situation for the winter. We are to
have almost no fuel. If I can keep a fire
going in the kitchen and manage a wood fire
for evenings in the salon, it will be about all
I can do. But I have laid in, by luck, some
petrole — taken over from a friend who is
going to return to the States, — so I have put
in two petrole stoves — one to heat the break-
fast-table, and one upstairs, beside my type-
writer, so that I can write in moderate com-
fort. It is not a healthy heat — but it is all
I can do.
Everything is calm here, in spite of the
battle going on in the north, and all the polit-
ical excitement in Paris.
I am sure that the American papers are
giving you all the details of the excitement
stirred up by Leon Daudet. I can only hope
he has not gone off half-cocked. The papers
give us no clue to the facts of the case. Un-
luckily, in all three of the principal books
which Daudet has published since the war
broke out, — all rich reading, — he has been
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so unbridled in his attacks on so many promi-
nent people, — literary, mondial, and politi-
cal, — that I can't help trembling. The sort
of attack he has often made on people about
whom I know something does not inspire me
with unquestioning confidence, although I
know that almost anyone put under the
microscope might give some such record as
Daudet gets with his humorous, often ugly,
southern temperament. No one questions
Daudet's patriotism, although he is an un-
qualified royalist, — but then, every one has
always known that. It is the policy of his
paper. However, if the hearings — now
secret — are over and the most dangerous,
as well as one of the most brilliant, un-
scrupulous and wicked men in Paris, — is
caught in the net, I shall feel that the ex-
citement, unfortunate and untimely as it is,
has been worth while. I cannot help feeling
that, in a sense, this is only the third act of
the Calmette-Caillaux affair which preceded
the war, in which Calmette was killed — the
first of his party " mort pour la Patrie" as
much as if he had been killed on the battle-
field. I suppose there is no such audacious
man in France as Joseph Caillaux. But
whether he is innocent enough to escape
always is the question.
It is rather a pity that France should have
to operate upon this ulcer in war-time. But
the sore has been gathering for a good while,
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and I suppose the sooner it is attended to
in a public clinic the better for the country,
— army, government, public service and all.
It will probably empty out a lot of people
whom public life — or life at all — will not
know any longer. You can't deny that it
takes a plucky nation to gather round an
operating-table at such a time — if they do,
and I believe they will.
The streets of Paris are full of American
boys in khaki, sombreros, and new tan gai-
ters, and all behaving as if they were here
for a sort of glorification. In a sense it is a
big adventure for them, and for some it will
be " the big adventure " — to come over the
sea, all dressed up in new uniforms, to walk
about the streets of Paris, before going on
" out there." No one blames them for en-
joying it, any more than any one blames
them for looking rather like the supers in
a Charlie Frohman border drama. In fact
every one likes them, just as they are, and
the French are quite daft about them. It is
a case of " love at first sight," only I am told
that boys arriving after this are not likely to
see Paris until they come back from uout
there."
On my return trip from Paris I met a
young officer from the Pacific coast, who, in
the course of conversation, said to me : " It
is odd. These people do not look a bit like
us. They don't speak our language. I speak
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very little of theirs. But somehow they are
like us. I felt at home with them at once,
and every day I feel more at home. I don't
know why it is — can't explain it."
So you see not all the boys are homesick,
as I feared they were.
Speaking of them — the other day a young
French officer, who is in the aviation corps
in a camp near St. Nazaire, and who belongs
to the fleet which goes out to meet the Ameri-
can transports coming into a French port,
told me that his first westward flight to pro-
tect the incoming American troops was one
of the most thrilling days of his life. I got
quite excited myself listening to his descrip-
tion of the flight over the submarine zone to
meet the fleet, flying so low that he could see
the khaki-clad lads, in their life belts, packed
on the decks, waving their caps in the air,
and imagined he could hear their shouts of
"Five la France/"
I don't seem to be able to write about any-
thing to-day but " our boys."
As for that, every one talks about them,
and when any of the people here see them
passing on the grande route, you would
surely think, to hear the jabbering about it,
that they had brought the " Glory of the
Lord" with them. I hope they have.
Some of their experiences in getting our
men acclimated are funny enough. For ex-
ample, the friend with whom I make my
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home in Paris is an unofficial u aunt" to any
number of American lads, the sons of her old
friends and otherwise. The other day she
had as an unexpected guest to dinner a
youngster from the flying corps. I went out
to buy a few things to supplement a war re-
past up to the appetite of a healthy boy, and
he went along with me to carry the bundles.
We ended in a cake-shop — they are not
shut yet — one of the prettiest in a smart
quarter, and I made a collection of things
which I thought a boy with a sweet tooth
would like, and could not get in camp.
When I went to the desk to pay, the cashier
mentioned the sum, but she added : " Mon-
sieur has been eating cakes?"
Instinctively I said " No," to look round
and find him with his mouth full, and another
dainty poised at his lips.
" How many? " I asked with a laugh.
"How many what?"
" How many cakes have you eaten?"
"These little things with petticoats? I
don't know. Three or four." I nodded to
the cashier. She mentioned the price, and,
as I paid it, he simply shouted: "What?
You are not going to pay for those piffling
little things? Why at home we always
sample these things in a shop."
" But you are not at home," I replied.
" We '11 discuss it outside," and in the street
I explained the French cake-shop system to
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him, to his deep amusement. He had only
been in Paris twenty-four hours, — it was his
first visit, and this was his first appearance in
a cake-shop. He could not get over the " ab-
surdity," as he called it.
Many of the boys down in the camps near
Chalons have had the same difficulty in mas-
tering French ideas and traditions regarding
fruit hanging on trees.
You know the American boy's point of
view regarding fruit in our land, where or-
chards are big. It is half the fun of being a
boy. If the farmer catches the young ma-
rauders at work he chases them with whip
and bad words, or exercises his skill in throw-
ing stones. Boys put their thumbs to their
noses, give the traditional waggle with their
fingers, and cut for it.
Here in France it is a crime to steal fruit,
a crime for which one can be arrested, im-
prisoned, or fined — and the law is enforced.
Until the harvest is over one cannot even
pick up an apple from the ground to which
it has fallen from a tree overhanging the
road, without risk of being punished. At
a certain date, fixed by the commune, the
town-crier beats his drum and announces the
harvest over, and after that date, fruit not
harvested can be picked up.
Of course the American boys had never
heard of this when they came. They know
all about it now. Some of them have had
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the fact very forcibly impressed on their
minds, to their deep disgust.
"What," exclaimed one youngster, "we
have come over to fight for these people,
and they won't let us pick up an apple?
What rot! " And it was just there that one
young American had it emphatically brought
home to him that he had not come over here
to " fight for these people," but to fight for
his own liberty, and that " these people " had
really been fighting for him for three years,
and he must hurry up and get ready to " go
in it" before "these people" were too ex-
hausted. I suppose it is absurd to put it that
way, because they are far from done up yet,
although if there were not something almost
superhuman in them, they would be.
Here we have been occupied, all of us, in
seeing what could be done to dress the chil-
dren for school this winter.
It is going to be a hard winter.
Many of these serious, thrifty women have
larger families than you think. We have
over sixty families in the commune who have
more than three children. There is one at
Joncheroy of eight, the oldest only twelve —
and three pairs of twins. They run together
in summer, a dirty, gay, barelegged, bare-
footed troop, each in one ragged garment,
doing their little chores, picking up brush-
wood and dragging it home, with the tiniest
tot trotting after them. But when school be-
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gins, according to the French school regula-
tions, they must be cleaned and combed, and
shod, and I assure you they always are. But
it is hard work. Of course the French tra-
dition that puts all public school children
into the uniform black aprons is a great help.
In the three years since the war broke out
many of these women have had to spend
their savings. Many of them, with that
French love of owning land of which I have
written you, have invested their savings in
that way. A great many of them own an
extra house which they rent for 150 fr. to
250 fr. a year. But no rents have been paid
since the war began, and they can't eat their
houses, and would die before they would
sell. These are things that don't show on
the surface, and no one complains. How
can they when the refugees we always have
with us emphasize the fact that we who have
not lost our homes are lucky. So it was only
when it was time for the school to open that
it was discovered how many children had no
shoes, and the communal caisse de bienfai-
sance nearly empty. However, the Ameri-
cans came to our assistance, and the children
went to school.
Our food problem is going to be a hard
one. So far as I am personally concerned it
is better than it was last year, for I have a
greater variety of vegetables and plenty of
apples, and there again the women of the
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States have generously helped with con-
densed milk for the children and old people
and with large quantities of rice and prunes
and sugar and such things. So you see that
far away as I am from you in this quiet place
where we are always looking at the war, I
can still bear witness that the loving hearts
in the States are ever on the watch for our
needs. If it is more blessed to give than to
receive — and I know it is — there must be
many in the States who are happy in these
days of giving with both hands and full
hearts.
Tell me, — over there, are you all for-
getting, as we are, how it used to be before
this war came? One thing I know, people
who expect when this is over to come back to
the France of before the war are going to be
mightily disillusioned. The France of the
old days is gone forever. I believe that all
over the world it will be the same. We none
of us shall get back to that, but I have faith
to believe that we are turning our faces
towards something much better. If we are
not, then all the great sacrifice has been in
vain.
It is getting cold and late, so this must
answer for to-day.
I hope this time I have talked about our
boys enough to suit you, though I am sure
you will always be calling for " more."
[ 106 ]
XII
November I, 1917
IT would be laughable, if it were not
tragic, for me to recall how many times in
the last thirty-nine months I have said " these
are the worst days of the war." Well, each
month takes a step forward in endurance,
and each step forward bears witness to what
we can endure, if we must. Possibly the
future holds worse, but we don't know it.
The desertion of Russia tries our patience
even here in this quiet place. What must it
be like " out there"? Of course the Allies
have got to show great indulgence to Russia
— it is that, or flinging the nation — with its
great territory, undeveloped resources and
future wealth — into the hands of Germany.
As it is, we can't do much except be patient
with them — and arrange the matter after
we get through licking Germany.
Though I know, as I have known from
the first, that we were going to do it, I don't
deny that I study the map to-day with a nerv-
ous dread of what is before us on the road.
It becomes us to do that. I own to trembling.
Why not? We've got the first results of
the Russian downfall — the terrific drive on
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Italy, and the loss of all they won in the
spring — just so much work to do over
again.
Don't imagine for one moment that I think
that these things are disastrous. I don't.
But there is no use denying that they are —
unfortunate, and that the loss of so many
men, so much material, and worst of all, the
methods by which it is done, are mightily
upsetting. It stirs still deeper the pacifist
sets and the cowards — and cowardice has
no race. It sets the socialists running amuck.
It disturbs the army, of course, and that's
the worst of it. But can you wonder? I
repeat what I wrote you in a recent letter,
which you evidently had not received when
you wrote the one now before me — received
yesterday, and dated October 5th, — about
the time I must have been writing to you of
my visit to Juilly, — that the political up-
heaval is not so important as you seem to
fear.
Anyway, it has comic opera episodes.
Here is one.
Leon Daudet, who, if he did not open the
ball, led the most important figure in the
dance, having dealt out domiciliary visits to
a number of prominent politicians, in true
revolutionary spirit, got the same thing
wished on him. In a counter attack he was
accused of preparing a royalist plot to over-
throw the republic. Of course, it never has
[ '08 ]
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been any secret that he would, if he could.
He does not love the present republic. Lots
of honest French people don't. Amelie
does n't. She is more royalist than the king.
But though Leon Daudet is no respecter of
accepted reputations, and has no bump of
reverence, he is no fool, and he is a far too
loyal Frenchman, and too ardently anxious
for an Allied victory, to undertake any such
stupid and impossible thing as a " restora-
tion," in these days of desperate fighting.
The accusation against him took the form
of the statement that a depot of arms des-
tined to put a royalist party in fighting trim
was found in his office. The depot of arms
was proved to be one of those ornamental
panoplies in which men delight as a decora-
tion. This contained — among other things
— five revolvers of various patterns, a dag-
ger in a sheath, two harmless weapons
marked as souvenirs of a royalist plot of
other days — perhaps that of Deroulede in
the time of Felix Faure's death — two coup
de poing Americain, and half a dozen old
pistolets of ancient history — a pretty arma-
ment to equip royalist conspirators in these
days of the soixante-qulnze and the hand-
grenade. Writers of comic opera ought to
take notice. Paris laughed, and so would
an audience. One thing is sure. Daudet has
scored the first laugh. It looks as if he
would score something more serious. We
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may see a procession of men whose faces
have been more or less familiar to the pub-
lic, and whose names are not unknown in
New York, up against a wall at Vincennes,
with a firing squad in front of them. I for
one hope so, for the good of the future.
XIII
November 26, 1917
HERE we are, almost into December; one
could have no doubt of it, it has been so
cold, and I have absolutely no real fuel. We
have actually done what little cooking there
is over a fire of chips. Did you ever try to
do that? I suppose you have when you
camped out. That is a different thing. I 'd
adore to have you see Amelie. She arrives
with her felt shoes — high ones — in her
sabots. She has a knitted bolero over her
wrapper, a long knitted sweater over that,
and a big ulster to top her off, and a knitted
cap on her head. She does the cooking —
such as it is — in that attire. Of course this
means a fire for a couple of hours in the
morning — the rest of the day no fire at all,
— and cold suppers. It means going to bed
with the dark, and putting on mittens to
read in bed. In this inventive age, I do wish
some ingenious person would devise an auto-
matic book-holder, which would not only
hold the book at any angle, according to the
light needed, but turn the pages.
I 'd love to give you an atmospheric pic-
ture of what my little cold house looks like,
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when I come downstairs in the morning. But
piercing chill — though it is actually visible -
cannot be pictured.
Of course I don't expect this condition to
last. I 've cords and cords of wood ordered.
Some of it will come, I suppose, some day.
In all ways that I could I provided for
this. I am done up in flannel. I wear noth-
ing but velveteens, and am never without a
fur. I run about out of doors all I can —
only it is so muddy. I have tried every year
to put sand on the garden paths, but have
never been able to get it hauled from the
He de Villenoy. If I only had had that, I
could follow what sun there is about the
house.
To sadden us all a little, our ambulance
has been closed, as are all the formations of
less than fifty beds, — question of heat and
light. The tiny hospital has been a source
of great interest and diversion to all of us.
Ever since people knew it was here, every
one of the American organizations and a
great number of private people in the States
have taken a kindly interest in it — the Red
Cross, the Comite pour les Blesses Francais,
and so many others, like Mrs. Griggs of New
York, whose name became very familiar to
nurses and poilus, especially after she visited
them. In fact, the little Quincy hospital,
which always flew the Stars and Stripes on
all American fete days, was by its American
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friends beautifully equipped and never
lacked for anything.
The boys were very happy there. I can't
tell you how they love being nursed in a small
ambulance. There is something so much
more intime, especially when they are con-
valescent, and can not only sit out in the
garden, but go to their meals in the huge
light refectory of the patronage of the town
— a clean, square room, with well-scrubbed
deal tables about three sides, and the won-
derful cook — herself a war widow — pre-
siding over the big stove at the other end,
and all the white-clad nurses, including the
directress herself, distinguished by her blue
veil, presiding over the service. Needless
to say, the sort of cooking they got was quite
different from that possible in the huge hos-
pitals, and they appreciated it.
Well, it is closed, alas! and its history
entered in the record of the commune. We
shall all miss it.
As its end was not foreseen, there was con-
siderable material left over — canned food,
condensed milk, as well as all the sheets and
clothing. So, three days after the closing —
the commune having politely asked my con-
sent— the town-crier beat his drum at the
cross-roads, and informed the people of the
two communes that the wives of men at the
front, war widows, and the refugees were
invited to present themselves at the Maine
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next day, when the Maire would distribute
" les restes des dons Americains " remaining
at the ambulance. So the Stars and Stripes
were hung over the door of the Mairie, and
the distribution was made.
No one is going to feel the vide this will
make in our daily lives as much as Made-
moiselle Henriette, who, after three years of
arduous daily service, finds herself idle, and,
what she minds more, dressed as a civilian.
I imagine that we shall not keep her here
long. She has always consoled herself for
her humble position, while longing for a
front line hospital, with the fact that her
work was hard. So there is small prob-
ability of her reconciling herself to idleness.
This morning I had a splendid bonfire —
burned up all the asparagus bushes in Pere's
garden. It was smoky work, but I got warm.
Now I am going to plant tulips, and pot
geraniums. This last is a joke. I do it every
year, but I rarely save any. I have no
proper place to put them away. I have tried
every place in the house and out, so you can
guess at the kind of cold we have here. This
year I have less space than usual, as the
arrangements for the winter cantonnements
are more extensive than they used to be. I
have had to clear out the cellar on the north
side, where I have always kept coal and
wood, to make a place there for twenty sol-
diers. So, if I get fuel, it will have to go
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into the one on the west side, where I keep
my garden stuff.
We have had no cantonnement yet, though
there is a big one down the hill at Couilly
and St. Germain.
Yesterday I saw these men for the first
time. I went over to Voulangis by train, and
Amelie drove me to the station. On the
route nationale I met several soldiers stroll-
ing up the hill in a uniform that I did not
know, — far the smartest French soldiers I
had ever seen, — dark blue (almost black)
snug-fitting knee-breeches, tight tunics, brown
leggings and belts and black berets. Just
before we got to the foot of the hill I heard
music, and as we turned into Couilly we
found the street crowded, and saw, advanc-
ing from St. Germain toward the bridge over
the Morin, which separates the two villages,
a big military band filling the street from
sidewalk to sidewalk, the sun shining on their
brass instruments as the trumpeters whirled
them in the air.
It was a new experience for Ninette. I
don't believe she had ever seen anything like
it in all her long life. As it was impossible
to pass, I got out and went across the bridge
on foot. I had to thread my way through
the crowd, among whom were a great num-
ber of poilus in the same uniform, so I took
the first opportunity to ask what regiment it
was, to be told — the Chasseurs Alpins. So
[ us ]
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I have seen them at last, and a regiment
wearing a fouragere.
When I reached home that night — I
drove from Voulangis — I found Amelie just
putting Ninette up. I had left her at two
o'clock. I returned at seven. When I
asked where she had been, she told me that
she had put Ninette in the shed at the coal
man's, and followed the band to the square to
hear the music, — the square is just across
the road, — and that Ninette had enjoyed
the music, in fact she had danced all the time,
and was so tired that it had taken her nearly
an hour and a half to climb the hill. I sus-
pect that Amelie, who adores dancing,
judged Ninette by herself.
The atmosphere is rather vibrating here.
All this defeatist propaganda is trying to our
nerves and our tempers. It is logical enough,
but it is ringing the death knell of socialism
among the farmers. The real truth of the
tension, is, of course, the Russian situation.
There has been so much sentimentality about
Russia, and so much ignorance, and every
day seems to bring its own special disillusion.
At the time of the abdication of the Czar,
the event was given considerable dignity
here. Later, when the menace of the sepa-
rate peace began to loom up, with its libera-
tion not only of the soldiers on the Russian
frontier, but of the supposed-to-be millions
of German prisoners, optimists argued that
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the Germans who were in Russia at the time
of the revolution would be more likely to
sow revolution in Germany than docilely re-
enter the shambles. Error again.
My own head gets confused at times.
Can you wonder that these people about me
cannot see straight? We have all blundered
so. I cannot help asking myself if we shall
blunder on to the end. I really get weary
of hearing the peace terms of the Allies dis-
cussed. I know that it has to be, that it is
absolutely necessary, since the days of secret
diplomacy are over, that the truth of what
the Allied nations are struggling for — and
must have — should be kept eternally before
the eyes of the world — lest they forget.
But I long so to think of nothing but licking
the Germans, and talking after that is done.
There are moments when I feel that every
one of us — women and children as well as
men — ought to be marching out towards
that battle-line — if only to die there. I am
laughing while I write that sentence, for I
have a vision of myself limping along, carry-
ing a gun in both hands — I could not lift
it with one — and falling down, and having
to be carefully stood up again. We mere
lookers-on encumber the earth at this epoch
— the epoch of the young and the active.
There was a time when we used to talk
of such things as nobility and chivalry. Both
are with us still. Poets and painters, ro-
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mance writers and dramatists have glorified
both in the wars of the past, and shrined
them under a halo of immortality. The
future will do that for this war.
I am getting terribly impatient of words
— of everything, in fact, but deeds. I am
beginning to feel as Amelie does. The other
day there was a criticism of a military opera-
tion in the English parliament, and she said,
impatiently: "Well, if I were Haig I would
simply reply, ' If you don't like the way I am
doing this thing, just get down off your cush-
ioned seats, and come out and face the guns
yourselves.' '
She does not know whether the benches
in the House of Commons are cushioned or
not. For that matter, neither do I. It is a
short-sighted point of view, but I often feel
the same way myself.
XIV
December 20, 191 J
NEARLY a month since I last wrote. So I
suppose all through January I shall be getting
letters of reproach from you. I can't help
it, and I Ve not an excuse to throw at you, —
simply had nothing to write about. Things
are happening every day, everywhere, but
I am not writing a history of the war, and
nothing happens here. We are simply hold-
ing on and smiling, and I suppose we shall
continue to do that until the boys from the
States are in real fighting trim.
The only piece of news at my house is that
my little kitty, Didine, is dead, and buried on
the top of a hill in Pere's garden under a
white lilac bush. It is absurd to grieve in
these days for a cat, but he was the only
affectionate cat I ever knew. I miss him ter-
ribly, especially in the evenings, when he
always sat on my knee while I read.
My English friends at the cantine of
Meaux have moved on toward the front to
a place called Serche, near Baisne, in the
Aisne, in the part of the territory liberated
last March. There they have a wonderful
foyer for two thousand soldiers, a cantonne-
royer re
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ment — library, concert hall, tennis courts,
tea rooms — in fact everything which can
help the soldiers to feel at home and cared
for.
I had a letter from them yesterday, telling
me that they had arrived safely with their
saddle-horse and their dog, and that they
had a royal reception, that they had found
their little house all ready, — a pretty de-
mountable structure — for everything there
had been destroyed, — painted green, and
most attractively placed. The letter added,
'* There were flowers everywhere — even
bouquets in each of our bedrooms — but,
alas ! there were no wash hand-bowls."
I loved that. It is so adorably French.
I am sure that you are just as much im-
pressed as we are with the idea that the Eng-
lish have taken Jerusalem. Shades of Rich-
ard Coeur de Lion ! Just think of General
Allenby marching his army piously into the
Holy City, and writing his name in history
along with St. Louis and all the bands of
Crusaders. Yet we are all too occupied with
nearer things to do more than turn our eyes
in that direction, give a thought to the stir-
ring visions it calls up, and then mentally re-
turn to the nearer battle-field.
I am going up to Paris for Christmas. I
am urged, and there seems to be no reason
why I should not, or for that matter, why
I should. I will write as soon as I return,
[ 120 ]
XV
January 1
AGAIN it is more than three weeks since
I wrote, but this time I really am not to
blame.
I wrote you that I was going up to Paris
to spend Christmas. I fully intended to be
back here before New Year's Day, which is
the great French fete day. It was very cold
when I left here, and every day the mercury
dropped a little lower, until it began to snow,
with the result that I was not able to leave
Paris until January 5th.
I had telegraphed Amelie that I would be
back on Thursday, the 27th, but the weather
was so bad that it was impossible, and I sent
word that I would let her know when to
expect me — as soon as the snow stopped.
Several days went by before it seemed wise
to start, and then when I telegraphed,
Amelie replied that I was to stay where I
was until our roads were in better condition,
that the hill was a sheer sheet of ice, and that
neither the horse nor the donkey could pos-
sibly climb it.
So there I was stranded in Paris. By the
Friday after New Year's, I began to feel
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pretty desperate, when suddenly there came
a call on the telephone, and there was Made-
moiselle Henriette in Paris. She said she
had just arrived, and that she was going back
in the morning; that the 21 5th infantry had
arrived and was cantonned in the commune,
that the Captain was going to send a military
wagon to the station in the morning to fetch
her, and that she had told Amelie that she
should bring me back, if I wanted to come,
and of course I did.
So Saturday at noon I was in the train,
where I discovered that the wagon was to
meet us at Esbly, not Couilly. Mademoi-
selle Henriette was a little upset when she
saw my surprise. You see she is young and
vigorous, and in good weather she never
thought of taking the train at Couilly. She
gaily footed it to Esbly, five miles away. She
had not even thought how much easier it
would have been for the horses to take us
from Couilly — two miles of hill instead of
five.
At Esbly we found the wagon awaiting us.
You ought to have seen me boosted into it.
I sat on a box in the back, so that the adju-
tant who drove and Mademoiselle Henriette
could shelter me a bit, — we had no covers.
My, it was cold! The wind blew a gale
from the north. The road was a sheet of
ice, and the poor horse pulled and tugged
and slipped. The steepest part of it was
[ 122 ]
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through the town of Conde, and I never real-
ized how steep that road was until I saw the
horse being led and pushed up it that terribly
cold day.
I reached home about frozen, to find the
house looking gay, and a huge fire in the
salon, — but no Amelie. They told me she
had supposed we were coming by Couilly and
had gone on foot to meet us, with rugs and
foot-warmer. She got back about ten min-
utes after we did — in such a state of perspi-
ration, lugging the big foot-warmer, full of
hot charcoal, wrapped in a big carriage-rug.
I expected her to fuss, after making a trip of
nearly four miles on foot, carrying such a
bundle. But she did not. I sat behind a
screen by the fire and thawed out. In spite
of the fire the house was a refrigerator.
Amelie told me there had been hot-water
bottles in my bed all day, as the sheets were
so cold she was afraid I would get a conges-
tion; I did not. But I slept with a hot-water
bottle in my arms and a hot brick in each of
the bottom corners of my bed.
The presence of the 21 5th makes the place
very gay again. It is a crack regiment from
the north. Most of the men and fully half
of the officers are from Lille — men who
have practically had no news from their
families since August, 1914.
I had a war tea the Sunday after I got
home — six officers and Mademoiselle Hen-
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riette sitting round the table — and we
talked morals and history, philosophy and
literature — no war.
There are some charming men in the regi-
ment— men who in civil life are bankers,
lawyers and manufacturers — almost no pro-
fessional soldiers. In the ranks are some of
the most amusing poilus I have yet encoun-
tered. For instance, there is a bombardier,
with a gold bomb on his sleeve, though I
neglected to ask what it meant. He speaks
English, and when he heard that there was
an English-speaking woman in the commune
he felt that he ought to come and present his
respects. He came, and gave me a few as
hearty laughs as I have had since the war
began.
He was a queer type. He was pure
French — born in Lille of French parents,
but taken to England when he was very
young by a widowed mother, sent to school
there, and his home is still at St. Helier,
where he left a wife and baby.
I wish you could have heard him, in the
broadest cockney English, tell the tale of his
difficulties in getting himself enrolled in the
French army.
Born in France, brought up in England,
never knowing a word of French until he was
out of school, he had never taken out English
naturalization papers, and never intended to.
A few years before the war broke out —
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at the age of eighteen, he left Jersey, and
came to France to offer to do his military
service. He spoke almost no French, and
fell in with an officer who did not care to
bother with him, as he did not seem to be
very well able to explain what he wanted.
He did not have the proper papers. He did
not know what he needed, or how to get
them. He only knew that he had arrived at
the age when a Frenchman ought to be in a
caserne. No one else seemed to care a rap
whether he was or not, so he went back to
Jersey, with his feelings very much hurt. He
had wanted to do his duty. No one cared.
So he went back to his farm, took off his store
clothes, put on his blouse, and practically
felt, " Devil take my native land."
Well, not long after that it looked as
though the devil was going to obey him.
Once more he went to Lille. Again he pre-
sented himself. This time war had begun,
and he was looked upon as " suspect." How
dare a man speaking English and French
equally atrociously, and with no proper
papers, claim to be a Frenchman? This
time he was madder still. The military au-
thorities did not know anything about him.
Apparently they did want him. A sympa-
thetic drill sergeant suggested that if he were
anxious to fight there was always the Foreign
Legion, and no questions asked.
" Np, I '11 be hanged if I do," he said to
[ 125 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
himself. " I '11 enlist in the English army."
So off he went to London. But in London
it was necessary to lie. If he told the re-
cruiting officer there that he was born a
Frenchman, of course he could not take him.
He began by saying he was English, born at
St. Helier, but he was not a neat liar, and he
soon got so twisted up that he was frightened,
broke down, and told the truth; explained
that he had twice been to France, but as he
had no birth certificate, was not even sure
of the date, etc., had never lived in France
since he was a baby, had no idea how to
go to work to put himself en regie, so, as he
wanted to fight, he had thought that England
might take him.
The recruiting officer in London was sym-
pathetic. He took down the facts, and told
the lad to go home and wait until the matter
could be straightened out. But the war was
a year old before he was finally called, and
entered as the rawest kind of a raw recruit.
The story itself is amusing, but you should
have heard him tell it — half in cockney Eng-
lish, and half in barrack-room French. It
was killing. I heard more words that were
new to me than I have heard in an age. I
wanted to stop him every two minutes, and
either get a slang dictionary or call for a
word-of-mouth translation. But he talked so
fast, and gesticulated so that I managed to
get it. I nearly upset myself trying not to
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
laugh while he described his early days of
hurried training. He visualized himself
standing the first day with the contents of his
sac about his feet, trying in vain to remem-
ber the names of all the articles, and to get
them back compactly into the sac, from
which the drill corporal had tumbled them.
He was even funnier when he told about his
efforts to conquer military etiquette, — to
salute the proper person and recognize his
rank at sight, never to salute when he had
on no head covering, for every one to him
was " mister " and he had never even heard
of the shades in salutation.
But if he was awkward in many ways com-
pared to some of his comrades, the moment
he got a bomb or a grenade into his hand it
was another matter. There he had the ad-
vantage of having played English sports all
his life. I never realized that he was a fine
type until I saw him giving a lesson in bomb-
throwing out in the fields. When he straight-
ened up and swung his arm into the air, I
appreciated that he was a fine type and
graceful.
The intense cold shows signs of moderat-
ing. My tulips are beginning to come up.
At last Caillaux is in the Sante, waiting to
be tried for high treason. Well, it is a com-
fort. He ought to be left there in silence,
isolated and forgotten, until the war is over.
But, alas ! although this is really no time for
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an operation on the great scandal and clear-
ing up the terrible plotting of which he is
possibly the centre, it has to be done. We
have been bringing into force all kinds of
laws to prevent holding him in silence.
Merely the habeas corpus is enough. Some
of our most prized reforms are inconvenient
at times, aren't they?
[ 1*8
XVI
February I,
THIS morning it looks to me as if all we
have been dreading since the Russians de-
serted us is likely to come true. One thing
is certain. The German offensive is not
going to be long retarded, and what is surer
still is that it is going to be preluded by a des-
perate German effort to terrorize the civil-
ians, and break the morale en arriere. Of
course that is another bit of false psychol-
ogy. There is nothing which pulls the
French together like a blow.
Of course you know that Paris has enjoyed
a strange immunity from air raids. While
England has been attacked night after night,
Paris has been spared. I 'd hate to tell you
of all the theories I have heard exploited in
explanation. I Ve had some theories myself.
There were people who believed that the
defences of Paris could not be passed by the
German air fleet. I had for a time the illu-
sion that perhaps this was true, until I was
told one day by an aviator that the German
fleet in the air could attack Paris whenever it
was ready, and, that while aerial methods
of attack had made great progress in the
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
past three years, no method of defence was
by any means a sure protection.
On dit that the reason for the persistent
action against England is explained by the
hesitation of the French to follow England's
example and give the Germans tit for tat by
attacking the Rhine towns. As the German
civilians are much more nervous than either
the French or English it was necessary to
terrorize the latter if possible, — and it has
not worked. Also, in spite of the reluctance
of the French, they have lately been follow-
ing England's sturdy lead. It has got to be
done. The curse will fall on the nation
which began it — Germany.
I imagine that, when the cable carried the
news to you yesterday that, after a long
freedom from air raids, Paris had been seri-
ously attacked Wednesday night, and that
the raid had lasted well into Thursday morn-
ing, you little dreamed that I had stood in
my garden, and saw — or rather heard, —
it all. But I did, and I can assure you that
it was an experience that I never expected to
have.
On Wednesday night I went to bed early.
I must have got to sleep about eleven. If
I do not sleep before midnight there is a
strong possibility of my not sleeping at all,
— one of my old-age habits. My first sleep
is very sound.
I wakened suddenly with the impression
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that I heard some one running along the ter-
race under my window. I sat up and listened,
half believing that I had been dreaming,
when I saw a ray of light in the staircase —
my door was open.
I called out, "Quiestla?"
Amelie's trembling voice replied, " C'est
moi, madame," and I had the sudden wide
vision of possibilities, which I am told is like
that of a drowning man, for I realized that
she was not coming to me in the middle of
the night for nothing, when she appeared in
the doorway, all dressed, even to her hood,
and with a lighted candle in her hand.
"Oh, Madame," she exclaimed, "you
were sleeping? You heard nothing?" And
at that moment I heard the cannon. " Oh,
mon Dieu, Madame, what is happening out
at the front? It is something terrible, and
you slept! "
I listened.
"That is not at the front, Amelie," I ex-
claimed. " It is much nearer, in the direction
of Paris. It's the guns of the forts." At
that moment a bomb exploded, and I knew
at once. "It's the Gothas, Amelie. Give
me something to put on. What time is it?"
" Nearly midnight," she answered.
It took me less than ten minutes to dress
-it was bitterly cold — and I wrapped my-
self in my big military cloak, put a cap over
my tumbled hair, and a big fur round my
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neck, grabbed my field glasses, and went out
into the orchard, which looks directly across
the fort at Chelles in the direction of Paris.
It was a beautiful night, cold and still,
white with moonlight, and the sky spangled
with stars. For three hours we stood there,
— Pere and Amelie and I, — listening to that
bombardment, seeing nothing — ignorant of
what was going on. The banging of the
guns, the whirring of the moteurs, the ex-
ploding of shells seemed over us and around
us — yet we could see nothing. It only took
us a little while to distinguish between the
booming of the guns at Chelles and Vau-
clure, endeavouring to prevent the Gothas
from passing, by putting up barrage firing,
and the more distant bombs dropped by the
flyers that had arrived near or over the city.
It was all the more impressive because it
was so mysterious. At times it seemed as if
one of three things must have been happen-
ing— either that we were destroying the
fleet in the air, or they were destroying us,
or that Paris was being wiped out. It did
not, during those hours that I stood there,
seem possible that such a cannonading could
be kept up without one of these results. It
was our first experience, and I assure you
that it was weird. The beauty of the night,
the invisibility of the machines, our absolute
ignorance of what was going on, the hum-
ming of the moteurs overhead, the infernal
[ 132 ]
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persistent firing of the cannon and the terrific
explosion of the bombs, followed, now and
then, by a dull glow in the west, was all so
mysterious. As the long minutes crept by,
we began to notice details, — for instance,
that the air battle moved in waves, and we
easily understood that meant several squad-
rons of German machines, and we could
finally, though we could see nothing dis-
tinctly, realize by the firing that they ap-
proached, met the guns of the forts — passed
over or through the barrage curtain, or re-
tired, and tried again, then, having dropped
their bombs, swept more to the west, and
gave place to another attacking squadron.
They seemed finally to retire in the direction
of Compiegne and Soissons, pursued by gun
fire from the forts.
It was four o'clock when we finally went
into the house, leaving silence under the stars
and the moonlit night. Amelie stirred up
the embers, threw on a little wood, put the
screen around me, made me a hot drink and
I sat there to wait for daybreak. It seemed
strange to go out of doors in the morning,
and see nothing changed, after such a night.
We waited impatiently for the morning
papers. They contained nothing but the
mere fact that Paris had been bombarded by
Gothas. There had been victims and dam-
age, but in comparison with the effort, the
result had been unimportant. Out of the
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twenty-eight German machines which had
.taken part in the attack, only one had been
brought down — that fell near Vaires, not
far from Chelles.
This was our first experience of the sort,
and I could not help feeling puzzled that so
much heavy firing could go on, and out of
twenty-eight machines only one be touched.
But that was only my first impression. I
knew when I came to think it over that it was
not easy in the night to do more than try to
keep the enemy off. The more I thought it
over the more I became convinced that up to
now there is no very effective way of prevent-
ing night air raids.
My letters which came this morning gave
me some details of the raid, saying enough to
let me guess what parts of the city were
reached. They penetrated as far as the
Avenue de la Grande Armee, and dropped
bombs also in the vicinity of the Halles, and
the Gare de Lyons. Every one writes that
Paris is perfectly calm, although it is evident
that the government — judging by the rapid-
ity with which it is preparing systematic pro-
tection for its population, — believes this to
be but the beginning of another desperate
attempt to break the morale of the country.
There are people at Voisins who claim to
have seen the Gotha that fell at Vaires. Per-
haps they did. I did not.
To-day has been a chilling day. This
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morning we went on bread rations — one
pound a day. It is enough for me.
I have planted my climbing sweet peas. I
ought to have done it in October. I don't
know why I didn't, any more than I really
know why I bothered to-day. One must not
let one's self grow idle. I know that. But
I hate having life become mechanical. The
strain is beginning to tell, and I hate to feel
that.
[ 135 ]
XVII
February 20,
THREE weeks again. Sorry.
Mademoiselle Henriette is getting ready
to go to Salonique, where nurses are needed.
Ever since our ambulance closed she has been
very restless, and it grows on her. She had
been so accustomed to wearing a uniform,
with three years' service brisques, on her left
arm, and to feeling herself a part of the
great army of defence, that to walk about in
civilian clothes seems to her stupid, and I
don't wonder.
Her discontent culminated the other day,
when we had a very interesting cantonne-
ment. The regiment arrived at nine o'clock
one evening, and there was a military mass
at the little church at Quincy at nine the next
morning. One of the captains, a priest, and
among the bravest men in a brave regiment,
preached a remarkable sermon. Every one
went, and of course the little church was not
a quarter big enough. The soldiers knelt on
the green in front of both doors, and even in
the road for the elevation. It was a very
touching sight. The regiment had just come
out of the firing line.
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Poor Henriette, in her tailored dress and
hat, felt terribly out of it, — she who, a few
months ago, would have been kneeling
among the soldiers in her white coiffe, with
the red cross on her forehead. She was near
to tears when she remarked that no one in
the regiment knew that she, too, had given
three years of her life to the cause. So she
must get back into the ranks, and it looks like
Salonique, — a hard post, but it means sac-
rifice, and that is what she wants.
Thus far this month the weather has been
delightful, and, though mornings and eve-
nings have been chilly, there have been many
days when I have not needed a fire, and be
sure I am grateful for that.
On St. Valentine's Day I went up to Paris
— just to change my ideas. I had not been
up since that terribly cold spell which ended
early in January. So I had not seen the city
since the big air raid. Every one had writ-
ten me details about the changed appearance
of the city — details as often comic as other-
wise. I was curious to see for myself. Curi-
osity killed a cat, you know.
Well, there are changes, of course, but one
has rather to hunt for them. Everywhere —
if one looks for them — large white cards
are hung on doorways. On them are printed
in large black letters the words " ABRIS —
60 personnes" or whatever number the
cellars will accommodate, and several of the
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
underground stations bear the same sort of
sign. These are refuges designated by the
police, into which the people near them are
expected to descend at the first sound of
the sirenes announcing the approach of the
enemy's air fleet.
More striking than these signs are the
rapid efforts being made to protect some of
the more important of the city's monuments.
They are being boarded in, and concealed
behind bags of sand. You 'd love to see it.
Perhaps you have, already, for I am sure
that some enterprising photographer is
busy preserving the record. Sandbags are
dumped everywhere, and workmen are fever-
ishly hurrying to cover in the treasures, and
avoid making them look too hideous. They
would not be French if they did not try, here
and there, to preserve a fine line.
The most important group on the facade
of the Opera is thus concealed. You remem-
ber it, — on the north-east corner — Car-
peaux's " La Danse." Of course you do,
because don't you remember we went and
looked at it together at the time Helene de
Racowitza's suicide recalled the woman who
posed for the figure of Apollon in the group
— she who caused the duel in which Ferdi-
nand Lasalle was killed, and whose affair
with him inspired George Meredith's
'Tragic Comedians." Poor Helene, I im-
agine she was a much more feeble character
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
than Meredith drew her, but she was a
beauty of the Third Empire sort, and the
shadow of great men fell over her, and made
her immortal as an idea, although she out-
lived husbands, and lover, youth, beauty, and
prestige. Still, one cannot pity too much the
woman over whom a famous author threw
a mantle of greatness during her lifetime.
It was unfortunate that she could not have
lived up to it. She tried hard at the time
that she wrote " Princesse et Comedienne,"
but the difficulty was that in her memoirs she
got herself terribly mixed up with the liter-
ary portrait Meredith drew of her.
The Rude group on the Arc de Triomphe,
the only real work of art in its ornamenta-
tion, has also gone into retirement, and so
have the doors on the west front of Notre
Dame, and famous equestrian Louis XIV
groups from Marly-le-Roi, which adorn the
entrance to the Champs-Elysees, and the en-
trance to the Tuileries garden opposite. The
latter have funny little chalets built over
them.
You might think that rough work of this
sort would disfigure the city we love. But
on my word, it does not. I really believe I
love it all the better, — dear, menaced Paris.
Perhaps it is because it has been and still is,
in danger, that we realize anew the immortal
charm. I cannot put into words just how I
feel about it, but I imagine you will under-
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
stand. Every one of those hoardings and
all these sacks of sand seem like italics to
draw my attention to how dear it all is to
me. We are so prone to take the beauty we
find in life as a matter of course.
Possibly you, who have not seen Paris for
four years, might find more changes than I
do, who have watched it all the time.
I often wonder how it would look to you,
who only knew it in its better days. I have
no way to establish a standard. I have seen
the change, of course — but only little by
little, and never losing any of the charm. If
it is really much altered I don't know it.
Just as one has to shake one's self hard to
realize the slow changes which time brings to
the faces of those whom we love, so am I
unconscious of the changes the war has
brought on Paris. I know that in some parts
of the city there are fewer people in the
streets. I know that in the centre of the city
one finds still much movement, though it has
changed its character. The soldiers of all
nations have done that. To me it has never
looked more beautiful than it does in these
days. Its loveliness simply strikes terror to
my heart for fear of what might be, now
that the Germans are so desperate.
My visit was not altogether a peaceful
one.
Perhaps I never told you that one of my
Paris friends, whenever she thinks I am stay-
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
ing away from town too long, has a habit
of writing to me, and promising that if I
will come up to town they will try and ar-
range an air raid for me. I never had hap-
pened to be there during one. She used to
say, " You really have seen so much, that it
would be a pity not to be in one of these
raids before the war ends." Of course, that
was before the attack of January. Since
then, there has been no need to arrange such
a thing merely as experience. I have had it.
All the same; they brought it off on Sun-
day night — the lyth. Thank you, I did not
enjoy it at all. It was an absolutely in-
effective raid, as far as doing any damage
went. But we did not know that while it
was going on. I would not have believed
that so much noise could do so little harm.
Of course the papers tell you how calm
Paris is. It is. But don't let that lead you
to suppose that an air raid is anything but a
very nasty experience. I imagine that very
few people are afraid of death to-day. Few
as the air raids have been, Parisians have
already learned that the guns for the defence
make most of the noise. The explosion of
the bombs, if rarer, is a more terrible sound.
But what is hard to bear, is the certainty
that, although you are safe, some one else
is not.
I suppose that if I don't tell you what we
did and how we passed the night, you '11 ask
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
me later, and then I may have forgotten,
or had first impressions overlaid by other
events.
Well, Sunday evening we had just gone to
bed. It was about ten o'clock. I was read-
ing quietly when I heard a far-off wailing
sound. I knew at once what it was. My
hostess and I tumbled out of our beds, un-
latched the windows so that no shock of air
expansion might break them, switched off all
the lights and went on the balcony just in
time to see the firemen on their auto as they
passed the end of the street, sounding the
" Gare a vous" on their sirenes, — the most
awful, hair-raising wail I have ever heard
— like a host of lost souls. Ulysses need
not have been tied to the mast to prevent his
following the song of this siren!
We were hardly on the balcony, when, in
an instant, all the lights of the city went out,
and a strange blackness settled down and
hugged the housetops and the very sidewalk.
At the same instant the guns of the outer
barrage began to fire, and as the night was
cold, we went inside to listen, and to talk.
I wonder if I can tell you — who are never
likely to have such an experience — how it
feels to sit inside four walls, in absolute dark-
ness, listening to the booming of the defence,
and the falling of bombs on an otherwi&e
silent city, wakened out of its sleep.
It is a sensation to which I doubt if any
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
of us get really accustomed — this sitting
quietly while the cannon boom, and now and
then an avion whirs overhead, or a venture-
some auto toots its horn as it dashes to a
shelter, or the occasional voice of a gen-
darme yells angrily at some unextinguished
light, or a hurried footstep on the pavement
tells of a passer in the deserted street, brav-
ing all risks to reach home.
I assure you that the hands on the clock-
face simply crawl. An hour is very long.
This raid of the iyth lasted only three quar-
ters of an hour. It was barely half-past
eleven when the berloque sounded from the
hurrying firemen's auto — the B-flat bugle
singing the "all clear," — and, in an instant,
the city was alive again, — noisily alive.
Even before the berloque was really audible
in the room where we sat, I heard the people
hurrying back from the abris, — doors
opened and banged, windows and shutters
were flung wide, and the rush of air in the
gas pipes told that the city lights were on
again.
I don't find that the people are at all panic-
stricken. Every one hates it. But every
one knows that the chances are about one
in some thousands, — and takes the chance.
I know of late sitters-up, who cannot change
their habits, and who keep right on playing
bridge during a raid. How good a game it
is I don't know. Well, one kind of bravado
r H3 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
is as good as another. Among many people
the chief sensation is one of boredom — it is
a nuisance to be wakened out of one's first
sleep; it is a worse nuisance to have proper
saut de lit clothes ready; and it is the worst
nuisance of all to go down into a damp cellar
and possibly have to listen to talk. But, oh
my! what a field for the farce-comedy writer
of the days after the war. It takes but little
imagination to conjure up the absurdities of
such a situation that the play-maker can com-
bine in the days when these times can be
looked at from a comic point of view.
I came back from town on the i8th. I
found everything quiet here. The only news
is that my hens are beginning to lay — but
so are every one's. While my hens did not
lay, eggs went up to fifteen cents a piece.
To-day, when I get three dozen a week, I
can buy them, two for five cents. The eco-
nomics of farming get me. There must be
a way of making hens lay all the year round.
It is to be one of my jobs next year to learn
the trick.
XVIII
March g, 1 918
WELL, we have been having some very
droll weather, and the weather is a safe
topic, especially when you seem to read be-
tween the lines of my letters that I am get-
ting demoralized, and at what you choose to
call an unnecessary moment, with so many of
"our boys" landing every week. That's
all right, but though they are here, they are
not ready, and there you are.
But weather?
I told you that February was a very pretty
month. It often is in France. We had some
lovely nights, when I used to go out in the
moonlight, and look up in the starry dome
and pick out the constellations I knew. But
I seemed the only one here who enjoyed
them. Every clear night seemed to offer an
open road to the Gothas. It is a pity to live
in a time when a lovely night simply stands
for a menace. As long as the February
moon lasted Amelie went home in a nervous
tremble every evening. She simply hates the
night attacks, although there is not the least
real danger here.
The thing that torments me is the feeling
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that this aerial activity presages the German
offensive. We all know it is coming — our
aeroplanes have announced that the Germans
are concentrating their forces on our front
— but when — where — on that long line?
If any of them knows at headquarters, they
are not, naturally, telling.
I am afraid that no one was sorry when,
on the first, the snow began to fall. It lasted,
off and on, five days. Every night Amelie
said, as she closed the shutters, "Well, let
us get a good night's rest. The Gothas can-
not go to Paris to-night." When it ceased
snowing, early Wednesday morning, there
was a foot on the ground. But the sun came
out, and by evening there was no snow at
all, and Amelie was sad again.
On Thursday — that was the yth, — I
worked all day in the garden, setting out
rose bushes, and though it was a beautiful
night, everything was calm. But last night
was a trying one. It began earlier than the
one in January, and it did not last as long,
but it was worse while it lasted. It was only
a little after nine o'clock, and I was on the
terrace, and the house was not shut up, when
the first gun of warning from the forts was
fired. Some one up the hill called, "What's
that?" and another voice replied, "Paris."
I hurriedly closed my shutters, and put
out the lamp I had just lighted, and went
into the garden to watch and wait.
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The battle of last night was quite different
from the previous ones. This time, there
were no aeroplanes in the air, except the
Bodies'. The forts in front of us — Chelles
and Vaujours — not only used their artillery
to put up a barrage, they had their search-
lights on most of the time, and sent up at
intervals a series of fusees eclair antes — so
pretty as they followed one another in a
line — they were usually four in a series —
and now and then a rocket. It might have
been fireworks — only the Gothas went right
over our heads in three distinct waves, flying
so low in an early evening, not at all dark,
that we frequently saw them, when caught
by the rockets or searchlights. We could
not be sure when they succeeded in passing,
but the explosion of bombs in Paris told that
soon enough, while the noise of the machines
over our heads told when they were actually
turned back.
I must tell you an amusing thing. Amelie
has always insisted that she could tell a
Boche machine by the sound of its motejtr.
Perhaps she can. She says always, "Listen,
now! Can't you hear that Boche? His
mote'tfr grunts just like a pig" (of course
this is funnier and more significant in French
— comme un cochon), "but ours make music
— they sing!" Pretty idea? Well, the
beauty of it is, I repeated it to an aviator the
other day as a joke. He looked at me seri-
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
ously and replied, <: But it is absolutely true."
Evidently I am sometimes stone deaf.
It was midnight when I came in, and that
is how it happens that I am writing to you
very early in the morning — just daybreak,
because, I suddenly decided, in a sleepless
night, that I needed a change of scene. The
only one available is to go to Paris, and talk
it over in English instead of French. So I
am sending these few words for fear that if
I am detained longer than I plan — and in
these days one never knows what may hap-
pen— there will not be again too long a
lapse in my letters.
Oh, I really must mention the British going
to Jericho, or you will think that I have my
eyes so fixed on local things that even my
mental vision cannot look over the horizon
line. Nice idea, isn't it — the Australian
cavalry riding into Jericho ? We Ve wished
Jericho on so many people in our time that
it is comforting to think that, finally, some
one has really gone there — and history has
recorded it.
XIX
March 17, 1918
YOUR letter just received remarks that I
seem to do a deal of "gadding" in these
days. Well, I told you in my last that I was
going again, and I did. I went the day I
wrote to you, — that was the 9th, and came
back day before yesterday. Apparently I
must have forgotten to tell you that, after
all these months, the Commander of the
Fifth Army Corps had decided to give me a
permis de circuler good for three months.
That is how it happens that I can " gad," as
you call it. I am afraid that you cannot
realize just what it means after years of such
restrictions as I had to support, to be free
to move without explaining each time, fixing
the date a fortnight in advance, and then
waiting in uncertainty as to whether the
simple request would be granted or not. It
inspires one to move on a bit, when it is not
absolutely necessary, just for the joy of feel-
ing free.
On the way down the hill to Couilly on
Saturday, the day I left, we met the 89th
Infantry marching in from Lagny, where
they had been resting for some weeks, to
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
canton on our hill, and I was half sorry that
I was leaving, especially as air raids are of
almost nightly recurrence, and Amelie, who
hates them, worries when I am away. It is
useless for me to explain to her that in town
I stay in a part of the city which is practically
safe — well to the south-west, in an apart-
ment on the second floor of a six-story build-
ing. Bombs which fall on a house rarely go
through more than three stories, and those
that burst in the street seldom damage above
the first floor. Amelie is always, in these
days, looking for the surprising and the un-
expected. I fancy she would feel happier
if she could be assured that at the first sound
of the alerte I would make for an abri with
an electric lamp in my pocket, a camp-stool
in one hand, a shovel in the other, and a
pickaxe over my shoulder. Then there
should be a maid behind, with a bucket of
water, a boule chande, a flask of cognac, a
cushion for my back, and a rug for my knees
— in fact, " all the comforts of home." But
she knows that I would much prefer to be
killed outright than suffocated in a cave.
As I had anything but a comfortable time
at home the night before I left, I really
could not see what difference it made where
I was. One side of the tlr de barrage seemed
to me as good as the other, though I will con-
fess that I prefer to listen out of doors, in
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the air, than shut up in a room, even when
honours are easy as to danger.
The last words Amelie said to me were
" I do hope the Gothas won't go to Paris
with you this time." But they did.
However I had a good night Saturday,
and passed a quiet Sunday, resting in a cosy
room, free from any responsibility, and talk-
ing about anything that was not war, and I
enjoyed it. But I paid up for it that night,
when, just as I was getting into bed, that
abominable sirene went wailing through the
street, and almost at the same moment the
bombs began to fall. This was even before
we heard the barrage, and then, for three
long hours and more, the cannon boomed,
the machine guns spat, and the bombs ex-
ploded. It was a simply infernal racket.
If you want an example of how some of
the simple people take it, here is one. The
bonne in the house where I visit is a girl
from Nimes, who used to live in a convent.
Needless to say that she is very religious.
She has no sense of fear. Perhaps she does
not know enough to be afraid, — maybe I
wrong her. She sleeps in the top of the
house. The only thing she, who loves her
bed, hates, is being waked up. Her orders
are to come downstairs, when the alerte be-
gins. But she rarely does. On that night,
for some reason, possibly because there was
a bad fire, she came down. The house was
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chilly, so she was told to lie on the sofa in
the dining-room. She obeyed, and fell asleep
at once, and peacefully slept right through
it all.
When it was over I went to the door and
called her, told her that it was over, and that
she could go up to bed.
She rose, sleepily, looking a bit dazed, and
then said: "Is it over, Madame?" Then
she piously blessed herself, and in a hurried
voice, just as you have heard people mur-
mur their prayers sotto voce, she added,
" God pity those less lucky than we have
been," and went back to bed. I am positive
that she was asleep in five minutes, and as I
already know those who claim to have slept
through raids it may be possible that I am
wrong about people not becoming accus-
tomed to them, and that, if they go on fre-
quently, we may all sleep right through.
I suppose that you know that the govern-
ment conceals, as far as possible, all the dam-
age done by these air raids. The newspapers
give no details. The part of the city dam-
aged is never mentioned. The official an-
nouncement contains merely the fact that the
raid began at a certain hour, that there was
or was not material damage done, when it
ended, and whether or not there were vic-
tims. Of course the people in the vicinity
hit by the bombs know, and the muzzled
newspapers know, but you would be sur-
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
prised at the small excitement there is. The
object of the silence is, of course, to conceal
from Germany the result of these raids.
I Ve my doubts if that is possible. It seems
to me that nothing can be concealed from
them. I 'm not sure that, in some diabolical
way, they don't know what I am writing to
you this very minute. But if the reticence
does not achieve that object, it proves very
effective in circumscribing excitement, which,
under the old reporting methods, would have
been inevitable, and the effects of the raid do
not become the one topic of the day's con-
versation in the streets. This raid was an
especially disastrous one, as there was a fire
in an important part of the city. Yet it was
only by the merest accident that, forty-eight
hours later, I passed through the famous
quarter which was most damaged, and al-
though it was wonderfully cleaned up, — the
fire department goes to work at once, — and
even daylight which follows the raid finds
many traces removed — it seemed to me that
for half a mile on both sides of the Boule-
vard St. Germain, where it runs between
the government buildings, there was not a
whole pane of glass — yet there was no ir-
reparable harm done, and the loss of life
was not heavy.
Amelie met me at the station when I came
home, in a very nervous frame of mind. She
literally yanked me out of the train, and
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
said emphatically: "Well, thank God, here
you are. You are not going to Paris again
until these raids are over. It makes us all
too nervous. You are better off at home."
When I got up the hill and saw what had
happened here I did not blame her for being
nervous, although I confess that I could not
see that one place was any improvement on
the other. Thirty bombs and a torpedo or
two had been sprinkled along the valley from
Vaires to Crecy-en-Brie. A big bomb fell
in the field on the other side of the route
nationale, and made a hole fifteen yards
square and nine yards deep. Five bombs
fell on Bouleurs, and a torpedo, which did
not explode, fell the other side of Quincy in
what is called the " terre noire." The bomb
which fell near the chateau shook the whole
hill, and it was quite evident that it had
shaken Amelie's nerves, and that she had
not recovered.
The result is that there is a general fit of
trembling everywhere, and it is the fashion
here to sleep in the caves. There is a ma-
chine gun set up at the Demi-Lune, the water-
mains on the top of the hill — the Paris
water from the Ourcq passes there — have
been examined, as have our local mains, —
Couilly has running water — and hose at-
tached. The firemen, of whom I have never
heard before, have materialized. All this
active preparation for a local defence ought
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
to calm the people, but, of course, it does
not. It only emphasizes the fact that it is
necessary, and to them, waiting so long in
suspense for the beginning of a spring ac-
tion, seems to presage hard days.
There have always been rigid rules about
lights here from the first air raids, so long
ago. They have been forgotten, with the
result that thirty people were fined to-day
for uncovered lights, and the rules are made
more rigid than ever. I have been notified
that my shutters are not sufficient, and have
to hustle to get some sort of heavy inside
curtains for a house which at this moment
seems all doors and windows. The truth
is, the part of my house where the lights
show is the guest chamber, never used except
when the soldiers are here, as they are now.
All circulation in the roads after dark is
forbidden. Wagons cannot carry lights, nor
foot-passenger lanterns. It has been the
habit for people from Couilly to come run-
ning up the hill, lantern in hand, to watch
the raids on Paris from here, and there is a
theory that it was these lanterns on the road
which drew the bombs on the hill Sunday.
It may be, but as there was a big cantonne-
ment of troops here that seems a better ex-
planation, while it is not unlikely that some
of the Gothas which failed to get through
the barrage, not wishing to return to their
base, carrying their bombs with them, may
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
simply have dropped them any old place.
All these things are guesses, of course.
The weather is lovely. I am getting a lot
of work done in my garden — among other
things, sand laid in all the paths, — after
trying for four years. The poilus did it for
me. It will make life much easier, as I can
walk in the garden in winter. It will also
be a comfort to Amelie, as I shall not track
in the mud, and neither will Khaki and Dick.
[ 156 ]
XX
March 28, 1918
CAN it be less than a fortnight ago that I
wrote to you? My letter-book says so, but
it is hard to believe. I seem to have lived a
century since.
The cables have told you the mere facts,
of course. You know that the long-expected
offensive presaged by the concentration of
the German hordes from the Russian fron-
tier began on the 2ist, when they were flung
against our lines, from Cherizy in the north
to Panisiaux Bois in the south, and that, in
six days, the Allies have lost all their hard-
earned advances of three years. In six days
all the sacrifices of three years have been
rendered vain, and last night our line was
sixty miles, in some places, west of where it
had been on the morning of March 2ist. In
the lost land are the scenes of so much hard
fighting, land over which the Allies had crept
inch by inch — all lost in six days, — Peronne,
Bapaume, Ham, Roye, Noyon and oh! how
many tragic hilltops, and how many spots
where our beloved dead lie buried!
But even though you read these things,
you have no idea of what the week has
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meant to us living so near it, to us, who, day
after day, have followed the brave boys in
the advance, and felt, as they felt, that no
inch of ground gained could be lost again.
The hours of those first days will always
be unforgettable hours of tragedy. I have
many times written of the dread we have
felt of some such thing ever since the Ger-
mans were in a position to remove their de-
fensive army from the east. But never, in
my greatest anxiety, did I dream of this.
March 2ist was a beautiful Thursday.
Louise and I were working in the garden.
I was setting out pansies in the bed under the
elderberry bushes, on the side of the hill.
It was during the morning that I began
to hear far-off guns, but I took little notice,
until after noon, when the booming became
so heavy that the very ground in which I had
my hands seemed to tremble under me — or
was it my hands that were trembling? I
don't know.
It lasted all day, and the guns were still
thundering when I went out on the lawn
before going up to bed, — to look off to the
north.
At intervals I heard it all night, and once,
in the night, I went out to look, and could sec
the lights in the sky, and now and then a
rocket. I heard the voices of Pere and
Amelie, and knew that they were hanging
out of their window, watching the north also.
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I cannot tell you what the sleepless sus-
pense, and the waiting for the morning was
like. I was still in bed, waiting for Amelie
to arrive on the morning of the 22nd, when
I heard some one running along the terrace,
and a voice called: "Fous etes eveillee,
Madame?"
I went to the window.
There stood my next-door neighbour,
white as a sheet.
" Oh, Madame," she cried, " the Germans
have attacked our line on a front of ninety
kilometres. We are retreating on the whole
line. My God, my God!" And she went
on down the hill to carry the news to Voisins.
Even while I was standing, stupefied, I
heard the drums beating the assemblage gen-
erale in Voisins, for the 89th Infantry are
still with us.
By the time I was dressed the boys were
coming in relays to say " good-bye," and to
announce that the camions were coming at
eleven.
The morning was a repetition of that of
last spring, when the n8th advanced to
Soissons.
It was impossible to work. No one could.
It was just after noon that the camions
began to arrive.
As the trees are not yet leaved out, I could
see, from the lawn, the long line of grey
camions drawn up at equal spaces from each
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
other all along the route to Meaux, and, at
intervals, the soldiers, sac an dos, standing
in groups ready to mount to their places.
It was two o'clock when they began to
move, and from that time, night and day,
until Sunday morning of the 24th, the line of
advancing troops, cannon, artillery, field-
kitchens, — was absolutely unbroken. They
occupied all the roads about us, even that on
the canal. Along the route nationale and the
route du canal of Meaux they moved, rum-
bling at top speed, about ten yards apart,
and along the route towards Esbly, through
Conde, wound all the horse-drawn vehicles
and the cavalry. Overhead hummed the
aeroplanes, keeping watch.
Every day the news that came was bad.
Every day the Allies were being driven back,
and last night they were within twelve miles
of Amiens, already evacuated.
To make the whole situation sadder, by
Sunday night, the refugees, driven for the
second time from their homes, began to pass
through over all our routes. That is what
brings panic. It would carry it as far as
Paris, if Paris had to see it, but in the city
the movement is concentrated about the Gare
du Nord, and the Gare de 1'Est, and there
the organization is wonderful. In the entire
evacuation I am told that the American boys
are doing heroic work.
All the week I have fought against panic
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
here. Faith, you understand, I am sure, had
received a hard blow. Fear seemed sud-
denly to have taken root everywhere, a thing
I have never seen here before, — fear that
the Germans were too strong in numbers
still, and the Americans not only unprepared,
but not yet numerous enough to turn the bal-
ance, for in the first few days before Amiens
the Allies fought, at times, one to six, and
some say, at an even greater disadvantage.
To make the situation all the harder for
the civilians — for they had to get hold of
their nerves, and they did it, — the Germans
threw all their resources against us at once,
not only at the front against the armies, but
against the civilians in the rear; it was the
very exaggeration of their warfare of terror.
On Saturday morning, the third day of the
battle, — at about half-past seven — as I was
sitting in the garden listening to the guns,
I heard an explosion in the direction of
Paris, and, while I was wondering what it
could mean, the church bells all along the
valley began to ring out an alerte. I had
not heard a sound even resembling a moteur
in the air and the sound from Paris was not
in the least like that made familiar by the
air raids. Besides, the Germans have never
attempted an air raid by daylight, although
the English have. It could not have been
more than a half hour later that there was
another sound exactly like the first in the
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
same direction. But this time there was no
alerte, and there was no noise of the guns for
the defence of the city against avions. At
regular intervals all day, while we read the
trying news from the front, — eighty divi-
sions of German soldiers thrown against the
British — we heard that sound from Paris
repeated.
About half-past four in the afternoon
Amelie's nephew, a lad of sixteen, who
works in an ammunition place, arrived from
Paris — his train over an hour and a half
late — with the news that Paris was being
bombarded from the air — that the attack
began a little after seven — that there had
been no alerte until after the bombardment
began, and, that up to the time he left, no
German avions had been heard by the listen-
ing posts anywhere, and yet once in about
fifteen minutes a bomb fell.
That was all very mysterious.
I asked him if much damage had been
done, and if there was any panic.
He said he had heard that several people
had been killed, but there was no panic.
When the sirenes went through the streets
after the first bomb, people ran, as usual, for
the abris, but as silence followed they gradu-
ally came out into the streets, and stood
about, gazing up into the air. No sign of
any air machine — any Boche — had been
seen. When the lad left Paris there was a
162
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
spirit of curiosity rather than alarm, and the
only harm he had actually seen was a news-
paper kiosk, near the railway station, de-
stroyed, and a hole in the ground. That
looked serious enough, considering the situa-
tion. But " a miss is as good as a mile."
The next day, Sunday — a day too beauti-
ful to look on such horrid deeds — we got
the explanation. It seemed inconceivable,
but it is evidently true. The latest war ex-
ploit of the Huns is a gun set up — -so the
aviators say — somewhere near La Fere,
where the Yorkshire boys fought their last
battle before retreating here in September,
1914, — a gun which is bombarding Paris
at a distance variously stated at from sixty-
five to eighty miles, — either distance seems
equally incredible, but it is evidently true.
The military authorities are said to have it
placed. The question is to destroy it. But
you probably heard all about this by cable.
The son of one of my neighbours who is
at home on leave — he is an aviator to-day;
he was a farmer in 1914, — said, as we were
listening to this gun yesterday, for it is still
at work :
" Madame, this is war. If we want to
win, we have got to get rid of all our civilian
ideas. If nations do not want to put up with
things of this sort, why they must find an-
other way than war to settle their disputes.
No one would be in the least sentimental
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
about killing a tiger and its whelps. Why
pretend to a finer feeling about an enemy
more dangerous than a tiger — an enemy so
dangerous that even when we get him down
— and we shall — I don't see how the world
can go on unless we exterminate him, even if
it takes this generation. If we, stupidly, do
not, then we must suffer for it later. Be sure
of one thing, if the Boches get us down,
they '11 wipe us out. The whole earth is not
big enough for both of us."
Anyway, there is a point of view for you.
On the fourth day of the bombardment of
Paris, while every one was divided between
anxiety about the battle in the north and
pride at the superb spirit of desperate resist-
ance of our armies, I got a letter from Paris
which gave us all a good laugh — for I trans-
lated for Amelie, knowing that she would
tell it everywhere — and better it in the tell-
ing. It spoke of the splendid spirit of the
bombarded capital, which had already re-
turned to normal life — tramways running,
street-life calm, school-children in the radius
of the bombardment being taken out of dan-
ger; and it told of the first effort to announce
the beginning of the daily bombardment by
an alerte to be given by the city police, who
were ordered to beat a drum in the streets
— a sort of city revival of our country town
crier. The Sergent de Ville, who has his
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
amour propre, protested. He did not know
how to drum, — drumming is a metier like
any other. The city replied, "Never mind
that. Put the drum on. Take these two
sticks, and go along pounding. We've no
time to give you lessons. Every one will
know what it means."
They were properly humiliated, but they
had to obey. Away they had to go, beating
their drums, and beside them marched the
gamins of Paris, pounding on tin cans, and
whatever would make a noise. Of course
all Paris roared with laughter. The blush-
ing Sergents de Ville returned to their posts,
and they never went out any more as drum-
mers. Isn't that deliciously Paris? Too
bad Mr. Hohenzollern could not have seen it.
But though this made a short diversion
here we did not laugh long. Yesterday it
looked dangerously like a panic again. For
a few hours it seemed as if all our efforts
could not prevent people here from evacuat-
ing the place, — without orders. If the news
had not been better this morning I hate to
think what might have happened.
Last night we heard no guns. This morn-
ing's communique announced that the Ger-
man advance has been practically stopped —
at all events the Allies are holding them —
the breaches in the line have been filled — it
is unbroken — but after a retreat of nearly
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
sixty miles, and all they have worked for and
won inch by inch, lost from Noyon north,
except a bit of Flanders.
It is a sin to look back, I know. Our road
lies in the future. I hope no one over there
whom I love will ever have to fight depres-
sion as I have fought it since a week ago
to-day. I suppose the turn of you across the
water is coming. Still, you will never have
to see poor women and little children flying
from their homes, as we see them every day.
They never complain. They are grateful
for the slightest sympathy. They invariably
tell you of cases they know of people so much
worse off than they are.
I hope you are not worrying about me. I
could not write you all these details if I did
not know — was not sure — that long be-
fore you read it, the situation will be changed
for the better, that the cable will have reas-
sured you, so that all this will only be inter-
esting to you, who want to know always the
truth about my life.
They tell us at the Maine that, while the
Boches may advance a little at one point or
another in the line, the push is absolutely
over, and that it has been out of all propor-
tion costly for the Germans. With that we
have to be content. We must wait for his-
tory to tell us of the glorious episodes of the
desperate battles, of the achievements of the
cavalry which closed the breaches in the line,
[ 1 66 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
ind how the French 5th Army Corps — our
irave boys of the Seine and Marne — held
the road down the valley of the Oise to the
beating heart of France — Paris — for the
second time. How long?
XXI
April IS, 1918
WE are droll, we humans.
Although the battle is still going on out
there every one here seems to have forgotten
those panicky hours of the last week in
March. It was that first quick retreat in the
north which upset them all with the unspeak-
able dread that perhaps we could not hold
them. The moment when it became evident
that, though the Allies had to retreat, the
line was not smashed, every one bucked up
— and life became just what it had been all
these forty-two and a half months before.
People seem even to have forgotten the
dread of those days.
The second phase of the battle was over
a week ago, and, though we have lost some
ground, the line is still an unbroken wall, and
Germany's situation unchanged — except
that she is a little nearer Paris.
We've had some queer weather — most
uncertain. It has rained, sunshined, snowed,
sunshined and frozen. I am afraid that
means another year without fruit, which is a
disappointment, as the fruit trees flowered
superbly.
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The long-distance cannon continues to fire
on Paris — the grosse Bertha, they call it.
We hear every shot from here. The cannon
at the front still pounds away, and during the
nights the battle-front is often strangely
illuminated, a dull glow, like that which I am
sure you have often seen in the sky over a
foundry, and not unlike that which, at times,
hangs over Vesuvius. Now and then we see
star rockets and different kinds of fusees.
But I no longer go out at night to watch,
though I cannot induce Pere and Amelie to
sleep. The truth is that I have got so that
the cannon do not keep me awake. Amelie
insists that she cannot sleep, but as her room
is on the south side of the house, I believe
that is only because she persists in getting up
and hanging out of the north window to see
what is going on, thus deliberately prevent-
ing herself from sleeping.
I keep myself very busy. It is the only
way. I go up to Paris whenever there is any
need, much to Amelie's disgust. She never
draws a long breath, she says, until I get
back, on the theory that a bomb from that
long-range gun will fall on the train one day,
or on me in the street. But as the chances
are about one in a million I '11 take that
chance. I was in Paris three times last week
— going up twice by the seven o'clock train,
and coming back at night. Of course, only
important business would have induced me
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
to make that effort, as it meant taking my
coffee at half-past five, and I don't like that
any better than I ever did.
In spite of everything I had heard, I found
Paris normal. It is a very great pity that
the Germans, who are told that Paris is being
bombarded every day, and probably suppose
it is being gradually destroyed, cannot see
the effects of the bombardment. I was on
the boulevards the first day I went up, when
a bomb fell and exploded, making so heavy
a detonation that it seemed very near. It
really was across the Seine. No one stopped
walking, though every one did exactly what
I did — pulled out a watch to see the hour.
That was all, though it was only a short time
after the Good Friday feat of the grosse
Bertha, when a bomb fell on the church you
and I know so well, and where we used to
go in the old days, and sitting near the tomb
of Madame de Maintenon's ribald first hus-
band— chair-bound old Scarron — listen to
the very service that was going on when the
bomb fell. What with the bomb, and the
panic that followed, there was heavy loss of
life, and because of the number of victims,
and the fact that many were well-known
people, — for the Good Friday office of the
Tenebrae is a smart religious function, — the
accident made a good deal of noise in the
world, and it was impossible to conceal it.
But it is ridiculous to emphasize the fact that
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the dirty Germans deliberately fired on a
church on a Holy Day during an office, as
the reaching of such a target was pure acci-
dent. The emplacement of the big gun is
fixed. It reaches a certain distance into the
city. It can evidently be turned east and
west, so that the menaced points seem to lie
in an arc, reaching roughly from Montrouge
to near the Gare de 1'Est, and passing by a
line just behind where I used to live —
through the " Garden of Lies," I imagine, —
and across the Seine near the Louvre.
Twice while I was in Paris I had to pass
through this line, while the gun was firing,
to go out through the fortifications. I was
on my way to a suburban hospital, and had a
sick woman in the motor-car. The big gun
fired a corking shot while we were crossing
the Seine to run up by the Luxembourg Gar-
dens. I looked at my watch and calculated
the distance to the Porte, but I had not the
smallest sensation of the suspense I expected
to have. Three hours later I came back by
the same route, only making a slight detour
to avoid a tree that a shot fired since I passed
out of the gate had broken off.
The only marked difference that I saw in
the quarter was the silence in the Luxem-
bourg Gardens, where the children were no
longer playing. Apropos of the children,
you might suppose that living in a bom-
barded city, being in so many cases taken out
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
of bed and carried to abns in the night, might
at least create a panic among them. It does
not seem to. On the contrary many of them
appear to think it all a lark.
In the danger zone, of course, Paris, which
takes great care of her children — for no-
where are children more loved or happier
than they are in France — has sent the
school-children, with their teachers, into the
country. But there are still plenty of chil-
dren in the city.
One day when I was in town I saw a group
of youngsters playing and making so much
noise that I had to stop and watch them.
It was in a garden in a safe part of the city,
and it took two minutes to see what they
were playing. They were playing " Les
Gothas." One boy was a watcher at a " lis-
tening post," who gave the alarm, "They
come ! " Another was the fireman in his
auto, rushing along, and sounding his sirene.
One was the gunner at his post of D. C. A.
putting up a barrage, " bang, bang, bang."
A group were Boche avions making a ter-
rible series of explosions in all parts of the
garden. When it was over, the bogus dead
and wounded were lying all over the place,
and a tiny little fellow rushed about, sounding
the "All clear," on a tin trumpet. Even
then it was not over, for along came the
clanging bells of the ambulances and the vic-
tims were picked up. They did the thing
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with great spirit, imitating all the noises
admirably, with children's apt talent at
mimicry.
I never go to Paris but I wish that you
were with me. Each trip into the city has
its new experience.
The railway station is one of the most in-
teresting places in the world to-day. Our
line carries most of the soldiers going to and
from the front.
At Vaires, just outside of the outer line of
forts, is the immense Camp des Permission-
cures. All the men coming in from the
front on their regular eight days' home-leave
once in four months, must stop at Vaires to
have their papers examined, and from there
go on to their destinations, and many of
them stay there during their leave, for obvi-
ous reasons. At the expiration of their
leave, they report there to be sent back to
their posts. The camp is immense. Line
after line of tracks has been laid, extending
almost as far as one can see, for the big mili-
tary trains run right into the camp from the
main line. Miles and miles of barracks, and
offices for re-equipping soldiers, stretch off
into the distance, and there is never an hour
of the day or night, when a train-load of
poilus is not coming in or going out.
As this is only a short distance down the
line between here and Paris it is one of the
most interesting points on my trips to town.
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The big station in Paris, with its various
Red Cross works, — the Americans have a
very well-organized one there — and moving
throngs, is even more interesting. It is alive
with movement — with tragedy and comedy
— and to-day it is a tower of Babel, with the
American militairy policeman in his red
bands and his conspicuous U. S. A. always in
evidence.
I never can resist lingering a minute to see
the soldiers leaving the station. There are
always crowds of women and children wait-
ing at the barriers — for the poilus have
their especial entrance and exit — and a
throng always presses round the gate through
which they must pass, not only those who
have come expecting — usually in vain — to
meet their own, — but the curious who have
just come to see the boys from the front.
The looker after material — artistic, realis-
tic, or otherwise, — lovers of the grotesque,
hunters after the picturesque, lovers of laugh-
ter, morbid seekers after tragedy, will find it
all there, as well as, now and then, something
of the beautiful, and occasionally a bit of the
heroic. But the seeker after what is ordi-
narily known as "scenes" will lose his time.
France may have once been what we used
to call her, " hysterical." She is certainly
not even emotional to-day, so far as I can
see.
Sometimes I think that the big station is
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even more picturesque on the side where the
poilus are waiting to go back. At those
times the big courtyard in front is packed
with them. When they are coming in from
the front, they simply seem to rush through,
taking little notice of the crowd so interested
in them and providing the atmosphere invol-
untarily. But when they are going back to
the front it is a different matter.
Do you find that puzzling? Well, the
poilus arriving on home-leave are tired, often
disgusted, or indifferent. " Home-leave "
looks like Heaven to them. But they go
back gaily. The truth is, as a rule, they are
glad to go back. It is not that they are not
tired of the war. They are. Every one is,
— except our boys, who are nearly four years
behind the game. It has lasted too long for
the poilu to have anything but dogged toler-
ance for it. When the regular time arrives
for him to "come out" he welcomes it, but
in the three and more years that he has been
cut off from normal life he has become the
inhabitant of another world. He speaks an-
other language — a specialized tongue, —
and, in spite of everything, he almost invari-
ably gets homesick on leave.
I suspected this, little by little, as I watched
the men coming in from the front — they are
no longer boisterous, — and then watched
them go singing back. So one day I said to
Petit Louis, a boy in our commune, a gunner,
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who always comes to pay his respects to me
when he arrives on leave, and to say u good-
bye " when " going in " again.
"Well, Louis, how is your soixante-
" Fine, the darling," he laughed.
Then I said that I supposed he was glad
to be at home.
He puckered up his brows, shrugged his
shoulders, made one of his queer little ges-
tures with his hands, and said :
" Well, I don't know. Sure, I am glad to
see the woman and the kids, and to sleep one
night or so in a bed, — but — I don't know
why it is, I get bored with it in a day or two.
I am used to a different kind of life. I miss
my chums. I miss knowing exactly what to do
— what I Ve got to do whether I want to or
not. So you see, after two days of walking
about, talking with people who seem to un-
derstand just nothing at all about what is
going on out there, I am bored. I miss being
dead tired at night. I miss the noise. After
two or three days I count the hours until I
can get back."
I can understand that. It made me think
of what a man said to me in Paris in the early
days of the war.
u My father used to go, once a year, to sit
over a dinner with his comrades of the regi-
ment in '70. My sons will cherish their com-
rades and live over with them this great war.
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Men of my generation — we have nothing
to talk about."
It was not worth while to remind him that
after this is over the men who will be heard
talking loudest will be those who have never
seen a trench or fired a gun. Here in our
little commune the people who can tell you
the wildest tales of the days of the invasion
are those who ran away. If anyone were to
come here to-day, in a spirit of research, it
would not be the half dozen of us who actu-
ally stayed here in September, 1914, who
would tell hair-raising tales. It would be the
others. The stories have rolled up like the
famous snowball. It has opened my eyes in
a sense about the difficulties of writing
history.
One of the striking features about this
war is that the active soldiers almost never
talk with the civilians about the war. In a
sense, it is forbidden, but the reason goes
deeper than that. The soldier and the civil-
ian seem to-day to speak a different lan-
guage. It almost seems as if a dark curtain
hung between the realities of life "out
there," and the life into which the soldier
enters en repos.
Whenever they are talkative, it is of some-
thing rather spiritual than material. The
last time I went up to Paris I had an experi-
ence of that sort. I was settled in my com-
partment— alone. The train was about to
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start when the door was yanked open. A
tall, middle-aged officer brought up his hand
to salute, flung his bag in, entered after it,
banged the door, and sat down just as the
train moved. He cast a keen glance at me,
then unbuckled his belt and made himself
comfortable. The first time he caught my
eyes he leaned over, and said :
" I imagine that you are the American
lady who lived up on the hill at Huiry ? "
I owned up.
" I have heard of you," he said. " I have
a friend who was quartered in your house."
Then he settled down to chat. He seemed
to need it, which is unusual. He appeared
to be about forty-five, — a lieutenant. He
asked all sorts of things about the States —
how long it would take their army to get
ready? What sort of soldiers did I think
they would make? How many did I think
were over? And so forth.
I did my best, but I could not tell him how
many were over, and we would not be really
ready until the army was here. The only
thing of which I could actually assure him
was that the boys from the States would,
with a little experience, make as fine soldiers
as the war has yet seen. On that point I was
absolutely sure, and I gave it to him, with
emphasis, that, in my opinion, old Kaiser
Bill would have no greater disillusion in the
war than the United States would furnish
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
him, in proving to him that it did not take a
lifetime of drilling to create a patriotic army,
and that a patriotic army was better than a
professional one.
With a sigh of content he leaned back, and
I realized again how great a factor in the
morale of the French the coming over of the
boys from the States was. After a short
silence he smiled at me, and said:
"Ridiculous — a war. You see, in the
days before this came I was what one calls,
with considerable contempt now, ' an intel-
lectual.' I did not believe in force. I be-
lieved in the spiritual development of the
individual. But in days of peace does any
man know what is really in him ? I Ve given
my only son," and he touched the black band
on his sleeve. " Thank God his mother went
first. I've done my duty as best I could,"
and he touched the red ribbon on his breast,
with the barred one of military medals be-
side it. " But I often wonder if all educated
men have to make the same struggle that I
do. Often, when the moment comes to ' go
over ' I wonder what my men would think if
I were to cry out, 'Fire in the air! It is
nobler to be killed than to kill.' ' He looked
out of the window a moment before he
laughed and added, "Absurd, isn't it? Be-
cause I know that a war of defence and for
principle, and for the hopes of the future, is
a holy war."
[ 179 ]
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Here the train began to slow down.
" Helloa ! Vaires already? I hope that
I have not bored you? " And as he buckled
his belt, and picked up his bag, he added,
"It is so rarely that I talk to a woman —
I Ve no family — that I rather lose my head.
A thousand excuses. Good-bye." And we
shook hands like old friends.
I watched him as he walked rapidly away.
A lieutenant at forty-five ! That meant that
he was a volunteer.
I have been sitting here, off and on, all day,
writing this. That shows my need of com-
munion in these trying days, when we are
asking ourselves where the next attack is to
be, and hoping that it will not take us by
surprise.
I smile when I remember that in the first
hard days of the first week in March I tried
to comfort the people about me by saying:
"Courage! This is the beginning of the
final act." So it is, I suppose. But there are
to be more scenes in it than I thought then.
They are still strong, those Huns.
I do hope that when I write so frankly of
the emotions of each day here you do not get
the impression that anyone has lost faith in
the final issue. I don't think they have. It
is only that they are not so sure as they were
up to the opening of this offensive that this
special part of France may not have to be
[ 180 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
sacrificed as so many places have been. If
it is — well, never mind. In our hearts, even
trembling, we instinctively believe in a sec-
ond miracle. Yet why should we?
[ 181 ]
XXII
May 24, 1918
WE are still sitting as tight as we can,
waiting for the next offensive move, which
has held off longer than was anticipated.
The absolute uncertainty as to the point in
the line now menaced, and the inevitable
nervousness which comes from waiting every
night for an aerial attack, and listening all
day for the big cannon to begin firing on
Paris, makes each hour of the twenty-four a
bit trying. Of course the last of the three
grosse Berthas was destroyed by the aviators
on the 3rd. But we know that it will not
stay out of action forever.
I have kept busy planting, cleaning house,
arranging all sorts of extra curtains, but,
luckily the nights are getting very short and
the Gotha raids do not force me to be her-
metically sealed for long at a time. It is
hardly dark at half-past nine, and it begins
to get light before four. I have already
learned to go about in my shuttered house in
the dark when an alerte gets me out of bed,
though there is no need. But an odd sensa-
tion comes over me during an attack, espe-
cially as the batteries for the defence sur-
182
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
round us now in a semicircle — there are five
of them. When they all begin to fire, I feel
as if my little house were the only visible
thing in the landscape, and as though, if I lit
up, even behind shutters and curtains, I
should be seen. If that is not the wth power
of vanity, I don't know what to name it.
I expect you will get tired of hearing
about air raids, but really, if I do not tell
you about them I should be at a loss to know
of what I could write to you. They are of
almost nightly occurrence, and each one is
different. We had a double one last night,
— or one in two acts — covering four hours
and a half, with an entr'acte of three quar-
ters of an hour.
It was about eleven o'clock. I was read-
ing quietly when I heard the guns from the
fort. I intended to stay comfortably in bed.
It had been understood between Amelie and
me that, under no circumstances, was she to
come to me. In the first place, it is forbid-
den by orders, and in the second, now that
the barrage surrounds us, there is danger
from spent shot from the guns of the forts.
But at the end of half an hour I could not
resist going out to try to see what was hap-
pening. I had hardly got into the garden
before the guns ceased firing, and I went
back to bed. It was only a little over an
hour later, when boom went the cannon
again, and the raid lasted until nearly day-
[ 183 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
light. This time I went out at once. It is
impossible to resist the impulse. In spite of
all the regulations there was a group in the
road above my house, at a point where they
can look right over the fort at Chelles into
the horizon line over Paris, and from which
point they can see and locate each search-
light and can often see the explosion of the
shells. I suppose they will continue to do
this until a bit of spent shrapnel hits some
one in the head, and demonstrates to them
that it is not safe.
It made a rather long night, but when the
last gun fired, just before daybreak, I was
still sitting on the lawn. All through the
night I had heard the military trains on the
railroad rushing along the valley, and, when
the dim coming of day enabled me to see
them, I noticed that a scouting engine pre-
ceded each train, as in the early days of the
mobilization. So I was not surprised a few
hours later to learn that a bomb had fallen
within fifty yards of the tunnel at Charlifert.
While I was still sitting there, Amelie
joined me. She was all dressed, and I knew
that she had not been in bed at all.
It was not quite four o'clock. A beautiful
day was breaking. The cuckoo was talking.
A blackbird began to sing. Then the spar-
rows and the swallows yawned and chirped,
and a thrush piped up. Overhead, the
avions de chasse were still scouting. Out
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at the big camp, lying along miles of the
fields, across the Marne, flechettes, thin
white lines of light, mounted like silver
arrows straight into the air at regular inter-
vals, to guide the aviators back to their
landing field. Now and then, a coloured
light in the air announced a flyer ready to
descend, then, in a moment, the big lights on
the field would flare up, and in the coming
daylight we would see a machine circling
down. We sat there, until, at half-past four,
the last homing avion was in. It was no use
to go to bed at that hour, so, as the days are
hot, I weeded and watered the garden, set
out a few begonias which Amelie went to
Meaux for yesterday, and some of the seed-
lings— zinnias, soucis, and old-fashioned
balsam. I promise myself to go to bed with
the chickens to-night to make up.
I note that you send your love to Khaki
and Dick. I have given your message to the
Grand Due, but Dick is very unpopular at
this moment, and civilities are suspended be-
tween us.
I think I told you that Dick had got so
that he never barked at a poilu? The army
might come and carry off the house, and me
in it, he would consider it all right. Like
the Grande Duchesse he loves the military.
Well, lately, life has been very dull for him.
Since he cannot run free without a muzzle,
his one idea is to escape, and go in search of
[ 185 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
his adored poilus, since they don't just now
come to see him. I expect they let him lick
out their gamelles. It saves washing them.
Anyway, last week there was a regiment at
Quincy. Dick disappeared. He was gone
for nearly a week. I kept hearing of him,
but the regiment had been gone nearly forty-
eight hours before he reappeared. Amelie
opened the door for him. He made a dash
upstairs and tried to jump on the bed to give
me an affectionate morning greeting, as he
is allowed to do when he is good. I repulsed
him severely, and tried to have an explana-
tion with him. I demanded, at least, to
know where he had been since the regiment
departed. He was very reticent. He looked
at me, and scratched his head behind his ear
in a very knowing manner — had brought a
military flea with him, I suppose, — and ex-
pected that to satisfy me. It distinctly did
not. So he was sent down to his kennel and
chained. I hope he knew why. Still, as he
had evidently had a good time, he probably
felt that it was worth while being chained up
for a day.
However, the explanation I could not get
from him followed almost at once. He
had evidently waited about in Quincy hoping
some more soldiers might arrive, and in the
waiting time he had been overcome by
hunger, and gone marketing for himself —
on tick, — and his bills followed him home.
[ 186 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
He had eaten a franc-twenty-five centimes'
worth of sausage at the charcuterie. He had
spoiled a pound of cheese at the cremerle.
He had decamped with a bone worth fifty
centimes at the butcher's, which would have
been allowed him if he had not returned and
helped himself to a costly chop — one franc-
fifty. On the morning of the third day, —
no regiment arriving, — he evidently decided
that life was too difficult, and that he had
better return to his regular boarding-house,
where, at least, meals were certain, and wait
until more soldiers and more gamelles ar-
rived. I paid the bills of the prodigal, of
course, but I did not kill any fatted calf for
him. Not that he minded that, for, to tell
you the truth, he rendered up some of the
stolen goods soon after his return, and then
rolled himself up to sleep it off.
While I am speaking about Dick, I must
tell you another amusing thing. -He has dis-
covered the aeroplanes. For a long time,
whenever a machine flew low, as they often
do, he has rushed out and barked furiously
all over the place. Just for fun, one day, I
held him by his collar and tried to make him
look in the right direction. I never suc-
ceeded. He looked everywhere but at the
proper place over his head. But one day,
standing with Amelie and me in the garden
while a big triplane was passing, he discov-
ered it himself. He began barking, running
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
madly after it, and trying to jump the hedge.
Since then, he has learned where to look
when he hears them, and he always runs the
length of the garden, eyes in the air, head
erect, yelping and jumping. Of course, he
thinks it is a big bird, though he never barks
at birds. But birds don't make such a racket.
I have seen some wonderful flights of
avions lately — some twenty in battle forma-
tion. It is a wonderful sight here where
the sky space is so extensive. One of the
prettiest flights the other day was so high
that, if it had not been for the noise the
moteurs made, I should not have detected
them at all, — they looked so tiny in the blue
depth of that vast expanse — no larger than
the swallow flying under them, thousands
and thousands of feet below.
Kind of you to congratulate me on drop-
ping out of the political note. As for that,
I was stirred when Caillaux went to live at
La Sante, and I shall get excited again when
he — goes on. For all the smaller men who
are moving out of the line of vision I am
little concerned so that they go and en route
close the pincers on the chief. Political trials
are delicate affairs in the democratic world
in which a man is said to have a right to his
opinions, but in times of war there are things
more important than opinions. The dis-
cipline to which an army defending the coun-
try must submit, and failure to do which
[ 188 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
tcurs the penalty of death for the soldier,
surely applies in some way to civilians. Un-
til it is demonstrated that it does, there can
no consolations for the terrible affair of
ist May, or for the tragedy of Coeuvres.
'hat is all.
[ 189 1
XXIII
May 30, 1918
IT has been a very trying week. Indeed,
as I look back to the long months of war, I
realize that it was only when, on the last day
of January, Germany began the effort of
which this week is only one phase, that we
really began to appreciate the frightfulness
of her endeavour. Since that day, no one
within hearing of the front has had a day
of tranquillity, and no one in France an hour
free of anxiety. For that matter, no one in
the world, capable of understanding or sym-
pathy, can have been calm. But it is surely
a different thing to read about these days
than to take part in them. I cannot write
you about the life here in detail, because, as
I have already assured you, things are all
changed by the time you read the letters, and
you know long before you get them what
turn affairs have taken. And then, there is
always the censor.
There has hardly been a night since I
wrote you last without an air raid, and on
the night of the day I last wrote you, we were
showered with spent shrapnel. It fell on the
roofs at Voisins and I am treasuring for you,
[ 190 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
as a personal souvenir of me and the war, a
large jagged bit which struck the shutter of
my bedroom window and bounded on to the
terrace.
On the day before the long-awaited offen-
sive began on our front, on the historic
Chemin des Dames, everything was quiet
here. It was a Sunday. We had had five air
raids in about eight days. The weather had
been very hot, and I had felt a bit shaky.
But on Saturday, that was the twenty-fifth, I
had a telegram from Paris telling me that a
friend was leaving for Bordeaux on Mon-
day, and, as she could not get a sauf conduit
to come to me, begged me to come up to
town, if only for an hour. So I was up at
five, and at six Pere was driving me down to
the station to take the seven o'clock train.
We always have to allow plenty of time for
fear of being delayed on the road by military
camions.
It was a lovely morning, full of sunshine,
but with the fresh breeze blowing from the
north-east still, as it has for weeks. As we
turned from the Chemin Madame into the
route nationale, we found ourselves face to
face with a procession of artillery camions
extending as far as we could see in the direc-
tion of Meaux, and down the hill to Couilly,
where, one after another, they continued to
come round the curve from St. Germain dur-
ing our entire descent to the station. The
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
camions had cannon of all calibres mounted,
each followed by a load of gunners, and
every little way came ammunition-trucks
and rolling kitchens. Every cannon's nose,
as it stuck its carefully capped muzzle be-
tween the heads of the chauffeur and mechani-
cian was wreathed with flowers, and every
camion carried a huge bunch of red peo-
nies or roses, with daisies and some blue
field flowers — always making the French
colours. The gunners all had clean, smiling,
Sunday faces, but, as Ninette ambled down
the hill in the cloud of dust made by the
camions groaning and rumbling up it, I felt
that this tremendous movement of artillery
must be the prelude to the offensive, and that
the movement just here must mean that it
was the line from Soissons to Reims which
was threatened. I said nothing to Pere. I
was coming back in the middle of the after-
noon.
I made an easy trip to Paris. Although
it was Sunday, there was no crowd. Nor
was there any unusual movement of troops
on the line. I found the streets more ani-
mated than usual. It was three weeks since
the long-range gun, which had so long bom-
barded the city, had been silenced. It looked
as if a great many people who had left Paris
during the March offensive had returned.
The animation in the streets was not that of
even a year ago, but it was anything but a
[ 192 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
dead city or a sad city to me. So I forgot all
about my impression of the morning, until,
as I was driving back by the road from
Esbly, in the middle of the afternoon, the
picture suddenly returned to me, and I in-
stinctively turned to look across the Marne,
and listened for the guns. Not a sound.
Perhaps I was mistaken, I thought.
We had a peaceful night. I went out
early the next morning. All was silent. But
while I was having my coffee there was one
heavy shot. I jumped. It was once more
that big gun firing on Paris. There was no
doubt in my mind — that was the accompani-
ment, or the prelude, to the new battle. But
still we heard no sound of artillery in the
direction of the front. The only explanation
seemed to us was that the attack was, after
all, not here but on a part of the line farther
north — perhaps again in Picardy where the
attack of March had carried the Germans
nearer the sea and nearer still to the railroad
communication so important to the British.
So you can imagine our surprise when the
news came that the attack, which had begun
at three o'clock in the morning, was against
the line in front of us from Montdidier in
the west, with Compiegne and the route to
Paris down the Oise valley, Chateau Thierry
and the route down the Marne, Reims and
Chalons, as objectives.
The big gun, which had begun to bombard
[ 193 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Paris at half-past six in the morning was still
firing at half-past six at night, and at half-
past ten at night there was an air raid which
lasted about an hour and a quarter.
With all one's pluck held tight in both
hands, and our morale builded up on the
same principles that are handed out to the
soldiers, you must agree that there is some-
thing appalling in this determined, reckless
exhibition of brute force. Even although I
am not a bit sentimental about this, I must
remark that it seems to be stupid. The
demonstration does not seriously alarm any-
one — it surely demoralizes no one. It must
be pretty costly. Besides that, the amount of
harm it does is infinitesimal in comparison
to the effort. One life sacrificed in that way
is one too many, but more lives are lost
almost any day by the ordinary accidents of
life than by this superman effort of frightful-
ness. As for the air raids — they get less
and less effective, as the air defence is elab-
orated by actual experience.
Trying as the week has been, it has been
absolutely different from that of the big
battle of March. We have hardly heard a
gun. Dead silence has reigned here, and
that silence has been terribly trying. We
have known that it was largely an infantry
battle, and all the time the wind has blown
steadily from the north-east — what Amelie
calls " le vent des Boches" because it is a
[ 194 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
wind which brings their gas over. But that
is the prevailing wind here at this season,
and the Germans have made a great study
of meteorology, as a military science. In
the drive towards Amiens in March, the
heavy guns played a big part, and for days
and nights the earth shook with the artillery
play even as far south as this. To-day, the
fourth of this battle, the silence is almost
terrifying. I keep saying to myself, " Will
the heavy artillery never get to work?"
We have lost Craonne, and the Chemin
des Dames, and how many a tragic hilltop?
Day after day we trace the battle-line as well
as we can, and, as it approaches us, the only
consolation is that though it bends and curves
and stretches, it does not break. The Ger-
mans have again crossed the Aisne and the
Vesle, and were last night at Fismes, which
the English retook in October, 1914, some-
thing like twenty miles nearer to us. Reims
is holding out superbly. But for that matter,
with its tremendous underground structures,
it is practically impregnable. I don't believe
it can be taken except by a siege, but the
rermans are encircling it and rapidly ap-
)roaching Chateau-Thierry, which threatens
)ur railroad communications.
It was only last week that I had a letter
>m you in which you said: "Of course
tey will attack again. They must or own
icmselves defeated. But they will not be
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
so strong." Hm! They were 650,000
against 80,000 when this battle began. Of
course, that was before our reserves were
brought up. I sit trembling for fear of a
panic again. I cannot blame these poor
people. They are as loyal as possible, but
our roads are again crowded with refugees
flying from the front. It is a horrid sight.
Wednesday a man rested at my gate. He
had been obliged to leave his farm when
the surprise attack forced the army back so
quickly Sunday that civilians had no time to
save anything but their lives. He had left
his big modern reaping machines — they had
to be destroyed to keep them from falling
into German hands. He had left two thou-
sand pounds of beans, requisitioned by the
army, — there was no time to move them,
and they were not paid for — burned that
the enemy might not get them. And he is
only one of thousands, and it is inevitable
that, after the first excitement, must come
the sense of personal loss. I could under-
stand that, for this is the second time he
had been driven out.
It was hard to find just the right thing to
say — especially as I was safe — so far. No
personal sacrifice has been asked of me. So
I said finally: "Don't be discouraged yet.
All these things will be arranged, and your
children will have a better world to live in.
Besides, the American boys are coming over
[ 196 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
as fast as they can get here. There are
nearly a million here now, I should think."
He shook his head. uToo late," he re-
plied. " What are a million against the three
millions the Huns have brought from
Russia?"
Well, there you are, and can you blame
him?
It was Wednesday that things began to
look serious here. On that day the scenes
of 1914 began to repeat themselves. The
better class began to fly. The humbler
farmers and peasants began to hide their
belongings. Caves and subterranean pas-
sages were again filled with furniture, bed-
ding and household treasures, even clothing.
Some of the richer farmers began to drive
their cattle south, and some people even
wheeled their possessions in wheelbarrows
to the quarries at Mareuil, where work had
stopped, owing to the bombs that have fallen
there.
It was in vain that I argued that there
was no immediate danger; that we should
get warning if it were necessary to go; that
the roads were sufficiently blocked already
by those who had been driven out, and by
the army, without our adding further to the
confusion. The peasants and the farmers
would listen, — if you set them the example,
you can count on them, but not so well on
those who have a place to go to, and money
[ 197 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
in their pockets to get there. Besides, I
really was " talking through my hat," and
I thought to myself, " If I am a bad prophet
they may mob me, and serve me right for
interfering."
In the meantime Amelie sat tight. I had
her fixed with my eye, — and she had not
forgotten 1914.
Thursday — that was yesterday — was the
hardest day. All night the confusion on the
road was terrible. Sleep was impossible.
On that day, while every one was rushing
about hiding things — too busy to do any
work in the fields — a group of refugees
arrived here. As a rule, we, who are off
the main road, see them at Quincy and
Voisins, and Couilly, and go out to help
them. But just before sunset yesterday one
of the children of the hamlet came running
to the gate with the news that a group of
emigres were crossing the hilltop by the
Chemin Madame. Of course if they were
taking that road, they were coming here.
It leads nowhere else. The first impulse of
every one seemed to be to hang back. Refu-
gees here, where every one was so nervous,
seemed to them the last straw — especially
at the moment when they felt pretty sure that
another day or two might see them all refu-
gees themselves. But they are children,
these simple people. So when I started hur-
riedly up the road, without a word, to meet
[ 198 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
them, they all followed, as I knew they
would. I thought of how it must feel to be
driven out of one's home, and to enter, at
sundown of a hot day, into a little hamlet
like this, not knowing what kind of a recep-
tion awaited one — was it to he a welcome,
or only curious looks from indifferent eyes?
As I reached the corner I met coming
across the hill a procession of five loaded
farm wagons, drawn by big sturdy farm
horses. Beside the train marched a middle-
aged man and half a dozen boys. In the
wagons rode the women and children, and by
them ran a couple of dogs. The man walk-
ing at the head of the group, with a heavy
stick in his hand, looked about fifty, and
was apparently the leader. When I smiled
him a welcome, he took off his hat, and then
we shook hands ceremoniously, and then the
Huiry-ites all followed suit. For a moment
I thought it was going to be a real function,
and I was about to tell him that I was not
the Mayor of Huiry, but a foreigner, when
I was spared the trouble. He spotted me
at once, and said: " Fous etes Americaine,
n'est-ce pas?" So much for my accent. He
explained that he knew the accent. He had
left a lot of our boys where he had come
from, — north of Compiegne.
When I asked him what we could do to
make the party comfortable, he explained
that he had been told that there was room
[ 199 J
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
on the hill to shelter his horses for the night,
and that that was all they needed. If we
could give the old grandmother and her little
grandchild a bed, the rest would camp, and
then he added: "We don't want to put any
one out. We can pay for everything. But
the horses must rest for one night, as we
have been on the road since sunrise yes-
terday."
You should have seen how quickly it was
arranged. I took in the grandmother — she
was not as old as I am, by the way — and
the little child, whose father had been killed,
and whose mother is a nurse in a hospital in
Paris, and a pretty blonde girl, who proved
to be the aunt, and inside half an hour the
horses were stabled, the wagons under cover,
and beds ready for every one, and a kitchen
found in the house across the road from me,
which was empty.
You can get some idea of what these
people are like when I tell you in a jiffy the
women turned up the skirts of their best
dresses, got out their big aprons, and went
to work to get their dinner. They had every-
thing with them — chickens, rabbits, vege-
tables, tinned things, bread, and even char-
coal. A kind welcome had made them cheer-
ful, and before nine o'clock they were all
established at an improvised table on the
roadside, eating, chatting and laughing. It
was a sight that did us all good.
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It was not much after ten when the women
went to bed, leaving the men to clear up and
re-pack. It was a family of neighbours —
rich shop keepers, hotel keepers, and their
farm hands, and farmers. One man told
me that he alone had left fifty thousand
francs' worth of materials behind him, and
his only prayer was that the Allies had been
able to take it or destroy it. There was no
sign of class distinction. They were all one
family, and had all such pretty manners.
The baby — about three — came to offer her
little hand when she was put to bed, and
lisp her " Bon soir, Madame, et bonne nuit"
and one after another of the group came
into the garden to say good-night.
The elderly man remarked that it would
be pleasant to sleep out of the sound of the
guns. I had to laugh, as I replied :
" Well, I am sorry that we cannot promise
you that. We are just in front of the guns
of the outer forts of Paris, and we get a
Gotha visit almost every night."
But that idea did not disturb them. They
had been accustomed to so much worse. And
re enough, we had hardly got into bed,
hen, at about twenty minutes past eleven,
the guns began to fire from the forts, and
{>r an hour and a quarter the noise was
fernal.
I was up early this morning, but, as I
anted to keep the house quiet, in order that
[ 201 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
my tired guests might sleep, I came upstairs
to write to you. The news is bad — the
Germans are in Soissons again, and the Allied
army is still retreating south and west. Poor
Soissons! This makes the third time its
people have had to get out. I remember so
well that day in the end of August — the
twenty-ninth, I think — in 1914, when the
British lost it the first time. But a fortnight
later people were returning, though they did
not stay long, as the following January the
Germans began bombarding it, and it was
not until March, 1917, that the town was
again safe for civilians, and now, for the
third time, these poor people are wanderers
again.
Well, my guests are beginning to move
about. Amelie is calling me to my coffee,
and I will finish this later.
Later
All sorts of things have happened since I
went down to breakfast. I have only time
to add a few words to this. News has come
that the railroad is cut — for civilians — at
Meaux. There is no certainty that even that
communication with Paris will not at any
moment become impossible. I am leaving
for Paris — only for twenty-four hours — at
five o'clock.
I will write to explain from there. In the
meantime there is no need for you to worry
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
yet. In case of any change in my plans I
shall cable so that you will know where I am.
I shall time the cable to reach you before
this letter does so that you will not be left
in any uncertainty. In case you have received
no word by wire when this reaches you, you
are to understand that I am back here, and
all is well.
[ 203 ]
XXIV
5 Villa Victor Hugo, Paris, June I, !Qi8
WELL, here we are, in practically the same
situation as on that memorable September
day in 1914, when Amelie and I made our
rush to Paris, to return the same night and
find the British army at the gate, at the end
of that tragic two weeks' retreat from Mons.
This is what happened.
The cordial welcome that my neighbours
gave the refugees who arrived Thursday
on the hilltop braced them up and consoled
them at the end of their two days' pilgrim-
age in the heat and dust, and their calm and
courage braced us all up. But alas ! the bad
news of Friday morning spoiled all that.
When I went into the garden after my coffee,
I found them in the road at the gate, with
their heads over a newspaper examining a
map of the front. I was not especially sur-
prised when the leader came into the garden
a little later, and said:
"Well, Madame, although you were all
so kind as to urge us last night to rest here
to-day and not go on until to-morrow, we
have decided that it is hardly wise. We are
leaving at once, and making for Melun. The
[ 204 ]
in
sa
:
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
roads are crowded now, and it seems to us
most unsafe here. We hope to reach Melun
during the night."
Two hours later they were gone.
Not long after, while I was sitting in the
garden, listening to the confused noises from
the moving trains of refugees on the road,
and trying to make up my mind calmly what
it was wisest to do, Amelie came out, and
began to argue the matter with me. To my
surprise I found that her mind was fixed on
having me go to Paris at least, and wait
there for the turn of the tide — for turn it
must. I don't really know why it must, but
I feel that it will. All her arguments did
not seem sound, but some of them were wise
enough.
She argued that every one had gone but
the farmers and peasants; that the situation
was different from that of 1914; that then
I belonged to the most powerful of the neu-
tral countries, whereas to-day I belonged to
the most hated of Germany's enemies; that
even if we were not invaded we risked being
bombarded; that in case of a bombardment
they could all live in the subterranean pas-
ages, and not mind it too much, but that it
ould be unnecessarily uncomfortable for
e; that I could still get to Paris with a
trunk, but in case of a hurried evacuation
ter I would have to go without clothes —
nd finally, as a crowning argument, she said,
[ 205 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
uWe all want you to go, and we shall feel
less anxious when you are in a safer place."
I heard her out, but I was doing some
pretty tall thinking. One thing was certain
— I had to have money. Was n't history re-
peating itself? It was already taking three
and sometimes four days to get a letter into
Paris, and almost as many to get one out.
That meant that it would take nearly a week
to get money by mail, and communications
might be cut at any minute. Besides, Amelie
was quite right on one point, — it might be
prudent for me to have a trunk in Paris, so
that, in case we were ordered out, I could
at least find clean clothes at the end of my
voyage.
Finally I cut the argument short.
" All right, Amelie," I said. " I '11 go up
to Paris. But I shall come right back as soon
as I get some money, see how things really
are in Paris, and leave my trunk."
uGood," said Amelie, jumping up. "Pack
the trunk at once. There is a train at five.
I '11 harness in an hour. That will give you
time enough, and we must allow for the
crowd on the road."
I protested that the next morning would
do, but she insisted that it was possible that
the next morning I might not be able to get
away. I didn't believe it, but, in the end, I
took the five o'clock train — that was day
206
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
before yesterday, the day on which I last
wrote to you.
We started away silently, except that I
assured every one who came out to say good
bye to me that there was no good bye, as I
was coming back, surely no later than Mon-
day. But as we drove across the Chemin
Madame I was surprised to find that Amelie
was crying, a thing she rarely does. When I
leaned forward to smile into her face she
quite broke down.
' You must not try to come back. None
of us want you to. It is too dangerous.
After this is all over we can find one another
again. We will do all that we can to save
your house and all your things."
" Nonsense/' I replied, " of course I am
coming back! You are to go to Couilly to
fetch me at two o'clock on Sunday, and, in
case I am not there, at the same hour Mon-
day, when I shall surely be there. In the
meantime, if I can telegraph, I will. Do you
understand?"
" I understand that you are coming if you
can get back."
" Fudge," I replied, but I knew that I was
taking that chance, so I hurriedly gave her
certain instructions in case our hill was evac-
uated ; emptied what money I had on me into
her lap; carefully wrote out a couple of
addresses, in and out of Paris, where she
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
could reach me; arranged what was to be
done about all the beasties in case worse
came to worst, and the one consolation I felt
was that in case Amelie was right and I
wrong about the situation I could certainly
serve them better by going than staying. If
a bombardment drove them down into the
caves I should be an embarrassment to them.
If military orders drove them into the roads,
why there were a horse and donkey and two
covered wagons, and again they would be
more at ease without me, while outside the
zone I could help them better than inside,
and prepare a refuge for them.
But as I stood on the steps at the station
watching Amelie drive away I knew that
she was still crying — her mind made up
for the worst. I simply refused to consider
that it could happen. I was not gay. Who
could be ? You never saw such a sight as the
gare was. The refugees who had arrived
thus far on foot, with their pitiful bags and
parcels, were being taken on by the rail-
road. Hundreds of women and children
from Couilly and St. Germain and Quincy
were flying, taking beds and all sorts of
boxes and bundles with them. It was 1914
all over again, only a hundred times sadder.
At Esbly, where we changed cars, it was
even worse.
The train from Meaux was over an hour
and a half late. The platform was piled
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
with boxes and bundles, trunks and baby-car-
riages loaded with parcels, baskets and
rolled-up bedding. The crowd was as sad-
looking as the baggage — women leading
children and dogs, carrying bundles of all
sorts, and string-bags in which shoes and
bread were conspicuous. There were birds
in cages, and cats crying in baskets. The
sight did not tend to make anyone gay.
It was a strangely silent crowd that stood
during that hour and a half of weary wait-
ing while train after train of rolling stock
from up the line was hurried towards Paris,
and train after train of military material was
rushed through to Meaux. When the train,
which should have come at twenty minutes
to six, finally pulled in at almost half-past
seven it seemed to me that I was back at that
day in 1914, — over forty-five months ago.
If the trip to town had not had some en-
couraging moments I am afraid that I might
have arrived in Paris in a mood not far re-
moved from that in which I had left Amelie
at Huiry.
The crowd in the packed compartment, in
which I found a place, was interesting.
There was a family from Nancy, which had
been stopping at Meaux, there was an in-
firmiere from the big military hospital, Val
de Grace, and people flying from Meaux,
and the principal topic of conversation was,
quite naturally, the "boys from the States."
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
The greatest anxiety of every one but the
nurse was that the delay of the train would
force them to remain over night in bom-
barded Paris.
We should have been in Paris before
seven o'clock. We got there at ten minutes
to nine.
All along the line we had been side-tracked
or held up to let long military trains have the
right of way — trains packed with poilus-
those closed cars marked " hommes, 40,
chevaux, 8;" you remember them? — with
men sitting in the open doors, their feet
hanging out, all smoking and laughing, trains
camoufle with splashes of green and dirt-
coloured paint; trucks on which were mounted
all sorts of cannon, their noses in the air,
trains of ammunition wagons, trains of trucks
carrying huge gas-tanks with all sorts of
cautionary directions in huge letters, and,
finally, as we drew out of Vaires and stopped,
we came alongside of the first train bllnde
and the first tanks I had ever seen. The
huge armoured train — camoufle, of course
— consisted of four enormous cars, and each
had its lower car for the gunners. On the
lower roofs sat the men, singing and laugh-
ing— most of them in their shirt-sleeves —
extraordinary for French boys — and each
car had its mascot. On one was a white
lamb, with a ribbon about his neck. On one
was a monkey. On one was a white poodle,
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
who looked as if he had just had a bath. On
the fourth was a bird in a cage.
Somehow all this bucked me up tremen-
dously. Every one was hanging out of the
car windows. There was a hearty exchange
of courtesies. There was no sign of any-
thing but high faith and cheery good humour
on the faces of any of these men, who, inside
a very few hours, would probably be in the
thick of it. I drew a long breath as I
thought to myself, "Well, the French are
not all dead yet. With spirit like this they
ought to be able to stem the tide."
The scene at the station in Paris beggared
all description. Never since the war began
have I seen anything like it. The baggage
was piled, pell-mell, on the platforms. It
had been apparently many days since there
had been any empty space in the baggage
rooms. One had to pick one's way through
it to find an exit. I found an old porter who
knew me to carry my bag, and gave him a
receipt for my trunk. He shook his head
and advised me not to try to get it that night,
as it would surely be hours before I could
find it, and by that time it would be impos-
sible to get a cab, as it would be dark, and
cabs do not care to make long trips after
dark, when a Gotha attack is an almost
nightly occurrence. There seemed to be
nothing else to do, although, as I looked
about, I saw no reason why anyone could not
[ 2" ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
help himself to a good-looking small trunk
like mine and walk off with it.
When we got outside there was no cab in
sight, and a crowd waiting. So the old man
told me to stay right where I was — not
budge, no matter what happened, even if he
should be ten minutes. So there I stood fixed
in the twilight, watching the scene. Now
and then a taxi-auto would come in through
the gate. Instantly twenty people would
rush to meet it. It was a real case of short
distance sprinting and no favour.
But that did not interest me as much as the
big camions of the American Red Cross
which have done most of the rescue work
during this evacuation. The refugees who
arrive at this station, after they have been
fed and cleaned, are carried by these big
camions to the stations on the lines going
out to the south and west. It was exciting
for Parisians to see these great open
camions, with sturdy American lads in their
sombreros, in their shirt-sleeves, — with the
sleeves rolled to the elbows at that, — stand-
ing braced on widespread feet, with their
arms folded, as the autos bumped over the
pavements.
It was not ten, but twenty, minutes before
my old porter finally came back, riding on
the running-board of a taxi. I was glad to
see him, I can tell you. It was already dark.
It was ten o'clock when I reached my desti-
[ 212 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
nation, and I had left home at four, and had
had no dinner — not that this is very impor-
tant in these days.
I had not even got through talking when
the alerte sounded. But this is getting to be
a common occurrence, so that it would not
be worth recording, if it had not been a
rather unusual raid. It was quarter to
eleven when the first gun fired, and fifty-five
minutes later came the berloque. But while
the "all clear" was being bugled in the
streets there came a second alerte, and for a
few minutes the sirene and the B-flat bugle
did a duet, and I assure you it was comic.
People who had started from the abris said
the whole thing was very funny — the bugler
lowered his bugle, — the fireman began toot-
ing his horn, — people who had come out of
the cellars ran back — anyway, here are
more points for the future makers of farce-
comedy.
After it was all over we stood for a while
on the balcony listening to the church bells
ringing out the message " all clear" in the
suburbs. It sounded so pretty. It is a pity
that so alluring a sound in the night should
be associated with anything so sinister. On
our hill, the alerte is given by tolling the
bells. I don't enjoy that. We have no " all
clear " signal. We know when the forts stop
firing that it is over.
As soon as I had my trunk in Paris I
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
wanted to go right home again. I found real
comfort in the fact that if I were driven out
of my home I should have at least a change
of shoes — they are so costly just now — sev-
enty-five francs a pair for shoes that in the
old days cost twenty-five. But since I was
in town it seemed wise to look the situation
over carefully and provide for possibilities.
One thing was certain — if I were actually
forced out by military operations, with which
neither fear nor my own wishes had anything
to do, why then Paris would be no place to
stay.
There is not in my mind the smallest
chance of Paris ever being taken or besieged.
But there is a chance that, if the Germans
pass Compiegne, they can mount the guns
which bombarded Antwerp, and still pound
Dunkirk, and Paris may, for a few days, be
seriously bombarded. In case of that possi-
bility becoming a fact, I imagine that few of
us foreigners would be allowed to stay in
Paris, and I have spent all day to-day, which
is Sunday, arranging for that eventuality, —
that is to say, all except what has been spent
writing you this long letter.
XXV
June 4, igi8
WELL, here I am at home again, and I
have been very busy ever since I got here,
most of the time chuckling. Life is not all
tragic, and it is only a breath over the line to
laughter, as usual.
I came back on Monday, the second, as
I said I should. The drive on Paris at both
Chateau-Thierry and Compiegne seems to
be held up. The Boches are in Chateau-
Thierry, and they have crossed the Marne
at Dormans, southeast of Chateau-Thierry,
but they are still outside Compiegne. Yes-
terday was the eighth day of the big battle,
and it almost appears to be a rule that an
eight days' drive is about all an army can
stand.
The trip back was what it always is in
these days, as almost the only soldiers I meet
on the train are the boys from the States.
But they are not much given, just now, to
talk. They know little about the country,
and their one desire seems to be to get on to
the job, get it done, and get home. Besides,
in spite of anything one can do, there is a
different feeling in one's heart towards them.
The French and English seem hardened to
[ 215 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
it, and take it all as a matter of course. The
boys from the States do not, yet.
I found Amelie waiting at the station.
She was visibly surprised to see me. It was
quite evident that she had not expected me.
She drove me up the hill quite sadly, and
her only comment was :
" Now you '11 have to do it all over again.
I was comfortable, knowing you were safe,
and now I 've got to go through it all again."
When I got to the house, the moment I
opened the door I discovered one reason for
her discomfort at my return. The house
was dismantled. My first impulse was to
scold, but when I realized how hard they
must all have worked, and with what good
intention, I decided to laugh loud and long
instead.
I wish you could have seen the house.
There was not a curtain. There was not a
dish in the dining-room nor in the kitchen.
The mirrors were down, and pictures on the
floor, faces to the wall. My winter clothes,
all the bed and body linen and even kitchen
towels had been packed, and everything car-
ried up the hill and hidden underground.
My first impulse as I looked about the dis-
mantled home was to be very cross, but, be-
fore I opened my mouth I looked into the
library. There stood my books all along the
walls. She had not dared touch them. The
hearty laugh the sight simply knocked out
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
of me gave me time to appreciate it. As
soon as I could get my face straight I said:
" Oh, Amelie, Amelie ! And you said, in
1914, that nothing would ever induce you to
do a thing like this again! "
"Well, mistress," she replied, "it's your
things I Ve hidden this time," which was per-
fectly true. Her own home had not been
touched.
There was no reply to be made to that ex-
cept that I was grateful to her for leaving
me something to read and my typewriter.
She had hidden the phonograph.
She explained that she saw no way to hide
the books, as there were not cases enough
or time enough — and she reasoned that if
the house were destroyed, and evidently she
had made up her mind to that, I could go on
without books, but that I would be glad to
have bedding and dishes and clothes. I saw
her point of view. She did not see mine.
So you can guess how I am living. Amelie
has made me up one bed with her sheets. I
drink my coffee out of a bowl, and stir it with
a pewter spoon. I have two plates and a
knife and fork from her house. I know a
little of discomforts of which, up to now, I
have had none. I am going to support it a
few days. I really have not the heart to
order all that hard work done over again at
once, especially as Amelie' is not yet sure that
I may not have to leave.
[ 217 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
The atmosphere is anything but calm here.
Meaux was bombarded yesterday, and more
harm done in an hour than during the entire
battle of the Marne. In addition, one of the
first regiments du choc, the boys who fell
back in the first hours of the attack of
May 27 — less than two hundred are left of
the regiment — came here to rest before re-
tiring further to reorganize. Naturally they
arrived in a sadly demoralized condition, in
a commune rather demoralized already. It
was an unfortunate combination. It was the
first time that the poilus had ever brought
anything but courage, hope and gaiety into
the place.
Yet let me tell you a strange thing. Even
with Amelie, whose mind is made up that we
are to be invaded, that idea does not for a
moment mean that she believes in a defeat.
It does not do even to say to her " the Ger-
mans are so strong." Any speech like that
arouses her anger. She replies with a vicious
emphasis :
"They are no stronger than we are. If
they are, why have they not beaten us, when
they were ready, and we were not, when they
are so much more numerous than we are, and
have three times as many guns? " And they
have, you know. But that does not prevent
one from dreading an invasion all the same.
As long ago as the first weeks of the war
I wrote you that I could not foresee a defeat
[ 218 j
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
for France, and that I believed that even if
her armies were beaten back to Bordeaux,
with their backs against the Biscay, I was
convinced they would still hold out. Of
course they could not have, if all the world
had not come to their aid, but is n't it a legit-
imate matter of pride that France, as a na-
tion and as a people, has made herself so
dear to the affections of :he world, and the
cause for which she stands so just, that
twenty governments have ranged themselves
beside her, so that even though Paris be
taken, even though the army of France be
wiped out, Germany would have no chance
to win, for all the United States will come
over before that can happen.
I sometimes wonder if it is possible for
you to understand just what it means to be
French to-day? The men from the States,
great as their sacrifice is, leave their women
and children in security. The men of France,
standing out there in that battle-line, have
not that comfort, for, while they are offering
their lives for the cause, right over their
heads the enemy is sending death to their
very firesides. Startling idea, isn't it?
Our roads are full of moving artillery —
Americans passing everywhere, and the en-
thusiasm for them grows every day.
The heavy artillery was very noisy at
noon. But we are so used to that that we
are nervous without it. When we don't hear
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
it every one here thinks nothing is doing, and
that, in spite of the fact that we all know
the present battle is a battle of movement,
an infantry battle, the sort of battle in which
the French are most at home.
It looks to-night as if Compiegne were
safe, although it has suffered badly from the
artillery fire. Do you remember the last
day we were there, and lunched at the hand-
some new hotel at the entrance of the forest,
with its wide verandah and its awnings — so
much more English than French, — and how
we drove through the forest to take tea at
Pierrefonds ? I remember it was a hunts day,
and every little way, down the long vistas of
trees, we saw the huntsmen dashing across,
and heard the horns. It is a lovely memory.
Though the town is so badly hurt, we are
told the palace, with its souvenirs of Napo-
leon III, has been spared by order of the
Kaiser, as it was there he planned to make
his last rest on the route to Paris, to put on
his white uniform de parade, and take his
automobile for the fortifications, where his
war-horse was to wait him and carry him
into Paris, and through the Arc de Tri-
omphe, — another of those illusions already
twice destroyed, since he waited outside
Nancy, ready to enter. It has been a close
shave each time, but " a miss is as good as
a mile."
[ 220 ]
XXVI
June 22, 1918
THINGS have not changed much since I
wrote you. The battle seems for the mo-
ment stationary, but we all know that it is
only held up until the Germans can re-organ-
ize another coup. As that of March 2ist
extended from Cherizy to the forest of
Coucy, and that of May 2yth along the
tragic Chemin des Dames, from the defences
of Soissons to Reims and across the Marne
the other side of Chateau-Thierry, about
thirty miles from us, we are unusually nerv-
ous right here as to the direction of the next
attack. If it should be in the direction of
Meaux it would be all up with us.
By a strange chance it is on the sector
which includes Chateau-Thierry that the
boys from the States are holding the line and
holding it bravely — brilliantly. Isn't it
odd to think that while they are all along the
line it should be at the point where an ad-
vance would menace my house that the " boys
from home " should be doing their most con-
spicuous work? The people about me are
really sentimental on the subject. You
would think, from their attitude, that I had
[ 221 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
especially ordered the arrangement. Per-
haps I will be mobbed if they don't hold on !
We hear the guns intermittently. There
is an almost daily movement of American
troops over the route to Meaux. I do not
see them. We have been dealt three air
raids since I last wrote, and now, as we have
a tir de barrage from five points in an arc
about us, the noise of the guns of defence is
terrible.
Almost every day a new group of refugees
arrive. We have a large number from Acy,
near Soissons, and within a mile or two of
Sarches, where the Englishwomen who used
to be at Meaux, and of whom I think I wrote
you, went last fall to organize a big foyer.
Somehow, in all the excitement of the last
month, it was not until the people from Acy
arrived that I realized that, of course,
the big foyer at Sarches must have been
destroyed.
It was.
A week ago last Tuesday they surprised
me by walking into the garden. They had
come over from Meaux, where they stopped
in the retreat, to help in the hospital, where
they were short of nurses. I am afraid they
were surprised when they found me here.
They insisted that I was not to stay, that the
Americans at Meaux sent word that, if I
were still here, I was to be told that I was
" crazy to stay."
222
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
They had passed through a terrible ex-
perience, seeing all they had organized so
well, and all they had collected and arranged
— libraries, music rooms, tennis courts, dear
little houses and gardens — destroyed, and
had made a tragic retreat over roads full of
empty gun-carriages, flying women and chil-
dren, retreating soldiers, exploding ammuni-
tion as the retiring army destroyed its stores
to prevent the Germans from getting what
could not be carried. They arrived, nerve-
tired, at Meaux to go right into the crowded
hospital, just in time (they were on night
service) to stand to their posts when the air
raid on the morning of the third of June did
such damage only a short distance from the
ambulance. It was no wonder that they
were a bit pessimistic about our chances here.
They were sweetly sympathetic about the
house and my library, and wanted me to
make an effort to get military automobiles to
come and take away my treasures before it
was too late.
But for that I had no ambition. Military
automobiles have too much work to do which
is more important, and I thought it would be
time enough, if ever, when we were warned
to get out.
" But you will get no warning," they ex-
claimed; "if you wait for that it will be too
late."
But my mind was made up. I have often
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
wondered what would become of all the stuff
I have collected about me when I have done
with it. Don't you remember, even in the
old days before I came out here, I used to
laugh about it with you? A poor person's
library, got together haphazard, is like one's
collection of friends, — no one else wants it.
I 'd hate the idea of its being sold, and turn-
ing up for years after in the dusty boxes on
the quais, as I have, in my time, found the
books of others. Well, if it were to go up in
srnoke, as my sacrifice f6r the victory, I
shan't care. In fact, it will be a fine end, and
settle one anxiety in my mind.
They insisted so much about, at least, my
leaving that I was glad to be able to tell them
that I was going to Paris next day, and I did
not tell them that I was coming directly back
— but I did.
I was glad I went, for I had a most inter-
esting trip, and saw thousands of our boys.
I don't see much of them unless I do move
about a bit, for they just rush by here to
Chateau-Thierry.
I went up last Friday. On the route de
Meaux, as I drove down to the station, I
found the road simply full of camion-loads
of the boys from home. As Ninette walked
slowly along the line, I leaned out to call my
greeting to the boys in English. I wish you
could have seen their smiling faces. It took
Ninette half an hour to go from the top of
[ 224 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the hill down to the station, and I did my best
to give them a solo acclamation all the way,
and they returned the compliment.
As my train ran into Esbly, we passed car-
load after carload, side-tracked outside the
station, all in their shirt-sleeves, sitting in the
cattle-cars which carry the French troops,
eating their breakfast in picnic fashion. I
longed to run back down the track to greet
them, but I had not time, so I bought up all
the English papers I could get — a few Paris
Heralds and Daily Mails — and sent them
down by the station-master, who was only
too glad to make the trip.
The excitement in the station was intense.
Every one was crowded on the end of the
platform from which the train-load of Amer-
icans could be seen. You would have
thought, from their air, that the war would
be over day after to-morrow. You should
have seen their faces and heard the tone of
their voices when they spoke of " ces braves
garqons de I'Amerique" I told you at the
time that war was declared in Washington
that we were a lucky people. Our boys have
come over to cast the deciding vote in a long-
tied struggle. They are going to get credit
for that decision. Please God they'll play
up to the enthusiasm there is for them, —
and modestly do full justice to the great sac-
rifices which have prepared the road for
them.
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
It is lucky that in these days I rarely read
in the train — the road is too interesting —
otherwise I should have missed seeing the
groups of lads from the States bivouacked
all along the line, lying on the banks or
grouped about eating. I rode most of the
way at the open window, waving my greet-
ings, and they not only always waved back as
cordially as if they had known I was a fellow
citizen, but often rose to their feet to do it.
I found Paris quiet, — it was the fifteenth,
and the big gun had ceased firing on the
twelfth, and there had been no air raids for
nine nights. But on Sunday night there was
a terrible one, in which there were lives lost
and a big fire started. It began at twenty
minutes after eleven and lasted until one
o'clock — long enough to spoil the night.
On the train Monday I read the news that
the big offensive for Venice had begun, so
there is one more cause for hourly suspense,
but the worst seemed to be over in three days
— this time the Italians are holding.
The weather has been queer. For a month
here we had practically no rain, and every-
thing is drying up. My lawn is a pitiful
sight, but that is no matter. What does
matter are the potatoes and beans.
Last night we had a most remarkable sun-
set. I never saw anything at all like it, or
anything of the sort that was so strangely
beautiful. The western horizon was like the
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
flames of a huge fire — copper and gold with
a background of sullen red. From the point
where the sun was sinking started broad
clouds like banners, extending in even rays,
like the spokes of a wheel, up to the zenith
and paling down to the east. These cloud
rays were almost white on one edge and
blackish gray on the other. They were even
in width, and as evenly spaced as if done with
a compass, and they curved with the dome of
the heavens. Every one was out on the hill
to watch the spectacle, and if I had seen it in
a picture and not with my own eyes, I could
not have believed it to be a true bill.
[ 227
XXVII
June 29, igi8
I GOT up this morning feeling as if I had
never had a trouble in the world. All my
nervousness had disappeared in the night.
I 'd like to think that it presages something
remarkable. I am afraid it only means that
I slept from ten to six without budging, —
which is unusual. You can guess how sound
my sleep was when I tell you that there was
a raid last night, and I never heard it. I am
generally a light sleeper. I never expected
to arrive at sleeping through a bombardment.
But I have. So it may be that I am getting
used to it. I am willing, for it's small serv-
ice I can render listening to the racket. I
can't stop the bombs, nor bring down the
Gothas, though if wishing it on them would
accomplish it they would long ago have been
all annihilated.
It has been rather a busy and picturesque
week.
Last Sunday — that was the twenty-third
— we had the 304th dragoons camped here
for the night — the very biggest cantonne-
ment we have ever had, and I had the Cap-
tain in the house.
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
They arrived at six o'clock, and it was one
of the hottest days I ever saw. They had
been in the saddle since four in the morning.
The quartermaster and a couple of cor-
porals had been here all day preparing the
cantonnement. We had eighty horses in the
little railed-in pasture on the top of the hill,
which we never thought was too big for
Ninette and Bijou, and fifty in the smaller
one where we used to put the goat. These
two little pares, as Pere calls them, are on
either side of the devise, a bit of City of
Paris land following the line of the Paris
water conduits from the Ourcq to Paris, and
across it runs a footpath, always kept clear,
which is barred at regular distances so that
it resembles a hurdle-course, though it is only
for pedestrians.
I never had such respect or understanding
for the tremendous work required to keep an
army going as I had while I watched that
regiment arrange itself just for this etape of
ten hours. Every one knew just what to do.
In less than an hour after the head of the line
came into the courtyard at Pere's where the
kitchens and big commissary wagons were set
up, all was in order.
I sat on a big stone beside the road and,
while the horses were being led in a line to
the watering-troughs, I saw the speed with
which posts four feet high attached with
heavy cords were driven into the ground some
[ 229 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
ten feet apart along both sides of the footpath.
To these posts such of the horses as could
not be stabled or put into our little enclosures,
were attached by their halters. It took al-
most less time than it takes me to write it for
saddles to be removed, nose bags to be ad-
justed, and there, close around the four sides
of the enclosures, and almost shoulder to
shoulder down either side of the footpath,
the horses ate, while saddles were being in-
spected and piled in regular heaps in the
centre of the enclosure and against the bar-
riers on the outside. Every one was busy,
there was plenty of blague falling about, but
no one seemed to get into anyone's way, and
by nine o'clock everybody was eating.
My ! but it takes lots to feed them. They
threw whole beeves out of the big camion,
— an old Paris tram-car, if you please, with
windows replaced by wire screenings, inside
which the beef and mutton hung up just as it
does at the butcher's, — while whole kegs of
beer had a camion of their own, and the
vegetable kettles were almost as big as
barrels.
While the dinner was preparing, and a
huge dish of eggs which it took two men to
carry was being cooked in my kitchen, the
men washed up wherever they could find a
place. I suppose you have heard that the
poilu never washes unless he has to. It is a
standard joke. There are exceptions. You
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD ,
ought to have seen the court at Amelia's, and
what I sarcastically call my basse cour.
Long ago, when I thought I 'd raise geese
— I never told you about that, perhaps? —
one of my follies — for lack of a brook I
bought a huge, flat, round bathtub. It was a
metre and a half in diameter. When I gave
up raising geese the tub was put in the tool
house, and there it stood on end. The poilus
found it. Just as I was coming through the
long garden at Amelie's, which runs beside
the chickens' home, with only a high grillage
between, a loud voice warned me with : " At-
tention. Defense d'entrer. Salle de bain
privee" and I got through the gate in time
to avoid a study in the nude. Amelie ex-
plained when I got through that they were
sprinkling one another in the tub with the big
watering-pot.
They were still eating when I went to bed.
As I closed up for the night I thought to
myself " It is dollars to doughnuts that the
Gothas will come to-night." And just before
eleven they did, and the barrage was not
silent until midnight.
Amelie told me in the morning that the
boys simply put out their lights, and finished
cleaning and repacking in the dark.
Just imagine how much actual work all
this means, when I tell you that at three
o'clock the next morning they were up and at
work, and at half-past three they were in the
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
saddle, and the long line of cavalry and the
big commissary wagons and the ammunition
train, with its mule-drawn mitrailleuses, were
trotting and rattling on the road again.
We had one day's rest and then the iO2nd
artillery came in for the same sort of a re-
pose. It was a different kind of cantonne-
ment, of course, as there were no horses ex-
cept those of the officers; everything else —
men, cannon, ammunition, equipment — was
carried on camions and in lorries. But the
little road in front of my house has never
been so picturesque. All along that road
from the turn above the well at Amelie's to
that below where it goes into Voisins, in
front of Mademoiselle Henrietta's, a line of
camions carrying guns was drawn up, and in
the open space in front of my gate the am-
munition wagons were simply packed. In
this etape there were no kitchens and no com-
missary. The men each carried one day's
rations, and the officers rode down to the
hotel at Couilly to dine.
I thought, as I looked out of my bedroom
window, that night, "La! la! if the Gothas
get this to-night they will make a mess."
But they did not. And before daylight the
next day they were off.
We are still waiting for some sign of the
next movement at the front, and of course
all this military activity means something.
The artillery had hardly got away when
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
news came that the 2ist dragoons were com-
ing in, and while I was talking to the Cap-
tain's orderly, who was arranging the offi-
cers' quarters here, and I was explaining the
kitchen to the cook — for four officers were
to eat in the house — I got a telegram from
Paris telling me to come up without delay,
as I was wanted at the Embassy. So I had
just time to welcome the Captain as he rode
in, and catch the noon train.
I went directly to the Embassy, where I
was informed that, at the request of the
French Government, all strangers were being
asked to leave Paris as well as the war zone.
The explanation given was that while no one
thought it possible that the Germans could
get to Paris, it was possible — perhaps prob-
able— that Paris would be bombarded. As
far as I was personally concerned they con-
sidered my situation untenable, as even a
slight advance on the Marne would bring
me within fifteen miles of the firing line,
where I would be an embarrassment to the
army, — in fact, though they put it more
politely, a nuisance. All my papers had to
be examined and 'vised, and I had to select
a place to go, which was properly written
against my name in the list of Americans
allowed, in the last combing out, to remain
in France, and then I was told that, as I
lived in the zone des armees, and travelled
at the pleasure of the Fifth army corps, I
[ 233 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
would have to go to the French bureau which
controlled circulation on the railroads, and
get a French vise.
Before we left the house we had agreed
that if it became necessary to leave the town
we would go to Versailles, as a first etape.
It is outside the fortifications to the south-
west, and in case of need it would be easier
to retreat west from there than from the
city proper. Of course what the authorities
are really trying to do is to avoid the possi-
bility of a panic at the railway stations at
the last minute in case the town is bombarded.
There are plenty of people who will not take
this warning seriously, but a great number
will, and the fewer people there are in the
city the better.
The passport department had been
crowded. It was evident that they were
combing people out carefully. I had only
escaped hours of waiting on the stairs by
being discovered by an old Boston friend
who needed a witness to swear to her iden-
tity. But, even with that advantage, which
admitted me long before my turn, the process
was a long one, and my papers were exam-
ined by at least six men before I escaped
and pushed my way downstairs through the
waiting crowd. I had been telegraphed for
by a friend as we were called alphabetically.
From the Embassy I went to the French
bureau on the rue de Rivoli. There I found
[ 234 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the waiting line extending down the street
and round the corner, and at that hour of
the day the sun shines right into the colon-
nade. There I stood in the heat, in a push-
ing line, for an hour before my turn came
to even enter the building. When I finally
got in and found my proper man, I was told
that my papers were in perfect order, that I
could go to Versailles whenever I desired.
And I was told that the sooner I left Paris
the better. I took the advice forty-eight
hours later, but I did not go to Versailles,
I came back here. I tell you all this just to
show you what it is like to be here now.
There is an even chance either way, that's
all.
I stayed in town Wednesday and Thurs-
day night, and came home yesterday. On
both nights there was a bad air raid. That
on Wednesday destroyed a big shop which
we both know, and that on Thursday was
the noisiest I have heard since March, and
one of the most destructive. It began at
half-past nine and lasted until midnight, and
the bombs seemed to be distributed over a
wide area. Just as in the big March raid I
had happened, by accident, on one of the
bombarded regions, so yesterday morning I
went through another on my way to the
station — the Place Vendome. But all the
damage I could see was a terrible destruc-
tion of window glass. There was hardly a
whole pane in the square.
c 235 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
On arriving at Couilly I found the road
up the hill full of ammunition camions, and
Ninette climbed up with the huge camions
full of big obns crawling by. I own to have
felt foolishly nervous as they jerked slowly
along. I felt as if, should one backslide or
topple over, I should see Kingdom-come be-
fore this cruel war was over. Of course I
knew they wouldn't, but we have had some
queer accidents on that road since the great
activity which has never ceased began on
May twenty-sixth.
I found the 2ist dragoons had gone.
Amelie said they had seemed very happy —
the officers — and I imagine they had a bet-
ter time than if I had been at home, for they
had the freedom of the house and no fear
that they were putting its mistress out.
Amelie said they did not leave the garden
at all — that they read and played cards and
wrote and chatted all day, and had their
coffee out on the lawn; but I found a little
note, tucked into the drawer in the salon
table, from the Captain, saying:
" Please read here the cordial thanks and
respectful homages of a Captain who was
bitterly disappointed that his charming host-
ess, as soon as he had set eyes on her,
disappeared."
Really, aren't they wonderful? It is not
only that they feel the necessity to do that
sort of thing, but that they are so uncon-
c 236 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
scious and do it so well, and sign it all up
with their names and rank.
I told you that I was feeling very chipper
when I began this, and I am. I wish I knew
why. It is not only that; I simply ordered
Amelie this morning to set my house in
order. I don't care how many people she
gets to help her. It must be done at once.
She argues that since things are put away
they may as well stay until we are sure of the
next move, but I say " No," and when I say
it loud like that I am always obeyed.
Besides, just to show you how well I feel,
I have decided to go to Paris both for the
Fourth and the Fourteenth of July. Paris
is going to make our Independence Day a
national fete, and on the Fourteenth I shall
know that somewhere you will be watching
the States celebrating Bastille Day at the
same time that I am standing somewhere in
Paris cheering the Allies. Well, of course,
not exactly that, because really I shall be in
the streets while you are still sleeping at two
in the morning, and I shall be at tea when
you see your procession start, but that 's not
important. The Allied spirit of the thing
is what matters. This is a great decision for
me. You know how I hate a crowd. But
there will be few more things of this sort
left for me, and I do feel that perhaps this
is the first scene in the last act. You see
how very much on the right side of the bed
I got out this morning.
[ 237 ]
XXVIII
July 12, 1918
WELL, I can tell you this is dry season.
If it were important I should grieve over
my garden. You should see my dahlias. I
don't ask them to be superb until later, but
they never came up in such a state as they
have this year. The slugs ate them as fast
as they came out of the ground, in spite
of the fact that, armed with the tongs, I
picked them up carefully twice a day. Such
dirty slimy things, all sizes and all colours,
from little pale white things and ditto black
up to big fat yellow fellows and ditto brown,
with horrid heads like seals and bulging
eyes, which they draw in and close when you
touch them. In spite of all that hard and
disagreeable work the first leaves were all
eaten and the first buds to open are small,
because of the lack of water, and worse than
that, they are half eaten away by the slugs.
But never mind, I had the fun of playing at
gardening, and now I can busy myself doc-
toring them. We have had every variety of
weather this week. It was piping hot on
Sunday, it blew hard on Tuesday, was clear
and sunny like an autumn day on Wednes-
[ 238 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
day, it showered on Thursday, it opened and
shut on Friday, it pours to-day. Variety,
anyway. In spite of the terrible drought
of which the farmers complain with reason,
and which has dwarfed all my posies and
scorched my lawn yellow, the grain looks
well, and I have never heard the larks sing
as they sing these mornings and evenings, as
I watch them mounting and mounting, their
rippling notes falling out of the clouds long
after the bird is invisible. And there are so
many finches. There is one who sits and
gives a real concert on the ridge-pole of the
house every day, and I am just as nice an
audience as I know for him — always with
an eye that Khaki does not sneak up there,
for I suspect Khaki and doubt if he makes
any distinction between birds that sing and
birds that don't, when he goes a-hunting.
You ask me if the winter is going to be a
hard one. Well, to tell you the truth, except
that I know it is to be another winter with
the army " out there," I have not thought
much about it. Anyway, what were hard-
ships for four winters will not be so bad this
winter, because I am used to them, and ex-
pect nothing else. I am getting in wood
every day. It is easier to get it than it has
been in the previous war years, and I am
buying it everywhere, and shall as long as I
can find any place to put it. What the army
is going to say I don't know, for there is a
[ 239 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
board on my gate which announces billets
for one officer and twenty men, and I am
afraid my wood is filling up the soldiers'
bedrooms. But I suppose we'll find some
way out of it. Perhaps the army will settle
it by taking my wood away.
We have heard the artillery at the front
almost every day since I last wrote to you,
but the newspapers say nothing which ex-
plains. The soldiers, going through, say
" Don't worry. All is going well. In eight
days you can expect to get good news," and
that has to content us for the present.
On Monday of last week we had an air
raid, which began at quarter before eleven
and lasted until nearly two the next morning
— that was the first day of this month —
and the next morning, at half-past seven,
while I was in the garden, there was a heavy
tir de barrage, but it appeared to be directed
to the protection of Meaux, though it was
impossible to be sure, in spite of my hearing
the Boche machine distinctly. As spent shot
began to rattle on the roof, I thought it pru-
dent to take to cover.
The next day I went up to Paris to pass
the Fourth, as I wrote you I should. Before
I left I made sure that our two communes
and Huiry itself had American flags, and
left Amelie to fling the Stars and Stripes to
the French breezes over the gate here and
under the bedroom windows, and on the
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road side of her house. That is all the fete
there will be here, but it is enough.
The Fourth was a lovely day. Every one
had anticipated, and even the papers had not
hesitated to say, that it was more than likely
that the Boches would consider the national
fete-day of the States, to be gloriously cele-
brated in the streets of the French capital,
as a legitimate opportunity to bring into play
again their long-distance cannon. But the
Kaiser, if he expected that possibility would
keep anyone from going into the streets to
see the boys from the States march down the
Champs-Elysees, had another disappoint-
ment.
We had no desire to hear the discourses
nor to see the statesmen sitting in the official
tribunes — the former we could read later,
and the latter were an old story. We had
instead a desire to see the crowd in the street
and the movement and watch the reception
of the troops at various points of the short
march from Washington's monument at the
head of the newly christened Avenue Presi-
dent Wilson to the Strasbourg monument on
the Place de la Concorde.
The streets in the vicinity of the line of
march were crowded, and everywhere, even
in the quiet and deserted streets of the other
quarters, were the American flags. There
was no shop too small to show one. Bonnes
on the way to market had the Stars and
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Stripes on their market baskets. Every taxi-
cab was decorated with the flag, and so
was every decrepit old sapin. It floated on
the tram-cars and the omnibuses, it hung
out of almost every window, and at the
entrance of the big apartment houses, already
closed but for the presence of the concierge.
Crippled soldiers distributed tiny flags on
all the streets. We took ours, two steps
from the door, from a one-legged chasseur
Alpin, who ran about on his peg as lively as a
cricket, and as gay — only twenty-two he
told me, three years' service stripes on his
sleeve, and a croix de guerre and medaille
militaire on his breast, and he laughed in my
face when I looked grave as he pinned a flag
on me, and remarked, " Don't you mind,
I 'm not done with them yet; " and away he
hopped across the street to pin an American
flag on some one else.
We took a cab and drove along the line
looking, from our higher elevation, over the
heads of the crowds behind each barrier, as
no one could approach without a ticket to
within a block in any direction of the grand-
stand— there was only one. My object was
to see the cortege passing down the Champs-
Elysees from the Rond Point to the Place de
la Concorde. So we drove to the Avenue
Gabriel, and, close to the garden entrance to
the Presidential residence we got out and
walked across the garden between the Ambas-
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
sadeurs and the Alcazar, now given up to the
American work for the aid of the French
wounded. You remember just the place, for
I know we went there to dine together ten
years ago. You remember? We sat at a
table in the balcony just opposite the stage,
and had what you called "the best table
d'hote dinner for the price" you had ever
eaten, and watched a good variety show —
or at least I did. I remember that you were
more interested in the women walking about
in the couloirs, and the wonderful clothes.
Alas ! those days are gone.
On arriving near the Avenue some one
helped me mount on to a bench, where, over
the heads of the throng massed at the curb,
I could look up and down the Avenue, with
an American aviator, in a Liberty machine,
doing stunts over my head just above the
tree-tops, and I assure you I had my heart in
my mouth most of the time.
The crowd that packed the line of march
was almost as picturesque as the procession.
As far as the French went it was, of course,
largely women, children, and white-haired
men, with a sprinkling of pollus on leave,
convalescent soldiers — the crippled soldiers
had a reserved stand near the head of the
route — and a great number of English and
American men in khaki — the Red Cross and
Y. M. C. A. units, the commissary men, who
have their headquarters in the Avenue, and a
[ 243 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
sprinkling of uniforms of all the nations in
arms. The shouts and cheers went up in
waves as the cortege started far away, but
in the Avenue itself only began when the
head of the line appeared preceded by the
band. Then the cries of " Fivent les Ameri-
cains" " Fivent nos Allies" were cut with
the " Hip, hip, hurrah ! " of the Americans,
and it culminated when the division of the
Marines, in their battle-stained uniforms,
their soiled but trim knapsacks on their backs,
and their battered " tin hats " (the boys who
cleared the Bois de Belleau), came into sight.
I thought then that the kind of crowd which
was gathered that day could not make any
more noise than they made for the Ameri-
cans, who, with their guns on their shoulders,
marched as steadily as veterans, though their
faces were the faces of boys. But I was
mistaken, for, with a fine spirit that I loved,
they had justly reserved their most ardent
acclamations for their own war-worn troops,
and the shouts of " Vwent nos poilus" " Five
la France," were as near hysterical as any-
thing I have seen in France since the war
began. I saw women laughing and crying at
the same time, and only able to wave their
hands in greeting.
After it was all over, we found our taxi
again and drove back up the Avenue. It
looked so gay, with the crowds laughing and
chatting and flowers everywhere. Paris had
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needed to see its armies and cheer the boys
from the front. It did them more visible
good than all the heroic talk can ever do.
I know it did me.
I had loved seeing so many of our boys,
not only in the procession, but the crowd in
the street. I love seeing — good soldiers as
they are proving themselves — how little
they stand on ceremony in private life. The
officers nod to one another instead of salut-
ing. A common soldier or a corporal says
" Hulloa, old man," to his lieutenant, with
whom he probably went to school. Even in
public an officer will sometimes stand uncov-
ered as he talks in the street to a girl friend.
It is only something so solemn as the passing
of the colours that brings the American boy
erect, his heels together, his shoulders
squared, his hand at just the proper angle
of salute, and when it is over, he slaps his
hand on his leg in real regimental fashion —
and limbers up to the characteristic Ameri-
can slouch again.
I remarked to an American officer one
day, as he lifted his hat to greet me, that
he was most unmilitary, and his reply was:
"Hell! We American soldiers are only
camoufled civilians;" and that is terribly
true, added to which they have not worn
a uniform long enough to be unconscious in
playing the role of a soldier.
In spite of all the expectations of an attack
[ 245 1
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
of some sort, the big cannon made no sign,
and there was no air raid that night.
I came back on the sixth, which was last
Saturday. I had hardly got my hat and coat
off when a French officer arrived at my gate
to arrange for the cantonnement here of the
American boys coming out from the secteur
at Chateau-Thierry — lads who fought at
Bois de Belleau. You should have seen the
face of the young American sergeant when
I addressed him in English, and told him
that I was an American. I don't know which
of us was the most excited.
The French officer, who spoke no English
and depended on me to help him out, told me
that there were seven Americans here to ar-
range the cantonnement for fifteen hundred
— a Town Major, a quartermaster, and a
few corporals and sergeants, and that the
rest were expected Monday morning. They
were coming by road, marching on foot, and
expected to take two days, in fact they were
supposed to have already " come out." They
are to rest a few days and go up to Paris the
morning of the Fourteenth, to be decorated
— the Marines won their fourragere in the
Bois de Belleau — and to march in the
procession.
The weather was terribly hot, so when
Monday came and went and there was no
sign of the American Marines every one was
as disappointed as I was, but we all explained
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
it by the intense heat, which would make
marching nearly forty miles no joke to tired
soldiers just out of a battle. But Tuesday
and Wednesday passed, and the advance
guard of the battalion who had arrived here
with only three days' rations began to worry
a little. They were getting a new kind of
taste of war. In the meantime they drifted
round one after another to see me, play the
phonograph and chat. I am afraid they
were rather bored. They spoke little French,
though they got on well with the French, and
they had guard duty to do, and the Town
Major kept strict discipline. But here it is
Friday night, and I am leaving for Paris to-
morrow to see the celebration of the Four-
teenth. I do want to see the armies of all
the Allies in the Avenue du Bois, otherwise I
would not go until the Americans have come
and are comfortably settled.
Amelie is not at all content. She is afraid
that she cannot properly replace me. She
has made me write a note in English which
she is to show any American soldier who
comes to the door. It is just a line saying
that they are welcome and are to consider
the house as " a little piece of home," and
make themselves comfortable accordingly.
She stood over me while I wrote it on a big
sheet of paper, imploring me to write it
" very large and very distinct," which shows
you what Amelie thinks of my handwriting.
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
She has pinned it on the blotter. She knows
how to say "cum een," and I can imagine
her taking them by the sleeve, and leading
them up to the desk to read the proclama-
tion. She has made me write " Mildred
Aldrich, American," as a signature.
By the way, Amelie's English does not
march very rapidly. She can still say " I
spek Engleesh vairee veil, oh yees." She
says they understand her, but she does not
get their reply, and is disappointed when I
am not by to hear and tell her what they said.
She has also learned to say " Got cigarette? "
with a strong interrogatory inflection. You
see Amelie loves her cigarette, but she does
not like Egyptians, the only thing available
just now, when the ordinary French cigarette
is not sold to civilians. That works very
well. The boys understand, and if they have
a cigarette they give it to her. But they
more often have a pipe and tobacco. I have
told Amelie that she must not do this, as
the boys have none too much tobacco for
themselves, and I thought I had broken her
of it. But the other day there was an officer
calling and she went out to look at his big
car and admire the chauffeur — she thought
him so chic — and I heard her getting off
her " Got cigarette? " When he had gone I
reproached her, and she looked grieved as
she explained that she did not want his ciga-
rettes— besides he did not have any. When
[ 248 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
I desired to know why she had taken the
trouble to ask if she did not want any she
replied: " Histoire de parler anglais!"
I thought that was lovely.
I have an idea that the American Marines
are not coming at all. There is a tremen-
dous activity everywhere about us. You
know, now, since the Germans reached the
Marne again, we are not only zone des
armees but we are arriere front, and never
since the war began has the military move-
ment about us been so constant. There are
hours of the day when we simply cannot
drive on our roads at all. All this means
something, and, although I am going up to
see the first real war celebration of the Four-
teenth, I am going with a feeling that if
something does not happen while I am gone,
something will all the same happen soon.
You realize, of course, that the next move
settles our fate here. So long as the Ger-
mans hold Soissons Paris is menaced, so long
as they hold Chateau-Thierry the Marne
valley is open to them. In either case our
situation is critical. If the next move sees
the Germans not only held, but pushed back,
all danger to us here is, I am convinced,
ended forever.
But whichever way it turns is only locally
important. Even if Paris is taken, even if it
were possible to wipe out the French army,
Germany's situation would not be changed
[ 249 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
and never will be until she has wiped out the
States. But every time I think about it the
condition of France seems to me the more
remarkable — all her men in the war or in
war works, all the rescued population of the
invaded districts from the frontier to the
Somme and the Marne crowded into the
south and west, and millions of Allied sol-
diers from other countries, with thousands
of Red Cross workers of all sorts, and hun-
dreds of thousands of German prisoners, and
here we are trying to lead a normal life, and
coming precious near to doing it. And
strangest of all, the majority of the people
are more sane and happier than they have
ever been. It is a great disaster. Of course
it is. But we are all terribly alive, and it is
not at such epochs that the world ever
bothers itself to write symposiums on " Is
Life Worth Living?", or speculates about
" La Lutte pour la Vie."
Thanks for the newspaper clipping con-
taining the pen portrait of me sitting on the
wheelbarrow on the platform of the railway
station at Esbly, on the day I went to Paris
to carry my trunk, " with tears in my voice if
not in my eyes." I am afraid that touch was
the pretty young journalist's poetic license —
she was pretty, you know. I am sorry the
picture struck you as " pitiful and pathetic."
I really am. Come now, what would you
have had me do, sitting there among that
[ 250 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
crowd of women leading children by one
hand and lugging such of their poor effects
as they had saved? You surely could not
have expected that I would do a song and
dance simply because, up to date, my home
was safe. I was sad. How could I have
been anything else ? Only a few hours before
I had seen a poor flying woman carrying a
dead baby in her arms, and among other ob-
jects of my journey to Paris was a visit to the
American Red Cross to beg some layettes for
newborn babies in our commune — emigre es
of course — and stuff to make underclothes
for women and children who had arrived
with only what they had on their backs, for
in that retreat of over thirty miles, from
Noyon to Chateau-Thierry, between May
2yth and June 4th these poor people were
taken by surprise and had no time to save
mo're than their skins and what covered them.
Will that explain the "tears in my voice" if
they were there?
You ask me for news of Mademoiselle
Henriette. Is it possible that in all the ex-
citement of the days since the retreat of
March 21 I forgot to tell you that she had
gone? She is at Salonica. She left here in
March — the very first if I remember. Any-
way I have looked up her first note — a post-
card— from Toulon, dated March 3, in
which she says :
"We sail to-morrow. It is Sunday, and
[ 251 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
I have just attended mass on deck. It was
pretty and very impressive. Standing in the
midst of officers, soldiers and sailors, I had
once more the illusion that I too was on
active service, and felt once more at home.
We are sailing without escort, under the pro-
tection simply of the Red Cross, although we
have on board a neutral — an officer of the
Spanish navy."
Odd that I should have forgotten to tell
you this at the time. She is now at Zeiten-
lick, where the service is very hard; but it
is interesting and she is at an age to enjoy
novel experiences, even when they have to be
paid for with mighty hard work.
252
XXIX
July 22, igiS
THIS has been such a week of mixed emo-
tions that I have not been able to settle down
to write.
I got your cable of congratulation on the
" great victory " last night. I shall say what
I think of that later. It may surprise you
to know that I am not in the humour. We
are calm and confident here. We are not
throwing our hats in the air yet. The ten-
sion has been terrible, and it is a comfort to
know that to-night there is not a German on
the south bank of the Marne, and we hope
they have crossed it for the last time.
I wrote you, if I remember, the night be-
fore the Fourteenth, when I was preparing
to go up to town to help celebrate the great
day. I went and I enjoyed it.
It was drizzly weather, and when, at nine,
I prepared to go out and find a place so near
the Porte Dauphine that I could see the Al-
lied armies enter the city from the Bois, I
found that no one wanted to go with me, on
the plea that it would be prettier to see it
with my eyes than go out in a crowd plus a
[ 253 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
drizzle, which of course was flattering but
covered a lazy spirit.
Luckily it stopped raining, and the air was
fresh, the sky a little overcast, and there was
no dust. It was an ideal day for comfort.
I stay in Paris only five minutes' walk
from the entrance to the Bois at the end of
the Avenue du Bois. I never saw the city
look more beautiful. Nothing had been
done to conceal or disfigure its beauty.
There were no seats put up along the route,
and the only tribune was on the east side of
the Avenue — near the Porte — just an en-
closed space hung in the traditional red, with
reserved seats for the President, the diplo-
matic corps and the city's guests.
On the same side of the Avenue, a little
nearer the Porte, was the colour-stand. All
along the street on both sides were the chairs
that are always there, only more of them,
and a simple wooden barrier behind them
prevented people from pushing into the space
thus reserved. There was no bunting on
any of the houses — nothing in the way of
decoration, but the flags of all the Allied
nations.
Every inch of space was taken. When I
arrived at my place, just behind the colour-
stand, the presidential party had already ar-
rived, and I passed behind a long line of the
most wonderful automobiles I ever saw (and
did not much wonder at hearing some one
[ 254 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
remark, "Well, it seems there is still some
essence in Paris! ").
Just then the head of the procession began
to issue from the trees of the Bois, and ap-
proach the Porte. The light was just right
for it, and the forest of moving bayonets
made a wonderful picture, which I shall
never forget. Most of the people in the
great crowd had evidently, like me, never
seen many of the armies, though most of
them had, like me, I suppose, seen individual
soldiers of all the Allies. I am sure the
American papers have given you a full de-
scription of the great cortege in which the
armies of all the Allies-in-arms for the
world's liberty marched for the first time in
the city the whole world loves, and which
even her enemies envy, and doubtless, by the
time you get this, the cinemas will have
shown it moving on the screen, for I counted
almost as many machines at work as there
were nations in the show. But what they
cannot give you is the colour, which was at-
mospherically French, and how much that
says, you who love France know, nor can it
give you the thrills. I simply adored seeing
the flag of each nation approach, and the
colours on the Allied stand dip to receive
each nation's salute, and the soldiers in the
crowd as far as I could see rising to atten-
tion with their hands at salute as the flags
passed.
[ 255 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Along the barrier, behind the seats, sol-
diers, mostly American, British and Italian,
who were not marching, stood erect braced
like bareback riders in their perilous posi-
tion, and they managed to stand rigid as
statues to salute the colours — a fine ath-
letic display.
The handsomest men in the line were, to
my mind, the Italians. Their greenish grey
uniform is a beautiful colour, and their hats,
higher in form than those of the other Allies,
are terribly smart. But the sturdy Serbs and
the Poles with their new flag, and the Czechs,
who sang as they marched, were greeted with
thundering cheers. As the Americans were
the clou of the Fourth of July, the British
carried off the honours of the Fourteenth.
They made a wonderful showing, so trim,
marching as if they had never done anything
but parade duty, they who have fought like
the bulldogs they are. There were English
and Irish, Scotch and Welsh, there were
Australians, New Zealanders, the armies of
Egypt and India and South Africa. It was
a fine show, and none of them were more
cheered than the tall ruddy men in kilts
marching to the crooning of the pipes. It
was so hard to realize that this was a demon-
stration in the midst of a war, at a time when
the enemy was nearer the fortifications of
the city than they had been in forty-six
months, in a city which had known forty days
c 256 ] '
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
of bombardment by a German cannon, and
could not be sure that the forty-first might
not come before the procession disbanded.
It was this spirit that I had gone out to see
and I had seen it.
This was the sort of experience one cannot
hope to get more than once in a fortunate
lifetime, the sort of thing that centuries have
not seen, and centuries may never see again.
It was the very essence of the spirit which is
to carry a righteous cause to victory, and
which future ages will have good reason to
bless.
As a detachment of French cavalry
brought up the rear — for the French divi-
sions had been scattered through the line,
acting as escort to their comrades-in-arms,
which I thought a pretty idea — the crowd
broke up quietly, and, while the echoes of the
cheers came back to me, receding with the
music as the cortege continued its route, I
walked slowly back to the house, strangely
comforted.
We all knew that we were on the eve of
another German offensive, and with the con-
sciousness of the great bound forward of
two of the previous ones, it was impossible
to be quite free from nervousness, or from
the feeling that Paris was in danger. But
we had seen the men who were to meet the
attack, and seen nowhere anything but cour-
age, so why should we worry?
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Personally, I can say that nothing has
done me so much good as the two look-ins
I have taken in Paris in the past ten days,
with the men who are defending her march-
ing through her streets.
On that day, no more than on the Fourth,
did any of the things the pessimists prophe-
sied come true. The Grosse Bertha did not
get to work. The night was quiet, — no air
raid.
I stayed over until the morning of the six-
teenth. I had to. I had a few necessary
errands to do. I arrived in Paris on Satur-
day after many shops — now having what
they called "la semaine anylaise" — were
closed, and Monday, the day after the Four-
teenth, was a holiday.
On Monday — the fifteenth — just before
two o'clock, "bang" went the Big Bertha
again, after a silence of three weeks. The
first shot went harmlessly into the Seine, just
missing a great mark, and after a lapse of
about three hours it began again and put in
several shells before dark. No one had any
doubt that this presaged the new offensive,
and we impatiently awaited the papers the
next morning, which announced simply the
fact that the Germans had attacked again on
the front from Soissons, which they still
hold, to Reims, which, although they have
destroyed it, they have not been able to take
since they were driven out in the battle of
[ 258 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the Marne — that is to say, the nearest point
to us.
Needless to tell you that I could not get
back home quickly enough, although the little
news we got seemed to be good. The Allies
were holding them. This time the Germans
had not been able to take Foch's army by
surprise, as they had done in March and
May. The attack, in extent, vigour and
material seemed to be quite as formidable as
that of March for Amiens.
Amelie met me at the station, and almost
before I was out of the train she told me that
the Americans had gone. The rest of the
division, as I had foreseen, never came at all,
and a camion came for those stranded on
our hill, and carried them away.
She announced that the movement on our
roads had been terrible for over forty-eight
hours. The little road passing my gate
had seen three hundred camions dashing by
towards the canal on the day before, — the
day the battle began. No sleep had been
possible for two nights. She had had great
difficulty in getting to the station, as the
route Natlonale was closed to all civilians.
She had come down by the cart-track across
the fields.
I lost some time at the station — my bag-
gage had not come. It was not personal bag-
gage— that is still waiting in Paris, to go to
Versailles, if I have to. It was only a sack
[ 259 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
of sugar — oh, so precious! — and a case
of condensed milk from an American rescue
work, for the little refugee children and the
old people. I had checked it the day before
to save time. The station is always so
crowded at train-time, and one has to wait
so interminably to be weighed that I took
advantage of the holiday, when I had noth-
ing to do, to get it off. Incidentally, I am
distressed about it, as it has not turned up
yet, and that is six days ago. But on the day
I returned I was too occupied with other
anxieties to worry. Besides, it would have
been a heavy load for Ninette to drag up
the hill.
When we turned out from the station and
crossed the Morin, the road looked clear,
and after the guard had examined my papers
— they seem to put a new guard every day,
so it always has to be done — Amelie fool-
ishly decided to try going up the grande
route. We had not gone ten steps when a
soldier with a red flag appeared in front of
us, and turned us back, and we had to come
up the ruelle. It is a very steep, very rough
path, deeply rutted by farm-wagons and
mowing-machines. The day was very hot.
Ninette struggled along until I finally de-
cided that, even in the blazing sun, I could
climb on foot easier than I could sit behind
her, and watch her strain and tug, so Amelie
and I both got out and walked up, and I took
260
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
in the news at the various stations we made
to rest. The Americans had come to say
good bye. They had said a lot of things,
and she was sad because she had not under-
stood a word. Meaux had been bombarded
Monday and rather seriously damaged.
Otherwise everything was as usual.
During the next two days the news was
not bad, and then on Saturday came word
that Foch had launched his counter-attack,
and that it looked brilliantly successful. By
Sunday morning we knew that the Germans
had recrossed the Marne at Dormans, just
south-east of Chateau-Thierry, hotly pur-
sued by the Americans, — not a live German,
unless he was prisoner, left on the south
bank of the river. Every day since then the
Germans have retreated. It is slow, but it
is hopeful.
Ever since we have lived again on the map.
Although we do not yet feel like calling it
"a glorious victory" as you do, we do feel
that never again will the Germans cross the
Marne. If the Allies have been able to
thrust them back now, when the Americans
are not yet all ready, how can it be possible
that we shall not hold them when we are
getting stronger every day? We may be
wrong, for one thing we do know, the Ger-
mans are still strong, and they will fight a
terrible battle. They have still thirty unused
divisions, and ever so much more artillery
[ 261 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
than we have, and a spy system that is amaz-
ing. They advanced from the Chemin des
Dames in May to the Marne, thirty miles in
six days. It has taken us nearly a week to
push them back, mile by mile, a third of the
way, so our relief is great, but our joy is
cautious and well-contained.
I was speaking of the slowness of the re-
treat and the economy of it, so far as the
Germans were concerned, this morning, to
an officer, and he replied :
" It is better than we dared hope. If, be-
fore winter sets in, we can succeed in pushing
them back to the strong positions in which
they started in March, we shall feel more
than satisfied, and hopeful, as by the spring
the States will be really ready, and we shall
be as strong as they are — at least — in ar-
tillery, and surely stronger in the air, and
then we '11 finish them off, but it will still
take time. They are mighty strong, and it is
death we propose to deal out to them."
I imagine that this is a pretty fair state-
ment of the situation. It makes me shiver
sometimes to see how immediately hopeful
you are. I have been that way myself, and
I know what getting over it means.
Of course, a thousand things may happen
— the morale may break in Germany. But
those who know both the people and the
country say it never will. So my present
prayer is that the interim may be useful for
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the spreading of the conviction that this
war must not stop when Germany is ready
to make concessions, not even when she is
ready to evacuate the lands she has seized,
not even when she begins to whimper and
regret — not until she is beaten to her knees,
and not even then until she has been pun-
ished, and punished so severely that she can-
not recover quickly, and left with a mark on
her which she cannot conceal, not even by
her most clever camouflage. She is a crimi-
nal nation. At large she is a danger to every
nation and to every people on the face of the
earth.
Now don't, I entreat you, reply that you
have heard me preach prison reform. I
have. I don't, of course, believe in treating
even criminals like wild beasts — yet I don't
know. At least I do believe in a restraint
which protects the community. I never did,
nor could, advocate pardon and liberty for
jail-birds of marked criminal tendencies.
The stigmata of crime are very persistent,
and Germany bears the mark. Why should
one cherish illusions for a race which one
dares not harbour for the individual?
In an age which proudly calls itself civil-
ized— whatever that may mean — Germany
has waged a war such as even barbarous
times never knew. It has not been a war
of legitimate slaughter, which would have
been terrible enough in a world of to-day's
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THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
aspirations and pretension. It has been a
war of violating women, abusing children,
murdering inoffensive civilians, a war of ra-
pine and wilful destruction, of breaking
every law of the God whom they arrogantly
claim, of every law man has made for the
safeguarding of the community, a war of lies
and cunning, by a people who claim the whole
world, and deliberately deny the right of
even existence to every one not born German,
who arrogate to themselves the right to sin,
and deny the right to live to all other races.
We are told that before the offensive of
March twenty-first was launched the disci-
plinary laws which have long governed
armies were all suspended by order of the
German Commander-in-chief, and that the
sack of all France on the hoped-for line of
march from St. Quentin to the sea, and from
the Chemin des Dames to Paris, was prom-
ised the German soldiers as their reward for
victory, and what really happened seems to
bear out the truth of the abominable state-
ment. From St. Quentin to the Somme, and
from the Chemin des Dames to the Marne,
as well as the time permitted, they accom-
plished the object. The amount of booty
they carried off was tremendous, and if every-
thing did not fall as loot to the army, they at
least achieved a destruction as complete as
possible.
Naturally I did not see this with my own
[ 264 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
eyes, but I have it on the testimony of sol-
diers who have come back from the devas-
tated country, and whose word I have no rea-
son to doubt. They tore to bits tapestries
which they had not time to destroy. They
smashed mirrors. They made firewood of
the furniture in the humbler houses which
was not good enough to send to Germany.
They smashed dishes. If they did not de-
stroy crops which they could not carry off, or
if they left a pin anywhere it was only be-
cause in neither of their great pushes did
they achieve their objective, and in both
they met a resistance more tenacious than
they expected, and which cost them dear, so
that in certain places they were unable to ac-
complish under bombardment a destruction
as thorough as they planned or had the will
to do.
It is on things like this on which our minds
fasten — for the flesh is weak and shrinks
from such suffering as all that entails on the
individual. Yet that is not Germany's worst
crime. She has attacked the fundamental
virtues towards which the world has been
marching for centuries, and for which it has
fought and bled many times, — the rights of
peoples to choose their own fates; the rights
of the individual to freedom; the hopes that
free peoples have cherished of seeing the
world become honest, and she has tried to
bend all the world to the slavery of force.
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In that lies her greatest crime, and it is for
that abominable crime that she has to suffer,
and must suffer, unless the world is to be
thrown back a thousand years.
After all it is ideas that make history, not
facets. From the beginning Man has shed
his blood for ideas and opinions. They
make history. That has marked the passing
of people, of habits and customs, but the
ideas have persisted. From the beginning —
or rather in the short span of which we know
anything — man has always had to fight and
bleed for his ideas. Perhaps he always will.
Who knows ? Considering how little the ma-
jority understand this it is wonderful how
heroically they do it.
As an example of that: the other day I
met a young American officer — a lieutenant
from the South — and in course of the con-
versation he remarked that France could
" never recover herself," and when I smiled
and shook my head at him, he added with a
great deal of feeling:
" But you have not been out there. You
have no idea of the destruction. There is
not one stone on another. It is terrible.
When this war is over, and all the costs
counted, you will see that France is finished."
I had the folly to remark that all that
would soon arrange itself, and that I counted
as unimportant in the great scheme the mate-
rial destruction, and was only concerned in
266
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the spiritual side of it all. Of course he did
not understand. Why should he? So I
thought it not worth while to state that per-
sonally I had a deep regret for every stone
thrown down and a deeper sorrow for every
young life so bravely given. He looked at
me as if I was crazy. I suppose he thought
me a white-haired old crank. Is it not true
of all of us who read our history straight —
or as straight as our limited intelligences will
let us — that, though the life of each genera-
tion is made enthralling by the personal
struggle, by new ways of making money, new
ways of spending it, new ways of living and
new ways of dressing and eating and amus-
ing ourselves, these are not the vital things.
If they were, there would have been few
wars, in spite of adventurers, camp-followers
and free-lances.
It is no palliation of the offence that the
war the Germans forced on the world, with
a criminal intent, has made of the fighting
nations of the defence a people who will be
all the finer for the struggle. It does not
lighten Germany's sin that the world will
have a nobler future, and living itself be the
more worth while, for the serried effort the
Allies have made. It is nothing to Ger-
many's credit that, in the shoulder-to-shoul-
der and heart-to-heart sacrifices, and the
heroically borne great grief, old differences
have been forgotten and a better understand-
c 267 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
ing achieved, that out of her sin good will
come. She has done her most devilish to pre-
vent that. The nations fighting out there in
front of us to-day — on that long line from
the Swiss frontier to the North Sea, and with
stiff lips and brave eyes offering their best
beloved on the altars of right, justice and
liberty — must not be merciful except to
a repentant sinner. That Germany will
never be. It is not possible to her Kultur.
A whining, lying, hypocritical — in fact a
camoufle — penitent she may be; more than
that is and will be for generations impossible
for a nation and people bred to believe that
what a people has strength to do, it has the
right to do. If after all the experience the
Allies have had they can be tricked into ex-
tending pity to a beaten Germany, why then
they have fought and bled in vain. I sup-
pose there are good Germans. Well, God
must pity them, but they must, for the time,
suffer for the crimes of their race as innocent
children suffer for the sins of their fathers,
and for the same reason; so why should man
be foolishly lenient when neither the Al-
mighty nor nature is?
We thought Belgium's tragedy could not
be capped until Servia's capped it, and I am
inclined to believe that Germany's deliberate
debauching of Russia and her conscious mu-
tilation of the soul of a people is her worst
crime, for it may have arrested for centuries
c 268 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the slow and hoped-for evolution of a nation
and a race in which we all may have had too
much faith, but which, now that chaos has
been dealt out to it, may be long in recover-
ing, because one sees nowhere in sight yet
the national hero who might wave a magic
wand of personal love and magnetic patriot-
ism and still the waters the Huns have
troubled. The Allies have a duty — to aid
in conjuring that spirit, but it can never be
done while there is a German foot on Russian
soil.
You ask in one of your late letters if I
have been reading Cheradame on the " East-
ern Question." Of course I have. His ar-
raignment of facts is appalling. I own that.
But it seems rather a pity that, while his sta-
tistics have tended to terrorize an easily ter-
rorized people, some one does not add a
footnote to remind the world, not only that
there is a spirit in this great war — it has a
soul as well as facts — and that if the Allies
have seemed to neglect the eastern to devote
themselves to the western frontier it must
not be forgotten that, with all the forces they
have, they have barely been able to hold the
Huns at bay there. Besides, the vital thing
is to defeat Germany, and it is immaterial
where that is done so that it is done, and it is
far from done yet. When Germany is well
licked, and only then, will it be possible to
deal with the races concerned in what has
[ 269 ]
ucai \\
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
for so long been known as the Eastern Ques-
tion, which really dates back to the seven-
teenth century, when Austria started on her
" eastern route," if it does not go far back
of that to the fall of Constantinople and the
entrance of the Turk into Europe. With this
great massacre ended, with Germany weak-
ened and punished, and the Turks driven out,
the Eastern Question can be dealt with by
other means than a sword; and I dare say it
will be found that, delivered from Prussian
intrigue, the victorious Allies, with the power
and the will to do it, will meet with aid and
not opposition from the people concerned.
But just as long as Germany is left with
power to interfere such dreams can never be
realized. Imagine the mentality of a people
who can be lulled to sleep with Kaiser Bill's
" Peace Talk," who can even tolerate a
leader who states that the Allies are respon-
sible for the continuation of the war because
they refuse to stop fighting to protect their
homes and liberties by acknowledging them-
selves beaten, pay the expenses of a war
forced on them, and leave in the hands of the
spoiler his loot in lands, subject peoples, and
material !
After all the Kaiser made a mistake when
he thought he was a second Napoleon I.
Do you know what he is like? He is a
reincarnation of Nabuchodonosor. Do read
Chapters V and VI of the book of Judith in
[ 270 J
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
the Apocrypha if you don't believe me.
And the King of the Assyrians had his Hin-
denburg, only even in those days of barbarity
it did not occur to Holofernes to poison the
wells and sources he seized when he set out
to reduce Jerusalem.
I suppose you will reply that this comes
very ill from me, who have been saying that
I was tired of talk, and only wanted acts —
words after achievements. Only a fool
never changes her mind. I can't be really a
fool, I change mine so often.
I note also that you object to my saying
" dirty Germans " so often. That is only be-
cause I am becoming so very American —
it's an ill war that brings about no good —
ahem! That's all right. You may laugh.
Besides, I supposed that you had heard the
song the Amex boys brought over with them
— a song which lists off what a soldier may
expect each day in the week — shrapnel one
day, then gas, then "over the top," down to
the hospital on Saturday, and a funeral on
Sunday, and each day's prayer is " Oh, you
dirty Germans, I wish the same on you."
Ever since I heard it in Paris we have never
spoken of the Huns except as " dirty Ger-
mans," and even Amelie can say it, and pre-
fers it to " les sales Boches," — the usual
French designation, and of which " dirty
Germans" is a literal translation.
Speaking of songs, I am told that the
[ 271 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
Marines went "over the top" at Chateau-
Thierry singing, " I want to go home, I am
too young to die," and with cigarettes in
their mouths. I don't vouch for that now,
but it was told me by one of them, a sergeant
who led the third wave over — thirty men.
There were only two left with him when the
mitrailleuse they encountered was silenced.
But I can believe it. You ought to hear what
the French say of the Amex boys, especially
of how they fight when an assault becomes a
hand-to-hand. They say that even when
their ammunition is out, and their guns shot
out of their hands, they use feet as well as
fists, and rush it, heads down, as if in a foot-
ball tussle. They assert that with experience
they are going to make great soldiers. That
emphasizes the blow at the German military
ideas, doesn't it?
I imagine that they have already dealt
out a flush of surprises to the Germans. We
have seen a large number of the prisoners here
whom the Americans took — some of them
not looking more than fifteen or sixteen years
old. A few of them know a word or two of
French, and when questioned about the
Americans they said: " Mediants les Ameri-
cains — mechantsf" Aren't they wonder-
ful? Strange people who feel the right to
do the things they have done, and then
think a soldier who fights back impolitely is
" mechant"
[ 272 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
While I am writing this Amelia and Pere
have gone to look at the big gang of pris-
oners who have built our new double bridge,
which crosses both the canal and the Marne
at Mareuil, and the new road which will
connect the route nationale with that to Com-
piegne, well west of Meaux. I haven't seen
it since it was begun, but they have been
down several times and tell me it is very
handsome.
[ 273 1
XXX
Remembrance Day,
WELL, we are entering on the fifth year
of the war. We were pained in 1914 when
Kitchener prophesied a three years' war, and
very cross when an American financier de-
clared that it might last seven. I rather
imagine five will settle it, but I am not
prophesying. It is a long road still to the
frontier. But to-day, when all the world,
except Central Europe, is joining England
in her solemn service of prayer, and the
Allied chiefs are exchanging cables of hope
and confidence, I may as well do my bit, by
sending you my message. I feel especially
inspired to do it by the fact that your letter
just received expresses some surprise at what
you call my losing my nerve, in the first week
in June. Did I? Do you know, I can't re-
member. But you must know that the situa-
tion here was desperate from March twenty-
first up to Foch's counter-offensive on July
eighteenth. When I say desperate I mean
just that.
Speaking of that time, I never told you
that my famous sack of sugar never got here.
By one of those errors that happen often,
but by good luck never happened to me be-
[ 274 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
fore, the cases I sent out from Paris on the
morning of the fifteenth — the day the fifth
offensive was launched — did not get put off
at Esbly, where our narrow-gauge line meets
the main line, but went on to the end, which,
as the Germans were across the Marne at
that time at Dormans, was La Ferte-sous-
Jouarre, the next station beyond Meaux, and
only about eleven miles from here. That
night the railway station was bombarded by
the Germans and destroyed and the station-
master killed. So my precious sugar was
burned up. I mention the fact only as inter-
esting, and because it may account for what
you call my nervousness. I am perfectly
sure that if ever I were condemned to die for
a cause, the hours of waiting for the end
would be — shall we say? — trying.
But all that is changed, and one forgets
easily.
On Friday night, at eight o'clock, the
Allies entered Soissons again, and the pillar
of the German position for the march on
Paris by the valley of the Oise is lost to
them. With both the valley of the Marne
and that of the Oise closed to the invader,
Paris is again safe, and we are again calm,
and draw a long breath of relief, even though
we know that we must count it lucky if, be-
fore winter, we can see the Huns back on
the famous Siegfried line, from which they
bounded last March, and to which they re-
[ 275 ]
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
treated in March of 1917. There they will
be in almost impregnable positions, behind a
long line of veritable fortresses, and in much
better winter quarters than the Allies.
One of the prettiest things about this slow
push forward, which is a victory, slow as it
is, is the fact that every nation in arms for
the Allied cause has taken part in it, and
distinguished itself.
Our boys, fresh and untried, have more
than held their own. I had a letter yester-
day from a Californian who is with the
Foreign Legion, who writes: "Since I saw
you we have been through two campaigns
with our beloved division. The first gave
us all the sensations of the agony of retreat,
the second all the exhilaration of a victory.
And more than that, we have had the thrill
of seeing our American troops fight side by
side with the hardened legionnaires and make
good."
One more consoling thing. I have often
asked myself, since I saw another war winter
looming in sight, how our boys were going
to stand the rough billets to which the poilus
are accustomed, — so different from the
camp quarters of their months of training
at home, in England and even here. An
American officer, who was here yesterday,
tells me that, although the fighting regiments
between the Marne and Fisme, which the
boys from the States retook by assault, are
[ 276 1
THE PEAK OF THE LOAD
cantonned in an absolutely destroyed coun-
try, under the roughest conditions, they take
it gaily, — he has never heard the very
smallest complaining.
So here we are at the beginning of the
Year V.
We know that Germany is still strong.
We cannot close our eyes to the knowledge
that her death-struggle will be full of fear-
fulness. Still, with the days shortening — I
had to light up last night at half-past seven
in the salon, the first time I have had a light
except in my bedroom since the last of May,
which means winter will be here before we
know it — we are really gayer than at the
opening of any winter since the war began.
It is not wholly because we are hardened to
it. It is because the dawn of the new era
begins to glow on the horizon of the future.
We are moving slowly towards new days,
for the world that was has gone, and the
special colour of the days before the war
can never be again. My Remembrance Day
prayer is that the spirit moving over the
fighting-line to-day and flinging its wide
wings over the heads and hearts of all of us
behind the lines may persist and make the
nations as fine in the great after-the-war
work ahead of them, as they have been noble,
sacrificing, loyal to one another, and patriotic
to their own flags in the great fight.
[ 277 J
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
D Aldrich, Mildred
570 The peak of the load
.9
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