Six Women and the Invasion

SIX WOMEN AND THE INVASION

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited London · Bombay · Calcutta · Madras Melbourne THE MACMILLAN COMPANY New York · Boston · Chicago Dallas · San Francisco THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. Toronto

WITH PREFACE BY Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917
COPYRIGHT

This little book gives a very graphic and interesting account by an eye-witness—who knows how to write!—of life in the occupied provinces of France under the daily pressure of the German invasion. There are many repulsive and odious incidents recorded here of the German occupation, but, mercifully, few atrocities, such as those which make of the French Governmental Reports, or that of the Bryce Commission, tales of horror and infamy that time will never wash out. These pages relate to the neighbourhood of Laon, and the worst brutalities committed by German soldiers in France seem to have happened farther south, along the line of the German retreat during the battle of the Marne, and in the border villages of Lorraine. But the picture drawn of the Germans in possession of a French country district, robbing and bullying its inhabitants, and delighting in all the petty tyrannies of their military régime, is one that writes in large-hand the lesson of this war. There must be no next time! If Europe cannot protect itself in future against such conduct on the part of a European nation, civilisation is doomed.
And that this little book under-states the case rather than over-states it, can be proved by a mass of contemporary evidence. I pass for instance from Madame Yerta's graphic account of the endless requisitions, perquisitions, inquisitions, to which the inhabitants of Morny in the Laonnois were subject in 1915, to a paragraph in this week's Morning Post (Tuesday, September 18), where a letter found upon a German soldier, and written to a comrade in Flanders from this very district, gleefully says: We take from the French population all their lead, tin, copper, cork, oil, candlesticks, kitchen pots, or anything at all like that, which is sent off to Germany. I had a good haul the other day with one of my comrades. In one walled-up room we found fifteen copper musical instruments, a new bicycle, 150 pairs of sheets, some towels, and six candlesticks of beaten copper. You can imagine the kind of noise the old hag made who owned them. I just laughed. The Commandant was very pleased.