Following is an extract from a letter written by a French girl to a young man who was located in the camp where the writer gave her longest period of service:
LE GUERANDAIS
Allee des Bouleaux, La Baule.
October 21, 1918.
Dear Mister:—
Your kind letter was welcome. I understand them very easily without my dictionary, and I thank you very much for the kind feelings you express me. Be not anxious about my health, I have recovered now.
I was very touched by all the sympathy you have showed me on this occasion, and I was surprised of it, very agreeably. Thank you for your friendship, I am happy to give mine in exchange, because I know now what is your hard condition. I have spoken to white men, and always I have seen the same flash (lightning) in their angry eyes, when I have spoken them of colored men. But I do not fear them for myself; I am afraid of them for you, because they have said me the horrible punishment of colored men in America. As I am a French girl I have answered, “It is not Christian.” I am full of pity for your unhappy condition, more still when I think you are very intelligent, and you have quality of the heart more than many white men....
When a colored man goes in the house of a white girl, the policeman wait for him and kill him when he goes away! I have thought this way to do is savage, and it is why I was pitiful for the colored man. But I see you are not unhappy as I believed, and I am glad of it for you....
I should like to express you how much I am revolted of that I have learned of your condition, and how amused I am to have heard many injurious opinions of white men upon ourselves, French women! I write you in English and I cannot express my feelings as well as in French.
Naturally these “injurious opinions” about the French women were resented, not only by the women themselves, but the Frenchmen as well.