But not of suffering only. At no place is France stronger than at this point of greatest strain. The district is dotted with great names of the humble—names unknown before the war, and now to be known for as long as France is France. Here Sister Julie held back the German Army and saved her wounded from the bayonet. Here the staunch Mayor of Lunéville and his good wife stayed with their people through the German occupation.
Leon Mirman is the Prefect of all this region. He was Director of Public Charities in Paris, but when war broke out he asked to be sent to the post of danger. So he was sent to the city of Nancy to rule the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. The Prefect of a Department in France is the same as the Governor of a State in America. But his office in peace is as nothing compared to his power in time of war. He can suspend a Mayor and remove an entire population from one village to another. The morale of France for that section is dependent on the reaction he makes to danger and stress.
The answer of the ravaged region to the murder and the burning is a steadiness of courage, a busy and sane life of normal activity. Beautiful Nancy still lifts her gates of gold in the Place of Stanislaus. The lovely light of France falls softly on the white stone front of the municipal buildings, and from their interior comes a throbbing energy that spreads through the hurt district. The Prefect's houses for refugees are admirably conducted. School "keeps" for the children of Pont-à-Mousson on a quiet country road, while their mothers still live in cellars in the bombarded town, busy with the sewing which has made their home famous. They are embroidering table cloths and napkins, and Americans are buying their work. They are not allowed any longer to be happy, but they can go on creating beauty. None of their trouble need escape into the clean white linen and the delicate needle-work, and the Bridge of Pont-à-Mousson embosses the centerpiece as proudly as if the town had not been pounded by heavy shells for two years.
But the parents were agreed on one thing: it was no place for children. So these and other hundreds of little ones have been brought together. The Prefect means that these children, some of whom have seen their homes burned, their mothers hunted by armed men, shall have the evil memory wiped out. He is working that they shall have a better chance than if the long peace had continued. The simple homely things are going on, as if the big guns could not reach in.
I attended the classes of domestic science, where little girls plan menus for the family meal. Overhead, the aeroplanes spot the sky. Three times in my days in the district they came and "laid their eggs," in the phrase of the soldiers. Sometimes a mother is killed, sometimes a sister, but the peaceful work goes on. The blackboard is scribbled over with chalk. Piping voices repeat their lesson. I saw the tiny boys at school. I saw the older boys working at trades. Some of them were busy at carpentry, remaking the material for their own village, bureaus, tables and chairs. We talked with boys and girls from Nomeny, where the slaughter fell on women with peculiar severity. These children had seen the Germans come in. Wherever I went I met children who had seen the hand grenades thrown, their homes burning. I visited many hundreds of these children at school. They are orderly and busy. It will take more than fire and murder from unjust men to spoil life for the new generation of France. For that insolence has released a good will in a greater race than the race that sought to offend these little ones.
And the same care has been put on the older refugees. I saw the barracks of the famous Twentieth Army Corps—the Iron Divisions—and of the Eighth Artillery used for this welfare work. Mirman has taken these poor herds of refugees and restored their community life in the new temporary quarters. Here they have a hospital, a church and a cinema. He is turning the evil purpose of the Germans into an instrument for lifting his people higher than if they had known only happiness. Beyond the great power and authority of his office he is loved. The Prefect is a good man, simple and high-minded.
He has given me the statement that follows for the American people. Let us remember in reading it that it comes from the highest official in France in charge of the region where systematic atrocity was practiced in an all-inclusive way. On this chance section of the world's great area, a supreme and undeserved suffering fell. Monsieur Mirman makes here the first official statement of the war on the subject of reprisals. There is something touching in his desire for our understanding. France hoped we would see her agony with the eyes she once turned toward us. She still hopes on, and sends this message of her representative:
"I wish you to understand in what spirit we began the war in France, and especially in this district. It was our intention to follow the rules of what you call in English 'Fair Play.' We wished to carry on the war as we had carried on other wars, to our risk and peril, with all the loyalties of fighting men. But from the start we have been faced with men whom we are unable to consider as soldiers, who have conducted themselves in a section of our Department as veritable outlaws. You are not going, unfortunately, to Nomeny, which is a town of this Department where the Germans have committed the worst of their atrocities. At least you will go to Gerbéviller, where they burned the houses, one by one, and put to death old men, women and children.
"Mention is often made of these two townships where the inhabitants suffered the most severely from the invasion of the enemy, but in many other townships, a long list, the Germans acted in the same way. They burned the streets, they killed men, women and children without cause. Always they gave the pretext, to excuse themselves, that the civilian population had fired on them. On that point, I bring you my personal testimony: I say to you on my honor that this German allegation is absolutely false.
"At my request I was appointed the Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle on August 9, 1914. In all the townships of this Department, on my arrival, I requested in the most urgent terms that the inhabitants should not give way to restlessness, and should not resort to a single act which I called an unruly act, by themselves taking direct part in the war. I made those requests in perfect agreement with all the population, approved by the most ardent patriots. I held inquiries, frequent and detailed, to find out if my instructions had been respected. Not once have I been able to establish the fact that a civilian fired on the Germans.