Our Part in the Great War

by Arthur Gleason

"Why did you burn our homes?" I asked a German officer, after the village was in ruins.

"We didn't burn the place," he answered. "It was French shells that destroyed it."

"I was here," I answered. "There were no French shells."

"The village people fired on our troops," he said.

"I was here," I told him. "The village people did not fire on your troops. The village people ran away."

"An empty town is a town to be pillaged," he explained.

The Mayor took up the story.

"A German officer took me into his room, one day," he said. "He closed the door, and began:

"I am French at heart. I believe that your village was burned as a spectacle for the Crown Prince who has his headquarters over yonder at a village a few kilometers away."

The picture he summoned was so vivid that I said, "Nero—Nero, for whom the destruction of a city and its people was a spectacle. Only this is a little Nero. Out of date and comic, not grandiose and convincing."