Home Fires in France

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"No, it doesn't. I never have understood why so little is given to the public about the sufferings of the invaded populations."

She looked at me strangely, the half-exasperated, half-patient look one gives to a child who asks a foolish, ignorant question, and explained wearily: "If those who escape tell what they have seen up there, those who are left suffer even worse torments. 'They' have spies everywhere, you know; no, that's not melodramatic nonsense, as I would have thought it three years ago, it's a literal fact. Very probably that little messenger-boy who brought the letter in here a moment ago is one. Very probably your baker is one. Anywhere in the world whatever is printed about what 'they' do to our people in their power is instantly read by some German eyes, and is instantly sent to German headquarters in the invaded regions. And it's the same with our poor, little, persistent attempts to express a little bit of what we feel for France. For instance, one of my friends who escaped at the risk of her life told about how we tried in our orphan asylum to keep the children mindful of France, how after closing hours, when the doors were shut, we took out the French flag from its hiding-place and told the children about France and whatever news of the war we had managed to hear. That article appeared, a half-column, in an obscure provincial newspaper with no indication as to which town was meant. In less than two weeks, from German headquarters in Brussels, went out a sweeping order to search to the last corner of the cellar every orphan asylum in the invaded regions. It was two o'clock in the morning when the searching squad in our town knocked at the doors. The flag was found, and our little collection of patriotic French recitations; and before dawn the superintendent, a splendid woman of fifty-seven, the salt of the earth, had disappeared. She was sent to a prison camp in Germany. Three months later we heard she was dead. Do you understand now why you must not repeat most of what I tell you, must give no clue as to how we hide our letters, how we get news from France; above all, say nothing that could give any idea of who I am? 'They' would do such dreadful things to Marguerite and little Julien and old Uncle Henri if 'they' knew that I have talked of the life there, of what 'they' have done to our people."

No, until the world turns over and we have awakened from the hideous nightmare no one may speak aloud of certain matters up there in Belgium and in the invaded provinces of France. But there are some things she told us which I may pass on to you, and I think you ought to know them. I think we all ought to know more than we do of what life is to the people who are awaiting deliverance at our hands. There are certain portions of her narration, certain detached pictures, brief dialogues and scenes, which may be set down in her own words. Your imagination must fill in the gaps.

"The first months were the worst—and the best. The worst because we could not believe at first that war was there, the stupid, imbecile anachronism we had thought buried with astrology and feudalism. For me it was like an unimaginably huge roller advancing slowly, heavily, steadily, to crush out our lives. During the day, as I worked with the wounded, I threw all my will power into the effort to disbelieve in that inexorable advance. I said to myself: 'No, it's not possible! They can't have invaded Belgium after their promises! Modern peoples don't do that sort of thing. No, it's not possible that Louvain is burned! Wild rumors are always afloat in such times. I must keep my head and not be credulous. The Germans are a highly civilized people who would not dream of such infamies as those they are being accused of.' All that I said to myself, naïvely, by day. At night, every hour, every half-hour, I started up from sleep, drenched in cold sweat, dreaming that the crushing roller was about to pass over us. Then it came, it passed, it crushed.

"But there were other, better things about those first months. For one thing, we had hope still. We hoped constantly for deliverance. Every morning I said to the girl who brought the milk, 'Are they here yet?' 'They' meant the French troops coming to deliver us. Yes, at first we expected them from one day to the next. Then from one week to the next, then from one month to the next. Finally, now, we have no strength left for anything but silent endurance. Besides that hope, which kept us alive those first months, we were not yet in that windowless prison which 'they' have succeeded in making our own country to us. We had news of France and of the outside world through the French and English prisoners. They were brought into our improvised hospital to have their wounds dressed before they were put on the train to be sent forward to their German prisons. As we cared for them we could get news of the battles; sometimes we heard through them of the men of our families; always they were a link with the world outside. We did not know what a priceless boon that was.

"But even this slight contact was soon forbidden us. We showed too openly the comfort it brought us. Free people, as we had always been, we were not then trained, as tyranny since has trained us, to the wretched arts of secrecy. We did too much for those prisoners. The people in the streets crowded about them too eagerly, showed them too many kindnesses. 'They' decided that our one link with the outside world must be broken. Fewer and fewer prisoners were sent; finally we saw none—for weeks and weeks none at all. We knew nothing but what 'they' told us, saw no other world, were hypnotized almost into believing that no other world existed.

"The last ones who came through—that is one of my memories. We never knew by what chance they were sent through our town. One day we looked, and there in our street were half a dozen French soldiers, with bloody heads and arms, limping along between Boche guards on their way to the hospital. All our people rose like a great wave and swept towards them. The guards reversed their rifles and began clubbing with their butt ends—clubbing the old women who tried to toss food to the prisoners, clubbing the little children who stretched out handfuls of chocolate, clubbing the white-haired men who thrust cigarettes into the pockets of the torn, stained French uniforms.

"We were beginning to practise some of the humiliating arts of a captive people then; we remembered that shouting in the streets is not allowed, that no French voice must be heard in that French town, and in all that straining, pressing, yearning crowd there was not a sound, not even a murmur of joy, when the Boche guards occasionally relaxed their vigilance for a moment and some of our presents reached the prisoners.

"Then they came to the hospital—it was a great mansion before the war—and went limping painfully through the broad doors and up the long stone staircase. Outside the doors stood the military car which was to take them to the station—stood the Boche guards—and the crowd, silent, motionless, waiting for the moment when those soldiers who stood for France should reappear. All demonstrations of feeling were forbidden by the invaders, yes, but there was no demonstration—only a great silent crowd waiting. The Boche guards looked about them uneasily, but there was no violation of any order to report. Every one waited silently. Twilight fell, darkness fell, the crowd grew larger and larger, filled the street, but gave no further sign of life. Not one of 'their' rules was broken, but as far as we could see there were upturned faces, white in the dusk. An hour passed, two hours passed, and then the moment was there. The lights flared up in the great hall of the hospital—all the lights at once, as if to do justice to a grand fête, an occasion of supreme honor. At the top of the stairway, very pale in that great light, with bandaged heads and arms, appeared those soldiers who stood for France.

"From all that silent, rigidly self-controlled crowd went up a sigh like a great stir of the ocean. The prisoners came limping down the stairway. France was passing there before our eyes, perhaps for the last time. A thousand handkerchiefs fluttered as silent salute to France, a thousand heads were bared to her. The weary soldiers stood very erect and returned a silent military salute. In their prison car they passed slowly along between the dense ranks of their fellow-countrymen, looking deeply, as though they too thought it might be for the last time, into those French eyes. Then they were gone. We had not broken one of 'their' rules—not one. But 'they' never allowed another French soldier to pass through our town.