Home Fires in France

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"'Liberty, our adored liberty, fight for thy defenders!' There were three hundred voices shouting it out, the tears streaming down our cheeks. If a regiment of German guards had marched into the room, we would not have turned our heads. Nothing could have stopped us then. We were only a crowd of old men and defenseless women and children, but we were all that was left of France in our French town.

"Letters? You know 'their' rule is that none are allowed, that we may neither write nor receive news from our dear ones. But that rule, like all their rules, is broken as often as we can. There are numbers of secret letter-carriers, who risk their lives to bring and take news. But it is horribly risky. If a letter is found on you, you are liable to a crushing fine, or, worse yet, to imprisonment, and, if you have children or old people dependent on you, you dare not risk leaving them. You might as well cut their throats at once and spare them the long suffering. Even if the letter is not found on you, there is risk if you try to send or receive one. They are not, of course, addressed, so that if the letter-carrier is discovered all those to whom he is bringing mail may not be incriminated. But if he is caught 'they' always threaten him with atrocious punishments which will be remitted if he will disclose the names of those who have employed him. Generally the poor letter-carriers are loyal even to death, suffering everything rather than betray their trust. But some of them are only young boys, physically undermined by hardship and insufficient food, like all our people, and they have not the physical strength to hold out against days of starvation, or floggings, or exposure—naked—to intense cold. They give way, reveal the names of the people who are receiving letters—and then there are a dozen more homes desolate, a dozen more mothers imprisoned, a dozen more groups of children left.

"And yet we all used to get letters before the rules became so terribly strict as at present. I have had six in the three years—just six. They were from my mother—I could not live without knowing whether my old maman was alive or not. Curious, isn't it, to think that I would have been imprisoned at hard labor if any one had known that I had received a letter from my old mother?

"Of course you must never carry them on you, if out of doors, for there is always a chance that you may be searched. On the trolley line between our town and the suburb, ——, which I used to take once a week to go to see Pauline when she was so ill, it often happened. The car would stop at a sudden cry of 'Halte!' and soldiers with bayonets would herd us into a nearby house. Women—German women, brought from Germany especially for such work—were waiting for us women passengers. We were forced to undress entirely, not a garment left on our poor humiliated old bodies, and everything was searched, our purses opened, our shoes examined, our stockings turned inside out. If anything which seemed remotely incriminating was found—an old clipping from a French newspaper, a poem which might be considered patriotic—a scrap of a letter, we were taken away to prison; if not, we were allowed to dress and go on our way."

We gazed at her, pale with incredulity. It was as though Americans had heard that such treatment had been accorded Jane Addams or Margaret Deland. "Were you ever searched in that way?" we faltered.

She had an instant of burning impatience with our ignorance. "Good Heavens, yes; many and many times! How absolutely little idea you have of what is going on up there under their rule! That was nothing compared to many, many things they do—their domiciliary visits, for instance. At any hour of the day or night a squad of soldiers knock at your door suddenly, with no warning. They search your house from top to bottom, often spending three hours over the undertaking. They look into every drawer, take down all the clothes from the hooks in the closets, look under the carpets, behind the bookcases, shake out all the soiled clothes in the laundry bag, pull out everything from under the kitchen sink, read every scrap of paper in your drawer and in your waste-paper basket—it's incredible. You watch them, with perfect stupefaction at the energy and ingenuity they put into their shameful business. And what they find as 'evidence' against you! It is as stupefying. They always read every page of the children's school copy-books, for instance, and if they find a 'composition' on patriotism, even expressed in the most general terms, they tear out those pages and take them away to be filed as 'evidence.'

"You must know that they can and do often enter for these searching visits at night when every one is in bed; perhaps you can guess how tensely the mothers of young girls endeavor not to offend against the least of 'their' innumerable rules, lest they be sent away into exile and leave their children defenseless. But it is almost impossible to avoid offending against some rule or other. Anything serves as ground for accusation—a liberal book, a harmless pamphlet found in the bookcase, the possession of a copper object forgotten after the summons to give up all copper has gone out, a piece of red, white, and blue ribbon, a copy of the 'Marseillaise,' a book of patriotic poems; but, above all, the possession of anything that serves to point to communication, ever so remote, with the outside world. That is the supreme crime in their eyes. A page of a French or English newspaper is as dangerous to have in the house as a stick of dynamite.

"Many men, women, and young girls are now in a German prison somewhere for the crime of having circulated little pamphlets intended to keep up the courage of the inhabitants. These little sheets no longer exist, but what exists in spite of all these repressive measures is the unshaken faith in our future, the most utter confidence that the Allies will rescue us out of the hand of our enemies."

What she told us about the deportations I may not repeat for fear of bringing down worse horrors on the heads of those she left behind. You may be thankful that you have not to read that story.

Only two incidents am I permitted to transcribe for you—two incidents which, perhaps, sum up the whole vast and unimaginable tragedy.