"From every French soldier's grave, ten soldiers will grow!"
Gutted houses, torn and charred hayricks, scraps of clothing, broken motor-cars, scraps of shells, and fires where the bodies of scores of horses were being burned, marked the line of the storm of war.
Ah! There is a farmhouse standing, almost untouched. The road to it is covered with shell-splinters. There are white figures there.
Turned into a hospital, of course, with doctors, orderlies and—nurses. So soon! So near the battlefield! Later, when the war was systematized, the nurses were not found in such advanced positions, but at this crisis for France, the red cross on the sleeve was but little less eager to plunge into its work than the arm that thrust the bayonet.
Are the Germans returning? They do not know.
Will that farmhouse be shelled in the next half-hour? They cannot tell.
Nor do they greatly care. For they know that they, too, are saving France.
Horace throbbed on, his thoughts vibrating to the tune of his motor-cycle, and, as he thought of the Red Cross of the Battlefield, the master's voice rang again in his ears,
"A nation's strength is in proportion as its women are strong."