On the other hand, we passed through many more of these villages without seeing a man. The women sat out of doors sewing, and the children swarmed. It is the bourgeoisie which has reduced the birth rate in France. The aristocracy and the poor have large families. Ever since my arrival I have heard almost daily of working class families of anywhere from five to sixteen children. In the great valleys through which we passed these children played bareheaded, but in the Vosges, where it rains most of the time, all the little boys wore military caps.
I also saw a large number of soldiers in the peaceful fields beside the noisy roads, and was told they had been sent by the authorities to help with the harvesting. I shall always be glad that I have seen “with my own eyes” something of the immense number (and I saw but one small section of the zone) of men that France still has at her disposal, and has not yet been able to use. And, as I have said before, they are nearly all big fellows. It is only the men of the south, of the Midi, that are small, and by no means all of those.
An amusing story came from Bulgaria while I was in Paris, and was sent by Joseph Reinach to Figaro. The Crown Prince of Germany invited the two older sons of the Bulgarian King to visit his headquarters before Verdun and be present at its downfall. The young men accepted the invitation, remained a month, then, very much bored, excused themselves and went home. “What impressed you the most?” their father asked. They replied simultaneously: “The resistance of the French.”
The fields devoid of soldiers were a picturesque sight with the women in blue print frocks and white sunbonnets. Old and young, they were hard at work harvesting, and the children played among the stacks. In some of the hotels where we stopped either overnight or for luncheon we saw officers and their families, who had joined them here to save two or more precious days of their short leave. And there was more than one bride and bridegroom. Strange honeymoon, within sound of the guns that promised a quick disunion. The faces of the older wives looked philosophically happy, but those of the young women were drawn and pale. Life was beginning in tragedy; and no doubt twenty years hence they will be as torn with anxiety for their absent sons.
It was in a large and handsome hotel in Nancy (the less said about the average hotel in the war zone the better) where we spent the first night of our journey that I saw so many of these couples and reunited families; as it was as admirably run as in times of peace, I should like to give its name, but forbear lest it incur the just wrath of the enemy.
Nancy is little over five miles from the front, so that the roar of the guns may be heard plainly. It is bombarded by cannons now and again, but I missed one of these delicate attentions by two days. The “caves” are indicated by the double cross of the House of Lorraine, for Taubes are among the daily commonplaces in Nancy.
Major C., our Lieutenant and I were at dinner in the dining-room about eight o’clock (Madame Lyon had gone to bed), when the iron shutters were hastily lowered and the maître d’hôtel came to our table and said solemnly: “It is my duty to tell you that there is a taube over the city and to ask you to go to the cellars.” “Are you going?” I asked my companions. “Certainly not.” they replied simultaneously and without raising their eyes from their excellent meal. I concluded that the bright restaurant with two men to protect me was infinitely preferable to a dark, damp, rat-infested cellar and sat tight. In a moment we heard a fusillade; the guns were searching out the invader. But whether the taube dropped a bomb or not no one remembered to inquire!
The next morning at six, Madame Lyon, hearing a noise, opened her window and looked out. A group of people were staring upward, and following their gaze she saw a taube surrounded by five French airplanes, which finally drove it off. I, alas! missed this thrilling sight, for although I was awake I was listening so intently to the guns at the front, only nine kilometres away, that I heard nothing else.