"Why, Mademoiselle, surely no German would do such a hideous thing as that without some reason."
At that time I believed, as apparently do the majority of people in this country to-day believe, that the Germans did not commit the atrocities that were attributed to them. But it is all true.
"But, oui, Monsieur,... les Allemands, they have no reason. They kill my two brothers ... my father I have not seen, my mother I have not seen ... no, not for five months. Les Allemands, they have taken them also ... they are dead also, peutetre."
"And you?" I continued. "Where was your home?"
"Ah, but it is the long story. We live close by Liége. It is a small village. The Uhlans come and we are sorely frightened. We hide in the cellar, and do not go out at all. While there les Allemands post a notice in the village. It is that every person who has a gun, a pistol, a shell, an explosive, must hand such over to the burgomaster. We do not know of this, and do nothing. At last, Monsieur, the Uhlans come to our house to search, and there they see a shotgun and some shot. It is such a gun as you must know in the house of British, in the house of American. It is the common gun. We did not know. But there is no pardon for ignorance in war. My brothers were roughly pulled to the market place and shot dead." Little Marie choked down a sob. "My mother and my father," she continued, "were carried away. I refuse. I fight, I bite, I scratch, I scream with frenzy, I tear. One of les Allemands ... perhaps he was mad, Monsieur, he slash ... so, and so ... he cut off my arm.
"I remember no more, Monsieur. After a day ... two days, I find that I can walk. I walk and walk. It is now one hundred and fifty miles from my home ... it is that I stay here until...."
I grasped the girl's left hand and turned away. I was sick. What if she had been my sister?
And then I thought of the laws read aloud to us that morning. We soldiers, fighting under the flag of the British Empire, were we to violate one little rule ... were we to take any property, no matter how small, without just payment to its owner; were we to drink one glass of beer too much ... were we to overstep by a hair's breadth the smallest rule of the code of a "soldier and a gentleman," we were liable to be shot.
What of the German who had ruined this young girl and maimed her body? Believe me, I realized then, if never before, what we were fighting for. I was ready to give every drop of blood in my veins to avenge the great crimes that this little girl, in her frail person, typified.
We passed another night in the same billets. Next morning at five-thirty we were roused to make a forced march, across country, of some twenty-two miles. This was the hardest march of the entire time I was at the front. Those ammunition boots! Those gol-darned, double distilled, dash, dash, dash, dashed boots!