“If they had burned Orchies,” said one of my acquaintances, “it is because we are too tolerant with them. To brutes we must speak only the language of brutes. We treat their prisoners like guests; let us put them all against the wall and shoot them and their wounded, too.”
When I replied that we should have little right to complain of German atrocities if we did what they are reported to do, I was looked at as too soft and as if I were a woman without patriotic feeling. My friend told me this as politely as his temper allowed.
I left him and went into the street to try to find some distraction from his hatred. I chanced to meet a woman of Orchies and inquired what had happened there. I give her tale as told to me, though I have not been able to verify it.
“The Germans,” said she, “behaved quite well the first time they came into our town. They were kind to the children and even gave them sweets and toys, but on their second visit they found that some of their wounded had had their ears cut off and they ordered that Orchies should be set on fire.”
“It was monstrous,” she added, “but I know that an African soldier was found with a necklace of sixty ears, which he had certainly taken somewhere. This, too, was monstrous. I do not excuse the Germans for their crime—I have lost everything myself—but if we allow their wounded to be mutilated at such times, what can we expect? Who can say which side is the more barbarous? I must tell you that the officer ordered to set fire to Orchies was also told to arrest the mayor and some other men and to have them shot. However, he gave them timely warning to evacuate Orchies and to make good their escape, so no one was hurt.”
How far this story was true I never knew, but the effect of it on my fellow creatures I had seen too well, and I went away bearing on my heart the words of the woman of Orchies: “Who can say which side is the more barbarous?”
On October 7 we heard that the Germans were outside the city and in many quarters fear was added to the anguish already overburdening the hearts of so many. Yet one woman, hearing the Germans were near, exclaimed, “Say what you like, these men are just like our French men. War is war; you cannot expect it to be anything but cruel and barbarous. The Germans are no enemies of mine.”
Her words made a bad impression on the listeners, and it was well that the kind-hearted soul had three brothers in the French Army or she would have been regarded with much suspicion.
An old lady of my acquaintance almost lost her head with fright. “How dare they,” she said, speaking of the French, “let the Germans take Lille?”
“What then,” said I, “of Rheims?”