"To civilians. You are not required to concern yourselves with military matters. If you talk about such things, you may come under suspicion."
A civilian warned is a civilian armed.
Such was Arras when I saw it in November, 1914, after the first bombardment, and so it was, or nearly so, when I saw it yesterday. And it was the same sorrow that I felt as I passed along those empty streets, where not one house is to be seen that has not received its wound, more or less mortal. The dismal impression may have been strengthened by yesterday's wretched weather.
8. ARRAS.
We often say of some provincial town: "It is a dead-alive place." The phrase should be changed, or else it should be used henceforth only about such towns as Arras, Ypres or Verdun.
For two years not only the Germans but the weather also have been active to help the work of destruction; the Germans with their never-ceasing bombardment, the weather by destroying without hope buildings which might, till lately, have perhaps been saved. Everything rusts and crumbles under the rain, and in many places the wind has finished their work for the guns. Grass sprouts among the ruins; moss grows on stone and timber. The work of Death goes on, slowly but surely.
It is not a little astonishing to meet civilians now and then in Arras. Here and there the white head of some old man or woman appears from a cellar or from behind a bit of wall. There are some hundreds of such French people, who have refused to leave their homes.
They have sent away the "jeunesse," as they say, so that the Boches may have no more children to kill. They, the old folk, propose to stay and look after their ruins.
Yesterday I saw a woman come out of the half-open door of a little shop. She may have been 65 years old. Over the door was the sign, "Washing done here." She was a washerwoman.