Think of those fine-grained, sensitive French girls, compelled to live with brutes—generally surly, often drunk, who have killed their husbands, their brothers, their fathers! They have broken all the rules of war. They have outraged every decency. They are so sunk in the abyss of shame that they know neither respect for the living nor reverence for the dead.
CHAPTER XVIII
LOVE AND WAR
Love and war go together. War destroys the body but love lives on with the soul. Love and war have transformed the hitherto seemingly empty-pated, fashionable woman to an angel of mercy. Socialists have developed into patriots, artisans have become statesmen, good-for-nothings are now heroes, misers have grown to be philanthropists.
Man, missing woman’s ministrations at the front, turns instinctively to her when opportunity offers. Hard, fierce, unyielding to his fellows, he relaxes in her sheltering affection. He is but a boy grown. He wants to be petted, coddled, civilized again.
The woman realizes he has suffered for her. He knows what she has sacrificed for him. War has brought them together, brushed aside false pride and hypocrisy and revealed refreshing springs of patriotism and love out of which flows a union of hearts and hopes that only those who suffer, sacrifice and endure together can realize.
The man is better for having been a soldier. He is self-reliant, stronger in mind and body. Through discipline he has become punctual and dependable. All snobbishness, fads and isms are now out of him. He is more tolerant and charitable. He recognizes the value of women’s work in the home, in the hospital and in the munition factory. As a representative of her country, whose uniform he wears, he carries himself more proudly, more uprightly.
What a soldier is to the army, a home is to the nation. The home is safe only so long as is the country. With foreign invasion, all values become nothing. The woman, the man, the home, the country are interwoven. Beyond lie the right to live their lives, personal liberty, representative government, the preservation, yes, even the propagation of the race.
To check that on-coming German tide which threatened to wipe away everything he holds dear, the soldier has fitted himself into that surging, bending, human wall. Behind it, under the shadow of death, woman works and waits, in a quiet that knows not peace—often in vain—filled with care and dread, ever striving to be calm, she hides her heart’s pain.
Ancestors died for the liberty his flag represents. Posterity must enjoy the same freedom. So, he bridges the gap, shoulders the load and becomes a better lover, husband, father. Having learned his obligation to the nation, he is a better citizen for all time. One man’s daughter loves and marries another’s son and they become one. War tears them apart. He goes to the trenches. She keeps the home fires burning. Love holds them together while he fights to protect and preserve, she works to support and maintain.
That man is not yet whose pen can do justice to the incomparable woman of France. She is a wonderful combination of heart, head and health. The women of colder climes love with their minds. The French woman with her heart. She gives all, regardless of consequences.