"Faugh! it smells of Prussians here!"
Such as they were, the gentlemen amused themselves. Some maintained even that they made conquests. I am touching here on a very delicate subject—the relations between the invaders and the women of the invaded countries. There has been much talk of rape. Compared with the crimes committed in Belgium and in Lorraine, the misdeeds we shall mention are but little things. To be sure, there were rapes, but, thanks be to God, they were few, and they took place at the beginning of the invasion, chiefly after the Germans' retreat on the Marne. In Jouville I heard many a sad story. There was the story of a young woman of Chevregny who went mad after her misfortune, and of several old women too. For, hardly credible as it seems, old women often fell victims to acts of violence, because they lacked agility to run away. At Braye, several soldiers fell upon a woman of eighty, knocked her down, and beat her most unmercifully. At Chamouille, in October 1914, a few women were living in a cellar, frightened to death. "One evening," one of them told me, "we heard a loud cry; there was a falling of stones, and a young woman tumbled down into the cellar through a shell-hole. Thus she escaped from her pursuers, but her companion, an old woman of sixty-eight, fell defenceless into the hands of the filthy fellows."
Ah, we had many proofs of the respect the Germans have for old age!
A woman of Cerny, eighty-seven years old, small and white-haired, with red eyes and a shaking head, told us how she had left her lodging. "I had a small bundle of clothes ready lying on the table. But the soldiers did not allow me to go in and take it; they beat me. As I didn't go—I had money, too, in my bundle—they forced me to go; they all flocked around me, they were twelve, and ... how am I to say it?..." In short, the twelve rascals had driven the poor old woman out of her house by directing towards her that which a famous statue innocently eternises in Brussels. Stripped of her spare clothes and money, filthy, disgusted at what she had seen, the unhappy woman had to go to a neighbour to beg for a bodice and a petticoat, that she might cast away her soiled clothes.
When the Germans settled themselves upon us, these feats of the satyr were no longer common. Here and there evil deeds were still spoken of, and a doctor of the neighbourhood told us in the spring of 1915 that nearly every week there was an act of violence. I must confess that many a woman was the victim of her own imprudence. When you have lived all your life in a quiet village, among kind people, you have some difficulty in believing that you must be on your guard for months together, that you are for ever surrounded with brutes. So more than one villager had reason to regret having gone alone to the forest, or having persisted in living in a lonely house.
But the systematic brutalities, the collective assaults, which marked the beginning, were no longer known. The method had changed. There were acts of violence which were no less terrible for being moral. In many a village whose inhabitants suffered hunger, the children were provided with bread and soup. Yes, but this privilege was reserved for the children whose mothers showed themselves complaisant towards the soldiers. And these women accepted dishonour, because they could not bear to see their little ones pine away and die, while others could not withstand the troubles and vexations that lay in store for good women.
A cry of reprobation and horror arose when we heard that the conduct of all women was not blameless. In the first place there were the women of the lowest class. Even Boule de suif herself would have been tamed after daily relations with the German soldiers. Of course a few black sheep are a disgrace to the flock, and I can fancy women-haters shrugging their shoulders in scorn when they hear of this.
Gently, sir—a truce to jeering. More than one person wearing a beard gave abundant proof of an equal complaisance. Alas, traitors were to be found among us. For instance, there were those who welcomed the Germans with a smile, and revealed to them the resources of the place. There were those, the foulest of all, who denounced French soldiers hidden in the woods or those who fed the fugitives. There were those who, for a little money or food, pointed out the hiding-places of his neighbours, and thus surrendered to the enemy wine, grain, potatoes, even money and jewels. But I am pleased to say that such despicable wretches were rare, and on the whole the population was proud and dignified, and opposed to the invaders' dishonesty a solid brotherhood, which no troubles, no persecutions could lessen or fatigue. And yet we led a grievous life; the Germans seemed to aim at making it as hard as possible, while theirs was as merry as can be.
The winter had been painful, but the summer was still more so. We had less liberty and less food. We were allowed to leave the place we lived in but three times a week, and on stated days. Besides, we had to ask for a pass two days beforehand, and pay seventy-five centimes for it when it was granted, which was not always the case. It was almost impossible to go to the country from Laon, and for weeks together nobody was allowed to leave the town. One day passports had been freely given to the people, tradesmen mostly who went to Marle to buy raw sugar—a yellowish sticky substance with a taste of glue—and a little butter, precious goods that were still to be found there in small quantities. They all came back furious. At different points of the road, level-crossings, outskirts of villages, they had all been arrested.
Men and women had been then entirely stripped of their garments, and searched according to rule. Nurses of the Red Cross and soldiers showed equal zeal in the task, which had a practical object—the gathering of all gold and even silver coins of five francs which pockets and purses might contain. The sum seized, it must be said, was replaced by notes of the Reichsbank.