“And where are your other six sons?” his English acquaintance inquired.
“They are all at the front, and I’ve heard from them too. They are as happy as happy can be, for, you see, Monsieur, we are daily gaining ground.”
This little anecdote will make you understand the great outstanding fact about France. It is that every one of her sons is, will be, or has been, a soldier! During the course of a great war, it is a splendid, inspiring thought that the whole manhood of a nation is in arms to defend her. No need of recruiting there—no need to remind the young men that their country needs them. The French soldier is the French Everyman.
In old days I often felt pained to hear English people, just returned from a holiday in France, smile—even jeer—at the rough, often unsmart, look of the French soldier. These same people do not smile and jeer now when they watch a rough, unsmart detachment of young Englishmen marching to their drilling ground. They are touched and thrilled—or if they are not, they ought to be. You cannot have smart uniforms when every man over eighteen and under fifty is a soldier—or if you do, you sacrifice the rest of the nation, as we now know Germany has done, to the awful, sinister War god, the evil genius who lies in wait for happy, peaceful, busy countries, which only arm, as France had done, not for attack, but for defence.
CHAPTER XI
BELGIUM ONCE MORE
The future’s gain
Is certain as God’s truth; but, meanwhile, pain
Is bitter, and tears are salt: our voices take
A sober tone; our very household songs
Are heavy with a nation’s griefs and wrongs;