Before going back to the fighting line, and especially before taking leave of our ally, France, I want to tell you of what was, perhaps, the bitterest blow suffered by her in the early weeks of the war.
That blow was the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.
Round Rheims are the most famous vineyards in France. All the little hills are covered with grape-laden vines, and when the writer was in that lovely, peaceful province of the Marne two years ago, all the happy peasant people, men, women, and little children, were gathering in the fruit, singing and laughing as they went along the narrow, fragrant pathways cut through the vines.
Rheims is a beautiful city, as old as France herself. Once more, as in 1870, fierce fighting was taking place there at the time of the grape harvest, recalling the fine lines of Bret Harte:
“Let me of my heart take counsel;
War is not of life the sum;
Who shall stay and reap the harvest
When the autumn days shall come?
But the drum
Echoed, ‘Come!