In the lower left-hand corner of the poster is a picture of a smooth German salesman trying to sell something in France. “Frenchmen, never forget!” They never will forget. They have tenacious memories, our French allies.
Can any one who has visited Paris forget the statue of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde? It is one of eight splendid monuments in that square, each representing a city of France. When the Germans filched Alsace and Lorraine from France, after the war of 1870, Strasbourg was lost to the French. On that day they laid funeral wreaths on the statue in the Place de la Concorde, and they have kept funeral wreaths there ever since.
Until August, 1914. Then they took away the emblem of mourning, because they knew Strasbourg would be theirs again. The statue is gay with flowers now, and with flags of all the allies. Our flag is there, the flag the French call le drapeau étoilé, the bestarred banner. May it stay there until what it has gone to France for has been accomplished, until the utterly crushed and vanquished German army has been pursued beyond the Rhine, until something of what the women of France and of martyred Belgium have endured has been paid for.
Not in the same coin, however. The men who have suffered so bravely are incapable of such crimes.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE NEW WOMAN IN FRANCE
The long-distance gun which has been bombarding Paris has not terrorized the civil population, as the Germans intended. I was in and out of the city for a month after the gun began to do its deadly work, and I can attest to that fact. But I remember three occasions when the wrath of the Parisians rose to such a height that I shuddered to think of the retribution that was piling up for Germany.
The first time was when a shell struck an historic old church, killing seventy-five Good Friday worshipers. The second was when the shell burst in a ward of a maternity hospital, making victims of mothers and newly born babes. The third time was when a factory was struck, and at least seven women workers were savagely slain. The shell struck the front of the factory, killing the head foreman who was just leaving the place. The man was torn limb from limb.
The entire front wall of the factory crushed inward and fell upon the women seated at their work. Six were killed outright, one died on the way to the hospital, and thirty were desperately hurt. They were nearly all war widows, wives of soldiers and refugees, those slain women and their comrades in the factory.
“After the church, after the nursery, the sewing room,” wrote the editor of Le Matin. “It will be said that the barbarians respect nothing.” Not religion, not infancy, not womanhood.
What deepened the indignation in the minds of the French public was the almost sublime courage shown by the women in that factory. There was not a single moment of panic. Instantly picking themselves up, those who were unhurt began to lift out of the mass of bricks and shattered timbers the dead and wounded. They vied with one another in their calm, quick efforts to save life, and by the time the ambulances arrived all the wounded had received first aid. The next morning at the usual hour every woman, except the seriously wounded, reported for work. Not one stayed at home.