Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

What can we, sheltered and safe in England, know of such sorrow as this? To say we have never known invasion is to say we have never known the real meaning of war. It may and does press hardly on us, but it does not grind us under foot. It does not set its iron heel upon our hearts and laugh when the red blood spurts upon the ground; it does not take our chastity in its filthy hands and batten upon it in the market-place; it doesn't rob us of liberty, nor of honour, nor does it break our altars, spuming its bestialities over the sacred flame. Our inner sanctuaries are still holy and undefiled. Those whom we have given have gone clear-eyed and pure-hearted to the White Temple of Sacrifice, there to lay their gift upon the outstretched hand of God: not one has died in shame.

Whatever the war may have in store for us—and that it has much of suffering, of hardship, of privation and bitter sorrow who can doubt?—if it spares us the violation of our homes and of our sanctuaries, if it leaves our frontiers unbroken, if it leaves us FREE, then, indeed, we shall have incurred a debt which it will be difficult to pay. A debt of gratitude which must become a debt of honour to be paid in full measure, pressed down, and running over to those, less fortunate than ourselves, who will turn to us in their need.

And in the longed-for days to come France will need us as she needs us now. She will need our sympathy, our money, our very selves. She will no longer call on us to destroy in order to save, she will call on us to regenerate, redeem, to roll away the Stone from her House of Death, and touching the crucified with our hand, bid them come forth, revivified, strong and free.

Yes, there will be fine work to do in France when the war is over! Constructive work, the building up of all that has been broken down; work much of which she will be too exhausted to undertake herself, work of such magnitude that generations yet unborn may not see it completed.

A new world to make! What possibilities that suggests. Rolling away the Stone, watching the dead limbs stir, the flush of health coming back into the grey, shrivelled faces, and light springing again into the eyes. Seeing Joy light her lamps, and Hope break into blossom, seeing human hearts and human souls cast off the cerecloths and come forth into the fruitful garden. Surely we can await the end with such a Vision Beautiful as that before us, and—who knows?—it may be that in healing the wounds of others we shall find balm for our own.

The Return. If the French visualise it at all, do they see it as a concrete thing, a long procession of worn, exhausted, but eager men and women winding its way from every quarter of France, from the far Pyrenees, from the Midi, from the snow-clad Alps, from the fertile plains, winding, with many a pitiful gap in its ranks, back over the thorn-strewn road? Is that their dream? Yet it may be that the reality is only the beginning of another exile, as long, as patient, as difficult to endure.

Hard-headed, practical, unimaginative reformers of the world's woes sometimes blame the refugees who have remained so near the Front.

In Bar house-rent is high, living exceedingly dear. Legends such as "Le sucre manque: Pas de tabac: no matches; no paraffin," are constantly displayed in the shop windows, wood has more than doubled in price, coal is simply hors de prix. Milk, butter and eggs are frequently unobtainable, and generally bad; gas is an uncertain quantity as coal is scarce, and has a diabolic knack of going out just when you need it most. All of which things do not lend to the gaiety of nations, still less to that of the allocation-supported refugee. If troops are being moved from one part of the Front to another, the Petite Vitesse ceases from its labours and supplies are cut off from the town. Farther south these lamentable things do not happen, but farther south is farther from home. And there's the rub! For home is a magnet and would draw the refugee to the actual Front itself, there to cower in any rude shelter did common sense and l'autorité compétente militaire not intervene.

So as many as possible have stayed as near the barrier as possible. And—this is a secret, you mustn't divulge it—these wicked, wily, homeless ones are plotting. They are afraid that after the war the Government will bar the road now swept by German guns; that orders will go forth forbidding return; that railway station guichets will be barred and roads watched by lynx-eyed policemen whom no bribe can corrupt—they will be very special policemen, you know—no tears cajole.