"Mais quand la voix de Dieu l'appela il se voyait seul sur la terre au milieu de fantomes tristes et sans nombre."
The latest estimate of German losses at Verdun is 200,000! Does the Kaiser, at safe distance, still "look on"? What blessing has this monarch of a great and productive realm brought upon his people? Mourning, desolation, and irremediable misery! No triumph, no victory can atone for such a deluge of blood and tears! That capricious Personage "somewhere in Heaven," whom Wilhelm calls "Unser Gott," may possibly resent the deliberate casting away of golden opportunities on the part of his crowned earthly "familiar," to whom a peaceful world was offered, only to be kicked aside for a battered helmet and broken sword!
"Thrust in thy sickle and reap!" O Emperor of a brief and bitter day! The harvest of death, not life!—the harvest of curses, not blessings! The thousands of dead men—dead in the very strength of manhood—sacrificed in a holocaust on the flaming altar of the wickedest war the world has ever seen, may have their own story to tell to "Unser Gott"; so may the bereaved and wretched women whose husbands and sons have been torn from their arms forever.
Marie Corelli in
The Sunday Times, London,
April, 1916.