There is one gay officer of twenty-nine, and six feet two. I don't think you'd speak of "little insignificant Frenchmen" if you could see him! He's superb. One finger off on the left hand, and the right hand utterly useless. So we work at that for fifteen minutes, and all the little group of soldiers linger, because they love him so—he's so killing, so witty, so gay. He screams in mock agony, and laughs and makes the most outrageous jokes; and when he has gone, one of them says to me: "Il est adoré par ses hommes, madame; il est si courageux." The spirit between men and officers is so beautiful in the French army. They are all brothers. None of that lordly, arrogant oppression of the Germans. One of the soldiers said to me: "Il n'y a pas de grade, maintenant, madame. Nous sommes tous des hommes qui aiment le pays."
And Lieutenant ——, of whom I have just been speaking. I said to him: "Tell me something about the campaign, monsieur." And he answered: "Oh, madame, I would like to tell you about the men. They're superb. I have never seen anything like it. I had to lead a charge with 156 men into what we all believed was certain death. Why," he said, "they went like schoolboys—shouting, laughing, pushing each other up the parapet.... We came back nine strong," he said.
Dr. Blake has been magnificent. His operations are something beyond words. Men came in to me for treatment and told me that he worked actual miracles with faces that were blown off, building new jaws, and oh, Heavens! I don't know what not.
VIII—STORY OF A FRENCH MOTHER AT MASS
Paris, July 20th, 1915.
Dearest Violet,
I saw a very touching thing the other day in the Madeleine, where I went to Mass. A woman no longer young, in the heaviest of crape, came in and sat down and buried her face in her hands. She shook with suppressed sobs and terrible weeping. Presently there came in another worshipper, a stranger to her, and sat down by her side. He was a splendid-looking officer in full-dress uniform—a young man, with a wedding-ring upon his hand—one of those permissionnaires home, evidently, for the short eight days that all the officers are given now—a hiatus between the old war and the new. He bent too, praying; but the weeping of the woman at his side evidently tore his heart. Presently she lifted her face and wiped her eyes, and the officer put his hand on hers. And as I was sitting near, I heard what he said:
"Pauvre madame, pauvre madame!... Ma mère pleure comme vous."
She glanced at him, then bent again in prayer. But when she had finished, before she left her seat, I heard her say to him: