mile. They fought by the example of abnegation they gave, by
the moral force with which they inspired the men in the trenches.

Madame de Castelnau is a glorious figure, she, the wife of the General
who saved Nancy and stopped the rush of the barbarians on the Grand
Couronne!... Madame de Castelnau had, before the war broke out, four
sons. Three fell on the battle field. The fourth is actually still a
prisoner in the hands of the Germans. On the lips of their father
there is never the slightest word of complaint; on the lips of the
mother there are these admirable words, which the children in the
schools will repeat later on.... Madame de Castelnau was in a little
village when her third son was killed. The cure of the village had the
pitiful task of telling the already mourning mother of this new blow
that had struck her. The cure found Madame de Castelnau, and, in the
presence of her great sorrow, he hesitated and was overcome with
embarrassment:

"Madame," he said, "I come to bring you another blow. But know well
that all the mothers of France weep for you."

Madame de Castelnau knew the truth at once. She interrupted the priest
and, looking him straight in the eye, replied:

"Yes, I know what you are going to tell me.... God's will be done. But
the mothers of France would be wrong in weeping for me. Let them envy
me."

Those are the words of a Frenchwoman of noble descent. But you can
place on the same high level the words of an old woman, a humble soul,
whom the gendarmes found one night crouched on a grave that was still
fresh. It was up near Verdun. She told the gendarmes:

"I come from La Rochelle. Five of my sons have already fallen in the
war. I have come here to see where the sixth is buried--the sixth--my
last son."

Moved by the tragic grandeur of the sight, the gendarmes rendered her
military honors and presented arms. The mother rose and uttered the
words her dead and her heart inspired:

"Even so, Vive la France!"

All of them, mothers of noble birth and of peasant stock, rich and
poor, wives, sisters, and fiancees are the first to exhort their sons,
husbands and brothers to fight to the end. All have the same words of
sacrifice and abnegation on their lips. All of them find words which
best fortify, exalt and console their men.

Read this letter I picked up on the field of battle, a letter written
by a humble peasant woman whose heart, after centuries of noble and
wise discipline, was in the