last gasp, we will shed our last drop of blood. Know
that if for months we have held our heads below the level of
the muddy trench and offered our breasts to death, it is
that you may be freed from the wild beasts that have burst
forth from the German forests. For your sakes our homes are
not in ruins and our towns are not vassals to the enemy. It
is all for you, so that when we shall return you need not
throw your arms around conquered necks. Our country, women
of France, is made up of our homes, our churches, and our
fields, and of your beloved faces. Throughout the tragic
periods of its history, our country has always been
incarnated in your faces, whether they called themselves St.
Genevieve or Jeanne d'Arc. And in our building, to personify
the cities that are dear to us, we have always taken your
bodies, your foreheads, and the folds of your gowns--see, in
Paris, that statue in the Place de la Concorde, in the
shadow of the Tuileries, which for days has worn a crepe
veil.... Well, today is the same as yesterday. In our
trenches our country appears to us in those visions wherein
are mingled your faces. We shall believe that our country
has been well served only when, on your beloved faces, we
shall have caused a smile to appear because the palms we
have placed at your feet are the palms of victory."

Future historians will state that France has fought not only with all
her courage, her tenacity and her soul, with all her men, women and
children: they will also state that these men, women and children, in
spite of the terrible times, their suffering and their mourning, have
remained firmly united, forming a firm rock from which not a single
stone has been splintered.

In that tormented, feverish France where the ardor of the Revolution
still boils, there were, before the war, different parties, cliques,
groups and churches. The war has leveled, united and bound them all
together.

In some admirable pages, consecrated to the "Effort of French
Womanhood," M. Louis Barthou has painted the picture of the sacred
union there is among all the French women:

I have seen [he writes] our women at the front and behind
the lines, in the hospitals, the railway stations, the
automobile service, the canteens, the factories, in relief
work and in charity work. I have met nurses, unmoved under a