oing the work of men because
the men were all either killed or at the front; when I remembered the
little fatherless children that I had seen all over France, whose sad
eyes looked up into mine everywhere I went; and when I remembered the
young widows (every woman of France seems to be in black); and when I
remembered the thousands of blind men and boys that I had seen being
led helplessly about the streets of the cities and villages of France;
and when I remembered that lonely wife that one Sunday afternoon in
Toul I had watched go and kneel beside a little mound and place flowers
there--the dates on the stone of which I later saw were "March, 1916,"
then I cried aloud in the darkness as I realized the tremendous
sacrifice that France has made for the world, as well as England and
Belgium. "No, France! No, England! No, little Belgium! this
traveller has never seen so great a grief as thine!"

"No, mothers and fathers, little children, wives, brothers, sisters of
France, and England, and Belgium, this traveller, America, has never
seen so great a grief as thine!"

And later I learned, after living in the Toul sector for two months,
that the challenging sentence on the crucifix had been read by nearly
every boy who had passed it; and all had. Either he had read it
himself or it had been quoted to him, and this one crucifix question
had much to do with challenging the boys who passed it to a new
understanding of all that France had passed through in the war.

The American boys have learned to respect the French soldier because of
the sacrifice that he has made. The American soldier remembers that
crowd of men called "Kitchener's Mob," which Kitchener sent into the
trenches of France to stem the tide of inhumanity, and to whom he gave
a message: "Go! Sacrifice yourselves while I raise an army in
England!" The American soldier knows all of this. He knows that
little Belgium might have said to all the world, "The forces were too
great for us," and she could have stepped aside and the world would
have forgiven her.

But instead she chose deliberately to sacrifice herself for the cause
of freedom, and sacrifice herself she did. And that sentence on the
crossroads crucifix in the Toul sector, day after day, sends its
reminder into the heart of the American soldiers, who stop their trucks
and their ammunition wagons, pause their weary marches to read it;
sends its reminder of the sacrifices that our allies have alre