o the woman trudging by his side or to a
group of people standing round him and say: "Alors, il faut dire Adieu
et Au revoir!" One might imagine that he was going on a week-end
visit and would be back again in Paris on Monday next. It was only by
the long-drawn kiss upon the lips of the woman who raised a dead
white face to him and by the abruptness with which the man broke
away and walked off hurriedly until he was lost in the passing crowds
that one might know that this was as likely as not the last parting
between a man and a woman who had known love together and that
each of them had seen the vision of death which would divide them
on this side of the grave. The stoicism of the Frenchwomen was
wonderful. They made no moan or plaint. They gave their men to "La
Patrie" with the resignation of religious women who offer their hearts
to God. Some spiritual fervour, which in France permeates the
sentiment of patriotism, giving a beauty to that tradition of nationality
which, without such a spirit, is the low and ignorant hatred of other
peoples, strengthened and uplifted them.

13

Sometimes when I watched these scenes I raged against the villainy
of a civilization which still permits these people to be sent like sheep
to the slaughter. Great God! These poor wretches of the working
quarters in Paris, these young peasants from the fields, these
underpaid clerks from city offices had had no voice in the declaration
of war. What could they know about international politics? Why
should they be the pawns of the political chessboard, played without
any regard for human life by diplomats and war lords and high
financiers? These poor weedy little men with the sallow faces of the
clerical class, in uniforms which hung loose round their undeveloped
frames, why should they be caught in the trap of this horrible machine
called "War" and let loose like a lot of mice against the hounds of
death? These peasants with slouching shoulders and loose limbs and
clumsy feet, who had been bringing in the harvest of France, after
their tilling and sowing and reaping, why should they be marched off
into tempests of shells which would hack off their strong arms and
drench unfertile fields with their blood? They had had to go, leaving all
the things that had given a meaning and purpose to their days, as
though God had commanded them, instead of groups of politicians
among the nations of Europe, damnably careless of human life. How
long will