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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
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 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 Publishers New York 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 BY 
 
 DOROTHY CANFIELD 
 
 5 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 
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 tVf<< 
 
 Copyright, rgig 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
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 ©CU51529 7 
 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 On the Edge ..... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 « • 3 
 
 
 France's Fighting Woman Doctor 
 
 •: M 39 
 
 
 LOURDES >: 
 
 . :. 8 9 
 
 
 Some Confused Impressions . 
 
 . . I05 
 
 
 " It Is Rather for Us To Be Here 
 
 Dedi- 
 
 
 CATED " . .. ,.. 
 
 • . 133 
 
 
 The Day of Glory . . :# , ,., 
 
 - > 139 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
/u 
 
 ON THE EDGE 
 
 As far as Jeanne's personal life was concerned, 
 what little was left of it ebbed and flowed to the 
 daily rhythm of the mail. She felt it begin to 
 sink lower with the fatigue of preparing and 
 serving the lunch for the six noisy children, 
 always too hungry for the small portions, so 
 that at the last she divided most of her own 
 part among them. It ebbed lower and lower 
 during the long hours of the afternoon when 
 she strove desperately to keep the little ones 
 cheerful and occupied and at the same time to 
 mend and bake and darn and clean and iron and 
 carry ashes out and coal in; her long slim pian- 
 ist's fingers reddened and roughened till they bled, 
 because cold cream was far too costly a luxury. 
 It sank to its stagnant lowest during the tired 
 end of the day when the younger children, fret- 
 ful with too much indoors, disputed and quar- 
 reled; and when, as she prepared the evening 
 meal, she tried to help the older ones with their 
 
 3 
 
4 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 Latin declensions and Greek verbs so that they 
 might be worthy sons of their father. And oh, 
 the nights, the long nights, when she woke again 
 and again, dreaming that she saw Andre 
 wounded, dreaming that some one called to her 
 in a loud voice that he had been killed at the 
 head of his men. 
 
 But after midnight she felt the turn of the 
 tide. In less than twelve hours there might be 
 a letter. She dozed, woke to make the round 
 of the children's beds to be sure that they were 
 covered, and noted that it was three o'clock. In 
 seven hours she might have news again. She 
 slept, and woke to hear the church clock clang 
 out five, and knew that if she could but live 
 through five hours more — 
 
 In the morning, the countless minor agitations ; 
 the early rising in the cold; the smoky kindling 
 of the fire; the hurried expedition for the milk 
 through the empty streets, dripping with the 
 clammy fog of the region; the tumultuous awak- 
 ening of the children, some noisily good-natured, 
 some noisily bad-tempered; the preparation of 
 the meager breakfast in the intervals of button- 
 
ON THE EDGE 5 
 
 ing up blouses and smoothing tousled hair; then, 
 as school time approached, the gradual crescendo 
 of all the noise and confusion into the climax 
 of the scampering departure of the three older 
 ones, blue-nosed and shivering in their worn, 
 insufficient wraps ; the gradual decrescendo as she 
 dressed the thin, white bodies of the younger 
 ones, and strove to invent some game for them 
 which would keep them active and yet allow her 
 to do the morning housework — all these tossing, 
 restless waves were the merest surface agitation. 
 Beneath their irregular, capricious rhythm she felt 
 physically the steady, upward swelling of her ex- 
 pectation as the clock-hands swung towards ten. 
 
 Till then she knew nothing, nothing of what 
 might have happened during the portentous night 
 behind her, for every night, like every day, was 
 portentous. There was no calamity which was 
 impossible. The last four years had proved that. 
 Anything might have happened since the last 
 news had come in from the outer world — any- 
 thing, that is, except the end of the war. That 
 alone had come to seem impossible. 
 
 And yet, in spite of that great flooding tide 
 
6 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 of her expectancy, when the ring at the door 
 finally came, it always gave Jeanne an instant's 
 violent shock. Her heart flared up like a torch 
 with hope and fear, its reflection flickering on 
 her thin cheeks as she hurried to the front of 
 the house and, her delicate work-worn hands 
 shaking, opened the door on Fate. 
 
 First her eye leaped to see that there was not 
 the official-looking letter without a stamp which 
 she had received so many times in her bad 
 dreams, the letter from his captain announcing 
 that sous-Lieutenant Bruneau — no, it had not 
 come yet. She had another day's respite. 
 
 She could breathe again, she could return the 
 white-haired postman's " Bonjour, Madame Bru- 
 neau." 
 
 Next, even on the days when there was a let- 
 ter from Andre, she tore open the Paris news- 
 paper and read in one glance the last com- 
 munique. After this her hands stopped shaking. 
 No, there was no specially bad news. No hor- 
 ror of a new offensive had begun. Then she 
 could even smile faintly back at the tired old face 
 before her and say, in answer to his inquiry, 
 
ON THE EDGE 7 
 
 " Oh yes, all pretty well, thank you. My own 
 are standing the winter pretty well. But my 
 brother's children, they have never really re- 
 covered from the nervous shock of that dread- 
 ful experience of bombardment, when they lost 
 their parents, you know. Of course none of the 
 six are as plump or as rosy as I would like to 
 have them — Michel is growing so fast." 
 
 " You ought to thank God, Madame Bruneau, 
 that they are too young. There are worse things 
 than being thin and white." 
 
 "Yes, yes, Monsieur Larcade," she apologized 
 hastily for her unmerited good fortune compared 
 to his, " what news from your sons ? " 
 
 " Still no news from Salonique. A letter this 
 morning from Jules's surgeon. They are not 
 sure whether he will ever be able to walk again. 
 The wound was so deep — an injury to the spine." 
 
 A wordless gesture of sympathy from her, a 
 weary shifting of his heavy letter bag, and he 
 went on to the next door, behind which another 
 woman waited, her hands shaking; and beyond 
 that another one, and then another. 
 
 If it was to be a good day, if there had been 
 
8 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 a letter from Andre, she opened it hurriedly and 
 read it all in one look, even though the children 
 clung clamoring to her skirts, even though the 
 fire smoked and threatened to go out. Then she 
 set it carefully in the bosom of her dress and 
 put on the faded caps and patched wraps and 
 darned mittens to take the children out for their 
 outing, while she did her marketing. They were 
 too small to leave alone, even for half an hour. 
 
 During the painful experience which her mar- 
 keting always was, she felt warmed and sustained 
 by the letter tucked inside her dress. Every- 
 thing cost more than the month before, twice as 
 much as the year before when her income was 
 the same minute sum as now. 
 
 But Andre was alive and unhurt. 
 
 She looked longingly at the beefsteak which 
 the older boys needed so much, her own chil- 
 dren, and bought instead the small piece of coarse 
 pork which must make a stew for them all, those 
 other children of her blood whom the war had 
 thrown on her hands. 
 
 But she had a letter from her husband in her 
 bosom. 
 
ON THE EDGE 9 
 
 She priced the cauliflowers, sighed, and bought 
 potatoes, and less of them than she had hoped 
 to have, the price having gone up again. She 
 was horrified to find that rice cost more than 
 it had, an impossible sum per pound, even the 
 broken, poor-quality grade. She would try mac- 
 aroni as a substitute. There was no macaroni, 
 the woman clerk informed her. There was none 
 at all, at any price. Jeanne turned to another 
 item on her list. The doctor had said that the 
 children absolutely must have more fruit in their 
 diet — fruit! Well, perhaps she might be able 
 to manage prunes. They were the cheapest 
 fruit — or they had been. " Prunes, Madame 
 Bruneau? They are only for the rich." She 
 named a price which made Jeanne gasp. 
 
 She calculated the amount she would need for 
 one portion each for her big family. It was out 
 of the question. She was really aghast, and ap- 
 pealed desperately to the woman clerk, " What 
 do you do? " she asked. " We do without," an- 
 swered the other woman briefly. 
 
 "But your children? Growing children can't 
 be in good health without some fruit." 
 
io THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 " They're not in good health," answered the 
 other grimly. " My Marthe has eczema, and the 
 doctor says that Henri is just ripe for tubercu- 
 losis." Her voice died. 
 
 Jeanne closed her eyes during the instant's 
 silence which followed. The woman clerk 
 shoved aimlessly at the sack of dry beans which 
 stood between them. 
 
 Then they both drew a long breath and be- 
 gan to add up together the cost of Jeanne's pur- 
 chases. She took out her pocketbook, paid so- 
 berly, and went on to the baker's. 
 
 Here a girl weighed out for her with scrupu- 
 lous care the exact amount of bread allowed for 
 the family, and took the bread tickets along with 
 the money in return. At the sight and smell of 
 the fresh-baked bread the children began their 
 babbling, begging, clamorous demand which 
 Jeanne dreaded almost more than anything else. 
 She winced away from this daily pain, crying 
 out, trying hastily to stop them before the tears 
 came, " No, no, my darlings, you can't have any 
 now. No, Jacqueline, don't tease auntie! An- 
 nette dearie, you know if mother lets you have 
 
ON THE EDGE n 
 
 any now there will be just that much less for you 
 at lunch and dinner. You know I can't give you 
 any of what belongs to the others." She was 
 imploring them not to ask her for the food she 
 could not give them. Anything but that! The 
 daily repetition of this poignant little scene was 
 intolerable. If she could only leave them at 
 home, could only spare them that daily ordeal 
 of the visit to the bakeshop where their poor lit- 
 tle heads were turned at the sight and odor of 
 all that food. Not to have bread to give them! 
 
 She was almost on her knees before their 
 shrill, insistent demands when she felt her hus- 
 band's letter crackle against her breast, and 
 stopped short. She was on the edge of losing 
 her head, like men after too long shell fire when 
 they walk dazedly straight into danger. She 
 knew better than this ! The tragic manner would 
 never do for little children who cannot live and 
 thrive save in gaiety and lightness of heart. She 
 was only making a bad matter worse. 
 
 She summoned all her strength, put her hand 
 on the letter in her bosom, and burst resolutely 
 into a hearty laugh. ■' Oh, children, just see that 
 
12 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 funny picture of the little kitten. He's chasing 
 his tail, do you see, round and round and round. 
 Annette, do you know how he feels! See, I'll 
 hang this string down your back, and you try 
 to catch it by turning around quickly. See, the 
 faster you turn the faster it gets away from you. 
 Maurice wants to try? Well, we'll just hurry 
 home, and I will give you a piece of old red 
 curtain cord and you each can have a tail and 
 be a little kitten. And when the big ones get 
 back from school you can show them how to 
 chase tails. Won't they laugh? " 
 
 They were safe in the street by this time, the 
 bakeshop forgotten, the loaf in the basket hid- 
 den, the children looking up, laughing through 
 their tears at Jeanne, breathless, pouring all her 
 vitality into her cheerful face and bright voice, 
 so that there was not enough left to keep her 
 knees from shaking under her. 
 
 Back to the house quickly, lest the wretched 
 war coal, half black stones, smoking sullenly in 
 the cook-stove, should go out in their absence. 
 The invention of the curtain-cord tails was still 
 valid, even after the pork had been put on to 
 
ON THE EDGE 13 
 
 cook with the potatoes. The children were still 
 playing, still unexacting. Jeanne would have 
 time to read her letter. 
 
 She put the paper-thin potato parings to cook 
 in an old kettle for their three hens, who occa- 
 sionally presented them with a priceless fresh 
 egg; and, wiping her cold, wet, potato-stained 
 hands (was it possible that those hands had 
 ever played Beethoven and Debussy?), took her 
 treasure out of her bosom and unfolded the 
 double sheet, warm still from the warmth of her 
 body. 
 
 This time she read it slowly, taking in, ab- 
 sorbing to the last cell of her consciousness, every 
 one of those words, written by candlelight, under- 
 ground, to the thunder of shells exploding over 
 the abri. They were plain, homely words enough, 
 rambling, unstudied familiar phrases, such as hus- 
 band and wife write to each other when they 
 have shared their daily life for many years and 
 still try to go on sharing what may be left to 
 them of days in common. 
 
 It had rained, as usual, all day long, but the 
 new trench boots had kept his feet almost dry. 
 
i 4 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 Yet he was ashamed of the price she must have 
 paid for them — she, straining every nerve to buy- 
 food to keep the children well. He was a man, 
 a grown-up, and the war had done for them 
 forever. Let him shift as best he could. Every- 
 thing ought to go to the children, there would 
 be little enough. But they must have the best 
 chance we could give them. Whoever else was 
 responsible for the war certainly the children 
 had nothing to do with it. And they must be 
 the torch bearers. Did she remember how he had 
 always wondered why no musician had ever com- 
 posed music on that theme? He could conceive 
 such a noble symphonic poem called " The Torch 
 Bearers." He had wondered all day if the coal 
 had finally arrived at Meru. It went beyond his 
 imagination how she could manage at all, the 
 days when the coal supply was so low. In their 
 little underground abri they had a stove — yes, a 
 real stove. It had been left there by some Ameri- 
 can ambulance men who had used the abri before 
 them. So they were really warm, part of the 
 time, and occasionally almost dry. But the wood 
 they were burning — it made him sick. It was 
 
ON THE EDGE 15 
 
 what his men tore out from the ruined village 
 houses near which the trenches ran. Of course 
 it could never be used for houses again, but when 
 you know what it is to have a home of your own, 
 and how it grows to be a part of you, it is not 
 much fun to put parts of other people's houses 
 into your stove. No, he did not need any new 
 socks. He did not need anything; she need not 
 go on trying to slip in some new luxury for him 
 out of her impossibly small budget. Did she re- 
 member that poor Dury, the youngest of his 
 men? He had been shot yesterday; a stray ball, 
 not meant for anybody in particular — such a silly 
 way to be killed. And now there was the letter 
 to write to his mother. Heavens, how he dreaded 
 writing the letters to the parents of men who died 
 or disappeared ! He hoped little Maurice's throat 
 was better. What a sickly child that poor kid 
 was! He was evidently one who would have to 
 be nursed along all through his childhood, and 
 since the war had killed his parents, it fell to 
 his poor aunt to do the job. And then — " Now, 
 see here, Jeanne darling, don't kill yourself over 
 that little boy because you feel so guilty at not 
 
16 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 loving him more. He's not a lovable kid. His 
 own mother, poor nervous thing, never could keep 
 from snapping at him, and you know your brother 
 cared enough sight more for Jacqueline than for 
 him. Don't you blame yourself. Take it easy! " 
 Jeanne laid the letter down with a little ex- 
 clamation, half a laugh. How ever did Andre 
 know she did not love the little nephew who re- 
 minded her so of the sister-in-law she had never 
 been able to love ? She had not thought that any- 
 body could guess that the child to whom she was 
 always the gentlest was the one — and here was 
 Andre, quite casually as usual, walking into her 
 most secret places! How he knew her! How 
 he knew the meaning of her smallest gesture, the 
 turn of her most carefully worded phrase! How 
 near he was to her! How there was no corner 
 of her life where he did not come and go, at 
 ease, and how she welcomed him in, how she 
 rejoiced to feel him thus pervading the poor, 
 hurried, barren inner life of her, which had 
 bloomed so richly when they had lived it to- 
 gether. How married they were! That was, 
 after all, an achievement, to have wrested that 
 
ON THE EDGE 17 
 
 glory from so horrible a thing as life had come 
 to be. Let the heavens fall, she had known what 
 it was to be one with a noble human soul. 
 
 She stood up, her thin face glowing, her tired 
 eyes shining, as they always were after reading 
 Andre's letter. It was the only moment of the 
 day when she felt herself wholly alive. 
 
 This was the high tide of her daily life, poor, 
 scanty trickle of life it was, even at its best, 
 compared to the fathomless deep surge of the 
 fullness of the days before the war, days when 
 it had seemed natural that Andre should be there 
 always, that they should profoundly live together, 
 that there should be some leisure, and some music 
 mixed with their work, and warm rooms and 
 clothes and food as simply as there was air to 
 breathe. 
 
 A whiff of acrid coal smoke in her face, a 
 wailing cry from Maurice who had pinched his 
 finger, a warning half -hour stroke from the 
 kitchen clock — she came back to the present with 
 a start and strove loyally to use for that present 
 the little renewal of strength which came from 
 a momentary vision of the past. She changed 
 
1 8 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 the drafts of the stove, stirred the stew and, gath- 
 ering the weeping child up in her tired arms, 
 began to make a funny nonsense song, purport- 
 ing to be sung by the hurt finger. Her voice 
 was obliged to pass through a knot in her throat, 
 but it came out bravely, and in a moment the 
 children were laughing again, their thin faces 
 turned toward hers like little pale flowers toward 
 the sun. 
 
 Then there was the table to set, of course in 
 the kitchen, since there was no coal for another 
 fire in the cold house. How Jeanne suffered from 
 this suffocating necessity to do everything in one 
 small room ! It made an intolerable trial of every 
 smallest process of the everyday life, to prepare 
 food, and eat it, and play, and wash, and study, 
 and bathe the children, and dress and undress 
 them — they were like pigs in a sty, she often 
 thought, working feverishly to keep a little order 
 and decency in the room which seemed to her 
 fastidious senses to reek stiflingly of the effluvia 
 of too-concentrated human life. 
 
 As she worked she felt, like an inward bleed- 
 ing, the slow ebbing of her forces. The good 
 
ON THE EDGE 19 
 
 moment of the day had come and gone. There 
 was nothing to look forward to now till the mail 
 of the next morning. 
 
 And this was a good day, one of the best, 
 when there had been no special activity on the 
 front, when the daily letter from Andre arrived 
 on time. But what of the days when the com- 
 munique announced laconically, " Heavy artillery 
 fire between Fresnes and Villers-Raignault " ? 
 (Andre was stationed at Fresnes.) Or worse, 
 when the great offensives began, when all personal 
 letters from the front were stopped, when day 
 after day the communique announced : " Violent 
 fighting all along the Champagne front." 
 
 The feeble, tired old postman, shuffling on his 
 rounds, was a very snake-crowned horror to the 
 dry-eyed women, waiting and hoping and dread- 
 ing to see him come. Always there were cases 
 of hysteria at such times; old Madame Viele, 
 who shrieked out suddenly in the market-place 
 that she had seen her son fall dead before her; 
 Marguerite Lemaire, who, returning from Paris 
 on the night train, had found her husband in the 
 compartment with her, had kissed him, held his 
 
20 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 hand, wept on his breast — and suddenly she was 
 alone, with the train rushing on through the 
 darkness to Meru, where she was met by the 
 news of his death. 
 
 At such times Jeanne braced her shivering limbs 
 and throbbing nerves to steady rigidity and bore 
 her burden as though she had the strength of 
 eternity in her heart. Scraps of phrases from 
 Andre's letters came before her eyes, as voices 
 speak to tranced saints. As she worked she saw, 
 written before her, " Whoever is responsible for 
 the war, the children are not." Or again, " We 
 are all evil creatures, God knows, and our mo- 
 tives must be mixed in this war because they are 
 mixed in everything else. But with whatever of 
 virtue there is in me, I am righting for what I 
 think best fit to survive in the world I wish my 
 children to inhabit." Or again, for her own 
 comfort, " Dearest darling Jeanne, the very 
 powers of hell cannot take away from me the 
 ten years of supreme happiness you have given 
 me. 
 
 The days went by, one, two, three, four, five, 
 with no letters, with no words at all beyond the 
 
ON THE EDGE 21 
 
 steady advance of the Germans. The nights went 
 by, the long, long nights, not black and empty, but 
 filled with dreadful lightning visions of what 
 might be happening, even at that instant, as she 
 lay in her bed. Jeanne felt no fatigue, no hun- 
 ger, no consciousness of her body at all, at such 
 times. It happened once, after one of these long, 
 numb days, that she cut Ler hand deeply, and did 
 not know she had done it till she saw the smears 
 of blood on her skirt. Her first thought was 
 that it was the only skirt she possessed and that 
 she must not spoil it with her blood, because 
 there was no money to buy another. 
 
 It was that very evening, after she had tied 
 up the wound on her hand and was beginning 
 to undress the younger children, interrupting her- 
 self frequently to help Jacques with his Latin, 
 that she heard the front door of the house open 
 and shut. 
 
 She went as cold as ice. Her heart stopped 
 beating, her hair stirred itself on her head. It 
 had come. Some one had brought a telegram 
 with the bad news. 
 
 She put the children on one side, quietly, 
 
22 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 opened the kitchen door, and stepped out into 
 the cold twilight of the hall. 
 
 Andre stood before her, a shadowy figure in 
 the obscurity, pale, unshaven, muddy, smiling, a 
 strange, dim, tired, infinitely tender smile. His 
 arms were outstretched toward her. 
 
 For a moment — a long, silent, intense moment 
 of full life — she knew nothing but that he was 
 there, that she held him in her arms, that his lips 
 were on hers. Nothing else existed. There was 
 no war, no danger, no fear, no wonder how he 
 could have come. There was nothing in all her 
 being but the consciousness that they were to- 
 gether again. She was drowned deep in this 
 consciousness; the blessed flood of it closed over 
 her head. 
 
 Presently the door of the kitchen opened, and 
 the littler ones trooped out to find her. They 
 could live but so few moments, those littler ones, 
 without sucking at her vitality. 
 
 She fell at once into the happy confusion of 
 the usual leave of absence, crying out to the 
 children, " See, see, papa has come ! See, Uncle 
 Andre is here ! " 
 
ON THE EDGE 23 
 
 It seemed to her the children were singularly 
 apathetic, not instantly molten joy as she had 
 been. The younger ones were even a little shy 
 of him, who was, after all, an unknown man to 
 them; and more than a little jealous of him, who 
 came to share with them their maman., their 
 auntie, the source and light and warmth of their 
 exacting little, new lives. It seemed to Jeanne 
 that they looked even more queerly at him this 
 time than usual, and that there was in the side- 
 long glances of the older ones an element of 
 strangeness. Their father was becoming a mere 
 legend to them, she thought with a painful con- 
 traction of her heart. 
 
 She found herself talking a great deal, in a 
 quavering, excited voice, gone back to her old 
 exuberance of expression. It seemed to her that 
 she finally asked Andre how it could have hap- 
 pened, his coming, and that he explained across 
 the children's clamor that his regiment had gone 
 down to the gates of hell in the offensive and 
 that what was left of them had been given a 
 twenty-four hours' leave of absence. 
 
 Oh, yes, she understood with no further words, 
 
24 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 she who knew by heart every way of communi- 
 cation between his sector on the front and her 
 door; he had reached Paris by the 3.20 train, 
 had hurriedly changed stations, had caught the 
 4.40 train out and reached Meru at twenty min- 
 utes of seven. And oh, she had not been at the 
 station to meet him! But of course he had not 
 had time to telegraph. So, if it were only a 
 twenty-four hour leave, he would need to take 
 the midnight train back. He had come so far, 
 so far, for five hours with her. 
 
 She thought this all out while flying to get 
 him some food, to open the can of meat, pre- 
 ciously kept for just such a golden chance, to heat 
 the potatoes which were left, to set Jacques to 
 grinding some coffee, real coffee, such as they 
 never used, to uncover the sacred little store of 
 sugar, wide, to his hand ! And at the same time 
 to talk to the children. How unresponsive chil- 
 dren are, she thought; how quickly they outgrow 
 whatever is not immediately present. It is hard 
 to remember that four years, so long in the life 
 of a child, is all eternity to a young child ; his ut- 
 most imagination cannot compass it. She said all 
 
ON THE EDGE 25 
 
 this to Andre, to explain the children. How ab- 
 surd to try to explain them to Andre, smiling 
 his deep understanding of them and of her, far 
 deeper than she could ever fathom! 
 
 Then she was driving them all upstairs to bed, 
 leaving the kitchen to Andre, the big tin bath- 
 tub and the clean underclothes which she had 
 always ready for the first ceremony of every 
 return from the trenches. If only there were 
 more hot water! But she always let the fire 
 go down toward night, to save coal. For her 
 there was no need of fire. She could put a 
 blanket around her shoulders and wrap her legs 
 in a rug of an evening as she sat writing her 
 letter to Andre by the poor light of the one lamp, 
 filled with war kerosene, which smoked and glim- 
 mered uncertainly. 
 
 She hardly knew what she was doing as she 
 hurried the children into their beds in the cold 
 rooms. Hurry as she might, there were six of 
 them ; and many, many, of the priceless, counted- 
 out moments had passed before she ran down 
 the stairs, as madly as any girl racing to meet 
 her lover. 
 
26 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 Andre was there, at table, washed, shaven, a 
 little color in his lean, deeply lined cheeks under 
 their warlike bronze. When he heard her step 
 flying down the hall, he pushed back from the 
 table and, his napkin across his knees, a good 
 light of laughter in his eyes, he held out his arms 
 to her again, crying like the traditional bride- 
 groom, " Alone at last ! " 
 
 So it began on the light note, that incredible 
 good fortune of their evening together, she perch- 
 ing on his knee, watching him eat, filling his 
 plate, pouring out more coffee, talking, laugh- 
 ing — yes, really laughing as she only did when 
 Andre was there on permission. When he had 
 finished she cleared the table, made up the fire, 
 recklessly putting in lump after lump of the 
 sticky resinous coal and opening all the drafts. 
 They sat down together before the stove, beside 
 the surly ill-conditioned lamp, and their tongues 
 were loosened for much talk — light, deep, sad, 
 hopeful, brave, depressed, casual, tragic. They 
 poured out to each other all the thousand things 
 which do not go into letters, even daily ones. 
 She heard of the unreasonable irritability of his 
 
ON THE EDGE 27 
 
 captain, and the plain, restoring good faith of 
 the old colonel; the heroism of the men, the cow- 
 ardly slinking back to a clerical position at the 
 rear by young Montverdier, the son of their 
 depute. He heard of her struggles with the boys' 
 Latin and mathematics, and with the little ones' 
 alphabet. " Just think, Andre, Annette, the ob- 
 stinate little thing, will not admit that B's name 
 is B. She says it is ' loof ' and she knows it is 
 because she dreamed it was — haven't children the 
 most absurd ideas ? " 
 
 She spoke out with a Frenchwoman's frank- 
 ness of her moments of horror, of despair, of 
 doubt of the war's meaning, of revulsion from 
 the industrial system which had made the war 
 possible. There deep answered deep ; he brought 
 to her the envenomed hatred of war which fills 
 the trenches to the brim. - It is not glorious ; 
 it is infamous. I am not a hero; I am a mur- 
 derer. But there are worse things. It would be 
 worse to have peace, with the German ideas ruling 
 the world. No, every one of us would better 
 die than allow that to happen. Yes, I have had 
 too — who hasn't? — moments of doubt, moments 
 
28 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 when the horror of our stupidity was too great, 
 when I have thought that any other way would 
 be better than war. But not since the Russian 
 affair, not since the Germans marched into 
 defenseless Russia. Russian children will be 
 brought up in German schools to form a new 
 generation of Germans. I would kill my chil- 
 dren with my own hands before having them 
 added to those ranks. No, since Russia, there 
 seems no other way but to go on to the end, 
 and to make that end an end to war forever." 
 The worn phrases, dubious and tarnished on the 
 facile tongues of public orators, repeated there 
 in that dimly lighted room by that worn man 
 and suffering woman, became new, became sac- 
 ramental. 
 
 They clung to each other for a moment again, 
 and gradually felt the tension of the spirit melt 
 away in the old cure of simple bodily nearness. 
 His cheek against hers — at the sensation she be- 
 came just a woman again. 
 
 She stirred, she smiled; she told an amusing 
 story of their queer old neighbor, — she inter- 
 rupted herself to say reproachfully, " But 
 
ON THE EDGE 29 
 
 I do love little Maurice! I don't love him 
 as I love the other children, but just because 
 of that I love him more, because I pity him 
 so." 
 
 " That," he said with conviction, " must be 
 true because nobody but you would be capable of 
 such mixed language and emotions." 
 
 She had laughed at this and, remembering 
 suddenly that she had a box of cigarettes for 
 him, jumped up to get it. He was amazed. 
 Where, in Heaven's name, had she been able to 
 get cigarettes in France in 19 18? Ah, that was 
 her little secret. She had her ways of doing 
 things ! She teased him for an instant and then 
 said she had begged it for him from an American 
 Red Cross camion driver who had stopped there 
 to get water for his radiator. The recollection 
 brought to mind something painful, which she 
 poured out before him like all the rest. " Oh 
 but, Andre, what do you think the woman in 
 uniform sitting by him said? Of course she 
 couldn't have known that I understand English, 
 but even so — She looked at me hard, and she 
 said, ' These heroic Frenchwomen people make 
 
30 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 so much fuss about, I notice you don't see any 
 of them turning out to run cars or distribute 
 clothes to refugees. Much they bother them- 
 selves for France. They stay right inside their 
 comfortable homes and do fancy work as usual/ 
 Yes, she said that. Oh, Andre, it hurt! I was 
 ashamed that I could be hurt so cruelly by any- 
 thing but the war." 
 
 This led to talk of America. " All our hope 
 is with them, Jeanne. You mustn't mind what 
 one woman said — very likely a tired woman too, 
 fretted by being in a country where she doesn't 
 speak the language. All the future is in their 
 hands, and, by God, Jeanne, I begin to believe 
 they realize it! They are really coming, you 
 know ; they are really here. I see them with my 
 own eyes, not just doctors and nurses and engi- 
 neers and telegraphists, as at first, but real fight- 
 ing men. They are in the sector next to ours 
 now. They fight. They fight with a sort of 
 exuberance, as though it were a game they were 
 playing and meant to win. And they all say 
 that their country is back of them as France is 
 back of us, to the last man, woman, and child. 
 
ON THE EDGE 31 
 
 They're queer fellows. They remind me a little 
 of our Normans and a little of our Gascons, if 
 you can imagine the combination. Whenever 
 there is a difficulty they have a whimsical, brag- 
 ging little phrase, that they drawl out in their 
 sharp, level voices, ' Never you mind, the Yanks 
 are coming/ It made me smile at first, at their 
 presumption, at their young ignorance. But 
 there is something hypnotizing about the way 
 they say that jerky, unlovely phrase, like the 
 refrain of a popular song that sticks in your 
 mind. It sticks in mine. ' The Yanks are com- 
 ing ! ' The Russians have gone, or rather the 
 Russians never were there, but * the Yanks are 
 coming ! ' " 
 
 Jeanne had been looking at him hard, scarcely 
 hearing what he said, drawing in a new convic- 
 tion from his eyes, his accent, the carriage of 
 his head. " Why, Andre ! you are really hoping 
 that it may end as it ought ! " she interrupted 
 him suddenly, " You are really hoping — " He 
 nodded soberly. " Yes, my darling, I really 
 hope." 
 
 He was silent, smiled, drew her to him with 
 
32 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 a long breath, his arm strong and hard about 
 her. They might have been eighteen and twenty 
 again. " And I know," he whispered, " that you 
 are the loveliest and the best and the bravest 
 woman in the world." 
 
 The tears ran down her cheeks at this — happy 
 tears which he kissed away. When she could 
 speak she protested, saying brokenly that she 
 was weak, she was helpless in the face of the 
 despair which so often overcame her, that she 
 was perilously poised on the edge of hysteria. 
 " Ah, who isn't near that edge ? " he told her. 
 " Not to go over the edge, that is the most that 
 can be done by even the strongest in these days." 
 " No, no," she told him. " You don't know 
 how weak I am, how cowardly, how I must 
 struggle every day, every hour, not to give up 
 altogether, to abandon the struggle and sink 
 into the abyss with the children." " But you 
 don't give it up," he murmured, his lips on her 
 cheek. " You do go on with the struggle. I 
 always find the children alive, well, happy. 
 You weak! You cowardly! You are the 
 bravest of the brave." 
 
ON THE EDGE 33 
 
 The clock struck ten. 
 
 They went upstairs hand in hand to look at 
 the sleeping children and to try to plan some 
 future for them. Jeanne told of her anxieties 
 about Michel, the oldest, who had silent, morose 
 fits of brooding. "He's old enough to feel it 
 all. The littler ones only suffer physically." 
 Andre put his father's hand on the sleeping boy's 
 forehead and looked down at him silently, the 
 deep look of strength and comprehension which 
 was like the wine of life to his wife. She 
 thought it was a benediction to the boy which 
 no priest could better. Andre took his watch 
 out of his pocket and laid it on the table. " See 
 here," he said, " I'm going to leave this here for 
 Michel when he wakes in the morning. I only 
 use the old wrist watch nowadays. It may 
 please the little fellow to know I think him big 
 enough to have my watch." 
 
 " He'll make it a talisman — it's the very 
 thing ! " she agreed, touched by his divining sym- 
 pathy for the boy's nature. 
 
 They roamed then through the cold deserted 
 rooms of the much-loved little home, unused 
 
34 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 because of lack of fuel, but the wan, clustering 
 memories were too thick even for their tried and 
 disciplined hearts. They went back into the 
 smoky kitchen, shivering. 
 
 The clock struck eleven. 
 
 As it struck twelve, Jeanne turned back from 
 the door, the lamp in her hand, the last echo of 
 his footsteps faint in her ears. She stood for 
 a moment, trance-like, staring at the yellow 
 flame of the lamp, her eyes wide. Already it 
 seemed impossible that he had been there. 
 
 She felt horribly, horribly tired, hardly any 
 other sensation but that. She went upstairs, un- 
 'dressed rapidly, blew out the light, and lay down 
 beside little Maurice. She slept with him, that 
 she might be sure to watch over him carefully 
 enough, fearing that she might not rise in the 
 cold so readily for him as for the others. Almost 
 at once she fell into a profound sleep. 
 
 She woke with a start, to find herself standing 
 up in her nightgown in the darkness, on the cold 
 floor, in the middle of the room, the cold, damp 
 wind blowing in on her from the black opening 
 
ON THE EDGE 35 
 
 of the window. And at once she knew what 
 had happened — knew it as though some one had 
 just finished telling her. 
 
 Andre had not been there at all that day. He 
 had been killed, that was it, and her intense long- 
 ing had brought his spirit straight to her for a 
 moment, and all the rest she had imagined. 
 
 Staring into the darkness, she saw it all with 
 perfect lucidity. That was why he had looked 
 so dim and shadowy when she had first seen him 
 in the hall; that was why his smile had been so 
 strange. That was why the children had seemed 
 so queer; she understood now, it was because 
 they saw no one there and because they heard 
 her talking to herself. 
 
 Did she, then, often talk to herself, that they 
 should do no more than look sidelong and askance 
 when she did it? Yes, she must have been 
 slowly going near the edge of dementia during 
 the last weeks, and quite over the edge into mad- 
 ness the last five days of suspense. 
 
 A deadly chill shook her, so that her teeth 
 chattered loudly in the darkness, audible even to 
 her ears. What did it matter? Andre had been 
 
36 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 killed. There was no meaning in anything any 
 more. 
 
 The cold settled around her heart, an icy flood, 
 and congealed in her veins. She felt herself to 
 be dying and ran out to meet delivering death. 
 
 She heard Andre's voice saying clearly, " Who- 
 ever else is responsible for the war, the chil- 
 dren are not. They must not suffer if we can 
 help it" 
 
 There was a pause when the world seemed to 
 be slowly shifting under her feet. 
 
 She knew what was coming. In an instant it 
 came. In all that was left alive of her, she knew 
 that she must try to go on living for the children. 
 
 She turned her back on escape, and in a spirit- 
 ual agony like the physical anguish of child- 
 birth, she put out her hands to grope her way 
 back to the fiery ordeal of life. 
 
 Her hands, groping in the darkness, fell on 
 something cold and metallic and round — Andre's 
 watch, which he had left for Michel! 
 
 But if his watch was there, he had been there 
 himself. 
 
ON THE EDGE 37 
 
 She ran trembling to the match box, struck a 
 light, and looked. Yes, there was the watch, and 
 a burned-out cigarette beside it. 
 
 The match went out suddenly in the cold, damp 
 breath from the window. 
 
 Andre had come, then ! And she — she was in 
 such a pass that she was incapable of believing 
 that her husband had been with her for an hour. 
 Stretched on the rack of long separation, her 
 body and brain had lost the power to conceive 
 of happiness as real. She felt now that she had 
 not really believed in his presence any of the 
 time. That was why she had fancied the chil- 
 dren looked oddly at him. She had not been 
 able to believe it! 
 
 But she did now! It had reached her very 
 self, at last, the knowledge that he had been 
 there, that he had been of good cheer, that he 
 loved her, that he thought the war might yet be 
 won for the right, that he had even laughed, 
 had said — what was that quaint phrase ? — " The 
 Yanks are coming ! " 
 
 She took the watch up in her hands, laid it 
 
38 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 against her cheek, and began to cry, sweet, weak, 
 childlike tears. 
 
 She groped her way back to the bed, weeping 
 silently, the watch clutched tightly in her hand. 
 
 She lay down beside the unloved little orphan, 
 whom she loved through pity; she took him in 
 her arms; she felt the watch cold and hard and 
 actual against her heart, and, the tears still on 
 her cheeks, she fell once more asleep, smiling. 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN 
 DOCTOR 
 
 The American public has just heard of Dr. 
 Nicole Girard-Mangin, the woman doctor who 
 was mobilized and sent to the front by mistake, 
 and who proved herself so fearless and useful 
 that she was kept there for two years amid 
 bursting shells and rattling mitrailleuses. She 
 is being cited spectacularly as a dramatic proof 
 that women can take men's parts, and do men's 
 work, and know the man's joy of being useful. 
 But she is much more than a woman doing a 
 man's work. She is a human being of the highest 
 type, giving to her country the highest sort of 
 service, and remaining normal, sane, and well- 
 balanced. 
 
 Long before the tornado of the war burst over 
 the world, Paris knew her in many varying 
 phases which now, as we look back, we see to 
 have been the unconscious preparation for the 
 hour of crisis. Personally I knew of her, 
 casually, as the public-spirited young doctor who 
 
 39 
 
4 o THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 was attached to the Paris lyccc where my chil- 
 dren go to school, and who was pushing the 
 " fresh-air " movement for the city poor. People 
 who met her in a social way knew her as an 
 attractive woman with a well-proportioned figure, 
 lovely hair, and clear brown eyes, whom one 
 met once or twice a week at the theater or in 
 the homes of mutual friends, and who enjoyed 
 a hearty laugh and cheerful, chatting talk. Other 
 people who saw her every morning in her labora- 
 tory garb, serious, intent, concentrated, knew her 
 as one of those scientific investigators who can 
 not rest while the horrible riddle of cancer is 
 unsolved. 
 
 Those who saw her in the afternoon among 
 the swarming sick and poor of the clinique of 
 the great Beaujon Hospital, knew her as one of 
 those lovers of their kind who can not rest as 
 long as the horrible apathy of public opinion 
 about tuberculosis continues. People who inves- 
 tigated cures for city ills and who went to visit 
 the model tenement house for the very poor, near 
 the St. Ouen gate of Paris, knew her as the 
 originator and planner of that admirable enter- 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 41 
 prise, whose energy and force fulness saw it 
 financed and brought to practical existence. Ob- 
 servers who knew her in the big international 
 Feminist Conferences in European capitals, saw 
 an alert, upright, quick-eyed Parisienne, whose 
 pretty hats showed no sign of the erudition of 
 the head under them. Friends knew her as the 
 gently bred woman who, although driven by no 
 material necessity, renounced the easy, sheltered, 
 comfortable life of the home-keeping woman for 
 an incessant, beneficent activity, the well-ordered 
 regularity of which alone kept it from breaking 
 down her none too robust health. And those 
 intimates who saw her in her home, saw her the 
 most loved of sisters and daughters, the most 
 devoted of mothers, adored by the little son to 
 whom she has been father and mother ever since 
 he was four years old. 
 
 No one dreamed of war, but if the very day 
 and hour had been known for years, Dr. Girard- 
 Mangin could hardly have prepared herself more 
 completely for the ordeal. Unconsciously she 
 had " trained " for it, as the runner trains for 
 his race. She was not very strong, slightly built, 
 
42 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 with some serious constitutional weakening, but 
 she filled every day full to the brim with exact- 
 ing and fatiguing work. She had two great fac- 
 tors in her favor. One of them was that enviable 
 gift which Nature gives occasionally to remark- 
 able people, the capacity to live with very little 
 sleep. The other is even more noteworthy in a 
 doctor — in whom close acquaintance with the 
 laws of health seems often to breed contempt. 
 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin is that rare bird, a doctor 
 who believes profoundly, seriously, in the advice 
 which she gives to others, in the importance of 
 those simple, humdrum laws of daily health 
 which only very extraordinary people have the 
 strength of mind to obey. Never, never, she 
 says, as though it were a matter of course, has 
 she allowed fatigue, or overoccupation, or 
 inertia, or boredom to interfere with her early 
 morning deep-breathing and physical exercises, 
 and her tonic cold bath. Never, never, no matter 
 how long or exhausting the day, has she rolled 
 into bed, dead beat, too tired to go through the 
 simple processes of the toilet, which make sleep 
 so much more refreshing. No matter how ab- 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 43 
 
 sorbed in her work, she has always taken the 
 time at regular intervals to relax, to chat sociably 
 with quite ordinary people, to go to the theater, 
 to hear music. She has always breakfasted and 
 lunched with her little boy, has steered him 
 through his spelling and arithmetic, has gone on 
 walks with him, has been his comrade and " pal." 
 This has been as good for her as for him, 
 naturally. Every summer she has had the cou- 
 rageous good sense to take a vacation in the 
 country. In short, she is a doctor who takes to 
 her own heart the advice about rational life 
 which doctors so often reserve for their patients. 
 To this woman, tempered to a steel-like 
 strength by self-imposed discipline and by a 
 regular, well-ordered life, came the great sum- 
 mons. And it found her ready to the last nerve 
 in her strong, delicate little hand. You have 
 read, probably, how on that " Day of Doom " 
 when France called out her men, a concierge 
 received, among mobilization papers for all the 
 men in the big apartment house, one sending Dr. 
 Girard-Mangin (presumably also a man, by the 
 name) out to a military hospital in the Vosges 
 
44 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 mountains. The notice of mobilization was 
 handed to a woman, a patriotic woman who long 
 ago had heard the call to fight for France's best 
 interests. She had seen her brother go before 
 her into the fighting ranks and she followed him, 
 into danger and service. She said a quick 
 good-by to her friends, to her parents, to her 
 son, her only child, a fine boy of fourteen then, 
 from whom she had never before been separated. 
 
 Will every mother who reads these lines stop 
 here and think what this means? 
 
 There is no need to repeat in detail here what 
 has already been told of the first three months of 
 her service — her arrival at the field hospital, 
 disorganized, submerged by the terrible, ever- 
 renewed flood of wounded men, of the astonish- 
 ment of the doctor in charge. " What, a woman ! 
 This is no place for a woman. But, good God ! 
 if you know anything about surgery, roll up your 
 sleeves and stay ! " 
 
 There she stayed for three months, those blast- 
 ing first three months of the war, when French 
 people put forth undreamed-of strength to meet 
 a crisis of undreamed-of horror. Out there in 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 45 
 
 that distant military hospital, toiling incessantly 
 in great heat, with insufficient supplies, bearing 
 the mental and moral shock of the first encounter 
 with the incredible miseries of war, that modern, 
 highly organized woman, separated for the first 
 time from her family, from her child, fearing 
 everything for them and for her country, had 
 no word, no tidings whatever, till the 28th of 
 August. Then no knowledge of her son, of her 
 parents, only a notice that the Government had 
 retreated from Paris to Bordeaux! Comforting 
 news that, for the first! Next they knew that 
 Rheims was taken. Then one of the men whose 
 wounds she dressed told her that he had been 
 able to see the EiffeJ Tower from where he fell. 
 This sounded as though the next news could be 
 nothing but the German entry into Paris. 
 
 All France throbbed with straining, despairing 
 effort, far beyond its normal strength, during 
 those first three months; and to do the man's 
 part she took, the delicate woman doctor, labor- 
 ing incessantly among the bleeding wrecks of 
 human bodies, needed all her will-power to pull 
 her through. 
 
46 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 Then the wild period of fury and haste and 
 nervous, emotional exaltation passed, and France 
 faced another ordeal, harder for her tempera- 
 ment even than the first fierce onset of the 
 unequal struggle — the long period of patient en- 
 durance of the unendurable. The miracle of the 
 Marne had been wrought; Paris was saved; the 
 sting and stimulant of immediate, deadly danger 
 was past; the fatigue from the supernatural 
 effort of those first months dimmed every eye, 
 deadened all nerves. Then France tapped another 
 reservoir of national strength and began pa- 
 tiently, constructively to " organize " the war. 
 And that daughter of France bent her energies 
 to help in this need, as in the first. 
 
 A rough rearrangement of competences was 
 attempted everywhere on the front. Dentists no 
 longer dug trenches, bakers were set to baking 
 instead of currying horses, and expert teleg- 
 raphers stopped making ineffectual efforts to 
 cook. It came out then that the real specialty 
 of the valiant little woman doctor who had been 
 doing such fine work in the operating-room was 
 not surgery at all. " Fm no surgeon, you 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 47 
 
 know ! " she says, and leaves it to her friends to 
 tell you of the extraordinary record of her effi- 
 ciency in that field, the low percentage of losses 
 in her surgical cases. If you mention this, she 
 says, " Ah, that's just because I'm not a born 
 surgeon. I have to take very special care of my 
 cases to be equal to the job." It was discovered 
 that her great specialty was contagious diseases. 
 There was great need for a specialist of that 
 sort out at Verdun, where, alas! a typhoid epi- 
 demic had broken out. This was before the 
 extra precautions about inoculations, which were 
 taken later. 
 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin was sent to Verdun on 
 November 1st, 19 14, and was there steadily for 
 more than a year, until the 28th of February, 
 191 6. She found her sick men on mattresses, in 
 tents, on such low ground that they were often 
 literally in water. Whenever there was freezing 
 weather, those who cared for them slid about on 
 sheets of ice. Above them, on higher ground, 
 were some rough old barracks, empty, partly 
 remodeled, said to have been left there by the 
 Prussians in 1871. "Why don't we move the 
 
48 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 sick up there?" she asked, and was met by all 
 the usual dragging, clogging reasons given by 
 administrative inertia. 
 
 The sheds were not ready to occupy; there 
 were no expert carpenters to get them ready; it 
 would be impossible to heat them; no order for 
 the change had come from Headquarters — fur- 
 thermore, a reason not mentioned, the sheds, 
 being on higher ground, were more exposed to 
 shell-fire. Dr. Girard-Mangin had had some 
 experience with administrative inertia in her 
 struggles for better housing for the poor; and 
 long before the war she had known what it was 
 to put herself voluntarily in danger — the scar 
 from a bad tubercular infection on her hand is 
 the honorable proof of that. She knew that the 
 sick men would be better off in the barracks on 
 higher ground. So she took them there. Just 
 like that. 
 
 She was to have the entire care of the typhoid 
 epidemic, and the only help which could be given 
 her was to come from twenty men, absolutely 
 unassorted — such a score as you would gather 
 by walking down any street and picking up the 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 49 
 
 first twenty men you met. There were several 
 farm-laborers, a barber, an accountant, miscel- 
 laneous factory hands. The only person re- 
 motely approaching a nurse was a man who had 
 had the training for a pharmacist, but as he had 
 never been able to stay sober long enough to 
 take his examinations, you may not be sur- 
 prised that he was the least useful of them 
 all. 
 
 These twenty casually selected human beings 
 went unwillingly up the hill toward the barracks, 
 ironic, mocking, lazy, indifferent, as human 
 beings unelectrified by purpose are apt to be. 
 But, although they did not know it, there 
 marched at their head an iron will, a steel-like 
 purpose, and an intelligence which was invin- 
 cible. They took this to be but a smallish, 
 youngish woman in uniform, and were all in 
 great guffaws at the comic idea of being under 
 her orders. 
 
 Of course, to begin with, she did not know one 
 of her men from another, but she studied them 
 closely as they worked, driven along by her direc- 
 tion, setting up the rough camp-stoves, stopping 
 
50 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 the worst of the holes in the walls, arranging 
 the poor apologies for mattresses, and cutting 
 off the tops of gasoline-cans for heating water — 
 for our woman doctor was asked to take care of 
 several hundred typhoid cases and was not pro- 
 vided with so much as a bowl that would hold 
 water. Presently, as they worked, she noticed 
 that there were but nineteen men there. All day 
 she studied their faces, their bearing, what was 
 written on them for the seeing eye to read. At 
 night, at supper-time, there were twenty men. 
 Those clear brown eyes swept around the circle 
 and pounced on a mild-looking poiln innocently 
 taking his soup with the others. 
 
 " Where have you been all day ? " she asked 
 him. 
 
 He fairly turned pale with astonishment, 
 "Why, how did you — ? I've been right here, 
 working! " he tried to bluster her down. 
 
 " No, you haven't. You haven't been here 
 since a quarter past ten this morning," she as- 
 sured him. 
 
 He hung his head a moment, then looked an 
 ugly defiance. " Well, I've been in to Verdun to 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 51 
 
 spend the day with a friend. What are you 
 going to do about it?" 
 
 " I'm going to have you punished for disobey- 
 ing an officer/' she said promptly, though so 
 kttle military had been her beneficent life, that 
 she had no more idea than you or I or any other 
 woman would have of what punishment could 
 be given in such a case. 
 
 " Officer's orders ! " said the man. " What 
 ©fiker?" All the men laughed. 
 
 " I'm your officer," she said, and went away 
 to telephone to the military authority in charge 
 ef such cases. 
 
 " I can't be expected to have discipline if I'm 
 not backed up," she said. "This is a test case. 
 It's now or never." 
 
 The answer was a non-com and a guard 
 marching up to the barracks, saluting the mili- 
 tary doctor, and, with all due military ceremony, 
 carrying off the offender for a week in prison. 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin laughs still at the recollec- 
 tion of the consternation among the nineteen 
 who were left. " I never had any trouble about 
 discipline, after that," she says. " Of course 
 
52 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 there were the utter incompetents to be weeded 
 out. For that I followed the time-honored army 
 custom of sending my worst man whenever the 
 demand from Headquarters came for a good, 
 competent person to be sent to other work J 
 Before long I had reduced the force of nurses 
 to twelve. Those twelve I kept for all the time 
 of my service there, and we parted at the end 
 old friends and tried comrades. I have never 
 lost track of them since. They always write me 
 once in a while, wherever they are." 
 
 As soon as it grew dark enough, that first 
 night, for the ambulances to dash out through 
 the blackness, over the shell-riddled roads to the 
 abris, close to the front, the stricken men began 
 to come in. Before dawn, that very first night, 
 there were fifty-five terrible typhoid cases 
 brought into the bare sheds. Then it was that 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin, working single-handed with 
 her score of crude, untrained helpers, needed all 
 her capacity for going without sleep. Then it 
 was that her men, seeing her at work, stopped 
 laughing because she was a woman and ad- 
 mired her because she was a woman doing won- 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 53 
 
 derful things; then, best of all, forgot that she 
 was a woman, and took her simply for the 
 matchless leader that she is, in the battle against 
 disease. I think it was not wholly the guard, 
 marching away the disobedient man to prison, who 
 was responsible for the fact that our little woman 
 doctor had no further difficulty with discipline. 
 
 The condition of the typhoid patients was har- 
 rowing beyond words. A man going out with 
 his squad to a front-line trench would be stricken 
 down with fever on arriving. It was impossible 
 for him to return until his squad was relieved 
 and he could be carried to the rear on a com- 
 rade's back. There he was, there he must re- 
 main, for the three or four or five days of his 
 squad's " turn " in the front lines. Can you 
 imagine the condition of a man with typhoid 
 fever, who has lain in a trench in the mud for 
 four days, with no shelter from the rain or 
 snow but an overcoat spread over him, with no 
 care beyond an occasional drink of water from 
 a comrade's flask? For your own sake I hope 
 you can not imagine it. And I will not go into 
 details. Enough to say that such men were 
 
54 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 brought in by the tens, by the twenties, by the 
 fifties, filthy beyond words, at the limit of ex- 
 haustion, out of their heads with weakness and 
 fever and horror. 
 
 And there to stem that black tide of human 
 misery stands this little upright, active, valiant, 
 twentieth-century woman. I think, although we 
 are not of her nation, we may well be proud of 
 her as a fellow-being who had voluntarily re- 
 nounced ease to choose the life which had made 
 her fit to cope with the crisis of that night — and 
 of the more than four hundred days and nights 
 following. For cope with it she did, competently, 
 resolutely, successfully. " Oh yes, we gave them 
 cold baths," she says, when you ask for 
 details. " We managed somehow. They had ail 
 the right treatment, cold baths, wet packs, injec- 
 tions, the right food — everything very primitive 
 at first, of course, but everything you ever do 
 for typhoid anywhere. Our percentage of losses 
 was very low always." 
 
 " But how ? How? How did you manage ? " 
 you ask. 
 
 " Oh, at the beginning everything was very 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 55 
 rough. We had only one portable galvanized- 
 iron bathtub. Since they were all so badly in- 
 fected, there was less danger in bathing them all 
 in the same tub than in not fighting the fever 
 that way. And then, just as soon as I could 
 reach the outside world by letter, I clamored for 
 naore, and they were sent. ,, 
 
 " But how could you, single-handed, give cold 
 baths to so many men? It's a difficult matter, 
 giving a cold bath to a typhoid patient." 
 
 " I wasn't single-handed. I had my twelve 
 soldier-nurses." 
 
 " * Nurses, 3 you say ! Farm-laborers, account- 
 ants, barbers, drunken druggists ! " 
 
 " But I got rid of that good-for-nothing 
 pharmacist at once ! And the others— the twelve 
 good ones — they learned what to do. They 
 learned how to give the simple remedies. They 
 learned how to do the other things enough to 
 give me a report — how to take temperatures, how 
 to give the baths at the right degree for the right 
 time, how to take the pulse." 
 
 "How could they learn all that?" you ask, 
 amazed. 
 
56 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 " I taught them," says Dr. Girard-Mangin, 
 slightly surprised, in the simplest, most matter- 
 of-fact tone. 
 
 You look past her, out there to that hand-to- 
 hand struggle with death which was carried on 
 by the one indomitable will and the one well- 
 trained mind, strong enough not only to animate 
 this woman's body before you, but those other 
 bodies and ignorant, indocile minds. 
 
 " They did it very well, too," she assures you, 
 and you do not doubt her. 
 
 That woman could teach anybody to do any- 
 thing. 
 
 You come back to details. " But how could 
 you get enough water and heat it for so many 
 baths, on just those rough, small, heating- 
 stoves? " 
 
 " Well, we were at it all the time, practically, 
 day and night. We cut the tops off those big 
 gasoline-cans the automobilists use, and stood 
 one on every stove up and down the barracks. 
 There wasn't a moment when water wasn't being 
 heated, or used, or carried away." 
 
 "What could you do about intestinal hemor- 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 57 
 
 rhages ? " you ask. " You must have had many, 
 with such advanced cases. Your farm-hand 
 nurses couldn't " 
 
 " I never tried to teach them how to handle 
 any real crisis, only to recognize it when it came, 
 and go quickly to fetch me. I taught them to 
 watch carefully and at the first sign of blood on 
 their patients' clothing or on the mattress, to take 
 the knapsack out from under the sick man's 
 head — they had no other pillow, of course — to 
 lay him down flat, and then to run and call me, 
 from wherever I was." 
 
 " You must have had almost no sleep at all." 
 
 " That was the greatest help I had, being able 
 to get along on little sleep. And I got more 
 work out of my helpers than any man could, for 
 they were ashamed to ask to sleep or rest, seeing 
 that a woman, half their size, could still keep 
 going." 
 
 " But how about your famous hygienic regu- 
 larity, the morning exercises and cold baths 
 and " 
 
 " Oh, as soon as I saw I was in for a long 
 period of regular service, I took the greatest 
 
58 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 care to go on with all the things which keep one 
 
 fit for regular service." 
 
 " Morning tubs ? " 
 
 "Yes, morning tubs! I slept — what time I 
 had to sleep — in an abandoned peasant's house 
 in an evacuated village near the hospital. I 
 didn't take any of the downstairs rooms because 
 people are likely to walk right into an abandoned 
 house, and part of the time there were soldiers 
 quartered in the village. Then there was usually 
 somebody in the house with me. The other 
 times I had it all to myself. I took a room on 
 the second floor. It happened to have a flight 
 of steps leading up to it, and another one going 
 out of it into the attic. Of course, I never had 
 any heat, and the drafts from those two open 
 stairways — well, it was like sleeping in the mid- 
 dle of a city square. Sometimes I used to take 
 down a bottle filled with hot water, but the bed 
 was so cold that it was almost instantly chilled. 
 Many a time I have gone to sleep, all curled up 
 in a ball, holding my feet in my hands, because 
 they were so cold, and wakened to find them still 
 as icy. Oh, the cold! That is the worst enemy 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 59 
 
 of all at the front, the most wearing, the most 
 demoralizing, the most dehumanizing, because it 
 lasts so. With other things — hunger, wounds, 
 danger — either it kills you, or it passes. But 
 the cold is always there." 
 
 She loses herself for a moment in brooding 
 recollection and you wonder if Jeanne d'Arc 
 ever did anything braver for her country than 
 did this delicate, stout-hearted modern woman, 
 sleeping alone for months and months in bitter 
 cold in a deserted house in a deserted village. 
 
 She comes back to the present. " And it was 
 there that I took my morning tubs ! " she says 
 with an amused smile. "Of course the water 
 froze hard into a solid lump. So I put carbonate 
 dc potasse into it. This not only kept it from 
 freezing, but made it alkaline, so that it was an 
 excellent detergent and stimulant to the skin. I 
 assure you, after a night in which I had been 
 incessantly called from one bed to another, when 
 I felt very much done-up, my cold sponge-bath 
 in that water was like a resurrection. I was 
 made over. Then, of course, no matter how busy 
 I was, I took care of my feet — changed my 
 
60 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 stockings and shoes every day. Feet are one's 
 weakest point in a long pull like that." 
 
 You venture to remark about a slight limp 
 noticeable when she walks. " Yes, it comes from 
 a frozen foot — I have to admit it. But it's really 
 not my fault. That was later, at the time of the 
 battle at Verdun. There are always brief crises, 
 when you have to give your all and not stop to 
 think. I went nine days then without once 
 taking off my shoes. I hadn't my other 
 pair by that time. The Bodies had them, 
 probably." 
 
 But we have not come to that terrific epic, as 
 yet. Before that second tornado burst over the 
 heads of the French and of our woman doctor, 
 there was a long, hard, dull period of four hun- 
 dred and seventy days of continuous service — 
 for Dr. Girard-Mangin, being a pioneer woman, 
 felt in honor bound to do more than a man would 
 do. In the three years and more of her war 
 service, she has had just three weeks' furlough, 
 seven days out of every year to see her son, to 
 see her family, to relax. Every other day of 
 that long procession of days, she has been on 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 61 
 
 duty, active, and, as befits a woman, construc- 
 tively active. 
 
 She did not continue resignedly to struggle 
 with tin-can drinking-cups, and one bathtub for 
 two hundred men. Neither did she rely on the 
 proverbially slow mills of the Government to 
 grind her out the necessary supplies. She was 
 not only the army doctor in charge of the con- 
 tagious cases in the big sanitary section and 
 hospital near Verdun, she was also a figure of 
 international importance, the Presidente of the 
 Hygiene Department of the Conseil International 
 des Femmes — her predecessor had been Lady 
 Aberdeen; she was high in honor at the big 
 Beaujon Hospital in Paris; she was well-known 
 to the charitable world in the Society for Hy- 
 gienic Lodgings for the poor, which owed so 
 much to her ; and she had a wide circle of friends 
 everywhere. The little aide major sent out from 
 her bare shed-hospital, lacking in everything, a 
 clarion call for help for her sick men. With 
 years of experience in organization back of her, 
 she set to work and, in the midst of the fury of 
 destruction all about her, built up, item by item, 
 
62 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 a little corner of order and competent activity. 
 In November, 19 14, there was nothing but a 
 windswept shed, with straw pallets and tin-can 
 utensils. By June of the next year you would 
 have found, if you had had the courage to go 
 within two kilometers of the front line, a very 
 well-appointed contagious ward of a military hos- 
 pital, where nothing was lacking for the men's 
 comfort — except a certainty that the whole thing 
 might not be blown to pieces by a shell. And 
 by the end of 19 15, when there began to be talk 
 of a great German drive against Verdun, the 
 men under our doctor's supervision had as good 
 care as they could have had anywhere, with 
 laboratory and sterilizing facilities — everything. 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin knew what was the best to 
 be had in hospitals and she did not rest until 
 somehow, Aladdin-like, she had made it to blos- 
 som, out there in danger and desolation. 
 
 All during January of 19 16 there was terrific 
 tension along that front. The monster German 
 offensive against Verdun was in the air. The 
 month of January passed with desperate slow- 
 ness, such intent, apprehensive suspense being 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 63 
 
 torturing for human nerves, especially tired hu- 
 man nerves which had already been through a 
 long, severe period of trial. 
 
 Everybody showed signs of nervousness. Our 
 little doctor stuck faithfully to her bedrock prin- 
 ciples of health, changed her shoes and stock- 
 ings every day, took her Spartan baths and rub- 
 downs in her colder-than-freezing water, went 
 through her deep-breathing and her setting-up 
 exercises every morning. By such merely 
 feminine reliance on everyday sanity in life, she 
 kept herself in excellent physical shape, and did 
 not succumb to the temptation, which is too 
 much for so many doctors under strain, of hypo- 
 dermics of strychnin, and other stimulants. 
 
 February 1st came. The great storm, looming 
 murkily, had not burst. 
 
 February inched itself along, and finally, be- 
 cause human nature can only stand about so 
 much of strain, nerves began to relax in utter 
 fatigue. 
 
 On February 21st, which was a Monday, it 
 was fairly clear, cold, with what passes for 
 sunshine in that region. Dr. Girard-Mangin 
 
64 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 stepped out in front of her shed-hospital ward, 
 after lunch, and made this remark to herself: 
 " I don't believe the Boches are going to pull 
 off that offensive at all. And to-day is almost 
 sunny. I have a good notion to go over to the 
 165th and get my hair washed/' There was an 
 ex-coiffeur in that regiment who kept on with 
 his trade in his leisure moments. 
 
 As this singularly peace-time thought passed 
 through her mind, an obits screamed its way 
 loudly over her head. " That's near," she 
 thought, " nearer than they generally are." 
 
 Before she could get back into the hospital, 
 the battle of Verdun had begun. 
 
 The blow was delivered with astounding ra- 
 pidity, and with stunning force. Up to that 
 time, nothing had ever been conceived like the 
 violence of the artillery fire. There in the hos- 
 pital, only two kilometers back of the front, the 
 noise was so great they could scarcely hear each 
 other's voices. Upon those men, and that 
 woman, unnerved by six weeks of nerve-racking 
 suspense, the great crisis leaped with murderous 
 fury. It was as though the world were being 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 65 
 battered to pieces about their heads. Each one 
 called up in himself all the reserve strength his 
 life had given him and, tight-lipped, clung as 
 best he could to self-control. 
 
 The first nerves to give way were in the bake- 
 shop. The bakers suddenly burst out of their 
 overheated cell and, half -naked in that sharp 
 cold, clad only in their white-linen aprons and 
 trousers, fled away, anywhere, away, out of that 
 hell. One of the doctors, seeing this beginning 
 of the panic, shouted out in an angry attempt 
 to stem the tide of fear, " Shame on you, men! 
 What are you doing! What would happen if 
 every one ran away ! " 
 
 One of the fleeing bakers, dodging with agility 
 the outstretched restraining arms, called out 
 heartily, with a strong Southern accent, " Right 
 you are, doctor, perfectly right! " and continued 
 to run faster than ever. Which typically Midi 
 phrase and action was seized upon by those gal- 
 lant French hearts for the laugh which is the 
 Gallic coquetry in the face of danger. 
 
 But even they could not smile at what they 
 next saw. At four o'clock that afternoon began 
 
66 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 the spectacle, awful to French eyes, of regiments 
 of chasseurs fleeing toward the rear. 
 
 " So inconceivable was this to me, that I re- 
 peated, ' Chasseurs! Retreating! ' " 
 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin closed her eyes a moment 
 as if she saw them again. " Oh, yes, retreating 
 — and no wonder ! All their equipment gone, no 
 guns, no ammunition, no grenades, no bayonets 
 — their bare fists, and those bleeding, for weap- 
 ons. Many of them were naked, yes, literally 
 naked, except for their leather cartridge belts. 
 Everything made of cloth had been blown from 
 their bodies by the air-pressure from exploding 
 shells. Many of them were horribly wounded, 
 although they were staggering along. I remem- 
 ber one man, whose wounds we dressed, who 
 came reeling up to the hospital, holding his hand 
 to his face, and when he took his hand down most 
 of his face came with it. Oh, yes, they were 
 retreating, those who had enough life left to 
 walk. And they told us that Verdun was 
 lost, that no human power could resist that 
 thrust." 
 
 All that night, and all the next day and all 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 67 
 
 the next night, such men poured through and 
 past the hospital and during all that time there 
 was no cessation in the intolerable, maddening 
 din of the artillery. When you ask Dr. Girard- 
 Mangin how she lived through those days and 
 nights, she tells you steadily, " Oh, that was not 
 the worst. We could still work. And we did. 
 More than eighteen thousand wounded passed 
 through the hospital that week. We had too 
 much to do to think of anything else. It seemed 
 as though all the men in the world were wounded 
 and pouring in on us." 
 
 On Wednesday afternoon, the tide of men 
 changed in character somewhat, and this meant 
 that the end was near. In place of chasseurs 
 and the ordinary poilus, quantities of brown 
 Moroccans, those who fight at the very front, 
 came fleeing back, horribly wounded, most of 
 them, yelling wild prayers to Allah, clutching at 
 themselves like children and howling like wild 
 beasts — impossible to understand or to make 
 understand. And yet, somehow, the hospital 
 staff, staggering with fatigue themselves, min- 
 istered to them, too, until — this was where they 
 
68 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 all touched bottom — until, on Wednesday night, 
 the electricity suddenly gave out and, in the 
 twinkling of an eye, blackness fell on the great 
 wards, shaken by the incessant infernal scream- 
 ing rush of the shells overhead, by the thunder 
 of the cannon, and filled with the shrieks of the 
 agonizing wild men from Africa. Blackness 
 like the end of the world. 
 
 Messengers were sent hastily to grope their 
 way down to the nearest village for candles. 
 But they returned empty-handed. Long before 
 that the soldiers had carried off all the supply 
 of candles. 
 
 " What did you do, all that night? " 
 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin makes no light pretense of 
 belittling the experience. 
 
 " It was awful beyond anything imaginable," 
 she tells you gravely. "The worst thing that 
 can happen to a doctor had come — to be in the 
 midst of suffering and not to be able to lift a 
 finger to help. All that we could do was to give 
 them water to drink. We could feel our way to 
 the water-pitchers. The rest of the time we 
 could only sit, helpless, listen to the shells and 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 69 
 
 I 
 to the wounded men groaning, and wait for 
 
 dawn." 
 
 Yes, it is a small, delicately fashioned woman, 
 like you, like me, who lived through those days 
 and those nights, and came through them morally 
 and physically intact, into an even greater use- 
 fulness. It will not be a bad thing to remember 
 her the next time we feel " tired " in our 
 ordinary round of small efforts. 
 
 On the next day came the order to evacuate 
 the hospital, bitter proof of the German success. 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin began sending off her sick 
 men in relays of four in the only ambulance at 
 her disposal. They were taken down to the 
 nearest little branch railroad, there put on the 
 train, and sent — nobody knew where, anywhere 
 out of the range of German guns. 
 
 All day Thursday the evacuation went on. By 
 Thursday evening there were left only nine men 
 in her ward, men practically dying, far gone 
 with intestinal hemorrhages, too ill to move. 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin spent another black night 
 beside her dying men, moving from one to 
 another in the intense obscurity, raising her voice 
 
70 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 above the thunder of the artillery to comfort 
 them, to give them what small help she could 
 without a light. On Friday all the hospital 
 staff, with a few exceptions, was to leave. The 
 hospital buildings and equipment were to be left 
 in the charge of a non-com and two privates; 
 and the men too ill to transport were to be left 
 with one doctor and two aides. The rule in the 
 French Sanitary Service for that case is that 
 the youngest doctor stays with the sick. Dr. 
 Girard-Mangin was the youngest doctor. 
 
 But at this, the good head-doctor, who had 
 daughters of his own in Paris, cried out that 
 there was a limit, that he would never for- 
 give any man who left a daughter of his 
 alone in such a position, alone with dying men, 
 alone under fire, alone to face the Bodies. 
 No, no Frenchman could be expected to do 
 that. 
 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin appealed over his head to 
 the military authority in command, for permis- 
 sion to do her duty as it fell to her. " I have 
 not failed in my services so far. It is not just 
 to force me to fail now." 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 71 
 
 The military ruling was that the usual rule 
 would hold. The little woman doctor stayed in 
 danger, and the men went back to the rear. The 
 parting was a moving one; those comrades of 
 hers who had seen her working by their sides 
 for so many months took her in their arms and 
 wept openly as they bade her good-by. 
 
 If you venture to ask her what were her own 
 emotions at this moment, she tells you with a 
 shudder, " Oh, sorrow, black, black sorrow for 
 France. We all thought, you know,, that Verdun 
 had fallen, that the Germans had pierced the line. 
 No one knew how far they had gone. It was 
 an awful moment. ,, Apparently she did not 
 think of herself at all. 
 
 All day Friday, she was there with her 
 stricken men and with two aides. Friday night 
 she lay beside them in the dark. On Saturday 
 the man left in charge of the hospital buildings 
 went mad from the nervous tension — they ex- 
 pected almost from hour to hour to see the Ger- 
 mans appear — and from the hellish noise of the 
 artillery. 
 
 I find myself cold as I try to think what 
 
72 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 another black night meant in those conditions. 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin passed it and emerged into 
 another dawn. 
 
 On Sunday morning the General in command 
 of that region, amazed to find that any one was 
 still there, sent peremptory orders that the 
 premises must be evacuated entirely, dying men 
 and all. They would certainly be killed if they 
 were kept there. And more, there was no 
 longer anything to give them to eat. This was 
 a military order and so overrode the rulings of 
 the Sanitary Service. Dr. Girard-Mangin pre- 
 pared to evacuate. She had at her disposition a 
 small camion in which she put the four men best 
 able to be carried, and her own ambulance in 
 which she packed the five worst cases, crosswise 
 of the vehicle. To try to give them some security 
 against the inevitable jolting, she bound them 
 tightly over and over to their stretchers. Then, 
 with her little medicine-kit, she got in beside 
 them and told her chauffeur to take them to 
 Clermont-en-Argonne, and not by the safer route 
 taken by the ravitaillement convoys, because her 
 sick men could never live through the length of 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 73 
 
 that trip, but by the shorter road, leading along 
 directly back of the front. 
 
 " I wonder that he was willing to take that 
 dangerous route," you say. 
 
 " I didn't ask his opinion about it," says Dr. 
 Girard-Mangin with a ring of iron in her voice. 
 
 So began a wild ride of forty-three kilometers, 
 constantly under fire, with five men at the point 
 of death. The chauffeur dodged between the 
 bursting shells, the woman in the car watched 
 her sick men closely and kept them up with hypo- 
 dermics of stimulants — which are not admin- 
 istered by a shaking hand ! 
 
 You ask respectfully, looking at the white scar 
 on her cheek, " It was then, during that ride, 
 that you were wounded, wasn't it ? " 
 
 She nods, hastily, indifferently, and says, 
 " And when we finally reached Clermont-en- 
 Argonne, my sick men were no better off, for I 
 found the hospital absolutely swamped witH 
 wounded. I said I was there with five mortally 
 sick men from Verdun, and they answered, ' If 
 they were all Generals we could not take them 
 in. You are mad, Madame, to bring sick men 
 
74 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 here/ So we went on ten kilometers further to 
 a little village called Froidos, where my face- 
 wound was dressed and where finally I was able 
 to leave my men, all alive still, in good hands. " 
 
 " They didn't live to get well, did they? " you 
 ask. 
 
 At this question, she has a moment of stupe- 
 faction before the picture of your total incom- 
 prehension of what she has been talking about; 
 she has a moment's retrospective stare back into 
 that seething caldron which was the battle of 
 Verdun ; she opens her mouth to cry out on your 
 lack of imagination; and she ends by saying 
 quietly, almost with pity for your ignorance, 
 " Oh, I never saw or heard of those men again. 
 There was a great deal too much else to be done 
 at that time." 
 
 Have you lost track of time and place in that 
 adventure of hers? It is not surprising. She 
 was then in the little village of Froidos, on the 
 afternoon of Sunday, February 27th, almost 
 exactly a week after the battle began — and after 
 almost exactly a week of unbelievable horror — 
 after four nights spent without a light in a great 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 75 
 
 hospital full of wounded men — after a ride of 
 nearly fifty kilometers constantly under fire, with 
 mortally sick men. And she now turned, like a 
 good soldier who has accomplished the task set 
 him, to report at headquarters for another. 
 
 Her headquarters, the Direction du Service 
 Sanitaire was at Bar-le-Duc. Without a mo- 
 ment's rest or delay, she set out for Bar-le-Duc, 
 she and her chauffeur, half-blind with lack of 
 sleep. They arrived there at midnight. She 
 reported herself at the hospital, so large that in 
 normal times it holds three thousand wounded. 
 " I have just brought in the last of the sick from 
 the military hospital at Verdun/' she said, to 
 explain her presence. They were astounded to 
 hear that any one had been there so lately. 
 Every one had thought that certainly the Ger- 
 mans were there by that time. 
 
 " Please, is there a place where I may sleep a 
 few hours? " she said. 
 
 But there was no place, not one. The great 
 hospital was crowded to the last inch of its 
 space with wounded — halls, passageways, aisles, 
 even the stairs had wounded on them. Finally 
 
76 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 some one gave her a blanket and she lay down 
 on the floor in the little office of the head-doctor 
 and slept till morning — five or six hours. Then 
 she went out into the town to try to find a lodg- 
 ing. Not one to be had, the town being as full 
 as the hospital. She had not taken her clothes 
 off, naturally, nor her shoes. 
 
 " Oh, then I did feel tired/' she says. " That 
 morning, for the first time, I knew how tired I 
 was, as I went dragging myself from door to 
 door, begging for a room and a bed. It was 
 because I was no longer working, you see. As 
 long as you have work to do, you can go on." 
 
 At last a poor woman took pity on her, said 
 that she and her daughter would sleep together 
 on one narrow bed, and let her have the other 
 one. 
 
 " I was so glad, so glad," says Dr. Girard- 
 Mangin, " to know I was to have a real bed ! I 
 was like a child. When you are as tired as that, 
 you don't think of anything but the simple ele- 
 mentals — lying down, being warm, having some- 
 thing to eat — all your fine, civilized ideas are 
 swept away." 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 77 
 
 She went back toward the hospital to get what 
 few things she had been able to bring with her, 
 and there she saw her chauffeur waving a paper 
 toward her. " We are to be off at once," he said, 
 and showed her an order to leave Bar-le-Duc 
 without delay, taking two nurses with them, and 
 to go with all speed to the hospital at Vadelain- 
 court. They were crowded with wounded there. 
 
 " Then, at once, my tiredness went away," she 
 says. " It only lasted while I thought of getting 
 a bed. When I knew we were going into action 
 once more, I was myself again." 
 
 By two o'clock that afternoon — this was Mon- 
 day — they were en route for the hospital, the 
 doctor on the seat by the chauffeur, the two 
 nurses, hysterical with fear over the shells, 
 weeping inside. 
 
 " What a terrible, tragic, inspiring trip that 
 was ! " she exclaims, and almost for the only 
 time during her quietly told narration her voice 
 quivers, her eyes suffuse. " We were going 
 against the tide of fresh reserves, rushing out to 
 the front — mile after mile, facing those strongly 
 marching ranks of splendid young Frenchmen, 
 
78 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 all going out to suffer the unimaginable horrors 
 from which I had just come. I could not bear 
 to look into those eager, ardent faces. I was so 
 proud of them, so yearning over them! And 
 they were so full of spirit, hurrying forward to 
 the supreme sacrifice. They shouted out to us 
 again and again, ' The battle isn't over yet, is 
 it ? Will we get there in time ? ' They laughed 
 light-heartedly, the younger ones, when they 
 saw me and called out, ' Oh, the women are fight- 
 ing out there, too, are they? ' Wave after wave 
 of them, rank on rank, the best of my country, 
 marching out to death.' , 
 
 They were delayed by an accident to a tire, 
 being instantly — as is the rule on military roads, 
 always crammed to the last inch — lifted bodily 
 into a neighboring field for repairs. No sta- 
 tioning for repairs is allowed on a road where 
 every one is incessantly in movement. While 
 the repairs were being made, the car sank deeper 
 and deeper into the mud, and it was a Herculean 
 undertaking to get it back in the main thorough- 
 fare. As usual, a crowd of good-natured poilus 
 managed this, heaving together with the hearty 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 79 
 
 good-will to which all drivers of American am- 
 bulances can testify. 
 
 Delayed by this, it was nearly midnight when 
 they drew near their destination. The chauffeur 
 turned off the main road into a smaller one, a 
 short cut to the hospital, and sank at once in 
 mud up to his hubs. From twelve o'clock that 
 night till half -past five in the morning, they 
 labored to make the few kilometers which 
 separated them from Vadelaincourt. Once the 
 chauffeur, hearing in the dark the rush of water 
 against the car, announced that he was sure that 
 the river had burst its banks, that they had 
 missed the bridge and were now in the main cur- 
 rent. Dr. Girard-Mangin got down to investi- 
 gate and found herself knee-deep in mud so 
 liquid that its sound had deceived the chauffeur. 
 They toiled on, the nurses inside the car wring- 
 ing their hands. 
 
 By the time it was faintly dawn they arrived 
 at the hospital, where the hard-worked head- 
 doctor, distracted with the rush of wounded, 
 cried out upon her for being a woman, but told 
 her for Heaven's sake to stay and help. The 
 
80 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 nurses were taken in and set to work, where at 
 once they forgot themselves and their fears. 
 But again there was no place for the new doctor 
 to sleep, the hospital being overflowing with 
 human wreckage. She did what all ambulance 
 people hate to do, she went back to the reeking 
 ambulance, laid herself on a stretcher, wet boots 
 and all, drew up about her the typhoid-soaked 
 blankets of her ex-patients, and instantly fell 
 asleep. The chauffeur had the preferable place 
 of sleeping under the car, on another stretcher. 
 
 She had no more than closed her eyes, when 
 came a loud, imperious pounding on the car, 
 " Get up quickly. The medecin-en-chef sends for 
 you at once; terrible lot of wounded just brought 
 in; every hand needed.' ' 
 
 She went back through the mud to the hospital, 
 had a cup of hot coffee and — detail eloquent of 
 the confusion and disorganization of that fever- 
 ish week — some plum-cake! By what freak of 
 ravitaillement there was only plum-cake, she 
 never knew. 
 
 Then she put on her operating-apron and cap. 
 She went into the operating-room at half -past 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 81 
 
 seven in the morning. She operated steadily, 
 without stopping, for more than five hours. At 
 one o'clock she felt giddy and her legs failed her. 
 She sat down flat on the floor, leaning back 
 against the wall. " Here it comes ! " she said to 
 herself, fighting the faintness which dissolved all 
 her members, " Here comes womanishness ! " 
 
 But it did not come. She sat thus, setting her 
 teeth and tightening her will until she conquered 
 it. A new relay of doctors came in. She stag- 
 gered off, had more coffee, a piece of chocolate 
 and another piece of plum-cake! And was told 
 that she would be "off duty" till eight that 
 evening. Where could she go to rest? Nowhere. 
 Snow lay on the fields, mud was deep in the 
 roads. There was not a bed empty. 
 
 " I sat down in a corner, in a chair, quite a 
 comfortable chair," she tells you, " and took 
 down my hair and brushed and braided it. You 
 know how much that rests you ! " 
 
 Now, Dr. Girard-Mangin is the last person in 
 the world over whom to sentimentalize, and I 
 swore before beginning to write about her that 
 I would try not to do it. But I can not restrain 
 
82 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 myself from asking you here if you do not feel 
 with me like both laughing and crying at the 
 inimitable, homely femininity of that familiar 
 gesture, at the picture of that shining little war- 
 rior-figure, returning in that abomination of 
 desolation to the simple action of a sheltered 
 woman's everyday home life? 
 
 Then she went to sleep, there in the " quite 
 comfortable " chair, with her shoes unlaced but 
 still on her feet. " I had lost my other pair 
 somewhere along the route," she explains, " and 
 I didn't dare to take those off because I knew I 
 could never get them on again if I did." 
 
 There followed twenty days of this terrific 
 routine, steady work in the operating-room with 
 intervals of seven hours' " rest," with nowhere 
 to go to rest. " But the food got better almost 
 at once," she says, in explanation of her having 
 lived through it. "We couldn't have gotten 
 along on plum-cake, of course ! " 
 
 For nine of those twenty days, she never took 
 off her shoes at all, and the foot was frozen 
 there which now she drags a little in walking. 
 
 On March 23rd, a month after the battle of 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 83 
 
 Verdun had begun, the medecin-chef-inspecteur 
 came to Vadelaincourt, went through the usual 
 motions of stupefaction to find a woman doctor 
 there, decided — rather late — that it was no place 
 for a woman, and sent her to Chalons. For six 
 months thereafter, she was in the Somme, near 
 Ypres, working specially among the tubercular 
 soldiers, but also taking her full share of mili- 
 tary surgery. " Just the usual service at the 
 front, nothing of special interest," she says with 
 military brevity, baffling your interest, and leav- 
 ing you to find out from other sources that she 
 was wounded again in June of that year. 
 
 On the nth of October, 1916, a remarkable 
 and noteworthy event took place. For once a 
 Governmental action was taken with intelli- 
 gence. The Government, wishing to institute a 
 special course of training for military nurses at 
 the front, called to its organization and direc- 
 tion, not somebody's relation-in-law, not a poli- 
 tician's protegee, but the woman in France best 
 fitted to undertake the work. Such an action on 
 the part of any Government is worthy of note! 
 
 The hospital which had been built for charita- 
 
84 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 ble purposes on the Rue Desnouettes was loaned 
 to the Government. What was needed for its 
 head was some one who knew all about what 
 training was essential for nursing service at the 
 front. Any good military doctor could have 
 done this part. Also some one was needed who 
 knew all about what is the life of a woman at 
 the front. Any good nurse of military experi- 
 ence could have seen to this. Also there was 
 needed a person with experience in organization, 
 with the capacity to keep a big enterprise in 
 smooth and regular running. Any good business 
 man could have managed this. Furthermore 
 there was needed a person with magnetism who 
 could inspire the women passing through the 
 school with enthusiasm, with ardor, with devo- 
 tion — I needn't go on, I think. You must have 
 seen that only one person combined all these 
 qualifications, and she is the one now at the head 
 of the hospital-school. 
 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin received a call summon- 
 ing her back to that " work at the rear n which 
 is such a trial for those who have known the 
 glory of direct service at the front. 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 85 
 This meant drudgery for her, long hours of 
 attention to uninteresting but important details, 
 work with a very mixed class of intelligences — • 
 the women in her courses of study vary from 
 peasant girls to officers' widows; bending her 
 quick intelligence to cope with sloth and dull- 
 ness. It meant, worst of all and hardest of all, 
 living again in the midst of petty bickerings, 
 little personal jealousies, mean ambitions. Noth- 
 ing is more startling for those who " come back 
 from the front " than to find the world at the 
 rear still going on with its tiny quarrels and 
 disputes, still industriously raking in its muck- 
 heap. And nothing more eloquently paints our 
 average, ordinary life than the intense moral 
 depression which attends the return to it of those 
 who have for a time escaped from it to a 
 rougher, more dangerous, and more self-forget- 
 ful atmosphere. 
 
 For me, no part of Dr. Girard-Mangin's use- 
 fulness is more dramatic than the undramatic 
 phase of it in which she is now faithfully toil- 
 ing. Her coolness under fire, her steadiness 
 under overwhelming responsibilities, her aston- 
 
86 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 ishing physical endurance do not thrill me more 
 than this prompt, disciplined ability to take up 
 civilian life again and quiet, civilian duties. 
 
 She has organized the hospital ingeniously 
 along original lines, as a perfect reproduction 
 of what the nurses will encounter at the front: 
 a series of barracks, a ward to each shed, with 
 the nurse's little sleeping-cubicle at the end with 
 its rough but sufficient sanitary arrangements. 
 Another unit is given over to the operating- 
 room and its appendages, the sterilizing-room, 
 anesthetic-room, etc. Another is the administra- 
 tive building, and contains the offices of the 
 medecin-en-chcf, the head-nurse, the pharmacy, 
 the bacteriological laboratory. At one side are 
 very simple but wholesome sleeping quarters and 
 study-rooms for the fifty and more nurses who 
 pass through the school every three months. For 
 Dr. Girard-Mangin only takes them in hand 
 when they have already completed a course of 
 training in ordinary hospitals. Even then she 
 weeds out rigorously, in the middle of the short, 
 intensive, concentrated course, those who do not 
 show the necessary physical, mental, and moral 
 
FRANCE'S FIGHTING WOMAN DOCTOR 87 
 qualities to fit them for the grave responsibili- 
 ties they will have at the front, for nurses from 
 this hospital go out to direct and run the field 
 hospitals, not merely to be nurses there. 
 
 The work for the doctor at the head is a 
 " grind," nothing less, monotonous, like all teach- 
 ing—an ever-reiterated repetition of the same 
 thing — no glory, no change, no bright face of 
 danger. The clear brown eyes face it as coolly, 
 as undaunted, as they faced bursting shells, or 
 maddened soldiers. The clear-thinking brain 
 sees its vital importance to the country as well 
 as it saw the more picturesque need for stay- 
 ing with sick men under fire. The well-tempered 
 will keeps lassitude and fatigue at bay, keeps 
 the whole highly strung, highly developed or- 
 ganism patiently, steadily, enduringly at work 
 for France. 
 
 There, my fellow-citizens in America, there is 
 a citizen to envy, to imitate! 
 
LOURDES 
 
 From the Ends of the Earth they come — Old 
 and Young, the Lame and the Blind — to Ask for 
 the Blessing. 
 
 Afternoon. There was not a vacant place left 
 in the long line of waiting sick, so that at the 
 last, when a little, white-faced blind boy with 
 dreadful horny growths on his eyes, was handed 
 over the heads of the crowd, he seemed to have 
 come too late. 
 
 His mother's voice rose anxiously, in reiter- 
 ated piteous demands to the stretcher-carriers to 
 make a place for him, any place, where he could 
 receive the blessing, for it was the day of the 
 greatest pilgrimage of the year, when twenty-five 
 thousand people sang and prayed together for 
 the cure of the sick, when the Host was carried 
 in solemn procession to bless them, lying in long 
 lines up and down the broad esplanade. 
 
 89 
 
90 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 " Oh, for the love of God, find a place for 
 him ! " she implored, in so strained a voice of 
 entreaty that the crowd, dense as it was, gave 
 way a little and allowed her to press forward, 
 back of the wheeled chairs of the cripples. The 
 stretcher-carrier who had taken the child in his 
 arms hesitated, looking about him for a vacant 
 spot. He glanced at a wounded soldier, rigid 
 on his litter, his face as white as it would be in 
 his coffin; and then turned to a child stricken 
 with a disease of the bones which paralyzed his 
 legs and made of his hands only twisted, shape- 
 less stumps, but which still permitted him to sit 
 in one of the wheeled chairs. His little withered 
 body did not half fill it, and it was there beside 
 him that the attendant decided to put down the 
 blind boy. 
 
 His mother gave a long sigh of intense feel- 
 ing and between the closely packed bodies of 
 the crowd strained forward to be near him. 
 
 " I'm here, darling, I'm here," she said in a 
 voice of concentrated tenderness. 
 
 The blind boy turned his hanging head a little, 
 toward the sound of her voice and stretched 
 
LOURDES 91 
 
 back a thin, waxy-white hand. She managed to 
 touch it for an instant, but then said, " Not now, 
 darling. You mustn't turn back toward Mother. 
 You must join your hands and pray to be cured, 
 pray for the blessing. You must repeat what- 
 ever the priest says." 
 
 For at that moment the powerfully built, 
 bearded priest, with the eyes of fire and the 
 thrown-back head of born command, strode 
 down the center of the great open place and 
 stood looking intently about him at the lines of 
 the white-faced sick, and the immense throngs 
 of pilgrims back of them. He raised his hands 
 suddenly in a vivid gesture, and cried in a 
 trumpet-like voice, like a captain leading for- 
 ward a charge, " Brothers, pray ! Pray for our 
 sick. With all your soul, with all the strength 
 of your body and mind, pray God for our 
 sick!" 
 
 He paused a moment. Every eye was on him. 
 
 The blind boy held his face lowered meekly 
 as blind children often do, as sensitive children 
 who know themselves unsightly always do. His 
 thin, white neck was bent like that of a victim 
 
92 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 awaiting the blow, but he put his little pale 
 fingers together and, turning for a moment, tried 
 to show to his mother that they were in the atti- 
 tude of prayer. She whispered, " Yes, yes, 
 darling, that is right. But not toward me. 
 Toward where the blessing is coming, so that 
 you may be cured." 
 
 " Lord save us ! Lord God save us, for we 
 perish ! " prayed the priest in a loud clear voice 
 of exaltation; and after him all the multitude 
 cried it aloud, in a great murmur like the voice 
 of a forest, or of the sea. 
 
 The blind boy's lips moved with the rest, but 
 his little face was clouded and anxious. He 
 whispered to the crippled child beside him : 
 
 " Are you blind, too, or can you see ? " 
 
 " I can see," said the other, " but I have never 
 walked." 
 
 " Then you must show me where I must put 
 my hands so that they will be toward the bless- 
 ing," begged the blind child. 
 
 The other took the thin, transparent fingers 
 between his twisted stumps, and directed them 
 toward the priest, thrillingly upright, aspiring 
 
LOURDES 93 
 
 visibly toward the sky. " There, you must keep 
 them turned toward the priest now/' he said with 
 an accent of certainty. " Later on it will be 
 toward the procession as it moves along, and 
 then at the last toward the church." 
 
 " You must tell me when to change them," 
 said the blind boy. 
 
 He stretched out his joined hands farther in 
 the direction indicated by his companion and 
 repeated with the others, after the priest, his 
 little voice lost in the great upward rush of 
 the supplications of the thousands around 
 him, " Lord ! Lord ! Our sole trust is in 
 Thee!" 
 
 The priest's voice soared into a glorious note 
 ef song, in which the multitude joined, their 
 eyes on him, their faces solemn in expectation. 
 The priest sang a line, the multitude chanted a 
 response; the man's voice ran out again, yearn- 
 ing, beseeching, the voice of the multitude rose 
 thousand-fold in answer. The earth seemed to 
 shake in unison, the low-hanging, heavy gray 
 clouds to send back the sound. The chanting, 
 imploring, impassioned voice of the throng 
 
94 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 seemed more alive than its multitudinous bodies, 
 
 rapt into utter stillness. 
 
 "Is it thus that I should hold my hands ?" 
 whispered the blind boy after a time. 
 
 " No, now the procession has just come into 
 the other end of the square," said the crippled 
 child. With an effort he leaned, took the little 
 white fingers again, and pointed them another 
 way. 
 
 " So? " asked the blind child humbly. 
 
 " Yes, so/' answered the other. He tried to 
 put his own shapeless stumps together in the atti- 
 tude of prayer and began to sing with the pil- 
 grims now defiling before them in endless lines, 
 " Praise ! All praise to Thee ! Praise, all praise 
 to Thee, Lord God!" The pilgrims were pass- 
 ing by, now, in single file, each with his long 
 white taper, burning yellow in the gray light of 
 the gray day. Their voices were loud and per- 
 sonal, each one as he passed being heard for an 
 instant alone. " Glory ! Glory to Thee ! " they 
 all sang the propitiatory words together, over 
 and over, a hundred times repeated — the old 
 wrinkled peasants in their blouses; the elegant 
 
LOURDES 95 
 
 officers in their well-cut uniforms; the stout 
 elderly merchants; the thin, weedy boys; the 
 white-faced, shaven priests; the black men from 
 Senegal with bushy, woolly hair; the tall, fair- 
 haired man from England; the occasional sol- 
 dier on leave in his shapeless, faded, blue-gray 
 uniform. Above all their voices rose the silver 
 bugle-like call of the priest, burning, devouring 
 in its ardor, " Brothers ! Brothers ! with all your 
 souls, now. GLORY BE TO THEE! Oh, 
 Lord, save us, for we perish! Lord, our trust 
 is in Thee. Praised be Thy name ! " 
 
 With each clamorous exhortation, repeated 
 clamorously by all those imploring voices, he 
 lifted the multitude up another step toward the 
 great moment of awe and faith. The tears 
 were streaming down the faces of many of the 
 women in the crowd. The little boy's mother 
 sobbed loudly, and prayed with all her might. 
 
 The march past of the innumerable men, the 
 incessant flickering passage of their pale-yellow 
 lights, the never-ending procession of their pale, 
 anxious faces, became an obsession. It seemed 
 that every one, everywhere in the world, was 
 
96 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 marching together, singing and praying, hoping 
 against hope for a miracle. 
 
 "Isn't it time to change my hands?" asked 
 the little blind boy desperately. " I have 
 heard so many people pass. I am very, very 
 tired." 
 
 " No, it is not yet time to change," said 
 the other, leaning forward to look down the 
 esplanade. " The procession with the Host goes 
 very slowly because it stops before each sick per- 
 son. They are not near yet." 
 
 " My hands are very tired," murmured the 
 little blind boy, faintly. But he held his hands 
 out still, praying with the others, as the priest 
 directed them. " Lord help us, for we perish. 
 Lord! Thou alone canst save us! Lord, say but 
 one word and we are healed. Lord, say but 
 one word. But one word, oh, Lord! 
 
 He held his strengthless hands out as he was 
 told, groping helplessly for the blessing he so 
 sorely needed; his blind eyes turned docilely in 
 the direction indicated to him; he repeated 
 meekly in his feeble little voice whatever words' 
 he was told to say — and all around him thou- 
 
LOURDES 97 
 
 sands and thousands of other helpless, docile, 
 suffering human beings in similar plight, did the 
 same, desperately, their faces groping up toward 
 the sky, their joined hands imploring, " Lord 
 save us, or we perish ! " 
 
 The pilgrims filed past continually, their eyes 
 staringly fixed on the feeble light of their tapers, 
 their voices torn out of their bodies by the ever- 
 deepening fervor and hope of the shouted, 
 passionate commands of the priest, calling, 
 " Brothers ! With all your soul pray for our 
 sick! Lord, say but one word and they are 
 healed ! But one word, oh, Lord ! " 
 
 " The blessing is very long in coming," fal- 
 tered the blind boy timidly, his face even whiter 
 than at the beginning, his lips blue. 
 
 The pilgrims passed constantly, the heavy 
 tramp of their feet shaking the chair on which 
 sat the little paralyzed boy and the blind child, 
 their hands outstretched. The men's voices were 
 hoarse and deep now, trembling with fatigue 
 and emotion. 
 
 The perspiration streamed down the face of 
 the priest as in piercing tones he exhorted the 
 
98 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 multitudes, " Brothers, with all your soul, pray ! 
 Tray!" 
 
 Presently, because he was a weak, sick little 
 child, and because the blessing was so long in 
 coming, the little blind boy fell asleep, his head 
 on the shoulder of the paralyzed child. 
 
 Then all the care and anxiety and humiliation 
 and sorrow left his little white face. It was per- 
 fect in a perfect peace. 
 
 The blessing had come. 
 
 Evening. 
 
 Scattered all over the vast stretch of the 
 esplanade, thousands of little lights flickered and 
 moved about in the rainy darkness, all that could 
 be seen of the immense multitude gathering for 
 the evening procession. The top of the great, 
 horseshoe-shaped, marble, inclined plane up 
 which they were later to defile, was so high 
 above the ground that not a sound reached there 
 of all those human voices talking together in the 
 dark, calling to each other, as people tried to find 
 their friends in the obscurity, and to form 
 groups that they might march together. The 
 
LOURDES 99 
 
 little lights they held were only slightly sheltered 
 from the gusts of wind-driven rain by cheap 
 paper shades and they flickered and flared up, 
 and many were extinguished. Although many 
 went out and were lighted again only once more 
 to have the wind puff them into blackness, the 
 number of lighted ones grew fabulously as the 
 crowd assembled. The little yellow spots of life 
 spread further and further, till around the foot 
 of the huge inclined plane was an ocean of lights, 
 heaving formlessly, with a futile, aimless mo- 
 tion like the sea, humanity lost in the darkness. 
 
 Then a faint murmur came up through the 
 rain and darkness. Speaking voices are not 
 heard far, but voices raised in song have wings. 
 The crowd was beginning to sing. 
 
 It was also beginning to take shape. From 
 the foot of the inclined plane out into the black 
 esplanade, streamed two long files of light, pur- 
 poseful, with the sharp, forward-piercing line of 
 the arrow. The procession was beginning to 
 form. 
 
 The murmur rose into a chant as the crowd, 
 hearing the first notes, took it up, singing as they 
 
ioo THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 fell into line. The first of the lights advanced 
 up the ascent toward the top, which was blazing 
 with light from the illuminated front of the lofty- 
 church. Far, far behind, stretching twice 
 around the immense esplanade and disappearing 
 into the distant blackness of the endless avenue, 
 the flickering lights were now in two lines, mov- 
 ing forward steadily. 
 
 The sound of voices grew louder, the advanc- 
 ing files were visible now, masses intensely black 
 against the night. 
 
 The wind roared, the rain beat down. The 
 voices suddenly rang out clear and vibrant, high 
 above the confused roar of the singing multi- 
 tudes below. 
 
 Then the glimmering blur of the faces in the 
 reflected light of the candles shone through the 
 rain; each dim figure, in a momentary trans- 
 figuration, was resplendent in the flare of light 
 from the church, the voices shouted loud and 
 strong, drowning out in their instant's glory of 
 individual life the hoarse chant of the vast crowd 
 below. Then each figure passed forward out of 
 the light and began to descend the inclined plane 
 
LOURDES 101 
 
 on the other side, going singing down into the 
 blackness. 
 
 There were so many singing now that, al- 
 though they all sang the same chant over and 
 over, a chant in which recurs constantly the 
 acclaiming shout of " Hail ! Hail ! " they were 
 not singing in tune together nor even in time, 
 nor even often the same words at the same time. 
 
 As the groups passed, each one was singing in 
 its own fashion on a different key from those 
 gone before and those following them. When 
 this was too apparent, they sometimes stopped, 
 listened, caught the note from the pilgrims near- 
 est to them, and burst out again, this time in 
 harmony. But for the most part they listened 
 only to their own voices and to those of their 
 friends, and sang lustily in a hearty discordance. 
 — and so vast was the throng and so simple 
 the joyful air they chanted, that from that 
 monstrous discordance rose a strange and won- 
 derful harmony like no other music in the world, 
 with a deep pulsation longer than that of any 
 other music, beating time, beating true. 
 
 They passed, shouting out loudly the confident 
 
102 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 words of their song; the young faces often 
 laughing gaily in the shaking light of their 
 candles, stopping to light the blown-out flames at 
 the candles of their friends; the older people 
 tramping forward resolutely, singing, often not 
 noting that their one light had been blown out 
 and that they were walking in darkness — no, not 
 walking in darkness, because of the infinite num- 
 ber of lights about them, carried by their fel- 
 lows; the young girls' eyes glistening through 
 the rain as they gazed upward toward the circle 
 of white light at the top of the ascent; the old 
 men's eyes turned downward on the darkness to 
 which they would descend; the occasional priest- 
 leader beating time, marshaling the lines; the 
 occasional children holding to their parents' 
 hands, their eyes blank and trustful, fixed on 
 their candles, their pure lips incessantly shaping 
 the joyful acclaiming shout of " Hail ! Hail ! " 
 
 Sometimes a group lagged behind, either be- 
 cause of the carelessness of the young people 
 in it, or the fatigue of the old people, and there 
 was almost a break in the line of lights. But 
 always as they approached the moment of trans- 
 
LOURDES 103 
 
 figuration, the ones who were behind hurried 
 forward shufflingly to keep the line intact. The 
 line was always intact. 
 
 The rain beat down on them, but they sang 
 loudly and joyously, rejoicing in singing to- 
 gether; the wind tore at their garments and 
 puffed at their frail, unprotected lights. Many 
 went out. But there were always enough lights 
 left in each group to light those of the others — 
 if they wished. 
 
 Last of all I saw a strong young man whose 
 light had been extinguished, holding out his life- 
 less candle to that of an old, poor, bent woman 
 who, patiently, patiently, offered him her tiny, 
 living flame. 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 
 
 {Near Chateau-Thierry, July, ip 18) 
 
 They were detraining in dense brown crowds at 
 what had been the station before German guns 
 had knocked it into a shapeless heap of tumbled 
 bricks; they were pouring in on foot along the 
 road from the west; and when I made my way 
 along the main street to the river, I found an- 
 other khaki-clad line leaving the little town, 
 marching heavily, unrhythmically and strongly 
 out across the narrow, temporary wooden 
 bridge, laid hastily across the massive stone 
 pillars which were all that remained of the 
 old bridge. 
 
 An old, white-capped woman, who had been 
 one of my neighbors in the days before the lit- 
 tle town had known German guns or American 
 soldiers, called out to me : " Oh, Madame ! See 
 them! Isn't it wonderful! Just look at them! 
 
 105 
 
106 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 All day like that, all night like that. Are there 
 any people left in America? And are all your 
 people so big, so fine ? " 
 
 "Where are they going?" I asked her, tak- 
 ing refuge for a moment in her doorway. 
 
 " To the front directly, the poor boys. They'll 
 be fighting in two hours — do you hear the big 
 guns off there banging away ? And they so good, 
 like nice big boys ! Their poor mothers ! " 
 
 I addressed myself in English to a soldier loi- 
 tering near, watching the troops pass, " So they 
 are going to the front, these boys?" After a 
 stare of intense surprise, a broad smile broke over 
 his face. He came closer. " No, ma'am," he 
 said, looking at me hard. " No, these are the 
 Alabama boys just coming back from the front. 
 They've been fighting steady for five days." He 
 added : " My, it seems good to talk to an Ameri- 
 can woman. I haven't seen one for four 
 months ! " 
 
 "Where are you from?" I asked him. 
 
 " Just from the Champagne front, with the 
 Third Division. Two of our regiments out 
 there were — " He began pouring out exact, de- 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 107 
 tailed military information which I would not 
 have dreamed of asking him. The simple-hearted 
 open confidence of the American soldier was 
 startling and alarming to one who had for long 
 breathed the thick air of universal suspicion. I 
 stopped his fluent statement of which was his 
 regiment, where they had been, what their losses 
 had been, where they were going. " No, no, I 
 mean where are you from in the States?" I 
 raised my voice to make myself heard above the 
 sudden thunder of a convoy of munition-camions 
 passing by and filling the narrow street from side 
 to side. 
 
 " Oh, from Kansas City, Missouri. It's just 
 eight months and seven days since I last saw the 
 old town." (Thus does a mother count the very 
 days of the little new life of her child.) 
 
 " And how do you like France ? " 
 
 " Oh, it's all right, I guess. The climate's not 
 so bad. And the towns would be well enough if 
 they'd clean up their manure-piles better." 
 
 " And the people, how do you get on with 
 them?" 
 
 The camions had passed and the street was 
 
108 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 again filled with American infantry, trudging for- 
 ward with an air of resolute endurance. 
 
 " Well enough, they don't cheat you. I forgot 
 and left a fifty-franc bill lying on the table of a 
 house where I'd bought some eggs, and the next 
 morning the woman sent her little girl over to 
 camp to give it back. Real poor-appearing folk 
 they were, too. But I've had enough. I want 
 to get home. Uncle Sam's good enough for me. 
 I want to hurry up and win the war and beat it 
 back to God's country." 
 
 He fell away before the sudden assault on me 
 of an old, old man and his old wife, with the 
 dirt, the hunted look, the crumpled clothes, the 
 desperate eyes of refugees : " Madame, Madame, 
 help us ! We cannot make them understand, the 
 Americans! We want to go back to Villers-le- 
 Petit. We want to see what is left of our house 
 and garden. We want to start in to repair the 
 house — and our potatoes must be dug." 
 
 I had passed that morning through what was 
 left of their village. For a moment I saw their 
 old, tired, anxious faces dimly as though across 
 the long stretch of shattered heaps of masonry. 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 109 
 I answered evasively, " But you know they are 
 not allowing civilian population to go back as 
 yet. All this region is still shelled. It's far too 
 dangerous." 
 
 They gave together an exclamation of impa- 
 tience as though over the futilities of children's 
 talk. " But, Madame, if we do not care about 
 the danger. We never cared! We would not 
 have left, ever, if the soldiers had not taken us 
 away in camions — our garden and vineyard just 
 at the time when they needed attention every 
 hour. Well, we will not wait for permission; 
 we will go back anyhow. The American sol- 
 diers are not bad, are they, Madame? They 
 would surely not fire on an old man and his 
 wife going back to their homes? If Madame 
 would only write on a piece of paper that we 
 only want to go back to our home to take care 
 
 of it—." 
 
 Their quavering old voices came to me indis- 
 tinctly through the steady thudding advance of 
 all those feet, come from so far, on so great, 
 so high, so perilous a mission ; come so far, many 
 of them, to meet death more than half-way — 
 
no THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 the poor, old, cramped people before me, blind 
 and deaf to the immensity of the earthquake, 
 seeing nothing but that the comfort of their own 
 lives was in danger. I had a nervous revulsion 
 of feeling and broke the news to them more 
 abruptly than I would have thought possible a 
 moment before. "There is nothing left to Vil- 
 lers-de-Petit. There is nothing left to go back 
 to." 
 
 Well, they were not so cramped, so blind, so 
 small, my poor old people. They took the news 
 standing, and after the first clutch at each other's 
 wrinkled hands, after the first paling of their 
 already ashy faces, they did not flinch. 
 
 " But the crops, Madame. The vineyards. Are 
 they all gone, too ? " 
 
 " No, very little damage done there. Every- 
 thing was kept, of course, intact for camouflage, 
 and the retreat was so rapid there was not enough 
 time for destruction." 
 
 "Then we will still go back, Madame. We 
 have brought the things for spraying the vine- 
 yards as far as here. Surely we can get them 
 to Villers-de-Petit, it is so near now. We can 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS in 
 
 sleep on the ground, anywhere. In another week, 
 you see, Madame, it will be too late to spray. 
 We have enough for ours and our neighbors, 
 too. We can save them if we go now. If Ma- 
 dame would only write on a piece of paper in 
 their language that — " 
 
 So I did it. I tore a fly-leaf out of a book 
 lying in the heap of rubbish before the ruins of 
 a bombarded house (it was a treatise on Bach's 
 chorales by the French organist Widor!) and 
 wrote, " These are two brave old people, inhabi- 
 tants of Villers-de-Petit, who wish to go back 
 there to work under shell-fire to save what they 
 can of their own and their neighbors' crops. 
 Theirs is the spirit that is keeping France alive." 
 
 " It probably won't do you a bit of good," I 
 said, " but there it is for what it is worth." 
 
 " Oh, once the American soldiers know what 
 we want, they will let us pass, we know." They 
 went off trustfully, holding my foolish " pass " 
 in their hands. 
 
 I turned from them to find another young 
 American soldier standing near me. "How do 
 you do ? " I said, smiling at him. 
 
H2 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 He gave a great start of amazement at the 
 sound of my American accent. " Well, how do 
 you like being in France ? " I asked him. 
 
 " Gee ! Are you really an American woman ? " 
 he said incredulously, his young face lighting up 
 as though he saw a member of his own family. 
 (t I haven't talked to one in so long! Why yes, 
 I like France fine. It's the loveliest country to 
 look at, isn't it ? I didn't know any country could 
 be kept up so, like a garden. How do they do 
 it without any men left? They must be awfully 
 fine people. I wish I could talk to them some." 
 
 " Who are these soldiers going through to- 
 day?" I asked. "Are they going out to the 
 front line trenches, or coming back? I've been 
 told both things." 
 
 He answered with perfect certainty and pre- 
 cision : " Neither. They are Second Division 
 troops, from Ohio mostly, just out of their 
 French training-camp, going up to hold the re- 
 serve line. They never have been in action yet." 
 
 Our attention was distracted to the inside of 
 a fruit-shop across the street, a group of Amer- 
 ican soldiers struggling with the sign-language, 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 113 
 a flushed, tired, distracted woman shopkeeper 
 volubly unable to conceive that men with all their 
 senses could not understand her native tongue. 
 I went across to interpret. One of the soldiers 
 in a strong Southern accent said, " Oh golly, 
 yes, if you would do the talkin' fo' us. We 
 cyan't make out whetheh we've paid heh or not, 
 and we wondeh if she'd 'low us to sit heah and 
 eat ouh fruit." 
 
 From the Frenchwoman, " Oh, Madame, please 
 what is it they want now? I have shown them 
 everything in sight. How strange that they can't 
 understand the simplest language ! " 
 
 The little misunderstanding was soon cleared 
 away. I lingered by the counter. " How do you 
 like our American troops, Madame ? " I asked. 
 " Very well, very much indeed, if only they could 
 talk. They don't do any harm. They are good 
 to the children. They are certainly as brave as 
 men can be. But there is one thing about them 
 I don't understand. They overpay you, often, 
 more than you ask — won't take change — and yet 
 if you leave things open, as we always do, in 
 front of the shop, they just put their hands in 
 
ii 4 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 and steal as they go by. I have lost a great deal 
 in that way. If they have so much money, why 
 do they steal?" 
 
 I contemplated making, and gave it up as too 
 difficult, a short disquisition on the peculiarities 
 of the American orchard-robbing tradition with 
 its ramifications, and instead sat down at the 
 table with the Americans, who gave me the greet- 
 ing always repeated, " Great Scott ! it's good to 
 talk to an American woman ! " 
 
 A fresh-faced, splendidly built lad, looked up 
 from the first bite of his melon, crying: "Yes 
 suh, a cantaloupe, a' honest-to-the-Lawd canta- 
 loupe! I neveh thought they'd heahd of such a 
 thing in France." 
 
 They explained to me, all talking at once, 
 pouring out unasked miltary information till my 
 hair rose up scandalized, that this was their first 
 experience with semi-normal civilian life in France 
 because they belonged to the troops from Geor- 
 gia, volunteers, that they had been in the front- 
 line trenches at exactly such a place for precisely 
 so many weeks where such and such things hap- 
 pened, and before that at such another place,. 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 115 
 where they were so many strong, etc., etc. 
 
 " So we neveh saw real sto's to buy things till 
 we struck this town. And when I saw a canta- 
 loupe I mighty nigh dropped daid ! I don't reck- 
 on I'm likely to run into a watermelon, am I? 
 I suahly would have to be ca'ied back to camp 
 on a stretcheh if I did ! " He laughed out, a boy's 
 cfoudless laughter. " But say, what do you-all 
 think? I paid fo'ty-five cents for this slice, yes, 
 ma'am, fo'ty-five cents for a slice, and back home 
 in Geo'gia you pay a nickel for the biggest one 
 in the sto' ! " He buried his face in the yellow 
 fruit. 
 
 The house began to shake to the ponderous 
 passage of artillery. The boys in khaki turned 
 their stag-like heads toward the street, glanced 
 at the motley-colored, mule-drawn guns and pro- 
 nounced expertly, "The 43rd, Heavy Artillery, 
 going out to Nolepieds, the fellows from Illi- 
 nois. They've just been up in the Verdun sector 
 and are coming down to reinforce the 102nd." 
 
 For the first time the idea crossed my head 
 that possibly their mania for pouring out mili- 
 tary information to the first comer might not be 
 
n6 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 so fatal to necessary secrecy as it seemed. I 
 rather pitied the spy who might attempt to make 
 coherent profit out of their candor. " How do 
 you like being in France? " I asked the boy who 
 was devouring the melon. 
 
 He looked up, his eyes kindling, " Well, I was 
 plumb crazy to get heah and now I'm heah I 
 like it mo' even than I 'lowed I would." I looked 
 at his fresh, unlined boy's cheeks, his clear, bright 
 boy's eyes, and felt a great wave of pity. " You 
 haven't been in active service yet," I surmised. 
 
 Unconsciously, gayly, he flung my pity back in 
 my face, " You bet yo' life I have. We've just 
 come from the Champagne front, and the sehvice 
 we saw theah was suah active, how about it, 
 boys?" 
 
 They all burst out again in rapid, high-keyed, 
 excited voices, longing above everything else for 
 a listener, leaning forward over the table toward 
 me, their healthy faces flushed with their ardor, 
 talking hurriedly because there was so much to 
 say, their tense young voices a staccato clatter of 
 words which brought to me in jerks, horribly 
 familiar war-pictures, barrage-fires meeting, ad- 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 117 
 vancing over dead comrades, hideous hand-to- 
 hand combats — all chanted in those eager young 
 voices. 
 
 I felt the heavy pain at the back of the head 
 which presages a wave of mortal war-sickness. 
 
 In a pause, I asked, perhaps rather faintly, 
 " And you like it? You are not ever homesick? " 
 
 The boy with the melon spoke for them all. 
 He stretched out his long arms, his hands clenched 
 to knotty masses of muscles; he set his jaw, 
 his blue eyes were like steel, his beautiful young 
 face was all aflame. "Oh, you just get to love 
 it ! " he cried, shaking with the intensity of his 
 feeling. " You just love it! Why, I neveh want 
 to go home! I want to stay over heah and go 
 right on killin' Boches all my life ! " 
 
 At this I felt sicker, stricken with the col- 
 lective remorse over the war which belongs to 
 the older generation. I said good-by to them 
 and left them to their child-like ecstasy over their 
 peaches and melons. 
 
 The artillery had passed. The street was again 
 solidly filled with dusty, heavily laden young 
 men in khaki, tramping silently and resolutely 
 
n8 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 forward, their brown steel casques, shaped like 
 antique Greek shepherd hats, giving to their 
 rounded young faces a curious air of classic 
 rusticity. 
 
 An older man, with a stern, rough, plain face 
 stood near me. "How do you do?" I asked. 
 " Can you tell me which troops these are and 
 where they are going? " I wondered what con- 
 fident and uninformed answer I would receive 
 this time. 
 
 Showing no surprise at my speech, he answered, 
 " I don't know who they be. You don't never 
 know anything but your own regiment. The 
 kids always think they do. They'll tell you this 
 and they'll tell you that, but the truth is we don't 
 know no more than Ann — not even where we are 
 ourselves, nor where we're going, most of the 
 time." 
 
 His accent made me say: "I wonder if you 
 are not from my part of the country. I live 
 in Vermont, when I'm at home." 
 
 " I'm from Maine," he said soberly, " a farmer, 
 over draft age of course. But it looked to me 
 like a kind o' mean trick to make the boys do it 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 119 
 all for us, so I come along, too." He added,* 
 as if in partial explanation, " One of my uncles 
 was with John Brown at Harper's Ferry." 
 
 "How do you like it, now you're here?" I 
 asked. 
 
 He looked at me heavily. " Like it ? It's 
 hell!" he said. 
 
 " Have you been in active service ? " I used 
 my usual cowardly evasive phrase. 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, I've killed some of 'em," he 
 answered me with brutal, courageous directness. 
 He looked down at his hands as he spoke, big, 
 calloused farmer's hands, crooked by holding the 
 plough-handles. As plainly as he saw it there, 
 I saw the blood on them, too. His stern, dark, 
 middle-aged face glowered, down solemnly on- 
 those strong farmer's hands. " It's dirty work, 
 but it's got to be done," he said, gravely, " and 
 I ain't a-going to dodge my share of it." 
 
 A very dark-eyed, gracefully-built young sol- 
 dier came loitering by now, and stopped near 
 us, ostensibly to look at the passing troops, but 
 evidently in order to share in the phenomenon 
 of a talk in English with an American woman. 
 
iao THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 I took him into the conversation with the usual 
 query, " How do you do, and how do you like 
 being in France ? " 
 
 He answered with a strong Italian accent, and 
 I dived into a dusty mental corner to bring out 
 my half-forgotten Italian. In a moment we were 
 talking like old friends. He had been born in 
 Italy, yes, but brought up in Waterbury, Connec- 
 ticut. His grandfather had been one of Gari- 
 baldi's Thousand, so of course he had joined the 
 American army and come to France among the 
 first. 
 
 "Well, there are more than a Thousand of 
 you this time," I said, looking at the endless 
 procession defiling before us. 
 
 " Si, signora, but it is a part of the same war. 
 We are here to go on with what the Thousand 
 began." 
 
 Yes, that was true, John Brown's soul and 
 Garibaldi's, and those of how many other fierce 
 old fighting lovers of freedom were marching on 
 there before my eyes, carried like invisible ban- 
 ners by all those strong young arms. 
 
 An elderly woman in well-brushed dowdy 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 121 
 black came down the street toward us, an ex- 
 pression of care on her face. When she saw me 
 she said, " Well, I've found you. They said 
 you were in town today. Won't you come back 
 to the house with me ? Something important. I'm 
 terribly troubled with some American officers — 
 oh, the war ! " 
 
 I went, apprehensive of trouble, and found her 
 house (save for a total absence of window-glass) 
 in its customary speckless and shining order. She 
 took me upstairs to what had been a bedroom 
 and was now an office in the Quartermaster's 
 department. It was filled with packing-case im- 
 provised desks and with serious-faced, youngish 
 American officers who, in their astonishment at 
 seeing me, forgot to take their long black cigars 
 out of their mouths. 
 
 " There ! " said the woman-with-a-grievance, 
 pointing to the floor. " Just look at that. Just 
 look! I tell them and I tell them, not to put their 
 horrid boxes on the floor but to keep them on 
 the linoleum, but they are so stupid, they can't 
 understand language that any child could take 
 in! And they drag those boxes just full of nails 
 
122 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 all over the floor. I'm sick of them and their 
 scratches ! " 
 
 A big gun boomed solemnly off on the hori- 
 zon as accompaniment to this speech. 
 
 I explained in a neutral tone to the officers 
 looking expectantly at me, what was at issue. 
 I made no comment. None was needed evidently, 
 for they said with a gravity which I found lova- 
 ble that they would endeavor to be more careful 
 about the floor, that indeed they had not under- 
 stood what their landlady had been trying to tell 
 them. I gave her their assurance and she went 
 away satisfied. 
 
 As the door closed on her, they broke into 
 broad grins and pungent exclamations. " Well, 
 how about that ! Wouldn't that get you ? With 
 the town bombarded every night, to think the old 
 lady was working herself up to a froth about her 
 floor- varnish ! And we thinking that every 
 French person is breaking his heart over the 
 invaded regions ! " 
 
 One of them said, " I never thought of it be- 
 fore, but I bet you my Aunt Selina would do 
 just that! I just bet if her town was bombarded 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 123 
 she'd go right on shooing the flies out of her 
 kitchen and mopping up her pantry floor with 
 skim-milk. Why, the French are just like any- 
 body, aren't they ? Just like our own folks ! " 
 
 " They are," I assured him, " so exactly like 
 our own folks, like everybody's own folks that 
 it's quite impossible to tell the difference." 
 
 When I went away, the owner of the house 
 was sweeping the garden-path clear of broken- 
 glass. " This bombardment is such a nuisance ! " 
 she said disapprovingly. " I'd like to know what 
 the place would be like if I didn't stay to look 
 after it." 
 
 I looked at her enviously, securely shut away 
 as she was by the rigid littleness of her outlook 
 from any blighting comprehension of what was 
 going on about her. But then, I reflected, there 
 are instants when the comprehension of what is 
 going on is not blighting. No, on the whole I 
 did not envy her. 
 
 Outside the gate I fell in at once with a group 
 of American soldiers. It was impossible to take 
 a step in any direction in the town without doing 
 this. After the invariable expressions of surprise 
 
i2 4 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 and pleasure over seeing an American woman, 
 came the invariable burst of eager narration of 
 where they had been and what had been hap- 
 pening to them. They seemed to me touchingly 
 like children, who have had an absorbing, exciting 
 adventure and must tumble it all out to the first 
 person they meet. Their haste, their speaking all 
 at once, gave me only an incoherent idea of what 
 they wished to say. I caught odd phrases, dis- 
 connected sentences, glimpses through pin-holes. 
 
 " One of the fellows, a conscript, that came 
 to fill a vacant place in our lines, he was only 
 over in France two weeks, and it was his first 
 time in a trench. He landed there at six o'clock 
 in the evening, and just like I'm telling you, at 
 a quarter past six a shell up and exploded and 
 buried him right where he stood. Yes, ma'am, 
 you certainly do see some very peculiar things 
 in this war." 
 
 From another, " We took the whole lot of 'em 
 prisoners, and passed 'em back to the rear, but 
 out of the fifteen we took, eight died of sud- 
 den heart-disease before they got back to the 
 prisoners' camp." (I tried not to believe this, 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 125 
 
 but the fact that it was told with a laugh and 
 received with a laugh reminded me gruesomely 
 that we are the nation that permits lynching of 
 helpless men by the mob.) 
 
 From another, " Some of the fellows say they 
 think about the Lusitania when they go after the 
 Boche. I don't have to come down as far as 
 that. Belgium's plenty good enough a whet- 
 stone for my bayonet." (This reminded me with 
 a thrill that we are the nation that has always 
 ultimately risen in defense of the defenseless.) 
 
 From another, " One of our own darkies went 
 up to one of these here Senegalese and began 
 talking United States to him. Of course the 
 other darkey talked back in French, and ours 
 said, ' Why, you pore thing ! You be'n over 
 heah so long you dun forgot yo' motheh- 
 tongue ! ' " 
 
 From another, " Oh, I can't stand the French ! 
 They make me tired ! And their jabber ! I seen 
 some of 'em talk it so fast they couldn't even 
 understand each other! Honest, I did." 
 
 From another, "There's something that sort 
 of takes me about the life over here. I'm not 
 
126 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 going to be in any hurry to go back to the States 
 and hustle my head off, after the war's over." 
 
 From another, " Not for mine. Me for Chi- 
 cago the day after the Bodies are licked." 
 
 They were swept away by a counter-current 
 somewhere in the khaki ebb and flow about us, 
 and I found myself with a start next to a poilu, 
 yes a real poilu with a faded horizon-blue uni- 
 form and a domed, battered, blue French casque, 
 such a poilu as had filled the town when I had 
 lived there. 
 
 " Well/' I said to him, " things have changed 
 here. The town's khaki now." He looked at 
 me out of bright brown eyes, smiled, and entered 
 into conversation. We talked, of course, of the 
 American soldier, one of whom came up and 
 stood at my elbow. When I stopped to speak 
 to him, " Gee ! " he said, " I wish I could rip 
 it off like that. I can say ' combien ' and ' trop 
 cher,' but there I stick. Say, what does the 
 Frenchman say about us? Now, since that little 
 Belleau-wood business I guess they see we know 
 a thing or two ourselves about how to run a 
 war! They're all right, of course; mighty fine 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 127 
 soldiers, but Lord! you'd know by the way any 
 one of them does business, as if he's all day for 
 it, that they couldn't run a war fast, the way it 
 ought to be run, the way we're going to run it, 
 now we're here." 
 
 I did not think it necessary to translate all of 
 this to the bright-eyed little Frenchman on my 
 other side, who began to talk as the American 
 stopped. " You asked my opinion of the Ameri- 
 can troops, Madame. I will give it to you frankly. 
 The first who came over, your regular army, the 
 mercenaries, made a very bad impression indeed. 
 All who have come since have made the best 
 possible impression. They are really astonishingly 
 courageous, and there could be no better, or more 
 cordial comrades in the world. But oh ! Madame, 
 as far as they really know how to make modern 
 war, they are children, just children ! They make 
 the mistakes we made four years ago. They have 
 so much to learn of the technique of war, and 
 they will lose so many men in learning it ! It is 
 sad to think of!" 
 
 I did not think it necessary to translate all this 
 to the American who now shook hands with both 
 
128 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 of us and turned away. The Frenchman, too, 
 after a look at the clock in the church-tower, 
 made his compliments, saluted, and disappeared. 
 
 I walked forward and, coming to the church 
 door, stepped inside. It was as though I had 
 stepped into another world. I had found the only 
 place in town where there were no soldiers. The 
 great, gray, dim, vaulted interior was empty. 
 
 After the beat of the marching feet outside, 
 after the shuffling to and fro of the innumera- 
 ble men quartered in town, after the noisy shops 
 crowded with khaki uniforms, after the incessant 
 thunderous passage of the artillery and munitions- 
 camions — the long, hushed quiet of the empty 
 church rang loud in my ears. I wondered for 
 just an instant if there could be any military reg- 
 ulation, forbidding our soldiers to enter the 
 church ; and even as I wondered, the door opened 
 and a boy in khaki stepped in — one out of all 
 those hordes. He crossed himself, took a rosary 
 out of his pocket, knelt, and began his prayers. 
 
 Thirty-thousand soldiers were in that town that 
 day. Whatever else we are, I reflected, we are 
 not a people of mystics. 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 129 
 But then I remembered the American soldier 
 who had said that Belgium was a good enough 
 whetstone for his bayonet. I remembered the 
 rough, gloomy farmer who did not want to shirk 
 his share of the world's dirty work. Perhaps 
 there are various kinds of mystics. 
 
 Once outside the church I turned to look up 
 Madame Larconneur, the valiant market-gardener 
 who had been one of my neighbors, a tired young 
 war-widow, with two little children, whom I had 
 watched toiling early and late, day and night, 
 to keep intact the little property left her by her 
 dead soldier husband. I had watched her, draw- 
 ing from the soil of her big garden, wet quite 
 laterally by her sweat, the livelihood for her 
 fatherless little girls. I wondered what the bom- 
 bardment of the town had done to her and her 
 small, priceless home. 
 
 I found the street, I found the other houses 
 there, but where her little, painfully, well-kept 
 house had stood was a heap of stones and rub- 
 ble, and in the place of her long, carefully tended 
 rows of beans and cabbages and potatoes, were 
 shell-holes where the chalky barren subsoil 
 
i 3 o THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 streaked the surface, and where the fertile black 
 earth, fruit of years of labor, was irrevocably 
 buried out of sight. Before all this, in her poor, 
 neat black, stood the war-widow with her chil- 
 dren. 
 
 I sprang forward, horrified, the tears on my 
 cheeks. " Oh, Madame Larconneur, how awful! 
 How awful!" I cried, putting out both hands 
 to her. 
 
 She turned a white, quiet face on me and 
 smiled, a smile that made me feel infinitely hum- 
 ble. " My little girls are not hurt," she said, 
 drawing them to her, " and as for all this — why, 
 if it is a part of getting other people's homes 
 restored to them — her gesture said that the price 
 was not too high. 
 
 The look in her sunken eyes took me for an 
 instant up into a very high place of courage and 
 steadfastness. For the first time that day, the 
 knot in my throat stopped aching. I was proud 
 to have her put her work-deformed hands in 
 mine and to feel on my cheeks her sister's kiss. 
 
 It steadied me somewhat during the difficult 
 next hour, when in the falling twilight I walked 
 
SOME CONFUSED IMPRESSIONS 13T 
 
 up and down between the long rows of raw earth, 
 with the innumerable crosses, each with its new, 
 bright American flag, fluttering in the sweet coun- 
 try air. I needed to recall that selfless courage, 
 for my heart was breaking with sorrow, with 
 guilt-consciousness, with protest, as I stood there, 
 thinking of our own little son, of the mothers 
 of the boys who lay there. 
 
 A squad of soldiers were preparing graves 
 for the next day. As they dug in the old, old 
 soil of the cemetery to make a place for the new 
 flesh come from so far to lie there forever, a 
 strong odor of corruption and decay came up in 
 puffs and drifted away down toward the little 
 town lying below us, in its lovely green setting, 
 still shaking rhythmically to the ponderous pas- 
 sage of the guns, of the troops, of the camions. 
 
 At one side were a few recent German graves, 
 marked with black crosses and others, marked 
 with stones, dating from the war of 1870, that 
 other nightmare when all this smiling country- 
 side was blood-soaked — and how many times be- 
 fore that ! 
 
 Above me, dominating the cemetery, stood a 
 
132 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 great monument of white marble, holding up to 
 all those graves the ironic inscription, " Love ye 
 one another." 
 
 The twilight fell more and more deeply, and 
 became darkness. The dull, steady surge of the 
 advancing troops grew louder. Night had come, 
 night no longer used for rest after labor in the 
 sunlight, night which must be used to hurry troops 
 and more troops forward over roads shelled by 
 day. 
 
 They passed by hundreds, by thousands, an 
 endless, endless procession — horses, mules, cam- 
 ions, artillery, infantry, cavalry; obscure shadowy 
 forms no longer in uniform, no longer from 
 Illinois, or Georgia or Vermont, no longer even 
 American; only human — young men, crowned 
 with the splendor of their strength, going out 
 gloriously through the darkness to sacrifice. 
 
" IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE 
 HERE DEDICATED " 
 
 <e It is rather for us to be here dedicated .... n 
 
 Out in the wheat-field, golden under a golden 
 sun, I came suddenly on the young American sol- 
 dier, lying dead, his face turned toward the Bois 
 de Belleau. He was the stillest thing in all the 
 silent countryside, ghostly quiet after the four- 
 days' din of battle, now gone forward and thun- 
 dering on the horizon. Compared to his stillness, 
 the wheat-stalks, broken and trampled as they 
 were, seemed quivering conscious life; the trees, 
 although half-shattered by the shell-fire, flut- 
 tered their bright leaves, vividly alive ; the weeds 
 by the roadside vibrated in triumph. They were 
 wounded, mutilated, disfigured, but they had sur- 
 vived. They were alive. Only the soldier had 
 not survived. 
 
 All men go a long journey to meet their death, 
 through many days and months and years. But 
 
 133 
 
134 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 he and his comrades had gone a longer than any 
 man before them. They had passed through all 
 those days and months and years; and more 
 than that, across unending miles of those other 
 wheat-fields in a far country and across the un- 
 ending miles of the ocean they saw for the first 
 time; but far more than that, they had crossed 
 incalculable gulfs of traditions, of prejudice, of 
 the tyranny of old, fixed ideas. 
 
 He had come a long journey, he had trod a new 
 road, he was fighting a new fight, this soldier 
 who had turned his back on the limitations of 
 the past, who was making forward into the fu- 
 ture with all the strength and faith of his young 
 manhood, when he met his sudden destiny and 
 lay down forever in a wheat-field of France. 
 
 There he lay in a blessed, blessed stillness, hav- 
 ing done his best. 
 
 Being still alive, and so not permitted to lie 
 down by him to rest, I left him, and returned to 
 a great city, any great city — all great cities every- 
 where in the world being the same. 
 
 I stood before the door of a shop. I saw an 
 old, thin, work-deformed woman cowering before 
 
" IT IS FOR US TO BE DEDICATED " 135 
 a well-fed man with a brutal voice who stood 
 over her, angrily shouting at her that she had 
 not sufficiently burnished the brass hinges of the 
 great glass doors. With the rich abundance of 
 the wheat-fields still golden before my eyes, I 
 saw her cowering before him, all her sacred hu- 
 man dignity stripped from her by her need for 
 food, by the fear of more hunger than even she 
 could endure. 
 
 I saw a woman with a bloated, flabby body, 
 strained together into a cohesion by steel bands, 
 with a bloated, flabby face covered with red and 
 white. Small glass-like pieces of white stone were 
 thrust into the pierced flesh of her ears, gleamed 
 on her protuberant bosom, on her puffed, useless 
 fingers. With the roar of the distant battle still 
 in my ears, I heard her saying, " The war is last- 
 ing too long! Lucette tells me that it's impossi- 
 ble for her to get the right shade of silk for my 
 corset ; the only coiffeur who understands my hair 
 has been sent to the front; and I have not had 
 a bonbon in ten days." 
 
 I saw a wretched, disinherited son of man, 
 shaking with alcoholism, rotten with disease, livid 
 
136 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 with hunger, undone with hopelessness, flung on 
 a bench like a ragged sack of old bones. Only 
 the palsied trembling of his dirty hands showed 
 that he lived. But with the awful odor of real 
 death still in my nostrils, I perceived that he was 
 alive, while the strong young soldier was dead. 
 
 I saw a man with a gross, pale countenance, 
 with white fine linen and smooth black broad- 
 cloth, who stepped confidently forward, not deign- 
 ing to lift his eyes to the crowd about him, sure 
 that they would give way before the costliness 
 of his ring and pin. 
 
 In his soft, white hands he held a newly printed 
 newspaper which, open at the news from the 
 stock exchange, he read with an expression of 
 eager rapacity. On his way stood a woman in 
 all the fleshly radiance of her youth, with some 
 of the holiness of youth still left on her painted 
 mouth. She, looking at him hungrily, desper- 
 ately, forced his eyes up to meet hers. With the 
 glory of the dead soldier still in my soul, I saw 
 the rapacity in his eyes change to lust, I saw 
 an instant's sickness in hers go out, quenched 
 by the bravado of despair. 
 
" IT IS FOR US TO BE DEDICATED " 137 
 
 Oh, American soldier, lying still in the wheat- 
 field of France, did you come so far a journey 
 to meet your death in order that all this might 
 continue ? 
 
 "Let us here highly resolve that all these dead 
 shall not have died in vain "- 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 . . . if the armistice is signed, a salvo of 
 camion from the Invalides at eleven o'clock will 
 announce the end of the war. 
 
 The clock hands crept slowly past ten and 
 lagged intolerably thereafter. The rapid beating 
 of your heart, telling off the minutes, brought 
 eleven finally very near. Then the clock, your 
 heart, all the world, seemed to stand still. The 
 great moment was there. Would the announc- 
 ing cannon speak? Such a terrible silence as 
 the world kept during that supreme moment of 
 suspense! It was the quintessence of all the 
 moral torture of four nightmare years. 
 
 And then . . . like a shock within your own 
 body it came, the first solemn proclamation of 
 the cannon, shaking the windows, the houses, the 
 very sky, with its news. The war was over. 
 The accursed guns had ceased tearing to pieces 
 our husbands and our sons and our fathers. 
 
 139 
 
140 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 Of all the hundreds of thousands of women 
 who heard those guns, I think there was not one 
 who did not feel instantly, scalding on her 
 cheeks, the blessed tears — tears of joy! She had 
 forgotten that there could be tears of joy. The 
 horrible weight on the soul that had grown to 
 be a part of life dissolved away in that assuaging 
 flood; the horrible constriction around the heart 
 loosened. We wept with all our might; we 
 poured out once for all the old bitterness, the 
 old horror. We felt sanity coming back, and 
 faith and even hope, that forgotten possession of 
 the old days. 
 
 When the first tears of deliverance had passed, 
 and your knees had stopped shaking, and your 
 heart no longer beat suffocatingly in your throat, 
 why, then every one felt one common imperious 
 desire, to leave the little cramping prison of his 
 own walls, to escape out of the selfish circle of 
 his own joy, and to mingle his thanksgiving 
 with that of all his fellows, to make himself 
 physically, as he felt spiritually, at one with 
 rejoicing humanity. 
 
 And we all rushed out into the streets. 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 141 
 
 I think there never can have been such a day 
 before, such a day of pure thanksgiving and joy 
 for every one. For the emotion was so intense 
 that, during the priceless hours of that first day, 
 it admitted no other. Human hearts could hold 
 no more than that great gladness. The dreadful 
 past, the terrible problems of the future, were 
 not. We lived and drew our breath only in the 
 knowledge that "firing had ceased at elev* 1 
 o'clock that morning," and that thc£° mo had 
 fought as best they could for the Right had con- 
 quered. You saw everywhere supreme testimony 
 to the nobility of the moment, women in black, 
 with bits of bright-colored tricolor pinned on 
 their long black veils, with at last a smile, the 
 most wonderful of all smiles, in their dimmed 
 eyes. They were marching with the others in 
 the streets; every one was marching with every 
 one else, arm in arm, singing: 
 
 Allons, en f ants de la patrie, 
 Le Jour de Gloire est arrive! 
 
 The houses echoed to those words, repeated and 
 repeated by every band of jubilant men and 
 
142 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 women and children who swept by, waving flags 
 and shouting: 
 
 Come, children of our country, 
 The Day of Glory is here! 
 
 Every group had at its head a permissionnaire 
 or two in field uniform who had been pounced 
 upon as the visible emblem of victorv, kissed, 
 embrace \ ™ V ered with flowers, and set in the 
 front rank to carry the largest flag. Sometimes 
 there walked beside these soldiers working 
 women with sleeping babies in their arms, some- 
 times old men in frock coats with ribbons in 
 their buttonholes, sometimes light-hearted, laugh- 
 ing little munition workers still in their black 
 aprons, but with tricolored ribbons twisted in 
 their hair, sometimes elegantly dressed ladies, 
 sometimes women in long mourning veils, some- 
 times ragged old beggars, sometimes a cab filled 
 with crippled soldiers waving their crutches — 
 but all with the same face of steadfast, glowing 
 jubilee. During those few blessed hours there 
 was no bitterness, no evil arrogance, no revenge- 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 143 
 
 ful fury. Any one who saw all that afternoon 
 those thousands and thousands of human faces 
 all shining with the same exaltation can never 
 entirely despair of his fellows again, knowing 
 them to be capable of that pure joy. 
 
 The Day of Glory has come. 
 
 The crowd seemed to be merely washing back 
 and forth in surging waves of thanksgiving, up 
 and down the streets aimlessly, carrying flowers 
 to no purpose but to celebrate their happiness. 
 But once you were in it, singing and marching 
 with the others, you felt an invisible current 
 bearing you steadily, irresistibly, in one direction ; 
 and soon, as you marched, and grew nearer the 
 unknown goal, you heard another shorter, more 
 peremptory, rhythm mingling with the longer 
 shout, repeated over and over : 
 
 Allons, enfants de la patrie, 
 Le Jour de Gloire est arrive! 
 
 Now people were beginning to shout : " To 
 Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! 
 To Strasbourg ! " Then you knew that you 
 
144 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 were being swept along to the Place de la Con- 
 corde, to salute the statue of Strasbourg, freed 
 from her forty years of mourning and slavery. 
 The crowd grew denser and denser as it ap- 
 proached that heart of Paris; and the denser it 
 grew the higher flamed the great fire of rejoic- 
 ing, mounting up almost visibly to the quiet 
 gray skies : 
 
 Come, children of our country, 
 The Day of Glory is here! 
 
 " To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To Stras- 
 bourg!" 
 
 No evil epithets hurled at the defeated enemy, 
 not one, not one in all those long hours of shout- 
 ing out what was in the heart; no ugly effigies, 
 no taunting cries, no mention even of the enemy 
 — instead a fresh outburst of rejoicing at the 
 encounter with a long procession of Belgians, 
 marching arm in arm, carrying Belgian flags 
 and pealing out like trumpets the noble Braban- 
 gonne! We made way for them with respectful 
 admiration, we stopped our song to listen to 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 145 
 
 theirs, we let them pass, waving our hats, our 
 handkerchiefs, cheering them, pressing flowers 
 upon them, snatching at their hands for a clasp 
 as they went by, blessing them for their con- 
 stancy and courage, sharing their relief till our 
 hearts were like to burst! 
 
 We fell in behind them and at once had to 
 separate again to allow the passage of a huge 
 camion, bristling with American soldiers, heaped 
 up in a great pyramid of brown. How every 
 one cheered them, a different shout, with none 
 of the poignant undercurrent of sympathy for 
 pain that had greeted the Belgian exiles. These 
 brave, lovable, boyish crusaders come from 
 across the sea for a great ideal, who had been 
 ready to give all, but who had been blessedly 
 spared the last sacrifice — it was a rollicking shout 
 which greeted them ! They represented the 
 youth, the sunshine; they were loved and 
 laughed at and acclaimed by the crowd as they 
 passed, waving their caps, leaning over the side 
 to shake the myriad hands stretched up to them, 
 catching at the flowers flung at them, shouting 
 out some song, perhaps a college cheer, judging 
 
146 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 by the professionally frantic gestures of a cheer 
 leader, grinding his teeth and waving his arms 
 wildly to exhort them to more volume of sound. 
 Whatever it was, it was quite inaudible in the 
 general uproar, the only coherent accent of 
 which was the swelling cry repeated till it was 
 like an elemental sound of nature. 
 
 The Day of Glory has arrived. 
 
 Now a group of English soldiers overtook us, 
 carrying a great, red, glorious English flag, 
 adding some hearty, inaudible marching song to 
 the tumult. As they passed, a poilu in our band 
 sprang forward, seized one of the Anglo-Saxons 
 in his arms, and kissed him resoundingly on both 
 cheeks. Then there was laughter, and shouts 
 and handshakings and more embracing, and they 
 too vanished away in the waves of the great 
 river of humanity flowing steadily, rapidly 
 toward the statue of the lost city whose loss had 
 meant the triumph of unscrupulous force, whose 
 restitution meant the righting of an old wrong 
 in the name of justice. We were almost there 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 147 
 
 now; the huge open Place opened out be- 
 fore us. 
 
 Now we had come into it, and our songs for 
 an instant were cut short by one great cry of 
 astonishment. As far as the eye could reach, 
 the vast public square was black with the crowd, 
 and brilliant with waving flags. A band up on 
 the terrace of the Tuileries, stationed between 
 the captured German airplanes, flashed in the 
 air the yellow sheen of their innumerable brass 
 instruments, evidently playing with all their 
 souls, but not a sound of their music reached our 
 ears, so deafening was the burst of shouting and 
 singing as the crowd saw its goal, the high 
 statue of the lost city, buried in heaped-up 
 flowers and palms, a triumphant wreath of gold 
 shadowing the eyes which so long had looked 
 back to France from exile. 
 
 Ah, what an ovation we gave her! Then we 
 shouted as we had not done before, the great 
 primitive, inarticulate cry of rejoicing that 
 bursts from the heart too full. We shook out 
 our flags high over our heads, as we passed, we 
 cast our flowers up on the pedestal, we were 
 
1 48 THE DAY OF GLORY 
 
 swept along by the current — we were the cur- 
 rent ourselves! 
 
 At the base of the statue a group of white- 
 haired Alsatians stood, men and women, with 
 quivering lips and trembling hands. Theirs 
 was the honor to arrange the flowers which, 
 tossed too hastily by the eager bearers, fell to 
 the ground. 
 
 As they stooped for them, and reached high 
 to find yet one more corner not covered with 
 blooms, a splendid, fair-haired lad, sturdy and 
 tall, with the field outfit of the French soldier 
 heavy on his back, pushed his way through the 
 crowd. 
 
 He had in his hand a little bouquet — white 
 and red roses, and forget-me-nots. His eyes 
 were fixed on the statue. He did not see the 
 old men and women there to receive the flowers. 
 He pressed past them and with his own young 
 hands laid his humble offering at the feet of the 
 recovered city. He looked up at the statue and 
 his lips moved. He could not have been more 
 unconscious if he had been entirely alone in an 
 Alsatian forest. The expression of his beautiful 
 
THE DAY OF GLORY 149 
 
 young face was such that a hush of awe fell on 
 those who saw him. 
 
 An old woman in black took his hand in hers 
 and said : " You are from Alsace ? " 
 
 " I escaped from Strasbourg to join the 
 French army," he said, " and all my family are 
 there." His eyes brimmed, his chin quivered. 
 
 The old woman had a noble gesture of self- 
 forgetting humanity. She took him in her arms 
 and kissed him on both cheeks. " You are my 
 son," she said. 
 
 They all crowded around him, taking his 
 hand. " And my brother ! " " And mine ! " 
 "And mine!" 
 
 The tears ran down their cheeks. 
 
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