We passed into the zone of another army and a hillier country,
where the border villages lay more sheltered. Here and there
a town and the fields round it gave us a glimpse of the
furious industry with which France makes and handles material
and troops. With her, as with us, the wounded officer of
experience goes back to the drill-ground to train the new
levies. But it was always the little crowded, defiant
villages, and the civil population waiting unweariedly and
cheerfully on the unwearied, cheerful army,
that went closest
to the heart. Take these pictures, caught almost anywhere
during a journey: A knot of little children in difficulties
with the village water-tap or high-handled pump. A soldier,
bearded and fatherly, or young and slim and therefore rather
shy of the big girls' chaff, comes forward and lifts the pail
or swings the handle. His reward, from the smallest babe
swung high in air, or, if he is an older man, pressed against
his knees, is a kiss. Then nobody laughs.
Or a fat old lady making oration against some wicked young
soldiers who, she says, know what has happened to a certain
bottle of wine. "And I meant it for all--yes, for all of you
--this evening, instead of the
thieves who stole it. Yes, I
tell you--stole it!" The whole street hears her; so does the
officer, who pretends not to, and the amused half-battalion up
the road. The young men express penitence; she growls like a
thunderstorm, but, softening at last, cuffs and drives them
affectionately before her. They are all one family.
Or a girl at work with horses in a ploughed field that is
dotted with graves. The machine must avoid each sacred plot.
So, hands on the plough-stilts, her hair flying forward, she
shouts and wrenches till her little brother runs up and swings
the team out of the furrow. Every aspect and detail of life
in France seems overlaid with a smooth patina of
long-continued war--everything except
the spirit of the people,
and that is as fresh and glorious as the sight of their own land
in sunshine.
