If one asked after the people that gave dinners and dances
last year, where every one talked so brilliantly of such vital
things, one got in return the addresses of hospitals. Those
pleasant hostesses and maidens seemed to be in charge of
departments or on duty in wards, or kitchens, or sculleries.
Some of the hospitals were in Paris. (Their staffs might have
one hour a day in which to see visitors.) Others were up the
line, and liable to be shelled or bombed.
I recalled one Frenchwoman in particular, because she had once
explained to me the necessities of civilized life. These
included a masseuse, a manicurist, and a maid to look after
the lapdogs. She is employed now, and has been for months
past, on the disinfection and repair of soldiers' clothes.
There was no need to ask after the men one had known. Still,
there was no sense of desolation. They had gone on; the
others were getting ready.
All France works outward to the Front--precisely as an endless
chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration. Leave
the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of
supplies. You will find no break, no pause, no apparent
haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or her
bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be
used. It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition
of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard
labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training,
and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance.
You know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom
till then we conceived we knew, how the man's nature sometimes
changes past knowledge or belief. He who was altogether such
an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to
heights we thought unattainable. Though he is the very same
comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things
he has become great. So it is with France to-day. She has
discovered the measure of her soul.