And having lavished all their love upon the little farmhouse, the
granary and the garden, having pruned these grape-vines with their
clusters of white and purple, the time came when each vine seemed like
a friend, dear as that miraculous picture was to Baucis and Philemon.
For these reasons all France was invested with affection and beauty.
The French peasants loved their land and then lost it. One morning the
Hun stood at the gate. The farmers with their pruning knives were no
match for Germans with their machine guns, and down they fell under
the plum trees they were pruning. The devastated regions of France are
like unto a world ruined by devils. The Germans cut down the apples,
the pears, and all the peaches. They did not spare the cherry, the
quince, the gooseberry and currant, or the vineyards. Gone also all the
beautiful bridges--they have been dynamited! Gone all the lovely and
majestic Thirteenth Century churches! Gone all the galleries, for some
of the finest art treasures in the world have perished.
The land has been put back to where it was when Julius Cæsar described
it two thousand years ago--a wild land, and waste, growing up with
thorns and thistles. That proclamation on a wall tells the whole
story. "Let no building stand, no vine or tree. Before retreating see
that the wells and springs are plentifully polluted with corpses and
with creasote." The spirit was this, "Since we Germans cannot have this
land, no one else shall."