At the officers' headquarters, one night after returning from
the front, several officers were recounting to us their dramatic
experiences. Many harrowing tales were told. During the winter of 1915,
in the trenches at the foot of Vimy Ridge, several English officers
and a French captain were down in a safety cellar having their pipes
together and recounting the events of the day. Rain was falling and
they delayed their stay. Finally the moment came to return to their
trenches above. At that moment an English sentinel exclaimed: "One
week from to-day and I will be home in England with my wife and baby.
One more week! The next seven days seem to me like seven eternities."
The English captain congratulated the boy, saying, "In two months my
permission will come and I will have eight days home with my family."
Then the English officer noticed the French officer's agitation.
Turning to him, the English captain exclaimed, "And when do you go,
Captain?" "When do I go home," exclaimed the Frenchman bitterly, "when
do I go home? You Englishmen do not understand! Your land has never
been invaded. Go home! To what could I go? The Germans have been in my
land for a year. My little town is gone, quite gone. My little house
is gone, and gone my little shop! My wife is still a young woman! My
little girl,--she is just a little, little girl! Why, I never thought
of her as a woman! And now our priest writes me that my young wife and
my little girl will have babes in two months by these brutes!" And then
the storm broke. The Frenchman beat his head upon the rude table, while
the two Englishmen fled into the rain and night, knowing that the rain
was nothing against those tears of pain, for that man's hopes were dead
forever. That lieutenant's only task was to recover France and then
transfer all his ambitions to God in Heaven.
Such devastations of the soul are why there must be no inconclusive
peace. Unconditional surrender is the only word. Whether this war goes
on one year or five years it must go on until the Hun repents and
makes restitution--so far as possible. Alas, a myriad of these German
outrages are irremediable! Thoughtful men doubt whether the German will
ever learn the wickedness of his own atrocities and the crimes of
militarism until his own land is laid waste, until he sees the horrors
of war with his own eyes, and hears the groans of his own people with
his own ears, sees his own land laid desolate, finds his own heart
crushed under anguish. Yet retribution in kind would be unthinkable for
the Allies!