but when she returned little Emile had mysteriously vanished. In her
absence the old stone church had altered also. One entire side had
fallen out and lay prone, a chaos of tumbled broken granite, upon the
mossy ground. And now Marthe recalled having heard an explosion, but
so accustomed were her ears to the sound that at the time she had but
vaguely marked it. That accounted for the church certainly.
But Emile--where was Emile, obedient, tender little Emile? She ran
about, peering behind gravestones, calling shrilly, and at length,
smitten by a nameless anguish of horror, scared in every atom of her
small being without knowing why, she fled, sobbing wildly, to her
mother and poured out her story.
That night there was a hurried exodus. Marthe’s mother, broken by the
death of her small son--for if his disappearance was a mystery to the
girl it was not to her mother after one glance at the high-piled
broken granite--decided to give up her field; but it was like wrenching
her heart out of her body. Jean, chancing by that way at dusk, offered
his company as far as the next village, for Marthe’s mother, a true
peasant, had never in her life traveled more than a dozen kilometers
from her own doorstep, and knew less of the outside world than she
knew of heaven. So Jean had taken charge. And now he walked beside the
refugees, carrying a huge blanketful of their possessions strapped
across his shoulders and holding by the hand Marthe, who still wept
bitterly at the thought of abandoning her little Emile to the cold
and the dark of the deserted churchyard. She pictured him sobbing and
stumbling among the mossy stones, and calling in sweet, plaintive
tones for his sister. That the fall of the church wall had anything to
do with the vanishing of Emile did not once enter her head. The two
were separate catastrophes--the one, familiar, ordinary; the other,
mystifying, terrible. She, too, bore a sack of household goods upon her
back, and from her free hand dangled a small, battered bird cage.
Behind them trudged Marthe’s mother, harnessed to the shafts of a dump
cart piled high with mattresses and bedding, and bearing on top the
small slumbering Georgette, cozy and warm, nested deep in pillows.
Since viewing the fallen wreck of the church not one sound had the
mother uttered. If she had marked Jean’s opportune appearance on the
scene she did not betray any sign of his presence. And now she plodded
forward, shoulders bent, gripping the shafts, dry-eyed, stolid, mute.
What were her thoughts upon that twilight road?
Ahead of her Marthe and Jean held low-voiced conversation as to the
probable whereabouts of Emile. The boy, who upon hearing her tale had
instantly divined the truth, declared it was his opinion that the
sacred Mother Marie, looking out through the window from her shrine in
the church, had seen Emile, and noting what a gentle and gay little
kid he was had borrowed him for a time to play in the sky with her
own small Son, who without doubt must be horribly bored among all
those solemn, grown-up saints and angels. And this idea of the _jeune
sauvage_, the vagabond of the fields, comforted Marthe greatly.
In time they arrived at a village which thus far had escaped shelling.
A shelter was found for them. And for a month the peasant mother
remained in her new, strange surroundings. But her heart was so heavy
that she could not sleep or eat or speak. She suffered as an animal
suffers, dumbly. A stranger would have called her sullen--a clod. For
hours on end she sat in the same chair, heavy, immobile, and stared out
upon a field of grain and poppies and thought of her own plot lying
untended in the sun. And finally the tug of the soil became too strong.
She returned.
Established once more in the damp cellar of their wrecked home she
became herself again, and the first night she chatted volubly with
Marthe, to whom she had scarcely addressed a word since their flight;
she even sang as she hushed the small Georgette to sleep.
“Listen, _petite_!” she said to Marthe after supper. “I am going down
the street a moment to see Madame Barrois. She tends the field next
mine. Perhaps also I can get some goat’s milk for the _bébé_. _Ne bouge
pas! Sois sage--hein?_” And Marthe had promised soberly not to budge
and to be good. She felt lonely the first night, and she wished that
Mother Marie would see fit to return Emile. There was such a thing as
keeping a borrowed article too long!
Half an hour later her mother burst into the cellar, tears upon her
cheek and a strange light in her eye. In her arms she bore a child who
bit and wailed and kicked and screamed without cessation: “_Maman!
Maman! Maman!_”
“_Ça y est! Tais-toi, mon petit gosse!_” (Enough! Enough! Keep still,
my little boy!) murmured Marthe’s mother, pressing the small head close
to her bosom. “Thy _maman_ is gone, _pauvre enfant_!”
She placed the sobbing child in Marthe’s arms. “Listen to me,” she
said. “Emile was taken from us----”
“I know. The Mother Marie borrowed him to play with the infant Jesus.
Jean said so.”
“Very good. For once that Jean was not so far off. And now the good
Mother Marie has given us this poor little one to nourish in Emile’s
stead.”
To Marthe this exchange seemed only simple justice and she did not
trouble her head with the details of the transaction. Nor did her
mother explain that on arriving at the dugout of her friend she had
knocked repeatedly without receiving a response and was on the point
of leaving when from out of the darkness behind the door had sounded a
shrill, angry, sobbing little voice: “_Maman! Maman! J’ai froid! J’ai
froid!_”
Hastily Marthe’s mother forced the door, made a light, and discovered
her friend lying upon the floor, the victim of a shell, and the child
beating the still, inanimate figure with his puny fists and crying:
“_Maman!_ Wake up! I’m cold!”
After this Marthe’s mother tended her own and her neighbor’s field, and
Marthe joyfully tended little Emile’s substitute.
One afternoon shortly afterward she took her new acquisition out to
wash him in the canal and see what kind of bargain Mother Marie had
made with her anyhow. And while she was thus employed, down on her
knees scrubbing absorbedly, there drew up quietly behind her a large,
military-gray automobile, from which two men descended. It was, in
fact, Prefect Mirman with an American friend. M. Mirman was prefect
of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, a portion of the country
bordering on Alsace, which included a large area of the battling
frontier of France. The prefect himself held a position comparable in
importance to the governorship of New York, and he had in his heart a
deep overflowing love for his suffering people which resembled that of
Lincoln’s.
But Marthe could not know that. She sprang to her feet, terribly
startled, staring behind the men at the big, gray, snorting, quivering,
smoking beast--the first she had ever laid eyes on--and instinctively
threw her new little brother behind her. The prefect, reading her
intention of flight, laid a restraining grasp on her shoulders. Marthe
faced him, pale, hostile, her pupils steadily enlarging.
“Poor unfortunates!” said the American. “Why are they permitted to
remain?”
The prefect smiled slightly. “They are not. They stay without
permission. It is impossible for you Americans, who are always
traveling about, to conceive the love, the passion with which our
poor people cling to the nourishing soil. Transplant them rudely,
scientifically as you may say, and they pine, they die. That is
the simple truth. Well, what are we to do? For example, take this
situation. All throughout this northern-frontier district the civilian
population was ordered to evacuate when the enemy started its
deliberate bombarding and gassing of defenseless open towns.
“Some of these little villages lie directly in the line of attack. It
is conceivable that, given a temporary reverse of our army, they might
fall into Prussian hands. And should that unfortunate event occur I
do not want left in those villages any women, any young maids, any
half-grown lads or any infants! The majority of the population, of
course, get out instantly when the evacuation orders come. But there is
always left a residue of those who cannot or will not go, poor people
in villages or farmers who have never traveled farther than twenty
kilometers in their lives, and whom it is as hard to uproot, even in
this time of stress, as it is to uproot a hardy old tree. Simply they
prefer to remain here and take their chances. But that must not be!
“So for the past two months, since the evacuation orders became
effective, I have driven from one end to another of my department,
searching out those who remain behind. And I explain, I beg, I urge,
I entreat. I promise that they shall not go far from home; that their
children shall remain with them; that as soon as it is safe they shall
return; and if they have crops in the ground they may go certain days
to tend them, leaving the children in safety. It has defects, of
course, this plan of mine, for often our shelters are bombed, but just
at present it is the best I can do.”
And here the prefect, one of the most romantic and truly great figures
in France, looked down at the reluctant young person he had been
holding fast while he discoursed, and said: “Well, little mother! How
goes it, eh?”
Silence. Marthe simply stared at him, clutching tightly behind her the
substitute Emile, naked save for a pair of diminutive trousers.
“Where is _maman_?”
Silence.
“Who is that you are hiding behind you?”
“Nobody. There’s nobody behind me!” At this mendacious statement the
prefect, father of his district, laughed. “Ha! ’Tis a little angel
then? I’m going to see!”
He bent over her shoulder. But Marthe, who had been edging out from
under the restraining hand, suddenly whirled, caught up the boy,
scudded to her cellar across the way, and shut and barricaded the door.
She was not going to risk a second disappearance!
The prefect approached, knocked, and addressed gentle, persuasive words
to the invisible occupants. There was no response.
“We shall have to wait,” he said, returning to the automobile. “Of
course we could use violence--but there’s been enough of that!”
And wait they did for more than two hours, the prefect calm, patient,
determined. In the interval he related some of his experiences as
prefect in connection with the German capture of French towns at the
commencement of the war. That the iron had entered the soul of this
strong, tender governor of his people was evident, for with all his
manifold duties he had taken time to compile a book of officially
vouched-for cases of outrages occurring within his own department, for
the benefit of those who pooh-poohed the idea of German atrocities. The
first sentence of that poignant little book reads: “_Voici un livre
d’horreurs; c’est, hélas! un livre de vérité_.” (This is a book of
horrors; it is, alas, a book of truth!)
And those Americans who hold that the Germans are really very
fine fellows, but simply misled by their overlords, should have a
confidential chat with Prefect Mirman, the great-hearted governor of
that frontier section of France.
It was deep twilight before Marthe’s mother returned from her work.
With two fields under bombardment to tend instead of one, life was no
joke. To her the prefect explained the object of his visit. Since the
fathers of France were away fighting, he, the prefect, was trying to be
father to all the children in his department, to watch over them, to
keep them decent boys and girls, in church and in school, to teach them
trades and safeguard them until their parents’ return.
Marthe’s mother listened, pondered, put a few practical questions. The
place to which he would take them--it was far? No, close at hand; in
effect, just behind that hill. And her children, they would be with
her? But surely! And she could return when necessary to care for her
fields? The prefect gave her his word. Whereupon Marthe’s mother, so
sparing of emotion, suddenly burst into tears and consented.
Three days later saw the entire family transported to Toul and safely
installed in a temporary barracks provided by Prefect Mirman. It was a
big, bare, uncomfortable, insanitary affair, and it seemed as if all
the young ragamuffins of France had been collected there in one sorry
regiment. The story of Marthe might serve as a type for most. But there
were some whose histories, written in their small peaked faces and
sullen gaze, had a more sinister cast; some had lost an eye; some had
lost a hand; some had lost parents; and most of them had lost their
childhood gayety. Gathered up from miles along the frontier where the
artillery fire was hottest, out of dank, dirty cellars or unspeakably
foul dugouts and caves, living without air, baths, change of garments
or the simplest sanitary arrangements, they were a dismal, pallid,
vermin-infested, scarecrow little crew--and yet they were the budding
hope of France, as nobody knew better than the prefect.
But what to do with them after he had got them together? It was a sore
question. For what these small unfortunates needed beyond everything
were baths, doctors, nurses, teachers, someone to teach them to
smile again--and always more and more baths. Out of the three hundred
and fifty, twenty-one were babies under one year; many of them had
contagious skin diseases; a few had tuberculosis; and all, sick and
well, were crowded together without discrimination.
Food and shelter were all the prefect could be sure of, for these
the French Government furnished, but more in the present stress it
could not promise, for all the French doctors and nurses were already
occupied with the war. And the worst of it was that more and more
children and mothers would be arriving as the wave of battle swept
toward other villages or wholesale gassing set in. It was a thoroughly
bad piece of business all round--a kind of vicious circle with no
visible outlet. But not for one moment did these difficulties stump
the prefect of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. He had rescued
these children and got them together--that was his job. Now somebody
had to take care of them; he couldn’t, the French Government couldn’t.
Therefore--somebody else had to!
And it is exactly at this point, at that “somebody,” that the American
Red Cross enters the story. For in the acute and immediate need the
prefect telegraphed for aid to a well-known American woman in Paris.
She brought the telegram to Major Murphy, Commissioner for Europe of
the American Red Cross, and he at once got into action. Within a few
hours eight workers were on their way to Toul--a doctor, a nurse, two
aids, and women to take charge of the administration. At the same time
there started a camionette loaded with clothing and food.
Thus began the first activity of the American Red Cross for the civil
population of France--and it began very appropriately with the children.
When, one morning several weeks later, I visited this refugee center
high up on a sunshiny hill, a general transformation had taken place.
The children, numbering by this time about five hundred, with sixty
mothers, had been moved into a newly constructed barracks of brick
and cement furnished by the French Government, which also supplied
heat, light, rations, cooks, unskilled labor and camion service for
transportation. This plant, in its bare elements, was then turned over
to the American Red Cross to supplement and run as it pleased. And
when I arrived the American administration was in full swing. To me
the children looked surprisingly well and happy--almost too happy, in
fact, in view of their grim past! And I remarked upon this fact to the
director.
“Well,” he laughed, “if you are after local color you should have seen
them--and smelled them!--when we first took hold. The very first thing
we did was to establish louse clinics--‘de-lousing’ is the technical
term. Don’t shudder! They’re about clean now, but in the beginning we
had some horrible little heads. The soldiers in the winter trenches had
nothing on those children in the way of vermin and filth. And at the
same time we inaugurated the good old American institution of shower
baths.”
“And what did the mothers think of these?”
The doctor chuckled. “Scandalous! Immoral! Indelicate! Designed to
murder their poor children outright! Some of these peasant women, you
know, have never taken a bath in the altogether in their lives. They
still continue the customs handed down to them since the time of Louis
XI. They bathe little boys in their trousers--put ’em in the tub with
their trousers on; indelicate to remove ’em, you see! They bathe little
girls with their chemises on. And babies they don’t bathe at all. Yes,
the shower bath was a novelty. But I may add that it was a novelty
which took with the children from the start. Now they fight for a
chance at it!
“Come here, Marthe, and say ‘_Bonjour_’ to the lady.” He caught by the
hand a passing little girl with great bright dark eyes and dark curls
neatly twined. Beside her trotted a small boy, decked in his Sunday
best. Thus I had my introduction to Marthe and the substitute brother
whom the Mother Marie had sent down to replace the borrowed Emile.
“She is never without that boy,” continued the director. “She seems
to be afraid somebody is going to steal him.” And then he told me
her story, narrated above. “Here is her mother,” he added as a woman
approached along the path. “She has walked all the way from her home
to spend a few days with her children. These peasant mothers come and
go as they will; they visit with us a few days and then return to their
fields. _Bonjour, madame_,” he said, turning to her. “How goes that
crop of wheat?”
“Not bad, monsieur. But yesterday--what a misfortune! An _obus_ fell
right in the middle of the field where the grain is highest and dug a
crater wide as this.” She extended her two arms. “_Sale brute!_” (Dirty
brute!) “_Grâce à Dieu!_ I was off in another corner of the field.”
“You are very courageous,” I said, “to work like that for your children
in those bombarded fields.”
“But no! But no! It is not for the infants. It is that the soldiers of
France may have food.”
“There you are!” exclaimed the director in English. “That’s what
they all say--and just as unselfconsciously. They don’t know what a
magnificent piece of work they’re pulling off!”
At this moment Marthe interrupted to show me her sewing and the mother
passed on to her baby, the little Georgette. Later I saw this tiny,
woeful creature, born in a cellar, under sound of heavy guns. Frail,
transparent, pale as a snowdrop, she lay in her mother’s arms. Not once
in her two years had she been seen to smile. I did not blame her. Such
a world was not worth smiling on! She showed a rare judgment beyond
her age. Nevertheless, for five minutes I held her in my arms, hating
the Germans, and trying by all arts to bring a flash of mirth to that
solemn, drooping little mouth. Vain enterprise. I might as well have
tried to make the Sphinx laugh.
After that, accompanied by the director, I made a tour of the
buildings, built after the usual fashion of military cantonments,
in the form of a hollow square. Everything was scrupulously clean,
the floors scrubbed, the windows flung wide open, and fresh sunshine
flooded the dormitories, where the mothers sat chatting together, their
babies at their breasts.
“This beats caves as a summer resort!” I said.
The director nodded rather grimly. In company with M. Mirman he had
made rescues from some of those caves.
“And we’re going to beat them still more before we’re through. Here
in this small settlement we are trying to achieve a model community.
Already we have a clinic, an infirmary, a hospital of eighty beds, a
kindergarten, a church, schools, a store, a recreation teacher--in
short, a welfare center for children as scientific and humane as
anything to be found in America. But that is not enough. Compared with
the need this one single unit is only a drop in the bucket. And so we
are planning to make Toul a kind of nucleus from which we shall ray out
in all directions. Already we have a traveling dispensary starting from
this point, with a doctor and nurse, which visits through twenty-five
villages, treating the children in their homes and fetching back to
the hospital the contagious and tubercular cases. Such a system keeps
up the general health par in the areas visited and prevents the sudden
spread of epidemics.
“At Nesle, a town in the devastated district, we have established
another unit--a small hospital and another automobile dispensary which
carries aid to the outlying districts. In that region, of course, the
problem is somewhat different from our own, because the Germans, having
retreated, the children do not need to be collected in one place to
protect them from gassing or bombing. They remain in their homes--if
one can call homes those ruined and burned shells, despoiled of every
stick of furniture, every kitchen utensil, and even the orchards cut
down and the wells defiled!--and we go to them. We go to them with
our traveling clinics in an ambulance containing a full outfit of
medical stores--and a bath! We carry the makings of that bath right
along with us on the floor of the machine--a tub, tubing, a spray
and a pumping apparatus. And when we arrive at a home where a child
needs a clean-up we heat water in the kitchen, stick the small victim
into the tub--without trousers or chemise, you bet!--and we bathe it
after the rules laid down by the Greek nymph Arethusa, who lived in
a fountain and who, according to the Limerick, used to wash, _sans_
mackintosh--b’gosh, _sans_ anything!
“It is the simple, serious truth that baths are the greatest hygienic
need of these children at the present time; and by bringing baths
into their homes we are helping to restore the health of the entire
district. So successful have been our efforts at Toul and Nesle that
the French authorities have earnestly requested us to broaden our
scope and establish centers in other needy districts. And this is what
we are doing as fast as we can. Eventually we intend to have a chain
of centers, linked together by automobile dispensaries, strung along
that whole northern frontier just behind the battle lines, in order to
care for the thousands of children who, no less than the men in the
trenches, are giving their lives in this war.
“As the situation stands to-day France is burning her candle at both
ends; she is at one and the same time losing her men and her children.
With our American soldiers once in the trenches we are going to check
the colossal loss of man power; and in the interval until our fellows
arrive, with our hospitals, our clinics, our traveling dispensaries and
our schools we are doing our best to check the loss of her child power.
This type of scientific social work is the sort of thing America excels
in; for the last ten years we’ve gone in hard for it. I suppose we’ve
got a flair for it, just as the French have for pure science. Anyhow,
as a nation we can do that particular job better than anybody else on
earth. And for the American Red Cross to throw into the breach our
finely trained child specialists is to render France in this hour an
inestimable benefit.”