The return of the refugees to Belgium and France holds the essence of a
thousand tragedies. From the days of Homer down to those of Longfellow,
with his story of Evangeline, literature has recounted the sad lot of
lovers torn from one another's arms and all the rest of their lives
going every whither in search of the beloved one, only to find the lost
and loved when it was too late.
But nothing in literature is so tragic as the events now going on from
week to week in the towns on the frontier of Switzerland.
When the Germans raped Belgium and northern France they sent back to the
rear trenches the young women and the girls, and now, from time to time,
those girls, all broken in health, are released by the Germans, who send
them back to their parents or husbands.
Multitudes of these girls have died of abuse and cruelty, but others,
broken in body and spirit, are returning for an interval that is brief
and heart-breaking before the end comes.
Three weeks ago an old friend returned from his Red Cross work in
France. By invitation of a Government official he visited a town on the
frontier through which the refugees released by Germany were returning
to France.
It seemed that during the month of September, 1914, the Germans had
carried away a number of girls and young women in a village northeast of
Luneville. When the French officials finished their inquiry as to the
poor, broken creatures returning to France they found a French woman,
clothed in rags, emaciated and sick unto death. In her arms she held a
little babe a few weeks old. Its tiny wrists were scarcely larger than
lead pencils. The child moaned incessantly. The mother was too thin and
weak to do more than answer the simple questions as to her name, age,
parents, and husband.
Moved with the sense of compassion, the French official soon found in
his index the name of her husband, the number of his company and
telegraphed to the young soldier's superior officer, asking that the boy
might be sent forward to the receiving station to take his wife back to
some friend, since the Germans had destroyed his village. By some
unfortunate blunder the officials gave no hint of the real facts in the
case.
Filled with high hope, burning with enthusiasm, exhaling a happiness
that cannot be described, the bronzed farmer-soldier stepped down from
the car to find the French official waiting to conduct him to one of the
houses of refuge where his young wife was waiting.
My American Red Cross friend witnessed the meeting between the girl and
her husband. When the fine young soldier entered the room he saw a poor,
broken, spent, miserable creature, too weak to do more than whisper his
name. When the young man saw that tiny German babe in his young wife's
arms he started as if he had been stung by a scorpion. Lifting his hands
above his head, he uttered an exclamation of horror. In utter amazement
he started back, overwhelmed with revulsion, anguish and terror.
Gone--the beauty and comeliness of the young wife! Gone her health and
allurement! Perished all her loveliness! Her garments were the garments
of a scarecrow. Despite all these things the girl was innocent. But she
realized her husband's horror and mistook it for disgust. She pitched
forward unconscious upon the floor before her husband could reach her.
The history of pain contains no more terrible chapter. That night the
dying girl told the French officials and her husband the crimes and
indignities to which she had been subjected. Two other babes had been
born under German brutality, and both had died, even as this infant
would die, and when a few days later her husband buried her he was
another man. The iron in him had become steel. The blade of intellect
had become a two-edged sword. His strength had become the strength of
ten. He decided not to survive this war. Going back to the front, he
consecrated his every day to one task--to kill Germans and save other
women from the foulest degenerates that have ever cursed the face of the
earth.