Well, dear girl, not a bit of news to tell you. I have really done nothing
this last month but look at my flowers, superintend the gathering of
my plums, put up a few pots of confiture, mow the lawn, and listen to
the guns, now and then, read the communiqués, and sigh over the
disasters in the east and the deadlock at Gallipoli.
At the end of the first year of the war the scene has stretched out so
tremendously that my poor tired brain can hardly take it in. I suppose
it is all clear to the general staff, but I don't know. To me it all looks
like a great labyrinth,--and the Germans are at the gates of Warsaw.
Of course this does not "alter the final result"--when that comes--but it
means more destruction, more land to win back, and, I imagine, such
desolation in Poland as makes even the Belgian disaster look, by
comparison, small.
Oddly enough, while we know that this will brace up the Germans,
fighting all about their borders on invaded territory, it does not effect
the faith of the people here, who have even the courage to turn aside
from their own grief, with tears in their eyes, to pity Poland. What a
price Belgium pays for her courage to be honorable, and at what a
price Poland must accept her independence! Everyone is philosophical
here, but one does not have to be heartless to be that.
I find it ironical that my flowers bloom, that gay humming-birds hover
over my Mas de Perse, that I have enough to eat, that sleep comes
to me, and that the country is so beautiful.
Our dragoons have ridden away--on to the front, I am told, and
silence has settled down on us.
I am well--there ends the history of a month, and I am not the only
one in France leading a life like that,--and still the cannon are
pounding on in the distance.