To the plow was yoked an ox and harnessed a horse. A tall and muscular
woman was guiding it, while a small boy carried the whip. From the
Isonzo front, not more than ten miles away, came the crash of heavy
artillery.
Neither the woman nor the boy seemed to mind that war was so near. I
concluded that they were from the village which I had just come through,
bound for the front named. The inhabitants of that place had listened to
the noise of battle for eighteen months and it was possible that now the
crash of guns meant less to them than the sound of the vesper bell.
There was a tire blow-out. While the soldier-chauffeur was attending to
that, I watched the woman draw furrows. Being somewhat of a farmer, I
was interested in the quality of her work. It was good average plowing.
The plow continued to cut down one side of the field and up the other.
The automobile did not interest the woman. She had serious business to
attend to. War must have seemed to her a sort of folly, and fools all
those connected with it--myself included. She was tilling the land to
get something to eat for her brood and to raise the money for taxes
which those idiots at the front would waste in powder and the like. Her
"hees" and "haws" punctuated the rumble of artillery like words of
command for the oxen in the trenches.
The woman behind the plow was a superb figure--the embodiment of nature
herself.