"I said to myself: 'What will the poor kiddie do without his dad?"'
Then there is that Silhouette of Sorrow that my friend brought back
from Germany, he who was on the Peace Ship Commission, and who saw a
train-load of German boys leaving a certain German town to fill in the
gaps caused by the losses at Verdun; and because this sorrow is
characteristic of the mother sorrow of the whole world, and especially
of the American mother, and because it has a note of wonderful triumph,
I tell it.
"I thought they were the hardest women in the world," he said, "for as
I watched them saying farewell to their boys there wasn't a tear.
There was laughter everywhere, shouting and smiles, as if those poor
boys were going off to school, or to a picnic, when we all knew that
they were going to certain death.
"I felt like cursing their indifference to the common impulses of
motherhood. I watched a thousand mothers and women as that train
started, and I didn't see a tear. They stood waving their hands and
smiling until the train was out of sight. I turned in disgust to walk
away when a woman near me fainted, and I caught her as she fell. Then
a low moan went up all over that station platform. It was as if those
mothers moaned as one. There was no hysteria, just a low moan that
swept over them. I saw dozens of them sink to the floor unconscious.
They had kept their grief to themselves until their lads had gone.
They had sent their boys away with a smile, and had kept their
heartache buried until those lads had departed."
I think that this is characteristic of the triumphant motherhood of the
whole world. It is a Silhouette of Sorrow, but it has a background of
the golden glory of bravery which is the admiration of all the world.
A recent despatch says that a woman, an American, sent her boy away
smiling a few weeks ago, and then dropped dead on the station, dead of
grief.
One who has lived and worked in France has silhouette memories of
funeral processions standing out in sombre blackness against a lurid
nation. He has memories of funeral trains in little villages and in
great cities; he has memories of brave men standing as doorkeepers in
hotels, with arms gone, with crosses for bravery on their breasts, but
somehow the cloud of sorrow is always fringed with gold and silver. He
has memories of funeral services in Notre Dame and the Madeleine, and
in little towns all over France, but in and around them all there is
somewhere the glory of sunlight, of hope, of courage. Indeed, one
cannot have silhouettes, even of sorrow, if there is no background of
light and hope.
For we know that even in war-time God "still makes roses," as John
Oxenham, the English poet, tells us:
"Man proposes--God disposes;
Yet our hope in Him reposes
Who in war-time still makes roses."
John Oxenham, one of the outstanding poets of the war, wrote this
verse, and for me it has been a sort of a motto of faith during my
service in France. I have quoted it everywhere I have spoken, and it
has sung its way into my heart, like a benediction with its comfort and
its assurance.
It has been surprising, too, the way the boys have grasped at it. I
have quoted it to them privately, in groups, and in great crowds down
on the line, and back in the rest-camps, and in the ports, and
everywhere I have quoted it I have had many requests to give copies of
it to the boys. I quoted it once in a negro hut, hesitating before I
did so lest they should not appreciate it enough to make quoting it
excusable. But I took a chance.
When the service was over a long line of intelligent-looking negro boys
waited for me. I thought that they just wanted to shake hands, but
much to my astonishment most of them wanted to know if I would give
them a copy of that verse, and so I was kept busy for half an hour
writing off copies of that brief word of faith.
One never quite knows all that this verse means until he has been in
France and has seen the suffering, the heartache, the loneliness, the
mud, and dirt and hurt; the wounds and pain and death which are
everywhere.
Then he turns from all the suffering to find a blood-red poppy blooming
in the field behind him; or a million of them covering a green field
like a great blanket. These poppies are exactly like our golden
California poppies. Like them they grow in the fields and along the
hedges; even covering the unsightly railroad-tracks, as if they would
hide the ugly things of life.
I thought to myself: "They look as if they had once been our golden
California poppies, but that in these years of war every last one of
them had been dipped in the blood of those brave lads who have died for
us, and forever after shall they be crimson in memory of these who have
given so much for humanity."
One day in early June I was driving through Brittany along the coast of
the Atlantic. On the road we passed many old-fashioned men, and women
in their little white bonnets and their black dresses.
We stopped at a beautiful little farmhouse for lunch. It attracted us
because of its serene appearance and its cleanliness. A gray-haired
little old woman was in the yard when we stopped our machine.
The yard was literally sprinkled with blood-red poppies. As we walked
in and were making known our desire for lunch a beautiful girl of about
twenty-five, dressed in mourning, stepped to the doorway, her black
eyes flashing a welcome, and cried out: "Welcome, comrade Americaine."
Behind her was a little girl, her very image.
I guessed at once that in this quiet Brittany home the war had reached
out its devastating hand. I had remarked earlier in the day as we
drove along: "It is all so quiet and beautiful here, with the old-gold
broom flowering everywhere on hedge and hill, and with the crimson
poppies blowing in the wind, that it doesn't seem as if war had touched
Brittany."
A friend who knew better said: "But have you not noticed that women are
pulling the carts, women are tilling the fields? Look at that woman
over there pulling a plough. Have you not noticed that there are no
men but old men everywhere?"
He was right. I could not remember to have seen any young men, and
everywhere women were working in the field, and in one place a woman
was yoked up with an ox, ploughing, while a young girl drove the odd
pair.
"And if that isn't enough, wait until we come to the next cathedral and
I'll show you what corresponds to our 'Honor Rolls' in the churches
back home. Then you'll know whether war has touched Brittany or not."
We entered with reverent hearts the next ancient cathedral of Brittany,
in a little town with a population of only about two thousand, we were
told, and yet out of this town close to five hundred boys had been
killed in the Great War. Their names were posted, written with many a
flourish by some village penman. In the list I saw the names of four
brothers who had been killed, and their father. The entire family had
been wiped out, all but the women.
So I was mistaken. As quiet and peaceful as Brittany was during May
and June, as beautiful with broom and poppies as were its fields, it
had not gone untouched by the cruel hand of war. It, too, had
suffered, as has every hamlet, village, and corner of fair France;
suffered grievously.
Thus I was not surprised to hear that this beautiful young woman was
wearing black because her husband had been killed, and that the little
girl behind her in the doorway had no longer any hope that her soldier
daddy would some day come home and romp with her as of old. At the
lunch we were told all about it. True, there were tears shed in the
telling, and these not alone by these brave Frenchwomen and the little
girl, but it was a sweet, simple story of courage. Several times
during its telling the little girl ran over to kiss the tears out of
her mother's eyes, and to say, with such faith that it thrilled us:
"Never mind, mother, the Américains are here now; they will kill the
cruel Boches."
After dinner we walked amid the red poppies in the great lawn that was
the crowning feature of that white-stone home. On the walls of the
ancient house grew the most wonderful roses that I have ever seen
anywhere, not excepting California. Great white roses, so large and
fragrant that they seemed unreal, delicately moulded red roses, which
unfolded like a baby's lips, climbed those ancient stone walls. The
younger woman cared for them herself, and was engaged in that task of
love even before we went away.
I said to her, in what French I could command: "They are the most
beautiful roses I have ever seen."
"Even in your own beautiful America?" she asked with a smile.
"Yes, more beautiful even than in my own America."
"Yes," she said, "they are most beautiful, but they are more than that;
they are full of hope for me. They are my promise that I shall see him
some time again. They come back each spring. He loved them and cared
for them when he was alive. Even on his leave in 1915 he gloried in
them. And when they come back each spring they seem to come to give me
promise that I shall see him again."
Then I translated Oxenham's verses about the roses for her. The
translation was poor, but she caught the idea, and her face beamed with
a new light, and she said: "Ah, yes, it is as I believe, that the good
God who still makes the beautiful roses, he will not take him away from
me forever."
I never read Oxenham's verse now that I do not see that little cottage
in Brittany that has sheltered the same family for centuries; twined
about with great red and white roses; and the old mother and the young
mother and the little lonely girl.
"Yet our hope in Him reposes
Who in war-time still makes roses."
Another time, down on the Toul front lines, I had this thought forced
home by a strange scene. It was in mid-March and for three days a
heavy blizzard had been blowing. I, who had lived in California for
several years, wondered at this blizzard and revelled in it, although I
had had to drive amid its fury, sometimes creeping along at a snail's
pace, without lights, down near the front lines. It was cruelly cold
and hard for those of us who were in the "truck gang."
One night during this blizzard, which blew with such fury as I have
never seen before, we were lost. At one time we were headed directly
for the German lines, which were close, but an American sentry stopped
us before we had gone very far, demanding in stern tones: "Where are
youse guys goin' that direction?"