_December 31._--The wintry wind is blowing keenly and violently. The
year is dying, and I am thinking of those out there in the trenches
who are playing at "_Qui perd gagne_." How sorrowfully they must be
thinking of their loved ones! and I am thinking also of the unutterable
sadness of everything around my son.
The pagans used to sprinkle lustral waters on towns defiled by
inexpiable wars, to appease the anger of the gods. Who can tell us what
ritual we can perform to allay the anger of God and wipe out the traces
of so much blood?
What is my son doing on this last evening of the year, on this December
31st which soon will be torn from this year's calendar like the last
leaf from a tree that thenceforward remains black and withered.
* * * * *
The papers are full of stories of German atrocities. The naked bodies
of some women were found stripped and empaled on German bayonets near
a farm, their breasts had been cut in pieces, and other unspeakable
details revealed the Sadism which prevails among the Kaiser's soldiers.
Is his madness infectious? and has it spread to his Army?--or are
these massacres due to the brutes being drunk? A Red Cross nurse who
had looked after a wounded prisoner, an officer, was warmly thanked by
him several times. His thanks were charmingly expressed in excellent
French. He even went so far as to promise to send her a little
souvenir when he went back to his country. Soon afterwards, when he
had recovered, he did go back, and the nurse thought no more about it,
until one day she received a parcel from the German officer.
Rather surprised at so much politeness she eagerly undid the parcel,
and nearly fainted with horror on discovering, wrapped up in
tissue-papers, two baby's hands cut off at the wrist. Such monstrous
behavior seems inconceivable on the part of a man of a certain class,
and therefore better educated than the mass of common soldiers. A story
like this sets one thinking of the mother who must have been present
when her child was mutilated....
Who will ever know all the sufferings endured by Frenchwomen in these
hours of terror and death brought upon them by the German war? They,
too, have trodden the road to Calvary.
Surely this Kaiser must be the Anti-Christ, for he has destroyed the
foundations of the old world and overthrown the pillars of modern
society, and all the laws of humanity and of Christian morality. Surely
the hand of God will weigh heavy upon him!
(This French mother describes heroically her experiences in Paris and
at Les Sablons, with her flight to Val André, and then thanks God from
the bottom of her heart that she is the "mother of Paul" and has lived
in these heroic days.)