Letters from France | Page 8

day to me and the children. We were always so united--never a
harsh word between us during all the years we were married--he was
always gentle and tender and affectionate--a good husband and father,

monsieur, and he sent the letter every day to my brother-in-law, who is
a soldier in Paris, and my brother-in-law sent it on to us.
"There came one day when he wrote to us saying that he was out
behind the trenches waiting for an attack which they were to make in
two hours' time. He had had his breakfast, and was smoking his pipe
quite content. There the letter ended, and for three days no letter came
from my dear friend. And then my brother-in-law wrote to his officer,
and the answer arrived--this, monsieur," she said, fumbling with
shaking fingers in a drawer where all her treasures were, and trying to
hide her tears; and handed me a folded piece of paper written on the
battlefield.
It was from his captain, and it spoke of the death of as loyal and brave a
soldier as ever breathed. He was killed, the letter said, ten yards from
the enemy's trenches.
And it is so in every house that you go into in these villages. When the
billeting officer goes round to ask what rooms they have, it is
continually the same story. "Room, monsieur--yes, there is the room of
my son who was killed in Argonne--of my husband who was killed at
Verdun. He is killed, and my father and mother they are in the invaded
country, and I know nothing of them since the war."
[Illustration: ALONG THE ROAD TO LILLE]
But the road to the invaded country will be opened some day. These
people have not a doubt of it. If one thing has struck us more than any
other since we came to France, it is the spirit of the French. We came
here when the battle at Verdun was at its height; and yet from the hour
of landing I have not heard a single French man or woman that was not
utterly confident. There is a quiet resolution over this people at present
which makes a most impressive contrast to the jabber of the world
outside. Whatever may be the case with Paris, these country people of
France are one of the freshest and strongest nations on earth.
They are living their ordinary lives right up under the burst of the
German shells. Three of them were killed here the other day--three

children, playing about one minute at a street corner in front of their
own homes before Australian eyes, were lying dead there the next. Yet
the people are still there--it is their home, and why should they leave it?
An autocracy has no chance against a convinced, united, determined
democracy like this. More than anything I have seen it is this surprising
quiet resolution of the French which has made one confident beyond a
doubt that Frenchmen will pass some day again, by no man's leave
except their own, along the road to Lille.
CHAPTER V
THE DIFFERENCES
France, April 25th.
The cottage door is open to the night. The soft air of a beautiful
evening following on a glorious day brushes past one into the room. As
I stand here the nightingale from a neighbouring garden is piping his
long, exquisite, repeated note till the air seems full of it. Far away over
the horizon is an incessant flicker like summer lightning, very faint but
quite continuous. Under the nightingale's note comes always a dull
grumble, throbbing and bumping occasionally, but seldom quite
ceasing. Someone is getting it heavily down there--it is not our
Australians; I think I know their direction.
It was just such a glorious day as this one has been, a year ago, when
this corps of untried soldiers suddenly rushed into the nightmare of a
desperate fight. At this moment of the night the rattle of rifle fire was
incessant all round the hills. Men were digging and firing and digging
in a dream which had continued since early dawn and had to continue
for two more days and nights before there was the first chance of rest.
They were old soldiers within twenty-four hours, as their leader told
them in an order which was circulated at the time. Only a sprinkling of
the men who were there are in the Anzac units to-day. But they are the
officers and the N.C.O.'s, and that means a great deal.
We have been here long enough now to discover the differences
between this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli. The rain has

been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until
yesterday seemed almost as bad. The trenches are made passable by
being floored with a