SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR
eight men in each, lying outstretched on straw, with their limbs swathed in blood-stained bandages, and their eyes glazed with pain. They were the brave fellows who, a few weeks before, had gone to Flanders in the pride and prime of their strength. In some cases they had lain like that for two whole days on their long way back from the fighting line, with no one to give them meat or drink, with nothing to see in the darkness of their moving tomb and nothing to hear, except the grinding of the iron wheels beneath them, and the cries of the comrades by their side.
"Mon Dieu! Que de souffrances! Qui l'aurait cru possible? O mon Dieu, aie pitié de moi."
THE MOTHERHOOD OF FRANCE
Still the soul of France did not fail her. It
heard the second approach of that monstrous
Prussian horde, which, like a broad, irresistible
tide, sweeping across one half of Europe, came
down, down, down from Mons until the thunder
of its guns could again be heard on the boulevards.
And then came the great miracle! Just as the
sea itself can rise no higher when it has reached
the top of the flood, so the mighty army of
Germany had to stop its advance thirty kilomètres
north of Paris, and when it stirred again
