Harvest by Mrs. Humphry Ward
page 41 of 280 (14%)
page 41 of 280 (14%)
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another bit of France!' How are we ever going to live with this people in
the same world after the war?" And there below, in the heart of this remote English woodland, now being sacrificed to the war, moved the sons of this very people, cast up here by the tide of battle. Janet had heard that nobody spoke to them during the work, except to give directions; after work they had their own wired camp, and all intercourse between them and the Canadian woodmen, or the English timber girls, was forbidden. But what were they saying among themselves--what were they thinking--these peasants, some perhaps from the Rhineland, or the beautiful Bavarian country, or the Prussian plains? Janet had travelled a good deal in Germany before the war, using her holidays as a mistress in a secondary school, and her small savings, in a kind of wandering which had been a passion with her. She had known Bavarians and Prussians at home. But here, in this corner of rural England, with this veil of silence drawn between them and the nation which at last, in this summer of 1918, was grimly certain, after four years of vengeance and victory, what ferments were, perhaps, working in the German mind? Yes, there was the German camp, and beyond it under the hill the Canadian forestry camp; whilst just beneath them could be seen the roof of the large women's hostel. Another exclamation from Rachel, as, on their left, another great tree started for the bottom of the hollow. "But haven't you seen all this before?" asked Janet. "No, I never saw anything of lumbering." |
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