There in the dull gray mist of the early morning she saw the familiar
procession. There were the big trucks drawn by the heavily built cart
horses and piled high with the abundant but precisely picked and
packed produce of the market gardens. Paris was to be fed as usual.
People must eat, war or no war. In spite of the summons which had
excited the brains and depressed the hearts of a continent those
trucks were playing their part in human destiny, not even claiming the
right to be five minutes late. The only difference was that the seats
on this gloomy August morning of 1914 were occupied by large stolid
peasant women, the wives and sisters and sweethearts of the men called
to the colors. They had mobilized themselves as automatically as the
Government had ordered out its army when the German war god deflowered
our lady of peace.

These women may have carried heavy hearts under their bright coifs and
cotton blouses, but their weather-beaten faces betrayed nothing but
the stoical determination to get their supplies to the Halles at the
usual hour. And they have gone by every morning since. Coifs and
blouses have turned black, but the hard brown faces betray nothing,
and they are never late.


II


Up in the Champagne district, although many of the vineyards were in
valleys between the two contending armies, the women undertook to care
for the vines when the time came, risking their lives rather than
sacrifice the next year's vintage. Captain Sweeney of the Foreign
Legion told me that when the French soldiers were not firing they