Kings, Queens and Pawns - An American Woman at the Front by Mary Roberts Rinehart
page 86 of 375 (22%)
page 86 of 375 (22%)
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"I do not go to church. There is no God." She looked up with
red-rimmed, defiant eyes. "My husband has been killed," she said. "There is no God. If there was a God, why should my husband be killed? He had done nothing." This afternoon at three-thirty I am to start for the front. I am to see everything. The machine leaves the _Mairie_ at three-thirty. * * * * * Do you recall the school map on which the state of Texas was always pink and Rhode Island green? And Canada a region without colour, and therefore without existence? The map of Europe has become a battle line painted in three colours: yellow for the Belgian Army, blue for the British and red for the French. It is really a double line, for the confronting German Army is drawn in black. It is a narrow line to signify what it does--not only death and wanton destruction, but the end of the myth of civilisation; a narrow line to prove that the brotherhood of man is a dream, that modern science is but an improvement on fifth-century barbarity; that right, after all, is only might. It took exactly twenty-four hours to strip the shirt off the diplomacy of Europe and show the coat of mail underneath. It will take a century to hide that coat of mail. It will take a thousand years to rebuild the historic towns of Belgium. But not years, nor a reclothed diplomacy, nor the punishment of whichever traitor to the world brought this thing to pass, nor anything but |
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