If one wants to picture the case of the repatrié in its true misery,
all he needs to do is to convert it into terms of his own mother or
grandmother. She has lived all her life in the neighbourhood of Vimy,
let us say. She was married there and it was there that she bore
all her children. She and her husband have saved money; they are
substantial people now and need not fear the future. Their sons are
gaining their own living; one daughter is married, the others are
arriving at the marriageable age. One day the Hun sweeps down on them.
The sons escape to join the French army; the girls and their parents
stay behind to guard their property. They are immediately evacuated
from Vimy and sent to some city, such as Drocourt, further behind
the Hun front-line. Here they are gradually robbed of all their
possessions. At the beginning all their gold is confiscated; later
even the mattresses upon their beds are requisitioned. For three and
a half years they are subjected to both big and petty tyrannies,
till their spirits are so broken that fear becomes their predominant
emotion. The father is led away to work in the mines. One by one the
daughters are commandeered and sent off into the heart of Germany,
where it will be no one's business to guard their virtue. At last
the mother is left with only her youngest child. Of her sons who are
fighting with the French armies she has no knowledge, whether they are
living or dead. Then one day it is decided by her captors that they
have no further use for her. They part her from her last remaining
child and pack her off by way of Belgium and Switzerland back to her
own country. She arrives at Evian penniless and half-witted with the
terror of her sorrow. There is no one to claim her; the part of France
that knew her is all behind the German lines. A label is tied to her,
as if she was a piece of baggage, and she is shipped off to Avignon,
let us say. She has never been in the South before; it is a foreign
country to her. Poverty and adversity have broken her pride; she has