old women and sick, to whom the soldiers were giving a lift on their way.

There was the mother in that procession. Sometimes she would have a bundle,
sometimes she would have a basket with a few broken pieces of food. There
was a young child, the baby hardly able to toddle and clinging to the
mother's skirts. There was the young brother, the little fellow, whimpering
a little perhaps at the noise and confusion and terror which his tiny
brain could not grasp. There was the baby, the baby which used to be plump
and smiling and round and pinky white, now held convulsively by the mother
to her breast, its little form thin and worn because of lack of
nourishment.

There was no means of feeding these thousands of helpless ones. Their only
means of sustenance was from the charity of the British and French
soldiers, who shared rations with them.

And there was sister, the daughter--sister--sister. At sight of these young
girls--from thirteen up to twenty and over--we learned, if we had not
learned before, that this is a war in which every decent man must fight.
Some Americans and Canadians may not want to go overseas; they may be
opposed to fighting; they may think they are not needed. Let them once see
what we saw that April morning and nothing in the world could keep them at
home.

They dragged along with heads low, and eyes seeking the ground in a shame
not of their own making. I am conservative when I say that one in four of
the hundreds of young girls who walked along in that sad crowd had a baby,
or was about to have one.

And that was not the only horror of their situation. Many of them had one