In one of our hospitals was a young lad of seventeen, who had managed to
enlist as an "engagé volontaire" by lying as to his age. His old mother
came to visit him, and she told me he was the last of her three
sons--the two elder ones had died the first week of the war at
Pont-Mousson, and her little home had been burned to the ground. The boy
had spent his time inventing new and terrible methods of dealing with
the enemy, but with his mother he became a child again, and tenderly
patted the old face. Seeing the lad in his mother's arms, and forgetting
for one moment the spirit of the French nation, I asked her if she would
not be glad if her boy was so wounded that she might take him home. She
was only an old peasant-woman, but her eyes flashed, her cheeks flushed
with anger, and turning to me she said: "Mademoiselle, how dare you say
such a thing to me? If all the mothers, wives, and sweethearts thought
as you, what would happen to the country? Gustave has only one thing to
do, get well quickly and fight for Mother France."

Because these women of France have sent their men forth to die, eyes
dry, with stiff lips and head erect, do not think that they do not mourn
for them. When night casts her kindly mantle of darkness over all, when
they are hidden from the eyes of the world, it is then that the proud
heads droop and are bent upon their arms, as the women cry out in the
bitterness of their souls for the men who have gone from them. Yet they
realise that behind them stands the greatest mother of all, Mother
France, who sees coming towards her, from all frontiers, line on line of
ambulances with their burden of suffering humanity, yet watches along
other routes her sons going forth in thousands, laughter in their eyes,
songs on their lips, ready and willing to die for her. France draws
around her her tattered and blood-stained robe, yet what matters the
outer raiment? Behind it shines forth her glorious, exultant soul, and