high in government--the kaiser is not above using the thief and the
harlot for his aims; money literally by the cartload was poured into
certain departments to hinder the work of the army, and the tragic
disaster of the Champagne drive was the result partly of intrigue
in Paris in the government, partly of poverty, partly the result
of three winters of terrible suffering in the nation, and partly
the weakening under the strain of all these things, of this "too
too solid flesh and blood." During the winter of 1916-17 soldiers
at the front received letters from home telling of starvation and
freezing and sickness in their families. And trench conditions in
the long hard winter were all but unbearable. When a soldier finally
got a leave of absence and started home, he found the railroad
system breaking down and he had long waits at junction points with
no sleeping quarters, no food, no shelter. French soldiers going
home on leave would lie all night and all day out in the open,
drenched by the rain and stained by the mud, and would reach home
bringing to their families trench vermin and trench fever and trench
misery untold, to add to the woe that the winter had brought to the
home while the soldier was away. Then when he went back to fight,
he found that a bureaucratic clash had left the soldiers without
supplies, or food or ammunition in sufficient quantities to supply
the battle needs. In the bureaucratic clash some one lost his head
in the army and ordered the men into their own barrage. Hundreds
were slaughtered. Thousands were verging on mutiny. A regiment
refused to fight, and another threatened to disobey. The American
ambulance boys told us that the most horrible task they did was
when they hauled eighty poor French boys out to be shot for mutiny!
Spies in Paris, working through the mistresses of the department
heads, the sad strain of war upon the French economic resources, and
the withering hand of winter upon the heart of France had achieved