How is it done? "It is all
summed up in three words," says an officer present, "M. le Maire!" What
we should have done without the local functionaries assigned by the
French system to every village and small town it is hard to say. They
are generally excellent people; they have the confidence of their fellow
townsmen, and know everything about them. Our authorities on taking over
a town or village do all the preliminaries through M. le Maire, and all
goes well.
The part played, indeed, by these local chiefs of the civil population
throughout France during the war has been an honourable and arduous--in
many cases a tragic--one. The murder, under the forms of a
court-martial, of the Maire of Senlis and his five fellow hostages
stands out among the innumerable German cruelties as one of peculiar
horror. Everywhere in the occupied departments the Maire has been the
surety for his fellows, and the Germans have handled them often as a
cruel boy torments some bird or beast he has captured, for the pleasure
of showing his power over it.
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