A French Army motor arrived early, with another French officer,
the Capitaine de G----, who proved to be a most interesting and
stimulating guide. With him I drove slowly through the beautiful town,
looking at the ruined houses, which are fairly frequent in its streets.
For Nancy has had its bombardments, and there is one gun of long range
in particular, surnamed by the town--"la grosse Bertha," which has done,
and still does, at intervals, damage of the kind the German loves.
Bombs, too, have been dropped by aeroplanes both here and at Luneville,
in streets crowded with non-combatants, with the natural result. It has
been in reprisal for this and similar deeds elsewhere, and in the hope
of stopping them, that the French have raided German towns across the
frontier. But the spirit of Nancy remains quite undaunted. The children
of its schools, drilled to run down to the cellars at the first alarm as
our children are drilled to empty a school on a warning of a Zeppelin
raid, are the gayest and most spirited creatures, as I saw them at their
games and action songs; unless indeed it be the children of the
_refugies_, in whose faces sometimes one seems to see the reflection of
scenes that no child ought to have witnessed and not even a child can
forget.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206