And the village insists that she shall claim her
rights! When the time came for dividing the communal wood in the
neighbouring forest, her fellow citizens arrived to take her with them
and show her how to obtain her share. As to the affection and confidence
with which she is regarded, it was enough to walk with her through the
village, to judge of its reality.
But it makes one happy to think that it is not only Americans who have
done this sort of work in France. Look, for instance, at the work of the
Society of Friends in the department of the Marne,--on that fragment of
the battlefield which extends from Bar-le-Duc to Vitry St. Francois. "Go
and ask," wrote a French writer in 1915, "for the village of Huiron, or
that of Glannes, or that other, with its name to shudder at, splashed
with blood and powder--Sermaize. Inquire for the English Quakers. Books,
perhaps, have taught you to think of them as people with long black
coats and long faces. Where are they? Here are only a band of workmen,
smooth-faced--not like our country folk.
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