Well, it is a pity the gods did
not order it so!--"to be a tale for those that should come after."
One more incident before we leave Lorraine! On our way up to the high
village of Amance, we had passed some three or four hundred French
soldiers at work. They looked with wide eyes of astonishment at the two
ladies in the military car. When we reached the village, Prince R----,
the young staff officer from a neighbouring Headquarters who was to meet
us there, had not arrived, and we spent some time in a cottage, chatting
with the women who lived in it. Then--apparently--while we were on the
ridge word reached the men working below, from the village, that we were
English. And on the drive down we found them gathered, three or four
hundred, beside the road, and as we passed them they cheered us
heartily, seeing in us, for the moment, the British alliance!
So that we left the Grand Couronne with wet eyes, and hearts all
passionate sympathy towards Lorraine and her people.
No. 10
_June 1st_, 1917.
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--In looking back over my two preceding letters, I
realise how inadequately they express the hundredth part of that vast
and insoluble debt of a guilty Germany to an injured France, the
realisation of which became--for me--in Lorraine, on the Ourcq, and in
Artois, a burning and overmastering thing, from which I was rarely or
never free.
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