Savve.
They're great women, the women of France," concluded my mate.
The women of France! what heroism and fortitude animates them in every
shell-shattered village from Souchez to the sea! What labours (p. 289)
they do in the fields between the foothills of the Pyrenees and the
Church of ----, where the woman nearest the German lines sells rum
under the ruined altar! The plough and sickle are symbols of peace and
power in the hands of the women of France in a land where men destroy
and women build. The young girls of the hundred and one villages which
fringe the line of destruction, proceed with their day's work under
shell fire, calm as if death did not wait ready to pounce on them at
every corner.
I have seen a woman in one place take her white horse from the pasture
when shells were falling in the field and lead the animal out again
when the row was over; two of her neighbours were killed in the same
field the day before. One of our men spoke to her and pointed out that
the action was fraught with danger. "I am convinced of that," she
replied. "It is madness to remain here," she was told, and she asked
"Where can I go to?" During the winter the French occupied the trenches
nearer her home; her husband fought there, but the French have gone
further south now and our men occupy their place in dug-out and trench
but not in the woman's heart. "The English soldiers have come and (p. 290)
my husband had to go away," she says.
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