But the living said,
"They shall not pass!" and kept their word.
The people of France--above all, the women of France--behind the
lines, were the equals of the fighting-men in valor. They fought with
despair, through many black months, and did not yield. They did the
work of their men in the fields, and knew that many of them--the sons
or brothers or lovers or husbands--would never return for the harvest-
time, but did not cry to have them back until the enemy should be
thrust out of France. Behind the German line, under German rule, the
French people, prisoners in their own land, suffered most in spirit,
but were proud and patient in endurance.
"Why don't your people give in?" asked a German officer of a woman in
Nesle. "France is bleeding to death."
"We shall go on for two years, or three years, or four, or five, and
in the end we shall smash you," said the woman who told me this.
The German officer stared at her and said, "You people are wonderful!"
Yes, they were wonderful, the French, and their hatred of the Germans,
their desire for vengeance, complete and terrible, at all cost of
life, even though France should bleed to death and die after victory,
is to be understood in the heights and depths of its hatred and in the
passion of its love for France and liberty.
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