PAUL BOURGET
Belgique, dont parlait le sous-officier, et qui, elle, a prononcé avec autant de fermeté résolue son "il le faut," quand l'Allemand l'a provoquée, et plus pathétiquement encore. Ce n'était pas pour la vie qu'elle allait se battre, c'était pour l'honneur, pour la probité. Il n'est pas un Français qui ne le sente, et qui ne confonde sa propre cause avec celle des admirables sujets de l'admirable Roi Albert.
de l' Académie Française
ONE YEAR LATER
[TRANSLATION]
DURING the first days of August, 1915, I found myself motoring in one of the central provinces of France. I had crossed the same region in the same way just a year before, when the beginning of mobilization was crowding the roads with waggons, with artillery and with marching troops. Only one year! How many men are dead since! But the high resolve of the nation is as firm as it was then, when all through the land there was only one impulse—to go forward. The willingness to fight and to endure has not grown less.
I went into an hotel for luncheon. I know the woman who keeps it, because I always stop there when I go through the little town. I found her dressed in black: she had lost her brother in Alsace. Her husband was waiting to be sent to the front. I asked her if she were doing any business. "Not much," she answered. "Nobody is travelling, and all the mobilized men are gone. The barracks are empty; why, only this morning—""It seems a longtime," I said, to draw her on. "Yes," she said, "but since we must…" and she went back without complaint to the task of writing her bills of fare. There were two maids in the dining-room, one of them also in black. I questioned her and learnt that her
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