The Marne

is by the German advance became heroes-or mostly heroines-who

onvalescent clothes, from her sofa-corner. "I'm sure we can none

she should spend the winter in France and take a job on a war charity. She was not strong enough for nursing, but she thought it wo

e too doubtful," he cabled back. "Insist on your sailing. St

ive up her projected war work. Meanwhile, having quite recovered, she rose from her cushions, donned a nurse's garb, poured tea once or twice at a fashionable hospital, and, on t

the narrow streets, young men lounging at the blacksmith's, blue-sleeved carters sitting in the wine-shops while their horses shook off the flies in the hot sunshine of the village square, black-pinafored children coming home from school, the fat curé stopping to talk to little old ladies under the church porch, girls with sleek ha

w miles beyond the sunny vineyards and the low hills, men were dying at that very moment by hundreds, by thousands-and their motionless young bodies must h

the old house he explained the struggle for the spur of Mondement: the advance of the grey masses across the plain, their capture of the ridge that barred the road to Paris; then the impetuous rush of General Humbert's infantry, repulsed, returning, repulse

s subject, had forgotten her and become technical); while Troy, his map spread on the top of a shot-riddled wall,

he most awful conflict in history. Scenes of anguish and heroism that ought to have had some Titanic background of cliff and chasm had unrolled themselves among harmless fields, and along wood-roads wh

ble to say, as this young man could say: "Yes, I was in the battle of the Marne"; to be able to break off, and step back a yard or two, correcting one's self critically: "No ... it was here the General stood when I told

it of Henry V. that M. Ganti

en in Engla

selves accurst t

manhood cheap,

ught wi

have been in the

tor stopped at the village church and the officer ju

picked their way among the smashed and slanting stones of the cemetery to a corner behind the church where wooden crosses marked a row

h "Pour la France," or "Priez pour lui"; but on others n

stopped shor

parapet overhanging the valley, and forgetting her roses she leaned

t read; of a sudden there had been revealed to him the deep secretiveness of sorrow. But he stole up to her and drew the flowers from her hand, while she conti

September 12, 1914. Paul Ga

roy; put the roses on their graves," Mrs. Belknap assent