Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1917 — french Village in War time [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

french Village in War time

LIFE in a French village in war time is described in an entertaining way by M. E. Clarke in Country Life. Even in peace-time the life of the village moves slowly, he says, but since the tocsin sounded war’s alarm it merely creeps along. Outwardly nothing is changed very much; the small white houses with their bright red roofs catch the smile and frown of every passing cloud, the poplars sing and murmur as they always have, the little gray church shows an open door and up the broken pavement of its aisle stray lightsome sunbeams, fallen leaves and dogs of more or less sober reputation, as well as women with heavy, anxious hearts who go to pray. The cure, a kindly man with more human understanding than dogmatic principle, welcomes those who come and refrains from chiding those who stay away. Old women in blue handkerchief caps lead their cows to graze along the green roadsides, and younger women go down to the stream to wash clothes. In the fields work elderly men, women, soldiers home on leave and a few children. The long strips of cultivated ground which make the hillsides look like a patchwork quilt pass through the usual yearly processes of tilling, sowing, reaping and gathering in the fruits of labor. Poppies, cornflowers, ragged robin, blue birds’ eyes, the cuckoo flower and a hundred others come in turn and throw their beauties to the right and to the left with that prodigal generosity which is nature’s splendid way. The birds are as generous with their song as the flowers with their beauty, and among this pageant of joy and loveliness walks the slow-moving, thrifty French peasantry. ______■ •'

All the Younger Men Gone. The war has drawn from the village nil its younger men, and already 30 of them have paid the supreme sacrifice as against ten in the war of 1870. Others have come home lame and , maimed, others still are fighting. In one of the little white cottages with , a garden renowned for its strawberries and asparagus you will find a wellbuilt young woman with straight dark brows and a mouth which tells of both temper and tenderness. She is busy patching an old pair of blue overalls such as French workmen wear. Opposite her sits an elderly man with fine sensitive eyes and a strong beard. He is reading the Petit Parisiep, the favorite village paper:' “Another attack on Mort Homme.” The young woman’s heart is sick within her at the words. She is not married, has no son of her own, but she has been a mother to her flve brothers since she was fourteen. They were all mobilized when France went to warr One has been killed, one has lost two of his limbs, two are in services more or less safe, and the youngest, the Benjamin, her baby, is at Mort Homme. She is not a religious' woman, but that no stone may remain unturned to secure her boy’s safety, she now goes to mass regularly and prays before the blue-robed Virgin whenever she has time. Tfie boy’s face is always before her eyes, handsome, gay, the very pride of her life. She never speaks of him, but her father knows what is passing In her mind, and their common ‘silence is more painful than any words. At the end of the village v street stands a little farm; a tumbledown , white house set in a yard where cows and pigs and poultry ha ve it al 1 their J, own way and no one ever; “sweeps . up." In d field near, a very old horse is working under the guidance of a thin old man whose admonitions to his patient, four-footed companion are more picturesque than effective. But the old horse goes gently on In his own way, as if he realized that a man

must bully someone when he himself is subject to a wife. All the week the farmer talked to his horse and tried to turn a deaf ear to his wife; on Sundays he acted as the cure’s right hand man in church and found consolatioh for many things in the importance of his office. But since the war, a common anxiety has drawn the farmer and his wife closer together. Their only son is in the trenches and his letters are his parents’ daily solance. Every night the farmer reads the last one aloud tohis wife,.who, on. a chair overrun by her ample proportions, listens with tearful eyes, while near her hangs the little farm servant, a girl of fourteen, soft-eyed and slender, with old-fashioned turns of speech gathered from her elders, and seven brothers called to the colors. Memories of the Aged. Every household, has its load of sorrow and anxiety, lightened or dulled by the daily routine of hard work which life demands from those who have not been called on to fight. The children are being clothed and fed and educated as in normal times; the old men and women have grown retrospective and talk often of I’annee terrible, 46 years ago, when they had the Germans in the village. Ten of them were billeted with the old woodman’s wife. She made bread for them and they said it was the best they had ever eaten. The memory of it makes the old woman chuckle, but her daughter-in-law, whose home is in the invaded districts, grinds her teeth and declares that nd on earth would persuade her to make bread for the Germans.

The hero of the village is the last man home on leave, and the hand of the White House president more, ardently asked for on his accession toi office than is that of the “permissionalre” when he returns to his native village. His stained tunic, his medals, the trench trophies he brings, and his personal opinion as to when the war is going to end, are all of thrilling interest to the village people, and his , way down, the village street is a slow, triumphant parade. His family wear his reflected glory with more obvious pride thah he himself wears the original thing, for he is a modest man. They are all people of humble station in this particular village, with a maire chosen from their midSt, a schoolmaster of strong republican sentiments, and a cure who is satisfied to do that which his hand findeth to do and leave the rest with higher powers. There is no hospital for wounded, no relief work of any kind, and an extraordinary aloofness from the restlessness of war marks the entire neighborhood. Yet war means to each one of these village- people a personal sacrifice. Beyond that it doqs not mean very much. The enemy, the allies, the refugees, are the things they read about in the daily paper when they read at all. Life to them is always laborious, for they work to save, not to spend, and the “stocking” is only emptied in the national cause when the call is for a loan. To “keep things going” is a French characteristic of great value, especially among the “people,” and their practical common sense keeps them from worrying about the far horizons. Their resourcefulness under difficult conditions is beyond all praise. Nothing is wasted, and substitutes for almost everything seem to be forthcoming. Oxen and mules are used on the land where, horses are not to be had, home-made tools, home-made clothes, home-mad^and home-made medicines help to save a penny here, a penny there. Sometimes the work may suffer from their primitive way of dealing with it, and if wider, more upeffhrts wejMt made would probably be more satisfactory economically.

THE OLD VILLAGE CHURCH