The Washington herald., 1919-05-22


and children on foot, carrying such
little scraps of clothing and furni-
ture as they had saved In their
flight before the Germans. lo1ter
along the highway weary ana 1901
sore. but always going forward 10
the land of their dreams.
Like Flight Of . Tribe.
It is like the night of tribe
Indeed, 1t is the flight of q tribe
the great hegira OF the French to
the thing they love most or all
their homes Not particularly 70
their actual houses-though that Is
a part of their homing instinct; not
exactly to their villages and towns
and farms-though that also is In
their minds; but strongest of all
in their hearts Is the instinct to
reconnect themselves with orderly
French life, to take up their old.
old touch with their past, with
France. with the civilization which
they love They are not a rowing
people. We, in the western hemi-
sphere, will get little immigration
from France; our real estate men
might flood the country knee deep
with seductive literature: we might
offer free farms. and all kinds Of
material lure to these people, all
kinds of promises to rise in the
economic scale. and they would
smile at it
What they want, Is the thing
they loved before the war; their
simple homes! And for that they
are trudging back over the white
ribbons of roads that bedeck
France. hundreds of thousands Of
poor people who knew what their
homes are like. For they have
seen pictures of the ruins. They
know that the houses were looted
before the Germans left; that not a
stick of furniture is left among the
ruins. But. nevertheless, empty
handed and heavy hearted and
wearily they plod on; answering
some deep call in their hearts 1t
is deep speaking unto deep.
That profound feeling of the
French for France comes to all
Frenchmen: it is not the possession
of the lowly. For the beauty of it
shines in the lives OF the educated
Frenchman as well as in the ignor-
ant peasants. Not far from Bleiran-
court is farm called the Farm of
the Quarries. Near the farm is the
ruin of a splendid chateau. Before
the war Madame Devereux lived in
the chateau with her little son and
managed the 2.000-acre estate froIp
which a little village under the
hillside beneath the quarry drew it's
life. Before burning the chateau
the Germans looted 1t. They took
every valuable thing in IL. A few
days in advance of her flight from
the chateau Madame Devereux had
hidden all her valuables in a secret
chamber in a subcellar. And after
burning the chateau the Germans
quartered soldiers in the great cell
lars of the place, and there they
found the secret chambers in the
subcellar and took everything out
of the cache
Everything Conc But Land.
So when the Germans were driven
out of the place in 1918 Madame
DevereuX came back to find every
thing gone but the land. That was
n waste-the trees stripped by shell
fire, the fields raked with barrage
fire that had turned the gravel up
and turned the rich soil under, while
trenches zig-zagged across the land.
cutting it horribly. The people were
gone from the village. 1t lay be-
, low the Farm of the ouarries a
dead silent thing under the cold
winter sky. when Madame Devereux
came back to see it in late Novem-
Der. But she did not go back to
Paris. 1t was no question of money.
She might have lived at the Ritz.
but to her home was home.
The Germans had run up a cement
wall in the quarry. which was bur-
rowcd far into the hillside. 1t made
fairly warm room. but it was still
a hole in the hillside-just that
There she brought rug. a bed. two
little tables. a petite stove about
the size of Valise, a beautiful ma
hogany secretary and n case of
books-and there she and her son
lived. A maid came with her and
a farmer and his wife lived in the
next quarry roof but one.
All through the cold winter in that
dark little hole in the hill she lived:
but more than that, she sat hours
every day at her desk writing, or
derins provisions, building material,
food. clothing. supplies for her peo-
pie. No one was in the village; but
| she knew what the spring would
bring. She went about the country
gang of German prisoners: quartered
them: put them 10 work on the fields,
filling the shell holes and trenches,
cutting down wire weeds of war
vines whercfrOm young mems blood
had flowed like wine-and she looked
after the food and shelter of the pris-