The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-05-05
BY HENRI BARBUSE.
TRANSLATED by George A. Brier)

tMAGlNE q llbIlS SONlANAJ
l mistress gathering around her
like hen all the young chicks
of the village. She is as thin as
lath, with eyes and hair as black as
sloes.
In her youth she had had CLEANS
Of paradise and visions Of angels:
it is not certain that she had not
heard voices.
From the school you saw the beltry
of the church Of d'Audeloncourt III
Lorraine, which is not very far from
tina of the church of Domremy, in the
shadow of which had grown shep-
herd girl not unlike this shepherdess
of children. BIT Joan Of Arc had lived
in the time of Charles VII, 500 years
before, while this Louise lived under
Napoleon III.
The honesty of the people who had
brought her up, aided by her own
strong natural intelligence, had freed
her from superstition. She had dis
missed the phantoms. She no longer
believed in anything but realities
marvellous and terrible.
Her dreams and her pity she exer-
cised upon human miseries.
Her love Of the oppressed showed
itself at first by her hatred Of the
potentate to whom France was then
enslaved.
At the village church one Sunday
the priest saying Mass dropped dur
ing a holy silence the consecrated
phrase, % Lord, save Napoleon" At
once there arose a great clatter in the
church. All the pupils of the little
schoolmistress, their sabots rafting
on the flagstones, We're fleeing from
the church, struck with horror and
panic fear, because she had taught
them that it was sin to pray for
the Emperor.
The inspectors and projects rolled
furious eyes, summoned her, menaced
her. But from the legends of her
childhood she had kept the faculty. Of
not being afraid of demons, even
when they manifested themselves in
flesh and blood.
She continued as she, had begun.
But she yearned to go to Paris to
teach upon wider scale.
She went there, being one of those
whose dreams come true.
She landed in the City of Light at
the time when industry on a great
scale was awaking with the formid-
able concentration of capital, the
fever of vast battles of money.
Paris was a wild whirlpool of de-
bauch, of enjoyment, Of corruption,
and Of vulgar luxury. It's heart was
the. Exchange, its lords were, after
the financiers (these princes of the
blood, courtesans, courtiers, literary
and artistic sycophants.
FINDER this surface there was
y another Paris more devoted, in
which serious and grave artists and
:, collars worked. And still further
dawn another stratum, much more
devoted, which hoped and conspired:
The Republicans.
In this group the tender-hearted
nationalist, the logical mystic, was in
stalled, and cherished her instinct for
struggle and revolt.
She led the austere life of poor
schoolmistress, bought old clothes and
books at the Carreau du Temple and
in the little shops OF old clothes
dealers. She got into debt because
she bought books, and, above all,
because she relieved all wretchedness
and suffering If she had any person
al feelings beyond her love for her
mother, no one ever knew it.
The Franco German war came; the
defeat came, then the fall of the en-
pire. Then the great upheaval Of the
people: the Commune.
1t was then that the faithlessness
Of the middle-class Republicans (who
were democrats" only so far as they
were hostile to the rather ridiculous
descendant of Napoleon ~ became
apparent.
The little schoolmistress with the
black eyes and black dress vowed
herself, body and soul, to the Com
mune. She preached, she organized.
She took gun, dressed herself like
man, went into the trenches, into
the mud, facing the machine-gun fire,
the volleys of musketry.
She had become the Revolution in
person since she had unders God the
falsehood of middle-class liberalism,
and all the hypocritical hideousness
of that gesture of Jules Favre, the
great middle-class Republican, press
ing her Electrically to his heart, to-
gether with Ferre, before the crowd
lin order to be better able to stifle
them both, and all those who were
behind them, under cover of this
Judas embrace.
She had her share, and more, of
the defeat and ruin of the people. It
was by a miracle that she escaped
from the soldiers of Order, from their
muskets, their machine guns, their