ldier, at least a
drummer boy in 1870. The pride that was his now in being the
official herald of portentous news was overcast by an evident
sorrow.

As if conscious of the fact that he was to pound not on the dead
dry skin of his drum, but on living human hearts, he hesitated a
moment before he let the sticks falls. Then sharp and loud
throbbed the drum through the still-hushed street. Clear and
resolute was the voice in which he read the order for mobilization.
The whole affair took little more than a minute. Those who know
how heavily the disgrace and disaster of 1870 lie upon the French
heart will admit that it is fair to say that all their life this crowd had
lived for this moment. Now that it had come, they took it with tense
white looks upon their faces. But not a cheer, not a cry, not a
shaking of the fist.

The only outwardly tragic touch came from our chauffeur. When
he heard the words "la mobilization" he flung down his cap, threw
up his hands, bowed his head a second, then gripped his steering
wheel and, for fifteen miles, drove desperately, accurately, as
though his car were a winged bullet shooting straight into the face
of the enemy. That fifteen-mile run from Reuilly to Paris was
through a long lane of sorrow: for not to one section or class, but
to all France had come the call to mobilize. Every home had been
summoned to the sacrifice of its sons.

We witnessed nowhere any wailings or wringing of hands or
frantic, foolish pleading to stay at home. Long ago the question of
their dear ones going had been settled. Through the years they
had made ready their hearts for this offering and now they gave
with a glad exaltation. How bravely the French woman met the
demand upon her, only those of us who moved in and out among
the homes during those days of mobilization can testify. The
"General" was indeed to these mothers, wives and sweethearts
left behind the saddest sound in all the world.

But if it were so sad as Sardou said in 1870, when 500,000
answered to its call, how infinitely sadder was it in 1914 when ten
times that number responded to its wild alarum, a million never
returning to the women that had loved them. But such statistics
are just the unemotional symbols of misery. We can look at this
colossal sum of human tragedy without being gripped one whit. If
we look into the soul of one woman these figures become invested
with a new and terrible meaning.

Such an opportunity was strangely giv