uickly urges,
"Ah, but Mme. Brunot!" And so it is always, if you exclaim, "Oh, the
spirit of the men of France!" and a Frenchman's ears catch your words,
he will correct, "Ah, but the women!"

And the women do stand above all other women, they have had such
opportunity for heroism. Whose heart does not beat the faster when the
names Soisson and Mme. Macherez are spoken! The mayor and the council
gone, she assumes the office and keeps order while German shells fall
thick on the town. And then the enemy enters, and asks for the mayor,
and she replies, "Le maire, c'est moi." And then do we women not like to
think of Mlle. Deletete staying at her post in the telegraph office in
Houplines in spite of German bombardments, and calmly facing tormentors,
when they smashed her instruments and threatened her with death.
One-tenth of France in the enemy's hands, and in each village and town
some woman staying behind to nurse the sick and wounded, to calm the
population when panic threatens, to stand invincible between the people
and their conquerors!

It is very splendid!--the French man holding steady at the front, the
French woman an unyielding second line of defense. But what of France?
Words of praise must not swallow our sense of obligation. Let us with
our hundred millions of people face the figures. The death rate in
France, not counting the military loss, is twenty per thousand, with a
birth rate of eight per thousand. In Paris for the year ending August,
1914, there were forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen births;
in the year ending in the same month, 1916, the births dropped to
twenty-six thousand one hundred and seventy-nine. The total deaths for
that year in all France were one million, one hundred thousand, and the
births three hundred and twelve thousand.

France is profoundly, infinitely sad. She has cause. I shall never
forget looking into the very depths of her sorrow when I was at Creil. A
great drive was in progress, the wounded were being brought down from
the front, troops hurried forward. Four different regiments passed as I
sat at dejeuner. The restaurant, full of its noonday patrons, was a
typical French cafe giving on the street. We could have reached out and
touched the soldiers. They marched without music, without song or word,
marched in silence. Some of the men were from this very town; their
little sons, with set faces, too, walked beside them and had brought
them bunches of flowers. The