id we understand the black tragedy. The room was shell-proof. The soft
yellow clay was shored up by rough boards. All around the walls were
bunks. In that chamber the German officers had kept the captive French
and Belgian girls. There were two cupboards standing against the wall.
One was made of rough boards; the other was a large, exquisitely carved
walnut bureau for girls' garments. When the German officers fled from
the trench above they had just time to escape to the lower shell-proof
rooms, grab some of the treasure and flee. Unwilling to give these
captive girls their freedom, since they could not have the girls they
determined that their French and Belgian fathers and sweethearts should
not recover them.

There was just time during the excitement of the flight to unlock the
door, rush in and send a bullet through each young woman. A few minutes
later the Canadian boys swarmed through the long connecting chambers and
side rooms.

In one of those rooms they found these young women now dead or dying.
Gas bombs had already been flung down and the rooms were foul with
poisoned air. Protected by their masks the Canadian boys had time to
pick up these girls and carry them up the steps into the open air, where
they laid them down on the grass in the open sunshine. But help came too
late. Beginning with an attempt to murder the souls of the girls the
German officers had ended by slaying their bodies.

An officer saw to it that the official photographer kept the record of
the faces of these dead girls. Once they must have been divinely
beautiful, for all were lovely beyond the average. One could understand
the pride and joy of a father or lover when he looked upon the young
girl's face. The slender body made one think of the tall lily stem,
crowned with that flower named the face and glorious head. Strangely
enough they seemed to sleep as if peace had come, after long pain.
Plainly death had been longed for.

Weeks passed by. The photographs of the dead girls were shown in the
hope that if possible word might reach their parents, but no friend had
been found to recognize them. One day a Canadian officer, making slow
recovery in a hospital near the coast, was asked by his nurse for the
photograph.

It seemed there was a Belgian woman working in the hospital. Her village
had been entirely destroyed. Her home was gone and all whom she loved
had disappeared. By some accident the Red Cross nurse remembered this
photograp