when Death has been decreed by Fate, and the Boches are
the unbelievers. After all, Islam in its great days was a virile faith,
the faith of a race of soldiers.

Chapter VII

The Town In The Trenches

At the beginning of the war the German plan of campaign was to take
France on the flank by marching through Belgium, and once the success of
this northern venture assured, strike at the Verdun-Belfort line which
had baffled them in the first instance. Had they not lost the battle of
the Marne, this second venture might have proved successful, for the
body of the French army was fighting in the north, and the remaining
troops would have been discouraged by the capture of Paris. On the eve
of the battle of the Marne the campaign seeming to be well in hand in
the north, a German invasion of Lorraine began, one army striking at the
defenses of the great plateau which slopes from the Vosges to the
Moselle, and the other attempting to ascend the valley of the river. It
was this second army which entered Pont-a-Mousson.

Immediately following the declaration of hostilities the troops who had
been quartered in the town were withdrawn, and the town was left open to
the enemy who, going very cautiously, was on his way from Metz. For
several weeks in August, this city, almost directly on the frontier, saw
no soldiers, French or German. It was a time of dramatic suspense. The
best recital of it I ever heard came from the lips of the housekeeper of
Wisteria Villa, a splendid, brave French woman who had never left her
post. She was short, of a clear, tanned complexion, and always had her
hair tightly rolled up in a little classic pug. She was as fearless of
shells as a soldier in the trenches, and once went to a deserted
orchard, practically in the trenches, to get some apples for Messieurs
les Americains. When asked why she did not get them at a safer place,
she replied that she did not have to pay for these apples as the land
belonged to her father! Her ear for shells was the most accurate of the
neighborhood, and when a deafening crash would shake the kettles on the
stove and rattle the teacups, she could tell you exactly from what
direction it had come and the probable caliber. I remember one morning
seeing her wash dishes while the Germans were shelling the corner I have
already described. The window over the sink opened directly on the
dangerous area, and she might have been killed any minute by a flying
eclat. Stand