he goes every week. Only, why does he
talk so incessantly about his wife, and show her pictures to me, to
everyone about the place? Why should we all be bored with tales of
Simon's stupid wife, when that's all she means to him? Only perhaps she
means more. I told you I did not understand.

Then the _Gestionnaire_, the little fat man in khaki, who is purveyor to
the hospital. Every night he commandeers an ambulance, and drives back
into the country, to a village twelve miles away, to sleep with a woman.
And the old doctor--he is sixty-four and has grandchildren--he goes down
to our village for a little girl of fourteen. He was decorated with the
Legion of Honour the other day. It seems incongruous.

Oh yes, of course these were decent girls at the start, at the
beginning of the war. But you know women, how they run after men,
especially when the men wear uniforms, all gilt buttons and braid. It's
not the men's fault that most of the women in the War Zone are ruined.
Have you ever watched the village girls when a regiment comes through,
or stops for a night or two, _en repos_, on its way to the Front? Have
you seen the girls make fools of themselves over the men? Well, that's
why there are so many accessible for the troops. Of course the
professional prostitutes from Paris aren't admitted to the War Zone, but
the Belgian girls made such fools of themselves, the others weren't
needed.

Across the lines, back of the German lines, in the invaded districts, it
is different. The conquering armies just ruined all the women they could
get hold of. Any one will tell you that. _Ces sales Bosches!_ For it is
inconceivable how any decent girl, even a Belgian, could give herself
up voluntarily to a Hun! They used force, those brutes! That is the
difference. It's all the difference in the world. No, the women over
there didn't make fools of themselves over those men--how could they!
No, no. Over there, in the invaded districts, the Germans forced those
girls. Here, on this side, the girls cajoled the men till they gave in.
Can't you see? You must be pro-German! Any way, they are all ruined and
not fit for any decent man to mate with, after the war.

They are pretty dangerous, too, some of these women. No, I don't mean in
that way. But they act as spies for the Germans and get a lot of
information out of the men, and send it back, somehow, into the German
lines. The Germans stop at nothing, nothing is too dastardly, too low,
for th