head, she pointed to a statue in a niche
above the doorway. It had been placed there by order of the King of
France after Joan was dead. But it wasn't so much the statue that she
wanted us to look at; it was the mutilations that were upon it. She
was filled with a great trembling of indignation. "Yes, gaze your fill
upon it, Messieurs," she said; "it was _les Boches_ did that. They
were here in 1870. To others she may be a saint, but to _them_--Bah!"
and she spat, "a woman is less than a woman always."

When we turned to go she was still cursing _les Boches_ beneath her
breath, tremblingly holding up the lamp above her head that she might
forget nothing of their defilement. The old dog rattled his chain as
we passed; he knew us now and did not trouble to come out. The dead
leaves whispered beneath our tread.

At the gate we halted. I turned to my American soldier. "How long
before you go into the line?"

He was carrying the little French girl in his arms. As he glanced
up to answer, his face caught the sunset. "Soon now. The sooner, the
better. She ...," and I knew he meant no living woman. "This place ...
I don't know how to express it. But everything here makes you want
to fight,--makes you ashamed of standing idle. If she could do
that--well, I guess that I...."

He made no attempt to fill his eloquent silences; and so I left. As
the car gathered speed, plunging into the pastoral solitudes, I looked
back. The last sight I had of Domremy was a grey little garden, made
sacred by the centuries, and an American soldier standing with a
French child in his arms, her golden hair lying thickly against his
neck.

On the surface the American is unemotionally practical, but at heart
he is a dreamer, first, last and always. If the Americans have merited
any criticism in France, it is owing to the vastness of their plans;
the tremendous dream of their preparations postpones the beginning of
the reality. Their mistake, if they have made a mistake, is an error
of generosity. They are building with a view to flinging millions
into the line when thousands a little earlier would be of superlative
advantage. They had the choice of dribbling their men over in small
contingents or of waiting till they could put a fighting-force into
the field so overwhelming in equipment and numbers that its weight
would be decisive. They were urged to learn wisdom from England's
example and not to waste their strength by putting men into the
tren