SPIRIT OF FRANCE.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16225, 4 July 1918, Page 8

SPIRIT OF FRANCE.

FEAR-PROOF INHABITANTS. (From the Official Correspondent with the Australian Imperial Force.) BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, France, March 31. Some days ago—on the evening of reaching the area of this new battle — ■ as we were walking home, I branched off about nightfall to visit a village in which somo of us lived at an earlier stage of the war. It was behind the furthest shell in those days. The old lady of our billet, who was fuU of fear of Australians on our first arrival, and had sent her daughter to Paris, and locked up her spoons, had finished by looking after us like a mother for three wintry months, and_ having some of tho every night to dinner with j her. She had a blackboard there, and when they could not understand one another they tvc-uld write the word upon it —in English or French f as the case might be—and then look it up in the dictionary. Her daughter writes to some of them still. That' day the Germans were for the first time in that very valley. Since tho day before their shells had been flying over that village. We had heard them exploding in the hollow half a dozen times as we went up, and as one wandered down there in the dusk there must have been twenty new brown shellholes in the young green wheat on the hill near the town. Of course the old! lady will have moved out'.long since, I thougnt. MADAME. APPEARS. I knoched at the well-remembered cottage door and rang the tiny doorbell. There was an answer from inside. No mistaking the - voice—it was Madame. . ... She kept the > front door locked, and came by . the side door to see •wno it was. A minute later we. were ,in the old pantry talking over "the little Arthur," a young Australian, who is 6ft high, and broad in proportion, and "the voung man and "this old driver of automobiles," and all the other company that she remembered so well. Not r. word about fright or these shells which had been crashing through the rickety village roofs. An old man was in the next room helping an old woman to lift a feather mattress. "My aged brother-in-law, Monsieur," she said as she saw me look that way. "My sister and he are going tn sleep in the next house up the hill. The shells were, passing over last night —they have- done little damage—only .thrown tome fragments on the roof. But we had very little sleep till three o'clock. This morning they were passing constantly, every five or six minutes. ,We thought that the little house next door would be safer than this ono —don't you think so, MonsieurP There is not much protection here, do you think?"

THE SCREAMING SHELLS. I looked round at the gimcrack walls —there was scarcely enough shelter to keep out a pebble from a catapult. While she was talking two shells from a high velocity gun—six-inch shells at least —screamed at a minute interval overhead and crashed about two hundted yards away. She did not even halt in her speech or notice them in any way. The old couple in the next room were chattering in even voices over their business, and never so much as looked up. ,And yet I suppose they never heard that sound in their lives until the day before. 1 thought of a j«t : r that I had seen amongst the city folk in London and in Paris when our own guns were pouring a friendly protecting barrage into the air half a mile away at least —and tho old lady chattered on. "My daughter is in Paris —I sent the young one away for safety," she said. "But, oh, monsieur, do you think she is safe?. That gun which is shelling Paris —1 grow very anxious for her." I could not helj)'laughing. "Madame, your daughter might live in Paris. for a year and never see a shell burst. But you here " "How far is this gun away?" she asked. 'This one firing now. Do you think two kilometres or three? Since the Newspapers have ceased arriving these three days we have no information of where the Germans are." I assured her the gun was ten kilometres away—which was true. I did not say that the next village up the valley was blown to ruins and an old man waß lying in the road between, and the cows were grazing amongst tbeir slaughtered companions in the green fields. BRAVE FACE TO FUTURE. I wondered if they realised their danger, but the next sentence settled the doubt. "Many villagers have gone, but some of us stayed," she said. "I have no vehicle —I could not walk—l iavo so far kept this little home and all my little belongings, but I suppose there"is nothing now except for us to be taken by the. Germans or bombarded —the village ruined like those others of the Somme —ruin for my home and death for me. Ah, what a fate." There was nothing but a firm courage in her voice. Nothing seemed more likely than that tho villa.pt! would be the centre of a verv bi<r battle to-morrow. That night the authorities decided to move from the village all tho inhabitants who were left. A senior officer lent Lis enr for some of the older women. The old mnn ttouM have to walk or come Tiext dny. When iiis wife, who was stnndin?r beside the car with three bundles of some sort of clothing : and ail old dog cn a chain, bad this

explained to her she quietly shook he l head, "If my husband stays I stay. We shall die together—l 6haU not go without my husband —nor my and she looked fondly down on the old mongrel on the chain. She kissed the others good-bye. And it was only when, at the end, room was found both for the husband- and the dog, that the old lady went off. leaving, without an hour's notice, all that she possessed behind her. : She was so calm that one would _have 6ai<3 she scarcely realised the critical position in which they were until the decision was arrived at to make room for them. Then the strain burst, and she broke down. "WHY SHOULD I FLYP" There are a few of them in those shelled villages still. They are almost always the old people who stay. As we went through one shattered place, where the cows were lying killed by shrapnel in thfe paddocks, and two Australian horsemen were rounding the remainder up and driving them towards [ safety—a sight which sent my thoughts j back twelve thousand miles in one j bound —we found an old fellow hobbling with a pail. "You are very intrepid, Monsieur," we said. The -old cnap laughed. "Me? Why should I fly from shells?" he sai,d. "I lost this arm," pointing to his empty sleeve, "I lost this arm in eighteen-seventy." Yesterday, when the Germans turned into a village in the Somme Valley and chunks of houses and clouds of red brickdnst were bursting from it, there came down the main street out of the place an-old man and an old woman, each leading a cow. They crossed tbe meadows, and the bridge and the steep northern side of the valley hid them from view. The German shifted his bombardment a little later to the north side, and presently, not a mile behind the front line of this bnttle, there passed over the hill and down into safety the two old people and their cows. Of such stuff are the country • people ■of France.