C'EST LA GUERRE!

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 226, 12 June 1918, Page 3

C'EST LA GUERRE!

Miles and miles behind tho Sorame battlefield is the village of JJ. . That village has been as Heaven to many a lad iresli from the Souime—ll —, with its eggs ami milk, its roast apples, its cider its piump cnicUens. ' Jiut that is not my' story.

A. widow lives there on whom I hud the good fortune to be billeted. She had a little boy named Paul. Paul's lather had died for France—and for us also, one may add—and Paul's mother kept herself and her son by weaving coarse sacks on a liand-loom in an old barn at the bottom of the garden. Very laborious work it was. in this cokl, draughty barn. The racket the loom made used to wako me in the mornings; the racket was often goiug on—in the light of an oil lamp—till late at night. And the resralt—a few francs a week.

One night after the lad had been put to bed i stole down to the 'barn to watch. Intent on her work, my approach was unnoticed. She was working patiently but swiftly, keeping herself warm (it was October) by her very uuergy. I was thinking how fearfully hard tho work was compared with tho hand-loom weaving I had seen in Lancashire yenrs before; how long her hours, how pitiful the result. When bhe looked up at last i spoke something of. my thoughts to her. She smiled bravely and said: "U'est la guerre, m'sieu." That was all—C'est la gnerru! G'est la gueri'j! How many hundreds of French men and women have I heard say the words, und always with, that same brave, patient resignation, that cheerful acceptance of Fate that only great souls can show. We have no phrase in English that is quite tho same. Tommy lias caught something of the spirit ot it, though. Often 1 have heard lads finish warm tirades against fancied or real grievuiiu.-s, or shoulder their packs i'or.im. uucipectk<l ■ extra mile or two, with the very words und the very shrug of the shouldors that is so inimitably French. But in English "It's a bit ot bad luck we're having" comes nearest lo it. Whether it was a working party back in tho front line only a few hours after being relieved, whether the cooks had burnt the stew, or the rest behind the line was curtailed, or the billet was 'bad, or the trenches 'particularly- vile, the grin and. .the phrase inevitably came to someone's lips, and thence afterward the grin to the faces of all. But folk at home have the spirit, 100. .The man who can receive the worst news-of all with the courageous words, "Tie has joined many another gullant fellow," lias plumbed "C'est la. guerre! to its depths. And England can number many of these great souls lc-day.— Jameß Eodsou in the "Daily News."