Mothers Who Bear War's Sorrows.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 20 July 1918, Page 2

Mothers Who Bear War's Sorrows.

MAURICE MAETERLmK TOUCHES A CHORD THAT MUST THRILL MANY HEARTS. The great Belgian poet, Maeterlinck, has Written the following appealing prcfaee to a book of pastels by LevyDliurmcr on the Mothers of the War: . "They bear the great sorrow of this war. In our streets and squares and churches, in our cities and villages, and in all our houses we come in contact with mothers who have lost their sons or arc living in- anxiety which is more cruel than the ccrtainty of death.

"Let us try to understand the loss that is theirs. They knew what it is, but they do not tell it to us men.

"In their declining years the boys are taken from them in the prime of life. When little children die it seems as if the infant souls scarcoly go away, but linger about her who brought them into the world, waiting in a new form. The death that visits the cradle is not the same death that spreads terror over the world.

"But a son that dies at twenty does not come back; he leaves no hope behind. He takes away with him all the future in store for his ipother, all that she had given him, all the promises that was in him; the pains and griefs and smiles of birth and childhood, the joys of youth, the recompense and reaping of maturity, the support and peace of old ago.

"He takes away far more than himself; it is not his life alone that ends; it is days without number that are suddenly cut off, a line of posterity that is snuffed out; a crowd of faces, laughter and games and tiny carressing hands that fall at one blow on the field oi battle, say adieu to the sun and return to the earth before they have known it.

"All this the eyes of our mothers see even if they do not reckon it, and it is this that makes none of us able at certain moments to bear the weight and sadness of their gaze. I THE COURAGE OF THE MOTHERS. Yet they do not weep like the mothers of otffer wars. One by one their sons vanish, -yet their moanings and complaints are not heard as in times gone by when great tribulations, great massacres and great oatastrophes were wrapped in the clamour and lamentation of women. They gather in the market places, they blame not, they accuse no one, they do not rebel. They gulp down their tears, as if obeying a password that they have transmitted to one another without the knowledge of men. One cannot know what it is that sustains them and gives them strength to bear what is left of them in life. Some of them have other children, and one understands how they transfer to these the love and the future that have been broken by death. Many have never lost . their faith in the eternal promises, or ! are trying to.find it again; and again , I one can understand why they despair | not, for neither did the mothers of the j martyrs despair. But many others, whose homes are forever desolate and for whom Heaven is peopled only with pale phantoms, cling to the same hope ' as those who hope always.

What is it, then, that sustains this courage which so astonishes our eyef

j "We talk to her of the righteousness ! and bcuaty of the cause for which tho hero fell, of the immensity and neces- , sity of the sacrifice, of the memory and gratitude of mankind, of the nothingness of this life which is not measured by length of days but by sublimity of duty and glory. Perhaps we add that | there are- no dead, that those who are ; no more live closer to our souls than when they were in the flesh, and that tall we held most dear in them Temains • still in our hearts, so long as memory can call it up and love can keep it alive. "But even while we speak we can feel the emptiness of what we are saying. We understand that all this is true only for those whom death haß not hurled down into the abyss where words are only hollow sounds; that j the warmest- recollection does not take j tlie place of a cherished reality which ! one can touch with hands or lips; that ! the most exalted thought is worth nothing to the familiar comings and goins, the presence at table, the morning and evening kiss the parting embrace and the joy of the welcome home. '' And they know it and feel it better than wc; this is why they do notreply to our words of consolation; they listen in silence and find within themselves other reasons for living and hoping than those that we, by vainly searching the whole horizon of certainties and human thoughts, endeavour to bring them from the outside. "They take up the burden : of their days without telling us whence they draw their strength, without imparting to us the secret of their sacrifice, their resignation and their heroism."