GOLDEN PATRIOTISM.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

GOLDEN PATRIOTISM.

DEVOTION OF FRENCHMEN. TOUCHING INCIDENT. In a late issue of the Paris Matin an incident from the battlefront is described which furnishes a touching proof of the intense patriotism of the people in France. "At ft certain point," says, the writer, "of the trench line in the north there lies a little French village which has been captured by the Germans and recaptured by the French time mid again, When the episode referred to took place the enemy was in possession of the village, and our trenches were about a thousand metres distant. One evening, when everything had quieted down and only a stray shot from some outpost, seared by suspicious shadows, would be heard now and then, a scattering rifle fire broke the silence all of a sudden, Was it an alarm? Was it the beginning ot an attack? Our men crawl up to the edge of the trenches, and in the dark they perceive a man running toward them with all speed. 'Who goes there?' sounds the challenge. 'Frenchman. Don't fire.' Over the brink of the nearest trench bounds an aged peasant The soldiers, who have grown to be suspicious of strangers, lay hold of him not too gently and bring him before the colonel. On regaining his composure after the running and the rough reception, the peasant tells his tale to the commanding oflicer. " 'There are four or five of us,' he said, 'who have remained in the village because our little pieces of land and the ruins of our houses represent all we possess. At our age we would rather live in the midst of fighting than abandon our old haunts. And, besides, isn't death better than exile and an unknown fate Last time your soldiers occupied our village one of them left a newspaper behind. News is scarce hereabouts, so we passed the sheet along. One paragraph in it impressed 11s very strongly. It said that the Minister of Finance needed gold. Well, each of us had a few pieces hidden away, and when we read that item we dug up our little treasures. Here is the whole amount, which my friends have asked me to bring over to you, with a request that you forward it to the Finance Ministry at your earliest convenient opportunity,'

"Without the least ostentation the old man handed to the colonel 350 francs in gold, the entire fortune of the devastated village. The officer could not for a long while find words fit for the proper acknowledgment of this sacrificial expression of profound patriotism. Before his emotions would allow the colonel to speak, the peasant continued: "'One thing morejl wish to aslc of you, and that is tlia*you let me stay here in your trench until you are ready to go over and take the village back again. I want to return with you, for if I tried to do it now the Germans would shoot me on the