I saw them
staggering from weariness and from the weakness of hunger. I saw all
these sights repeated and multiplied infinitely--yes, and magnified,
too--but not once did I see a man or woman or even a child that wept or
cried out.
If the Belgian soldiers won the world's admiration by the resistance
which they made against tremendously overpowering numbers, the people of
Belgium--the families of their soldiers--should have the world's
admiration and pity for the courage, the patience, and the fortitude
they have displayed under the load of an affliction too dolorous for any
words to describe, too terrible for any imagination to picture.
In France I saw a pastoral land overrun by soldiers and racked by war
until it seemed the very earth would cry out for mercy. I saw a country
literally stripped of its men in order that the regiments might be
filled. I saw women hourly striving to do the ordained work of their
fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, hourly piecing together the
jarred and broken fragments of their lives. I saw countless villages
turned into smoking, filthy, ill-smelling heaps of ruins. I saw schools
that were converted into hospitals and factories changed into barracks.
I saw the industries that were abandoned and the shops that were bare of
customers, the shopkeepers standing before empty shelves looking
bankruptcy in the face.
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