man is decoration. Once, however, I saw the Cross of Honor received with no sign of satisfaction at all, but that was because it came too late, and its recipient, one of my friends, a brave officer, was about to receive another recompense in heaven. It was very affecting to see the A dying decoration laid on that already gasping breast, decorated. without any consciousness on the part of the poor hero. His mother and wife, at least, before they buried him, could take the glorious emblem to hand down as heirloom and as instruction to his three little ones. It is a noble idea of the French Government, to give the decorations of soldiers killed by the enemy to A legacy their families-their widows, their orphans, or, for his if they are not married, to their old parents. family. During these years filled with emotion, few spectacles have impressed me so deeply as the ceremony of "taking arms" in the court of honor of the Invalides, when in this historic monument, built by Louis XIV. and now the tomb of Napoleon, a General of the Third Republic gave the emblem of the brave to women and children dressed in mourning, at the same time as to rough soldiers newly healed of their wounds and ready to return to the front. of honor return Return to the front! This is the The almost invariable ending of the history of our to the wounded soldier of the fourth year of the War. front. Return to the front! Never will the heroism required for the acceptance of such a duty be sufficiently admired! After three years of fatigue, privations, of unheard-of dangers, after one or several wounds which brought him within an inch of death, this man who has for long months felt the sweetness, the care, the calm of a comfortable hospital; has had a taste of the charms of family life once more; has little by little turned his thought away from the horrors of war, now he is sent back to the depot, from which he knows that before long Often im- he will be called again to the front! And he patient his to rejoin submits, resigns himself: what do I say? Often comrades. impatient of inaction, of the little rules which annoy his independent temper, he asks to go in advance of the call, to rejoin as a volunteer and without further delay his comrades of Champagne, Lorraine, Flanders or Picardy. He reenters his regiment as the traveler reenters his own country, and his only sadness is to find that during his absence so many old comrades have fallen, so many newcomers have filled the gaps. But the welcome of the survivors warms his heart. He goes into the at night. Although it is night-for only at night do trenches they go into the trenches-the sky is ploughed with illuminating fireworks, with projections and projectiles, of various kinds which bursting sow quick flashes of light, and a death often as prompt. In a maze of narrow and compli cated paths our friend advances without knowing where and feeling his way: nearer and nearer he approaches to enemies whose sleepless hate growls menacingly below his feet in the ground, around him on the earth, above him in the sky filled with sinister gleams. He goes his way without enthusiasm, but without hesitation, without boasting, but without fear, knowing by long experience what peril he runs, but offering himself calmly to his formidable destiny, ready to answer: "Present!" if God and his country demand his life. There are no heroes What hero in all the centuries of history attains to the grandeur of our hero? Who ever defended, in a war so terrible, a cause so imso grand. portant to the future of the world? Who has in past history striven so hard, suffered so much, so often passed through death? To prove himself equal to his high mission, he has had to rid himself of all egoism, renounce lucre and vain honors, sacrifice family joys; many times he has known the worst extremes of weariness, thirst, hunger and cold; he equals and surpasses in austerity the severest of monks; he practices an obedience and humility that monasteries and Thebaides know nothing of, constantly ready to expose himself, as soon as he receives the order, to a terrible and invisible death. No one ever more completely obeyed the counsels of Christ: "If you will be perfect, leave your father and mother, your wife, forsake your possessions, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Me." Those among these brave men who have faith, are conscious of such supernatural life and their letters-admirable collections have been published-reflect a light of authentic saintliness. The others, too, without knowing it, walk in the footsteps of Christ; at the moment of supreme sacrifice He will enlighten them with the brightness of His grace and will admit them, like their believing brothers, into the heaven promised to those who suffer for righteousness. Humanity which has never known Humanity horrors like those it is enduring now, has also shown never shown such moral grandeur, and it is such not astonishing that in face of such great grandeur. crimes and such great virtues, our soul should pause, breathless, incapable of expressing the excess of its emotion. has never moral voted wor I cannot speak to the great American public about our wounded, without saying how much we appreciate the fact that it has followed them, with admirable solicitude, all the length of their hard Calvary. Its stretcher-bearers The dehave helped us rescue them at the front, its amof the bulances have carried them to our hospitals, American public where they have found its doctors, its nurses for the to tend their wounds, its offerings of all kinds to assure their material well-being and their moral comfort. And in after-care it has not been less solicitous: teaching the blind, reeducating the maimed and giving them the costly wounded. apparatus which take the place of their lost limbs. When they could not survive, despite efforts of science and devotion, it contributed toward assuring the future of their widows and orphans. America to-day gives us even her blood; she has from the first given us her gold, given her heart! The great series of battles, known in general as the Battle of Picardy, formed a prelude to the final acts of the war. A stirring account of these battles is given in the narrative which follows. Ο THE BATTLE OF PICARDY J. B. W. GARDINER N MARCH 21st, 1918, Germany opened the the war. ably prove to be the decisive battle of Possibly the war. This designation has already, but not decisive altogether correctly, been given to the Battle battle of of the Marne. The Marne did decide that the Germans were not to capture Paris in their first great rush through Belgium and France. It did not only halt the German advance, but threw it back behind the Aisne, thus preventing Germany from winning the war in 1914. But it did not defeat the German army decisively. Nor did it make an ultimate German victory impossible. It left the German army still in the field, its strength practically unimpaired, still capable of strong defense, still with great striking power in attack. It made possible for the future a decisive Allied victory, but it did not achieve it. The German defeat at Verdun, indeed, did more harm to the German army, lessened to a greater extent its power of defense and its strength to attack than did the Marne, because through the French defense and counter-efforts, the German army lost nearly half a million men. But the battle now raging, which for convenience of reference is called the Battle of Picardy (although it embraces Picardy, Artois, and Flanders), will do more than did either the Marne or Verdun. It will place Germany irrevocably and unmistakably upon Germany will the laurel of victory or the thorny crown of de- victor feat. It is, therefore, the decisive battle of the or van Copyright, World's Work, June, 1918. emerge quished. |