The Bavarian soldiers in Gerbeviller were not only murderers—­they were incendiaries, even more deliberate and thorough-going than the soldiers of Von Kluck’s army at Senlis.  With the exception of a few houses beyond the hospital, spared at the entreaty of Soeur Julie, and on her promise to nurse the German wounded, the whole town was deliberately burnt out, house by house, the bare walls left standing, the rest destroyed.  And as, after the fire, the place was twice taken and retaken under bombardment, its present condition may be imagined.  It was during the burning that some of the worst murders and outrages took place.  For there is a maddening force in triumphant cruelty, which is deadlier than that of wine; under it men become demons, and all that is human perishes.

The excuse, of course, was here as at Senlis—­“les civils ont tire!” There is not the slightest evidence in support of the charge.  As at Senlis, there was a French rear-guard of 57 Chasseurs—­left behind to delay the German advance as long as possible.  They were told to hold their ground for five hours; they held it for eleven, fighting with reckless bravery, and firing from a street below the hospital.  The Germans, taken by surprise, lost a good many men before, at small loss to themselves, the Chasseurs retreated.  In their rage at the unexpected check, and feeling, no doubt, already that the whole campaign was going against them, the Germans avenged themselves on the town and its helpless inhabitants.

Our half-hour in Soeur Julie’s parlour was a wonderful experience!  Imagine a portly woman of sixty, with a shrewd humorous face, talking with French vivacity, and with many homely turns of phrase drawn straight from that life of the soil and the peasants amid which she worked; a woman named in one of General Castelnau’s Orders of the Day and entitled to wear the Legion of Honour; a woman, too, who has seen horror face to face as few women, even in war, have seen it, yet still simple, racy, full of irony, and full of heart, talking as a mother might talk of her “grands blesses”! but always with humorous asides, and an utter absence of pose or pretence; flashing now into scorn and now into tenderness, as she described the conduct of the German officers who searched her hospital for arms, or the helplessness of the wounded men whom she protected.  I will try and put down some of her talk.  It threw much light for me on the psychology of two nations.

“During the fighting, we had always about 300 of our wounded (nos chers blesses) in this hospital.  As fast as we sent them off, others came in.  All our stores were soon exhausted.  I was thankful we had some good wine in the cellars—­about 200 bottles.  You understand, Madame, that when we go to nurse our people in their farms, they don’t pay us, but they like to give us something—­very often it is a bottle of old wine, and we put it in the cellar, when it comes in handy often for our invalids.