Amelie has a stepson and daughter.  The boy—­named Marius—­like his father plays the violin.  Like many humble musicians his music is his life and he adds handsomely to his salary as a clerk by playing at dances and little concerts, and by giving lessons in the evening.  Like his father he is very timid.  But he accepted the war without a word, though nothing is more foreign to his nature.  It brought it home to me—­this rising up of a Nation in self-defense.  It is not the marching into battle of an army that has chosen soldiering.  It is the marching out of all the people—­of every temperament—­the rich, the poor, the timid and the bold, the sensitive and the hardened, the ignorant and the scholar—­all men, because they happen to be males, called on not only to cry, “Vive la France,” but to see to it that she does live if dying for her can keep her alive.  It is a compelling idea, isn’t it?

Amelie’s stepdaughter is married to a big burly chap by the name of Georges Godot.  He is a thick-necked, red-faced man—­in the dynamite corps on the railroad, the construction department.  He is used to hardships.  War is as good as anything else to him.  When he came to say “good-bye” he said, “Well, if I have the luck to come back—­so much the better.  If I don’t, that will be all right.  You can put a placque down below in the cemetery with ’Godot, Georges:  Died for the country ’; and when my boys grow up they can say to their comrades, ’Papa, you know, he died on the battlefield.’  It will be a sort of distinction I am not likely to earn for them any other way”; and off he went.  Rather fine for a man of that class.

Even the women make no cry.  As for the children—­even when you would think that they were old enough to understand the meaning of these partings they make no sign, though they seem to understand all the rest of it well enough.  There isn’t a boy of eight in our commune who cannot tell you how it all came about, and who is not just now full of stories of 1870, which he has heard from grandma and grandpa, for, as is natural, every one talks of 1870 now.  I have lived among these people, loved them and believed in them, even when their politics annoyed me, but I confess that they have given me a surprise.

IX

August 17, 1914.

I have Belgium on my soul.  Brave little country that has given new proof of its courage and nobility, and surprised the world with a ruler who is a man, as well as king.  It occurs to me more than ever to-day in what a wonderful epoch we have lived.  I simply can’t talk about it.  The suspense is so great.  I heard this morning from an officer that the English troops are landing, though he tells me that in London they don’t yet know that the Expedition has started.  If that is true, it is wonderful.  Not a word in the papers yet, but your press is not censored as ours is.  I fancy you know these things in New York before we do, although we are now getting a newspaper from Meaux regularly.  But there is never anything illuminating in it.  The attitude of the world to the Belgian question is a shock to me.  I confess to have expected more active indignation at such an outrage.