In France there is not a single family which has not given without hesitation all its children of military age to fight for the repulse of the invader.  All the men from Creans, of ages 20 to 48 years, have gone, with one exception, and he is now going; and meanwhile no work has ceased because of their absence.  In all the communes, in all the hamlets of the whole of France, the women, the children, and the men over 48 have assumed all duties, in particular the gathering of the harvests, which I see already finished as in normal times. * * *

When one thinks that Servia alone, even though exhausted by two atrocious wars, is sufficient to hold in check imperial Austria; when one sees Italy remain neutral, and in reality hostile to Austria, and Russia open slowly, inexorably, her reservoir of men, resources, and infinite energy on the eastern frontier of Germany, one asks truly if the Pan-Germanists have not been the veritable plague of God for their country; the Fatherland, which men like Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven had made so cultured, so glorious, and which asked only to live and to prosper, the Pan-Germanists have isolated only to deliver it to the execration of the world.  It was the same in France formerly, when she ceded to chauvinistic influences.

Second Letter.

PARIS, Sept. 3, 1914.

* * * May you never witness such calamities as have fallen upon Europe.  The visions of horror, which formerly we evoked in order to terrify the world and to try to conjure them away, are now surpassed; and we are only at the commencement of the war!  The trains, thronged with youth and enthusiasm, which I saw leave are now returning crowded with the wounded.  They have filled all the hospitals, the barracks which had been left empty, the lyceums, and the schools throughout France.  In but a few days they have arrived everywhere in the south, the west and the centre of the country.  At La Fleche alone we have five improvised hospitals with 1,200 beds.  Creans is a hospital annex, and so it is in all the villages and in the dwellings which can provide one or more beds.  The wounded who occupy these beds are happy, very happy.  One of them, who has only a broken leg, but who thinks of the thousands of his comrades who remain wounded upon the fields of battle, said to me, “I am in heaven.” * * *

The worst of all, (I have always said it, but it is even worse than I had thought,) the worst is that each of the combatants, for the most part incapable of cruelty under ordinary conditions, is now devoted to the horrible work of hatred and of reprisal; and even more than the combatants, their children, their orphans, all those who are to remain in mourning. * * *

As far as France is concerned, our first reverses have served to exalt the national spirit and to fortify the unanimous resolution to conquer or to die.  It is important that this be well understood in the United States and that it be given due consideration if it is desired to intervene without irritating the most noble scruples. * * *