No sound of firing rattled my window panes. It still
seemed very quiet--over there to the East. Yet before the dawn came
a German avalanche of men and guns might be sweeping across the
frontier, and if I stayed a day or two in the open town of Nancy I might
see the spiked helmets of the enemy glinting down the streets. The
town was not to be defended, I was told, if the French troops had to
fall back from the frontier to the fortresses of Belfort and Toul.
A woman's voice was singing outside in the courtyard when I
awakened next day. How strange that any woman should sing in an
undefended town confronted by such a peril. But none of the girls
about the streets had any fear in their eyes. German frightfulness had
not yet scared them with its nameless horrors.
28
I did not stay in Nancy. It was only the French War Office in Paris who
could give permission for a correspondent to join the troops. This
unfortified town has never echoed in the war to the tramp of German
feet, and its women's courage has not been dismayed by the worst
horrors. But since those days of August 1914, many women's faces
have blanched at the sight of blood--streams of blood sopping the
stretchers in which the wounded have been carried back from the
frontier, which seemed so quiet when I listened at the open window.
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