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It is curious how long the song of La Marseillaise has held its power. It
has been like a leit-motif through all the drama of this war in France,
through the spirit of the French people waiting patiently for victory,
hiding their tears for the dead, consoling their wounded and their
cripples, and giving their youngest and their manhood to the God of
War. What is the magic in this tune so that if one hear it even on a
cheap piano in an auxiliary hospital, or scraped thinly on a violin in a
courtyard of Paris, it thrills one horribly? On the night of August 2,
when I travelled from Paris to Nancy, it seemed to me that France
sang La Marseillaise--the strains of it rose from every wayside station
--and that out of its graveyards across those dark hills and fields, with
a thin luminous line on the far horizon the ghosts of slain soldiers rose
to sing it to those men who were going to fight again for liberty.
Since then it has always been in my ears. I heard it that night in
Amiens when the French army was in retreat, and when all the young
men of the city, not yet called to the colours because of their youth,
escaped hurriedly on truck trains before a bridge was blown up, so
that if they stayed they would be prisoners in German hands.
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