TEXT
"At the Front"
I recently had the high privilege of visiting the battlefront
of freedom from the English Channel to Venice. I saw the superb
and veteran armies of Great Britain, France and Italy. I saw the
heroic associates with whom our own army is to fight, and I had
then, as I have now a sense of stirring and rising pride in the
feeling that America's great and splendidly equipped and prepared
army is composed of men worthy to be classed with those heroes and
that they will find heroes worthy of their fellowship.
As the great army of American boys is streaming across the
sea, and taking its place beside the British and the French, my
mind projects that picture to another which I saw in Europe.
Mountains unscaled by human feet, descended by Italian engineers
with cable-ways running up them from valleys which seemed
bottomless, and carrying up CANNONS, men, and munitions until these
white-fingered, up-pointing mountains were really, each of them,
converted into fortress sentinels guarding Italy and guarding
freedom as well, by day and by night.
As an illustration of the spirit in heroic France, I heard of
a French woman who went to the intelligence office of a hospital to
inquire whether her husband, reported to her seriously wounded, had
any chance of recovery. They told her there, that her husband was
dead. She turned. It was not her first sacrifice in the war and
as she turned, seemed to stagger from the room. A kindly disposed
man followed her to see whether he could be of any comfort or
consolation in her distress. He overtook her at the sidewalk, and
she seemed almost distraught as he said to her: "Madam I beg you to
let me express my profound sympathy for this terrible blow." She
turned round, faced him squarely, and catching her breath and
choking back what would have been a sob said: "Sir, under these
circumstances there is only one proper sentiment to express, vive
la France!" That is the spirit of the people and the armies in
Europe. It is the spirit of America, and we shall be blessed in
the victory we are to win by the sacrifices which will have
purified us as they will have glorified our cause.
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