260 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



And what about France? The indomitable spirit of France can 

 best be illustrated by the story that Charles Edward Russell tells 

 about a French mother. Mr. Russell and Elihu Root were sent on 

 a mission to Russia. They traveled through continental Europe 

 and visited many battlefields. They were out on the battlefield of 

 the Marne when Mr. Russell saw this woman of France. When the 

 war began she was feeble and broken in health, and she mourned 

 the fact that she had nothing to give to her country. But she had. 

 She was the mother of four stalwart sons, the youngest being 

 sixteen years of age, and those she gave freely. Those boys 

 fought at the battle of the Marne. They fell mortally wounded and 

 their bodies were placed in a row. Out upon that battlefield came 

 the mother, she -paused at the grave of her first-born child, she 

 breathed a prayer and dropped a flower, and passed to the second, 

 and then to the third, and finally she stood at the foot of the grave 

 of her baby boy, that last great sacrifice that had been wrung from 

 a mother's heart, and her emotions overpowered her and she fell 

 prostrate upon that little mound of dirt and wept as though her 

 heart would break. But that mother had the courage, that mother 

 who had given everything, who, by all the standards that we know 

 anything about, had nothing more for which to live, had the courage 

 to lift her face through her tears and to raise her voice to high 

 heaven and after all to thank her God that she still had her France. 

 That was the spirit with which France fought. Look at the battle 

 of Verdun ! Verdun wasn't a battle, it was a war in itself ! Four 

 hundred thousand lives were sacrificed in the assault upon that 

 stronghold. Inch by inch the gallant French gave way until Fort 

 De Vaux was the key to the entire position. That pivotal point was 

 taken and retaken seven times, and when the Germans were pre- 

 paring for the final assault a young lieutenant found himself in com- 

 mand, every superior officer having fallen. He received a telegram 

 from General Petain which read : "They shall not pass. Fort De 

 Vaux must be held or Paris and the channel ports are lost." That 

 young man felt the crushing responsibility that was resting upon 

 him. He looked about upon the gaunt and famished faces of the 

 living, three days without food or water. He looked upon the end- 

 less windrows of the dead, and he leaped upon an eminence and 

 cried, "Arise, ye dead, and fight once more for France !" The dead, 

 of course, didn't arise, but they did fight once more for France, 

 because the spirit of their sacrifice so inspired the living that Fort 

 De Vaux was held and Paris and the channel ports, and civiliza- 



