When the Germans invaded France in August, 1914, this woman lived in a small town directly in the path of the Wurtemburg army that swept in from Lorraine. Her husband kept a small shop where tobacco and fruit and such like were sold. They had a home and three children--Cécile, sixteen; Georges, twelve, and Marcel, six. They were quiet people, like all the other villagers, and the mobilizing of their men when war came was the first great and terrifying event in their lives. This woman’s husband had a club foot and could not be mobilized. She had no son old enough to fight, so she was counted lucky. Then the Germans came. They swarmed in early one morning and the horrified villagers at once began to see war in its most frightful guise. Soldiers broke into the home of the club-footed man and demanded tobacco. He led the way to his little shop and told them to help themselves. They did, and when they had filled their pockets and their haversacks they shot the lame man through the heart. Meantime, with torch and grenade, other soldiers were setting fire to the village. They burned the dead tobacconist’s home, and when the wife rushed from the house with her youngest child in her arms they shot the child. He screamed “Mother!” just once, and died. She and her two remaining children fled, but Cécile, the sixteen-year-old daughter, did not get very far. She was seized by a German officer, and it was a year before her mother saw her again. When those two met again the girl was a skeleton, and she bore in her arms a skeleton baby. It was a girl. Otherwise they would not have permitted her to take it back to France. The reunited family made their way to a relative in a village near Peronne. When the Germans swept over that district in 1916 they fled again, and in the flight Cécile, never strong after her experience in Germany, died. Soon afterward the baby died. Georges, now a sturdy boy of fourteen, was all that was left. After the Germans retreated last November they went back to their village near Peronne, and the boy worked for their support--until March twenty-first, this year. Then they fled again, and here she was--alone. “Where is Georges?” I asked. “Do not speak so loud, madame,” implored the neighbor. “The poor one can not be told just yet, but Georges was killed by a shell that burst near the station when we got on the train. Not all of us could get on that train. She thinks that Georges was left behind and that he will come to-morrow.” I could write stories like that to fill a book. Indeed, it has been done, officially done, by the French government, and every story was carefully authenticated before it was published. I tell this story because it was told to me while I was feeding the wretched victim.