It’s the threading up of all these destinies, this web of the France to be, that is the great problem. And oh, how terrible is this uptearing of human beings, this ghastly showing of the roots! I have seen it wholesale, east and west. I remember especially the first two evacuations of Czernowitz and the adjacent towns and villages during the Russian advance through Galicia. They would flood the streets of Vienna by the tens of thousands, in pitiful groups, always the same—old men, women, and children; and it’s all alike, it’s war, the ruthless, the indescribable, and everywhere the children paying most heavily. Could the war-book of _children_ be written no eyes could read it for tears....[13] We went back to luncheon at the Prefecture, where I met M. Mirman, one of the most striking figures of the war. Since the 12th of August, 1914, when he took up his duties as _Préfet de la Meurthe et Moselle_, his handsome, straight-featured face has figured at every gathering of sorrow or relief. As he sat at his table, surrounded by his six children, he talked of those first days when Nancy was in danger and it was not known if _le Grand Couronné_ on which Castelnau had flung his _paraphe could_ protect them, and then he told of many urgent present needs. After lunch we drove with Madame Mirman to her favorite good work, _l’école ménagère_. When we got there the elementary class, girls of thirteen to fourteen, were chopping herbs and onions to make seasoning for soups in winter, and putting it up in stone pots. Another class was kneading and rolling out dough. Then we went into the great sewing-room and turned over the books of miniature sample pieces of underclothing. When the girls become expert they are given material and make their own trousseaux. With a sigh Madame Mirman said: “But I am sad for these girls. The men who might have been their husbands lie dead on the field of honor, and there will be no homes for them.” Something chill and inexorable laid its hand on me as I thought: only graves, and they leveled out of memory by time; except in the hearts of mothers, to whom _voir un pen sa personne_ is the supreme joy, and the knowledge that it can be no more the supreme sorrow. HÔTEL DES VOSGES, LUNÉVILLE, _11.30 p.m._