"However, the fact that the brewery is intact and the church in ruins does not prove that a brewery is better than a church. It only proves which is the Lord's side in this war," said Sister Julie. But I get ahead of my story. In the middle of the main street were half a dozen smoke-blackened houses which remained standing, an oasis in the sea of destruction, with doors and windows intact facing gaps where doors and windows had been. We entered with a sense of awe of the chance which had spared these buildings. "Sister Julie!" the major called. A short, sturdy nun of about sixty years answered cheerily and appeared in the dark hall. She led us into the sitting-room, where she spryly placed chairs for our little party. She was smiling; her eyes were sparkling with a hospitable and kindly interest in us, while I felt, on my part, that thrill of curiosity that one always has when he meets some celebrated person for the first time--curiosity no less keen than if I were to meet Barbara Frietchie. Through all that battle of ten days, with the cannon never silent day or night, with shells screaming overhead and crashing into houses; through ten days of thunder and lightning and earthquake, she and her four sister associates remained in Gerbéviller. When the town was fired they moved from one building to another. They nursed both wounded French and Germans; also wounded townspeople who could not flee with the others. "You were not frightened? You did not think of going away?" she was asked. "Frightened?" she answered. "I had not time to think of that. Go away? How could I when the Lord's work had come to me?" President Poincaré went in person to give her the Legion of Honour, the first given to a woman in this war; so rarely given to a woman, and here bestowed with the love of a nation. Sister Marie was in the kitchen at the time, cooking the meal for the sick for whom the sisters are still caring. So Sister Julie took the President of France into the kitchen to meet Sister Marie, quite as she would take you or me. A human being is simply a human being to Sister Julie, to be treated courteously; and great men may not cause a meal for the sick to burn. After the complexity of French politics, President Poincaré was anything but unfavourably impressed by the incident. "He was such a little man, I could not believe at first that he could be President," she said. "I thought that the President of France would be a big man. But he was very agreeable and, I am sure, very wise. Then there were other men with him, a Monsieur de-de-Deschanel, who was president of something or other in Paris, and Monsieur du- du--yes, that was it, Du Bag. He also is president of something in Paris. They were very agreeable, too." "And your Legion of Honour?" "Oh, my medal that M. le Président gave me! I keep that in a drawer. I do not wear it every day when I am in my working-clothes." "Have you ever been to Paris?" "No, monsieur."