It was Christmas night--the time to dance. So they chose partners, by the compulsion of the bayonet, with the women of an invaded and outraged race. The same rich, childlike sentiment floods their eyes with tears at thought of the mother at home. Cruel, sentimental, melancholy, methodical, they are a race that needs wise leadership. And they have not received that. They have been led by men who do not believe in them. Every evil trait has been played upon, to the betrayal of the simple rather primitive personality, which in other hands would have gone gently all its days. But the homely goodness has been stultified, and we have a race, of our own stock, behaving like savages under the cool guidance of its masters. The next piece of testimony was given me by a woman who was within a few days of giving birth to a child by a German father. I withhold her name and the name of her village. "I was maltreated by them, Monsieur. They abused me. Last year in the month of October, 1915, they arrived. I was learning how to take care of the cattle, to help my father, who already had enough with what the Germans required him to do outside in the fields. My father had not returned; I was entirely alone. I was in the bottom of the barn; my children were in the house with my mother. They were upon me; I did not see them. They threw me down and held me. They were the soldiers who lodged with my parents. I cried out three or four times for some one to come, but it was finished. I got up from the straw." "Have you told your parents or any one?" "No. Never to a person, Monsieur. I am too much ashamed. But I always think of it. My eldest child is eleven years old, the next seven years, the third six years, and the last I have had since the war. The one I wait for now, of course, I do not count on bringing up." Monsieur Mirman, the Prefect, replied: "Since you must have him, you will tell me at the time, so that I may take action and give you assistance." Through the courtesy of Mrs. Charles Prince, I spent an afternoon with a French nurse, Marie Louise Vincent, of Launois, in the Ardenne. The Germans came. She was on the road, one hundred yards away, when she saw this: "I saw an old French beggar, whom everybody knew, hobbling down the road. He passed through our village every week. He was called "Père Noël" (Father Christmas) because of his big beard. He was seventy-five years old. It was the 29th of August, about 8 o'clock in the morning. Officers ordered twelve men to step out from the ranks. They took the old man and tied him to a tree. An officer ordered the men to shoot. One or two of the sous-officers fired when the men fired. So they shot Père Noël. The villagers found thirteen bullet holes in him. "That day the soldiers burned the first four houses of our village. They made a big blaze, and if the wind had turned the whole village would have burned.