There is nothing for anyone to do but wait for news from the front.  It is the same old story—­they are see-sawing at Verdun, with the Germans much nearer than at the beginning—­and still we have the firm faith that they will never get there.  Doesn’t it seem to prove that had Germany fought an honest war she could never have invaded France?

Now, in addition, we’ve all this strain of waiting for news from Dublin.  The affairs of the whole world are in a mess.

There are many aspects of the war which would interest you if you were sitting down on my hilltop with me—­conditions which may seem more significant than they are.  For example, the Government has sent back from the front a certain number of men to aid in the farm work until the planting is done.  Our commune does not get many of these.  Our old men and boys and women do the work fairly well, with the aid of a few territorials, who guard the railway two hours each night and work in the fields in the daytime.  The women here are used to doing field work, and don’t mind doing more than their usual stunt.

I often wonder if some of the women are not better off than in the days before the war.  They do about the same work, only they are not bothered by their men.

In the days before the war the men worked in the fields in the summer, and in the carriere de platre, at Mareuil-les-Meaux, in the winter.  It was a hard life, and most of them drank a little.  It is never the kind of drunkenness you know in America, however.  Most of them were radical Socialists in politics—­which as a rule meant “ag’in’ the government.”  Of course, being Socialists and French, they simply had to talk it all over.  The cafe was the proper place to do that—­the provincial cafe being the workingman’s club.  Of course, the man never dreamed of quitting until legal closing hour, and when he got home, if wife objected, why he just hit her a clip,—­it was, of course, for her good,—­“a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,”—­you know the adage.

Almost always in these provincial towns it is the woman who is thrifty, and often she sees but too little of her man’s earnings.  Still, she is, in her way, fond of him, tenacious in her possession of him, and Sundays and fete days they get on together very handsomely.

All the women here, married or not, have always worked, and worked hard.  The habit has settled on them.  Few of them actually expect their husbands to support them, and they do not feel degraded because their labor helps, and they are wonderfully saving.  They spend almost nothing on their clothes, never wear a hat, and usually treasure, for years, one black dress to wear to funerals.  The children go to school bareheaded, in black pinafores.  It is rare that the humblest of these women has not money put aside.