I visited the devastated areas of the Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Oise and Aisne and saw what is being accomplished.  This destroyed territory is roughly one hundred miles long by thirty miles broad at its widest point.  In 1912 one-quarter of the wheat produced in France and eighty-seven per cent. of the beet crop employed in the national industry of sugar-making, were raised in these departments of the north.  The invasion has diminished the national wheat production by more than a half.  It is obvious, then, that in getting these districts once more under cultivation two birds are being killed with one stone:  the refugee is being made a self-supporting person—­an economic asset instead of a dead weight—­and the tonnage problem is being solved.  If more food is grown behind the Western Front, grain-ships can be released for transporting the munitions of war from America.

The French Government had already made a start in this undertaking before America came into the war.  As early as 1914 it voted three hundred million francs and appointed a group of sous-prefets to see to the dispensing of it.  Little by little, as the Huns have been driven back, the wealthier inhabitants, whose money was safe in Paris banks, have returned to these districts and opened oeuvres for the poorer inhabitants.  Many of them have lost their sons and husbands; they find in their daily labour for others worse off than themselves an escape from life-long despair.  Misfortune is a matter of comparison and contrast.  We are all of us unhappy or fortunate according to our standards of selfishness and our personal interpretation of our lot.  These patriots are bravely turning their experience of sorrow into the materials of service.  They can speak the one and only word which makes a bond of sympathy between the prosperous and the broken-hearted, “I, too, have suffered.”  I came across one such woman in the neighbourhood of Villequier-au-Mont.  She was a woman of title and a royalist.  Her estates had been laid waste by the invasion and all her men-folk, save her youngest son, were dead.  Directly the Hun withdrew last spring, she came back to the wilderness which had been created and commenced to spend what remained of her fortune upon helping her peasants.  These peasants had been the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Hun for three and a half years.  When his armies retreated, they took with them the girls and the young men, leaving behind only the weaklings, the children and the aged.  Word came to the Red Cross official of the district that her remaining son had been killed in action; he was asked to break the news to her.  He went out to her ruined village and found her sitting among a group of women in the shell of a house, teaching them to make garments for their families.  She was pleased to see him; she was in need of more materials.  She had been intending to make the journey to see him herself.  She was full of her work and enthusiastic over the valiance of her people.  He led her aside and told her.  She fell silent.  Her face quivered—­that was all.  Then she completed her list of requirements and went back to her women.  In living to comfort other people’s grief, she had no time to nurse her own.