Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/297

Rh that which made our own Civil War so terrible. In these border provinces the population is very much mixed. On the German side there are many men who through forty years of enemy rule have never lost their true nationality. On the French side one hears many German names, sees many Teutonic faces. Here naturally was an opportunity which during all these years the Wilhelmstrasse wasn't likely to neglect. Who is to draw the line? Who is to say that this Teutonic type is a loyal Frenchman or a German spy? And on the other side of the trenches the Germans ask themselves precisely the reverse of that question.

It is a dreadful thing to suspect one's neighbours, to search for guilt behind the eyes of those who, before the war, were one's friends. And no spy could expect mercy from these people. The wantonness of the destruction rankles in the border provinces as it never has in any other war, and when you have wandered through the devastated districts, as the Quaker and I did, you understand why. The church at M— brought it home. It had no military value since a line of hills rolled between it and the enemy. Yet it had been blasted by great shells sent from guns many miles away, and the neighbouring houses, mere skeletons now, had been blasted with it. Its bronze bells, distorted and silent, lay in a pool of mud at the