Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/298

258 entrance. I saw it on a Sunday morning. The officer who accompanied me said:

“Now let us look at the real church."

He led me to a house comparatively whole. He opened a door. Within were gathered two or three bent old men, many women, and a host of little children. They sat on rough chairs arranged before an improvised altar whose boards had been draped with white cloths. One had a feeling that the simplicity of their worship concealed a desire for the only justice they could understand an eye for an eye. They glanced at us with that desire in their faces, and with pride and suspicion. I was glad not to stand there unconducted. I should hate to enter the border provinces at all without iron-bound credentials. It was, I fancy, pride more than habit that had held these people to the vicinity of their desolate homes. There would have been, their stolid faces seemed to say, a special degradation in seeking comfort and whole houses and unsoiled churches at the command of Germany's destructive voice. They seemed trying to tell me that Germany had had nothing to do with this, that they were making the best of matters after a bad fire or a levelling tempest.

I was glad to have seen that, for it offered a solution I had been seeking ever since my arrival