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 bear—the removal of machinery from the factories, the taking away of the young men and boys for forced labour, and, then, the greater infamy of that night when machine-guns were placed at the street corners and German officers ordered each household to assemble at the front door and chose the healthy-looking girls by the pointing of a stick and the word, "You!—you!—" for slave-labour—it was that—in unknown fields far away.

The priest's face blanched at the remembrance of that scene. His voice quavered when he spoke of the girls' screams—one of them had gone raving mad—and of the wailing that rose among their stricken families. For a while he was silent, with lowered head and brooding eyes which stared at a rent in the threadbare carpet, and I noticed the trembling of a pulse on his right temple above the deeply-graven wrinkles of his parchment skin. Then he raised his head and spoke harshly.

"Not even that could break the spirit of my people. They only said, 'We will never forget, and never forgive!' They were hungry—we did not get much food—but they said, 'Our sons who are fighting for us are suffering worse things. It is for us to be patient.' They were surrounded by German spies—the secret police—who listened to their words and haled them off to prison upon any pretext. There is hardly a man among us who has not been in prison. The women were made to do filthy work for German soldiers, to wash their lousy clothes, to scrub their dirty barracks, and they were insulted, humiliated, tempted, by brutal men."

"Was there much of that brutality?" I asked.

The priest's eyes grew sombre.

"Many women suffered abominable things. I thank God that so many kept their pride, and their honour. There were, no doubt, some bad men and women in the city—disloyal, venal, weak, sinful—may God have mercy