No one complains,
though we already lack many things. No merchandise can come out yet on
the railroads, all the automobiles and most of the horses are gone, and
shops are shy of staple things.
Really I don't know which are the more remarkable, the men or the women.
You may have read the proclamation of the Minister of Agriculture to the
women of France, calling on them to go into the fields and get in the
crops and prepare the ground for the sowing of the winter wheat that the
men on returning might not find their fields neglected nor their crops
lost. You should have seen the old men and the women and the youngsters
respond. It is harvest-time, you know, just as it was in the invasion
of 1870.
In a few weeks it will be time to gather the fruit. Even now it is time
to pick the black currants, all of which go to England to make the jams
and jellies without which no English breakfast table is complete.
For days now the women and children have been climbing the hill at six
in the morning, with big hats on their heads, deep baskets on their
backs, low stools in their hands. There is a big field of black-currant
bushes beside my garden to the south.
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