However, that is merely a personal theory. I may be
absolutely wrong about it. The German general who interpreted the
meaning of the situation may have been absolutely right about it.
Certainly the physical testimony was on his side.
Also, it seemed to me, the psychology of the people--particularly of the
womenfolk--in northern France was not that of their neighboors over the
frontier. In a trade way the small shopkeepers here faced ruin; the
Belgians already had been ruined. The Frenchwomen, whose sons and
brothers and husbands and fathers were at the front, walked in the
shadow of a great fear, as you might tell by a look into the face of any
one of them. They were as peppercorns between the upper millstone and
the nether, and the sound of the crunching was always in their ears,
even though their turn to be ground up had not yet come.
For the Belgian women, however, the worst that might befall had already
happened to them; their souls could be wrung no more; they had no terror
of the future, since the past had been so terrible and the present was a
living desolation of all they counted worth while.
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