FRENCH GRATITUDE.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13594, 8 October 1914, Page 2

FRENCH GRATITUDE.

"If only those who cannot see the necessity for preparation could see the state of France how differently they would regard the situation," says the London "Daily Telegraph." "There are two impressions which stand out most vividly—the absence, of all young and middle-aged men, and the inta&Mk sustained, concentrated anxiety written on the faces of the women and children and the old territorials, who, arrayed in every species of strange uniform and armed with every kind of weapon, guard the bridges, pulverts, and stations. The whole country looked as if some terrible pestilence had swept it bare of men, leaving only the old and the feeble and the young. The joy on the faces of these poor wretches, as in hundreds they gathered round anyone who happened to have newspapers and learned of trifling success on, the fron-, tier, was pathetic to see.. Their gratitude towards England for standing by them in this terrible hdur is alone enough to repay the sacxifice we. shall have to make. Nothing can ever efface from the soul of the' French people the memory of the debt which they bear towards us. No blundering statesmanship, no conflicting interests, no legitimate cause of grievance can ever destory the great edifice of friendship which is being built up on the plains of Belgium, almost on the site of Waterloo."