AN AMERICAN GIRL IN EUROPE.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13732, 22 March 1915, Page 3

AN AMERICAN GIRL IN EUROPE.

HER IMPRESSIONS

Miss Augusta Foute, a San Francisco girl, has made a tour of Europe since the outbreak of war, and has contributed to the "Bulletin" a series of articles giving her impressions. The people of Berlin, she states, were kept in a state of elation by reports of successive victories. They were confident of success, and spoke of the drastic j conditions which would be imposed upon the defeated allies. While allowing 1 many fine qualities to Germans, the writer declares that their national vanity and contempt for everything not German are perfectly'astounding and] ridiqulous. The masses of the people are in complete ignorance of the real position of affairs in connection with the war, and she believes that there will be trouble when they become acquainted with the truth. Miss Foute visited Sweden. Shefound public opinion there generallyl favourable to Germany, chiefly in conI sequence of ancient feuds and a national apprehension of Russian aggression. In Switzerland opinion was very much divided, but the people were resolved to preserve strict neutrality, I and had mobilised an army of 400,000 troops with the object of resisting in- ' vasion of Swiss terirtory. The great tourist hotels were closed, and owing to the drafting of men to the front most of the work was being done by women. Of her entry by rail into Paris she writes:—"ln my innocence I was eagerly looking for the lights of Paris. I had heard often of its brilliant illumination, and was sure it must be visible far away. Suddenly large opaque masses seemed to spring out o£ the surrounding darkness. It looked something like the Colorado Canyon at night. It was Paris, silent, sombre, inky, almost sinister. We alighted at a railroad station, dimly lighted for the moment, and passed through darkened streets to a dark hotel. Such is the fear that Zeppelins inspire. "Wherever I travelled in, Europe — in England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland —I could see the clear evidence of a vast religious movement —a turning to the thoughts from which the unfortunate have ever found consolation and which the fortunate seldom bother with at all. Overflow congregations fill the churches. These represent not the ruling class, but the great masses of the people, who approach the Master, not with arrogant prayers for victory, but with humble petitions that He save them from impending calamity—that he spare them from the consequences of their sins. "This is most apparent in France, and for a reason. When war was declared twelve thousand priests exchanged the cassock for the uniform and are now fighting for their country in the trenches in Flanders and France. All say that they make ideal soldiers, calm, resourceful and intrepid. They have cheered the living, given aid to the wounded, comforted and shrived the parting soul. And the convents have contributed their thousands of nuns, who are on the firing line, sharing every hardship, indifferent to danger—the most devoted and efficient nurses in giving first aid to the awful toll of the battlefields. Every wounded soldier brought to Paris has something to tell of their beneficient service. All France is ringing with their praise. And when the French people compare this devotion with the rotten treatment the ecclesiastics have received from the Government in recent years, it has brought a profound revolution of feeling towards the faith of their ancestors which, unless I am greatly mistaken, will not terminate with the war. "The French Government issues no Hats of casualties. Only when some person of importance falls is there public mention. An official list is kept, open only for those seeking legitimate information. But the bereaved are advised promptly of their sorrow. A printed postal card is used for this purpose. It reads about as follows: 'This will convey the sad intelligence that - — died fighting gloriously for his country. Details will follow later.' "Only an address and a name! No date, no signature, no battlefield! How pitifully incomplete to a heart that perhaps is breaking! But the stern exigencies of war seem to demand" that no information be given that might disclose the movements or position of commands. "For this reason no special services are h'eld, but almost every day a solemn requiem mass for the dead. There is no music, no toll of ■ bells. You see only a great church filled with black-dressed, kneeling figures, hear only the solemn intonation of the priest, broken here and there by the sob of a sorrowing mother, wife, or sister. No human being, however hardened, could view the impressive spectacle unmoved. "And I think it gives a truer impression of what war really i© and means than can be gathered from the letters of a thousand correspondents in the field or from the reports of all the generals who ever lived."