Excerpt from Just Behind the Front in France The France that I had left five years ago was full of youth, of joy, of contentment, a land of sun-kissed hills, of velvety meadows and of purple vineyards, a land filled with the songs and laughter of children and the smiles of gentle women. On my return I found her sadly changed. She had suddenly aged. The joy and contentment were gone, and in their place were intense suffer ing and profound sorrow. The fiery ordeal through which she had passed had left its ugly scars but it had also tempered her and made her finer and stronger. Where she had lost materially she had gained Spiritually. She stands to-day erect and proud, confident and determined, her face illumined by the glory of a great faith that in the ultimate outcome of the tremendous struggle hers will be the victory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.