Mothers of France (1917)

It is summer. In the fertile fields of Meurcy, France, the tillers are gathering the harvest. The castle occupied by the commandant and his wife, Monsieur and Madame D'Urbex, is filled with happy excitement, for Robert D'Urbex, the only son, has been made a lieutenant. Conducting the farm, which is a part of the D'Urbex estate, is the Lebron family, father, mother, Marie, their daughter, and Nonet, an orphaned youth of nineteen. The village schoolmaster, Guinot, loves Marie and a wedding has been arranged, although there is an unspoken tenderness between the girl and Nonet. The tranquility of Meurcy is soon disturbed by news of diplomatic complications. War is imminent. The call to mobilize comes suddenly. Nonet seizes the drum and strides through the village followed by an ever increasing crowd. There is a passionate meeting in the square and after it come scenes of soldiers parting from their loved ones. Nonet insists on going with the rest, although rejected as being under age. Months pass. General D'Urbex is in command of the Champagne front. The regiment of Lieutenant D'Urbex has Victor Lebron as one of its corporals. The schoolmaster, Guinot, is a sergeant attached to the commissary department. Nonet is a soldier in the ranks. Mme. D'Urbex is matron of the military hospital at Rheims. Lieutenant D'Urbex is mortally wounded and Corporal Lebron, who has been slightly injured, is sent to the hospital at Rheims to inform Mme. D'Urbex of the approaching death of her son. Guinot, in Rheims at the moment, is returning to the front, and the distracted mother beseeches him to take her in one of his supply trucks to the place where she supposes the young lieutenant has been removed. It is a violation of military rules, but he consents. They find that the young officer has not been brought in as expected, but is still at the "first aid" station. She finds him in a shell-riddled building, stretched out upon a cot and at the final moment of life. After the young lieutenant has expired his mother removes from his hand a letter he has scrawled, imploring her to overcome her grief and show herself a worthy example to the mothers of France. Madame D'Urbex devotes herself again to her duties as matron of the in hospital, to which one day Guinot is brought, blinded for life. Beneath his pillow patient secretes the pocketbook of General D'Urbex, who has entrusted it to him when fatally wounded. Guinot cannot bring himself to deliver this new blow to the heroic woman, and the pocketbook remains under his pillow until Madame D'Urbex herself finds it there and learns the truth. The doubly bereaved woman resolves to devote herself to assuaging the grief of others, and she goes back to her little village, to console the other stricken women. Madame Lebron curses war, but the commander's widow stills her, saying, "We have not the right to curse. Those for whom we weep are dead in order that our mother shall possess all things. France never dies." The schoolmaster Guinot meanwhile has shown the manner of man he is by writing to the girl he loves that he cannot ask her to share the life of a sightless man, and releasing her from her promise. But little Marie refuses to accept her liberty. Nonet comes home on leave, a medal on his breast, but he is unhappy there through the hopelessness of his love, and after a scene with Marie he determines to return to the trenches. But the schoolmaster overhears a part of the leave taking, and himself unites the young lovers. Solitude weighs heavily on the blind man, who has sacrificed not alone his eyesight but his heart upon the altar of duty, so that the future to him is empty indeed. Here again Madame D'Urbex fills the breach. "Reflect," she says, "that there remains to you a family for the members of which you have a noble task to perform. Your pupils are waiting for you. To them you are no longer merely the schoolmaster, but a living example of the sacrifices we willingly make for our country." So these two proceed to the little schoolhouse, where Madame D'Urbex inscribes upon the blackboard this message: "So that the mothers shall no longer suffer, it is necessary that France carry on the war, war upon war, and that the glow of the future paradise shall illuminate itself from the bayonets of France."