By rights, Canizy belongs with three other hamlets, to the commune of Hombleux. The mayor of Hombleux is therefore in reality also the mayor of Canizy. But each of the hamlets has an acting mayor besides. And, to complicate this matter of mayors still further, the real mayor of the commune has left his post to reside in his mansion in the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Inquiring into the reason of his non-residence, I was told that he was broken in health, and belonged to a political party which, at the moment, was no longer in power. Hence the so-called mayors, with whom rests the welfare of our villages.

Before the war, the present mayor of Hombleux was one of the grands cultivateurs. With Mme. la Baronne, Mme. Desmarchez and M. Gomart, he owned most of the rich acres encircling the town. Hombleux itself contained then about 1200 inhabitants, and was an industrial as well as an agricultural centre, having a distillery and two refineries for sugar-beets. Of the factories, practically nothing now remains, and of the inhabitants, 250 have survived the German deportations. ZÉlie, the kitchen maid, has told me of these last. “The first deportation,” she said, “was one of five hundred. The officers came to the doors at seven o’clock with the names, and told us to be ready to start at dawn. O Mademoiselle, the night! All the neighbours ran to and fro; all night we washed and sewed and ironed, and in the morning, each with a sack of fresh linen, my father, my sister, M. le CurÉ,—the flower of our village,—were marched away. And after, what weeping!” ZÉlie put down her broom to wring her hands, as if still dry-eyed from too much suffering. “The next time,” she continued, “the Boches gave us no warning. They came at midnight, and dragged us from our beds.” “Did you then go?” I inquired. “But yes,” she replied, and her eyes flashed. “They tried to make us work; there were five of us, friends, from our village. But work for the enemies of France? We would not! They put us in prison; they fed us almost nothing, but we would not work. One day they summoned us. ‘Go,’ they said, ‘go where you like, beasts of the Somme!’ Hungry, foot-sore, travelling mostly by night from the frontier, we came home. It was midnight when we reached Hombleux. In my own house, my mother had barred the door. I tapped on the window to wake her. At first, she would not believe that it was I. Even now, she looks at me with a question in her eyes as if asking continually, ‘ZÉlie, is it thou?’”

Our mayors have no such heroic past! They not only saved their own skins, but reside to this day with their wives and daughters; comely daughters of an age for the German draft. Of one it is more than whispered that he is a spy. Many carrier pigeons he had in his dovecote, and whether there were any connection or not, he knew of the impending German invasion, and left his comfortable house and growing crops, to spend the summer of 1914 in Normandy. Nor did he return till the summer of 1917. Meantime, his little hamlet had held a town meeting of its refugees, and elected a lady as mayor. In fact, M. Renet, on his return, found himself the only man in the village. He found also—a suspicious circumstance in the eyes of his neighbours—his house the only one undestroyed. I have talked with him there, looking out of his casement windows into a walled garden, where the fruit trees are uncut, and the walks are still bordered with close-trimmed box. He assumes an injured air, recounting his unpopularity. It is unfortunate, but since M. the Deputy has again asked him to act as mayor, que voulez-vous? He is compelled.

His superior, the mayor of the entire commune, did not fare so well. On our first visit, we found him inhabiting a loft in his partially ruined barn. But despite his chubby person, this mayor is a man of action. Week after week, Hombleux receives shifting regiments of troops back from the trenches en repos. These are detailed for construction work. Carpenters set up the baraques, which the Government furnishes to homeless families; masons and bricklayers are slowly raising the walls of the village bakery. The mayor has taken his share of the materials and workmen, and is now housed in a two-room lean-to, with a new slate roof, and lace-curtained windows. Here, beside an open fire, he transacts business.

He it is to whom returning refugees come to report and register; through him claims of damage (based on pre-war valuation of property) are filed, which the Government has promised to honor after the war. To him, requests for baraques are made, and sent by him to the Sous-PrÉfet of the Department, to be forwarded in turn to the Minister of the Interior, with whom such matters rest. The mayor calculates the amount of allocation or pension to which each family in the devastated area is entitled, varying according as they are rÉfugiÉs or rapatriÉs, according to the number of bread-winners imprisoned or serving with the colors, according to the number of children, or, in some cases, to the decorations won by their soldiers, for decorations carry pensions.[5] This entire matter of income is adjusted finally for our district by the PrÉfet at PÉronne. Besides housing and pensioning, the Government has undertaken to supply a certain amount of cereals, coffee, sago and the like. These the mayor distributes. Furniture as well is provided by the Government: bedsteads, mattresses (not forgetting bolsters), stoves, cupboards, chairs, tables and batteries de cuisine. Before our coming to take charge of the district, the mayor signed the furniture requisitions which were understood by the fortunate recipients to represent a part of their “indemnitÉ de guerre.” He also had the even more delicate task of distributing relief supplies left in bulk by the Red Cross or other agencies on their hurried passage through the ruined villages. Naturally, the supply fell short of the demand; and it was with unconcealed pleasure that the Mayor at the instance of the Sous-PrÉfet turned over these two thankless tasks to us. Yet we found him—or rather his wife and daughter—always ready to advise and coÖperate. On demand, they furnished immaculately penned lists of all inhabitants, whether grouped by sex and by age, by family, or by the main division of adults and juveniles. They know the number of families in each hamlet, the number of persons in each family, the name and the age of each. Much more they know, of gossip, and of human nature, and laughed, I fear a trifle derisively, at our manifest difficulties.

All these activities, centring in the Mayor, belong to the civil administration of the Department. The Ministry of Agriculture has its share in reconstruction also, but is more independent of local officials, having an office of its own in the commune. To it belong the ploughing and seeding, the replacing of orchards, and to a certain extent of livestock. But on all these matters, as to whose fields shall be ploughed, or who shall plant two apple trees or own a goat, the verdict of the Mayor is sought. He himself, you may be sure, is dependent on no such circuitous methods. Together with two other grands cultivateurs, he has bought an American tractor, a harrow, and a mowing machine. These can even be hired for the same price as the government-owned tractors, which is forty francs an hectare. Over all reconstruction, considered as a part of the civil administration, preside the Sous-PrÉfet and the PrÉfet of the Somme.

On the other hand, food supplies in general, such as bread, are controlled by the army. In fact, every detail of life in the War Zone is their care if they choose to assume it. Troop movements delay shipments; therefore there may be no bread. Cavalry needs fodder; the sergeant at Hombleux goes out to forage with rick and trio of white horses and buys it at a fixed price. Mme. N—— is ill; the army doctor visits her, and if she seems to him a menace to the health of the soldiers, he removes her to a hospital. In view of the military importance attached to the Zone, the confidence of the French Government in giving over a section of it to the care of a group of American women, wholly unacquainted with the task before them, seems truly touching.

In fact, it seemed appalling, as I learned from day to day the problems for which I was myself responsible in Canizy. Not the least of these was its mayor. Unlike his confrÈre at B——, M. Thuillard had not fled his property until forced to do so with the rest of the villagers immediately prior to the Retreat of 1917. During the occupation, he kept his store as usual. And even though his horses and cattle, his fat rabbits and plump chickens, were requisitioned by the Germans, they say that he was paid for them. To see him, however, housed in a miserable hut, with a dirt floor so uneven that the very chairs looked tipsy; to hear the complaints of his querulous wife, and the references of his daughter to their former comfort, was calculated to enlist one’s sympathy. Mme. Thuillard was ill, and he was lame, and the daughter’s husband was a prisoner, and they had lost heavily, because they had the most to lose. All this they told me over the saucerless cups of black coffee which they offered me “out of a good heart.”

But when I considered the Mayor’s duty to his village, my own heart hardened. Here is the entry I find in my notebook on my first survey of Canizy. “Canizy, dependence of Hombleux, Thuillard, Oscar, in charge. CurÉ of Voyennes has charge of the children; 4 k. away. No church, no school, no bread, no water fit to drink.” There was something, of course, in the Mayor’s own contention that the village had been forgotten; and one could understand why the CurÉ came only to burials when one saw him,—so ill he looked. But in M. Thuillard’s barn were two stout horses, and two carts stood before his door. On his own business, he could travel. “Why, then,” I inquired, “has he not fetched the bread supply from Hombleux to which the village is entitled?” “Because he has nothing to gain,” and the good wife I interrogated shrugged her shoulders and laughed. “Look you,” she continued, “M. Thuillard is rich; 26 kilos of money he buried, and it is not in sous.” This rumour, which gave the one-legged Mayor something of the air of a land pirate, I heard on all sides. Even the school teacher of Hombleux repeated it; and her husband, an officer, nodded his head to emphasize his “Oui, c’est vrai.”

Of one of our mayors, however, I would like to record nothing but praise. Widow of a soldier, left with two little girls, and absolutely no other possession in the world, she ruled our home village at the ChÂteau with justice and dignity. She never complained. When at last the baraque on the ruins of her farm was completed, all except the fitting of the glass in the windows, she insisted on moving in so that we could make use of the space she vacated in our basse-cour. I met her one bitter evening shortly afterward, as I was returning from Canizy. “Is it not cold in the baraque, Madame?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she replied, “but what would you? It is so good to be at home!”