Excerpt from Behind the Scences at German Headquarters
My dear Master,
During fifty-two long months of German oppression your stirring articles in the Echo de Paris, in spite of a strict censorship and pitiless repression, have reached us, sometimes regularly, sometimes at long intervals. The breath of patriotism with which they were inspired, the ineradicable confidence which never deserted you, were a precious source of comfort to us, completely isolated as we were from our beloved France, and not one of my compatriots who have had the good fortune to read them will contradict me, when I say that they have helped greatly to keep our spirit firm in the presence of the enemy, and to keep alive our constant hope.
The odious campaign against your noble personality, led by the infamous Gazette des Ardennes, the low insults poured out for us by the Alsatian renegade, Rene Prevost, have given us eloquent proof of your noble mission of defending the French conscience against the perfidious attacks of Boche hypocrisy... It will be the great honour of your life to have been splashed by this infected mud with which they sought, through you and every good Frenchman they decried, to sully the honour of our country and to shake the stoutest hearts. They merely succeeded in increasing our sympathy and admiration for you and your colleagues, for the patriotic Press, whom the Kaiser"s scribblers, and their French allies of the "Defeatist" persuasion, so basely attacked.
We, the victims of the barbarian invasion, have listened to the counsel of Deroulede"s successor in la Ligue des Patriotes, and your example, reflected in your articles in support of vengeance, have laid down our duty for us: "To hold out at all costs; for victory was the prize of our tenacity"; in a word, "We must win!"
Thank you, dear Master, for the immense service you have rendered us. Thanks to you our spirit did not falter for a single instant; we never despaired. On the contrary, we held out, and we have won.
For this reason you will permit one of your admirers to dedicate to you these modest pages, the sole merit of which is that they give the impressions of a witness who has seen, judged, and suffered, and who will never forget!
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