Question

Read this excerpt from Guy de Maupassant's "Mother Savage" about an old woman who takes in four Prussian soldiers while her son is away fighting in the French army:

But the old woman thought always of her own son, so tall and thin, with his hooked nose and his brown eyes and his heavy mustache which made a roll of black hair upon his lip. She asked every day of each of the soldiers who were installed beside her hearth: "Do you know where the French marching regiment, No. 23, was sent? My boy is in it."
They invariably answered, "No, we don't know, don't know a thing at all." And, understanding her pain and her uneasiness—they who had mothers, too, there at home—they rendered her a thousand little services. She loved them well, moreover, her four enemies, since the peasantry have no patriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class alone. The humble, those who pay the most because they are poor and because every new burden crushes them down; those who are killed in masses, who make the true cannon's prey because they are so many; those, in fine, who suffer most cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest and offer least resistance—they hardly understand at all those bellicose ardors, that excitable sense of honor or those pretended political combinations which in six months exhaust two nations, the conqueror with the conquered.

A mother’s love has no barriers.
B.
In war, there are no winners.
C.
The common man is not patriotic.
D.
The poor suffer the most in war.

Answer 1

The main theme of this passage is that the poor suffer the most in war. The passage states that the poor don't really understand why there needs to be a war in the first place and so they end up suffering.

Answer: D) The poor suffer the most in war

Credit to: @Erudite1

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there are still good things to live for

Answer 2

D. The poor suffer the most in war.

Step-by-step explanation:

The poor mother, even though her own son is in the war, took in four enemy soldiers and cared for them like they were her own sons.

"they are poor and because every new burden crushes them down"

"who suffer most cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest and offer least resistance"

These lines from the passage is proof that the poor have no side in wars, for according to the narrator, "patriotic hatred [...] belongs to the upper class alone". Either way, no matter who wins, it is the poor who will suffer the most in any circumstance.