rise attacks from the civil
population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to
create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to
the whole country."

A Belgian officer once quoted it to me, with a comment.

"This is not an order to the army. It is an attempt at justification
for the very acts which Berlin is now attempting to deny!"

That is how "frightfulness" came into the literature of the war.

Captain F---- stopped the car. Near the road was a ruin of an old
church.

"In that church," he said, "our soldiers were sleeping when the
Germans, evidently informed by a spy, began to shell it. The first
shot smashed that house there, twenty-five yards away; the second shot
came through the roof and struck one of the supporting pillars,
bringing the roof down. Forty-six men were killed and one hundred and
nine wounded."

He showed me the grave from a window of the car, a great grave in
front of the church, with a wooden cross on it. It was too dark to
read the inscription, but he told me what it said:

"Here lie forty-six _chasseurs_." Beneath are the names, one below the
other in two columns, and underneath all: "_Morts pour la Patrie_."

We continued to advance. Our lamps were out, but the _fusees_ made
progress easy. And there was the moon. We had left behind us the lines
of the silent men. The scene was empty, desolate. Suddenly we stopped
by a low brick house, a one-story building with overhanging eaves.
Sentries with carbines stood under the eaves, flattened against the
wall for shelter from the biting wind.

CHAPTER XI

AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER

A narrow path led up to the house. It was flanked on both sides by
barbed wire, and progress through it was slow. The wind caught my rain
cape and tore it against the barbs. I had to be disentangled. The
sentries saluted, and the low door, through which the officers were
obliged to stoop to enter, was opened by an orderly from within.

We entered The House of the Mill of Saint ----.

The House of the Mill of Saint ---- was less pretentious than its
name. Even at its best it could not have been imposing. Now, partially
destroyed and with its windows carefully screened inside by grain
sacks nailed to the frames for fear of a betraying ray of light, it
was not beautiful. But it was hospitable. A hanging lamp in its one
livable room, a great iron stove, red and comforting, and a large
round table under the lamp made it