death has been made by the other side against the
weakened line of the Allies. During the winter the line, in this
manner, automatically straightened. But what will happen now?

[Footnote E: Battle of Neuve Chapelle March, 1915.]

One thing we know: General Foch will send out his brave men, and,
having sent them, will watch the Louis-Quinze clock and wait. And
other great generals will send out their men, and wait also. There
will be more charts, and every fresh line of black or blue or red or
Belgian yellow will mean a thousand deaths, ten thousand deaths.

They are fighting to-day at Ypres. I have seen that flat and muddy
battlefield. I have talked with the men, have stood by the batteries
as they fired. How many of the boys I watched playing prisoners' base
round their guns in the intervals of firing are there to-day? How many
remain of that little company of soldiers who gave three cheers for me
because I was the only woman they had seen for months? How many of the
officers who shrugged their shoulders when I spoke of danger have gone
down to death?

Outside the window where I am writing this, Fifth Avenue, New York,
has just left its churches and is flaunting its spring finery in the
sun. Across the sea, such a little way as measured by time, people are
in the churches also. The light comes through the ancient,
stained-glass windows and falls, not on spring finery, not on orchids
and gardenias, but on thousands of tiny candles burning before the
shrine of the Mother of Pity.

It is so near. And it is so terrible. How can we play? How can we
think of anything else? But for the grace of God, your son and mine
lying there in the spring sunlight on the muddy battlefield of Ypres!

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE"

I was taken to see the battlefield of Ypres by Captain Boisseau, of
the French War Academy, and Lieutenant Rene Puaux, of the staff of
General Foch. It was a bright and sunny day, with a cold wind,
however, that set the water in the wayside ditches to rippling.

All the night before I had wakened at intervals to heavy cannonading
and the sharp cracking of _mitrailleuse_. We were well behind the
line, but the wind was coming from the direction of the battlefield.

The start was made from in front of General Foch's headquarters. He
himself put me in the car, and bowed an _au revoir_.

"You will see," he said, "the French soldier in the field, and you
will see him cheerful and