wbridge across the moat were destroyed; the huge
blocks of masonry were tossed about, were playthings in the hands of the
mighty force of high explosives which flung them there. These scenes I
carefully filmed, together with several others in the vicinity of the
ramparts.

[Illustration: LORD KITCHENER'S LAST VISIT TO FRANCE. HE IS VERY
INTERESTED IN THE CARE OF THE WOUNDED]

The town was the same as every other I had filmed--burnt and
shell-riven. The place as a habitable town simply did not exist.
German names were everywhere; the names of the streets were altered,
even a French washerwoman had put up a notice that "washing was done
here," in German.

Street after street I passed through and filmed. Many of the buildings
were still burning and at one corner of the Grande Place flames were
shooting out of the windows of the three remaining houses in Peronne. I
hastily fitted up my camera and filmed the scene. When I had finished it
was necessary to run the gauntlet, and pass directly under the burning
buildings to get into the square.

Showers of sparks were flying about, pieces of the burning building were
being blown in all directions by the strong wind. But I had to get by,
so, buttoning up my collar tightly, fastening my steel shrapnel helmet
on my head, and tucking the camera under my arm, I made a rush, yelling
out to my man to follow with the tripod. As I passed I felt several
heavy pieces of something hit my helmet and another blazing piece hit my
shoulder and stuck there, making me set up an unearthly yell as the
flames caught my ear and singed my hair. But, quickly shooting past, I
reached a place of safety, and setting up the camera I obtained some
excellent views of the burning buildings.

Standing upon a heap of rubble, which once formed a branch of one of the
largest banking concerns in France, I took a panoramic scene of the
great square. The smoke clouds curling in and around the skeleton walls
appeared for all the world like some loathsome reptile seeming to gloat
upon its prey, loath to leave it, until it had made absolutely certain
that not a single thing was left to be devoured.

With the exception of the crackling flames and the distant boom of the
guns, it was like a city of the dead. The once beautiful church was
totally destroyed. In the square was the base of a monument upon which,
before the war, stood a memorial to France's glorious dead in the war of
1870. The "kultured" Germans had d