reports. The friends of
architectural art and beauty hope to see the cathedral fully restored at
no distant date.]

"SLAUGHTER" AT SOISSONS

Much of the fighting during the battle of the Aisne centered around
Soissons. On September 16 a correspondent described the fighting there
as follows: "For the last three hours I have been watching from the
hills to the south of the town that part of the terrific struggle that
may be known in history as the battle of Soissons.

"It has lasted for four days, and only now can it be said that victory
is turning to the side of the Allies.

"The town itself cannot be entered for it still is being raked both by
artillery and rifle fire, and great columns of smoke mark several points
at which houses are burning.

"The center of the fighting lies where the British and French pontoon
corps are trying to keep the bridges they have succeeded in throwing
across the river.

"Men who have come from the front line tell me that the combat there has
been a positive slaughter. They say that the unremitting and desperate
firing of these four days and nights puts anything else in modern
warfare into the shade, that river crossings are as great an objective
on one side to take and keep as on the other to destroy."

SEVEN DAYS OF HELL

A wounded soldier, on being brought back to the hospital at Paris, after
only one week in the valley of the Aisne, said in a dazed sort of way:

"Each day was like the others. It began at 6 o'clock in the, morning
with heavy shellfire. There was a short interval at which it stopped,
about 5:30 every day. Then in the night came the charges, and one night
I couldn't count them. It was awful--kill, kill, kill, and still they
came on, shoving one another over on to us. Seven days and nights of it
and some nights only an hour's sleep; it was just absolute hell!"

None of the wounded found another word to describe the battle and the
sight of the men bore it out. Muddied to the eyes, wet, often with blood
caked on them, many were suffering from the curious aphasia produced by
continued trouble and the concussion of shells bursting. Some were
dazed and speechless, some deafened, and yet, strange to say, said a
correspondent, no face wore the terrible animal war look. They seemed to
have been softened, instead of hardened, by their awful experience.

CHAPTER XIX

FALL OF ANTWERP

_Great Seaport of Belgium Besieged by a Large German Force_--_Forts
Battered b