air of coming from lights and cigarette smoke, and of
these simple mothers rose above the noise of the street, half dirge,
half battle-cry, while out beyond somewhere the little soldiers in red
breeches were fighting, and the fate of France hung in the balance, that
morning.

Chapter III

After The Marne

At the end of the village the road climbed again from the ravine and
emerged on open fields. A wall of timber, dark and impenetrable as the
woods round an old chateau, rose at the farther end of these fields--the
road cutting through it like a tunnel--and on the brow of the ravine,
commanding the road and the little plain, was a line of trenches. Here
evidently they had fought.

We walked on down the road. Below the northern horizon, where they were
fighting now along the Aisne, rolled the sullen thunder of artillery, as
it had been rolling since daylight. And the autumn wind, cold with the
week of equinoctial rain, puffing out of thickets and across ravines,
brought, every now and then, the horrible odor of death.

Ahead, to the right, one caught the glint of a French infantry's red
trousers. A man was lying there, face downward, on the field. Then
across the open space appeared another--and another--they were scattered
all over that field, bright as the red poppies which were growing in the
stubble and as still. They were in various positions. One lay on his
back, with one knee raised like a man day-dreaming and looking up at the
sky. Another was stretched stiff, with both hands clinched over his
chest. One lay in the ditch close beside us, his head jammed into the
muddy bank just as he had dived there in falling; another gripped a cup
in one hand and a spoon in the other, as if, perhaps, he might have
tried to feed himself in the long hours after the battle rolled on and
left them there.

All these were French, but just at the edge of the thick timber was a
heap--one could scarcely say of Germans, so utterly did the gray, sodden
faces and sodden, gray uniforms merge into anonymity. A squad of French
soldiers appeared at a turn in the road. Two officers rode beside them,
and they were just moving off across the fields carrying shovels instead
of rifles. Looking after them, beyond the belt of timber, one could see
other parties like theirs on the distant slopes to the left, and here
and there smoke. Two more French soldiers appeared pushing a
wheelbarrow filled with cast-off arms. With