estruction following the descent
of these?

But the Taube turned away, the guns fired less and less frequently,
the people in the streets drifted away, the children to school, the
men to work, the women to wait. It was just a detail in their lives,
as familiar as the incoming steamer to the commuters on the North
River ferryboats. Some portion of war has been the day's history of
Nancy for nearly two years now. The children do not carry gas masks to
school with them as they do at Pont-a-Mousson, a dozen miles to the
north, but women and children have been killed by German shells, by
bombs, brought by Zeppelins and by aeroplanes. There is always
excitement of sorts in the district of Nancy.

After a breakfast, broken by the return of the aeroplanes we had seen
departing the night before for the patrol, we entered our cars and set
out for the front, for the near-front, for the lines a few miles
behind the present trenches, where Nancy was saved but two years ago.
Our route lay north along the valley of the Meurthe, a smiling broad
valley, marching north and south and meeting in a few miles that of
the Moselle coming east. It was easy to believe that one was riding
through the valley of the Susquehanna, with spring and peace in the
air. Toward the east a wall of hills shut out the view. This was the
shoulder of the Grand Couronne, the wall against which German
violence burst and broke in September, 1914.

Presently we came to a long stretch of road walled in on the river
side by brown canvas, exactly the sort of thing that is used at
football games to shut out the non-paying public. But it had another
purpose here. We were within the vision of the Germans, across the
river, on the heights behind the forest, which outlined itself at the
skyline; there were the Kaiser's troops and that forest was the
Bois-le-Pretre, the familiar incident in so many communiques since the
war began. Thanks to the canvas, it was possible for the French to
move troops along this road without inviting German shells. Yet it was
impossible to derive any large feeling of security from a canvas wall,
which alone interposed between you and German heavy artillery.

We passed through several villages and each was crowded with troops;
cavalry, infantry, all the branches represented; it was still early
and the soldiers were just beginning their day's work; war is so
completely a business here. Transport wagons marched along the roads,
companies of so