tself has
existed and exists.

From St. Genevieve we went to the Grand Mont d'Amance, the most famous
point in all the Lorraine front, the southeast corner of the Grand
Couronne, as St. Genevieve is the northern. Here, from a hill some
1,300 feet high, one looks eastward into the Promised Land of
France--into German Lorraine. In the early days of August the great
French invasion, resting one flank upon this hill, the other upon the
distant Vosges, had stepped over the frontier. One could trace its
route to the distant hills among which it had found disaster. In these
hills the Germans had hidden their heavy guns, and the French, coming
under their fire without warning, unsupported by heavy artillery,
which was lacking to them, had broken. Then the German invasion had
rolled back. You could follow the route. In the foreground the little
Seille River could be discerned; it marked the old frontier. Across
this had come the defeated troops. They had swarmed down the low, bare
hills; they had crossed and vanished in the woods just at my feet;
these woods were the Forest of Champenoux. Into this forest the
Germans had followed by the thousand, they were astride the main road
to Nancy, which rolled white and straight at my feet. But in the woods
the French rallied. For days there was fought in this stretch of trees
one of the most terrible of battles.

As I stood on the Grand Mont I faced almost due east. In front of me
and to the south extended the forest. Exactly at my feet the forest
reached up the hill and there was a little cluster of buildings about
a fountain. All was in ruins, and here, exactly here, was the high
water mark of the German advance. They had occupied the ruins for a
few moments and then had been driven out. Elsewhere they had never
emerged from the woods; they had approached the western shore, but the
French had met them with machine guns and "seventy-fives." The brown
woods at my feet were nothing but a vast cemetery; thousands of French
and German soldiers slept there.

In their turn the Germans had gone back. Now, in the same woods, a
French battery was shelling the Germans on the other side of the
Seille. Under the glass I studied the little villages unfolding as on
a map; they were all destroyed, but it was impossible to recognize
this. Some were French, some German; you could follow the line, but
there were no trenches; behind them French shells were bursting
occasionally and black smoke rose ju