which
logs are carried to the saw in a mill. You felt unconsciously, yet
unmistakably, that you were looking, not upon automobiles, not upon
separate trucks, but upon some vast and intricate system of belts and
benches that were steadily, swiftly, surely carrying all this vast
material, carrying men and munitions and supplies, everything human
and inanimate, to that vast grinding mill which was beyond the hills,
the crushing machine which worked with equal remorselessness upon men
and upon things.

Now and again, too, over the hills came the Red Cross ambulances; they
passed you returning from the front and bringing within their
carefully closed walls the finished product, the fruits of the day's
grinding, or a fraction thereof. And about the whole thing there was a
sense of the mechanical rather than the human, something that
suggested an automatic, a machine-driven, movement; it was as if an
unseen system of belts and engines and levers guided, moved, propelled
this long procession upward and ever toward the mysterious front where
the knives or the axes or the grinding stones did their work.

Night came down upon us along the road and brought a new impression.
Mile on mile over the hills and round the curves, disappearing in the
woods, reappearing on the distant summits of the hills, each showing a
rear light that wagged crazily on the horizon, this huge caravan
flowed onward, while in the villages and on the hillsides campfires
flashed up and the faces or the figures of the soldiers could be seen
now clearly and now dimly. But all else was subordinated to the line
of moving transports. Somewhere far off at one end of the procession
there was battle; somewhere down below at the other end there was
peace. There all the resources, the life blood, the treasure in men
and in riches of France were concentrating and collecting, were being
fed into this motor fleet, which like baskets on ropes was carrying it
forward to the end of the line and then bringing back what remained,
or for the most part coming back empty, for more--for more lives and
more treasure.

It was full night when our car came down the curved grades into
Bar-le-Duc, halted at the corner, where soldiers performed the work
of traffic policemen and steadily guided the caravan toward the road
marked by a canvas sign lighted within by a single candle and bearing
the one word, "Verdun." All night, too, the rumble of the passing
transport filled the air and