tory before his empire
fell. The sound of the guns we had left behind was still in our ears
and the meaning of these names in our minds. Presently my French
companion said to me: "It is a long time, isn't it?" He meant all the
years since the first storm came out of the north, and I think the
same thought is in every Frenchman's mind. Then he told me his story.

"I had two boys," he said; "one was taken from me years ago in an
accident; he was killed and it was terrible. But the other I gave.

"He was shot, my last boy, up near Verdun, in the beginning of the
war. He did not die at once and I went to him. For twenty days I sat
beside him in a cellar waiting for him to die. I bought the last
coffin in the village, that he might be buried in it, and kept it
under my bed. We talked many times before he died, and he told me all
he knew of the fight, of the men about him and how they fell.

"My name is finished, but I say to you now that in all that experience
there was nothing that was not beautiful." And as far as I can analyze
or put in words the impression that I have brought away from France,
from the ruin and the suffering and the destruction, I think it is
expressed in those words. I have seen nothing that was not beautiful,
too, because through all the spirit of France shone clear and bright.

III

BATTLE OF VERDUN ANOTHER GETTYSBURG

FAILURE OF CROWN PRINCE LIKENED BY FRENCH TO "HIGH TIDE" OF
CONFEDERACY

"The parallel between Gettysburg in your Civil War and Verdun in the
present contest is unmistakable and striking." This was said to me by
General Delacroix, one of Joffre's predecessors as chief of the French
General Staff and the distinguished military critic of the Paris
_Temps_ now that because of age he has passed to the retired list.

What General Delacroix meant was patent and must have already
impressed many Americans. Our own Gettysburg was the final bid for
decision of a South which had long been victorious on the battlefield,
which still possessed the armies that seemed the better organized and
the generals whose campaigns had been wonderfully successful. But it
was the bid for decision of a Confederacy which was outnumbered in
men, in resources, in the ultimate powers of endurance, and was
already beginning to feel the growing pinch both in numbers and
credit.

At Gettysburg Lee made his final effort to destroy the army which he
had frequently defeated but never eliminated. Vi