be, the root question remains--"Why are the Germans
_in France at all_?" What brought them there but their own
determination, in the words of the Secret Report of 1913 printed in the
French Yellow book, to "strengthen and extend _Deutschtum_ (Germanism)
throughout the entire world"? Every injury that poor France in
self-defence, or the Allies at her side, are forced to inflict on the
villages and towns which express and are interwoven with the history and
genius of the French, is really a German crime. There is no forgiveness
for what Germany has done--none! She has tried to murder a people; and
but for the splendid gifts of that people, she would have achieved
her end.

Perhaps the tragedy of what is to be seen and heard at Senlis, on the
battle-grounds of the Ourcq, and in the villages of Lorraine, was
heightened for me by the beauty of the long drive south from the
neighbourhood of G.H.Q.--some hundred and forty miles. It was a cold but
clear March day. We had but parted from snow a little while, and we were
soon to find it again. But on this day, austerely bright, the land of
France unrolled before us its long succession of valley and upland,
upland and valley. Here, no trace of the invader; generally speaking no
signs of the armies; for our route lay, on an average, some forty miles
behind the line. All was peace, solitude even; for the few women, old
men, and boys on the land scarcely told in the landscape. But every mile
was rich in the signs and suggestion of an old and most human
civilisation--farms, villages, towns, the carefully tended woods, the
fine roads running their straight unimpeded course over hill and dale,
bearing witness to a _State sense,_ of which we possess too little in
this country.

We stopped several times on the journey--I remember a puncture,
involving a couple of hours' delay, somewhere north of Beauvais--and
found ourselves talking in small hot rooms with peasant families of all
ages and stages, from the blind old grandmother, like a brooding Fate in
the background, to the last toddling baby. How friendly they were, in
their own self-respecting way!--the grave-faced elder women, the young
wives, the children. The strength of the _family_ in France seems to me
still overwhelming--would we had more of it left in England! The
prevailing effect was of women everywhere _carrying on_--making no
parade of it, being indeed accustomed to work, and familiar with every
detail of the land; having