gne to Soissons, with Castelnau to the north of him,
with his left wing resting on the Somme; that Maud'huy was behind
Albert; and that Rheims cathedral had been persistently and brutally
shelled since September 18? We only get news of that sort
intermittently. Our railroad is in the hands of the Minister of War, and
every day or two our communications are cut off, from military
necessity. You know, I am sure, more about all this than we do, with
your cable men filling the newspapers.

But if I am seeing none of that, I am seeing the spirit of these people,
so sure of success in the end, and so convinced that, even if it takes
the whole world to do it, they will yet see the Hohenzollern dynasty go
up in the smoke of the conflagration it has lighted.

Of course, the vicious destruction of the great cathedral sends
shivers down my back. Every time I hear the big guns in that direction
I think of the last time we were there. Do you remember how we sat,
in the twilight of a rainy day, in our top-floor room, at the Lion d'Or, in
the wide window-seat, which brought us just at a level with that dear
tympanum, with its primitive stone carving of David and Goliath, and
all those wonderful animals sitting up so bravely on the lacework of
the parapet? Such a wave of pity goes over me when I think that not
only is it destroyed, but that future generations are deprived of seeing
it; that one of the greatest achievements of the hands of man, a work
which has withstood so many wars in what we called "savage times,"
before any claims were made for "Kultur," should have been
destroyed in our days. Men have come and men have gone
(apologies to Tennyson)--it is the law of living. But the wilful,
unnecessary destruction of the great works of man, the testimony
which one age has left as a heritage to all time--for that loss neither
Man nor Time has any consolation. It is a theft from future ages, and
for it Germany will merit the hatred of the world through the coming
generations.

IV

October 10, 1914

Amelie and I went up to Paris day before yesterday, for the first time
since the battle,--you see everything here dates "before" and "after"
the battle, and will for a long time.

Trains had been running between Paris and Meaux for ten days, and
will soon go as far as Chalons, where the Etat-Major was the last time
we heard of it. Isn't that pretty quick work? And with three big bridges
to build? But the army needed the r