She has given the
spacious, lovely house for a military hospital. And there, while the
German guns thundered a few kilometres away from us and a German sausage
balloon floated in the sky, I watched the skilful ministrations of
French and American doctors and nurses to the wounded.

One thought haunted me--the memory of Kipling's only son, nineteen years
old, who was with us in that happy Christmastide. The lad was reported
"missing" after one of the battles between Loos and Hulluch. For six
months I sought, with the help of Herr von Kuhlmann, German Minister at
The Hague, to find a trace of the brave boy. But never a word could we
get.

The second visit was to the battle-field of the Marne under the escort
of Captain the Count de Ganay. We motored slowly through the ruined
towns and villages. Those which had been wrecked by shellfire were like
mouthfuls of broken teeth--chimneys and fragments of walls still
standing. Those which had been vengefully burned by the retreating
Germans were mere heaps of ashes. Most of our time was spent around the
Marais de St. Gond, where the French General Foch held the Thermopylae
of Europe.

Four times he advanced across that marsh and was driven back, but not
beaten. The fifth time he advanced and stayed, and Paris was forever
lost to the Germans. Think of the men who made that last advance and
saved Europe from the Potsdam gang. Their graves, carefully marked and
tended, lie thickly strewn along the lonely ridges of all that
region--humble but immortal reminders of glorious heroism.

The third visit was with the same escort to the fighting front at
Verdun.

The long, bare, rolling ridges between Bar-le-Duc and the Meuse; the
high-shouldered hills along the river and around the ruined little
city; the open fields, the narrow valleys, the wrecked villages, the
shattered woodlands--all were covered with dazzling snow. The sun was
bright in a cloudless sky. A bitter, biting wind poured fiercely,
steadily out of the north, driving the glittering snow-dust before it.
Every man had put on all the clothes he possessed, and more; pads of
sheepskin over back and breast; gunny sacks tied around the shoulders.
The troops of cavalry, the teams of mules and horses dragging
munition-wagons or travelling kitchens or long "75" guns, clattered
along the iron surface of the Via Sacra--that blessed road which made
the salvation of Verdun possible after the only railway was destroyed.
Endless train