to the soldiers' voices was not hard to read. Their town was pierced by
cannonballs where it was not scarified with fire; there was sorrow and
the abundant cause for sorrow in every house; commerce was dead and
credit was killed; and round the next turning their enemy sang his
drinking song. I judge that the thrifty Frenchman who went partner with
the German stranger in the beer traffic lost popularity that day among
his fellow townsmen.

We were bound for the railway station, which the Germans already had
rechristened Bahnhof. Word had been brought to us that trains of
wounded men and prisoners were due in the course of the afternoon from
the front, and more especially from the right wing; and in this prospect
we scented a story to be written. To reach the station we crossed the
river Sambre, over a damaged bridge, and passed beneath the arched
passageway of the citadel which the great Vauban built for the still
greater Louis XIV, thinking, no doubt, when he built it, that it would
always be potent to keep out any foe, however strong. Next to its
stupid massiveness what most impressed us this day was its utter
uselessness as a protection. The station stood just beyond the walls,
with a park at one side of it, but the park had become a timber
deadfall. At the approach of the enemy hundreds of splendid trees had
been felled to clear the way for gunfire from the inner defenses in the
event that the Germans got by the outer circle of fortresses. After the
Germans took the forts, though, the town surrendered, so all this
destruction had been futile. There were acres of ragged stumps and,
between the stumps, jungles of overlapping trunks and interlacing boughs
from which the dead and dying leaves shook off in showers. One of our
party, who knew something of forestry, estimated that these trees were
about forty years old.

"I suppose," he added speculatively, "that when this war ends these
people will replant their trees. Then in another forty years or so
another war will come and they will chop them all down again. On the
whole I'm rather glad I don't live on this continent."

The trains which were expected had not begun to arrive yet, so with two
companions I sat on a bench at the back of the station, waiting. Facing
us was a line of houses. One, the corner house, was a big black char.
It had caught fire during the shelling and burned quite down. Its
neighbors were intact, except for shattered chimneys and