imney;
and we noted that already weeds were springing up in the quarry yards
and about the mouths of the coal pits and the doorways of the empty
factories.

Considering that the Germans had to fight their way along the Meuse,
driving back the French and Belgians before they trusted their columns
to enter the narrow defiles, there was in the physical aspect of things
no great amount of damage visible. Stagnation, though, lay like a
blight on what had been one of the busiest and most productive
industrial districts in all of Europe. Except that trains ran by
endlessly, bearing wounded men north, and fresh troops and fresh
supplies south, the river shore was empty and silent.

In twenty miles of running we passed just two groups of busy men. At
one place a gang of German soldiers were strengthening the temporary
supports of a railroad bridge which had been blown up by the retiring
forces and immediately repaired by the invaders. In another place a
company of reserves were recharging cases of artillery shells which had
been sent back from the front in carload lots. There were horses here
--a whole troop of draft horses which had been worn out in that
relentless, heartbreaking labor into which war sooner or later resolves
itself. The drove had been shipped back this far to be rested and cured
up, or to be shot in the event that they were past mending.

I had seen perhaps a hundred thousand head of horses, drawing cannon and
wagons, and serving as mounts for officers in the first drive of the
Germans toward Paris, and had marveled at the uniformly prime condition
of the teams. Presumably these sorry crow-baits, which drooped and
limped about the barren railroad yards at the back of the siding where
the shell loaders squatted, had been whole-skinned and sound of wind and
joint in early August.

Two months of service had turned them into gaunt wrecks. Their ribs
stuck through their hollow sides. Their hoofs were broken; their hocks
were swelled enormously; and, worst of all, there were great raw wounds
on their shoulders and backs, where the collars and saddles had worn
through hide and flesh to the bones. From that time on, the numbers of
mistreated, worn-out horses we encountered in transit back from the
front increased steadily. Finally we ceased to notice them at all.

I should explain that the description I have given of the prevalent
idleness along the Meuse applied to the towns and to the scattered
worki