on or one more package
into the already crowded train they turned away in quiet grief, and when
women wept over their babies it was silently and without abandonment to
despair. The women of France are brave, God knows. I have seen their
courage during the past ten days--gallantry surpassing that of the men,
because of their own children in their arms without shelter, food, or
safety in this terrible flight from the advancing enemy.

Enormous herds of cattle were being driven into Paris. For miles the
roads were thronged with them; and down other roads away from Paris
families were trekking to far fields with their household goods piled
into bullock carts, pony carts, and wheelbarrows.

Two batteries of artillery were stationed by the line, and a regiment of
infantry was hiding in the hollows of the grassy slopes. Their outposts
were scanning the horizon, and it was obvious that the Germans were
expected at this point in order to cut the last way of escape from the
capital.

One of the enemy's aeroplanes flew above our heads, circled around, and
then disappeared. It dropped no bombs and was satisfied with its
reconnoissance. The whistle of the train shrieked out, and there was a
cheer from the French gunners as we went on our way to safety, leaving
them behind at the post of peril.

ST. PIERRE DU VAUVRAY, Sept. 6.--England received a hint yesterday as to
a change in the German campaign, but only those who have been, as I
have, into the very heart of this monstrous horror of war, seeing the
flight of hundreds of thousands of people before an overwhelming enemy
and following the lines of the allied armies in their steady retirement
before an apparently irresistible advance, may realize even dimly the
meaning of the amazing transformation that has happened during the last
few days.

For when I wrote my last dispatch from Arques-la-Bataille, after my
adventures along the French and English lines, it seemed as inevitable
as the rising of next day's sun that the Germans should enter Paris on
the very day when I wrote my dispatch. Still not a single shot has come
crashing upon the French fortifications.

At least a million men--that is no exaggeration of a light pen, but the
sober and actual truth--were advancing steadily upon the capital last
Tuesday. They were close to Beauvais when I escaped from what was then a
death-trap. They were fighting our British troops at Creil when I came
to that town. Upon the following day