ere were opening stealthily, ah,
so stealthily! Some one else tiptoed out, and some one else, and some
one else. We stood there staring, aghast at our daring. Suddenly we
realised what had happened. The brutes had gone. We were free. It was
indescribable, what followed--we ran together, weeping and embracing.
At first we wept for gladness; soon we wept for sorrow. Our youth had
departed; we were all old women or very ancient men. Two hours later
our poilus came, like a blue-grey wave of laughter, fighting their
way through the burning country that those swine had left in a sea of
smoke and flames."

And so that was why the Hun spared Noyon. But if he spared Noyon,
he spared little else.[2] Every village between here and the present
front line has been levelled; every fruit-tree cut down. The wilful
wickedness and pettiness of the crime stir one's heart to pity and
his soul to white-hot anger. The people who did this must make
payment in more than money; to settle such a debt blood is required.
American soldiers who came to Europe to do a job and with no decided
detestation of the Hun, are being taught by such landscapes. They know
now why they came. The wounds of France are educating them.

[Footnote 2: Goodness knows where the "present Front-line" may be by
the time this book is published. I visited Noyon in February, 1918,
just before the big Hun offensive commenced.]

There has been a scheme proposed in America under which certain
individual cities and towns in the States shall make themselves
responsible for the re-building of certain individual cities and
towns in the devastated areas. The scheme is noble; it has only one
drawback, namely that it specialises effort and tends to ignore the
immensity of the problem as a whole. I visited one of these towns--it
is a town for which Philadelphia has made itself responsible. I wish
the people of Philadelphia might get a glimpse of the task they have
undertaken. There is a church-spire still standing; that is about
all. The rest is a pile of bricks. In the midst of this havoc some
Philadelphia ladies are living, one of whom is a nurse. They run a
dispensary for the people who keep house for the most part in cellars
and holes in the ground. A doctor visits them to hold a clinic ever
so often. They have a little warehouse, in which they keep the
necessities for immediate relief work. They have a rest hut for
soldiers. They employ whatever civilian labour they can hire for