Our
friends are as invisible as moles. There is not a trace even of their
track. This is a fine object-lesson in the efficacy of trenches. At
length an officer returns and saves us. We have to take the trench
on the extreme right. Much more hot walking, and a complete loss
of the notion of direction.

Then we come out on to another portion of the same road at the
point where a main line of railway crosses it. We are told to run to
shelter. In the near distance a German captive balloon sticks up
moveless against the sky. The main line of railway is a sorrowful
sight. Its signal-wires hang in festoons. Its rails are rusting. The
abandonment of a main line in a civilised country is a thing
unknown, a thing contrary to sense, an impossible thing, so that one
wonders whether one is not visiting the remains of a civilisation
dead and definitely closed. Very strange thoughts pass through the
mind. That portion of the main line cannot be used by the Germans
because it is within the French positions, and it cannot be used by
the French because it is utterly exposed to German artillery. Thus,
perhaps ten kilometres of it are left forlorn to illustrate the imbecile
brutality of an invasion. There is a good deal more trench before we
reach the village which forms the head of a salient in the French
line. This village is knocked all to pieces. It is a fearful spectacle. We
see a Teddy-bear left on what remains of a flight of stairs, a
bedstead buried to the knobs in debris, skeletons of birds in a cage
hanging under an eave. The entire place is in the zone of fire,
and it has been tremendously bombarded throughout the war.
Nevertheless, some houses still stand, and seventeen civilians--
seven men and ten women--insist on remaining there. I talked to
one fat old woman, who contended that there was no danger. A few
minutes later a shell fell within a hundred yards of her, and it might
just as well have fallen on the top of her coiffe, to prove finally to her
the noble reasonableness of war and the reality of the German
necessity for expansion.

The village church was laid low. In the roof two thin arches of the
groining remain, marvellously. One remembers this freak of
balance--and a few poor flowers on the altar. Mass is celebrated in
that church every Sunday morning. We spoke with the cure, an
extremely emaciated priest of middle age; he wore the Legion of
Honour. We took to the trenches again, having in the interval been
protec