rench dig a trench on
the crest. After two days the French forced the Germans out of the
woods by hitting them from another point.

We went over the field of another charge half a mile away. There a
French regiment put a stream with a single bridge at their back--which
requires some nerve--and charged a German trench on rising
ground. They took it. Then they tried to take the woods beyond.
Before they were checked twenty-two officers out of a total of thirty
fell. But they did not give up the ground they had won. They burrowed
into the earth in a trench of their own, and when help came they put
the Germans out of the woods.

The men of this regiment were not first line, but the older fellows--men
of the type we stopped to chat with in the village--hastening to the
front when the war began. Their officers were mostly reserves, too,
who left civil occupations at the call to arms. One of the eight
survivors of the thirty was with us, a stocky little man, hardly looking
the hero or the soldier. I expressed my admiration, and he answered
quietly: "It was for France!" How often I have heard that as a reason
for courage or sacrifice! The enemies of France have learned to
respect it, though they had a poor opinion of the French army before
the war began.

"That railroad bridge yonder the Germans left intact when they
occupied it because they were certain that they would need it to
supply their troops when they took the Gap of Mirecourt and
surrounded the French army," I was told. "However, they had to go in
such a hurry that they failed to mine it. They must have fired five
hundred shells afterwards to destroy it, in vain."

It was dusk when we entered the city of Luneville for the second time.
Whole blocks lay in ruins; others only showed where shells had
crashed into walls. It is hard to estimate just how much damage shell-
fire has done to a town, for you see the effects only where they have
struck on the street sides and not when they strike in the centre of the
block. But Luneville has certainly suffered as much as Louvain, only
we did not hear about it. Grim, sad Louvain, with its German sentries
among the ruins! Happy, triumphant Luneville, with its poilus instead
of German sentries!

"We are going to meet the mayor," said the major.

First we went to his office. But that was a mistake. We were invited to
his house, which was a fine, old, eighteenth-century building. If you
could transport it to New York some arm