e in Europe have learned to live on short rations; they rarely
indulge in luxuries like weeping, but bear the most unwonted
afflictions as though they were the ordinary fortunes of life. War
has set a new standard for grief. So these victims passed along
the road, but not before the record of their passing was etched for
ever on our moving-picture films. The coming generation will not
have to reconstruct the scene from the colored accounts of the
journalist, but with their own eyes they can see the hegira of the
homeless as it really was.

The resignation of the peasant in the face of the great calamity
was a continual source of amazement to us. Zola in "Le Debacle"
puts into his picture of the battle of Sedan an old peasant plowing
on his farm in the valley. While shells go screaming overhead he
placidly drives his old white horse through the accustomed
furrows. One naturally presumed that this was a dramatic touch of
the great novelist. But similar incidents we saw in this Great War
over and over again.

We were with Consul van Hee one morning early before the
clinging veil of sleep had lifted from our spirits or the mists from the
low-lying meadows. Without warning our car shot through a bank
of fog into a spectacle of medieval splendor--a veritable Field of
the Cloth of Gold, spread out on the green plains of Flanders.

A thousand horses strained at their bridles while their thousand
riders in great fur busbies loomed up almost like giants. A
thousand pennons stirred in the morning air while the sun burning
through the mists glinted on the tips of as many lances. The crack
Belgian cavalry divisions had been gathered here just behind the
firing-lines in readiness for a sortie; the Lancers in their cherry and
green and the Guides in their blue and gold making a blaze of
color.

It was as if in a trance we had been carried back to a tourney of
ancient chivalry--this was before privations and the new drab
uniforms had taken all glamour out of the war. As we gazed upon
the glittering spectacle the order from the commander came to us:

"Back, back out of danger!"

"Forward!" was the charge to the Lancers.

The field-guns rumbled into line and each rider unslung his
carbine. Putting spurs to the horses, the whole line rode past
saluting our Stars and Stripes with a "Vive L'Amerique." Bringing
up the rear two cassocked priests served to give this pageantry a
touch of prophetic grimness.

And yet as the cavalcade