XXIII

It is two days since I wrote, Padre; and I have come back to Compiegne
from a world of unnatural silence and desolation. Day before yesterday
it was Roye and Nesle; the Chateau of Ham; Jussy, Chauny and Prince
Eitel Friedrich's pavilion. To-morrow we hope to start for Soissons.

Yesterday we rested, because Mother Beckett had a shocking headache.
(Oh, it was pathetic and funny, too, what she said when we slipped back
into Compiegne at night! "Isn't it a comfort, Molly, to see a place
again where there are _whole_ houses?") After Soissons we shall return
to Compiegne and then go to Amiens with several of the war
correspondents, who have their own car. Women aren't allowed, as a rule,
to see anything of the British front, but it's just possible that Father
Beckett can get permission for his wife to venture within gazing
distance. Of course, she can't--or thinks she can't--stir without me!

We took still another road to Noyon (one must pass through Noyon going
toward the front, if one keeps Compiegne for one's headquarters) and the
slaughter of trees was the wickedest we'd seen: a long avenue of kind
giants murdered, and orchards on both sides of it. The Germans, it
seems, had circular saws, worked by motors, on purpose to destroy the
large trees in a hurry. They didn't protect their retreat by barring
the road with the felled trunks. They left most of the martyrs standing,
their trunks so nearly sawed through that a wind would have blown them
down. The pursuing armies had to finish the destruction to protect
themselves. Farms were exterminated all along the way; and little
hamlets--nameless for us--were heaps of blackened brick and stone,
mercifully strewn with flowers like old altars to an unforgotten god.

Roye was the first big place on our road. It used to be rich, and its
4,000 inhabitants traded in grain and sugar. How the very name brought
back our last spring joy in reading news of the recapture! "Important
Victory. Roye Retaken." It was grandly impressive in ruin, especially
the old church of St. Pierre, whose immense, graceful windows used to be
jewelled with ancient glass that people came from far away to see.

Jim had written his mother about that glass, consequently she _would_
get out of the car to climb (with my help and her husband's) over a pile
of fallen stones like a petrified cataract, which leads painfully up to
the desecrated and pillaged high altar. I nearly sprained my ankle in
getting