are fairly frequent in its streets.
For Nancy has had its bombardments, and there is one gun of long range
in particular, surnamed by the town--"la grosse Bertha," which has done,
and still does, at intervals, damage of the kind the German loves.
Bombs, too, have been dropped by aeroplanes both here and at Luneville,
in streets crowded with non-combatants, with the natural result. It has
been in reprisal for this and similar deeds elsewhere, and in the hope
of stopping them, that the French have raided German towns across the
frontier. But the spirit of Nancy remains quite undaunted. The children
of its schools, drilled to run down to the cellars at the first alarm as
our children are drilled to empty a school on a warning of a Zeppelin
raid, are the gayest and most spirited creatures, as I saw them at their
games and action songs; unless indeed it be the children of the
_refugies_, in whose faces sometimes one seems to see the reflection of
scenes that no child ought to have witnessed and not even a child can
forget. For these children come from the frontier villages, ravaged by
the German advance, and still, some of them, in German occupation. And
the orgy of murder, cruelty, and arson which broke out at Nomeny,
Badonviller, and Gerbeviller, during the campaign of 1914, has scarcely
been surpassed elsewhere--even in Belgium. Here again, as at Vareddes,
the hideous deeds done were largely owing to the rage of defeat. The
Germans, mainly Bavarians, on the frontier, had set their hearts on
Nancy, as the troops of Von Kluck had set their hearts on Paris; and
General Castelnau, commanding the Second Army, denied them Nancy, as
Maunoury's Sixth Army denied Paris to Von Kluck.

But more of this presently. We started first of all for a famous point
in the fighting of 1914, the farm and hill of Leomont. By this time the
day had brightened into a cold sunlight, and as we sped south from Nancy
on the Luneville road, through the old town of St. Nicholas du Port,
with its remarkable church, and past the great salt works at Dombasle,
all the country-side was clear to view.

Good fortune indeed!--as I soon discovered when, after climbing a steep
hill to the east of the road, we found ourselves in full view of the
fighting lines and a wide section of the frontier, with the Forest of
Parroy, which is still partly German, stretching its dark length
southward on the right, while to the north ran the famous heights of the
Grand Couronne