being could survive such a bombardment were many
grewsome proofs. In one place for a mile the road was lined with
those wicker baskets in which the Germans carry their ammunition.
These were filled with shells, unexploded, and behind the trenches
were hundreds more of these baskets, some for the shells of the
siege-guns, as large as lobster-pots or umbrella-stands, and others,
each with three compartments, for shrapnel. In gutters along the road
and in the wheat-fields these brass shells flashed in the sunshine like
tiny mirrors.

The four miles of countryside over which for four days both armies
had ploughed the earth with these shells was the picture of complete
desolation. The rout of the German army was marked by knapsacks,
uniforms, and accoutrements scattered over the fields on either hand
as far as you could see. Red Cross flags hanging from bushes
showed where there had been dressing stations. Under them were
blood-stains, bandages and clothing, and boots piled in heaps as
high as a man's chest, and the bodies of those German soldiers that
the first aid had failed to save.

After death the body is mercifully robbed of its human aspect. You are
spared the thought that what is lying in the trenches among the
shattered trees and in the wheat-fields staring up at the sky was once
a man. It appears to be only a bundle of clothes, a scarecrow that
has tumbled among the grain it once protected. But it gives a terrible
meaning to the word "missing." When you read in the reports from
the War Office that five thousand are "missing," you like to think of
them safely cared for in a hospital or dragging out the period of the
war as prisoners. But the real missing are the unidentified dead. In
time some peasant will bury them, but he will not understand the
purpose of the medal each wears around his neck. And so, with the
dead man will be buried his name and the number of his regiment. No
one will know where he fell or where he lies. Some one will always
hope that he will return. For, among the dead his name did not
appear. He was reported "missing."

The utter wastefulness of war was seldom more clearly shown.
Carcasses of horses lined the road. Some few of these had been
killed by shell-fire. Others, worn out and emaciated, and bearing the
brand of the German army, had been mercifully destroyed; but the
greater number of them were the farm horses of peasants, still
wearing their head-stalls or the harness of the plough