be the fate of hundreds of other towns over all of Europe. In this war
the waste of horses is appalling. Those that first entered Brussels with
the German army had been bred and trained for the purposes of war,
and they were magnificent specimens. Every one who saw them
exclaimed ungrudgingly in admiration. But by the time the army
reached the approaches of Paris the forced marches had so depleted
the stock of horses that for remounts the Germans were seizing all
they met. Those that could not keep up were shot. For miles along
the road from Meaux to Soissons and Rheims their bodies tainted the
air.

They had served their purposes, and after six weeks of campaigning
the same animals that in times of peace would have proved faithful
servants for many years were destroyed that they might not fall into
the hands of the French. Just as an artillery-man spikes his gun, the
Germans on their retreat to the Aisne River left in their wake no horse
that might assist in their pursuit. As they withdrew they searched each
stable yard and killed the horses. In village after village I saw horses
lying in the stalls or in the fields still wearing the harness of the
plough, or in groups of three or four in the yard of a barn, each with a
bullet-hole in its temple. They were killed for fear they might be useful.

Waste can go no further. Another example of waste were the motor-
trucks and automobiles. When the war began the motor-trucks of the
big department stores and manufacturers and motor-buses of
London, Paris, and Berlin were taken over by the different armies.
They had cost them from two thousand to three thousand dollars
each, and in times of peace, had they been used for the purposes for
which they were built, would several times over have paid for
themselves. But war gave them no time to pay even for their tires.
You saw them by the roadside, cast aside like empty cigarette-boxes.
A few hours' tinkering would have set them right. They were still good
for years of service. But an army in retreat or in pursuit has no time to
waste in repairing motors. To waste the motor is cheaper.

Between Villers-Cotterets and Soissons the road was strewn with
high-power automobiles and motor-trucks that the Germans had
been forced to destroy. Something had gone wrong, something that
at other times could easily have been mended. But with the French in
pursuit there was no time to pause, nor could cars of such value be
left to the enemy. So t