women and children
brutally massacred.

I best remember the little city as it was one afternoon in early
December. The population of 17,000 had then shrunk to about 900, and
only a little furtive life lingered in the town. My promenade began at
the river-bank by the wooden footbridge crossing from the shore to the
remaining arches of the graceful eighteenth-century stone bridge blown
up in September, 1914. There is always something melancholy about a
ruined bridge, perhaps because the structure symbolizes a patient human
victory over the material world. There was something intensely tragic in
the view of the wrecked quarter of Saint-Martin, seen across the deep,
greenish, wintry river, and in the great curve of the broad flood
sullenly hurrying to Metz. At the end of the bridge, ancient and gray,
rose the two round towers of the fifteenth-century parish church, with
that blind, solemn look to them the towers of Notre Dame possess, and
beyond this edifice, a tile-roofed town and the great triangular hill
called the Mousson. It was dangerous to cross the bridge, because German
snipers occasionally fired at it, so I contented myself with looking
down the river. Beyond the Bois-le-Pretre, the next ridge to rise from
the river was a grassy spur bearing the village of Norroy on its back.
You could see the hill, only four kilometres away, the brown walls of
the village, the red roofs, and sometimes the glint of sunlight on a
window; but for us the village might have been on another planet. All
social and economic relations with Norroy had ceased since September,
1914, and reflecting on this fact, the invisible wall of the trenches
became more than a mere military wall, became a barrier to every human
relation and peaceful tie.

A sentry stood by the ruined bridge, a small, well-knit man with
beautiful silver-gray hair, blue eyes, and pink cheeks; his uniform was
exceptionally clean, and he appeared to be some decent burgher torn from
his customary life. I fell into conversation with him. He recollected
that his father, a veteran of 1870, had prophesied the present war.

"'We shall see them again, the spiked helmets (les casques a pointe),'
said my father--'we shall see them again.'

"'Why?' I asked him.

"'Because they have eaten of us, and will be hungry once more.'"

The principal street of the town led from this bridge to a great square,
and continued straight on toward Maidieres and Montauville. The
sidewalks around