he same disadvantage. There
is the city of Lille with its million or more of French inhabitants
lying within five miles of our lines (such easy range), for over three
years, and not a shell fired into it. How the Germans smile as their
bases of operation lie in such security, for, of course, sentiment has
been erased from the German character forever.

The French made the mistake again in regard to Bapaume of crediting the
Germans with human feelings--they vainly hoped that the Germans would
respect historic monuments when they gained no military advantage by
destroying them. But every day that the war is prolonged is but adding
to the evidence already so colossal that the German is a beast who
wantonly destroys and takes sheer joy in slaying, burning, and
smashing, destroying for destruction's sake, and killing for the sight
of blood. When we drove the Germans from Bapaume they left it in ruins
as utter as though we had bombarded it, but so much more systematic was
their destruction! In the market square there is a hole large enough
to hold a cathedral, made by the mine they exploded as they left, which
was so senseless as almost to make it seem that, like children, they
wanted to hear how big a bang they could make. But their devilish lack
of humor is more plainly shown in the system with which they destroyed
the orchards in the country further back. Every tree was cut at
exactly the same height from the ground, and carefully laid in the
selfsame way. Not one of them deviated a hair's breadth in its
position on the ground from the angle made by its neighbor. They must
have spent hours in obtaining such hellish regularity. Wed System to
Lust, and you have an alliance of Satan with the hag Sycorax, and their
offspring is the German Empire, the Caliban of nations.

The highest point of the church-tower, however, before the days of our
advance, was its cross, and in our misery we could always see this
symbol of hope and salvation; but it was a reminder too of pain and
suffering endured that man's spirit might be free, and as we also were
suffering and enduring in freedom's cause, we knew that our strife was
religion and our accomplishment would be salvation.

And what we endured in that bitter cold has scarred our memories and
added to our bodies the aging of years. In the chronic agony of cold
the pain of wounds was an alleviation, and I have seen men who had just
had their arms blown off wave the jagged stu