the
last one got it and discovered a mistake in the second civilian's
writing, and the mistake had to be initialled by all the lot, each
making great play with a blotter; and at last the precious document was
handed to me and I was really free to start. But it was now dark.

* * *

The road from ---- leaves the town by a hill, crosses a canal, and then
mounts and winds, and mounts again, and dips and mounts, between fields
of stubble, with circular straw-stacks as their only occupants. The
first intimation of anything untoward, besides the want of life, was the
spire of the little white village of ---- on the distant hill, which
surely had been damaged. As one drew nearer it was clear that not only
had the spire been damaged, but that the houses had been damaged too.
The place seemed empty and under a ban.

I stopped the car outside, at the remains of a burned shed, and walked
along the desolate main street. All the windows were broken; the walls
were indented with little holes or perforated with big ones. The roofs
were in ruins. Here was the post-office; it is now half demolished and
boarded up. There was the inn; it is now empty and forlorn. Half the
great clock face leant against a wall. Everyone had fled--it is a
"deserted village" with a vengeance: nothing left but a few fowls.
Everything was damaged; but the church had suffered most. Half of the
shingled spire was destroyed, most of the roof, and the great bronze
bell lay among the _debris_ on the ground. It is as though the enemy's
policy was to intimidate the simple folk through the failure of their
super-natural stronghold. "If the church is so pregnable, then what
chance have we?"--that is the question which it was hoped would be
asked; or so I imagined as I stood before this ruined sanctuary.
Where, I wondered, are those villagers now, and what chances are there
of the rebuilding of these old peaceful homes, so secure and placid only
four months ago?

And then I walked to the battlefield a few hundred yards away, and only
too distinguishable as such by the little cheap tricolors on the
hastily-dug graves among the stubble and the ricks. Hitherto I had
always associated these ricks with the art of Claude Monet, and seeing
the one had recalled the other; but henceforward I shall think of those
poor pathetic graves sprinkled among them, at all kinds of odd angles to
each other--for evidently the holes were dug parallel with the bodies
beside them--