e hills where German guns were vomiting their shrapnel.

Imagine such a case in England. A man leaves his office in London
and takes the train to Guildford, where his wife and children are
waiting supper for him. At Weybridge the train comes to a dead-halt.
The guard runs up to the engine-driver, and comes back to say that
the tunnel has been blown up by the enemy. It is reported that
Guildford and all the villages around have been invaded. Families
flying from Guildford describe the bombardment of the town. A part of
it is in flames. The Guildhall is destroyed. Many inhabitants have been
killed. Most of the others have fled.

The man who was going home to supper wants to set out to find his
wife and children. His friends hold him back in spite of his struggles.
"You are mad!" they shout. "Mad!"... He has no supper at home that
night. His supper and his home have been burnt to cinders. For
weeks he advertises in the papers for the whereabouts of his wife
and babes. Nobody can tell him. He does not know whether they are
dead or alive.

There were thousands of such cases in France. I have seen this
tragedy--a man weeping for his wife and children swallowed up into
the unknown after the destruction of Fives, near Lille. A new-born
babe was expected. On the first day of life it would receive a baptism
of fire. Who could tell this distracted man whether the mother or child
were alive?

3

There were many villages in France around Lille and Armentieres,
Amiens and Arras, and over a wide stretch of country in Artois and
Picardy, where, in spite of all weariness, women who lay down beside
their sleeping babes could find no sleep for themselves. For who
could say what the night would bring forth? Perhaps a patrol of
Uhlans, who shot peasants like rabbits as they ran across the fields,
and who demanded wine, and more wine, until in the madness of
drink they began to burn and destroy for mere lust of ruin. So it was at
Senlis, at Sermaize, and in many villages in the region through which
I passed.

It was never possible to tell the enemy's next move. His cavalry came
riding swiftly far from the main lines of the hostile troops, and owing to
the reticence of official news, the inhabitants of a town or village
found themselves engulfed in the tide of battle before they guessed
their danger. They were trapped by the sudden tearing-up of railway
lines and blowing-up of bridges, as I was nearly trapped one day
when the Ger