all those crimes which in the months of August and
September set hell loose in the beautiful old villages of France along
a front of five hundred miles. The facts are monotonous in the
repetition of their horror, and one's imagination is not helped but
stupefied by long records of outrages upon defenceless women, with
indiscriminate shooting down village streets, with unarmed peasants
killed as they trudged across their fields or burned in their own
homesteads, with false accusations against innocent villagers, so that
hostages were collected and shot in groups as a punishment for
alleged attacks upon German soldiers, with old French chateaux
looted of all their treasures by German officers in search of souvenirs
and trophies of victory for their womenfolk, and with drunken orgies in
which men of decent breeding became mere animals inflamed with
lust.

10

The memory of those things has burnt deep into the brains of the
French people, so deep that in some cases there is the fire of
madness there.

In a small chateau in France an English friend of mine serving with a
volunteer ambulance column with the French troops on the Meuse
was sitting at ease one night with some of his comrades and fellow-
countrymen. The conversation turned to England, because April was
there, and after ten months of war the thoughts of these men yearned
back to their homes. They spoke of their mothers and wives and
children. One man had a pretty daughter, and read a piece of her
latest letter, and laughed at her gay little jests and her descriptions of
the old pony and the dogs and the antics of a black kitten. Other men
gave themselves away and revealed the sentiment which as a rule
Englishmen hide. In the room was a French officer, who sat very still,
listening to these stories. The candles were burning dim on the table
when he spoke at last in a strange, hard voice:

"It is good for you Englishmen when you go back home. Those who
are not killed out here will be very happy to see their women again.
You do not want to die, because of that. ... If I were to go home now,
gentlemen, I should not be happy. I should find my wife and my
daughter both expecting babies whose fathers are German soldiers...
England has not suffered invasion."

11

The most complete destruction I saw in France was in Champagne,
when I walked through places which had been the villages of
Sermaize, Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Blesmes, and Huiron. Sermaize was
utter