ly wiped out. As far as I could see, not one house was left
standing. Not one wall was spared. It was laid flat upon the earth, with
only a few charred chimney-stacks sticking out of the piles of bricks
and cinders. Strange, piteous relics of pretty dwelling-places lay about
in the litter, signifying that men and women with some love for the arts
of life had lived here in decent comfort. A notice-board of a hotel
which had given hospitality to many travellers before it became a
blazing furnace lay sideways on a mass of broken bricks with a
legend so frightfully ironical that I laughed among the ruins:
"Chauffage central"--the system of "central heating" invented by
Germans in this war had been too hot for the hotel, and had burnt it to
a wreck of ashes. Half a dozen peasants stood in one of the
"streets"--marked by a line of rubbish-heaps which had once been
their homes. Some of them had waited until the first shells came over
their chimney-pots before they fled. Several of their friends, not so
lucky in timing their escape, had been crushed to death by the falling
houses. But it was not shell-fire which did the work. The Germans
strewed the cottages with their black inflammable tablets, which had
been made for such cases, and set their torches to the window-
curtains before marching away to make other bonfires on their road of
retreat. Sermaize became a street of fire, and from each of its houses
flames shot out like scarlet snakes, biting through the heavy pall of
smoke. Peasants hiding in ditches a mile away stared at the furnace
in which all their household goods were being consumed. Something
of their own life seemed to be burning there, leaving the dust and
ashes of old hopes and happiness.

"That was mine," said one of the peasants, pointing to a few square
yards of wreckage. "I took my woman home across the threshold that
was there. She was a fine girl, with hair like gold, Monsieur. Now her
hair has gone quite white, during these recent weeks. That's what war
does for women. There are many like that hereabouts, white-haired
before their time."

I saw some of those white-haired women in Blesmes and Huiron and
other scrap-heaps of German ruthlessness. They wandered in a
disconsolate way about the ruins, watching rather hopelessly the
building of wooden huts by a number of English "Quakers" who had
come here to put up shelters for these homeless people of France.
They were doing good work--one of the most beauti