ry went over the top throwing bombs and piled
themselves up into mounds of silence. Nations far away toiled day and
night in factories--and all that they might achieve this repellant
desolation. The innocence of the project made one smile--a handful of
women sailing from America to reconstruct! To reconstruct will take
ten times more effort than was required to destroy. More than eight
hundred years ago William the Norman burnt his way through the North
Country to Chester. Yorkshire has not yet recovered; it is still a
wind-swept moorland. This women's college in America hoped to repair
in our lifetime a ruin a million times more terrible. Their courage
was depressing, it so exceeded the possible. They might love one
village back to life, but.... That is exactly what they are doing.

I arrived at Grecourt on an afternoon in January. It is here that the
women of the Smith College Unit have taken up their tenancy. We had
extraordinary difficulty in finding the place. The surrounding country
had been blasted and scorched by fire. There was no one left of whom
we could enquire. Everything had perished. Barns, houses, everything
habitable had been blown up by the departing Hun. As a study in the
painstaking completion of a purpose the scenes through which we
passed almost called for admiration. Berlin had ordered her armies to
destroy everything before withdrawing; they had obeyed with a loving
thoroughness. The world has never seen such past masters in the art
of demolition. Ever since they invaded Belgium, their hand has been
improving. In the neighbourhood of Grecourt they have equalled, if not
surpassed, their own best efforts. I would suggest to the Kaiser that
this manly performance calls for a distribution of iron crosses. It is
true that his armies were beaten and retiring; but does not that fact
rather enhance their valour? They were retiring, yet there were those
who were brave enough to delay their departure till they had achieved
this final victory over old women and children to the lasting honour
of their country. Such heroes are worthy to stand beside the sinkers
of the _Lusitania_. It is not just that they should go unrecorded.

In the midst of this hell I came across a tumbled chateau. Its roof,
its windows, its stairways were gone; only the crumbling shell of its
former happiness was left standing. A high wall ran about its grounds.
The place must have been pleasant with flower-gardens once. There was
an im