The officers who were with us were tremendously interested—­not interested, mind you, in the death of that trooper, spitted from the heavens by a steel pencil, but interested in the thing that had done the work.  It was the first dart they had seen.  Indeed, I think until then this weapon had not been used against the Germans in this particular area of the western theater of war.  These officers passed it about, fingering it in turn, and commenting on the design of it and the possibilities of its use.

“Typically French,” the senior of them said at length, handing it back to its owner, the Red Cross man—­“a very clever idea too; but it might be bettered, I think.”  He pondered a moment, then added, with the racial complacence that belongs to a German military man when he considers military matters:  “No doubt we shall adopt the notion; but we’ll improve on the pattern and the method of discharging it.  The French usually lead the way in aerial inventions, but the Germans invariably perfect them.”

The day wound up and rounded out most fittingly with a trip eastward along the lines to the German siege investments in front of Rheims.  We ran for a while through damaged French hamlets, each with its soldier garrison to make up for the inhabitants who had fled; and then, a little later, through a less well-populated district.  In the fields, for long stretches, nothing stirred except pheasants, feeding on the neglected grain, and big, noisy magpies.  The roads were empty, too, except that there were wrecked shells of automobiles and bloated carcasses of dead troop horses.  When the Germans, in their campaigning, smash up an automobile—­and traveling at the rate they do there must be many smashed—­they capsize it at the roadside, strip it of its tires, draw off the precious gasoline, pour oil over it and touch a match to it.  What remains offers no salvage to friend, or enemy either.

The horses rot where they drop unless the country people choose to put the bodies underground.  We counted the charred cadavers of fifteen automobiles and twice as many dead horses during that ride.  The smell of horseflesh spoiled the good air.  When passing through a wood the smell was always heavier.  We hoped it was only dead horses we smelled there.

When there has been fighting in France or Belgium, almost any thicket will give up hideous grisly secrets to the man who goes searching there.  Men sorely wounded in the open share one trait at least with the lower animals.  The dying creature—­whether man or beast—­dreads to lie and die in the naked field.  It drags itself in among the trees if it has the strength.

I believe every woodland in northern France was a poison place, and remained so until the freezing of winter sealed up its abominations under ice and frost.