Then we come out on to another portion of the same road at the point where a main line of railway crosses it.  We are told to run to shelter.  In the near distance a German captive balloon sticks up moveless against the sky.  The main line of railway is a sorrowful sight.  Its signal-wires hang in festoons.  Its rails are rusting.  The abandonment of a main line in a civilised country is a thing unknown, a thing contrary to sense, an impossible thing, so that one wonders whether one is not visiting the remains of a civilisation dead and definitely closed.  Very strange thoughts pass through the mind.  That portion of the main line cannot be used by the Germans because it is within the French positions, and it cannot be used by the French because it is utterly exposed to German artillery.  Thus, perhaps ten kilometres of it are left forlorn to illustrate the imbecile brutality of an invasion.  There is a good deal more trench before we reach the village which forms the head of a salient in the French line.  This village is knocked all to pieces.  It is a fearful spectacle.  We see a Teddy-bear left on what remains of a flight of stairs, a bedstead buried to the knobs in debris, skeletons of birds in a cage hanging under an eave.  The entire place is in the zone of fire, and it has been tremendously bombarded throughout the war.  Nevertheless, some houses still stand, and seventeen civilians—­ seven men and ten women—­insist on remaining there.  I talked to one fat old woman, who contended that there was no danger.  A few minutes later a shell fell within a hundred yards of her, and it might just as well have fallen on the top of her coiffe, to prove finally to her the noble reasonableness of war and the reality of the German necessity for expansion.

The village church was laid low.  In the roof two thin arches of the groining remain, marvellously.  One remembers this freak of balance—­and a few poor flowers on the altar.  Mass is celebrated in that church every Sunday morning.  We spoke with the cure, an extremely emaciated priest of middle age; he wore the Legion of Honour.  We took to the trenches again, having in the interval been protected by several acres of ruined masonry.  About this point geography seemed to end for me.  I was in a maze of burrowing, from which the hot sun could be felt but not seen.  I saw stencilled signs, such as “Tranchee de repli,” and signs containing numbers.  I saw a sign over a door:  “Guetteur de jour et de nuit”—­watcher by day and by night.

“Anybody in there?”

“Certainly.”

The door was opened.  In the gloom a pale man stood rather like a ghost, almost as disconcerting as a ghost, watching.  He ignored us, and kept on watching.