This farm-house was somebody’s house, just as your home is yours, and mine mine.  To some woman or other every object in it was familiar.  She glanced at the canister on the mantelpiece and said to herself:  “I really must clean that canister to-morrow.”  There the house stood, with holes in its roof, empty.  And if there are half a million similarly tragic houses in Europe to-day, as probably there are, such frequency does not in the slightest degree diminish the forlorn tragedy of that particular house which I have beheld.

At last Barcy came into view—­the pierced remains of its church tower over the brow of a rise in the plain.  Barcy is our driver’s show-place.  Barcy was in the middle of things.  The fighting round Barcy lasted a night and a day, and Barcy was taken and retaken twice.

“You see the new red roofs,” said the driver as we approached.  “By those new red roofs you are in a state to judge a little what the damage was.”

Some of the newly made roofs, however, were of tarred paper.

The street by which we entered had a small-pox of shrapnel and bullet-marks.  The post office had particularly suffered:  its bones were laid bare.  It had not been restored, but it was ready to do any business that fell to be done, though closed on that afternoon.  We turned a corner, and came upon the church.  The work on the church was well up to the reported Teutonic average.  Of its roof only the rafters were left.  The windows were all smashed, and their lead fantastically twisted.  The west door was entirely gone; a rough grille of strips of wood served in its stead.  Through this grille one could see the nave and altar, in a miraculous and horrible confusion.  It was as if house-breakers had spent days in doing their best to produce a professional effect.  The oak pews were almost unharmed.  Immediately behind the grille lay a great bronze bell, about three feet high, covered with beautifully incised inscriptions; it was unhurt.

Apparently nothing had been accomplished, in ten months, towards the restoration of the church.  But something was contemplated, perhaps already started.  A polished steel saw lay on one of the pews, but there was no workman attached to it.

While I was writing some notes in the porch three little boys came up and diligently stared at me.

“What dost thou want?” I said sharply to the tallest.

“Nothing,” he replied.

Then three widows came up, one young, one young and beautiful, one middle-aged.

We got back into the carriage.

“The village seems very deserted,” I said to the driver.

“What would you?” he answered.  “Many went.  They had no home.  Few have returned.”

All around were houses of which nothing remained but the stone walls.

The Germans had shown great prowess here, and the French still greater.  It was a village upon which rival commanders could gaze with pride.  It will remember the fourth and the fifth of September 1914.