When this retrograde movement of the Germans began, those who could not see the nature of the fighting believed that the German line of communication, the one from Aix-la-Chapelle through Belgium, had proved too long, and that the left wing was voluntarily withdrawing to meet the new line of communication through Luxembourg.  But the fields of battle beyond Meaux, through which it was necessary to pass to reach the fight at Sois-sons, showed no evidence of leisurely withdrawal.  On both sides there were evidences of the most desperate fighting and of artillery fire that was wide-spread and desolating.  That of the Germans, intended to destroy the road from Meaux and to cover their retreat, showed marksmanship so accurate and execution so terrible as, while it lasted, to render pursuit impossible.

The battle-field stretched from the hills three miles north of Meaux for four miles along the road and a mile to either side.  The road is lined with poplars three feet across and as high as a five-story building.  For the four miles the road was piled with branches of these trees.  The trees themselves were split as by lightning, or torn in half, as with your hands you could tear apart a loaf of bread.  Through some, solid shell had passed, leaving clean holes.  Others looked as though drunken woodsmen with axes from roots to topmost branches had slashed them in crazy fury.  Some shells had broken the trunks in half as a hurricane snaps a mast.

That no human being could survive such a bombardment were many grewsome proofs.  In one place for a mile the road was lined with those wicker baskets in which the Germans carry their ammunition.  These were filled with shells, unexploded, and behind the trenches were hundreds more of these baskets, some for the shells of the siege-guns, as large as lobster-pots or umbrella-stands, and others, each with three compartments, for shrapnel.  In gutters along the road and in the wheat-fields these brass shells flashed in the sunshine like tiny mirrors.

The four miles of countryside over which for four days both armies had ploughed the earth with these shells was the picture of complete desolation.  The rout of the German army was marked by knapsacks, uniforms, and accoutrements scattered over the fields on either hand as far as you could see.  Red Cross flags hanging from bushes showed where there had been dressing stations.  Under them were blood-stains, bandages and clothing, and boots piled in heaps as high as a man’s chest, and the bodies of those German soldiers that the first aid had failed to save.

After death the body is mercifully robbed of its human aspect.  You are spared the thought that what is lying in the trenches among the shattered trees and in the wheat-fields staring up at the sky was once a man.  It appears to be only a bundle of clothes, a scarecrow that has tumbled among the grain it once protected.  But it gives a terrible meaning to the word “missing.”  When you read