Long streamers of ivy that during a century had crept higher and higher up the wall of some noble mansion, until they were part of it, still clung to it, although it was divided into a thousand fragments.  Of one house all that was left standing was a slice of the front wall just wide enough to bear a sign reading:  “This house is for sale; elegantly furnished.”  Nothing else of that house remained.

In some streets of the destroyed area I met not one living person.  The noise made by my feet kicking the broken glass was the only sound.  The silence, the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the ghastly tributes to the power of the shells, and the complete desolation, made more desolate by the bright sunshine, gave you a curious feeling that the end of the world had come and you were the only survivor.

This-impression was aided by the sight of many rare and valuable articles with no one guarding them.  They were things of price that one may not carry into the next world but which in this are kept under lock and key.

In the Rue de l’Universite, at my leisure, I could have ransacked shop after shop or from the shattered drawing-rooms filled my pockets.  Shopkeepers had gone without waiting to lock their doors, and in houses the fronts of which were down you could see that, in order to save their lives, the inmates had fled at a moment’s warning.

In one street a high wall extended an entire block, but in the centre a howitzer shell had made a breach as large as a barn door.  Through this I had a view of an old and beautiful garden, on which oasis nothing had been disturbed.  Hanging from the walls, on diamond-shaped lattices, roses were still in bloom, and along the gravel walks flowers of every color raised their petals to the sunshine.  On the terrace was spread a tea-service of silver and on the grass were children’s toys—­hoops, tennis-balls, and flat on its back, staring up wide-eyed at the shells, a large, fashionably dressed doll.

In another house everything was destroyed except the mantel over the fireplace in the drawing-room.  On this stood a terra-cotta statuette of Harlequin.  It is one you have often seen.  The legs are wide apart, the arms folded, the head thrown back in an ecstasy of laughter.  It looked exactly as though it were laughing at the wreckage with which it was surrounded.  No one could have placed it where it was after the house fell, for the approach to it was still on fire.  Of all the fantastic tricks played by the bursting shells it was the most curious.

Chapter VII The Spirit Of The English

When I left England for home I had just returned from France and had motored many miles in both countries.  Everywhere in this greatest crisis of the century I found the people of England showing the most undaunted and splendid spirit.  To their common enemy they are presenting an unbroken front.  The civilian is playing his part just as loyally as the soldier, the women as bravely as the men.