None of the roof, none of the superstructure of these farm-buildings was left; only the lower walls, which were eighteen inches thick and in places penetrated by the shells.  For when a Frenchman builds a farmhouse he builds it to last a few hundred years.  The farm windmill was as twisted as a birdcage that has been rolled under a trolley car, but a large hayrake was unharmed.  Such is the luck of war.  I made up my mind that if I ever got under shell-fire I would make for the hayrake and avoid the windmill.

Our tall major pointed out all the fluctuating positions during the battle.  It was like hearing a chess match explained from memory by an expert.  Words to him were something precious.  He made each one count as he would the shots from his cannon.  His narrative had the lucidity of a terse judge reviewing evidence.  The battlefield was etched on his mind in every important phase of its action.

Not once did he speak in abuse of the enemy.  The staff officer who directs steel ringing on steel is too busy thrusting and keeping guard to indulge in diatribes.  To him the enemy is a powerful impersonal devil, who must be beaten.  When I asked about the conduct of the Germans in the towns they occupied, his lip tightened and his eyes grew hard.

“I’m afraid it was pretty bad!” he said; as if he felt, besides the wrong to his own people, the shame that men who had fought so bravely should act so ill.  I think his attitude toward war was this:  “We will die for France, but calling the Germans names will not help us to win.  It only takes breath.”

“Allons, messieurs!”

As our car ran up a gentle hill we noticed two soldiers driving a load of manure.  This seemed a pretty prosaic, even humiliating, business, in a poetic sense, for the brave poilus, veterans of Lorraine’s great battle.  But Father Joffre is a true Frenchman of his time.  Why should not the soldiers help the farmers whose sons are away at the front and perhaps helping farmers back of some Other point of the line?

Over the crest of the hill we came on long lines of soldiers bearing timbers and fascines for trench-building, which explained why some of the villages were empty.  A fascine is something usually made of woven branches which will hold dirt in position.  The woven wicker cases for shells which the German artillery uses and leaves behind when it has to quit the field in a hurry, make excellent fascines, and a number that I saw were of this ready-made kind.  After carrying shell for killing Frenchmen they were to protect the lives of Frenchmen.  Near by other soldiers were turning up a strip of fresh earth against the snow, which looked like a rip in the frosting of a chocolate cake.

“How do you like this kind of war?” we asked.  It is the kind that irrigationists and subway excavators make.

“We’ve grown to be very fond of it,” was the answer.  “It is a cultivated taste, which becomes a passion with experience.  After you have been shot at in the open you want all the earth you can get between you and the bullets.”