ing, all the inhabitants fled before their approach. The enemy now is not far away. Over there, just against that horizon, lie the trenches they now occupy. See this roadside along which we are driving, how it is curiously hung with linen curtains? They are strung on wires fifteen feet high. For miles we ride behind them. It is the camouflage, the French captain says, that hides us from German view. We have just emerged from the forest at the edge of the Mountain of Rheims when, hark! Hear it—the sharp, distinct sound of an explosion! What is it? Where is it? The captain lays his hand reassuringly on my arm: "It is, I think, a tire that has burst on the rear car."
"Captain," I say, "no automobile tire I ever heard sounded exactly like that."
"You are not nervous?" he asks. I shake my head. "Well," he admits, "it is sometimes that the Germans do take a chance shot at this road."
But at Rheims when we arrive, I notice that all our automobile tires are quite intact. We enter the city through the great bronze gate, the finishing ornaments of which have been nicked off by German shells. We stand in the midst of a scene of desolation that looks like the ruins of some long ago civilisation. Once, before this world that men had builded began to go to pieces, even as the blocks that children pile tumble to a nursery floor, here was a populous busy city of some 120,000 souls. Now our footsteps echo through deserted streets. Not a man or woman or child is in sight. The grass is
