wonderful knowledge of the battle, hails every landmark, identifies
every farm and wood, even in what has become, in less than an hour, a
white wilderness. But it is of one village only, of these many whose
names are henceforth known to history, that I wish to speak--the
village of Vareddes. In my next letter I propose to tell the ghastly
story of the hostages of Vareddes.



No. 8

_May 17th_, 1917.

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--Shall I ever forget that broad wintry plateau of
the Ourcq, as it lay, at the opening of March, under its bed of snow,
with its ruined villages, its graves scattered over the fields, its
utter loneliness, save for the columns of marching soldiers in the
roads, and the howling wind that rushed over the fields, the graves, the
cemeteries, and whistled through the gaping walls of the poor churches
and farms? This high spreading plain, which before the war was one scene
of rural plenty and industrious peace, with its farm lands and orchards
dropping gently from the forest country of Chantilly, Compiègne, and
Ermenonville, down to the Ourcq and the Marne, will be a place of
pilgrimage for generations to come. Most of the Battle of the Marne was
fought on so vast a scale, over so wide a stretch of country--about 200
miles long, by 50 broad--that for the civilian spectator of the future
it will never be possible to realise it as a whole, and very difficult
even to realise any section of it, topographically, owing to the
complication of the actions involved. But in the Battle of the Ourcq,
the distances are comparatively small, the actions comparatively simple