brand of the German army, had been mercifully destroyed; but the
greater number of them were the farm horses of peasants, still
wearing their head-stalls or the harness of the plough. That they
might not aid the enemy as remounts, the Germans in their retreat
had shot them. I saw four and five together in the yards of stables,
the bullet-hole of an automatic in the head of each. Others lay beside
the market cart, others by the canal, where they had sought water.

Less pitiful, but still evidencing the wastefulness of war, were the
motor-trucks, and automobiles that in the flight had been abandoned.
For twenty miles these automobiles were scattered along the road.
There were so many one stopped counting them. Added to their loss
were two shattered German airships. One I saw twenty-six kilometres
outside of Meaux and one at Bouneville. As they fell they had buried
their motors deep in the soft earth and their wings were twisted
wrecks of silk and steel.

All the fields through which the army passed had become waste land.
Shells had re-ploughed them. Horses and men had camped in them.
The haystacks, gathered by the sweat of the brow and patiently set in
trim rows were trampled in the mud and scattered to the winds. All the
smaller villages through which I passed were empty of people, and
since the day before, when the Germans occupied them, none of the
inhabitants had returned. These villages were just as the Germans
had left them. The streets were piled with grain on which the soldiers
had slept, and on the sidewalks in front of the better class of houses
tables around which the officers had eaten still remained, the bottles
half empty, the food half eaten.

In a château beyond Neufchelles the doors and windows were open