industrial Nancy which has grown up since the development of the iron
mines of French Lorraine in the eighties. Through this ugly huddle we
passed first: there were working men on the sidewalks, gamins in the
gutters,--nothing to remind one of the war.

"Halt!"

At a turn in the road near the outskirts of the city, a sentry, a small,
gray-haired man, had stepped out before the car. From the door of a
neighboring wineshop, a hideous old woman, her uncombed, tawny yellow
hair messed round her coarse, shiny face, came out to look at us.

"Your papers, please," said a red-faced, middle-aged sergeant wearing a
brown corduroy uniform, who, walking briskly on enormous fat legs, had
followed the sentry out into the street. The lieutenant produced the
military permit to travel in the army zone--the ordre de mouvement, a
printed form on a blue sheet about the size of a leaf of typewriter
paper.

"Pass," said the sergeant, and saluted. The sentry retired to his post
on the sidewalk. At the door of the wineshop the woman continued to
stare at us with an animal curiosity. Possibly our English-like uniforms
had attracted her attention; the French are very curious about les
Anglais. Over the roof of an ugly row of working men's barracks, built
of mortar and trimmed with dingy brick, came the uproar of a great
industry, the humming clang of saws, the ringing of iron on iron, and
the heart-beat thump of a great hammer that shook the earth. In a vast,
detached building five great furnaces were crowned with tufts of pinkish
fire, workmen were crossing the cindery yard dragging little carts and
long strips of iron, and a long line of open freight cars was being