them--in the patches of scrub between the tall trunks and yellow
cowslips and white and pink anemones and primroses. You see the
flaxen-haired children out in the woods and along the roadside gathering
them. A rosy-cheeked woman stands in the doorway of a farm at the
cross-roads, and a golden-haired youngster, scarce able to run as yet,
totters across the road to her, laughing.

Only this morning, as we passed that same house, there was the low
whine of a shell, and a metallic bang like the sound of a dented
kerosene tin when you try to straighten the bend in it. Then another and
another and another. We could see the white smoke of the shells floating
past behind the spring greenery of a hedgerow only a few fields away. It
drifted slowly through the trees and then came another salvo. There were
some red roofs near--those of a neighbouring farm--but we could not see
whether they were firing at them, or at some sign of moving troops, or
at a working party if there were any; and I do not know now. As we came
back that way in the afternoon there was more shelling farther along.
The woman in the doorway simply turned her head in its direction for a
moment, and so did a younger woman who came to the doorway behind her.
Then they turned to the baby again.

Through the trees one could see that the farmhouses and cottages farther
on had mostly been battered and broken. There was a road running at a
little distance, and every roof and wall in it had been shattered. There
was a feverish, insane disorder about the little groups of buildings
there, all shattered, burnt and gaping, like the tangled nightmare of
desolation on the morning after a great city fire. Farther still was
open country again, where long communication trenches began to run
through the fields--but you could see none of this from where we stood.
Only in the distant hedgerows, perhaps, we might have noticed, if we had