East of it, a ribbon of river winds among poplars, and that ribbon
is the boundary between Empire and Republic. On such a clear day as
this the view from the hill is extraordinarily interesting. From its
grassy top a little aeroplane cannon stares to heaven, watching the
east for the danger speck; and the circumference of the hill is
furrowed by a deep trench--a "bowel," rather--winding invisibly from
one subterranean observation post to another. In each of these
earthly warrens (ingeniously wattled, roofed and iron-sheeted) stand
two or three artillery officers with keen quiet faces, directing by
telephone the fire of batteries nestling somewhere in the woods four
or five miles away. Interesting as the place was, the men who lived
there interested me far more. They obviously belonged to different
classes, and had received a different social education; but their
mental and moral fraternity was complete. They were all fairly
young, and their faces had the look that war has given to French
faces: a look of sharpened intelligence, strengthened will and
sobered judgment, as if every faculty, trebly vivified, were so bent
on the one end that personal problems had been pushed back to the
vanishing point of the great perspective.

From this vigilant height--one of the intentest eyes open on the
frontier--we went a short distance down the hillside to a village
out of range of the guns, where the commanding officer gave us tea
in a charming old house with a terraced garden full of flowers and
puppies. Below the terrace, lost Lorraine stretched away to her blue
heights, a vision of summer peace: and just above us the unsleeping
hill kept watch, its signal-wires trembling night and day. It was
one of the intervals of rest and sweetness when the whole horrible
black business seems to press most intolerably on the nerves.