went back to German cities, the emptied cellars and ransacked houses
have fed the fire of disgust and loathing which the French feel for
their foe. Yet they should not begrudge the invader the extraordinary
quantity of good wine which he consumed on his raid, because the
victory of the Marne was doubtless won in part by the aid of the
champagne bottle!

* * * * *

When I passed through the Marne valley the fields were being harvested
for the first time since those fatal days in September. Among the
harvesters were a number of middle-aged men with the soldiers' _kepi_,
who had been given leave to make the crop, which was unusually abundant.
The fields of old Champagne, watered with the best blood of France, had
yielded their richest returns. Outside the charred and crumbled ruins
of the villages one might have forgotten the fact of war were it not for
the graves. Here and there the corner of some wood where a battery had
been placed was mowed as if cut by a giant reaper. The tall poplars
along the roadsides had been ripped and torn as by a violent storm. Some
hillsides were scarred with ripples from burrowing shells, and hastily
made trenches had not yet been ploughed completely under. But over the
undulating golden fields it would be difficult to trace the course of
the tempest were it not for the crosses above the graves, thousands upon
thousands of them,--singly, in clumps, in long lines where the dead
bodies had been brought out of the copses and buried side by side in
trenches, or where at a crossroads a little cemetery had been made to
receive the dead of the vicinity.

Often as you crawled along in a train you could follow the battle by
the bare spots left in the fields around the graves. They will never