town and shot. There were other moving and significant incidents in
the occupation of Senlis which are well authenticated, characteristic
of the German method, but need not be repeated here.

The older part of the town, the cathedral, the Roman wall fortunately
escaped with only a few chance shell holes here and there. The black
scar runs through the place from end to end, incontrovertible instance
of the German thing, which has been visited by thousands of French and
foreigners the past year. The wounds of Senlis are not deep: by
comparison with much else done by the Germans they are almost trivial.
The murder of the Mayor of Senlis was not a large crime in the German
scale. But the whole is nicely typical: Senlis is the kindergarten
lesson in the German method of making war.

* * * * *

As every one knows, the Germans breaking into France at Namur and
Mons came on with unexampled rapidity from the north and east toward
the south and west, circled somewhat to the west as they neared Paris,
and then the 5th of September recoiled under the shock of the French
offensive. For the better part of a week two millions of men struggled
on a thousand different battlefields from Nancy and Verdun on the east
to Coulommiers, Meaux, and Amiens on the south and west. This was the
great battle of the Marne, which checked the German invasion. The
pressure of this human cyclone, in general from northeast to southwest,
was more intense in some places than others. One of the bloodiest storm
centers lay east and west from the town of Vitry-le-Francois--from
Sermaize-les-Bains on the east to Fere-le-Champenoise, Montmirail, and
Esternay on the west. For fifty miles there in the heart of Champagne
the path of the cyclone can be traced by the blackened villages, the