in the reports from the War Office that five thousand are “missing,” you like to think of them safely cared for in a hospital or dragging out the period of the war as prisoners.  But the real missing are the unidentified dead.  In time some peasant will bury them, but he will not understand the purpose of the medal each wears around his neck.  And so, with the dead man will be buried his name and the number of his regiment.  No one will know where he fell or where he lies.  Some one will always hope that he will return.  For, among the dead his name did not appear.  He was reported “missing.”

The utter wastefulness of war was seldom more clearly shown.  Carcasses of horses lined the road.  Some few of these had been killed by shell-fire.  Others, worn out and emaciated, and bearing the brand of the German army, had been mercifully destroyed; but the greater number of them were the farm horses of peasants, still wearing their head-stalls or the harness of the plough.  That they might not aid the enemy as remounts, the Germans in their retreat had shot them.  I saw four and five together in the yards of stables, the bullet-hole of an automatic in the head of each.  Others lay beside the market cart, others by the canal, where they had sought water.

Less pitiful, but still evidencing the wastefulness of war, were the motor-trucks, and automobiles that in the flight had been abandoned.  For twenty miles these automobiles were scattered along the road.  There were so many one stopped counting them.  Added to their loss were two shattered German airships.  One I saw twenty-six kilometres outside of Meaux and one at Bouneville.  As they fell they had buried their motors deep in the soft earth and their wings were twisted wrecks of silk and steel.

All the fields through which the army passed had become waste land.  Shells had re-ploughed them.  Horses and men had camped in them.  The haystacks, gathered by the sweat of the brow and patiently set in trim rows were trampled in the mud and scattered to the winds.  All the smaller villages through which I passed were empty of people, and since the day before, when the Germans occupied them, none of the inhabitants had returned.  These villages were just as the Germans had left them.  The streets were piled with grain on which the soldiers had slept, and on the sidewalks in front of the better class of houses tables around which the officers had eaten still remained, the bottles half empty, the food half eaten.

In a chateau beyond Neufchelles the doors and windows were open and lace curtains were blowing in the breeze.  From the garden you could see paintings on the walls, books on the tables.  Outside, on the lawn, surrounded by old and charming gardens, apparently the general and his staff had prepared to dine.  The table was set for a dozen, and on it were candles in silver sticks, many bottles of red and white wine, champagne, liqueurs, and coffee-cups of the finest china.  From their banquet some alarm had summoned the officers.  The place was as they had left it, the coffee untasted, the candles burned to the candlesticks, and red stains on the cloth where the burgundy had spilled.  In the bright sunlight, and surrounded by flowers, the deserted table and the silent, stately chateau seemed like the sleeping palace of the fairy-tale.