On the Edge of the War Zone From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes

18,

pril I intended to write,

rned to the north wh

days ago-we knew the

g on. It seems

k the line for miles by the terror of its surprise-and the destruction of the Lusitania on the 7

foe, an accepted evil, just as the uncalled-for war was. It had wrought a strange, unexpected, altogether remarkable change in the French people. Their faces had become more serious, their bearing more heroic, their laughter less frequent, and their humor more biting. But, on the day, t

added to the horrors of war seemed the last straw, and within a few weeks, I have seen grow up among these simple people the conviction that the race which planned and launched this great war has lost the very right to live

ago, came the news of the

ere on the 8th. I

n twenty-four hours. My neighbors who passed the gate looked at me curiously as they greeted me, and with less cordia

ced on individuals, why, the world and humanity must take the consequences, and must reconcile themselves to the belief that such wars as this are as necessary as surgical operations. If one accepts that point of view-and I am ready to do so,-then every diabolical act of Germany will rebound to the future good of the race, as it, from every point of

ing their fields. I continue cutting my lawn, planting my dahlias, pruning my roses, tying

eds and giving them a dose of boiling water, or lugging about a watering-pot. I do it energetically, but my heart is

ion yet. Still they lend a picturesqueness to the countryside, though to me it is, as so much of the war has been, too much like the decor of a drama. Every morning they ride by the gate, two abreast, to exercise their lovely

in the street at Voisins, and they sing wonderfully well, and they sing good music. The other evening they sang choruses from "

passing of a Zeppelin. I got up and went out-of-doors, but neither heard nor saw anything, except a bicycle going over

rrounding it, and little envelopes of tiny British, Belgian, French, Montenegrin, Servian, Russian, German, and Austrian flags, mounted

as obliged to retreat the Allied flags on the frontier, and when the Russian offe

are but incidents, and will have no effect on the final result. A nation is not defeated

r, when they get it in perspective, can they find the inspiration for words where now we have only tigh

ng of cooks and laborers with staff officers and dismounted cavalry, in shining helmets, flung themselves pellmell into a bayonet charge with no bayonets, to relieve the hard-pressed English division under General Bulfin? And did it. Who will sing the great chant in honor of the 100,000 who held Ypres against half a million, and locked the door to the Channel? Who will sing the bulldog fighting qualities of Rawlinson's 7th division, which held the line in those October days un

ld of machinery has not yet made a race incapable of greatness. I have a feeling that from the soil to which so many thousands of men have voluntarily returned to save their country's honor must spring up a France greater than ever. It is the old story of Atlas. Besides