Who is to blame, if the hitherto undestroyed towns and villages of France and Belgium sink in ashes? Who is to blame, if hundreds of thousands of unhappy women and children are driven from their homes to hunger and freeze? =The German people offers its hand for peace.= After which, being the only woman who had ever lunched in the H.W.K. sector, I was photographed by the doctor with the four stripes. Then in a fog thickly enfolding us, as well as the mountains, we started out with gas-masks, compasses and pistols, plus an armed escort, toward the German lines, for they wanted to show me the ruins of the Castle of Freundstein, now an observation post, directly overhanging the great plain I had seen yesterday. Much banter between the commandant and Captain Perdrizet, their eyes very alert, as to the right road, the one that wouldn’t lead us into the enemies’ hands. Suddenly a firing of French guns began right over our befogged heads, with a near swish and crack, and answering duller German guns. In the thick fog, even those men accustomed to sensations seemed quite keyed up, and the commandant had become like some woodsman, looking closely at the trunks of battered trees, some with old scars, some with new, and other indications, invisible to me, along the path. Finally, at a certain crossroad, he stopped, saying: “_That_ would lead us straight to them. Even now a pointed casque might appear, though, with the probable armistice in sight, they will be less venturesome.” I: “What would they do?” He: “Throw hand-grenades first and then”—he looked at the others—“there’d be a scuffle.” It didn’t sound attractive, I must say, the potentialities of the fog seeming even quite horrid, and I was entirely ready to hunt in the opposite direction for the path to the Freundstein, which, according to the compass, lay pleasantly due west. Dreadful, unexploded things, too, were lying about, in new and ancient shell-holes, and there was much careful stepping among broken tree-trunks and half-demolished barbed wire, and I got a horrid rip in the last of my American boots. Here and there was a black cross, and the possibility of being underneath one, instead of above one, if we _did_ meet a German patrol, came before me. With all one’s poetizing or philosophizing, there _is_ a difference, and one’s a long time dead—as I know Lieutenant Lavallée would agree. Suddenly the path began to rise, the commandant giving an exclamation of relief as he saw a steep ladder almost in front of us, apparently leaning against a wall of fog. Captain Perdrizet’s eyes began to shine again; he’d been quite subdued, not to say cast down.