The officer in charge of the administration said that a car was needed to go down the valley to Saint-Dié, but we must be very careful for Saint-Dié was under bombardment. Once we were startled at lunch time by an explosion near the edge of town. Three of us stepped to the door. We were eating the rarity of blood sausage and the fourth man kept his seat to help himself from the next man's plate. As we looked out there came a second explosion a little farther off, and then in a few moments a telephone call for an ambulance, with the news that a Taube had struck a train. When I reached the place the train had gone on, carrying ten slightly wounded to Lunéville, and I brought back the other two on stretchers--one a civilian struck in a dozen places, but otherwise apparently in excellent health and spirits; the other was a soldier in pretty bad shape. It must have been excellent markmanship for the Taube, since we had seen nothing in the clear blue sky overhead nor heard the characteristic whir of the motor, and yet both shell craters were very close to the tracks. In Alsace they were constantly in sight, but seldom attacked and almost never scored a hit, while the French gunners seemed perfectly happy to fire shrapnel at them all afternoon with the same indecisive result. One could not even take the white shrapnel clouds as a point of departure in looking for the aeroplane--though the French artillery is very justly famous for its accuracy of fire. In this instance as in all air raids the success scored seemed pitifully futile, for it was not a military train, and most of the wounded were noncombatants. It had added its little unnecessary mite of suffering, and of hatred to the vast monument which Germany has reared to herself and by which she will always be remembered. W. KERR RAINSFORD [Illustration] _Night_ You can little imagine how lonely it is here under the black, star-swept sky, the houses only masses of regular blackness in the darkness, the street silent as a dune in the desert, and devoid of any sign of human life. Muffled and heavy, the explosion of a torpedo inscribes its solitary half-note on the blank lines of the night's stillness. I go up to my room, and sigh with relief as my sulphur match boils blue and breaks into its short-lived yellow flame. Shadows are born, leaping and rising, and I move swiftly towards my candle-end, the flame catches, and burns straight and still in the cold, silent room. The people who lived here were very religious; an ivory Christ on an ebony crucifix hangs over the door, and a solemn-eyed, pure and lovely head of Jeanne d'Arc stands on my mantel. What a marvellous history--hers! I think it the most beautiful, mystic tale in our human annals. Silence--sleep--the crowning mercy. A few hours go by. _Morning_ "There is a call, Monsieur Shin--_un couché à_----"