Entering Creil from the north, at first only every house in four or five seems to have been injured. Further down towards the river, every second house; and then whole rows of empty shells, shattered by bombardment, burnt out with fire. Others still standing, with every window broken and the doors smashed in; pillaged and scooped out, as if by the enormous paw of some predatory beast. In the cold autumn wind and driving rain the inhabitants are sheltering in the empty frameworks, doorless, windowless, often roofless. The town is full of the usual tales of suffering. The boy scout, who piloted me, grew passionate over the long tale of a lady called _la belle Andaluse_. It embodied all the atrocities; with the single exception of the now dubitable anecdote of the "little boy who was shot because he pointed his toy gun at a soldier." For any one who has read the story of Napoleon's campaign in this district, in 1814, and of the Cossack atrocities perpetrated among these villagers, it has a grim meaning to hear, in 1914, their descendants in the same villages recounting, unknowingly, much the same catalogue of outrages. Civilisation will seem to bray at him, like a donkey running round in a well-wheel. In the grey chilly evening the river dividing the town is a melancholy sight. The two twisted ends of the great girder bridge, blown up by the French on their retreat, droop into the broad river. Below this, still survives the remains of the German pontoon bridge, by which they crossed. A big ferry further down makes the only connection with the region north-west of the Oise for a number of miles. None of the heroics of war in these depressing after-views and moody, hopeless faces. A column of French sailors swung through just now; fine fellows, bronzed, and singing in time to their springing step. It was more reckless, more tuneful than the toneless, barbaric little chant of the Cuirassiers as they rode past me at Sombreffe in August. But that did not jar with the sunlight and woods and the noise of armies going into battle. Here the song seemed garish and discordant, in the grey, miserable awakening of a town to its own ruin. And, if this of Creil, what shall we have left to say of Rheims, or to think of its cathedral and churches, reported to-night to have succumbed at last to the week's bombardment? To German Culture--let Louvain be the memorial; to the Imperial Piety--the ruins of Rheims. CHAPTER XII On the Aisne