"We arrived at the town of Wandre. The inhabitants without exception were brought out and shot. They all knelt down and prayed, but that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the green grass and slept forever. It is real sport."--Page 34. [Illustration] [Illustration] RUINS OF GERBÉVILLER This once lovely village of Gerbéviller, is now called Gerbéviller the Martyred. In a rage of fury because of his enforced retreat before a French army, of two-thirds in number of his own troops, General Clauss looted this little city and massacred about one hundred of its people. Among the slain were fifteen very aged men, including the Mayor and his secretary, there being no young or middle-aged men left in the town who could be killed. Out of 475 houses, twenty at most were left habitable.--Page 37. [Illustration] PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WRECKINGS Two examples of wanton, unmilitary destruction. Above, a scene in Nomeny (Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle), and below, the splendid great Cloth Hall of Ypres. The former was simply the hell-blast of German passage; the latter, a distinct intention to destroy by fire a famous and beautiful edifice, made a target for the heaviest guns, with no remotest military reason--except "frightfulness." [Illustration] [Illustration] MUTE WITNESSES The full extent of the German atrocities committed on a battle line six hundred miles in length, and extending from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier, can never be known. More than one hundred thousand people are simply reported as "missing," other multitudes were burned or thrown into pits. Only in towns from which the German armies hurriedly retreated were inquests possible, and in those towns affidavits were prepared and photographs of the mutilated bodies taken. After the German troops had passed out of the village or city, it became possible for the village school-teacher, priest or banker, the aged women and the children to creep out of pits, the caves in the fields, or the edge of the woods, where they had been hiding, and return to survey the scene of desolation behind them. The opposite page shows victims in the little town of Andenne, where more than 300 civilians were massacred. [Illustration] [Illustration] CATHEDRAL OF ST. MARTIN The city of Ypres, in the intensest zone of conflict, has suffered much. The ancient Cathedral, of the XIII Century, on the site of an edifice of the XI, stately and impressive with its magnificent rose window in the choir, is now unroofed and its fine interior a heap of stones mournfully guarded by the remaining pillars and broken walls. The great altarpiece of St. Martin on his white steed still presides over the ruins of the high altar. It is a ghastly scene. [Illustration]