Revigny seen from the inside is a hole of holes—but through it defile continually the blue-clad men of France. Twelve thousand had already passed through that day. In the _carrefour_ of the road by the station is a ceaseless line of convoys coming from or going to Verdun. This once banal little village has come to have something symbolic about it, though looking, as one passes by, like dozens of other destroyed villages. But inside it is the lining of the war—that thing of dust, fatigue, thirst, hunger, sadness, fear, despondence, hopelessness, running up and down the gamut of spiritual and physical miseries. “Theirs not to reason why.” ... The English canteen is the only bright spot in the whole place. Those sad-eyed men, like us, love and regret, and are beloved and regretted; women have let them go in fear and dread; and all over Europe it is the same, east, west, north, and south—all they love they lay down at the word of command. I watched for an hour the blue stream of heavily laden men as they passed in, coming up to the counter with their battered quart cups, drinking their coffee standing, in haste, that the comrade following might be sure to get his drink, the sweat dripping from their faces. Fifteen minutes later a great thunder-storm broke, and thousands of sad-eyed men were huddled together, shelterless, like sheep, suddenly soaked; the hateful dust became the still more hateful mud. I left it all in complete desolation of spirit, and wondering, Is God in His heaven? Revigny was worse to my spiritual sense almost than the battle-field—there all was consummated. Here the men are still passing up to sacrifice. CHAPTER X MONT FRENET.—LA CHAMPAGNE POUILLEUSE.—THE RETURN CHÂLONS, _10 p.m._