“They mean to make a stand,” the private went on. “It’s an ideal place for it. There is no use of an attack in front. We’d be mowed down by machine guns.” The br-r-r of a dozen shots from a German machine gun gave point to his conclusion. “Our infantry is hugging what we have and entrenching. You better not go up. One has to know the way, or he’ll walk right into a sharpshooter’s bullet”--instructions that would have been applicable a year later when you were about to visit a British trench in almost the same location. The siege warfare of the Aisne line had already begun. It was singular to get the first news of it from a private in Soissons and then to return to Paris and London, on the other side of the curtain of secrecy, where the public thought that the Allied advance would continue. “_Allons!_” said our statesman, and we went to the town square, where German guns had carpeted the ground with branches of shade trees and torn off the fronts of houses, revealing sections of looted interior which had been further messed by shell-bursts. Some women and children and a crippled man came out-of-doors at sight of us. M. Doumer introduced himself and shook hands all around. They were glad to meet him in much the same way as if he had been on an election campaign. “A German shell struck there across the square only half an hour ago,” said one of the women. “What do you do when there is shelling?” asked M. Doumer. “If it is bad we go into the cellar,” was the answer; an answer which implied that peculiar fearlessness of women, who get accustomed to fire easier than men. These were the fatalists of the town, who would not turn refugee; helpless to fight, but grimly staying with their homes and accepting what came with an incomprehensible stoicism, which possibly had its origin in a race-feeling so proud and bitter that they would not admit that they could be afraid of anything German, even a shell. “And how did the Germans act?” “They made themselves at home in our houses and slept in our beds, while we slept in the kitchen,” she answered. “They said if we kept indoors and gave them what they wanted we should not be harmed. But if any one fired a shot at their troops or any arms were found in our houses, they would burn the town. When they were going back in a great hurry--how they scattered from _our_ shells! We went out in the square to see _our_ shells, monsieur!” What mattered the ruins of her home? _Our_ shells had returned vengeance. Arrows with directions in German, “This way to the river,” “This way to Villers-Cotteret,” were chalked on the standing walls; and on door-casings the names of the detachments of the Prussian Guard billeted there, all in systematic Teutonic fashion.