The crops interested me very much. Large fields of wheat and barley, as well as trim lines of lettuce and garden truck, were on each side of the road near every settlement. I asked who planted them. "Different people," said our lieutenant; "the people who have been living here right along under the Germans, the soldiers who delivered the territory last March, the civil population who came back to their homes when the Boches were driven out." Until March 18th, the Germans held French territory up to the line passing through Rossières, Andréhy, Lassigny, Ribecourt, and Soissons. They retreated on that date, and the present line passes just west of Saint-Quentin, La Fère, and Barésis. Our route was a big circle through the section between these lines among the towns most lately relinquished by the invader. I felt reluctant to be whisked along so fast, for I wanted to see just how these bridges had been blown up. I wanted to ask that old man over there, hoeing in the field with a tiny little girl beside him in a black apron, what he had seen and felt, and how he liked the Boches. But we seemed always to keep the same pace. At Chauny we slowed up, however. We passed down an aisle of ruins, and stopped in a big square. We were told: "They are shelling the town, so that you run a risk if you stop here, but they seem to be lazy to-day, so don't worry." I was so glad to get out of the car and wander around according to my fancy, that I didn't give a thought to the possibility of shells. And I couldn't see why they should want to keep on firing, as there didn't seem much more to do to the place. I stood at first and looked about me. Not one roof to be seen--just walls, and not more than one or two stories of these. Nothing horizontal--just the perpendicular skeletons of buildings, and piles, piles, piles of stone in between. The streets have been cleared of rubbish, by the French, so that the square or "place" looked as neat and ready for market-day as though the market-women might come at any moment with their pushcarts, station themselves in the center, and display piles of carrots, cherries, potatoes, and radishes to tempt the passing throng. But the passing throng had passed somewhere else. We saw nobody. On one side was a wall marked "Théâtre"--just the front of it left, all the rest ruins. Across the square was a large building with "Palais de Justice" carved over the portal, portions of the front ripped away so that we could see the different rooms and central staircase leading up, and up, to nothing.