I think that before I got off on that ramble I was telling you about arriving at Chauny. This town is pretty newly destroyed, and very completely so. It was evidently a manufacturing town, and the factories are now only a mass of twisted iron and steel. The rest of the village is literally ruined. I doubt if there is a house in the whole town that has two walls standing. We did not see it, if there is one. The completeness of the destruction is what impressed me. Nothing, nothing, left at all. It seems to me it will take generations to ever get that one town in shape again, and, of course, this is only one of many. As it is still under fire, we were scooted through, and were not allowed to get out, or take any pictures, for which I am sorry. From here we went via Guivry and Guisarde, two very much destroyed towns, to Champier, where we stopped and looked at a church which was ruined, and also saw for the first time graves which had been opened and emptied! This seems like a good story, I have no doubt. What in the world the German army wants with the contents of French graveyards I do not know, but I do know that they have opened and pillaged great numbers of the graves. At first it seemed to me that the sarcophagus might have been split open by the shock caused by the explosion of the church and other near buildings, for there must be a jolly shock when a church falls down in pieces, but I saw many graveyards which were not in the churchyard and which were also desecrated. I was interested to see the depth of the older graves. They were all brick-lined, and surely eight feet deep. This destroying graves has also had a very infuriating effect on the people in the district, particularly as there are such awful stories afoot about the Germans using their dead for all sorts of horrible purposes. [Illustration: Very Old and Beautiful House at Roye Interior completely gone] [Illustration: The Cathedral at Soissons. Notice only steel bars left in windows]