So we rolled through the streets of Rheims, where of the 110,000 original population 20,000 still live and carry on their daily life. The greater part of the city showed no signs whatever of the constantly repeated bombardments which it has sustained, save for the blocks on blocks of houses closed and with windows boarded up. But when we entered that portion lying to the east of the cathedral and toward the enemy, we passed through the fleshless skeleton of a city. The house walls generally stood intact, but through the gaping windows one could see the nothingness that lay behind, where great shells had plunged downward through the roof, sweeping the whole interior, floor by floor, down into the cellar; or where smaller shells had gutted the interior by fire. Every now and then we would see a street completely blocked by a great barrier of rubble, where a whole house had been plucked out bodily from between its neighbors by some monstrous explosion and smashed to pieces on the pavement as you would smash an egg on the ground. Then we came out into the great square before the cathedral, and looked up at its cliff-like façade. I heaved a sigh of relief. I seemed to be looking at the same incredible beauty that I had looked at just over a year ago, when the world was still at peace. It is true that half the great rose window was empty of glass; that here and there stood statues headless or with chipped and mutilated limbs. But in the vast profusion of carvings on the façade these were almost lost. Gradually, however, the full tragedy bore in on me.