As we left the farm-house to regain the communication trench there was a fierce, loud noise like this: ZZZZZ ssss ZZZZ sss ZZZZ. And then an explosion. The observer in the captive balloon had noticed unaccustomed activity in our village, and the consequences were coming. We saw yellow smoke rising just beyond the wall of the farmyard, about two hundred yards away. We received instructions to hurry to the trench. We had not gone fifty yards in the trench when there was another celestial confusion of S's and Z's. Imitating the officers, we bent low in the trench. The explosion followed. "One, two, three, four, five," said a Captain. "One should not rise till one has counted five, because all the bits have not fallen. If it is a big shell, count ten." We tiptoed and glanced over the edge of the trench. Yellow smoke was rising at a distance of about three lawn-tennis courts. "With some of their big shells," said the Captain, "you can hear nothing until it is too late, for the reason that the shell travels more quickly than the sound of it. The sounds reach your ears in inverse order--if you are alive." A moment later a third shell dropped in the same plot of ground. And even a mile and a half off, at the other end of the communication trench, when the automobiles emerged from their shelter into the view of the captive balloon, the officers feared for the automobiles, and we fled very swiftly. We had been to the very front of the front, and it was the most cheerful, confident, high-spirited place I had seen in France, or in England either. III Ruins When you go into Rheims by the Epernay road, the life of the street seems to be proceeding as usual, except that octroi formalities have been abolished. Women, some young and beautiful, stare nonchalantly as the car passes. Children are playing and shrieking in the sunshine; the little cafes and shops keep open door; the baker is busy; middle-aged persons go their ways in meditation upon existence. It is true there are soldiers; but there are soldiers in every important French town at all seasons of the year in peace-time. In short, the spectacle is just that ordinarily presented to the poorer exterior thoroughfares leading towards the centre of a city.