Through the courtesy of a friend who was going to Meaux in charge of a Red Cross automobile to distribute hospital stores to a field hospital near Plessis-Pacy, I had an opportunity to visit the scene of the recent battles along the Ourcq Canal, where General von Kluck's army met its first signal defeat. We came near to the villages of Chambry, Marcilly, Etrepilly, and Vincy--along the road from Meaux to Soissons--and found that the trenches dug by the Germans were filled with human corpses in thick, serried masses. Quicklime and straw had been thrown over them by the ton. Piles of bodies of men and of horses had been partially cremated in the most rudimentary fashion. The country seemed to be one endless charnel-house. The stench of the dead was appalling. Of the fifty odd houses that form the village of Etrepilly, not one remained intact. Some of them had been hit by a shell that penetrated through the roof, falling into the cellar, and by its explosion bringing down from garret or second story all the furniture in one confused mass of ruin. But many other houses had been simply sacked and looted. Cupboards, chests of drawers, and wardrobes were smashed open, and their contents scattered pell-mell in the streets, courtyards, and fields. Here was the portrait of an ancestor ripped to shreds by a bayonet; there was a child's cradle. An old-fashioned grandmother's armchair, with its cushions and ear-laps, lay smashed in fragments in the gutter. The village had fortunately been deserted by its inhabitants at the approach of the Germans, who, furious with rage, had looted, sacked, or wantonly destroyed whatever they found. How thirsty the Germans were! The roads and fields and trenches were strewn with bottles, full or half-empty. The Germans must have been obliged to retreat suddenly, for heaps of unexploded shells for the three-inch and five-inch German field-guns were abandoned, and in wicker baskets were loads of three-inch unexploded shells, apparently about to be served to the gunners. Wanton, ruthless devastation everywhere! In a field was a wrecked aeroplane, a white and yellow _taube_, with its right wing reaching into the air, looking like some gigantic, wounded bird. Towards sunset, an automobile passed along the road through this terrible desolate valley of death. In it sat Monseigneur Marbeau, the venerable Bishop of Meaux--the successor of Bossuet, the famous "Eagle of Meaux"--who now and then raised his right finger aloft and then lowered it with the sign of the cross, as he pronounced benedictions on this vast charnel-house. A great number of German killed and wounded wearing uniforms of the Eleventh Prussian Infantry Regiment indicated that this corps had occupied the village of Etrepilly. As there were no civilian villagers noticed in this part of the country, this seems presumptive evidence that the Eleventh Prussian Infantry participated in this looting and wanton devastation.