Our car climbs the steep hill beyond Meaux, which is the extreme edge of the battlefield, about ten in the morning; and during the day circuits about half the area of the fighting, a distance of about seventy-five miles--or a hundred miles. The "Field of Five Thousand Dead" is what the majority of the tourists will probably call the battlefield of the Marne, because of the tragic toll of life taken on that one particular rolling bit of meadow. We stop at this field in the morning soon after leaving Meaux. As we look across it we see none of the signs of conflict that I had witnessed in September. There are none of the ruined accouterments of war. No horses lie on their backs, four legs sticking straight in the air. There are no human forms in huddled and grotesque positions in the ravines and on the flat. True, every tree bears the mark of bullets, every wall has been shattered by shells, but these signs are not overpowering evidences of massive conflict. There is nothing to make vivid the fearful charge of the Zouaves against the flower of Von Kluck's army only five months before. Yes--there is something. As we look more closely we see far away a cluster of little rude black wood crosses. They are not planted on mounds, they just stick up straight from the level ground. There are other little clusters throughout the field. Each cross marks a grave. Each grave contains from a dozen to fifty bodies. Together the crosses mark the total of five thousand dead. An old woman hobbles along the main road. She looks at us curiously and stops beside the car. I ask if we can go close to the little black crosses. She replies that we can but that the fields are very muddy. I ask if any of the graves are marked with the names of the fallen soldiers. She shakes her head. No, they are the unknown dead. The regiments that fought across that field are known--that is all. There are both French and German dead. The relatives of course know that their men were in those regiments and they may assume, if they have not received letters from them recently, that they have been buried there--out on that vast, undulating, wind swept plain under one of the little black crosses. But, of course, one can never be sure. They might not be dead at all--only prisoners--or again, they might have died somewhere else. It is all very confusing and vague--what happens to the men who no longer send letters home. It is safe to believe they are just dead--to determine where they died is difficult. The old woman suggests that we visit the little village graveyard, at the corner of the field. The Zouave officers are buried there--those who were recognized as officers. Some English had also been found and carried there. She is the caretaker of the little graveyard. She will show it to us. She says that it is much more interesting than the field. The field is much too muddy.