But this is to anticipate a little. We passed north through Iverny, where there was a great deal of fighting, and then eastwards, skirting Montyon, where the Germans, pressed hard in their retreat, threw nine hundred bombs into a duckpond. It was only in the neighbourhood of the graceful hill of Montyon that the flags began to be noticed. In Montyon we observed the first ruined cottage; but it is at Barcy, the next hamlet to the north-east, that the vestiges of war begin to be numerous. Barcy was the centre of the enemy’s line on September 6, and this village has not made much effort to recover from its heavy devastation. These little communes of the Ile de France possess nothing of the architectural charm which gives so exquisite and tender a beauty to many a village of Southern England, but most of them have a single feature, the church. In the case of Barcy, the broad village street forms an avenue closed, at its northern end, by the graceful parish church, with its short pointed spire. This building is violently injured by the bombardment, and looks as though some monster had bitten large pieces out of it; while no attempt has yet been made to restore it. Other buildings at Barcy have been patched or mended. It is probable that this work of restoration has been delayed by the uncertainty which has prevailed as to the part which the State was prepared to take in this rehabilitation. Only ten days after my visit the French Government, for the first time, assumed the full responsibility for the rebuilding of private property destroyed in the war, and now, therefore, so soon as labour is forthcoming, the work may be expected to go merrily forward. What is involved is so enormous that the imagination fails to follow the course which it must take. Up to the present time it has been left to private enterprise, and as regards these villages of the Marne and Ourcq, except where the owner has been in a hurry to resume his normal life, the bombarded villages have been left in a deplorable disarray.