It is now nothing but a huge skeleton of twisted iron, grimacing at the sky. Between Varreddes and Etrépilly, as we prepare to cross the Ourcq, we pass a little tavern at the left-hand side of the road, which carries on a newly painted sign the name ‘À l’Obus.’ The excuse for this is that on its gable-end, close to a window, it displays an unexploded German shell, rusty and red, which half penetrated the wall and stuck there, without bursting. Similar bombs are already pointed out as curiosities in tree-trunks, and will doubtless be much exploited when tourists begin to be admitted. On the east from Varreddes we had seen, through a screen of trees, the Marne below us, and the great bridge at Germigny-l’Evêque, which the Germans blew up behind them in their final retreat. We are now in the very midst of the worst slaughter of September 6 and 7, 1914, but it is very curious to see how little sign of it is left in the countryside. Occasional remnants of barbed wire, and here and there the trenches of defence, might easily be overlooked by a hasty traveller. He will more readily notice that here are orchards, starred with the rose-colour of ripening apples; there feathery boskage of acacias delicately green; here we run between violently contrasted fields, with the sulphur of mustard on one side, the purple of beetroot on the other; there the oat-harvest descends to little copses of chestnut and beech, that brood over some unseen rivulet. Everywhere the peace of uniform rustic experience, unaltered through the sober centuries, would seem stamped upon the landscape, if the little occasional groups of flapping tricolors were not there to remind us that only two brief years ago the question whether European liberty should or should not be overwhelmed for ever was fought out here with unsurpassable fury and tenacity.