The winding walled hamlet of Etrépilly is bright with the sunshine on its new orange and velvet-brown roofs, by which the damage done by the German shells is concealed. This is not the case with the little village of Vincy-Manœuvres, through which we pass next on our northward course. Vincy was heavily shelled on September 7, and still presents an appearance of dismal dilapidation. Without doubt, this is a matter which depends on the enterprise or wealth of individual proprietors, and it will be curious to see what immediate effect the decision of the Government to repair all private property at the cost of the State will have in these remote communes. It was on September 9, 1914, that the German army made a final stand on the wooded height between Vincy-Manœuvres and Acy-en-Multien, from which they were dislodged next day by the army of Manoury. This was the third and conclusive stage of the great struggle, in the course of which the sixth French army pushed back the half-encircling corps of Kluck’s reinforcements, and here we felt it necessary to bear in mind, as much as the peaceful uniformity of the landscape would permit, the great double line of attack and retreat which we had now twice traversed. We sped on north, and were now no longer in the department of the Seine-et-Marne, but in that of the Oise. No place was more prominent in the battle than Acy-en-Multien, which we now approached. This must have been, and indeed still is, much the most attractive and picturesque of the villages which the battle of the Ourcq has immortalised. Acy lies in a wooded dimple of the high plateau, and it is scattered broadly over its site, more like an English than a French township. When it is considered with what violence the Germans were hunted out of Acy, it is surprising how few marks of their presence are left. One large house, of château pretensions, is a complete wreck, having been bombed out of existence by German shells, but the beautiful and curious church, with its twelfth-century octagonal tower and its rudiments of earliest Gothic ornament, is, so far as the eye can judge, intact. At Acy a prodigious number of French soldiers are buried in a vast cemetery, which seems to have been improvised for the occasion. The piety of relatives and friends keeps these graves so lavishly covered with nosegays that the cemetery looks like a flower-garden. The epitaphs and sentiments on the tombstones are poignant, and we lingered long and with great emotion in this sacred melancholy place. I was particularly struck by one inscription—that on the tombstone of a certain Charles Schulz, who died as a corporal, leading on his men. He had been, till the war broke out, a Protestant pastor, but in what locality the epitaph does not say. The text chosen for his place of burial—‘il tint ferme, parcequ’il voyait celui qui est invisible’—may well have been the echo of his own sentiments when he exchanged his ministry for the terrible duty of fighting for his