And hearts are strong in Picardy, Where Hope is still aflame, Where Freedom's heroes see ahead The goal at which they aim; Though drear and cold the ruined hearth And barren fields are dumb, A voice breathes soft across the earth Of peace that is to come. CHAPTER I THE SOMME In the afternoon of October 11, 1918, I found myself with a party travelling out from Amiens and taking the straight road that runs eastwards towards St. Quentin across the war harried fields of the Somme. We had just passed through a country where the harvest was gathered in, where the hay ricks and cornstacks stood high round the ancient farmhouses, and we were now in a country where Death had reaped its sad harvest for over four years, where all was ruin and decay--a spread of demolition and destruction. This was the battleground of the Somme. This department is level, very fertile and was at one time amongst the best cultivated districts of France. Cider was made there, poultry reared, and the locality was rich in all manner of farm produce. And it stood high in textile industries--wool, cotton, hemp, silk-spinning, and the weaving of velvet and carpets. In addition to these industries there were also large iron foundries, beetroot sugar factories, distilleries, breweries, employing prior to the war close on seventy thousand hands. But now, at the present moment, all these industries are obliterated, the rich pastures of the Somme are barren wastes, the factories and distilleries huddles of charred wood, twisted iron, and broken bricks. All homes and hamlets are destroyed, and for miles and miles ruin succeeds ruin, until the eye wearies and the heart is heavy at the sight of the horror which has been heaped on the once fair land of France. The land of the Somme is not alone deserted and ravaged. It is dead, utterly laid waste as if the lava of war had not alone fallen on it, but blotted it out as a sand storm smothers the landmarks of a desert. Of the great trees which lined the roadways nothing remains save the peeled stumps, that stretch mile after mile as far as the eye can see, passive relics of the hate which swept over them and broke them down. Never again will they bear a leaf or call to the dead earth for the food which gave green to their foliage. The green which spreads out from the roadways is the green of rank weeds, thistle, nettle and dock, the rank undergrowth which rises through the tortured strands of rusty wire that were once the outer ramparts of the Hindenburg line. Up from these nettles, docks, and thistles, rises here and there a cumbrous tank which at one time fell into a shell-hole and was unable to hiccough itself out again.