As we advanced we became more and more convinced of the correctness of Capt. Parker's theory that there had been a big focal center of the battle somewhere still to the east of us, and that the actions along the rest of the line of contact from Paris to Lorraine had occurred with reference to this vortex. It is characteristic of the limited knowledge which troops in battle have of what goes on outside of their immediate geographical vicinity, that we ran almost into the great battle area for which we were searching before anyone gave us a hint of its location. It was at Vertus that we were told by a French officer that terrific fighting had taken place in the upland plateau to the south of us, around a place called Fère Champenoise; that the Germans had there made their main attack with close to a quarter of a million men; that a frightful battle had raged, a battle in which the Germans were at first, during some thirty-six hours, victorious, but that, with the arrival of reinforcements, the Ninth French Army under General Foch had turned the tide and finally routed them. The officers said that the fighting and slaughter had been frightful; that the combined casualties of the two sides were close to two hundred thousand on a front of something over twenty miles and a depth of about fifteen miles. They said that the battle area was contained roughly within a circumference drawn through the villages of Champaubert, Coligny, Pierre-Morains, Clamanges, Sommesous, Gourgançon, Corroy, and Sézanne. [Illustration: "THE DEAD WERE SCATTERED FAR AND WIDE" [Our automobile on one of the battlefields of the Marne]] As we conferred with the officers a constant stream of reinforcements for the French army was passing, coming from Fère Champenoise and marching toward Ay and Epernay; regiments of infantry, ammunition trains, caissons, transports, and cavalry, all marching endlessly toward the booming guns to the northward. We turned our machine to the south with a feeling of the greatest awe at the thought of what two hundred thousand casualties must mean. We were silent for some minutes as the machine sped along, and then Captain Parker remarked: "At Gettysburg or at Waterloo the total forces engaged amounted to only about one hundred and sixty thousand!" We ran toward the slope of the plateau, passing slowly an endless, unbroken line of transports. Beyond Bergères-Les-Vertus an infantry brigade was resting beside the road and the tired men were cooking and eating. * * * * *