Today an old man in a long white apron smock was the centre of attention here. He was busy searching the ruins of his house for buried treasure. Every little while he would come back to the canteen with the fruits of his pathetic salvaging,—a few silver spoons, some paint brushes, a bolt of black velvet ribbon,—place them in a basket and then return to look for more. Two German prisoners were digging for him. Finally he came back with six unbroken champagne glasses and a face scored with tragedy. He had been hoping against hope to recover the treasures in his wine cellar but he was too late, not a bottle was there left! Verdun, February 28. This morning I went out on a truck to Fort Douaumont. This is the fort which was captured by the Germans, held by them for five months, and then retaken by the French and marks the enemy’s nearest approach to the city. Oddly enough the French were the gainers through this occupation to the extent of a splendid electric lighting system introduced by the Germans into the fort! A modern fort does not resemble in the least the idea that one has of a “fort.” Viewed from outside it is nothing more or less than a hole in the ground. Once inside we had the sense of being in a monster ant-hill as we followed our guide through a network of tunnelled corridors. We saw the room of the Commandant with its wonderful relief maps both French and German of the Verdun hills, we saw the war-museum, the Foyer, the store-rooms and engine-rooms, the magazine rooms where the big shells were stacked like cord wood, and we climbed up into the turrets of the disappearing guns. In this strange fort which has been both friend and enemy we looked through one empty doorway into a pit of ruins open to the sky, under the wreckage sixteen Germans lay, they said; it was here that a French shell had broken through. We passed by another door which bore a sign on it announcing that this was the tomb of five French mitrailleurs who had been killed by a German shell in the room within; instead of burying the bodies they had simply sealed up the door and left them. Then we ducked through a little low door and climbed up over the hillock which forms the roof of the fort as it were. All about us stretched the abomination of desolation of the battle-fields, wracked tortured earth, seared and scarred into a yellow-grey desert waste. Here and there lay bones, human bones, sometimes scattered loose, sometimes gathered in a little heap with a rusty helmet and a broken rifle lying close beside them. Only a few hundred feet from the road, the man who guided the party told us, he came yesterday upon two unburied bodies.