We arrived here at Bar-le-Duc last night after a six-hour trip by motor car. Mr. K. came by motor-cycle; most of the other men travelled by truck, sitting perched on top of a load of luggage, canvas cots, and chocolate boilers. The truck broke down somewhere _en route_ and never reached Bar-le-Duc until this morning, when it rolled in carrying a rather weary-looking lot of passengers. Tomorrow we go on to our station behind the lines. Today we have spent shopping for supplies. We have bought writing paper; materials to make hot chocolate, paying two francs and a half apiece or almost fifty cents for a small-sized can of condensed milk; and dozens of gross of little jars of confiture. Ever since I was a child _Bar-le-Duc_ has meant just the one thing to me,—those little glasses of delectable currant preserve which bear its label. We went around to the wholesale houses which handle the famous _Confitures Fins de Bar-le-Duc_. The sight of all those gleaming rows of glass jars filled with deep crimson or amber-colored currants was one that I shan’t easily forget. Bar-le-Duc is a city which shows the wounds of war. Time and again, unfortified, defenceless as she is, she has known _the terror that flieth by night_. Last summer several blocks in the very heart of the city were completely demolished by bombs and the wilderness of ruins lies there untouched. All over the city great black signs are painted on the houses; _Cave, Cave voutée_,—vaulted cellar,—_Place Pour 40 Personnes_. At the end of the afternoon we climbed, Mr. K and I, to the top of the ancient clock-tower which stands on the edge of the fortress-citadel of the Dukes of Bar, overlooking the city. Just above the clock we came upon a tiny platform transformed for the time being into light-housekeeping apartments for two poilus who night and day keep watch there for enemy aircraft. As we stood on the little balcony outside and looked down on the house-tops of the city spread beneath us, with the little children playing in the streets, a telephone bell in the tower tingled. A moment later one of the poilus announced; “A squadrille of Gothas has just crossed the lines, headed for Paris.” Alas, poor Paris! Yet the news brought a feeling of relief with it. The little children of Bar-le-Duc are safe for the night, it seems. The avions are out after bigger game. Rattentout, March 14. Out from Bar-le-Duc one swings into a separate world, the World-Behind-the-Lines. Here one is at the back door of the war, as it were. Passing through the half-abandoned villages one sees war in its _déshabille_; you get no sense of the thrill of it, nor even of its horrors; only the weary disgust, the stultifying stupidity, the unutterable ennui.