Two years before the war a German company, formed for the manufacture of chemical produce, rented a large plot of ground close to St. Mihiel for a term of thirty years. It was a big company and it had need of big buildings with solid foundations. So a floor about two hundred and fifty feet long by thirty wide was laid down in reinforced concrete. Then the company, after announcing that its money had come to an end, and that it could not proceed to put up the proposed buildings, was dissolved. But the plot of ground and the concrete floor, which, before the workmen left, was tidily covered up with a loose coating of earth, still belonged to it. When the army of Metz arrived on the scene some one had the curiosity or the intelligence to inquire what might be hidden under this covering of earth, which was accordingly removed. And there, by the greatest good luck in the world, they discovered not only the concrete floor, but a number of holes in it which proved to be admirably adapted for emplacements for the Austrian guns. On the whole, I am inclined to back the story of the St. Mihiel concrete floor against the Tooting tennis-court, though in any case it would only add one more to the long list of undoubted cases in which German settlers were planted in the Woevre district in order to render valuable services to the Fatherland either before or during the war. The main point is that from some position near St. Mihiel, whether prepared beforehand or not, the big Austrian howitzers in a very short time silenced the guns and smashed up the turrets and bastions of the Camp des Romains fort, until at last the plucky garrison had no guns left to shoot with, and were finally smoked out after trenches had been pushed up close to the fort. When the asphyxiated survivors had recovered enough to march out the Germans presented arms in recognition of the fine courage they had shown in the defence, and though they were naturally made prisoners the officers were allowed to keep their swords. The destruction of Troyon, les Paroches, and the Camp des Romains was followed, a day or two later, by that of Liouville, where the damage done was particularly extensive. The holes ploughed by the big shells were the largest I have seen, and for acres round the fort almost every square yard of ground is littered with scraps of shell casing and rusty iron.