After driving for half an hour we are right in the thick of that inferno of the battle front, which, from habit, we no longer notice, though it was at first so impressive and will later on be so strange to remember. All is chaos, hurly-burly; all is overthrown, shattered; walls are calcined, houses eviscerated, villages in ruins on the ground; but life, intense and magnificent, informs both roads and ruins. There are no longer any civilians, no women or children; nothing but soldiers, horses, and motor cars; of these, however, there are such numbers that progress is difficult. Two streams of traffic, almost uninterrupted, divide the roads between them; on one side is everything that is on its way to the firing-line; on the other side everything that is on its way back. Great lorries bringing up artillery, munitions, rations, and Red Cross supplies jolt along on the frozen cart ruts with a great din of clanging iron, rivalling the noise, more or less distant, of the incessant cannonade. And the faces of all these different men, who are driving along on these enormous rolling machines, express health and resolution. There are our own soldiers, now wearing those bluish helmets of steel, which recall the ancient casque and bring us back to the old times; there are yellow-bearded Russians, Indians, and Bedouins with swarthy complexions. All these crowds are continuously travelling to and fro along the road, dragging all sorts of curious things heaped up in piles. There are also thousands of horses, picking their way among the huge wheels of innumerable vehicles. Indeed it might be thought that this was a general migration of mankind after some cataclysm had subverted the surface of the earth. Not so! This is simply the work of the great Accursed, who has unloosed German barbarism. He took forty years to prepare the monstrous _coup_, which, according to his reckoning, was to establish the apotheosis of his insane pride, but which will result in nothing but his downfall, in a sea of blood, in the midst of the detestation of the world. There is certainly a remarkable lull here to-day, for even when the rolling of the iron lorries ceases for a moment, the rumbling of the cannon does not make itself heard. The cause of this must be the fog and in other respects, too, how greatly it is to our advantage, this kindly mist; it seems as if we had ordered it.