The impressions which the great German drive made upon the minds of our workers who fell back before it will remain with them as long as thought and memory cling--the vast conglomeration of men, tired, dirty, unshaven; men and animals and inanimate things, moving quickly, slowly, intermittently, moving not at all, but choking and halting all progress--with the deadly perversity of inanimate things; men not merely tired, dirty and unshaven, but sick and wounded almost unto death, moaning and sobbing under the fearful onslaughts of pain unbearable, sometimes death itself, a blessed relief, and marked by a stop by the roadside, a hurriedly dug grave, prayers, the closing earth, one other soul gone from the millions in order that hundreds of millions of other souls may live in peace and safety. Such traffic, such turmoil, such variety, such blinding, choking dust. Army supply trains, motor trucks, guns, soldiers, civilians, on foot and mounted, of vehicles of every variety conceivable and many unconceivable; motor cars upon which the genius of a Renault or a Ford had been expended; wheelbarrows, baby carriages, sledges, more motor cars, ranging in age from two weeks to fourteen years, dog carts, wagons creaking and groaning behind badly scared mules and worse scared negroes who wondered why they had ever left the corn brake--for this. Such traffic, such life. And then--again and again death, more graves, more prayers, more men's souls poured into the vague unknown. And in the midst of death, life. Here in this wagon is a haggard-looking woman. The babe which she clasps to her breast is but four hours old; but the woman is a hundred--seemingly. She stretches her long, bare arms out from the flapping curtains at the rear of the Red Cross camionette. A group of _poilus_, in extremely dirty uniforms, catches her eyes. She shrieks to them in her native French. "My _poilus_," she cries, "you shall return. God wills it. You shall return--you and my little son," and falls, sobbing incoherently, into the bottom of the bumping ambulance. An old woman with her one precious possession saved--a bewhiskered goat--hears her, and crosses herself. A three-ton motor truck falls into a deep ditch and is abandoned, with all of its contents. This is no hour for salvage. The dust from all the traffic grows thicker and thicker. Yet it is naught with the blinding white dust which arises from this shell--which almost struck into the heart of one of the main lines of traffic. The racket is terrific; yet above it one catches the shrieking cry of the young mother in the camionette. Her reason hangs in the balance. And as the noise subsides a detachment of _poilus_ falls out beside the roadside and begins opening more graves. The _boche's_ aim was quite as good as he might have hoped. * * * * *