THE MENACE OF THE GOLDEN VIRGIN.

I have now to tell of the reconquered ground, and I own that the description, which I cannot claim to have invented, more nearly than any other suggests the reality. Indeed, there are not in the French language, nor can there be in any other, for the imagination cannot conceive such things, any words that can give a just idea of so much wretchedness and desolation.

So I have thought a score of times, while, during these last days, I have been making my way over the plateau which lies between the Ancre and the Somme, a quite narrow section of the battle front. What would be my difficulty had I to describe the land that the French have retaken!

We had set out on our pilgrimage from Albert.

"Albert! That's an old story—ancient history. Tell us about something else," say those who look for new sensations.

Not so. We may not yet forget Albert, that ruined outpost of Picardy, for her sufferings are not ended. Within the last few days the Boches bombarded her from an immense distance. They only succeeded in knocking over ruins, since all is ruin at Albert, but "if one can't get thrushes one eats blackbirds," eh, friend Fritz?

"Well, Mother So-and-So," said an old fellow to an old dame the other morning in a street in Amiens, "when do you think the folks will get back into Albert?"

"Indeed, Father Such-and-Such, you know that as well as I do. When the Golden Virgin falls."

For a superstition runs in this country that the war will be near its end when the Golden Virgin, who hangs suspended—by what miracle?—between Heaven and Earth, from the top of the belfry of Albert, shall fall to break in pieces upon the ground. But the trouble is that the Virgin "holds on."

From Albert to Fricourt, going via BÉcordel-BÉcourt, the road is hardly 1-1/2 miles long. By this way one skirts in an almost straight line the South-western slopes of the plateau. A few steps beyond the German line that was taken on the 1st July, and we are in Fricourt.

You will look a long time in the guide-books that were held in esteem before the war ere you will find the smallest mention of Fricourt. Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, Contalmaison and a dozen other villages that now can never be forgotten, did not exist for the tourist. He got on most happily without them.

Well, to-day all these villages can be found on their own soil no more than in those guide-books. That, Fricourt! This grey blotch in front of the wood of the same name! That, the Public Square, that rectangle of tree-trunks!

That? Yes, that is very surely Fricourt. All the villages are like that.

Let us get on and you shall see for yourself. A short climb, but a stiff one, and we are in Mametz.

You look about you and you see nothing at all. Believe me, I am not joking. The number of mounds and wooden crosses of every size that border the edges of the road tell us plainly enough at what a cost to both sides these ruined hamlets were captured.

Another fight with the mud and we are in Montauban de Picardie. Montauban looks over all this plateau that lies between the Ancre and the Somme. In clear weather one can see everywhere around, and towards the North-west the houses of Bapaume are visible. To-day the clouds are too low and the rain too heavy for us to try to see anything at all.

One can, moreover, look at nothing but the earth, for it is here that the story of recent events is most clearly to be read.

The first thing that one finds on entering Montauban is the little cemetery on the left. To enter the village it was necessary first to cross this cemetery; and to cross it, they had to "make jam" of it. Will you be so good as to consider what a cemetery is like when it has been made into jam? Grave-stones torn up and smashed, crosses thrown down, Christs crucified again, iron railings twisted grotesquely, vaults burst open, corpses.... Out of such a chaos, who shall ever retrieve the dear graves of his dead?

And see these gaping holes where once were houses, these cellars laid bare, the bellows of the blacksmith, bits of the trough where baker Moulin kneaded his bread, splintered pieces of the chemist's bottles, the whole stock of the draper's at the corner—ribbons, thread and remnants—a fragment from the porch of the town hall, and on it the word "ÉgalitÉ."

Equality in suffering, one would say.

But perhaps we may find some sign of peace beyond the village in the little wood of Bernafay, which in other days offered a calm retreat to the weary and a shelter to lovers.

No! The wood of Bernafay is a wood no longer, and so it is with all the pretty woods of this neighbourhood, TrÔnes, Belville and Foureaux. How is one to describe this ghastly picture of roots, clayey soil freshly ploughed up, shattered trunks of every size, and dismal stumps, among which, none the less, the birds persist in their vain search for food and cover?

These trees will bud again; Nature will clothe herself once more in green; even the earth that lies about us will yield new fruits. But the villages? What magical power shall call them back to life, unless it be the marvellous vitality of France—France, who refuses to die?