Monday.
Northward, northward! and now to the east; escaping one fatal trap by a most skilful movement of tired men, but beginning in humbler fashion to retread the wasted fields of the proud parade from the frontier. So swift, it is difficult to keep in touch with their retreat. Oho! this is a different business to fleeing before their lightning march across Belgium.
And they are different men to meet, the stragglers and prisoners of the harried army, to the perfect equipage of war I watched coming over the hills, triumphant, into helpless Brussels. Weary, anxious men, scarcely human, with mask-like faces.
But you would steel your heart if you could follow the tracks of their arrogant progress and vengeful retreat. If you saw the deserted, ravaged villages, heaped with the remnants of the poor man's bare necessities. If you passed through the tainted atmosphere of the countless battlefields, that makes a sick offence of a country of prosperous peace.
I came from the west into Senlis to-day, a day after its evacuation by the Germans. A detour took me through the Forest of Ermenonville; the beautiful pine and heather glades and wide lakes haunted by memories of the humanist philosopher, Rousseau. It is haunted now by other ghosts. Impossible to suggest the eerie sensation of passing in utter silence through the village and forest spaces. Not a soul to be seen. Not a sound. But jettisoned along the road the dissolute debris of a vanished army. The woods cut for hurried defences. The houses wantonly broken and looted; and myriads of bottles, from the pillaged wine that served for food.
The desolation and silence prepared me for a shock. And it came. Senlis, Senlis of history, with its exquisite tower of open stone-work and frame of romantic beauty, is a wasted ruin.
As I moved up the deserted streets, for a moment I was deceived. But every house, as I looked into it, was a shell; burnt out, skeleton-like, staring at the sky. Fire, and pillage, and ruin. And why?
The French soldiers held the last houses with effective fire. Then, for ten days the Germans held the town; and destroyed it, for amusement! The Mayor and other elderly burgesses were set in front of the hotel, in single file, and shot with a single discharge, for practice. They were not allowed to speak to their wives and children, who stood by.
Proud of the fact, the General and his aide-de-camp have signed their names large in the hotel book—may they be kept, for execration!
The hostess of the hotel was forced to open every room, with a pistol held at her throat. The two old maid-servants who had stayed to look after the "great house"—now a smoking shell—were abused and injured. One wanders half an idiot in the village, still weeping.