Aug. 7.—A most fearful noise was heard about 2 o'clock. They say that it was a fort blown up. A German aeroplane passed yesterday. The soldiers are camping in the woods. There are seven wounded here. Nearly all the others are taken to Aix-la-Chapelle.
Aug. 8.—Went to mass in the village. A man told us that the Germans had burned two big farms at Warsage (the next village.) Two women and two men arrived from Liége. They said that the people had been living in caves for the last two days and nights. These poor people saw awful sights in coming across the fields, which were covered with dead. We have heard that Berneau is burned and the women and children hung. The Germans are furious at having lost such a number of men before seeing the French. A soldier passed last night, and Maria lifted up a corner of the curtain. In a minute he had out his revolver and threatened to shoot her. Some of the soldiers opposite the convent were drunk.
Aug. 9.—An aeroplane passed right over us, and seemed to drop something white. The soldiers are going about in bands destroying and laying waste every house and garden. They pass with bottles of wine and their pockets bulging out with things they have stolen. They set a house on fire just near the convent. There are 40,000 soldiers between here and Niouland.
Aug. 10.—There was a terrific crash at the door. Four German officers, who had come in a motor, pointed their revolvers and asked for wine. They looked as if they had been drinking. We had a fearful fright after dinner. An officer, followed by a soldier, came to ask us where the curé was, and threatened to shoot us because we could not tell him. Miss MacMahon had to lead him to the rector's house, with a revolver pointed at her back all the way. The houses on either side are burning. The nuns asked the German officers if they would spare the convent. They laughed and said they would make it a cemetery for their dead. They took away the wounded, and as soon as they had gone the nuns woke us up, and we started out, following all the back roads.
A postcard has been received from Miss Agnes Holliday, daughter of a Hammersmith builder, who is at a convent school near Liége, in which she states that on Tuesday night last "the convent was full of German soldiers, to whom we spoke. At Fouron they have had a terrible time."
War-Time Scenes in Rouen
[From The New York Times, Sept. 8, 1914.]
The following is a literal translation of a letter just received in New York by a French lady's maid from her sister at Rouen, and gives the point of view of the modest laboring classes in France: