Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/106

82 He took me to a flowering tree not far away and pointed out a polished round hole in the trunk.

That," he said, was made by a shell nearly spent. It struck its nose in and exploded its entire charge backwards. It killed two lieutenants who were standing in consultation just where you are.

Here are their graves, at your feet."

The inhabitants will relate a thousand such intimate details of the battle of the Marne. They understand it in no other language. It is, in fact, impossible for the layman to gaze across the field, sewn with tricolours, and interpret the miracle in any broader terms. But of the most intimate and desirable detail of all there was no one who could speak surely. I looked at a quiet and picturesque farm where Von Kluck had had his headquarters. I wondered what dramatic event had happened there, perhaps during the course of a moment or two, that had urged him to give the command to swing in across Paris. Had he run ahead of his supplies? Had an order been misinterpreted? Was a fit of petulance responsible? Had he lunched too well? There the German structure of forty years' growth had tumbled, and no one could tell what had happened at the pretty farm during that decisive moment. The closeness of