Some of them were most intelligent-looking and had the manner and clothes of the rich.

There was one family of five that on four different occasions on our way to and from Paris we saw seated on the ground at a place certainly five miles away from any spot where a shell had fallen.

They were all in deep mourning, but as they sat in the hay-field around a wicker tea basket and wrapped in steamer-rugs they were comic.

Their lives were no more valuable than those of thousands of their fellow townsfolk who in Rheims were carrying on the daily routine.

These kept the shops open or in the streets were assisting the Red Cross.
One elderly gentleman told me how he had been seized by the Germans as a hostage and threatened with death by hanging.