The officers, in each case, were plainly worried: the editors were intensely interested.
They were depressing trips through miles and miles of devastated villages and small cities.

From two to three days each were spent in front-line posts on the Amiens-Bethune, Albert-Peronne, Bapaume-Soissons, St.Mihiel, and back of the Argonne sectors.

Often, the party was the first civilian group to enter a town evacuated only a week before, and all the horrible evidence of bloody warfare was fresh and plain.

Bodies of German soldiers lay in the trenches where they had fallen; wired bombs were on every hand, so that no object could be touched that lay on the battle-fields; the streets of some of the towns were still mined, so that no automobiles could enter; the towns were deserted, the streets desolate.

It was an appalling panorama of the most frightful results of war.
The picturesqueness and romance of the war of picture books were missing.