How good to remember, as one writes, all that has happened
since I was in Senlis!--and the increased distance that now divides the
German hosts from the great prize on which they had set their hearts.
How fiercely they had set their hearts on it, the old Cure of Senlis,
who is the chief depository of the story of the town, was to make us
feel anew.
One enters Senlis from Paris by the main street, the Rue de la
Republique, which the Germans deliberately and ruthlessly burnt on
September 2nd and 3rd, 1914. We moved slowly along it through the
blackened ruins of houses large and small, systematically fired by the
German _petroleurs_, in revenge for a supposed attack by civilians upon
the entering German troops. _Les civils ont tire_--it is the universal
excuse for these deeds of wanton barbarism, and for the hideous
cruelties to men, women, and children that have attended them--beginning
with that incident which first revealed to a startled world the true
character of the men directing the German Army--the burning and sack of
Louvain.
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