" Then they will
stand under the celebrated old tree in the courtyard, unhurt by the
explosion, and take photographs of the chateau the Germans have
unwittingly made more beautiful than before.
"_Mon mieux_" was the motto St. Pol carved over the gateway; "Our worst"
is the taunt the Germans have flung. But the combination of that best
and worst is glorious to the eye.
From Ham we spun on to Jussy, along the new white road which is so
amazing when one thinks that every yard of it had to be created out of
chaos a few months ago. (They say that some sort of surface was given
for the army to pass over in three days' work!) At Jussy we came close
to the _real_ front--closer than we've been yet, except when we went to
the American trenches. The first line was only three miles away, and the
place is under bombardment, but this was what our guide called a "quiet
day," so there was only an occasional mumble and boom. The town was
destroyed, wiped almost out of existence, save for heaps of rubble which
might have been houses or hills. But there were things to be seen which
would have made Jussy worth a long journey. It had been a prosperous
place, with one of the biggest sugar refineries in France, and the
wrecked _usine_ was as terrible and thrilling as the moon seen through
the biggest telescope in the world.
Not that it looked like the moon. It looked more like a futurist sketch,
in red and brown, of the heart of a cyclone; or of the inside of a
submarine that has rammed a skeleton ship on the stocks.
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