But the sight
gave me the same kind of icy shock I had when I first saw the moon's
ravaged face through a huge telescope. _You_ took me, Padre, so you'll
remember.
If you came to Jussy, and didn't know about the war, you'd think you had
stumbled into hell--or else that you were having a nightmare and
couldn't wake up. I shall never forget a brobdingnagian boiler as big as
a battle tank, that had reared itself on its hind-legs to peer through a
_cheval de frise_ of writhing girders--tortured girders like a vast
wilderness of immense thorn bushes in a hopeless tangle, or a pit of
bloodstained snakes. The walls of the _usine_ have simply melted, and
it's hard to realize that it as a building, put up by human hands for
human uses, ever existed. There is a new Jussy, though, created since
the German retreat; and seeing it, you couldn't _help_ knowing that
there was a war! The whole landscape is full of cannon, big and little
and middle-sized. Queer mushroom buildings have sprung up, for officers'
and soldiers' barracks and canteens. Narrow plank walks built high above
mud-level--"duck boards," I think they're called--lead to the corrugated
iron, tin, and wooden huts. There are aerodromes and aerodromes like a
vast circus encampment, where there are not cannon; and the greenish
canvas roofs give the only bit of colour, as far as the eye can
see--unless one counts the soldiers' uniforms. All the rest is gray as
the desert before a dust-storm.
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