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120 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
I showed my pass to the sentry at the gate. The galleries
are also guarded by sentries. The guard has settled down in
a casemate in the counterscarp. Large placards still remained
posted on the walls here and there, such as : Armée de Terre
et Armée de Mer. Or again under two crossed tricolors :
Ordre de Mobilisation Generate, with all particulars, and finally
a notice that Sunday, the 2nd August, 1914, was the first
day of mobilisation. It is really horrible to read this order,
which was destined to cause rivers of France’s noblest blood
to flow, to ruin all her northern provinces, and reduce the
little town inside the fortifications to a mass of wreckage.
From the gates the main street runs through the town of
Longwy. In the part we first come to, a number of French
workmen are busy emptying the powder out of French hand
grenades to render them harmless. No earthquake could
have destroyed this street throughout its length more com-
pletely than the shells have done. There is not a single house
left standing. When the attacking artillery began to bombard
Longwy, the inhabitants were ordered to leave the place,
and most of them went away. Some, however, preferred to
remain, and of them some sixty were buried under the ruins,
among them several women. I stopped at the church and
walked in. The scene there is one of indescribable devastation.
The arches over the aisles had fallen in completely, and else-
where the shells had made tremendous gaps, the hail of
splinters having struck the pillars and cut great scars into
them. The force of the explosions had broken practically
all the stained-glass windows. All that remained here and
there was the lead setting. The pulpit, from which the truths
of Christianity had so often been expounded, had curiously
enough been spared, and had the priest stood there and read
the Mass during the bombardment—as did the Greek patriarch
when the Turks stormed into the Hagia Sofia—not a hair of
his head would have been touched, and a miracle would
doubtless have been proclaimed. The sanctity of the altar,
however, had not been proof against the shells, for the floor
of the choir was strewn with fragments and debris, covered
in turn with a thick layer of limestone dust. The centre
aisle was impassable, for the organ with its flattened pipes
and the galleries with their benches and rails had been shot
down and formed an incredible confusion of debris and rubbish.
Heaps of plaster and fragments of ornaments, prie-dieux and
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