Nothing had been too small or insignificant to escape the plunderers. In these heaps, children's toys lay side by side with old machine guns and rifles, machinery with kitchen utensils, the iron heads of tools with old shell cases salved from former battlefields; the whole mixed up in inextricable tangle with copper and galvanized iron wire from the old French telegraph routes and fences. Never before, since civilization became more than a name, can a captured country have been robbed so systematically and so thoroughly by a ruthless conqueror.
The enemy's comparatively unmolested retreat was secured principally by the efficient manner in which his Engineers had performed their task of demolition. As he retired, he blew up both the roads and railways behind him, and our advancing transport was again and again held up by yawning craters across their path. In the open country around Fresnoy and Bohain, the consequent delay was not, however, as serious as he must have anticipated. Dry-weather tracks existed nearly everywhere, and even these could be ignored by horsed transport on fine days when the surface of the ground was fairly hard. From time to time, therefore, our troops could press forward close on his heels, sure of the necessary supplies of rations and ammunition, while on occasion he was hustled very unpleasantly indeed. The rapid advance of a modern army, however, is not possible without the aid of railways, or at least of mechanical transport, and the system of delay-action mines used by the Germans was well calculated to hold up our progress. At every cross-roads mines had been buried—some of them timed to explode a few hours after the enemy had left, others a few days, some even after a delay of several weeks.
No rule of modern war is more true than that which
