NOW IT CAN BE TOLD

by Philip Gibbs

CONTENTS

 PREFACE

 Part One OBSERVERS AND COMMANDERS

 Part Two THE SCHOOL OF COURAGE

 Part Three THE NATURE OF A BATTLE

 Part Four A WINTER OF DISCONTENT

 Part Five THE HEART OF A CITY

 Part Six PSYCHOLOGY ON THE SOMME

 Part Seven THE FIELDS OF ARMAGEDDON

 Part Eight FOR WHAT MEN DIED

PREFACE

In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, Ibelieve, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial ofmen's courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happenagain--surely--if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of thehearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only asit appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers onall the fronts where conditions were the same. 

What I have written here does not cancel, nor alter, nor deny anythingin my daily narratives of events on the western front as they are nowpublished in book form. They stand, I may claim sincerely and humbly, as a truthful, accurate, and tragic record of the battles in France andBelgium during the years of war, broadly pictured out as far as I couldsee and know. My duty, then, was that of a chronicler, not arguing whythings should have happened so nor giving reasons why they should nothappen so, but describing faithfully many of the things I saw, andnarrating the facts as I found them, as far as the censorship wouldallow. After early, hostile days it allowed nearly all but criticism, protest, and of the figures of loss. 

The purpose of this book is to get deeper into the truth of this war andof all war--not by a more detailed narrative of events, but rather asthe truth was revealed to the minds of men, in many aspects, outof their experience; and by a plain statement of realities, howeverpainful, to add something to the world's knowledge out of which men ofgood-will may try to shape some new system of relationship between onepeople and another, some new code of international morality, preventingor at least postponing another massacre of youth like that five years'sacrifice of boys of which I was a witness. 

PART ONE. OBSERVERS AND COMMANDERS

I

When Germany threw down her challenge to Russia and France, and Englandknew that her Imperial power would be one of the prizes of Germanvictory (the common people did not think this, at first, but saw onlythe outrage to Belgium, a brutal attack on civilization, and a gloriousadventure), some newspaper correspondents were sent out from London toreport the proceedings, and I was one of them. 

We went in civilian clothes without military passports--the War Officewas not giving any--with bags of money which might be necessary for thehire of motor-cars, hotel life, and the bribery of doorkeepers in theantechambers of war, as some of us had gone to the Balkan War, andothers. The Old Guard of war correspondents besieged the War Officefor official recognition and were insulted day after day by juniorstaff-officers who knew that "K" hated these men and thought the pressought to be throttled in time of war; or they were beguiled into falsehopes by officials who hoped to go in charge of them and were told tobuy horses and sleeping-bags and be ready to start at a moment's noticefor the front. 

The moment's notice was postponed for months. .. . 

The younger ones did not wait for it. They took their chance of "seeingsomething, " without authority, and made wild, desperate efforts to breakthrough the barrier that had been put up against them by French andBritish staffs in the zone of war. Many of them were arrested, putinto prison, let out, caught again in forbidden places, rearrested, andexpelled from France. That was after fantastic adventures in which theysaw what war meant in civilized countries where vast populations weremade fugitives of fear, where millions of women and children and oldpeople became wanderers along the roads in a tide of human misery, withthe red flame of war behind them and following them, and where the firstbattalions of youth, so gay in their approach to war, so confident ofvictory, so careless of the dangers (which they did not know), came backmaimed and mangled and blinded and wrecked, in the backwash of retreat, which presently became a spate through Belgium and the north of France, swamping over many cities and thousands of villages and many fields. Those young writing-men who had set out in a spirit of adventure wentback to Fleet Street with a queer look in their eyes, unable to writethe things they had seen, unable to tell them to people who had not seenand could not understand. Because there was no code of words which wouldconvey the picture of that wild agony of peoples, that smashing of allcivilized laws, to men and women who still thought of war in terms ofheroic pageantry. 

"Had a good time?" asked a colleague along the corridor, hardly waitingfor an answer. 

"A good time!". .. God!. .. Did people think it was amusing to be anonlooker of world-tragedy?. .. One of them remembered a lady of Francewith a small boy who had fled from Charleville, which was in flames andsmoke. She was weak with hunger, with dirty and bedraggled skirts on herflight, and she had heard that her husband was in the battle that wasnow being fought round their own town. She was brave--pointed out theline of the German advance on the map--and it was in a troop-traincrowded with French soldiers--and then burst into wild weeping, claspingthe hand of an English writing-man so that her nails dug into his flesh. I remember her still. 

"Courage, maman! Courage, p'tite maman!" said the boy of eight. 

Through Amiens at night had come a French army in retreat. There weredead and wounded on their wagons. Cuirassiers stumbled as they led theirtired horses. Crowds of people with white faces, like ghosts in thedarkness, stared at their men retreating like this through their city, and knew that the enemy was close behind. 

"Nous sommes perdus!" whispered a woman, and gave a wailing cry. 

People were fighting their way into railway trucks at every station forhundreds of miles across northern France. Women were beseeching a placefor the sake of their babes. There was no food for them on journeys ofnineteen hours or more; they fainted with heat and hunger. An old womandied, and her corpse blocked up the lavatory. At night they slept on thepavements in cities invaded by fugitives. 

At Furnes in Belgium, and at Dunkirk on the coast of France, there werecolumns of ambulances bringing in an endless tide of wounded. They werelaid out stretcher by stretcher in station-yards, five hundred at atime. Some of their faces were masks of clotted blood. Some of theirbodies were horribly torn. They breathed with a hard snuffle. A foulsmell came from them. 

At Chartres they were swilling over the station hall with disinfectingfluid after getting through with one day's wounded. The French doctorin charge had received a telegram from the director of medical services:"Make ready for forty thousand wounded. " It was during the first battleof the Marne. 

"It is impossible!" said the French doctor. .. . 

Four hundred thousand people were in flight from Antwerp, into whichbig shells were falling, as English correspondents flattened themselvesagainst the walls and said, "God in heaven!" Two hundred andfifty thousand people coming across the Scheldt in rowing-boats, sailing-craft, rafts, invaded one village in Holland. They had nofood. Children were mad with fright. Young mothers had no milk in theirbreasts. It was cold at night and there were only a few canal-boats andfishermen's cottages, and in them were crowds of fugitives. The odorof human filth exuded from them, as I smell it now, and sicken inremembrance. .. . 

Then Dixmude was in flames, and Pervyse, and many other towns from theBelgian coast to Switzerland. In Dixmude young boys of France--fusiliersmarins--lay dead about the Grande Place. In the Town Hall, falling tobits under shell-fire, a colonel stood dazed and waiting for death amidthe dead bodies of his men--one so young, so handsome, lying there onhis back, with a waxen face, staring steadily at the sky through thebroken roof. .. . 

At Nieuport-les-Bains one dead soldier lay at the end of the esplanade, and a little group of living were huddled under the wall of a red-brickvilla, watching other villas falling like card houses in a town that hadbeen built for love and pretty women and the lucky people of the world. British monitors lying close into shore were answering the Germanbombardment, firing over Nieuport to the dunes by Ostend. From onemonitor came a group of figures with white masks of cotton-wool tippedwith wet blood. British seamen, and all blind, with the dead body of anofficer tied up in a sack. .. . 

"O Jesu!. .. O maman!. .. O ma pauvre p'tite femme!. .. O Jesu! O Jesu!"

From thousands of French soldiers lying wounded or parched in theburning sun before the battle of the Marne these cries went up to theblue sky of France in August of '14. They were the cries of youth'sagony in war. Afterward I went across the fields where they fought andsaw their bodies and their graves, and the proof of the victory thatsaved France and us. The German dead had been gathered into heaps likeautumn leaves. They were soaked in petrol and oily smoke was rising fromthem. .. . 

That was after the retreat from Mons, and the French retreat along alltheir line, and the thrust that drew very close to Paris, when I saw ourlittle Regular Army, the "Old Contemptibles, " on their way back, withthe German hordes following close. Sir John French had his headquartersfor the night in Creil. English, Irish, Scottish soldiers, stragglersfrom units still keeping some kind of order, were coming in, bronzed, dusty, parched with thirst, with light wounds tied round with rags, with blistered feet. French soldiers, bearded, dirty, thirsty as dogs, crowded the station platforms. They, too, had been retreating andretreating. A company of sappers had blown up forty bridges of France. Under a gas-lamp in a foul-smelling urinal I copied out the diary oftheir officer. Some spiritual faith upheld these men. "Wait, " they said. "In a few days we shall give them a hard knock. They will never getParis. Jamais de la vie!". .. 

In Beauvais there was hardly a living soul when three Englishcorrespondents went there, after escape from Amiens, now in Germanhands. A tall cuirassier stood by some bags of gunpowder, ready toblow up the bridge. The streets were strewn with barbed wire and brokenbottles. .. In Paris there was a great fear and solitude, except wheregrief-stricken crowds stormed the railway stations for escape and whereFrench and British soldiers--stragglers all--drank together, and sangabove their broken glasses, and cursed the war and the Germans. 

And down all the roads from the front, on every day in every monthof that first six months of war--as afterward--came back the tide ofwounded; wounded everywhere, maimed men at every junction; hospitalscrowded with blind and dying and moaning men. .. . 

"Had an interesting time?" asked a man I wanted to kill because of hissmug ignorance, his damnable indifference, his impregnable stupidityof cheerfulness in this world of agony. I had changed the clotheswhich were smeared with blood of French and Belgian soldiers whom I hadhelped, in a week of strange adventure, to carry to the surgeons. As anonlooker of war I hated the people who had not seen, because they couldnot understand. All these things I had seen in the first nine months Iput down in a book called The Soul of the War, so that some might know;but it was only a few who understood. .. . 

II

In 1915 the War Office at last moved in the matter of warcorrespondents. Lord Kitchener, prejudiced against them, was beingbroken down a little by the pressure of public opinion (mentioned fromtime to time by members of the government), which demanded more news oftheir men in the field than was given by bald communiqués fromGeneral Headquarters and by an "eye-witness" who, as one paper hadthe audacity to say, wrote nothing but "eye-wash. " Even the enormous, impregnable stupidity of our High Command on all matters of psychologywas penetrated by a vague notion that a few "writing fellows" might besent out with permission to follow the armies in the field, under thestrictest censorship, in order to silence the popular clamor for morenews. Dimly and nervously they apprehended that in order to stimulatethe recruiting of the New Army now being called to the colors by vulgarappeals to sentiment and passion, it might be well to "write up"the glorious side of war as it could be seen at the base and in theorganization of transport, without, of course, any allusion to dead ordying men, to the ghastly failures of distinguished generals, or to thefilth and horror of the battlefields. They could not understand, nor didthey ever understand (these soldiers of the old school) that a nationwhich was sending all its sons to the field of honor desired with a deepand poignant craving to know how those boys of theirs were living andhow they were dying, and what suffering was theirs, and what chancesthey had against their enemy, and how it was going with the war whichwas absorbing all the energy and wealth of the people at home. 

"Why don't they trust their leaders?" asked the army chiefs. "Why don'tthey leave it to us?"

"We do trust you--with some misgivings, " thought the people, "and we doleave it to you--though you seem to be making a mess of things--butwe want to know what we have a right to know, and that is the life andprogress of this war in which our men are engaged. We want to know moreabout their heroism, so that it shall be remembered by their people andknown by the world; about their agony, so that we may share it in ourhearts; and about the way of their death, so that our grief may besoftened by the thought of their courage. We will not stand for thisanonymous war; and you are wasting time by keeping it secret, becausethe imagination of those who have not joined cannot be fired by coldlines which say, 'There is nothing to report on the western front. '"

In March of 1915 I went out with the first body of accredited warcorrespondents, and we saw some of the bad places where our men livedand died, and the traffic to the lines, and the mechanism of war infixed positions as were then established after the battle of the Marneand the first battle of Ypres. Even then it was only an experimentalvisit. It was not until June of that year, after an adventure on theFrench front in the Champagne, that I received full credentials as a warcorrespondent with the British armies on the western front, and joinedfour other men who had been selected for this service, and began thatlong innings as an authorized onlooker of war which ended, after longand dreadful years, with the Army of Occupation beyond the Rhine. 

III

In the very early days we lived in a small old house, called by courtesya chateau, in the village of Tatinghem, near General Headquartersat St. -Omer. (Afterward we shifted our quarters from time to time, according to the drift of battle and our convenience. ) It was verypeaceful there amid fields of standing corn, where peasant women workedwhile their men were fighting, but in the motor-cars supplied us bythe army (with military drivers, all complete) it was a quick ride overCassel Hill to the edge of the Ypres salient and the farthest pointwhere any car could go without being seen by a watchful enemy and blownto bits at a signal to the guns. Then we walked, up sinister roads, oralong communication trenches, to the fire-step in the front line, orinto places like "Plug Street" wood and Kemmel village, and the ruinsof Vermelles, and the lines by Neuve Chapelle--the training-schools ofBritish armies--where always birds of death were on the wing, screamingwith high and rising notes before coming to earth with the cough thatkilled. .. After hours in those hiding-places where boys of the New Armywere learning the lessons of war in dugouts and ditches under the rangeof German guns, back again to the little white chateau at Tatinghem, with a sweet scent of flowers from the fields, and nightingales singingin the woods and a bell tinkling for Benediction in the old church towerbeyond our gate. 

"To-morrow, " said the colonel--our first chief--before driving in fora late visit to G. H. Q. , "we will go to Armentieres and see how the'Kitchener' boys are shaping in the line up there. It ought to beinteresting. "

The colonel was profoundly interested in the technic of war, in itsorganization of supplies and transport, and methods of command. He wasa Regular of the Indian Army, a soldier by blood and caste and training, and the noblest type of the old school of Imperial officer, withobedience to command as a religious instinct; of stainless honor, Ithink, in small things as well as great, with a deep love of England, and a belief and pride in her Imperial destiny to govern many peoplesfor their own good, and with the narrowness of such belief. Hisimagination was limited to the boundaries of his professional interests, though now and then his humanity made him realize in a perplexed waygreater issues at stake in this war than the challenge to BritishEmpiry. 

One day, when we were walking through the desolation of a battlefield, with the smell of human corruption about us, and men crouched in chalkyditches below their breastworks of sand-bags, he turned to a colleagueof mine and said in a startled way:

"This must never happen again! Never!"

It will never happen again for him, as for many others. He was too tallfor the trenches, and one day a German sniper saw the red glint of hishat-band--he was on the staff of the 11th Corps--and thought, "a gaybird"! So he fell; and in our mess, when the news came, we were sad athis going, and one of our orderlies, who had been his body-servant, weptas he waited on us. 

Late at night the colonel--that first chief of ours--used to come homefrom G. H. Q. , as all men called General Headquarters with a sense ofmystery, power, and inexplicable industry accomplishing--what?--in thoseinitials. He came back with a cheery shout of, "Fine weather to-morrow!"or, "A starry night and all's well!" looking fine and soldierly as theglare of his headlights shone on his tall figure with red tabs and acolored armlet. But that cheeriness covered secret worries. Night afternight, in those early weeks of our service, he sat in his little office, talking earnestly with the press officers--our censors. They seemedto be arguing, debating, protesting, about secret influences andhostilities surrounding us and them. I could only guess what it was allabout. It all seemed to make no difference to me when I sat down beforepieces of blank paper to get down some kind of picture, some kindof impression, of a long day in place where I had been scared awhilebecause death was on the prowl in a noisy way and I had seen it pounceon human bodies. I knew that tomorrow I was going to another littlepeep-show of war, where I should hear the same noises. That talkdownstairs, that worry about some mystery at G. H. Q. Would make nodifference to the life or death of men, nor get rid of that coldnesswhich came to me when men were being killed nearby. Why all thatargument?

It seemed that G. H. Q. --mysterious people in a mysterious place--weredrawing up rules for war correspondence and censorship; altering rulesmade the day before, formulating new rules for to-morrow, establishingprecedents, writing minutes, initialing reports with, "Passed to you, "or, "I agree, " written on the margin. The censors who lived with us andtraveled with us and were our friends, and read what we wrote before theink was dry, had to examine our screeds with microscopic eyes and withinfinite remembrance of the thousand and one rules. Was it safe tomention the weather? Would that give any information to the enemy?Was it permissible to describe the smell of chloride-of-lime in thetrenches, or would that discourage recruiting? That description ofthe traffic on the roads of war, with transport wagons, gun-limbers, lorries, mules--how did that conflict with Rule No. 17a (or whatever itwas) prohibiting all mention of movements of troops?

One of the censors working late at night, with lines of worry on hisforehead and little puckers about his eyes, turned to me with a queerlaugh, one night in the early days. He was an Indian Civil Servant, andtherefore, by every rule, a gentleman and a charming fellow. 

"You don't know what I am risking in passing your despatch! It's toogood to spoil, but G. H. Q. Will probably find that it conveys accurateinformation to the enemy about the offensive in 1925. I shall get thesack--and oh, the difference to me!"

It appeared that G. H. Q. Was nervous of us. They suggested that ourprivate letters should be tested for writing in invisible ink betweenthe lines. They were afraid that, either deliberately for somejournalistic advantage, or in sheer ignorance as "outsiders, " we mighthand information to the enemy about important secrets. Belonging tothe old caste of army mind, they believed that war was the specialprerogative of professional soldiers, of which politicians and peopleshould have no knowledge. Therefore as civilians in khaki we were hardlybetter than spies. 

The Indian Civil Servant went for a stroll with me in the moonlight, after a day up the line, where young men were living and dying in dirtyditches. I could see that he was worried, even angry. 

"Those people!" he said. 

"What people?"

"G. H. Q. "

"Oh, Lord!" I groaned. "Again?" and looked across the fields of cornto the dark outline of a convent on the hill where young officers werelearning the gentle art of killing by machine-guns before their turncame to be killed or crippled. I thought of a dead boy I had seen thatday--or yesterday was it?--kneeling on the fire-step of a trench, withhis forehead against the parapet as though in prayer. .. How sweet wasthe scent of the clover to-night! And how that star twinkled above thelow flashes of gun-fire away there in the salient. 

"They want us to waste your time, " said the officer. "Those were thevery words used by the Chief of Intelligence--in writing which I havekept. 'Waste their time!'. .. I'll be damned if I consider my work is towaste the time of war correspondents. Don't those good fools see thatthis is not a professional adventure, like their other little wars; thatthe whole nation is in it, and that the nation demands to know what itsmen are doing? They have a right to know. "

IV

Just at first--though not for long--there was a touch of hostilityagainst us among divisional and brigade staffs, of the Regulars, butnot of the New Army. They, too, suspected our motive in going to theirquarters, wondered why we should come "spying around, " trying to "seethings. " I was faintly conscious of this one day in those very earlytimes, when with the officer who had been a ruler in India I went to abrigade headquarters of the 1st Division near Vermelles. It was not easynor pleasant to get there, though it was a summer day with fleecy cloudsin a blue sky. There was a long straight road leading to the village ofVermelles, with a crisscross of communication trenches on one side, and, on the other, fields where corn and grass grew rankly in abandonedfields. Some lean sheep were browsing there as though this were Arcadyin days of peace. It was not. The red ruins of Vermelles, a mile orso away, were sharply defined, as through stereoscopic lenses, in thequiver of sunlight, and had the sinister look of a death-haunted place. It was where the French had fought their way through gardens, walls, and houses in murderous battle, before leaving it for British troops tohold. Across it now came the whine of shells, and I saw that shrapnelbullets were kicking up the dust of a thousand yards down the straightroad, following a small body of brown men whose tramp of feet raisedanother cloud of dust, like smoke. They were the only representatives ofhuman life--besides ourselves--in this loneliness, though many men musthave been in hiding somewhere. Then heavy "crumps" burst in the fieldswhere the sheep were browsing, across the way we had to go to thebrigade headquarters. 

"How about it?" asked the captain with me. "I don't like crossing thatfield, in spite of the buttercups and daisies and the little friskylambs. "

"I hate the idea of it, " I said. 

Then we looked down the road at the little body of brown men. They werenearer now, and I could see the face of the officer leading them--a boysubaltern, rather pale though the sun was hot. He halted and saluted mycompanion. 

"The enemy seems to have sighted our dust, sir. His shrapnel isfollowing up pretty closely. Would you advise me to put my men undercover, or carry on?"

The captain hesitated. This was rather outside his sphere of influence. But the boyishness of the other officer asked for help. 

"My advice is to put your men into that ditch and keep them there untilthe strafe is over. " Some shrapnel bullets whipped the sun-baked road ashe spoke. 

"Very good, sir. "

The men sat in the ditch, with their packs against the bank, and wipedthe sweat off their faces. They looked tired and dispirited, but notalarmed. 

In the fields behind them--our way--the 4. 2's (four--point-twos) werebusy plugging holes in the grass and flowers, rather deep holes, fromwhich white smoke-clouds rose after explosive noises. 

"With a little careful strategy we might get through, " said the captain. "There's a general waiting for us, and I have noticed that generals areimpatient fellows. Let's try our luck. "

We walked across the wild flowers, past the sheep, who only raised theirheads in meek surprise when shells came with a shrill, intensifyingsnarl and burrowed up the earth about them. I noticed how loudly andsweetly the larks were singing up in the blue. Several horses lay dead, newly killed, with blood oozing about them, and their entrails smoking. We made a half-loop around them and then struck straight for the chateauwhich was the brigade headquarters. Neither of us spoke now. We werethoughtful, calculating the chance of getting to that red-brick housebetween the shells. It was just dependent on the coincidence of time andplace. 

Three men jumped up from a ditch below a brown wall round the chateaugarden and ran hard for the gateway. A shell had pitched quite closeto them. One man laughed as though at a grotesque joke, and fell as hereached the courtyard. Smoke was rising from the outhouses, and therewas a clatter of tiles and timbers, after an explosive crash. 

"It rather looks, " said my companion, "as though the Germans knew thereis a party on in that charming house. "

It was as good to go on as to go back, and it was never good to go backbefore reaching one's objective. That was bad for the discipline of thecourage that is just beyond fear. 

Two gunners were killed in the back yard of the chateau, and as we wentin through the gateway a sergeant made a quick jump for a barn as ashell burst somewhere close. As visitors we hesitated between two waysinto the chateau, and chose the easier; and it was then that I becamedimly aware of hostility against me on the part of a number of officersin the front hall. The brigade staff was there, grouped under thebanisters. I wondered why, and guessed (rightly, as I found) that thecenter of the house might have a better chance of escape than therooms on either side, in case of direct hits from those things fallingoutside. 

It was the brigade major who asked our business. He was a tall, handsomeyoung man of something over thirty, with the arrogance of a ChristChurch blood. 

"Oh, he has come out to see something in Vermelles? A pleasant place forsightseeing! Meanwhile the Hun is ranging on this house, so he may seemore than he wants. "

He turned on his heel and rejoined his group. They all stared in mydirection as though at a curious animal. A very young gentleman--thegeneral's A. D. C. --made a funny remark at my expense and the otherslaughed. Then they ignored me, and I was glad, and made a little studyin the psychology of men awaiting a close call of death. I was perfectlyconscious myself that in a moment or two some of us, perhaps all of us, might be in a pulp of mangled flesh beneath the ruins of a red-brickvilla--the shells were crashing among the outhouses and in thecourtyard, and the enemy was making good shooting--and the idea did notplease me at all. At the back of my brain was Fear, and there was acold sweat in the palms of my hands; but I was master of myself, andI remember having a sense of satisfaction because I had answered thebrigade major in a level voice, with a touch of his own arrogance. I sawthat these officers were afraid; that they, too, had Fear at the back ofthe brain, and that their conversation and laughter were the camouflageof the soul. The face of the young A. D. C. Was flushed and he laughedtoo much at his own jokes, and his laughter was just a tone too shrill. An officer came into the hall, carrying two Mills bombs--new toys inthose days--and the others fell back from him, and one said:

"For Christ's sake don't bring them here--in the middle of abombardment!"

"Where's the general?" asked the newcomer. 

"Down in the cellar with the other brigadier. They don't ask us down totea, I notice. "

Those last words caused all the officers to laugh--almost excessively. But their laughter ended sharply, and they listened intently as therewas a heavy crash outside. 

Another officer came up the steps and made a rapid entry into the hall. 

"I understand there is to be a conference of battalion commanders, "he said, with a queer catch in his breath. "In view ofthis--er--bombardment, I had better come in later, perhaps?"

"You had better wait, " said the brigade major, rather grimly. 

"Oh, certainly. "

A sergeant-major was pacing up and down the passage by the back door. He was calm and stolid. I liked the look of him and found somethingcomforting in his presence, so that I went to have a few words with him. 

"How long is this likely to last, Sergeant-major"

"There's no saying, sir. They may be searching for the chateau to passthe time, so to speak, or they may go on till they get it. I'm sorrythey caught those gunners. Nice lads, both of them. "

He did not seem to be worrying about his own chance. 

Then suddenly there was silence. The German guns had switched off. Iheard the larks singing through the open doorway, and all the littlesounds of a summer day. The group of officers in the hall startedchatting more quietly. There was no more need of finding jokes andlaughter. They had been reprieved, and could be serious. 

"We'd better get forward to Vermelles, " said my companion. 

As we walked away from the chateau, the brigade major passed us on hishorse. He leaned over his saddle toward me and said, "Good day to you, and I hope you'll like Vermelles. "

The words were civil, but there was an underlying meaning in them. 

"I hope to do so, sir. "

We walked down the long straight road toward the ruins of Vermelles witha young soldier-guide who on the outskirts of the village remarked in acasual way:

"No one is allowed along this road in daylight, as a rule. It's underhobservation of the henemy. "

"Then why the devil did you come this way?" asked my companion. 

"I thought you might prefer the short cut, sir. "

We explored the ruins of Vermelles, where many young Frenchmen hadfallen in fighting through the walls and gardens. One could see thetrack of their strife, in trampled bushes and broken walls. Bits ofred rag--the red pantaloons of the first French soldiers--were stillfastened to brambles and barbed wire. Broken rifles, cartouches, water-bottles, torn letters, twisted bayonets, and German stick-bombslittered the ditches which had been dug as trenches across streets ofburned-out houses. 

V

A young gunner officer whom we met was very civil, and stopped in frontof the chateau of Vermelles, a big red villa with the outer walls stillstanding, and told us the story of its capture. 

"It was a wild scrap. I was told all about it by a French sergeant whowas in it. They were under the cover of that wall over there, about ahundred yards away, and fixing up a charge of high explosives to knocka breach in the wall. The chateau was a machine-gun fortress, withthe Germans on the top floor, the ground floor, and in the basement, protected by sand-bags, through which they fired. A German officer madea bad mistake. He opened the front door and came out with some of hismachine-gunners from the ground floor to hold a trench across the squarein front of the house. Instantly a French lieutenant called to his men. They climbed over the wall and made a dash for the chateau, bayonetingthe Germans who tried to stop them. Then they swarmed into thechateau--a platoon of them with the lieutenant. They were in thedrawing-room, quite an elegant place, you know, with the usual giltfurniture and long mirrors. In one corner was a pedestal, with a statueof Venus standing on it. Rather charming, I expect. A few Germans werekilled in the room, easily. But upstairs there was a mob who fireddown through the ceiling when they found what had happened. The Frenchsoldiers prodded the ceiling with their bayonets, and all the plasterbroke, falling on them. A German, fat and heavy, fell half-way throughthe rafters, and a bayonet was poked into him as he stuck there. Thewhole ceiling gave way, and the Germans upstairs came downstairs, in aheap. They fought like wolves--wild beasts--with fear and rage. Frenchand Germans clawed at one another's throats, grabbed hold of noses, rolled over each other. The French sergeant told me he had his teethinto a German's neck. The man was all over him, pinning his arms, tryingto choke him. It was the French lieutenant who did most damage. He firedhis last shot and smashed a German's face with his empty revolver. Thenhe caught hold of the marble Venus by the legs and swung it above hishead, in the old Berserker style, and laid out Germans like ninepins. .. The fellows in the basement surrendered. "

VI

The chateau of Vermelles, where that had happened, was an empty ruin, and there was no sign of the gilt furniture, or the long mirrors, or themarble Venus when I looked through the charred window-frames upon pilesof bricks and timber churned up by shell-fire. The gunner officer tookus to the cemetery, to meet some friends of his who had their batterynearby. We stumbled over broken walls and pushed through undergrowthto get to the graveyard, where some broken crosses and wire frameswith immortelles remained as relics of that garden where the people ofVermelles had laid their dead to rest. New dead had followed old dead. I stumbled over something soft, like a ball of clay, and saw that it wasthe head of a faceless man, in a battered kepi. From a ditch close bycame a sickly stench of half-buried flesh. 

"The whole place is a pest-house, " said the gunner. 

Another voice spoke from some hiding-place. 

"Salvo!"

The earth shook and there was a flash of red flame, and a shock of noisewhich hurt one's ear-drums. 

"That's my battery, " said the gunner officer. "It's the very devil whenone doesn't expect it. "

I was introduced to the gentleman who had said "Salvo!" He was thegunner-major, and a charming fellow, recently from civil life. All thebattery was made up of New Army men learning their job, and learning itvery well, I should say. There was no arrogance about them. 

"It's sporting of you to come along to a spot like this, " said one ofthem. "I wouldn't unless I had to. Of course you'll take tea in ourmess?"

I was glad to take tea--in a little house at the end of the ruinedhigh-street of Vermelles which had by some miracle escaped destruction, though a shell had pierced through the brick wall of the parlor and hadfailed to burst. It was there still, firmly wedged, like a huge nail. The tea was good, in tin mugs. Better still was the company of thegunner officers. They told me how often they were "scared stiff. " Theyhad been very frightened an hour before I came, when the German gunnershad ranged up and down the street, smashing up ruined houses intogreater ruin. 

"They're so methodical!" said one of the officers. 

"Wonderful shooting!" said another. 

"I will say they're topping gunners, " said the major. "But we'relearning; my men are very keen. Put in a good word for the newartillery. It would buck them up no end. "

We went back before sunset, down the long straight road, and past thechateau which we had visited in the afternoon. It looked very peacefulthere among the trees. 

It is curious that I remember the details of that day so vividly, as though they happened yesterday. On hundreds of other days I hadadventures like that, which I remember more dimly. 

"That brigade major was a trifle haughty, don't you think?" said mycompanion. "And the others didn't seem very friendly. Not like thosegunner boys. "

"We called at an awkward time. They were rather fussed. "

"One expects good manners. Especially from Regulars who pride themselveson being different in that way from the New Army. "

"It's the difference between the professional and the amateur soldier. The Regular crowd think the war belongs to them. .. But I liked theirpluck. They're arrogant to Death himself when he comes knocking at thedoor. "

VII

It was not long before we broke down the prejudice against us amongthe fighting units. The new armies were our friends from the first, andliked us to visit them in their trenches and their dugouts, theircamps and their billets. Every young officer was keen to show us hisparticular "peep-show" or to tell us his latest "stunt. " We made manyfriends among them, and it was our grief that as the war went on so manyof them disappeared from their battalions, and old faces were replacedby new faces, and those again by others when they had become familiar. Again and again, after battle, twenty-two officers in a battalion messwere reduced to two or three, and the gaps were filled up from thereserve depots. I was afraid to ask, "Where is So-and-so?" because Iknew that the best answer would be, "A Blighty wound, " and the worst wasmore likely. 

It was the duration of all the drama of death that seared one's soul asan onlooker; the frightful sum of sacrifice that we were recording dayby day. There were times when it became intolerable and agonizing, andwhen I at least desired peace-at-almost-any-price, peace by negotiation, by compromise, that the river of blood might cease to flow. The menlooked so splendid as they marched up to the lines, singing, whistling, with an easy swing. They looked so different when thousands came downagain, to field dressing-stations--the walking wounded and the stretchercases, the blind and the gassed--as we saw them on the mornings ofbattle, month after month, year after year. 

Our work as chroniclers of their acts was not altogether "soft, " thoughwe did not go "over the top" or live in the dirty ditches with them. Wehad to travel prodigiously to cover the ground between one division andanother along a hundred miles of front, with long walks often at thejourney's end and a wet way back. Sometimes we were soaked to the skinon the journey home. Often we were so cold and numbed in those long wilddrives up desolate roads that our limbs lost consciousness and the windcut into us like knives. We were working against time, always againsttime, and another tire-burst would mean that no despatch could bewritten of a great battle on the British front, or only a short recordwritten in the wildest haste when there was so much to tell, so muchto describe, such unforgetable pictures in one's brain of another day'simpressions in the fields and on the roads. 

There were five English correspondents and, two years later, twoAmericans. On mornings of big battle we divided up the line of front anddrew lots for the particular section which each man would cover. Thenbefore the dawn, or in the murk of winter mornings, or the first glimmerof a summer day, our cars would pull out and we would go off separatelyto the part of the line allotted to us by the number drawn, to see thepreliminary bombardment, to walk over newly captured ground, to get intothe backwash of prisoners and walking wounded, amid batteries firinga new barrage, guns moving forward on days of good advance, artillerytransport bringing up new stores of ammunition, troops in supportmarching to repel a counter-attack or follow through the new objectives, ambulances threading their way back through the traffic, with loadsof prostrate men, mules, gunhorses, lorries churning up the mud inFlanders. 

So we gained a personal view of all this activity of strife, and frommany men in its whirlpool details of their own adventure and ofgeneral progress or disaster on one sector of the battle-front. Then indivisional headquarters we saw the reports of the battle as they came inby telephone, or aircraft, or pigeon-post, from half-hour to half-hour, or ten minutes by ten minutes. Three divisions widely separated providedall the work one war correspondent could do on one day of action, andlater news on a broader scale, could be obtained from corps headquartersfarther back. Tired, hungry, nerve-racked, splashed to the eyes in mud, or covered in a mask of dust, we started for the journey back to our ownquarters, which we shifted from time to time in order to get as near aswe could to the latest battle-front without getting beyond reach of thetelegraph instruments--by relays of despatch-riders--at "Signals, " G. H. Q. , which remained immovably fixed in the rear. 

There was a rendezvous in one of our rooms, and each man outlined thehistorical narrative of the day upon the front he had covered, reservingfor himself his own adventures, impressions, and emotions. 

Time slipped away, and time was short, while the despatch-riderswaited for our unwritten despatches, and censors who had been ourfellow-travelers washed themselves cleaner and kept an eye on the clock. 

Time was short while the world waited for our tales of tragedy orvictory. .. And tempers were frayed, and nerves on edge, among fivemen who hated one another, sometimes, with a murderous hatred (though, otherwise, good comrades) and desired one another's death by slowtorture or poison-gas when they fumbled over notes, written in a joltingcar, or on a battlefield walk, and went into past history in orderto explain present happenings, or became tangled in the numbers ofbattalions and divisions. 

Percival Phillips turned pink-and-white under the hideous strain ofnervous control, with an hour and a half for two columns in The MorningPost. A little pulse throbbed in his forehead. His lips were tightlypressed. His oaths and his anguish were in his soul, but unuttered. Beach Thomas, the most amiable of men, the Peter Pan who went abird-nesting on battlefields, a lover of beauty and games and old poemsand Greek and Latin tags, and all joy in life--what had he to do withwar?--looked bored with an infinite boredom, irritable with a scornfulimpatience of unnecessary detail, gazed through his gold-rimmedspectacles with an air of extreme detachment (when Percy Robinsonrebuilt the map with dabs and dashes on a blank sheet of paper), andsaid, "I've got more than I can write, and The Daily Mail goes early topress. "

"Thanks very much. .. It's very kind of you. "

We gathered up our note-books and were punctiliously polite. (Afterwardwe were the best of friends. ) Thomas was first out of the room, withshort, quick little steps in spite of his long legs. His door banged. Phillips was first at his typewriter, working it like a machine-gun, inshort, furious spasms of word-fire. I sat down to my typewriter--anew instrument of torture to me--and coaxed its evil genius withconciliatory prayers. 

"For dear God's sake, " I said, "don't go twisting that blasted ribbon ofyours to-day. I must write this despatch, and I've just an hour when Iwant five. "

Sometimes that Corona was a mechanism of singular sweetness, and Iblessed it with a benediction. But often there was a devil in it whichmocked at me. After the first sentence or two it twisted the ribbon; atthe end of twenty sentences the ribbon was like an angry snake, writhingand coiling hideously. 

I shouted for Mackenzie, the American, a master of these things. 

He came in and saw my blanched face, my sweat of anguish, my crise denerfs. I could see by his eyes that he understood my stress and had pityon me. 

"That's all right, " he said. "A little patience--"

By a touch or two he exorcised the devil, laughed, and said: "Go easy. You've just about reached breaking--point. "

I wrote, as we all wrote, fast and furiously, to get down something ofenormous history, word-pictures of things seen, heroic anecdotes, theunderlying meaning of this new slaughter. There was never time to thinkout a sentence or a phrase, to touch up a clumsy paragraph, to go backon a false start, to annihilate a vulgar adjective, to put a touchof style into one's narrative. One wrote instinctively, blindly, feverishly. .. And downstairs were the censors, sending up messages byorderlies to say "half-time, " or "ten minutes more, " and cuttingout sometimes the things one wanted most to say, modifying a directstatement of fact into a vague surmise, taking away the honor due tothe heroic men who had fought and died to-day. .. Who would be a warcorrespondent, or a censor?

So it happened day by day, for five months at a stretch, when bigbattles were in progress. It was not an easy life. There were times whenI was so physically and mentally exhausted that I could hardly rousemyself to a new day's effort. There were times when I was faint and sickand weak; and my colleagues were like me. But we struggled on to tellthe daily history of the war and the public cursed us because we did nottell more, or sneered at us because they thought we were "spoon-fed" byG. H. Q. --who never gave us any news and who were far from our way oflife, except when they thwarted us, by petty restrictions and foolishrules. 

VIII

The Commander-in-Chief--Sir John French--received us when we were firstattached to the British armies in the field--a lifetime ago, as it seemsto me now. It was a formal ceremony in the chateau near St. -Omer, whichhe used as his own headquarters, with his A. D. C. 's in attendance, though the main general headquarters were in the town. Our first colonelgathered us like a shepherd with his flock, counting us twice overbefore we passed in. A tall, dark young man, whom I knew afterward to beSir Philip Sassoon, received us and chatted pleasantly in a Frenchsalon with folding-doors which shut off an inner room. There were afew portraits of ladies and gentlemen of France in the days before theRevolution, like those belonging to that old aristocracy which stillexisted, in poverty and pride, in other chateaus in this FrenchFlanders. There was a bouquet of flowers on the table, giving a sweetscent to the room, and sunlight streamed through the shutters. .. Ithought for a moment of the men living in ditches in the salient, underharassing fire by day and night. Their actions and their encounters withdeath were being arranged, without their knowledge, in this sunny littlechateau. .. . 

The folding-doors opened and Sir John French came in. He wore top-bootsand spurs, and after saying, "Good day, gentlemen, " stood with his legsapart, a stocky, soldierly figure, with a square head and heavy jaw. Iwondered whether there were any light of genius in him--any inspiration, any force which would break the awful strength of the enemy against us, any cunning in modern warfare. 

He coughed a little, and made us a speech. I forget his words, butremember the gist of them. He was pleased to welcome us within his army, and trusted to our honor and loyalty. He made an allusion to the powerof the press, and promised us facilities for seeing and writing, within the bounds of censorship. I noticed that he pronounced St. -Omer, St. -Omar, as though Omar Khayyam had been canonized. He said, "Good day, gentlemen, " again, and coughed huskily again to clear his throat, andthen went back through the folding-doors. 

I saw him later, during the battle of Loos, after its ghastly failure. He was riding a white horse in the villages of Heuchin and Houdain, through which lightly wounded Scots of the 1st and 15th Divisions weremaking their way back. He leaned over his saddle, questioning the menand thanking them for their gallantry. I thought he looked grayer andolder than when he had addressed us. 

"Who mun that old geezer be, Jock?" asked a Highlander when he hadpassed. 

"I dinna ken, " said the other Scot. "An' I dinna care. "

"It's the Commander-in-Chief, " I said. "Sir John French. "

"Eh?" said the younger man, of the 8th Gordons. He did not seem thrilledby the knowledge I had given him, but turned his head and stared afterthe figure on the white horse. Then he said: "Well, he's made a mess o'the battle. We could've held Hill 70 against all the di'els o' hell ifthere had bin supports behind us. "

"Ay, " said his comrade, "an' there's few o' the laddies'll come back fraCite St. -Auguste. "

IX

It was another commander-in-chief who received us some months after thebattle of Loos, in a chateau near Montreuil, to which G. H. Q. Had thenremoved. Our only knowledge of Sir Douglas Haig before that day was ofa hostile influence against us in the First Army, which he commanded. Hehad drawn a line through his area beyond which we might not pass. He didnot desire our presence among his troops nor in his neighborhood. Thatline had been broken by the protests of our commandant, and now asCommander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig had realized dimly that he might behelped by our services. 

It was in another French salon that we waited for the man who controlledthe British armies in the field--those armies which we now knew in someintimacy, whom we had seen in the front-line trenches and rest-camps andbillets, hearing their point of view, knowing their suffering and theirpatience, and their impatience--and their deadly hatred of G. H. Q. 

He was very handsome as he sat behind a Louis XIV table, with GeneralCharteris--his Chief of Intelligence, who was our chief, too--behind himat one side, for prompting and advice. He received us with fine courtesyand said:

"Pray be seated, gentlemen. "

There had been many troubles over censorship, of which he knew butvaguely through General Charteris, who looked upon us as his special"cross. " We had fought hard for liberty in mentioning units, to givethe honor to the troops, and for other concessions which would free ourpens. 

The Commander-in-Chief was sympathetic, but his sympathy was expressedin words which revealed a complete misunderstanding of our purpose andof our work, and was indeed no less than an insult, unconscious but veryhurtful. 

"I think I understand fairly well what you gentlemen want, " he said. "You want to get hold of little stories of heroism, and so forth, and towrite them up in a bright way to make good reading for Mary Ann in thekitchen, and the Man in the Street. " The quiet passion with which thosewords were resented by us, the quick repudiation of this slur upon ourpurpose by a charming man perfectly ignorant at that time of the newpsychology of nations in a war which was no longer a professionaladventure, surprised him. We took occasion to point out to him that theBritish Empire, which had sent its men into this war, yearned to knowwhat they were doing and how they were doing, and that their patienceand loyalty depended upon closer knowledge of what was happening thanwas told them in the communiques issued by the Commander-in-Chiefhimself. We urged him to let us mention more frequently the names of thetroops engaged--especially English troops--for the sake of the soldiersthemselves, who were discouraged by this lack of recognition, and forthe sake of the people behind them. .. It was to the pressure of thewar correspondents, very largely, that the troops owed the mentionand world-wide honor which came to them, more generously, in the laterphases of the war. 

The Commander-in-Chief made a note of our grievances, turning now andagain to General Charteris, who was extremely nervous at our franknessof speech, and telling him to relax the rules of censorship as far aspossible. That was done, and in later stages of the war I personallyhad no great complaint against the censorship, and wrote all that waspossible to write of the actions day by day, though I had to leave outsomething of the underlying horror of them all, in spite of my continualemphasis, by temperament and by conviction, on the tragedy of all thissacrifice of youth. The only alternative to what we wrote would havebeen a passionate denunciation of all this ghastly slaughter and violentattacks on British generalship. Even now I do not think that would havebeen justified. As Bernard Shaw told me, "while the war lasts one mustput one's own soul under censorship. "

After many bloody battles had been fought we were received again by theCommander-in-Chief, and this time his cordiality was not marred by anyslighting touch. 

"Gentlemen, " he said, "you have played the game like men!"

When victory came at last--at last!--after the years of slaughter, itwas the little band of war correspondents on the British front, ourforeign comrades included, whom the Field-Marshal addressed on his firstvisit to the Rhine. We stood on the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, watched by groups of Germans peering through the escort of Lancers. Itwas a dank and foul day, but to us beautiful, because this was the endof the long journey--four-and--a-half years long, which had been filledwith slaughter all the way, so that we were tired of its backwashof agony, which had overwhelmed our souls--mine, certainly. TheCommander-in-Chief read out a speech to us, thanking us for ourservices, which, he said, had helped him to victory, because we hadheartened the troops and the people by our work. It was a recognitionby the leader of our armies that, as chroniclers of war, we had been aspiritual force behind his arms. It was a reward for many mournful days, for much agony of spirit, for hours of danger--some of us had walkedoften in the ways of death--and for exhausting labors which we didso that the world might know what British soldiers had been doing andsuffering. 

X

I came to know General Headquarters more closely when it removed, forfresher air, to Montreuil, a fine old walled town, once within sight ofthe sea, which ebbed over the low-lying ground below its hill, butnow looking across a wide vista of richly cultivated fields where manyhamlets are scattered among clumps of trees. One came to G. H. Q. Fromjourneys over the wild desert of the battlefields, where men lived inditches and "pill-boxes, " muddy, miserable in all things but spirit, asto a place where the pageantry of war still maintained its old and deadtradition. It was like one of those pageants which used to be played inEngland before the war--picturesque, romantic, utterly unreal. It was asthough men were playing at war here, while others sixty miles away werefighting and dying, in mud and gas-waves and explosive barrages. 

An "open sesame, " by means of a special pass, was needed to enter thisCity of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside, sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up onpulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in ared cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to theoccupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers were goingin to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt tounderstand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God. Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged colonelsand majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands, red tabs, and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q. , so that color went with them ontheir way. 

Often one saw the Commander-in-Chief starting for an afternoon ride, a fine figure, nobly mounted, with two A. D. C. 's and an escort ofLancers. A pretty sight, with fluttering pennons on all their lances, and horses groomed to the last hair. It was prettier than the real thingup in the salient or beyond the Somme, where dead bodies lay in upheavedearth among ruins and slaughtered trees. War at Montreuil was quite apleasant occupation for elderly generals who liked their little strollafter lunch, and for young Regular officers, released from the painfulnecessity of dying for their country, who were glad to get a game oftennis, down below the walls there, after strenuous office-work in whichthey had written "Passed to you" on many "minutes, " or had drawn themost comical caricatures of their immediate chief, and of his immediatechief, on blotting-pads and writing-blocks. 

It seemed, at a mere glance, that all these military inhabitants of G. H. Q. Were great and glorious soldiers. Some of the youngest of them hada row of decorations from Montenegro, Serbia, Italy, Rumania, and otherstates, as recognition of gallant service in translating German letters(found in dugouts by the fighting-men), or arranging for visitsof political personages to the back areas of war, or initialingrequisitions for pink, blue, green, and yellow forms, which in duecourse would find their way to battalion adjutants for immediatefilling-up in the middle of an action. The oldest of them, thosewhite-haired, bronze-faced, gray-eyed generals in the administrativeside of war, had started their third row of ribbons well before the endof the Somme battles, and had flower-borders on their breasts by thetime the massacres had been accomplished in the fields of Flanders. Iknow an officer who was awarded the D. S. O. Because he had hindered thework of war correspondents with the zeal of a hedge-sparrow in search ofworms, and another who was the best-decorated man in the army because hehad presided over a visitors' chateau and entertained Royalties, Members of Parliament, Mrs. Humphry Ward, miners, Japanese, Russianrevolutionaries, Portuguese ministers, Harry Lauder, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, clergymen, Montenegrins, and the Editor of John Bull, at thegovernment's expense--and I am bound to say he deserved them all, beinga man of infinite tact, many languages, and a devastating sense ofhumor. There was always a Charlie Chaplin film between moving picturesof the battles of the Somme. He brought the actualities of war to thevisitors' chateau by sentry-boxes outside the door, a toy "tank" in thefront garden, and a collection of war trophies in the hall. He spoke toHigh Personages with less deference than he showed to miners from Durhamand Wales, and was master of them always, ordering them sternly to bedat ten o'clock (when he sat down to bridge with his junior officers), and with strict military discipline insisting upon their inspection ofthe bakeries at Boulogne, and boot-mending factories at Calais, as partof the glory of war which they had come out for to see. 

So it was that there were brilliant colors in the streets of Montreuil, and at every doorway a sentry slapped his hand to his rifle, with smartand untiring iteration, as the "brains" of the army, under "brass hats"and red bands, went hither and thither in the town, looking stern, assoldiers of grave responsibility, answering salutes absent--mindedly, staring haughtily at young battalion officers who passed throughMontreuil and looked meekly for a chance of a lorry-ride to Boulogne, onseven days' leave from the lines. 

The smart society of G. H. Q. Was best seen at the Officers' Club inMontreuil, at dinner-time. It was as much like musical comedy as anystage setting of war at the Gaiety. A band played ragtime and lightmusic while the warriors fed, and all these generals and staff officers, with their decorations and arm-bands and polished buttons and crossedswords, were waited upon by little W. A. A. C. 's with the G. H. Q. Colors tied up in bows on their hair, and khaki stockings undertheir short skirts and fancy aprons. Such a chatter! Such bursts oflight-hearted laughter! Such whisperings of secrets and intrigues andscandals in high places! Such careless--hearted courage when Britishsoldiers were being blown to bits, gassed, blinded, maimed, andshell-shocked in places that were far--so very far--from G. H. Q. !

XI

There were shrill voices one morning outside the gate of ourquarters--women's voices, excited, angry, passionate. An orderly cameinto the mess--we were at breakfast--and explained the meaning ofthe clamor, which by some intuition and a quick ear for French he hadgathered from all this confusion of tongues. 

"There's a soldier up the road, drunk or mad. He has been attacking agirl. The villagers want an officer to arrest him. "

The colonel sliced off the top of his egg and then rose. "Tell threeorderlies to follow me. "

We went into the roadway, and twenty women crowded round us with astory of attempted violence against an innocent girl. The man had beendrinking last night at the estaminet up there. Then he had followedthe girl, trying to make love to her. She had barricaded herself in theroom, when he tried to climb through the window. 

"If you don't come out I'll get in and kill you, " he said, according tothe women. 

But she had kept him out, though he prowled round all night. Now he washiding in an outhouse. The brute! The pig!

When we went up the road the man was standing in the center of it, witha sullen look. 

"What's the trouble?" he asked. "It looks as if all France were out tograb me. "

He glanced sideways over the field, as though reckoning his chance ofescape. There was no chance. 

The colonel placed him under arrest and he marched back between theorderlies, with an old soldier of the Contemptibles behind him. 

Later in the day he was lined up for identification by the girl, among acrowd of other men. 

The girl looked down the line, and we watched her curiously--a slimcreature with dark hair neatly coiled. 

She stretched out her right hand with a pointing finger. 

"Le voila!. .. C'est l'homme. "

There was no mistake about it, and the man looked sheepishly at her, notdenying. He was sent off under escort to the military prison in St. Omerfor court-martial. 

"What's the punishment--if guilty?" I asked. 

"Death, " said the colonel, resuming his egg. 

He was a fine-looking fellow, the prisoner. He had answered the call forking and country without delay. In the estaminet, after coming down fromthe salient for a machine-gun course, he had drunk more beer than wasgood for him, and the face of a pretty girl had bewitched him, stirringup desire. He wanted to kiss her lips. .. There were no women in theYpres salient. Nothing pretty or soft. It was hell up there, and thisgirl was a pretty witch, bringing back thoughts of the other side--forlife, womanhood, love, caresses which were good for the souls and bodiesof men. It was a starved life up there in the salient. .. Why shouldn'tshe give him her lips? Wasn't he fighting for France? Wasn't he atall and proper lad? Curse the girl for being so sulky to an Englishsoldier!. .. And now, if those other women, those old hags, were to swearagainst him things he had never said, things he had never done, unlessdrink had made him forget--by God! supposing drink had made him forget?He would be shot against a white wall. Shot dead, disgracefully, shamefully, by his own comrades! O Christ! and the little mother in aSussex cottage!. .. 

XII

Going up to Kemmel one day I had to wait in battalion headquartersfor the officer I had gone to see. He was attending a court martial. Presently he came into the wooden hut, with a flushed face. 

"Sorry I had to keep you, " he said. "Tomorrow there will be one swineless in the world. "

"A death sentence?"

He nodded. 

"A damned coward. Said he didn't mind rifle-fire, but couldn't standshells. Admitted he left his post. He doesn't mind rifle-fire!. .. Well, tomorrow morning. "

The officer laughed grimly, and then listened for a second. 

There were some heavy crumps falling over Kemmel Hill, rather close, itseemed, to our wooden hut. 

"Damn those German gunners" said the officer. "Why can't they give us alittle peace?"

He turned to his papers, but several times while I talked with him hejerked his head up and listened to a heavy crash. 

On the way back I saw a man on foot, walking in front of a mounted man, past the old hill of the Scherpenberg, toward the village of Locre. There was something in the way he walked, in his attitude--the headhunched forward a little, and his arms behind his back--which made meturn to look at him. He was manacled, and tied by a rope to the mountedman. I caught one glimpse of his face, and then turned away, cold andsick. There was doom written on his face, and in his eyes a capturedlook. He was walking to his wall. 

XIII

There were other men who could not stand shell-fire. It filled them withan animal terror and took all will-power out of them. One young officerwas like that man who "did not mind rifle-fire. " He, by some strangefreak of psychology, was brave under machine-gun fire. He had doneseveral gallant things, and was bright and cheerful in the trenchesuntil the enemy barraged them with high explosive. Then he was seenwandering back to the support trenches in a dazed way. It happened threetimes, and he was sentenced to death. Before going out at dawn to facethe firing-squad he was calm. There was a lighted candle on the table, and he sorted out his personal belongings and made small packages ofthem as keepsakes for his family and friends. His hand did not tremble. When his time came he put out the candle, between thumb and finger, raised his hand, and said, "Right O!"

Another man, shot for cowardice in face of the enemy, was sullen andsilent to one who hoped to comfort him in the last hour. The chaplainasked him whether he had any message for his relatives. He said, "I haveno relatives. " He was asked whether he would like to say any prayers, and he said, "I don't believe in them. " The chaplain talked to him, butcould get no answer--and time was creeping on. There were two guards inthe room, sitting motionless, with loaded rifles between their knees. Outside it was silent in the courtyard, except for little noises of thenight and the wind. The chaplain suffered, and was torn with pityfor that sullen man whose life was almost at an end. He took out hishymn--book and said: "I will sing to you. It will pass the time. " Hesang a hymn, and once or twice his voice broke a little, but he steadiedit. Then the man said, "I will sing with you. " He knew all the hymns, words and music. It was an unusual, astonishing knowledge, and he wenton singing, hymn after hymn, with the chaplain by his side. It wasthe chaplain who tired first. His voice cracked and his throat becameparched. Sweat broke out on his forehead, because of the nervous strain. But the man who was going to die sang on in a clear, hard voice. A faintglimmer of coming dawn lightened the cottage window. There were not manyminutes more. The two guards shifted their feet. "Now, " said the man, "we'll sing 'God Save the King. '" The two guards rose and stood atattention, and the chaplain sang the national anthem with the man whowas to be shot for cowardice. Then the tramp of the firing-party cameacross the cobblestones in the courtyard. It was dawn. 

XIV

Shell-shock was the worst thing to see. There were generals who said:"There is no such thing as shell-shock. It is cowardice. I wouldcourt-martial in every case. " Doctors said: "It is difficult to drawthe line between shell-shock and blue funk. Both are physical as well asmental. Often it is the destruction of the nerve tissues by concussion, or actual physical damage to the brain; sometimes it is a shock ofhorror unbalancing the mind, but that is more rare. It is not generallythe slight, nervous men who suffer worst from shell-shock. It is oftenthe stolid fellow, one of those we describe as being utterly withoutnerves, who goes down badly. Something snaps in him. He has noresilience in his nervous system. He has never trained himself innerve-control, being so stolid and self-reliant. Now, the nervous man, the cockney, for example, is always training himself in the control ofhis nerves, on 'buses which lurch round corners, in the traffic thatbears down on him, in a thousand and one situations which demandself-control in a 'nervy' man. That helps him in war; whereas the yokel, or the sergeant--major type, is splendid until the shock comes. Thenhe may crack. But there is no law. Imagination--apprehension--are thedevil, too, and they go with 'nerves. '"

It was a sergeant-major whom I saw stricken badly with shell-shock inAveluy Wood near Thiepval. He was convulsed with a dreadful rigor likea man in epilepsy, and clawed at his mouth, moaning horribly, with lividterror in his eyes. He had to be strapped to a stretcher before hecould be carried away. He had been a tall and splendid man, this poor, terror-stricken lunatic. 

Nearer to Thiepval, during the fighting there, other men were broughtdown with shell-shock. I remember one of them now, though I saw manyothers. He was a Wiltshire lad, very young, with an apple-cheeked faceand blue-gray eyes. He stood outside a dugout, shaking in every limb, ina palsied way. His steel hat was at the back of his head and his mouthslobbered, and two comrades could not hold him still. 

These badly shell-shocked boys clawed their mouths ceaselessly. It was acommon, dreadful action. Others sat in the field hospitals in a stateof coma, dazed, as though deaf, and actually dumb. I hated to see them, turned my eyes away from them, and yet wished that they might be seenby bloody-minded men and women who, far behind the lines, still spoke ofwar lightly, as a kind of sport, or heroic game, which brave boys likedor ought to like, and said, "We'll fight on to the last man rather thanaccept anything less than absolute victory, " and when victory camesaid: "We stopped too soon. We ought to have gone on for another threemonths. " It was for fighting-men to say those things, because they knewthe things they suffered and risked. That word "we" was not to be usedby gentlemen in government offices scared of air raids, nor by womendancing in scanty frocks at war-bazaars for the "poor dear wounded, "nor even by generals at G. H. Q. , enjoying the thrill of war without itsdirt and danger. 

Seeing these shell-shock cases month after month, during years offighting, I, as an onlooker, hated the people who had not seen, and werecallous of this misery; the laughing girls in the Strand greeting theboys on seven days' leave; the newspaper editors and leader-writerswhose articles on war were always "cheery"; the bishops and clergy whopraised God as the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies, and hadnever said a word before the war to make it less inevitable; theschoolmasters who gloried in the lengthening "Roll of Honor" and said, "We're doing very well, " when more boys died; the pretty woman-facesogling in the picture-papers, as "well--known war-workers"; themunition-workers who were getting good wages out of the war; theworking-women who were buying gramophones and furs while their men werein the stinking trenches; the dreadful, callous, cheerful spirit ofEngland at war. 

Often I was unfair, bitter, unbalanced, wrong. The spirit of England, taking it broad and large--with dreadful exceptions--was wonderful inits courage and patience, and ached with sympathy for its fighting sons, and was stricken with the tragedy of all this slaughter. There were manytears in English homes; many sad and lonely women. But, as an onlooker, I could not be just or fair, and hated the non-combatants who did notreveal its wound in their souls, but were placid in their belief that weshould win, and pleased with themselves because of their easy optimism. So easy for those who did not see!

XV

As war correspondents we were supposed to have honorary rank ascaptains, by custom and tradition--but it amounted to nothing, hereor there. We were civilians in khaki, with green bands round our rightarms, and uncertain status. It was better so, because we were in thepeculiar and privileged position of being able to speak to Tommies andsergeants as human beings, to be on terms of comradeship with juniorsubalterns and battalion commanders, and to sit at the right hand ofgenerals without embarrassment to them or to ourselves. 

Physically, many of our generals were curiously alike. They were menturned fifty, with square jaws, tanned, ruddy faces, searching andrather stern gray eyes, closely cropped hair growing white, with alittle white mustache, neatly trimmed, on the upper lip. 

Mentally they had similar qualities. They had unfailing physicalcourage--though courage is not put to the test much in moderngeneralship, which, above the rank of brigadier, works far from theactual line of battle, unless it "slips" in the wrong direction. Theywere stern disciplinarians, and tested the quality of troops by theirsmartness in saluting and on parade, which did not account for thefighting merit of the Australians. Most of them were conservative bypolitical tradition and hereditary instinct, and conservative also inmilitary ideas and methods. They distrusted the "brilliant" fellow, and were inclined to think him unsafe; and they were not quick to allowyoung men to gain high command at the expense of their gray hair andexperience. They were industrious, able, conscientious men, neversparing themselves long hours of work for a life of ease, and becausethey were willing to sacrifice their own lives, if need be, for theircountry's sake, they demanded equal willingness of sacrifice from everyofficer and man under their authority, having no mercy whatever for theslacker or the weakling. 

Among them there was not one whose personality had that mysterious butessential quality of great generalship--inspiring large bodies of menwith exalted enthusiasm, devotion, and faith. It did not matter tothe men whether an army commander, a corps commander, or a divisionalcommander stood in the roadside to watch them march past on their wayto battle or on their way back. They saw one of these sturdy men in hisbrass hat, with his ruddy face and white mustache, but no thrill passeddown their ranks, no hoarse cheers broke from them because he was there, as when Wellington sat on his white horse in the Peninsular War, or aswhen Napoleon saluted his Old Guard, or even as when Lord Roberts, "OurBob, " came perched like a little old falcon on his big charger. 

Nine men out of ten in the ranks did not even know the name of theirarmy general or of the corps commander. It meant nothing to them. Theydid not face death with more passionate courage to win the approval of amilitary idol. That was due partly to the conditions of modern warfare, which make it difficult for generals of high rank to get into directpersonal touch with their troops, and to the masses of men engaged. Butthose difficulties could have been overcome by a general of impressivepersonality, able to stir the imaginations of men by words of firespoken at the right time, by deep, human sympathy, and by the luck ofvictory seized by daring adventure against great odds. 

No such man appeared on the western front until Foch obtained thesupreme command. On the British front there was no general with the giftof speech--a gift too much despised by our British men of action--orwith a character and prestige which could raise him to the highest rankin popular imagination. During the retreat from Mona, Sir John Frenchhad a touch of that personal power--his presence meant something tothe men because of his reputation in South Africa; but afterward, whentrench warfare began, and the daily routine of slaughter under Germangun-fire, when our artillery was weak, and when our infantry was orderedto attack fixed positions of terrible strength without adequate support, and not a dog's chance of luck against such odds, the prestige of theCommander-in-Chief faded from men's minds and he lost place in theiradmiration. It was washed out in blood and mud. 

Sir Douglas Haig, who followed Sir John French, inherited thedisillusionment of armies who saw now that war on the western front wasto be a long struggle, with enormous slaughter, and no visible signof the end beyond a vista of dreadful years. Sir Douglas Haig, in hisgeneral headquarters at St. -Omer, and afterward at Montreuil, near thecoast, had the affection and loyalty of the staff--officers. A man ofremarkably good looks, with fine, delicate features, strengthened bythe firm line of his jaw, and of singular sweetness, courtesy, andsimplicity in his manner toward all who approached him, he had qualitieswhich might have raised him to the supreme height of personal influenceamong his armies but for lack of the magic touch and the tragiccondition of his command. 

He was intensely shy and reserved, shrinking from publicity and holdinghimself aloof from the human side of war. He was constitutionally unableto make a dramatic gesture before a multitude, or to say easy, stirringthings to officers and men whom he reviewed. His shyness and reserveprevented him also from knowing as much as he ought to have known aboutthe opinions of officers and men, and getting direct information fromthem. He held the supreme command of the British armies on the westernfront when, in the battlefields of the Somme and Flanders, of Picardyand Artois, there was not much chance for daring strategy, but onlyfor hammer-strokes by the flesh and blood of men against fortresspositions--the German trench systems, twenty-five miles deep in tunneledearthworks and machine-gun dugouts--when the immensity of casualtiesamong British troops was out of all proportion to their gains of ground, so that our men's spirits revolted against these massacres of theiryouth and they were embittered against the generalship and staff-workwhich directed these sacrificial actions. 

This sense of bitterness became intense, to the point of fury, so thata young staff officer, in his red tabs, with a jaunty manner, was like ared rag to a bull among battalion officers and men, and they desiredhis death exceedingly, exalting his little personality, dressed in awell-cut tunic and fawn-colored riding-breeches and highly polishedtop-boots, into the supreme folly of "the Staff" which made men attackimpossible positions, send down conflicting orders, issued a litterof documents--called by an ugly name--containing impracticableinstructions, to the torment of the adjutants and to the scorn of thetroops. This hatred of the Staff was stoked high by the fires ofpassion and despair. Some of it was unjust, and even the jaunty youngstaff-officer--a G. S. O. 3, with red tabs and polished boots--was oftennot quite such a fool as he looked, but a fellow who had proved hispluck in the early days of the war and was now doing his duty--aboutequal to the work of a boy clerk--with real industry and an exaggeratedsense of its importance. 

Personally I can pay high tribute to some of our staff--officers atdivisional, corps, and army headquarters, because of their industry, efficiency, and devotion to duty. And during the progress of battle Ihave seen them, hundreds of times, working desperately for long hourswithout much rest or sleep, so that the fighting-men should get theirfood and munitions, so that the artillery should support their actions, and the troops in reserve move up to their relief at the proper time andplace. 

Owing largely to new army brains the administrative side of our warbecame efficient in its method and organization, and the armies wereworked like clockwork machines. The transport was good beyond all wordsof praise, and there was one thing which seldom failed to reach poorold Tommy Atkins, unless he was cut off by shell-fire, and that was hisfood. The motor-supply columns and ammunition-dumps were organized tothe last item. Our map department was magnificent, and the admirationof the French. Our Intelligence branch became valuable (apart from afrequent insanity of optimism) and was sometimes uncanny in the accuracyof its information about the enemy's disposition and plans. So that theStaff was not altogether hopeless in its effect, as the young battalionofficers, with sharp tongues and a sense of injustice in their hearts, made out, with pardonable blasphemy, in their dugouts. 

Nevertheless the system was bad and British generalship made manymistakes, some of them, no doubt, unavoidable, because it is human toerr, and some of them due to sheer, simple, impregnable stupidity. 

In the early days the outstanding fault of our generals was their desireto gain ground which was utterly worthless when gained. They organizedsmall attacks against strong positions, dreadfully costly to take, and after the desperate valor of men had seized a few yards of mangledearth, found that they had made another small salient, jutting out fromtheir front in a V-shaped wedge, so that it was a death-trap for the menwho had to hold it. This was done again and again, and I remember onedistinguished officer saying, with bitter irony, remembering how many ofhis men had died, "Our generals must have their little V's at any price, to justify themselves at G. H. Q. "

In the battles of the Somme they attacked isolated objectives onnarrow fronts, so that the enemy swept our men with fire by artilleryconcentrated from all points, instead of having to disperse his fireduring a general attack on a wide front. In the days of trench warfare, when the enemy artillery was much stronger than ours, and when hisinfantry strength was enormously greater, our generals insisted uponthe British troops maintaining an "aggressive" attitude, with the resultthat they were shot to pieces, instead of adopting, like the French, aquiet and waiting attitude until the time came for a sharp and terribleblow. The battles of Neuve Chapelle, Fertubert, and Loos, in 1915, cost us thousands of dead and gave us no gain of any account; and bothgeneralship and staff-work were, in the opinion of most officers whoknow anything of those battles, ghastly. 

After all, our generals had to learn their lesson, like the privatesoldier, and the young battalion officer, in conditions of warfare whichhad never been seen before--and it was bad for the private soldier andthe young battalion officer, who died so they might learn. As timewent on staff-work improved, and British generalship was less rash inoptimism and less rigid in ideas. 

XVI

General Haldane was friendly to the war correspondents--he had beensomething of the kind himself in earlier days--and we were welcomed athis headquarters, both when he commanded the 3d Division and afterwardwhen he became commander of the 6th Corps. I thought during the war, andI think now, that he had more intellect and "quality" than many ofour other generals. A tall, strongly built man, with a distinction ofmovement and gesture, not "stocky" or rigid, but nervous and restless, he gave one a sense of power and intensity of purpose. There was akind of slow-burning fire in him--a hatred of the enemy which was notweakened in him by any mercy, and a consuming rage, as it appeared tome, against inefficiency in high places, injustice of which he may havefelt himself to be the victim, and restrictions upon his liberty ofcommand. A bitter irony was often in his laughter when discussingpoliticians at home, and the wider strategy of war apart from thaton his own front. He was intolerant of stupidity, which he foundwidespread, and there was no tenderness or emotion in his attitudetoward life. The officers and men under his command accused him ofruthlessness. But they admitted that he took more personal risk thanhe need have done as a divisional general, and was constantly in thetrenches examining his line. They also acknowledged that he was generousin his praise of their good service, though merciless if he foundfault with them. He held himself aloof--too much, I am sure--from hisbattalion officers, and had an extreme haughtiness of bearing which waspartly due to reserve and that shyness which is in many Englishmen and afew Scots. 

In the old salient warfare he often demanded service in the way of raidsand the holding of death-traps, and the execution of minor attacks whichcaused many casualties, and filled men with rage and horror at whatthey believed to be unnecessary waste of life--their life, and theircomrades'--that did not make for popularity in the ranks of thebattalion messes. Privately, in his own mess, he was gracious tovisitors, and revealed not only a wide range of knowledge outside aswell as inside his profession, but a curious, unexpected sympathy forideas, not belonging as a rule to generals of the old caste. I likedhim, though I was always conscious of that flame and steel in his naturewhich made his psychology a world away from mine. He was hit hard--inwhat I think was the softest spot in his heart--by the death of one ofhis A. D. C. 's--young Congreve, who was the beau ideal of knighthood, wonderfully handsome, elegant even when covered from head to foot in wetmud (as I saw him one day), fearless, or at least scornful of danger, to the verge of recklessness. General Haldane had marked him out asthe most promising young soldier in the whole army. A bit of shell, asenseless bit of steel, spoiled that promise--as it spoiled the promiseof a million boys--and the general was saddened more than by the deathof other gallant officers. 

I have one memory of General Haldane which shows him in a differentlight. It was during the great German offensive in the north, when Arraswas hard beset and the enemy had come back over Monchy Hill and wasshelling villages on the western side of Arras, which until thenhad been undamaged. It was in one of these villages--nearAvesnes-le-Compte--to which the general had come back with his corpsheadquarters, established there for many months in earlier days, so thatthe peasants and their children knew him well by sight and had talkedwith him, because he liked to speak French with them. When I went to seehim one day during that bad time in April of '18, he was surrounded bya group of children who were asking anxiously whether Arras would betaken. He drew a map for them in the dust of the roadway, and showedthem where the enemy was attacking and the general strategy. He spokesimply and gravely, as though to a group of staff-officers, and thechildren followed his diagram in the dust and understood him perfectly. 

"They will not take Arras if I can help it, " he said. "You will be allright here. "

XVII

Gen. Sir Neville Macready was adjutant-general in the days of Sir JohnFrench, and I dined at his mess once or twice, and he came to ours onreturn visits. The son of Macready, the actor, he had a subtlety of mindnot common among British generals, to whom "subtlety" in any form isrepulsive. His sense of humor was developed upon lines of irony andhe had a sly twinkle in his eyes before telling one of his innumerableanecdotes. They were good stories, and I remember one of them, which hadto do with the retreat from Mons. It was not, to tell the truth, that"orderly" retreat which is described in second-hand accounts. There weretimes when it was a wild stampede from the tightening loop of a Germanadvance, with lorries and motor-cycles and transport wagons goinghelter-skelter among civilian refugees and mixed battalions andstragglers from every unit walking, footsore, in small groups. EvenGeneral Headquarters was flurried at times, far in advance of thisprocession backward. One night Sir Neville Macready, with the judgeadvocate and an officer named Colonel Childs (a hot-headed fellow!), took up their quarters in a French chateau somewhere, I think, in theneighborhood of Creil. The Commander-in-Chief was in another chateausome distance away. Other branches of G. H. Q. Were billeted in privatehouses, widely scattered about a straggling village. 

Colonel Childs was writing opposite the adjutant-general, who wasworking silently. Presently Childs looked up, listened, and said:

"It's rather quiet, sir, outside. "

"So much the better, " growled General Macready. "Get on with your job. "

A quarter of an hour passed. No rumble of traffic passed by the windows. No gun-wagons were jolting over French pave. 

Colonel Childs looked up again and listened. 

"It's damned quiet outside, sir. "

"Well, don't go making a noise, " said the general, "Can't you see I'mbusy?"

"I think I'll just take a turn round, " said Colonel Childs. 

He felt uneasy. Something in the silence of the village scared him. Hewent out into the roadway and walked toward Sir John French's quarters. There was no challenge from a sentry. The British Expeditionary Forceseemed to be sleeping. They needed sleep--poor beggars!--but the Germansdid not let them take much. 

Colonel Childs went into the Commander-in-Chief's chateau and found asoldier in the front hall, licking out a jam-pot. 

"Where's the Commander-in-Chief?" asked the officer. 

"Gone hours ago, sir, " said the soldier. "I was left behind for lackof transport. From what I hear the Germans ought to be here by now. Irather fancy I heard some shots pretty close awhile ago. "

Colonel Childs walked back to his own quarters quickly. He made noapology for interrupting the work of the adjutant-general. 

"General, the whole box of tricks has gone. We've been left behind. Forgotten!"

"The dirty dogs!" said General Macready. 

There was not much time for packing up, and only one motor-car, and onlyone rifle. The general said he would look after the rifle, but ColonelChilds said if that were so he would rather stay behind and takehis chance of being captured. It would be safer for him. So theadjutant-general, the judge advocate, the deputy assistant judgeadvocate (Colonel Childs), and an orderly or two packed into the car andset out to find G. H. Q. Before they found it they had to run the gantletof Germans, and were sniped all the way through a wood, and took flyingshots at moving figures. Then, miles away, they found G. H. Q. 

"And weren't they sorry to see me again!" said General Macready, whotold me the tale. "They thought they had lost me forever. "

The day's casualty list was brought into the adjutant--general oneevening when I was dining in his mess. The orderly put it down by theside of his plate, and he interrupted a funny story to glance down thecolumns of names. 

"Du Maurier has been killed. .. I'm sorry. "

He put down the paper beside his plate again and continued his story, and we all laughed heartily at the end of the anecdote. It was the onlyway, and the soldier's way. There was no hugging of grief when our bestfriend fell. A sigh, another ghost in one's life, and then, "Carry on!"

XVIII

Scores of times, hundreds of times, during the battles of the Somme, I passed the headquarters of Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson, commandingthe Fourth Army, and several times I met the army commander thereand elsewhere. One of my first meetings with him was extraordinarilyembarrassing to me for a moment or two. While he was organizing hisarmy, which was to be called, with unconscious irony, "The Armyof Pursuit"--the battles of the Somme were a siege rather than apursuit--he desired to take over the chateau at Tilques, in which thewar correspondents were then quartered. As we were paying for itand liked it, we put up an opposition which was most annoying to hisA. D. C. 's, especially to one young gentleman of enormous wealth, haughtymanners, and a boyish intolerance of other people's interests, who hadlooked over our rooms without troubling to knock at the doors, and thensaid, "This will suit us down to the ground. " On my way back from thesalient one evening I walked up the drive in the flickering light ofsummer eve, and saw two officers coming in my direction, one of whom Ithought I recognized as an old friend. 

"Hullo!" I said, cheerily. "You here again?"

Then I saw that I was face to face with Sir Henry Rawlinson. He musthave been surprised, but dug me in the ribs in a genial way, and said, "Hullo, young feller!"

He made no further attempt to "pinch" our quarters, but my familiarmethod of address could not have produced that result. 

His headquarters at Querrieux were in another old chateau on theAmiens-Albert road, surrounded by pleasant fields through which a streamwound its way. Everywhere the sign-boards were red, and a militarypoliceman, authorized to secure obedience to the rules thereon, sloweddown every motor-car on its way through the village, as though Sir HenryRawlinson lay sick of a fever, so anxious were his gestures and hisexpression of "Hush! do be careful!"

The army commander seemed to me to have a roguish eye. He seemed to bethinking to himself, "This war is a rare old joke!" He spoke habituallyof the enemy as "the old Hun" or "old Fritz, " in an affectionate, contemptuous way, as a fellow who was trying his best but getting theworst of it every time. Before the battles of the Somme I had a talkwith him among his maps, and found that I had been to many places in hisline which he did not seem to know. He could not find there very quicklyon his large-sized maps, or pretended not to, though I concluded thatthis was "camouflage, " in case I might tell "old Fritz" that suchplaces existed. Like most of our generals, he had amazing, overweeningoptimism. He had always got the enemy "nearly beat, " and he arrangedattacks during the Somme fighting with the jovial sense of strikinganother blow which would lead this time to stupendous results. In theearly days, in command of the 7th Division, he had done well, and he wasa gallant soldier, with initiative and courage of decision and a quickintelligence in open warfare. His trouble on the Somme was thatthe enemy did not permit open warfare, but made a siege of it, withdefensive lines all the way back to Bapaume, and every hillock amachine-gun fortress and every wood a death-trap. We were alwayspreparing for a "break-through" for cavalry pursuit, and the cavalrywere always being massed behind the lines and then turned back again, after futile waiting, encumbering the roads. "The bloodbath of theSomme, " as the Germans called it, was ours as well as theirs, and scoresof times when I saw the dead bodies of our men lying strewn over thosedreadful fields, after desperate and, in the end, successful attacksthrough the woods of death--Mametz Wood, Delville Wood, Trones Wood, Bernafay Wood, High Wood, and over the Pozieres ridge to Courcelletteand Martinpuich--I thought of Rawlinson in his chateau in Querrieux, scheming out the battles and ordering up new masses of troops to thegreat assault over the bodies of their dead. .. Well, it is not forgenerals to sit down with their heads in their hands, bemoaningslaughter, or to shed tears over their maps when directing battle. Itis their job to be cheerful, to harden their hearts against the casualtylists, to keep out of the danger-zone unless their presence is strictlynecessary. But it is inevitable that the men who risk death daily, thefighting-men who carry out the plans of the High Command and see nosense in them, should be savage in their irony when they pass a peacefulhouse where their doom is being planned, and green-eyed when they seean army general taking a stroll in buttercup fields, with a jaunty youngA. D. C. Slashing the flowers with his cane and telling the latest jokefrom London to his laughing chief. As onlookers of sacrifice some ofus--I, for one--adopted the point of view of the men who were to die, finding some reason in their hatred of the staffs, though they weredoing their job with a sense of duty, and with as much intelligenceas God had given them. Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson was one of our bestgenerals, as may be seen by the ribbons on his breast, and in the lastphase commanded a real "Army of Pursuit, " which had the enemy on therun, and broke through to Victory. It was in that last phase of openwarfare that Rawlinson showed his qualities of generalship and onceagain that driving purpose which was his in the Somme battles, butachieved only by prodigious cost of life. 

XIX

Of General Allenby, commanding the Third Army before he was succeeded byGen. Sir Julian Byng and went to his triumph in Palestine, I knew verylittle except by hearsay. He went by the name of "The Bull, " becauseof his burly size and deep voice. The costly fighting that followedthe battle of Arras on April 9th along the glacis of the Scarpe didnot reveal high generalship. There were many young officers--and somedivisional generals who complained bitterly of attacks ordered withoutsufficient forethought, and the stream of casualties which poured back, day by day, with tales of tragic happenings did not inspire one with asense of some high purpose behind it all, or some presiding genius. 

General Byng, "Bungo Byng, " as he was called by his troops, won theadmiration of the Canadian Corps which he commanded, and afterward, inthe Cambrai advance of November, '17, he showed daring of conceptionand gained the first striking surprise in the war by novel methods ofattack--spoiled by the quick come-back of the enemy under Von Marwitzand our withdrawal from Bourlon Wood, Masnieres, and Marcoing, and otherplaces, after desperate fighting. 

His chief of staff, Gen. Louis Vaughan, was a charming, gentle-manneredman, with a scientific outlook on the problems of war, and so kind inhis expression and character that it seemed impossible that he coulddevise methods of killing Germans in a wholesale way. He was like anOxford professor of history discoursing on the Marlborough wars, thoughwhen I saw him many times outside the Third Army headquarters, ina railway carriage, somewhere near Villers Carbonnel on the Sommebattlefields, he was explaining his preparations and strategy foractions to be fought next day which would be of bloody consequence toour men and the enemy. 

General Birdwood, commanding the Australian Corps, and afterward theFifth Army in succession to General Gough, was always known as "Birdie"by high and low, and this dapper man, so neat, so bright, so brisk, hada human touch with him which won him the affection of all his troops. 

Gen. Hunter Weston, of the 8th Corps, was another man of character inhigh command. He spoke of himself in the House of Commons one day as"a plain, blunt soldier, " and the army roared with laughter from end toend. There was nothing plain or blunt about him. He was a man of airyimagination and a wide range of knowledge, and theories on life and warwhich he put forward with dramatic eloquence. 

It was of Gen. Hunter Weston that the story was told about the drunkensoldier put onto a stretcher and covered with a blanket, to get him outof the way when the army commander made a visit to the lines. 

"What's this?" said the general. 

"Casualty, sir, " said the quaking platoon commander. 

"Not bad, I hope?"

"Dead, sir, " said the subaltern. He meant dead drunk. 

The general drew himself up, and said, in his dramatic way, "The armycommander salutes the honored dead!"

And the drunken private put his head from under the blanket and asked, "What's the old geezer a-sayin' of?"

That story may have been invented in a battalion mess, but it wentthrough the army affixed to the name of Hunter Weston, and seemed to fithim. 

The 8th Corps was on the left in the first attack on the Somme, whenmany of our divisions were cut to pieces in the attempt to break theGerman line at Gommecourt. It was a ghastly tragedy, which spoiled thesuccess on the right at Fricourt and Montauban. But Gen. Hunter Westonwas not degomme, as the French would say, and continued to air histheories on life and warfare until the day of Victory, when once againwe had "muddled through, " not by great generalship, but by the courageof common men. 

Among the divisional generals with whom I came in contact--I met mostof them at one time or another--were General Hull of the 56th (London)Division, General Hickey of the 16th (Irish) Division, General Harperof the 51st (Highland) Division, General Nugent of the 36th (Ulster)Division, and General Pinnie of the 35th (Bantams) Division, afterwardof the 33d. 

General Hull was a handsome, straight-speaking, straight-thinking man, and I should say an able general. "Ruthless, " his men said, but this wasa war of ruthlessness, because life was cheap. Bitter he was at times, because he had to order his men to do things which he knew were folly. I remember sitting on the window-sill of his bedroom, in an old house ofArras, while he gave me an account of "the battle in the dark, " in whichthe Londoners and other English troops lost their direction and foundthemselves at dawn with the enemy behind them. General Hull made nosecret of the tragedy or the stupidity. .. On another day I met himsomewhere on the other side of Peronne, before March 21st, when he wascommanding the 16th (Irish) Division in the absence of General Hickey, who was ill. He talked a good deal about the belief in a great Germanoffensive, and gave many reasons for thinking it was all "bluff. " Afew days later the enemy had rolled over his lines. .. Out of thirteengenerals I met at that time, there were only three who believed that theenemy would make his great assault in a final effort to gain decisivevictory, though our Intelligence had amassed innumerable proofs and wereutterly convinced of the approaching menace. 

"They will never risk it!" said General Gorringe of the 47th (London)Division. "Our lines are too strong. We should mow them down. "

I was standing with him on a wagon, watching the sports of the Londonmen. We could see the German lines, south of St. -Quentin, very quietover there, without any sign of coming trouble. A few days later theplace where we were standing was under waves of German storm-troops. 

I liked the love of General Hickey for his Irish division. An Irishmanhimself, with a touch of the old Irish soldier as drawn by CharlesLever, gay-hearted, proud of his boys, he was always pleased to see mebecause he knew I had a warm spot in my heart for the Irish troops. Hehad a good story to tell every time, and passed me on to "the boys" toget at the heart of them. It was long before he lost hope of keeping thedivision together, though it was hard to get recruits and losses werehigh at Guillemont and Ginchy. For the first time he lost heart and wasvery sad when the division was cut to pieces in a Flanders battle. It lost 2, 000 men and 162 officers before the battle began--they wereshelled to death in the trenches--and 2, 000 men and 170 officers moreduring the progress of the battle. It was murderous and ghastly. 

General Harper of the 51st (Highland) Division, afterward commanding the4th Corps, had the respect of his troops, though they called him "Uncle"because of his shock of white hair. The Highland division, under hiscommand, fought many battles and gained great honor, even from theenemy, who feared them and called the kilted men "the ladies from hell. "It was to them the Germans sent their message in a small balloonduring the retreat from the Somme: "Poor old 51st. Still sticking it!Cheery-oh!"

"Uncle" Harper invited me to lunch in his mess, and was ironicalwith war correspondents, and censors, and the British public, and newtheories of training, and many things in which he saw no sense. Therewas a smoldering passion in him which glowed in his dark eyes. 

He was against bayonet-training, which took the field against rifle-firefor a time. 

"No man in this war, " he said, with a sweeping assertion, "has ever beenkilled by the bayonet unless he had his hands up first. " And, broadlyspeaking, I think he was right, in spite of the Director of Training, who was extremely annoyed with me when I quoted this authority. 

XX

I met many other generals who were men of ability, energy, high senseof duty, and strong personality. I found them intellectually, with fewexceptions, narrowly molded to the same type, strangely limited in theirrange of ideas and qualities of character. 

"One has to leave many gaps in one's conversation with generals, " said afriend of mine, after lunching with an army commander. 

That was true. One had to talk to them on the lines of leading articlesin The Morning Post. Their patriotism, their knowledge of human nature, their idealism, and their imagination were restricted to the traditionalviews of English country gentlemen of the Tory school. Anything outsidethat range of thought was to them heresy, treason, or wishy-washysentiment. 

What mainly was wrong with our generalship was the system which putthe High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the oldschool of war, unable, by reason of their age and traditions, to getaway from rigid methods and to become elastic in face of new conditions. 

Our Staff College had been hopelessly inefficient in its system oftraining, if I am justified in forming such an opinion from specimensproduced by it, who had the brains of canaries and the manners ofPotsdam. There was also a close corporation among the officers of theRegular Army, so that they took the lion's share of staff appointments, thus keeping out brilliant young men of the new armies, whosebrain-power, to say the least of it, was on a higher level than that ofthe Sandhurst standard. Here and there, where the unprofessional soldierobtained a chance of high command or staff authority, he proved thevalue of the business mind applied to war, and this was seen veryclearly--blindingly--in the able generalship of the Australian Corps, inwhich most of the commanders, like Generals Hobbs, Monash, and others, were men in civil life before the war. The same thing was observed inthe Canadian Corps, General Currie, the corps commander, having beenan estate agent, and many of his high officers having had no militarytraining of any scientific importance before they handled their own menin France and Flanders. 

XXI

As there are exceptions to every rule, so harsh criticism must bemodified in favor of the generalship and organization of the SecondArmy-of rare efficiency under the restrictions and authority of theGeneral Staff. I often used to wonder what qualities belonged to SirHerbert Plumer, the army commander. In appearance he was almosta caricature of an old-time British general, with his ruddy, pippin-cheeked face, with white hair, and a fierce little whitemustache, and blue, watery eyes, and a little pot-belly and shortlegs. He puffed and panted when he walked, and after two minutes in hiscompany Cyril Maude would have played him to perfection. The staff-workof his army was as good in detail as any machinery of war may be, andthe tactical direction of the Second Army battles was not slipshod norhaphazard, as so many others, but prepared with minute attention todetail and after thoughtful planning of the general scheme. The battleof Wytschaete and Messines was a model in organization and method, andworked in its frightful destructiveness like the clockwork of a deathmachine. Even the battles of Flanders in the autumn of '17, ghastly asthey were in the losses of our men in the state of the ground throughwhich they had to fight, and in futile results, were well organized bythe Second Army headquarters, compared with the abominable mismanagementof other troops, the contrast being visible to every battalion officerand even to the private soldier. How much share of this was due to SirHerbert Plumer it is impossible for me to tell, though it is fair togive him credit for soundness of judgment in general ideas and in thechoice of men. 

He had for his chief of staff Sir John Harington, and beyond all doubtthis general was the organizing brain of to Second Army, though withpunctilious chivalry he gave, always, the credit of all his work tothe army commander. A thin, nervous, highly strung man, with extremesimplicity of manner and clarity of intelligence, he impressed me as abrain of the highest temper and quality in staff-work. His memory fordetail was like a card-index system, yet his mind was not clogged withdetail, but saw the wood as well as the trees, and the whole broad sweepof the problem which confronted him. There was something fascinating aswell as terrible in his exposition of a battle that he was planning. Forthe first time in his presence and over his maps, I saw that after allthere was such a thing as the science of war, and that it was not alwaysa fetish of elementary ideas raised to the nth degree of pomposity, asI had been led to believe by contact with other generals andstaff-officers. Here at least was a man who dealt with it as ascientific business, according to the methods of science--calculatingthe weight and effect of gun-fire, the strength of the enemy's defensesand man-power, the psychology of German generalship and of Germanunits, the pressure which could be put on British troops before thebreaking-point of courage, the relative or cumulative effects ofpoison-gas, mines, heavy and light artillery, tanks, the disposition ofGerman guns and the probability of their movement in this direction orthat, the amount of their wastage under our counter-battery work, theadvantages of attacks in depth--one body of troops "leap-frogging, "another in an advance to further objectives--the time-table oftransport, the supply of food and water and ammunition, the comfort oftroops before action, and a thousand other factors of success. 

Before every battle fought by the Second Army, and of the eve of it, SirJohn Harington sent for the war correspondents and devoted an hour ormore to a detailed explanation of his plans. He put down all his cardson the table with perfect candor, hiding nothing, neither minimizing norexaggerating the difficulties and dangers of the attack, pointing outthe tactical obstacles which must be overcome before any chance ofsuccess, and exposing the general strategy in the simplest and clearestspeech. 

I used to study him at those times, and marveled at him. After intenseand prolonged work at all this detail involving the lives of thousandsof men, he was highly wrought, with every nerve in his body and brainat full tension, but he was never flurried, never irritable, neverdepressed or elated by false pessimism or false optimism. He was achemist explaining the factors of a great experiment of which theresult was still uncertain. He could only hope for certain results aftercareful analysis and synthesis. Yet he was not dehumanized. He laughedsometimes at surprises he had caused the enemy, or was likely to causethem--surprises which would lead to a massacre of their men. He warmedto the glory of the courage of the troops who were carrying out hisplans. 

"It depends on these fellows, " he would say. "I am setting them adifficult job. If they can do it, as I hope and believe, it will bea fine achievement. They have been very much tried, poor fellows, buttheir spirit is still high, as I know from their commanding officers. "

One of his ambitions was to break down the prejudice between thefighting units and the Staff. "We want them to know that we are allworking together, for the same purpose and with the same zeal. Theycannot do without us, as we cannot do without them, and I want them tofeel that the work done here is to help them to do theirs more easily, with lighter losses, in better physical conditions, with organizationbehind them at every stage. "

Many times the Second Army would not order an attack or decide the timeof it before consulting the divisional generals and brigadiers, andobtaining their consensus of opinion. The officers and men in the SecondArmy did actually come to acknowledge the value of the staff-work behindthem, and felt a confidence in its devotion to their interests which wasrare on the western front. 

At the end of one of his expositions Sir John Harington would rise andgather up his maps and papers, and say:

"Well, there you are, gentlemen. You know as much as I do about theplans for to-morrow's battle. At the end of the day you will be able tosee the result of all our work and tell me things I do not know. "

Those conferences took place in the Second Army headquarters on CasselHill, in a big building which was a casino before the war, with afar-reaching view across Flanders, so that one could see in the distancethe whole sweep of the Ypres salient, and southward the country belowNotre Dame de Lorette, with Merville and Hazebrouck in the foreground. Often we assembled in a glass house, furnished with trestle tables onwhich maps were spread, and, thinking back to these scenes, I remembernow, as I write, the noise of rain beating on that glass roof, and theclammy touch of fog on the window-panes stealing through the cracks andcreeping into the room. The meteorologist of the Second Army was oftena gloomy prophet, and his prophecies were right. How it rained on nightswhen hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were waiting in theirtrenches to attack in a murky dawn!. .. We said good night to GeneralHarington, each one of us, I think, excited by the thought of the dramaof human life and death which we had heard in advance in that glasshouse on the hill; to be played out by flesh and blood before manyhours had passed. A kind of sickness took possession of my soul when Istumbled down the rock path from those headquarters in pitch darkness, over slabs of stones designed by a casino architect to break one's neck, with the rain dribbling down one's collar, and, far away, watery lightsin the sky, of gun-flashes and ammunition-dumps afire, and the noise ofartillery thudding in dull, crumbling shocks. We were starting earlyto see the opening of the battle and its backwash. There would be morestreams of bloody, muddy men, more crowds of miserable prisoners, moredead bodies lying in the muck of captured ground, more shells plunginginto the wet earth and throwing up columns of smoke and mud, more deadhorses, disemboweled, and another victory at fearful cost, over one ofthe Flanders ridges. 

Curses and prayers surged up in my heart. How long was this to goon--this massacre of youth, this agony of men? Was there no sanity leftin the world that could settle the argument by other means than this?When we had taken that ridge to-morrow there would be another to take, and another. And what then? Had we such endless reserves of men that wecould go on gaining ground at such a price? Was it to be exterminationon both sides? The end of civilization itself? General Harington hadsaid: "The enemy is still very strong. He has plenty of reserves on handand he is fighting hard. It won't be a walk-over to-morrow. "

As an onlooker I was overwhelmed by the full measure of all this tragicdrama. The vastness and the duration of its horror appalled me. I wentto my billet in an old monastery, and sat there in the darkness, mywindow glimmering with the faint glow of distant shell-flashes, andsaid, "O God, give us victory to-morrow, if that may help us to theend. " Then to bed, without undressing. There was an early start beforethe dawn. Major Lytton would be with me. He had a gallant look along theduckboards. .. Or Montague--white-haired Montague, who liked to gain afar objective, whatever the risk, and gave one a little courage byhis apparent fearlessness. I had no courage on those early mornings ofbattle. All that I had, which was little, oozed out of me when we cameto the first dead horses and the first dead men, and passed the tumultof our guns firing out of the mud, and heard the scream of shells. Ihated it all with a cold hatred; and I went on hating it for yearsthat seem a lifetime. I was not alone in that hatred, and other men hadgreater cause, though it was for their sake that I suffered most, asan observer of their drama of death. .. As observers we saw most of thegrisly game. 

PART TWO. THE SCHOOL OF COURAGE

EARLY DAYS WITH THE NEW ARMY

I

By the time stationary warfare had been established on the western frontin trench lines from the sea to Switzerland, the British Regular Armyhad withered away. That was after the retreat from Mons, the victoryof the Marne, the early battles round Ypres, and the slaughter at NeuveChapelle. The "Old Contemptibles" were an army of ghosts whose deadclay was under earth in many fields of France, but whose spirit still"carried on" as an heroic tradition to those who came after them intothose same fields, to the same fate. The only survivors were Regularofficers taken out of the fighting-lines to form the staffs of newdivisions and to train the army of volunteers now being raised at home, and men who were recovering from wounds or serving behind the lines:those, and non-commissioned officers who were the best schoolmasters ofthe new boys, the best friends and guides of the new officers, stubbornin their courage, hard and ruthless in their discipline, foul-mouthedaccording to their own traditions, until they, too, fell in theshambles. It was in March of 1915 that a lieutenant-colonel in thetrenches said to me: "I am one out of 150 Regular officers still servingwith their battalions. That is to say, there are 150 of us left in thefighting-lines out of 1, 500. "

That little Regular Army of ours had justified its pride in a longhistory of fighting courage. It had helped to save England and France byits own death. Those boys of ours whom I had seen in the first Augustof the war, landing at Boulogne and marching, as though to a festival, toward the enemy, with French girls kissing them and loading them withfruit and flowers, had proved the quality of their spirit and training. As riflemen they had stupefied the enemy, brought to a sudden check byforces they had despised. They held their fire until the German rankswere within eight hundred yards of them, and then mowed them down asthough by machine-gun fire--before we had machine-guns, except as rarespecimens, here and there. Our horse artillery was beyond any doubt thebest in the world at that time. Even before peace came German generalspaid ungrudging tributes to the efficiency of our Regular Army, writingdown in their histories of war that this was the model of all armies, the most perfectly trained. .. It was spent by the spring of '15. Itsmemory remains as the last epic of those professional soldiers who, through centuries of English history, took "the King's shilling" andfought when they were told to fight, and left their bones in far placesof the world and in many fields in Europe, and won for the Britishsoldier universal fame as a terrible warrior. There will never be aRegular Army like that. Modern warfare has opened the arena to themultitude. They may no longer sit in the Coliseum watching the paidgladiators. If there be war they must take their share of its sacrifice. They must be victims as well as victors. They must pay for the luxury ofconquest, hatred, and revenge by their own bodies, and for their safetyagainst aggression by national service. 

After the first quick phases of the war this need of national soldiersto replace the professional forces became clear to the military leaders. The Territorials who had been raised for home defense were sent out tofill up the gaps, and their elementary training was shown to be goodenough, as a beginning, in the fighting-lines. The courage of thoseTerritorial divisions who came out first to France was quickly proved, and soon put to the supreme test, in which they did not fail. From thebeginning to the end these men, who had made a game of soldiering indays of peace, yet a serious game to which they had devoted much oftheir spare time after working-hours, were splendid beyond all words ofpraise, and from the beginning to the end the Territorial officers--menof good standing in their counties, men of brain and businesstraining--were handicapped by lack of promotion and treated withcontempt by the High Command, who gave preference always to the Regularofficers in every staff appointment. 

This was natural and inevitable in armies controlled by the old Regularschool of service and tradition. As a close corporation in command ofthe machine, it was not within their nature or philosophy to make wayfor the new type. The Staff College was jealous of its own. Sandhurstand Woolwich were still the only schools of soldiering recognizedas giving the right "tone" to officers and gentlemen fit for highappointment. The cavalry, above all, held the power of supreme commandin a war of machines and chemistry and national psychology. .. . 

I should hate to attack the Regular officer. His caste belonged to thebest of our blood. He was the heir to fine old traditions of courage andleadership in battle. He was a gentleman whose touch of arrogance wassubject to a rigid code of honor which made him look to the comfort ofhis men first, to the health of his horse second, to his own physicalneeds last. He had the stern sense of justice of a Roman Centurian, andhis men knew that though he would not spare them punishment if guilty, he would give them always a fair hearing, with a point in their favor, if possible. It was in their code to take the greatest risk in time ofdanger, to be scornful of death in the face of their men whatever secretfear they had, and to be proud and jealous of the honor of the regiment. In action men found them good to follow--better than some of the youngofficers of the New Army, who had not the same traditional pride northe same instinct for command nor the same consideration for their men, though more easy-going and human in sympathy. 

So I salute in spirit those battalion officers of the Old Army whofulfilled their heritage until it was overwhelmed by new forces, andI find extenuating circumstances even in remembrance of the highstupidities, the narrow imagination, the deep, impregnable, intolerantignorance of Staff College men who with their red tape and their generalorders were the inquisitors and torturers of the new armies. Toutcomprendre c'est tout pardonner. They were molded in an old system, andcould not change their cliche. 

II

The New Army was called into being by Lord Kitchener and his advisers, who adopted modern advertising methods to stir the sluggish imaginationof the masses, so that every wall in London and great cities, everyfence in rural places, was placarded with picture-posters. 

. .. "What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?". .. "What will your bestgirl say if you're not in khaki?"

Those were vulgar appeals which, no doubt, stirred many simple souls, and so were good enough. It would have been better to let the peopleknow more of the truth of what was happening in France and Flanders--thetruth of tragedy, instead of carefully camouflaged communiques, hidingthe losses, ignoring the deeds of famous regiments, veiling all thedrama of that early fighting by a deliberate screen of mystery, thoughall was known to the enemy. It was fear of their own people, not of theenemy, which guided the rules of censorship then and later. 

For some little time the British people did not understand what washappening. How could they know? It appeared that all was going well. Then why worry? Soon there would be the joy-bells of peace, and the boyswould come marching home again, as in earlier wars. It was only veryslowly--because of the conspiracy of silence--that there crept into theconsciousness of our people the dim realization of a desperate struggleahead, in which all their young manhood would be needed to save Franceand Belgium, and--dear God!--England herself. It was as that thoughttouched one mind and another that the recruiting offices were crowdedwith young men. Some of them offered their bodies because of the promiseof a great adventure--and life had been rather dull in office andfactory and on the farm. Something stirred in their blood--an old callto youth. Some instinct of a primitive, savage kind, for open-air life, fighting, killing, the comradeship of hunters, violent emotions, thechance of death, surged up into the brains of quiet boys, clerks, mechanics, miners, factory hands. It was the call of the wild--thehark-back of the mind to the old barbarities of the world's dawn, whichis in the embryo of modern man. The shock of anger at frightful talesfrom Belgium--little children with their hands cut off (no evidence forthat one); women foully outraged; civilians shot in cold blood--sentmany men at a quick pace to the recruiting agents. Others were sentthere by the taunt of a girl, or the sneer of a comrade in khaki, or thestraight, steady look in the eyes of a father who said, "What about it, Dick?. .. The old country is up against it. " It was that last thoughtwhich worked in the brain of England's manhood. That was his real call, which whispered to men at the plow--quiet, ruminating lads, the peasanttype, the yeoman--and excited undergraduates in their rooms at Oxfordand Cambridge, and the masters of public schools, and all manner ofyoung men, and some, as I know, old in years but young in heart. "Theold country is in danger!" The shadow of a menace was creeping over somelittle patch of England--or of Scotland. 

"I's best be going, " said the village boy. 

"'Dulce et decorum est--'" said the undergraduate. 

"I hate the idea, but it's got to be done, " said the city--bred man. 

So they disappeared from their familiar haunts--more and more of themas the months passed. They were put into training-camps, "pigged" it ondirty straw in dirty barns, were ill-fed and ill-equipped, and trainedby hard--mouthed sergeants--tyrants and bullies in a good cause--untilthey became automata at the word of command, lost their souls, as itseemed, in that grinding-machine of military training, and cursed theirfate. Only comradeship helped them--not always jolly, if they happenedto be a class above their fellows, a moral peg above foul-mouthedslum-dwellers and men of filthy habits, but splendid if they were intheir own crowd of decent, laughter-loving, companionable lads. Elevenmonths' training! Were they ever going to the front? The war would beover before they landed in France. .. Then, at last, they came. 

III

It was not until July of 1915 that the Commander-in-Chief announcedthat a part of the New Army was in France, and lifted the veil from thesecret which had mystified people at home whose boys had gone from them, but who could not get a word of their doings in France. 

I saw the first of the "Kitchener men, " as we called them then. Thetramp of their feet in a steady scrunch, scrunch, along a gritty road ofFrance, passed the window of my billet very early in the mornings, and Ipoked my head out to get another glimpse of those lads marching forwardto the firing-line. For as long as history lasts the imagination of ourpeople will strive to conjure up the vision of those boys who, in theyear of 1915, went out to Flanders, not as conscript soldiers, but asvolunteers, for the old country's sake, to take their risks and "dotheir bit" in the world's bloodiest war. I saw those fellows day by day, touched hands with them, went into the trenches with them, heard theirfirst tales, and strolled into their billets when they had shaken downfor a night or two within sound of the guns. History will envy me that, this living touch with the men who, beyond any doubt, did in theirsimple way act and suffer things before the war ended which revealednew wonders of human courage and endurance. Some people envied methen--those people at home to whom those boys belonged, and who incountry towns and villages and suburban houses would have given theirhearts to get one look at them there in Flanders and to see the way oftheir life. .. How were they living? How did they like it? How were theysleeping? What did the Regulars think of the New Army?

"Oh, a very cheerful lot, " said a sergeant-major of the old Regulartype, who was having a quiet pipe over a half-penny paper in a shedat the back of some farm buildings in the neighborhood of Armentieres, which had been plugged by two hundred German shells that time the daybefore. (One never knew when the fellows on the other side would take itinto their heads to empty their guns that way. They had already killed alot of civilians thereabouts, but the others stayed on. )

"Not a bit of trouble with them, " said the sergeant-major, "and allas keen as when they grinned into a recruiting office and said, `I'mgoing. ' They're glad to be out. Over-trained, some of 'em. For tenmonths we've been working 'em pretty hard. Had to, but they were willingenough. Now you couldn't find a better battalion, though some morefamous. .. Till we get our chance, you know. "

He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the open door of an old barn, where a party of his men were resting. 

"You'll find plenty of hot heads among them, but no cold feet. I'll beton that. "

The men were lying on a stone floor with haversacks for pillows, orsquatting tailor-wise, writing letters home. From a far corner came awhistling trio, harmonized in a tune which for some reason made me thinkof hayfields in southern England. 

They belonged to a Sussex battalion, and I said, "Any one here fromBurpham?"

One of the boys sat up, stared, flushed to the roots of his yellow hair, and said, "Yes. "

I spoke to him of people I knew there, and he was astonished that Ishould know them. Distressed also in a queer way. Those memories of aSussex village seemed to break down some of the hardness in which he hadcased himself. I could see a frightful homesickness in his blue eyes. 

"P'raps I've seed the last o' Burpham, " he said in a kind of whisper, sothat the other men should not hear. 

The other men were from Arundel, Littlehampton, and Sussex villages. They were of Saxon breed. There was hardly a difference between themand some German prisoners I saw, yellow-haired as they were, with fair, freckled, sun-baked skins. They told me they were glad to be out inFrance. Anything was better than training at home. 

"I like Germans more'n sergeant-majors, " said one young yokel, and theothers shouted with laughter at his jest. 

"Perhaps you haven't met the German sergeants, " I said. 

"I've met our'n, " said the Sussex boy. "A man's a fool to be a soldier. Eh, lads?"

They agreed heartily, though they were all volunteers. 

"Not that we're skeered, " said one of them. "We'll be glad when thefighting begins. "

"Speak for yourself, Dick Meekcombe, and don't forget the shells lastnight. "

There was another roar of laughter. Those boys of the South Saxonswere full of spirit. In their yokel way they were disguising their realthoughts--their fear of being afraid, their hatred of the thought ofdeath--very close to them now--and their sense of strangeness in thisscene on the edge of Armentieres, a world away from their old life. 

The colonel sat in a little room at headquarters, a bronzed man witha grizzled mustache and light-blue eyes, with a fine tenderness in hissmile. 

"These boys of mine are all right, " he said. "They're dear fellows, andready for anything. Of course, it was anxious work at first, but my N. C. O. 's are a first-class lot, and we're ready for business. "

He spoke of the recruiting task which had begun the business elevenmonths ago. It had not been easy, among all those scattered villages ofthe southern county. He had gone hunting among the farms and cottagesfor likely young fellows. They were of good class, and he had picked thelads of intelligence, and weeded out the others. They came from agood stock--the yeoman breed. One could not ask for better stuff. Theofficers were men of old county families, and they knew their men. That was a great thing. So far they had been very lucky with regard tocasualties, though it was unfortunate that a company commander, a finefellow who had been a schoolmaster and a parson, should have been pickedoff by a sniper on his first day out. 

The New Army had received its baptism of fire, though nothing veryfierce as yet. They were led on in easy stages to the danger-zone. Itwas not fair to plunge them straight away into the bad places. But thetest of steadiness was good enough on a dark night behind the reservetrenches, when the reliefs had gone up, and there was a bit of diggingto do in the open. 

"Quiet there, boys, " said the sergeant-major. "And no larks. "

It was not a larky kind of place or time. There was no moon, and a lightdrizzle of rain fell. The enemy's trenches were about a thousand yardsaway, and their guns were busy in the night, so that the shells cameoverhead, and lads who had heard the owls hoot in English woods nowheard stranger night-birds crying through the air, with the noise ofrushing wings, ending in a thunderclap. 

"And my old mother thinks I'm enjoying myself!" said the heir to aseaside lodging-house. 

"Thirsty work, this grave-digging job, " said a lad who used to skate onrollers between the bath-chairs of Brighton promenade. 

"Can't see much in those shells, " said a young man who once sold ladies'blouses in an emporium of a south coast village. "How those newspaperchaps do try to frighten us!"

He put his head on one side with a sudden jerk. 

"What's that? Wasps?"

A number of insects were flying overhead with a queer, sibilant noise. Somewhere in the darkness there was a steady rattle in the throat of abeast. 

"What's that, Sergeant?"

"Machine-gums, my child. Keep your head down, or you'll lose hold ofit. .. Steady, there. Don't get jumpy, now!"

The machine-gun was firing too high to do any serious damage. It wasprobably a ricochet from a broken tree which made one of the boyssuddenly drop his spade and fall over it in a crumpled way. 

"Get up, Charlie, " said the comrade next to him; and then, in a scaredvoice, "Oh, Sergeant!"

"That's all right, " said the sergeant-major. "We're getting off verylightly. New remember what I've been telling you. .. Stretcher this way. "

They were very steady through the night, this first company of the NewArmy. 

"Like old soldiers, sir, " said the sergeant-major, when he stoodchatting with the colonel after breakfast. 

It was a bit of bad luck, though not very bad, after all--which made theGermans shell a hamlet into which I went just as some of the New Armywere marching through to their quarters. These men had already seenwhat shellfire could do to knock the beauty out of old houses and quietstreets. They had gone tramping through one or two villages to whichthe enemy's guns had turned their attention, and had received thatunforgetable sensation of one's first sight of roofless cottages, andgreat gaps in garden walls, and tall houses which have tumbled insidethemselves. But now they saw this destruction in the process, and stoodvery still, listening to the infernal clatter as shells burst at theother end of the street, tumbling down huge masses of masonry andplugging holes into neat cottages, and tearing great gashes out ofred-brick walls. 

"Funny business!" said one of the boys. 

"Regular Drury Lane melodrama, " said another. 

"Looks as if some of us wouldn't be home in time for lunch, " was anothercomment, greeted by a guffaw along the line. 

They tried to see the humor of it, though there was a false note insome of the jokes. But it was the heroic falsity of boys whose prideis stronger than their fear, that inevitable fear which chills one whenthis beastliness is being done. 

"Not a single casualty, " said one of the officers when the storm ofshells ended with a few last concussions and a rumble of falling bricks. "Anything wrong with our luck?"

Everything was all right with the luck of this battalion of the New Armyin its first experience of war on the first night in the danger-zone. No damage was done even when two shells came into one of their billets, where a number of men were sleeping after a hard day and a long march. 

"I woke up pretty quick, " said one of them, "and thought the house hadfallen in. I was out of it before the second came. Then I laughed. I'm aheavy sleeper, you know. [He spoke as if I knew his weakness. ] My motherbought me an alarm-clock last birthday. 'Perhaps you'll be down forbreakfast now, ' she said. But a shell is better--as a knocker-up. Ididn't stop to dress. "

Death had missed him by a foot or two, but he laughed at the fluke ofhis escape. 

"K. 's men" had not forgotten how to laugh after those eleven monthsof hard training, and they found a joke in grisly things which do notappeal humorously to sensitive men. 

"Any room for us there?" asked one of these bronzed fellows as hemarched with his battalion past a cemetery where the fantastic devicesof French graves rose above the churchyard wall. 

"Oh, we'll do all right in the open air, all along of the Germantrenches, " was the answer he had from the lad at his side. They grinnedat their own wit. 

IV

I did not find any self-conscious patriotism among the rank and file ofthe New Army. The word itself meant nothing to them. Unlike the Frenchsoldier, to whom patriotism is a religion and who has the name ofFrance on his lips at the moment of peril, our men were silent about thereasons for their coming out and the cause for which they risked theirlives. It was not for imperial power. Any illusion to "The Empire" leftthem stone--cold unless they confused it with the Empire Music Hall, when their hearts warmed to the name. It was not because they hatedGermans, because after a few turns in the trenches many of them had afellow-feeling for the poor devils over the way, and to the end of thewar treated any prisoners they took (after the killing in hot blood)like pet monkeys or tame bears. But for stringent regulations they wouldhave fraternized with the enemy at the slightest excuse, and did soin the winter of 1914, to the great scandal of G. H. Q. "What'spatriotism?" asked a boy of me, in Ypres, and there was hard scorn inhis voice. Yet the love of the old country was deep down in the roots oftheir hearts, and, as with a boy who came from the village where I livedfor a time, the name of some such place held all the meaning of life tomany of them. The simple minds of country boys clung fast to that, wentback in waking dreams to dwell in a cottage parlor where their parentssat, and an old clock ticked, and a dog slept with its head on its paws. The smell of the fields and the barns, the friendship of familiar trees, the heritage that was in their blood from old yeoman ancestry, touchedthem with the spirit of England, and it was because of that they fought. 

The London lad was more self-conscious, had a more glib way ofexpressing his convictions, but even he hid his purpose in the war undera covering of irony and cynical jests. It was the spirit of the old cityand the pride of it which helped him to suffer, and in his daydreams wasthe clanging of 'buses from Charing Cross to the Bank, the lights of theembankment reflected in the dark river, the back yard where he had kepthis bicycle, or the suburban garden where he had watered his mother'splants. .. London! Good old London!. .. His heart ached for it sometimeswhen, as sentry, he stared across the parapet to the barbed wire in NoMan's Land. 

One night, strolling outside my own billet and wandering down the lanea way, I heard the sound of singing coming from a big brick barn onthe roadside. I stood close under the blank wall at the back of thebuilding, and listened. The men were singing "Auld Lang Syne" to theaccompaniment of a concertina and a mouth-organ. They were taking parts, and the old tune--so strange to hear out in a village of France, in thewar zone--sounded very well, with deep-throated harmonies. Presently theconcertina changed its tune, and the men of the New Army sang "God Savethe King. " I heard it sung a thousand times or more on royal festivalsand tours, but listening to it then from that dark old barn in Flanders, where a number of "K. 's men" lay on the straw a night or two away fromthe ordeal of advanced trenches, in which they had to take their turn, Iheard it with more emotion than ever before. In that anthem, chantedby these boys in the darkness, was the spirit of England. If I had beenking, like that Harry who wandered round the camp of Agincourt, wherehis men lay sleeping, I should have been glad to stand and listenoutside that barn and hear those words:

Send him victorious, Happy and glorious. 

As the chief of the British tribes, the fifth George received histribute from those warrior boys who had come out to fight for the flagthat meant to them some old village on the Sussex Downs, where a motherand a sweetheart waited, or some town in the Midlands where the wallswere placarded with posters which made the Germans gibe, or old London, where the 'buses went clanging down the Strand. 

As I went back up the lane a dark figure loomed out, and I heard theclick of a rifle-bolt. It was one of K. 's men, standing sentry outsidethe camp. 

"Who goes there?"

It was a cockney voice. 

"Friends. "

"Pass, friends. All's well. "

Yes, all was well then, as far as human courage and the spirit ofa splendid youthfulness counted in that war of high explosives anddestructive chemistry. The fighting in front of these lads of the NewArmy decided the fate of the world, and it was the valor of those youngsoldiers who, in a little while, were flung into hell-fires and killedin great numbers, which made all things different in the philosophy ofmodern life. That concertina in the barn was playing the music of anepic which will make those who sang it seem like heroes of mythology tothe future race which will read of this death-struggle in Europe. Yet itwas a cockney, perhaps from Clapham junction or Peckham Rye, who said, like a voice of Fate, "All's well. "

V

When the New Army first came out to learn their lessons in the trenchesin the long days before open warfare, the enemy had the best of it inevery way. In gunpowder and in supplies of ammunition he was our masterall along the line, and made use of his mastery by flinging over largenumbers of shells, of all sizes and types, which caused a heavy tollin casualties to us; while our gunners were strictly limited to a fewrounds a day, and cursed bitterly because they could not "answer back. "In March of 1915 I saw the first fifteen-inch howitzer open fire. Wecalled this monster "grandma, " and there was a little group of generalson the Scherpenberg, near Kemmel, to see the effect of the first shell. Its target was on the lower slope of the Wytschaete Ridge, where sometrenches were to be attacked for reasons only known by our generalsand by God. Preliminary to the attack our field-guns opened fire withshrapnel, which scattered over the German trenches--their formidableearthworks with deep, shell-proof dugouts--like the glitter of confetti, and had no more effect than that before the infantry made a rush for theenemy's line and were mown down by machine-gun fire--the Germans werevery strong in machine-guns, and we were very weak--in the usual wayof those early days. The first shell fired by our monster howitzer washeralded by a low reverberation, as of thunder, from the field belowus. Then, several seconds later, there rose from the Wytschaete Ridge atall, black column of smoke which stood steady until the breeze clawedat it and tore it to tatters. 

"Some shell!" said an officer. "Now we ought to win the war--I don'tthink!"

Later there arrived the first 9. 2 (nine-point-two)--"aunty, " as wecalled it. 

Well, that was something in the way of heavy artillery, and graduallyour gun-power grew and grew, until we could "answer back, " and give morethan came to us; but meanwhile the New Army had to stand the racket, as the Old Army had done, being strafed by harassing fire, having theirtrenches blown in, and their billets smashed, and their bodies broken, at all times and in all places within range of German guns. 

Everywhere the enemy was on high ground and had observation of ourposition. From the Westhook Ridge and the Pilkem Ridge his observerswatched every movement of our men round Ypres, and along the main roadto Hooge, signaling back to their guns if anybody of them were visible. From the Wytschaete Ridge (White-sheet, as we called it) and Messinesthey could see for miles across our territory, not only the trenches, but the ways up to the trenches, and the villages behind them and theroads through the villages. They looked straight into Kemmel villageand turned their guns on to it when our men crouched among its ruinsand opened the graves in the cemetery and lay old bones bare. Clear andvivid to them were the red roofs of Dickebusch village and the gauntribs of its broken houses. (I knew a boy from Fleet Street who wascobbler there in a room between the ruins. ) Those Germans gazed down theroads to Vierstraat and Vormizeele, and watched for the rising ofwhite dust which would tell them when men were marching by--more cannonfodder. Southward they saw Neuve Eglise, with its rag of a tower, andPlug Street wood. In cheerful mood, on sunny days, German gunners withshells to spare ranged upon separate farm-houses and isolated barnsuntil they became bits of oddly standing brick about great holes. Theyshelled the roads down which our transport wagons went at night, and thecommunication trenches to which our men moved up to the front lines, and gun-positions revealed by every flash, and dugouts foolishly frailagainst their 5. 9's, which in those early days we could only answer bya few pip-squeaks. They made fixed targets of crossroads and points ourmen were bound to pass, so that to our men those places became sinisterwith remembered horror and present fear: Dead Horse Corner and DeadCow Farm, and the farm beyond Plug Street; Dead Dog Farm and the MoatedGrange on the way to St. -Eloi; Stinking Farm and Suicide Corner andShell-trap Barn, out by Ypres. 

All the fighting youth of our race took their turn in those places, searched along those roads, lived in ditches and dugouts there, underconstant fire. In wet holes along the Yser Canal by Ypres, youngofficers who had known the decencies of home life tried to camouflagetheir beastliness by giving a touch of decoration to the clammy walls. They bought Kirchner prints of little ladies too lightly clad for theclimate of Flanders, and pinned them up as a reminder of the daintyfeminine side of life which here was banished. They brought brokenchairs and mirrors from the ruins of Ypres, and said, "It's quite cozy, after all!"

And they sat there chatting, as in St. James's Street clubs, in the sametone of voice, with the same courtesy and sense of humor--while theylistened to noises without, and wondered whether it would be to-day orto-morrow, or in the middle of the sentence they were speaking, thatbits of steel would smash through that mud above their heads and tearthem to bits and make a mess of things. 

There was an officer of the Coldstream Guards who sat in one of theseholes, like many others. A nice, gentle fellow, fond of music, a finejudge of wine, a connoisseur of old furniture and good food. It wascruelty to put such a man into a hole in the earth, like the ape-housesof Hagenbeck's Zoo. He had been used to comfort, the little luxuriesof court life. There, on the canal-bank, he refused to sink into thesqualor. He put on pajamas at night before sleeping in his bunk--silkpajamas--and while waiting for his breakfast smoked his own brand ofgold-tipped cigarettes, until one morning a big shell blew out theback of his dugout and hurled him under a heap of earth and timber. Hecrawled out, cursing loudly with a nice choice of language, and then litanother gold--tipped cigarette, and called to his servant for breakfast. His batman was a fine lad, brought up in the old traditions of serviceto an officer of the Guards, and he provided excellent little meals, done to a turn, until something else happened, and he was buried alivewithin a few yards of his master. .. Whenever I went to the canal-bank, and I went there many times (when still and always hungry highvelocities came searching for a chance meal), I thought of my friendin the Guards, and of other men I knew who had lived there in the worstdays, and some of whom had died there. They hated that canal-bank anddreaded it, but they jested in their dugouts, and there was the laughterof men who hid the fear in their hearts and were "game" until somebit of steel plugged them with a gaping wound or tore their flesh totatters. 

VI

Because the enemy was on the high ground and our men were in the lowground, many of our trenches were wet and waterlogged, even in summer, after heavy rain. In winter they were in bogs and swamps, up by St. -Eloiand southward this side of Gommecourt, and in many other evil places. The enemy drained his water into our ditches when he could, with thecunning and the science of his way of war, and that made our men savage. 

I remember going to the line this side of Fricourt on an August day in'15. It was the seventeenth of August, as I have it in my diary, andthe episode is vivid in my mind because I saw then the New Army ladslearning one of the lessons of war in one of the foulest places. I alsolearned the sense of humor of a British general, and afterward, notenjoying the joke, the fatalistic valor of officers and men (in civillife a year before) who lived with the knowledge that the ground beneaththem was mined and charged with high explosives, and might hurl them toeternity between the whiffs of a cigarette. 

We were sitting in the garden of the general's headquarters, having apicnic meal before going into the trenches. In spite of the wasps, whichattacked the sandwiches, it was a nice, quiet place in time of war. No shell same crashing in our neighborhood (though we were well withinrange of the enemy's guns), and the loudest noise was the drop of anover-ripe apple in the orchard. Later on a shrill whistle signaled ahostile airplane overhead, but it passed without throwing a bomb. 

"You will have a moist time in some of the trenches, " said the general(whose boots were finely polished). "The rain has made them ratherdamp. .. But you must get down as far as the mine craters. We'reexpecting the Germans to fire one at any moment, and some of ourtrenches are only six yards away from the enemy. It's an interestingplace. "

The interest of it seemed to me too much of a good thing, and I uttereda pious prayer that the enemy would not explode his beastly mine underme. It makes such a mess of a man. 

A staff captain came out with a report, which he read: "The sound ofpicks has been heard close to our sap-head. The enemy will probablyexplode their mine in a few hours. "

"That's the place I was telling you about, " said the general. "It's wellworth a visit. .. But you must make up your mind to get your feet wet. "

As long as I could keep my head dry and firmly fixed to my shoulders, Iwas ready to brave the perils of wet feet with any man. 

It had been raining heavily for a day or two. I remember thinking thatin London--which seemed a long way off--people were going about underumbrellas and looking glum when their clothes were splashed by passingomnibuses. The women had their skirts tucked up and showed their prettyankles. (Those things used to happen in the far-off days of peace. ) Butin the trenches, those that lay low, rain meant something different, andhideously uncomfortable for men who lived in holes. Our soldiers, who cursed the rain--as in the old days, "they swore terribly inFlanders"--did not tuck their clothes up above their ankles. They tookoff their trousers. 

There was something ludicrous, yet pitiable, in the sight of those heftymen coming back through the communication trenches with the tails oftheir shirts flapping above their bare legs, which were plastered with ayellowish mud. Shouldering their rifles or their spades, they trudged ongrimly through two feet of water, and the boots which they wore withoutsocks squelched at every step with a loud, sucking noise--"like a Germandrinking soup, " said an officer who preceded me. 

"Why grouse?" he said, presently. "It's better than Brighton!"

It was a queer experience, this paddling through the long communicationtrenches, which wound in and out like the Hampton Court maze toward thefront line, and the mine craters which made a salient to our right, bya place called the "Tambour. " Shells came whining overhead and somewherebehind us iron doors were slamming in the sky, with metallic bangs, asthough opening and shutting in a tempest. The sharp crack of rifle-shotsshowed that the snipers were busy on both sides, and once I stood in adeep pool, with the water up to my knees, listening to what sounded likethe tap-tap-tap of invisible blacksmiths playing a tattoo on an anvil. 

It was one of our machine-guns at work a few yards away from my head, which I ducked below the trench parapet. Splodge! went the officerin front of me, with a yell of dismay. The water was well above histop-boots. Splosh! went another man ahead, recovering from a side-slipin the oozy mud and clinging desperately to some bunches of yarrowgrowing up the side of the trench. Squelch! went a young gentleman whoseputtees and breeches had lost their glory and were but swabs about hiselegant legs. 

"Clever fellows!" said the officer, as two of us climbed on to thefire-stand of the trench in order to avoid a specially deep water-hole, and with ducked heads and bodies bent double (the Germans were only twohundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth forat least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner ofthe next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough ofdespond. 

"And I hope they can swim!" said an ironical voice from a dugout, as theofficers passed. They were lying in wet mud in those square burrows, themen who had been working all night under their platoon commanders, andwere now sleeping and resting in their trench dwellings. As I paddledon I glanced at those men lying on straw which gave out a moist smell, mixed with the pungent vapors of chloride of lime. They were notinterested in the German guns, which were giving their daily dose of"hate" to the village of Becourt-Becordel. The noise did not interrupttheir heavy, slumbrous breathing. Some of those who were awake werereading novelettes, forgetting war in the eternal plot of cheap romance. Others sat at the entrance of their burrows with their knees tucked up, staring gloomily to the opposite wall of the trench in day-dreams ofsome places betwixt Aberdeen and Hackney Downs. I spoke to one of them, and said, "How are you getting on?" He answered, "I'm not getting on. .. I don't see the fun of this. "

"Can you keep dry?"

"Dry?. .. I'm soaked to the skin. "

"What's it like here?"

"It's hell. .. The devils blow up mines to make things worse. "

Another boy spoke. 

"Don't you mind what he says, sir. He's always a gloomy bastard. Doesn'tbelieve in his luck. "

There were mascots for luck, at the doorways of their dugouts--a woman'sface carved in chalk, the name of a girl written in pebbles, a portraitof the King in a frame of withered wild flowers. 

A company of our New Army boys had respected a memento of French troopswho were once in this section of trenches. It was an altar builtinto the side of the trench, where mass was said each morning by asoldier--priest. It was decorated with vases and candlesticks, and abovethe altar-table was a statue, crudely modeled, upon the base of which Iread the words Notre Dame des Tranchees ("Our Lady of the Trenches"). Atablet fastened in the earth-wall recorded in French the desire of thosewho worshiped here:

"This altar, dedicated to Our Lady of the Trenches, was blessed by thechaplain of the French regiment. The 9th Squadron of the 6th Companyrecommends its care and preservation to their successors. Please do nottouch the fragile statue in trench-clay. "

"Our Lady of the Trenches!" It was the first time I had heard of thisnew title of the Madonna, whose spirit, if she visited those ditches ofdeath, must have wept with pity for all those poor children of mankindwhose faith was so unlike the work they had to do. 

From a dugout near the altar there came tinkling music. A young soldierwas playing the mandolin to two comrades. "All the latest ragtime, " saidone of them with a grin. 

So we paddled on our way, glimpsing every now and then over the parapetsat the German lines a few hundred yards away, and at a village in whichthe enemy was intrenched, quiet and sinister there. The water throughwhich we waded was alive with a multitude of swimming frogs. Redslugs crawled up the sides of the trenches, and queer beetles withdangerous-looking horns wriggled along dry ledges and invaded thedugouts in search of the vermin which infested them. 

"Rats are the worst plague, " said a colonel, coming out of the battalionheadquarters, where he had a hole large enough for a bed and table. "There are thousands of rats in this part of the line, and they'reaudacious devils. In the dugout next door the straw at night writheswith them. .. I don't mind the mice so much. One of them comes to dinneron my table every evening, a friendly little beggar who is very pallywith me. "

We looked out above the mine-craters, a chaos of tumbled earth, whereour trenches ran so close to the enemy's that it was forbidden to smokeor talk, and where our sappers listened with all their souls in theirears to any little tapping or picking which might signal approachingupheaval. The coats of some French soldiers, blown up long ago by someof these mines, looked like the blue of the chicory flower growing inthe churned-up soil. .. The new mine was not fired that afternoon, upto the time of my going away. But it was fired next day, and I wonderedwhether the gloomy boy had gone up with it. There was a foreknowledge ofdeath in his eyes. 

One of the officers had spoken to me privately. 

"I'm afraid of losing my nerve before the men. It haunts me, thatthought. The shelling is bad enough, but it's the mining business thatwears one's nerve to shreds. One never knows. "

I hated to leave him there to his agony. .. The colonel himself wasall nerves, and he loathed the rats as much as the shell-fire and themining, those big, lean, hungry rats of the trenches, who invaded thedugouts and frisked over the bodies of sleeping men. One young subalternwas in terror of them. He told me how he shot at one, seeing the glintof its eyes in the darkness. The bullet from his revolver ricochetedfrom wall to wall, and he was nearly court-martialed for having fired. 

The rats, the lice that lived on the bodies of our men, the water-loggedtrenches, the shell-fire which broke down the parapets and buried men inwet mud, wetter for their blood, the German snipers waiting for Englishheads, and then the mines--oh, a cheery little school of courage forthe sons of gentlemen! A gentle academy of war for the devil and GeneralSqueers!

VII

The city of Ypres was the capital of our battlefields in Flanders fromthe beginning to the end of the war, and the ground on which it stands, whether a new city rises there or its remnants of ruin stay as amemorial of dreadful things, will be forever haunted by the spirit ofthose men of ours who passed through its gates to fight in the fieldsbeyond or to fall within its ramparts. 

I went through Ypres so many times in early days and late days of thewar that I think I could find my way about it blindfold, even now. I sawit first in March of 1915, before the battle when the Germans firstused poison-gas and bombarded its choking people, and French and Britishsoldiers, until the city fell into a chaos of masonry. On that firstvisit I found it scarred by shell--fire, and its great Cloth Hall wasroofless and licked out by the flame of burning timbers, but most of thebuildings were still standing and the shops were busy with customersin khaki, and in the Grande Place were many small booths served by thewomen and girls who sold picture post-cards and Flemish lace and fancycakes and soap to British soldiers sauntering about without a thought ofwhat might happen here in this city, so close to the enemy's lines, soclose to his guns. I had tea in a bun-shop, crowded with young officers, who were served by two Flemish girls, buxom, smiling, glad of all theEnglish money they were making. 

A few weeks later the devil came to Ypres. The first sign of his workwas when a mass of French soldiers and colored troops, and English, Irish, Scottish, and Canadian soldiers came staggering through the Lilleand Menin gates with panic in their look, and some foul spell upon them. They were gasping for breath, vomiting, falling into unconsciousness, and, as they lay, their lungs were struggling desperately against somestifling thing. A whitish cloud crept up to the gates of Ypres, with asweet smell of violets, and women and girls smelled it and then gaspedand lurched as they ran and fell. It was after that when shells came inhurricane flights over Ypres, smashing the houses and setting themon fire, until they toppled and fell inside themselves. Hundreds ofcivilians hid in their cellars, and many were buried there. Otherscrawled into a big drain-pipe--there were wounded women and childrenamong them, and a young French interpreter, the Baron de Rosen, whotried to help them--and they stayed there three days and nights, intheir vomit and excrement and blood, until the bombardment ceased. Ypreswas a city of ruin, with a red fire in its heart where the Cloth Halland cathedral smoldered below their broken arches and high ribs ofmasonry that had been their buttresses and towers. 

When I went there two months later I saw Ypres as it stood through theyears of the war that followed, changing only in the disintegration ofits ruin as broken walls became more broken and fallen houses were rakedinto smaller fragments by new bombardments, for there was never a dayfor years in which Ypres was not shelled. 

The approach to it was sinister after one had left Poperinghe and passedthrough the skeleton of Vlamertinghe church, beyond Goldfish Chateau. .. For a long time Poperinghe was the last link with a life in which menand women could move freely without hiding from the pursuit of death;and even there, from time to time, there were shells from long-rangeguns and, later, night-birds dropping high-explosive eggs. Round aboutPoperinghe, by Reninghelst and Locre, long convoys of motor-wagons, taking up a new day's rations from the rail-heads, raised clouds of dustwhich powdered the hedges white. Flemish cart-horses with hugefringes of knotted string wended their way between motor-lorries andgun-limbers. Often the sky was blue above the hop-gardens, with fleecyclouds over distant woodlands and the gray old towers of Flemishchurches and the windmills on Mont Rouge and Mont Neir, whose sails haveturned through centuries of peace and strife. It all comes back to me asI write--that way to Ypres, and the sounds and the smells of the roadsand fields where the traffic of war went up, month after month, yearafter year. 

That day when I saw it first, after the gas-attack, was strangely quiet, I remember. There was "nothing doing, " as our men used to say. TheGerman gunners seemed asleep in the noonday sun, and it was a charmingday for a stroll and a talk about the raving madness of war under everyold hedge. 

"What about lunch in Dickebusch on the way up?" asked one of mycompanions. There were three of us. 

It seemed a good idea, and we walked toward the village which then--theywere early days!--looked a peaceful spot, with a shimmer of sunshineabove its gray thatch and red-tiled roofs. 

Suddenly one of us said, "Good God!"

An iron door had slammed down the corridors of the sky and the hamletinto which we were just going was blotted out by black smoke, which cameup from its center as though its market-place had opened up and vomitedout infernal vapors. 

"A big shell that!" said one man, a tall, lean-limbed officer, who laterin the war was sniper-in-chief of the British army. Something enragedhim at the sight of that shelled village. 

"Damn them!" he said. "Damn the war! Damn all dirty dogs who smash uplife!"

Four times the thing happened, and we were glad there had been a minuteor so between us and Dickebusch. (In Dickebusch my young cobbler friendfrom Fleet Street was crouching low, expecting death. ) The peace of theday was spoiled. There was seldom a real peace on the way to Ypres. TheGerman gunners had wakened up again. They always did. They were gettingbusy, those house-wreckers. The long rush of shells tore great holesthrough the air. Under a hedge, with our feet in the ditch, we ate theluncheon we had carried in our pockets. 

"A silly idea!" said the lanky man, with a fierce, sad look in his eyes. He was Norman-Irish, and a man of letters, and a crack shot, and all theboys he knew were being killed. 

"What's silly?" I asked, wondering what particular foolishness he wasthinking of, in a world of folly. 

"Silly to die with a broken bit of sandwich in one's mouth, just becausesome German fellow, some fat, stupid man a few miles away, looses off abit of steel in search of the bodies of men with whom he has no personalacquaintance. "

"Damn silly, " I said. 

"That's all there is to it in modern warfare, " said the lanky man. "It'snot like the old way of fighting, body to body. Your strength againstyour enemy's, your cunning against his. Now it is mechanics andchemistry. What is the splendor of courage, the glory of youth, whenguns kill at fifteen miles?"

Afterward this man went close to the enemy, devised tricks to make himshow his head, and shot each head that showed. 

The guns ceased fire. Their tumult died down, and all was quiet again. It was horribly quiet on our way into Ypres, across the railway, pastthe red-brick asylum, where a calvary hung unscathed on broken walls, past the gas-tank at the crossroads. This silence was not reassuring, asour heels clicked over bits of broken brick on our way into Ypres. Theenemy had been shelling heavily for three-quarters of an hour in themorning. There was no reason why he should not begin again. .. Iremember now the intense silence of the Grande Place that day afterthe gas-attack, when we three men stood there looking up at the charredruins of the Cloth Hall. It was a great solitude of ruin. No livingfigure stirred among the piles of masonry which were tombstones abovemany dead. We three were like travelers who had come to some capitalof an old and buried civilization, staring with awe and uncanny fear atthis burial-place of ancient splendor, with broken traces of peoples whoonce had lived here in security. I looked up at the blue sky above thosewhite ruins, and had an idea that death hovered there like a hawk readyto pounce. Even as one of us (not I) spoke the thought, the signal came. It was a humming drone high up in the sky. 

"Look out!" said the lanky man. "Germans!"

It was certain that two birds hovering over the Grande Place werehostile things, because suddenly white puffballs burst all round them, as the shrapnel of our own guns scattered about them. But they flewround steadily in a half-circle until they were poised above our heads. 

It was time to seek cover, which was not easy to find just there, wheremasses of stonework were piled high. At any moment things might drop. Iducked my head behind a curtain of bricks as I heard a shrill "coo-ee!"from a shell. It burst close with a scatter, and a tin cup was flungagainst a bit of wall close to where the lanky man sat in a shell-hole. He picked it up and said, "Queer!" and then smelled it, and said"Queer!" again. It was not an ordinary bomb. It had held some poisonousliquid from a German chemist's shop. Other bombs were dropping roundas the two hostile airmen circled overhead, untouched still by thefollowing shell-bursts. Then they passed toward their own lines, and myfriend in the shell-hole called to me and said, "Let's be going. "

It was time to go. 

When we reached the edge of the town our guns away back startedshelling, and we knew the Germans would answer. So we sat in a fieldnearby to watch the bombardment. The air moved with the rushing waveswhich tracked the carry of each shell from our batteries, and over Yprescame the high singsong of the enemies' answering voice. 

As the dusk fell there was a movement out from Vlamertinghe, a movementof transport wagons and marching men. They were going up in the darknessthrough Ypres--rations and reliefs. They were the New Army men of theWest Riding. 

"Carry on there, " said a young officer at the head of his company. Something in his eyes startled me. Was it fear, or an act of sacrifice?I wondered if he would be killed that night. Men were killed most nightson the way through Ypres, sometimes a few and sometimes many. One shellkilled thirty one night, and their bodies lay strewn, headless andlimbless, at the corner of the Grande Place. Transport wagons gallopedtheir way through, between bursts of shell-fire, hoping to dodge them, and sometimes not dodging them. I saw the litter of their wheels andshafts, and the bodies of the drivers, and the raw flesh of the deadhorses that had not dodged them. Many men were buried alive in Ypres, under masses of masonry when they had been sleeping in cellars, and werewakened by the avalanche above them. Comrades tried to dig them out, to pull away great stones, to get down to those vaults below from whichvoices were calling; and while they worked other shells came and laiddead bodies above the stones which had entombed their living comrades. That happened, not once or twice, but many times in Ypres. 

There was a Town Major of Ypres. Men said it was a sentence of deathto any officer appointed to that job. I think one of them I met had hadeleven predecessors. He sat in a cellar of the old prison, with walls ofsandbags on each side of him, but he could not sit there very long ata stretch, because it was his duty to regulate the traffic according tothe shell-fire. He kept a visitors' book as a hobby, until it was buriedunder piles of prison, and was a hearty, cheerful soul, in spite of themenace of death always about him. 

VIII

My memory goes back to a strange night in Ypres in those early days. Itwas Gullett, the Australian eyewitness, afterward in Palestine, who hadthe idea. 

"It would be a great adventure, " he said, as we stood listening to thegun-fire over there. 

"It would be damn silly, " said a staff officer. "Only a stern sense ofduty would make me do it. "

It was Gullett who was the brave man. 

We took a bottle of Cointreau and a sweet cake as a gift to anybattalion mess we might find in the ramparts, and were sorry forourselves when we failed to find it, nor, for a long time, any livingsoul. 

Our own footsteps were the noisiest sounds as we stumbled over thebroken stones. No other footstep paced down any of those streets ofshattered houses through which we wandered with tightened nerves. Therewas no movement among all those rubbish heaps of fallen masonry andtwisted iron. We were in the loneliness of a sepulcher which had beenonce a fair city. 

For a little while my friend and I stood in the Grande Place, notspeaking. In the deepening twilight, beneath the last flame-feathers ofthe sinking sun and the first stars that glimmered in a pale sky, thefrightful beauty of the ruins put a spell upon us. 

The tower of the cathedral rose high above the framework of brokenarches and single pillars, like a white rock which had been split fromend to end by a thunderbolt. A recent shell had torn out a slice so thatthe top of the tower was supported only upon broken buttresses, and thegreat pile was hollowed out like a decayed tooth. The Cloth Hall was buta skeleton in stone, with immense gaunt ribs about the dead carcass ofits former majesty. Beyond, the tower of St. Mark's was a stark ruin, which gleamed white through the darkening twilight. 

We felt as men who should stand gazing upon the ruins of WestminsterAbbey, while the shadows of night crept into their dark caverns and intotheir yawning chasms of chaotic masonry, with a gleam of moon upon theirriven towers and fingers of pale light touching the ribs of isolatedarches. In the spaciousness of the Grande Place at Ypres my friend and Istood like the last men on earth in a city of buried life. 

It was almost dark now as we made our way through other streets ofrubbish heaps. Strangely enough, as I remember, many of the ironlamp-posts had been left standing, though bent and twisted in a drunkenway, and here and there we caught the sweet whiff of flowers and plantsstill growing in gardens which had not been utterly destroyed by thedaily tempest of shells, though the houses about them had been allwrecked. 

The woods below the ramparts were slashed and torn by these storms, andin the darkness, lightened faintly by the crescent moon, we stumbledover broken branches and innumerable shell-holes. The silence was brokennow by the roar of a gun, which sounded so loud that I jumped sidewayswith the sudden shock of it. It seemed to be the signal for ourbatteries, and shell after shell went rushing through the night, withthat long, menacing hiss which ends in a dull blast. 

The reports of the guns and the explosions of the shells followed eachother, and mingled in an enormous tumult, echoed back by the ruins ofYpres in hollow, reverberating thunder-strokes. The enemy was answeringback, not very fiercely yet, and from the center of the town, in orabout the Grande Place, came the noise of falling houses or of hugeblocks of stone splitting into fragments. 

We groped along, scared with the sense of death around us. The firstflares of the night were being lighted by both sides above theirtrenches on each side of the salient. The balls of light rose into thevelvety darkness and a moment later suffused the sky with a white glarewhich faded away tremulously after half a minute. 

Against the first vivid brightness of it the lines of trees along theroads to Hooge were silhouetted as black as ink, and the fields betweenYpres and the trenches were flooded with a milky luminance. The wholeshape of the salient was revealed to us in those flashes. We couldsee all those places for which our soldiers fought and died. We staredacross the fields beyond the Menin road toward the Hooge crater, andthose trenches which were battered to pieces but not abandoned in thefirst battle of Ypres and the second battle. 

That salient was, even then, in 1915, a graveyard of Britishsoldiers--there were years to follow when many more would lie there--andas between flash and flash the scene was revealed, I seemed to see agreat army of ghosts, the spirits of all those boys who had died on thisground. It was the darkness, and the tumult of guns, and our lonelinesshere on the ramparts, which put an edge to my nerves and made me seeunnatural things. 

No wonder a sentry was startled when he saw our two figures approachinghim through a clump of trees. His words rang out like pistol-shots. 

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Friends!" we shouted, seeing the gleam of light on a shaking bayonet. 

"Come close to be recognized!" he said, and his voice was harsh. 

We went close, and I for one was afraid. Young sentries sometimes shottoo soon. 

"Who are you?" he asked, in a more natural voice, and when we explainedhe laughed gruffly. "I never saw two strangers pass this way before!"

He was an old soldier, "back to the army again, " with Kitchener's men. He had been in the Chitral campaign and South Africa--"Little warscompared to this, " as he said. A fine, simple man, and although abricklayer's laborer in private life, with a knowledge of the rightword. I was struck when he said that the German flares were more"luminous" than ours. I could hardly see his face in the darkness, except when he struck a match once, but his figure was black against theillumined sky, and I watched the motion of his arm as he pointed to theroads up which his comrades had gone to the support of another battalionat Hooge, who were hard pressed. "They went along under a lot ofshrapnel and had many casualties. "

He told the story of that night in a quiet, thoughtful way, with phrasesof almost biblical beauty in their simple truth, and the soul of theman, the spirit of the whole army in which he was a private soldier, wasrevealed when he flashed out a sentence with his one note of fire, "Butthe enemy lost more than we did, sir, that night!"

We wandered away again into the darkness, with the din of thebombardment all about us. There was not a square yard of ground unplowedby shells and we did not nourish any false illusions as to finding asafe spot for a bivouac. 

There was no spot within the ramparts of Ypres where a man might say "Noshells will fall here. " But one place we found where there seemed somereasonable odds of safety. There also, if sleep assailed us, we mightcurl up in an abandoned dugout and hope that it would not be "crumped"before the dawn. There were several of these shelters there, but, peering into them by the light of a match, I shuddered at the idea oflying in one of them. They had been long out of use and there was a foullook about the damp bedding and rugs which had been left to rot there. They were inhabited already by half-wild cats--the abandoned cats ofYpres, which hunted mice through the ruins of their old houses--andthey spat at me and glared with green-eyed fear as I thrust a match intotheir lairs. 

There were two kitchen chairs, with a deal table on which we put ourcake and Cointreau, and here, through half a night, my friend and Isat watching and listening to that weird scene upon which the old moonlooked down; and, as two men will at such a time, we talked over all theproblems of life and death and the meaning of man's heritage. 

Another sentry challenged us--all his nerves jangled at our apparition. He was a young fellow, one of "Kitchener's crowd, " and told us franklythat he had the "jimjams" in this solitude of Ypres and "saw Germans"every time a rat jumped. He lingered near us--"for company. 

It was becoming chilly. The dew made our clothes damp. Cake and sweetliquor were poor provisions for the night, and the thought of hottea was infinitely seductive. Perhaps somewhere one might find a fewsoldiers round a kettle in some friendly dugout. We groped our wayalong, holding our breath at times as a shell came sweeping overhead orburst with a sputter of steel against the ramparts. It was profoundlydark, so that only the glowworms glittered like jewels on black velvet. The moon had gone down, and inside Ypres the light of the distant flaresonly glimmered faintly above the broken walls. In a tunnel of darknessvoices were speaking and some one was whistling softly, and a gleam ofred light made a bar across the grass. We walked toward a group of blackfigures, suddenly silent at our approach--obviously startled. 

"Who's there?" said a voice. 

We were just in time for tea--a stroke of luck--with a company of boys(all Kitchener lads from the Civil Service) who were spending the nighthere. They had made a fire behind a screen to give them a little comfortand frighten off the ghosts, and gossiped with a queer sense of humor, cynical and blasphemous, but even through their jokes there was ayearning for the end of a business which was too close to death. 

I remember the gist of their conversation, which was partly devised formy benefit. One boy declared that he was sick of the whole business. 

"I should like to cancel my contract, " he remarked. 

"Yes, send in your resignation, old lad, " said another, with ironicallaughter. 

"They'd consider it, wouldn't they? P'raps offer a rise in wages--Idon't think!"

Another boy said, "I am a citizen of no mean Empire, but what the hellis the Empire going to do for me when the next shell blows off both mybleeding legs?"

This remark was also received by a gust of subdued laughter, silencedfor a moment by a roar and upheaval of masonry somewhere by the ruins ofthe Cloth Hall. 

"Soldiers are prisoners, " said a boy without any trace of humor. "You'relagged, and you can't escape. A 'blighty' is the best luck you can hopefor. "

"I don't want to kill Germans, " said a fellow with a superior accent. "I've no personal quarrel against them; and, anyhow, I don't likebutcher's work. "

"Christian service, that's what the padre calls it. I wonder if Christwould have stuck a bayonet into a German stomach--a German with hishands up. That's what we're asked to do. "

"Oh, Christianity is out of business, my child. Why mention it? This iswar, and we're back to the primitive state--B. C. All the same, I say mylittle prayers when I'm in a blue funk. 

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child. "

This last remark was the prize joke of the evening, received with muchhilarity, not too loud, for fear of drawing fire--though really noGermans could have heard any laughter in Ypres. 

Nearby, their officer was spending the night. We called on him, andfound him sitting alone in a dugout furnished by odd bits from thewrecked houses, with waxen flowers in a glass case on the shelf, andan old cottage clock which ticked out the night, and a velvet armchairwhich had been the pride of a Flemish home. He was a Devonshire lad, with a pale, thoughtful face, and I was sorry for him in his loneliness, with a roof over his head which would be no proof against a fair-sizedshell. 

He expressed no surprise at seeing us. I think he would not have beensurprised if the ghost of Edward the Black Prince had called on him. He would have greeted him with the same politeness and offered him hisgreen armchair. 

The night passed. The guns slackened down before the dawn. For a littlewhile there was almost silence, even over the trenches. But as the firstfaint glow of dawn crept through the darkness the rifle-fire burstout again feverishly, and the machine-guns clucked with new spasms offerocity. The boys of the New Army, and the Germans facing them, had anattack of the nerves, as always at that hour. 

The flares were still rising, but had the debauched look of belatedfireworks after a night of orgy. 

In a distant field a cock crew. 

The dawn lightened all the sky, and the shadows crept away from theruins of Ypres, and all the ghastly wreckage of the city was revealedagain nakedly. Then the guns ceased for a while, and there was quietudein the trenches, and out of Ypres, sneaking by side ways, went two tiredfigures, padding the hoof with a slouching swiftness to escape the earlymorning "hate" which was sure to come as soon as a clock in Vlamertinghestill working in a ruined tower chimed the hour of six. 

I went through Ypres scores of times afterward, and during the battlesof Flanders saw it day by day as columns of men and guns andpack-mules and transports went up toward the ridge which led at last toPasschendaele. We had big guns in the ruins of Ypres, and round about, and they fired with violent concussions which shook loose stones, andtheir flashes were red through the Flanders mist. Always this capital ofthe battlefields was sinister, with the sense of menace about. 

"Steel helmets to be worn. Gas-masks at the alert. "

So said the traffic man at the crossroads. 

As one strapped on one's steel helmet and shortened the strap of one'sgas-mask, the spirit of Ypres touched one's soul icily. 

IX

The worst school of war for the sons of gentlemen was, in those earlydays, and for long afterward, Hooge. That was the devil's playgroundand his chamber of horrors, wherein he devised merry tortures for youngChristian men. It was not far out of Ypres, to the left of the Meninroad, and to the north of Zouave Wood and Sanctuary Wood. For a timethere was a chateau there called the White Chateau, with excellentstables and good accommodation for one of our brigade staffs, until oneof our generals was killed and others wounded by a shell, which broke uptheir conference. Afterward there was no chateau, but only a rubbleof bricks banked up with sandbags and deep mine-craters filled withstinking water slopping over from the Bellewarde Lake and low-lyingpools. Bodies, and bits of bodies, and clots of blood, and greenmetallic-looking slime, made by explosive gases, were floating on thesurface of that water below the crater banks when I first passed thatway, and so it was always. Our men lived there and died there within afew yards of the enemy, crouched below the sand-bags and burrowed inthe sides of the crater. Lice crawled over them in legions. Human flesh, rotting and stinking, mere pulp, was pasted into the mud-banks. If theydug to get deeper cover their shovels went into the softness of deadbodies who had been their comrades. Scraps of flesh, booted legs, blackened hands, eyeless heads, came falling over them when the enemytrench-mortared their position or blew up a new mine-shaft. 

I remember one young Irish officer who came down to bur quarters on abrief respite from commanding the garrison at Hooge. He was a handsomefellow, like young Philip of Spain by Velasquez, and he had a profoundmelancholy in his eyes in spite of a charming smile. 

"Do you mind if I have a bath before I join you?" he asked. 

He walked about in the open air until the bath was ready. Even there astrong, fetid smell came from him. 

"Hooge, " he said, in a thoughtful way, "is not a health resort. "

He was more cheerful after his bath and did not feel quite such a leper. He told one or two stories about the things that happened at Hooge, and I wondered if hell could be so bad. After a short stay he went backagain, and I could see that he expected to be killed. Before sayinggood-by he touched some flowers on the mess-table, and for a moment ortwo listened to birds twittering in the trees. 

"Thanks very much, " he said. "I've enjoyed this visit a good deal. . . Good-by. "

He went back through Ypres on the way to Hooge, and the mine-craterwhere his Irish soldiers were lying in slime, in which vermin crawled. 

Sometimes it was the enemy who mined under our position, blowing a fewmen to bits and scattering the sand-bags. Sometimes it was our menwho upheaved the earth beyond them by mine charges and rushed the newcrater. 

It was in July of '15 that the devils of Hooge became merry and brightwith increased activity. The Germans had taken possession of one of themine-craters which formed the apex of a triangle across the Menin road, with trenches running down to it on either side, so that it was like thespear-head of their position. They had fortified it with sand-bags andcrammed it with machine--guns which could sweep the ground on threesides, so making a direct attack by infantry a suicidal enterprise. Ourtrenches immediately faced this stronghold from the other side of aroad at right angles with the Menin road, and our men--the New Armyboys--were shelled day and night, so that many of them were torn topieces, and others buried alive, and others sent mad by shell-shock. (They were learning their lessons in the school of courage. ) It wasdecided by a conference of generals, not at Hooge, to clear out thishornets' nest, and the job was given to the sappers, who mined underthe roadway toward the redoubt, while our heavy artillery shelled theenemy's position all around the neighborhood. 

On July 22d the mine was exploded, while our men crouched low, horriblyafraid after hours of suspense. The earth was rent asunder by a gust offlame, and vomited up a tumult of soil and stones and human limbs andbodies. Our men still crouched while these things fell upon them. 

"I thought I had been blown to bits, " one of them told me. "I was aquaking fear, with my head in the earth. I kept saying, 'Christ!. .. Christ!'"

When the earth and smoke had settled again it was seen that the enemy'sredoubt had ceased to exist. In its place, where there had been acrisscross of trenches and sand-bag shelters for their machine-guns anda network of barbed wire, there was now an enormous crater, holloweddeep with shelving sides surrounded by tumbled earth heaps which hadblocked up the enemy's trenches on either side of the position, so thatthey could not rush into the cavern and take possession. It was our menwho "rushed" the crater and lay there panting in its smoking soil. 

Our generals had asked for trouble when they destroyed that redoubt, and our men had it. Infuriated by a massacre of their garrison in themine-explosion and by the loss of their spear-head, the Germans kept upa furious bombardment on our trenches in that neighborhood in bursts ofgun-fire which tossed our earthworks about and killed and wounded manymen. Our line at Hooge at that time was held by the King's RoyalRifles of the 14th Division, young fellows, not far advanced inthe training-school of war. They held on under the gunning of theirpositions, and each man among them wondered whether it was the shellscreeching overhead or the next which would smash him into pulp likethose bodies lying nearby in dugouts and upheaved earthworks. 

On the morning of July 30th there was a strange lull of silence after aheavy bout of shells and mortars. Men of the K. R. R. Raised their headsabove broken parapets and crawled out of shell-holes and looked about. There were many dead bodies lying around, and wounded men were wailing. The unwounded, startled by the silence, became aware of some moisturefalling on them; thick, oily drops of liquid. 

"What in hell's name--?" said a subaltern. 

One man smelled his clothes, which reeked of something like paraffin. 

Coming across from the German trenches were men hunched up under someheavy weights. They were carrying cylinders with nozles like hose-pipes. Suddenly there was a rushing noise like an escape of air from someblast-furnace. Long tongues of flame licked across to the broken groundwhere the King's Royal Rifles lay. 

Some of them were set on fire, their clothes burning on them, makingthem living torches, and in a second or two cinders. 

It was a new horror of war--the Flammenwerfer. 

Some of the men leaped to their feet, cursing, and fired repeatedly atthe Germans carrying the flaming jets. Here and there the shots weretrue. A man hunched under a cylinder exploded like a fat moth caughtin a candle-flame. But that advancing line of fire after the longbombardment was too much for the rank and file, whose clothes weresmoking and whose bodies were scorched. In something like a panic theyfell back, abandoning the cratered ground in which their dead lay. 

The news of this disaster and of the new horror reached the troops inreserve, who had been resting in the rear after a long spell. They movedup at once to support their comrades and make a counter-attack. Theground they had to cover was swept by machine-guns, and many fell, butthe others attacked again and again, regardless of their losses, and wonback part of the lost ground, leaving only a depth of five hundred yardsin the enemy's hands. 

So the position remained until the morning of August 9th, when a newattack was begun by the Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Midlandtroops of the 6th Division, who had been long in the salient and hadproved the quality of northern "grit" in the foul places and the foulweather of that region. 

It was late on the night of August 8th that these battalions took uptheir position, ready for the assault. These men, who came mostly frommines and workshops, were hard and steady and did not show any outwardsign of nervousness, though they knew well enough that before the lightof another day came their numbers would have passed through the lotteryof this game of death. Each man's life depended on no more than a flukeof luck by the throw of those dice which explode as they fall. They knewwhat their job was. It was to cross five hundred yards of open groundto capture and to hold a certain part of the German position near theChateau of Hooge. 

They were at the apex of the triangle which made a German salient afterthe ground was lost, on July 30th. On the left side of the triangle wasZouave Wood, and Sanctuary Wood ran up the right side to a strong fortheld by the enemy and crammed with machine-guns and every kind of bomb. The base of the upturned triangle was made by the Menin road, to thenorth, beyond which lay the crater, the chateau, and the stables. 

The way that lay between the regiment and their goal was not an easy oneto pass. It was cut and crosscut by our old trenches, now held by theenemy, who had made tangles of barbed wire in front of their parapets, and had placed machine-guns at various points. The ground was litteredwith dead bodies belonging to the battle of July 30th, and pock-markedby deep shell-holes. To cross five hundred yards of such ground inthe storm of the enemy's fire would be an ordeal greater than that ofrushing from one trench to another. It would have to be done in regularattack formation, and with the best of luck would be a grim and costlyprogress. 

The night was pitch dark. The men drawn up could only see one anotheras shadows blacker than the night. They were very quiet; each man wasfighting down his fear in his soul, trying to get a grip on nerveshideously strained by the rack of this suspense. The words, "Steady, lads. " were spoken down the ranks by young lieutenants and sergeants. The sounds of men whispering, a cough here and there, a word of command, the clink of bayonets, the cracking of twigs under heavy boots, theshuffle of troops getting into line, would not carry with any loudnessto German ears. 

The men deployed before dawn broke, waiting for the preliminarybombardment which would smash a way for them. The officers struckmatches now and then to glance at their wrist-watches, set verycarefully to those of the gunners. Then our artillery burst forth withan enormous violence of shell-fire, so that the night was shattered withthe tumult of it. Guns of every caliber mingled their explosions, and the long screech of the shells rushed through the air as thoughthousands of engines were chasing one another madly through a vastjunction in that black vault. 

The men listened and waited. As soon as the guns lengthened their fusesthe infantry advance would begin. Their nerves were getting jangled. Itwas just the torture of human animals. There was an indrawing of breathwhen suddenly the enemy began to fire rockets, sending up flares whichmade white waves of light. If they were seen! There would be a shambles. 

But the smoke of all the bursting shells rolled up in a thick veil, hiding those mining lads who stared toward the illuminations above theblack vapors and at the flashes which seemed to stab great rents in thepall of smoke. "It was a jumpy moment, " said the colonel of the Durhams, and the moment lengthened into minutes. 

Then the time came. The watch hands pointed to the second which had beengiven for the assault to begin, and instantly, to the tick, the gunslifted and made a curtain of fire round the Chateau of Hooge, beyond theMenin road, six hundred yards away. 

"Time!"

The company officers blew their whistles, and there was a sudden clatterfrom trench-spades slung to rifle-barrels, and from men girdled withhand-grenades, as the advancing companies deployed and made their firstrush forward. The ground had been churned up by our shells, and thetrenches had been battered into shapelessness, strewn with broken wireand heaps of loose stones and fragments of steel. 

It seemed impossible that any German should be left alive in thisquagmire, but there was still a rattle of machine-guns from holes andhillocks. Not for long. The bombing-parties searched and found them, and silenced them. From the heaps of earth which had once been trenchesGerman soldiers rose and staggered in a dazed, drunken way, stupefied bythe bombardment beneath which they had crouched. 

Our men spitted them on their bayonets or hurled hand-grenades, andswept the ground before them. Some Germans screeched like pigs in aslaughter-house. 

The men went on in short rushes. They were across the Menin road now, and were first to the crater, though other troops were advancing quicklyfrom the left. They went down into the crater, shouting hoarsely, andhurling bombs at Germans, who were caught like rats in a trap, andscurried up the steep sides beyond, firing before rolling down again, until at least two hundred bodies lay dead at the bottom of this pit ofhell. 

While some of the men dug themselves into the crater or held the dugoutsalready made by the enemy, others climbed up to the ridge beyond andwith a final rush, almost winded and spent, reached the extreme limitof their line of assault and achieved the task which had been set them. They were mad now, not human in their senses. They saw red throughbloodshot eyes. They were beasts of prey--these decent Yorkshire lads. 

Round the stables themselves three hundred Germans were bayoneted, untilnot a single enemy lived on this ground, and the light of day on that9th of August revealed a bloody and terrible scene, not decent for wordsto tell. Not decent, but a shambles of human flesh which had been apanic-stricken crowd of living men crying for mercy, with that dreadfulscreech of terror from German boys who saw the white gleam of steel attheir stomachs before they were spitted. Not many of those Durham andYorkshire lads remain alive now with that memory. The few who do musthave thrust it out of their vision, unless at night it haunts them. 

The assaulting battalion had lost many men during the assault, but theirmain ordeal came after the first advance, when the German guns belchedout a large quantity of heavy shells from the direction of Hill 60. Theyraked the ground, and tried to make our men yield the position they hadgained. But they would not go back or crawl away from their dead. 

All through the day the bombardment continued, answered from our sideby fourteen hours of concentrated fire, which I watched from our batterypositions. In spite of the difficulties of getting up suppliesthrough the "crumped" trenches, the men held on and consolidated theirpositions. One of the most astounding feats was done by the sappers, whoput up barbed wire beyond the line under a devilish cannonade. 

A telephone operator had had his apparatus smashed by a shell earlyin the action, and worked his way back to get another. He succeededin reaching the advanced line again, but another shell knocked out hissecond instrument. It was then only possible to keep in touch withthe battalion headquarters by means of messengers, and again and againofficers and men made their way across the zone of fire or died in theattempt. Messages reached the colonel of the regiment that part of hisfront trenches had been blown away. 

From other parts of the line reports came in that the enemy waspreparing a counter-attack. For several hours now the colonel of theDurhams could not get into touch with his companies, isolated and hiddenbeneath the smoke of the shell-bursts. Flag-wagging and heliographingwere out of the question. He could not tell even if a single manremained alive out there beneath all those shells. No word came fromthem now to let him know if the enemy were counter-attacking. 

Early in the afternoon he decided to go out and make his ownreconnaissance. The bombardment was still relentless, and it was onlypossible to go part of the way in an old communication trench. Theground about was littered with the dead, still being blown about by highexplosives. 

The soul of the colonel was heavy then with doubt and with the knowledgethat most of the dead here were his own. When he told me this adventurehis only comment was the soldier's phrase, "It was not what might becalled a 'healthy' place. " He could see no sign of a counter-attack, but, straining through the smoke-clouds, his eyes could detect no signof life where his men had been holding the captured lines. Were they alldead out there?

On Monday night the colonel was told that his battalion would berelieved, and managed to send this order to a part of it. It was sentthrough by various routes, but some men who carried it came backwith the news that it was still impossible to get into touch with thecompanies holding the advanced positions above the Menin road. 

In trying to do so they had had astounding escapes. Several of them hadbeen blown as far as ten yards by the air-pressure of exploding shellsand had been buried in the scatter of earth. 

"When at last my men came back--those of them who had received theorder, " said the colonel, "I knew the price of their achievement--itscost in officers and men. " He spoke as a man resentful of that bloodysacrifice. 

There were other men still alive and still holding on. With some of themwere four young officers, who clung to their ground all through thenext night, before being relieved. They were without a drop of water andsuffered the extreme miseries of the battlefield. 

There was no distinction in courage between those four men, but thegreater share of suffering was borne by one. Early in the day he had hadhis jaw broken by a piece of shell, but still led his men. Later in theday he was wounded in the shoulder and leg, but kept his command, and hewas still leading the survivors of his company when he came back on themorning of Tuesday, August 10th. 

Another party of men had even a longer time of trial. They were underthe command of a lance-corporal, who had gained possession of thestables above the Menin road and now defended their ruins. Duringthe previous twenty-four hours he had managed to send through severalmessages, but they were not to report his exposed position nor to askfor supports nor to request relief. What he said each time was, "Sendus more bombs. " It was only at seven-thirty in the morning of Tuesday, after thirty hours under shell-fire, that the survivors came away fromtheir rubbish heap in the lines of death. 

So it was at Hooge on that day of August. I talked with these men, touched hands with them while the mud and blood of the business stillfouled them. Even now, in remembrance, I wonder how men could go throughsuch hours without having on their faces more traces of their hell, though some of them were still shaking with a kind of ague. 

X

Here and there on the roadsides behind the lines queer sacks hung fromwooden poles. They had round, red disks painted on them, and looked likethe trunks of human bodies after Red Indians had been doing decorativework with their enemy's slain. At Flixecourt, near Amiens, I passed oneon a Sunday when bells were ringing for high mass and a crowd of youngsoldiers were trooping into the field with fixed bayonets. 

A friend of mine--an ironical fellow--nudged me, and said, "Sunday-school for young Christians!" and made a hideous face, verycomical. 

It was a bayonet-school of instruction, and "O. C. Bayonets"--Col. Ronald Campbell--was giving a little demonstration. It was a curiouslyinteresting form of exercise. It was as though the primitive naturein man, which had been sleeping through the centuries, was suddenlyawakened in the souls of these cockney soldier--boys. They made suddenjabs at one another fiercely and with savage grimaces, leaped at menstanding with their backs turned, who wheeled round sharply, and crossedbayonets, and taunted the attackers. Then they lunged at the hangingsacks, stabbing them where the red circles were painted. These inanimatethings became revoltingly lifelike as they jerked to and fro, and thebayonet men seemed enraged with them. One fell from the rope, and a boysprang at it, dug his bayonet in, put his foot on the prostrate thingto get a purchase for the bayonet, which he lugged out again, and thenkicked the sack. 

"That's what I like to see, " said an officer. "There's a finefighting-spirit in that lad. He'll kill plenty of Germans before he'sdone. "

Col. Ronald Campbell was a great lecturer on bayonet exercise. Hecurdled the blood of boys with his eloquence on the method of attackto pierce liver and lights and kidneys of the enemy. He made their eyesbulge out of their heads, fired them with blood-lust, stoked up hatredof Germans--all in a quiet, earnest, persuasive voice, and a sense oflatent power and passion in him. He told funny stories--one, famous inthe army, called "Where's 'Arry?"

It was the story of an attack on German trenches in which a crowd ofGermans were captured in a dugout. The sergeant had been told to bloodhis men, and during the killing he turned round and asked, "Where's'Arry?. .. 'Arry 'asn't 'ad a go yet. "

'Arry was a timid boy, who shrank from butcher's work, but he was calledup and given his man to kill. And after that 'Arry was like a man-eatingtiger in his desire for German blood. 

He used another illustration in his bayonet lectures. "You may meet aGerman who says, 'Mercy! I have ten children. '. .. Kill him! He mighthave ten more. "

At those training-schools of British youth (when nature was averse tohuman slaughter until very scientifically trained) one might seeevery form of instruction in every kind of weapon and instrument ofdeath--machine-guns, trench-mortars, bombs, torpedoes, gas, and, lateron, tanks; and as the months passed, and the years, the youth of theBritish Empire graduated in these schools of war, and those who livedlongest were experts in divers branches of technical education. 

Col. Ronald Campbell retired from bayonet instruction and devoted hisgenius and his heart (which was bigger than the point of a bayonet) tothe physical instruction of the army and the recuperation of battle-wornmen. I liked him better in that job, and saw the real imagination of theman at work, and his amazing, self-taught knowledge of psychology. Whenmen came down from the trenches, dazed, sullen, stupid, dismal, broken, he set to work to build up their vitality again, to get them interestedin life again, and to make them keen and alert. As they had beendehumanized by war, so he rehumanized them by natural means. He had afarm, with flowers and vegetables, pigs, poultry, and queer beasts. Atame bear named Flanagan was the comic character of the camp. ColonelCampbell found a thousand qualities of character in this animal, andbrought laughter back to gloomy boys by his description of them. He hadnames for many of his pets--the game-cocks and the mother-hens; and hetaught the men to know each one, and to rear chicks, and tend flowers, and grow vegetables. Love, and not hate, was now his gospel. All histraining was done by games, simple games arousing intelligence, leadingup to elaborate games demanding skill of hand and eye. He challenged thewhole army system of discipline imposed by authority by a new systemof self-discipline based upon interest and instinct. His resultswere startling, and men who had been dumb, blear-eyed, dejected, shell-shocked wrecks of life were changed quite quickly into bright, cheery fellows, with laughter in their eyes. 

"It's a pity, " he said, "they have to go off again and be shot topieces. I cure them only to be killed--but that's not my fault. It's thefault of war. "

It was Colonel Campbell who discovered "Willie Woodbine, " the fightingparson and soldier's poet, who was the leading member of a travelingtroupe of thick-eared thugs. They gave pugilistic entertainments totired men. Each of them had one thick ear. Willie Woodbine had two. Theyfought one another with science (as old professionals) and challengedany man in the crowd. Then one of them played the violin and drew thesoul out of soldiers who seemed mere animals, and after another fightWillie Woodbine stepped up and talked of God, and war, and the weaknessof men, and the meaning of courage. He held all those fellows in hishand, put a spell on them, kept them excited by a new revelation, gavethem, poor devils, an extra touch of courage to face the menace that wasahead of them when they went to the trenches again. 

XI

Our men were not always in the trenches. As the New Army grew in numbersreliefs were more frequent than in the old days, when battalions heldthe line for long spells, until their souls as well as their bodies weresunk in squalor. Now in the summer of 1915 it was not usual for men tostay in the line for more than three weeks at a stretch, and they cameback to camps and billets, where there was more sense of life, thoughstill the chance of death from long-range guns. Farther back still, asfar back as the coast, and all the way between the sea and the edge ofwar, there were new battalions quartered in French and Flemish villages, so that every cottage and farmstead, villa, and chateau was inhabitedby men in khaki, who made themselves at home and established friendlyrelations with civilians there unless they were too flagrant in theirrobbery, or too sour in their temper, or too filthy in their habits. Generally the British troops were popular in Picardy and Artois, andwhen they left women kissed and cried, in spite of laughter, and jokedin a queer jargon of English-French. In the estaminets of Franceand Flanders they danced with frowzy peasant girls to the tune of apenny-in-the-slot piano, or, failing the girls, danced with one another. 

For many years to come, perhaps for centuries, those cottages andbarns into which our men crowded will retain signs and memories of thatBritish occupation in the great war. Boys who afterward went forward tothe fighting-fields and stepped across the line to the world of ghostscarved their names on wooden beams, and on the whitewashed wallsscribbled legends proclaiming that Private John Johnson was a bastard;or that a certain battalion was a rabble of ruffians; or that KaiserBill would die on the gallows, illustrating those remarks with portraitsand allegorical devices, sketchily drawn, but vivid and significant. 

The soldier in the house learned quite a lot of French, with whichhe made his needs understood by the elderly woman who cooked for hisofficers' mess. He could say, with a fine fluency, "Ou est le bloomingcouteau?" or "Donnez-moi le bally fourchette, s'il vous plait, madame. "It was not beyond his vocabulary to explain that "Les pommes de terrefrites are absolument all right if only madame will tenir ses cheveuxon. " In the courtyards of ancient farmhouses, so old in their timbersand gables that the Scottish bodyguard of Louis XI may have passed themon their way to Paris, modern Scots with khaki-covered kilts pumped upthe water from old wells, and whistled "I Know a Lassie" to the girl whobrought the cattle home, and munched their evening rations while Sandyplayed a "wee bit" on the pipes to the peasant--folk who gathered atthe gate. Such good relations existed between the cottagers and theirtemporary guests that one day, for instance, when a young friend of minecame back from a long spell in the trenches (his conversation was ofdead men, flies, bombs, lice, and hell), the old lady who had given himher best bedroom at the beginning of the war flung her arms about himand greeted him like a long-lost son. To a young Guardsman, withhis undeveloped mustache on his upper lip, her demonstrations wereembarrassing. 

It was one of the paradoxes of the war that beauty lived but a mile ortwo away from hideous squalor. While men in the lines lived in dugoutsand marched down communicating trenches thigh-high, after rainyweather, in mud and water, and suffered the beastliness of the primitiveearth-men, those who were out of the trenches, turn and turn about, cameback to leafy villages and drilled in fields all golden with buttercups, and were not too uncomfortable in spite of overcrowding in dirty barns. 

There was more than comfort in some of the headquarters where ourofficers were billeted in French chateaux. There was a splendor ofsurroundings which gave a graciousness and elegance to the daily life ofthat extraordinary war in which men fought as brutally as in prehistorictimes. I knew scores of such places, and went through gilded gatesemblazoned with noble coats of arms belonging to the days of the SunKing, or farther back to the Valois, and on my visits to generalsand their staffs stood on long flights of steps which led up to oldmansions, with many towers and turrets, surrounded by noble parks andornamental waters and deep barns in which five centuries of harvests hadbeen stored. From one of the archways here one might see in the mind'seye Mme. De Pompadour come out with a hawk on her wrist, or even Henride Navarre with his gentlemen-at-arms, all their plumes alight in thesun as they mounted their horses for a morning's boar-hunt. 

It was surprising at first when a young British officer came out andsaid, "Toppin' morning, " or, "Any news from the Dardanelles?" Therewas something incongruous about this habitation of French chiteaux byBritish officers with their war-kit. The strangeness of it made me laughin early days of first impressions, when I went through the rooms of oneof those old historic houses, well within range of the German guns witha brigade major. It was the Chateau de Henencourt, near Albert. 

"This is the general's bedroom, " said the brigade major, opening a doorwhich led off a gallery, in which many beautiful women of France andmany great nobles of the old regime looked down from their gilt frames. 

The general had a nice bed to sleep in. In such a bed Mme. Du Barrymight have stretched her arms and yawned, or the beautiful Duchesse deMazarin might have held her morning levee. A British general, with hisbronzed face and bristly mustache, would look a little strange underthat blue-silk canopy, with rosy cherubs dancing overhead on theflowered ceiling. His top-boots and spurs stood next to a Louis Quinzetoilet-table. His leather belts and field-glasses lay on the polishedboards beneath the tapestry on which Venus wooed Adonis and Dianawent a-hunting. In other rooms no less elegantly rose-tinted or darklypaneled other officers had made a litter of their bags, haversacks, rubber baths, trench--boots, and puttees. At night the staff sat downto dinner in a salon where the portraits of a great family of France, insilks and satins and Pompadour wigs, looked down upon their khaki. The owner of the chateau, in whose veins flowed the blood of those oldaristocrats, was away with his regiment, in which he held the rank ofcorporal. His wife, the Comtesse de Henencourt, managed the estate, fromwhich all the men-servants except the veterans had been mobilized. Inher own chateau she kept one room for herself, and every morning camein from the dairies, where she had been working with her maids, to say, with her very gracious smile, to the invaders of her house: "Bon jour, messieurs! Ca va bien?"

She hid any fear she had under the courage of her smile. Poor chateauxof France! German shells came to knock down their painted turrets, tosmash through the ceilings where the rosy Cupids played, and in one houror two to ruin the beauty that had lived through centuries of pride. 

Scores of them along the line of battle were but heaps of brick-dust andtwisted iron. 

I saw the ruins of the Chateau de Henencourt two years after my firstvisit there. The enemy's line had come closer to it and it was a targetfor their guns. Our guns--heavy and light--were firing from the backyard and neighboring fields, with deafening tumult. Shells had alreadybroken the roofs and turrets of the chateau and torn away great chunksof wall. A colonel of artillery had his headquarters in the petit salon. His hand trembled as he greeted me. 

"I'm not fond of this place, " he said. "The whole damn thing will comedown on my head at any time. I think I shall take to the cellars. "

We walked out to the courtyard and he showed me the way down to thevault. A shell came over the chateau and burst in the outhouses. 

"They knocked out a 9. 2 a little while ago, " said the colonel. "Made amess of some heavy gunners. "

There was a sense of imminent death about us, but it was not so sinistera place as farther on, where a brother of mine sat in a hole directinghis battery. .. The Countess of Henencourt had gone. She went away withher dairymaids, driving her cattle down the roads. 

XII

One of the most curious little schools of courage inhabited by Britishsoldiers in early days was the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, which we tookover from the French, who were our next-door neighbors at the village ofFrise in the summer of '15. After the foul conditions of the salient itseemed unreal and fantastic, with a touch of romance not found in otherplaces. Strange as it seemed, the village garrisoned by our men was inadvance of our trench lines, with nothing dividing them from the enemybut a little undergrowth--and the queerest part of it all was the senseof safety, the ridiculously false security with which one could wanderabout the village and up the footpath beyond, with the knowledge thatone's movements were being watched by German eyes and that the wholeplace could be blown off the face of the earth. .. But for the convenientfact that the Germans, who were living in the village of Curlu, beyondthe footpath, were under our own observation and at the mercy of our ownguns. 

That sounded like a fairy-tale to men who, in other places, could not goover the parapet of the first-line trenches, or even put their heads upfor a single second, without risking instant death. 

I stood on a hill here, with a French interpreter and one of his men. Abattalion of loyal North Lancashires was some distance away, but afteran exchange of compliments in an idyllic glade, where a party ofFrench soldiers lived in the friendliest juxtaposition with the Britishinfantry surrounding them--it was a cheery bivouac among the trees, withthe fragrance of a stew-pot mingling with the odor of burning wood--thelieutenant insisted upon leading the way to the top of the hill. 

He made a slight detour to point out a German shell which had fallenthere without exploding, and made laughing comments upon the harmless, futile character of those poor Germans in front of us. They did theirbest to kill us, but oh, so feebly!

Yet when I took a pace toward the shell he called out, sharply, "Netouchez pas!" I would rather have touched a sleeping tiger than thatconical piece of metal with its unexploded possibilities, but bent lowto see the inscriptions on it, scratched by French gunners with worerecklessness of death. Mort aux Boches was scrawled upon it between themen's initials. 

Then we came to the hill-crest and to the last of our trenches, and, standing there, looked down upon the villages of Vaux and Curlu, separated by a piece of marshy water. In the farthest village were theGermans, and in the nearest, just below us down the steep cliff, our ownmen. Between the two there was a narrow causeway across the marsh and astrip of woods half a rifle-shot in length. 

Behind, in a sweeping semicircle round their village and ours, were theGerman trenches and the German guns. I looked into the streets of bothvillages as clearly as one may see into Clovelly village from the crestof the hill. In Vaux-sur-Somme a few British soldiers were strollingabout. One was sitting on the window-sill of a cottage, kicking up hisheels. 

In the German village of Curlu the roadways were concealed by theperspective of the houses, with their gables and chimney-stacks, so thatI could not see any passers--by. But at the top of the road, going outof the village and standing outside the last house on the road, was asolitary figure--a German sentry. 

The French lieutenant pointed to a thin mast away from the village onthe hillside. 

"Do you see that? That is their flagstaff. They hoist their flag forvictories. It wagged a good deal during the recent Russian fighting. Butlately they have not had the cheek to put it up. "

This interpreter--the Baron de Rosen--laughed very heartily at thatnaked pole on the hill. 

Then I left him and joined our own men, and went down a steep hillinto Vaux, well outside our line of trenches, and thrust forward asan outpost in the marsh. German eyes could see me as I walked. At anymoment those little houses about me might have been smashed into rubbishheaps. But no shells came to disturb the waterfowl among the reedsaround. 

And so it was that the life in this place was utterly abnormal, andwhile the guns were silent except for long--range fire, an old-fashionedmode of war--what the adjutant of this little outpost called a"gentlemanly warfare, " prevailed. Officers and men slept within a fewhundred yards of the enemy, and the officers wore their pajamas atnight. When a fight took place it was a chivalrous excursion, such asSir Walter Manny would have liked, between thirty or forty men on oneside against somewhat the same number on the other. 

Our men used to steal out along the causeway which crossed the marsh--apathway about four feet wide, broadening out in the middle, so that alittle redoubt or blockhouse was established there, then across a narrowdrawbridge, then along the path again until they came to the thicketwhich screened the German village of Curlu. 

It sometimes happened that a party of Germans were creeping forward fromthe other direction, in just the same way, disguised in party-coloredclothes splashed with greens and reds and browns to make them invisiblebetween the trees, with brown masks over their faces. Then suddenlycontact was made. 

Into the silence of the wood came the sharp crack of rifles, the zip-zipof bullets, the shouts of men who had given up the game of invisibility. It was a sharp encounter one night when the Loyal North Lancashires heldthe village of Vaux, and our men brought back many German helmets andother trophies as proofs of victory. Then to bed in the village, and agood night's rest, as when English knights fought the French, notfar from these fields, as chronicled in the pages of that early warcorrespondent, Sir John Froissart. 

All was quiet when I went along the causeway and out into the wood, where the outposts stood listening for any crack of a twig which mightbetray a German footstep. I was startled when I came suddenly upontwo men, almost invisible, against the tree-trunks. There they stood, motionless, with their rifles ready, peering through the brushwood. If Ihad followed the path on which they stood for just a little way I shouldhave walked into the German village. But, on the other hand, I shouldnot have walked back again. .. . 

When I left the village, and climbed up the hill to our own trenchesagain, I laughed aloud at the fantastic visit to that grim littleoutpost in the marsh. If all the war had been like this it would havebeen more endurable for men who had no need to hide in holes in theearth, nor crouch for three months below ground, until an hour or two ofmassacre below a storm of high explosives. In the village on the marshmen fought at least against other men, and not against invisible powerswhich belched forth death. 

It was part of the French system of "keeping quiet" until the turn ofbig offensives; a good system, to my mind, if not carried too far. At Frise, next door to Vaux, in a loop of the Somme, it was carried alittle too far, with relaxed vigilance. 

It was a joke of our soldiers to crawl on and through the reeds andenter the French line and exchange souvenirs with the sentries. 

"Souvenir!" said one of them one day. "Bullet--you know--cartouche. Comprenny?"

A French poilu of Territorials, who had been dozing, sat up with a grinand said, "Mais oui, mon vieux, " and felt in his pouch for a cartridge, and then in his pockets, and then in the magazine of the rifle betweenhis knees. 

"Fini!" he said. "Tout fini, mon p'tit camarade. "

The Germans one day made a pounce on Frise, that little village in theloop of the Somme, and "pinched" every man of the French garrison. Therewas the devil to pay, and I heard it being played to the tune of theFrench soixante-quinzes, slashing over the trees. 

Vaux and Curlu went the way of all French villages in the zone of war, when the battles of the Somme began, and were blown off the map. 

XIII

At a place called the Pont de Nieppe, beyond Armentieres--a most"unhealthy" place in later years of war--a bathing establishment wasorganized by officers who were as proud of their work as though they hadbrought a piece of paradise to Flanders. To be fair to them, they haddone that. To any interested visitor, understanding the nobility oftheir work, they exhibited a curious relic. It was the Holy Shirt ofNieppe, which should be treasured as a memorial in our War Museum--anobject-lesson of what the great war meant to clean-living men. It wasnot a saint's shirt, but had been worn by a British officer in thetrenches, and was like tens of thousands of other shirts worn by ourofficers and men in the first winters of the war, neither better norworse, but a fair average specimen. It had been framed in a glass case, and revealed, on its linen, the corpses of thousands of lice. Thatvermin swarmed upon the bodies of all our boys who went into thetrenches and tortured them. After three days they were lousy from headto foot. After three weeks they were walking menageries. To Englishboys from clean homes, to young officers who had been brought up in thereligion of the morning tub, this was one of the worst horrors of war. They were disgusted with themselves. Their own bodies were revolting tothem. Scores of times I have seen battalions of men just out of battlestripping themselves and hunting in their shirts for the foul beast. They had a technical name for this hunter's job. They calledit "chatting. " They desired a bath as the hart panteth for thewater--brooks, and baths were but a mirage of the brain to men inFlanders fields and beyond the Somme, until here and there, as atNieppe, officers with human sympathy organized a system by whichbattalions of men could wash their bodies. 

The place in Nieppe had been a jute-factory, and there were big tubs inthe sheds, and nearby was the water of the Lys. Boilers were set goingto heat the water. A battalion's shirts were put into an oven and thelice were baked and killed. It was a splendid thing to see scores ofboys wallowing in those big tubs, six in a tub, with a bit of soap foreach. They gave little grunts and shouts of joyous satisfaction. Thecleansing water, the liquid heat, made their flesh tingle with exquisitedelight, sensuous and spiritual. They were like children. They splashedone another, with gurgles of laughter. They put their heads under waterand came up puffing and blowing like grampuses. Something broke in one'sheart to see them, those splendid boys whose bodies might soon be tornto tatters by chunks of steel. One of them remembered a bit of Latinhe had sung at Stonyhurst: "Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor;lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. " ("Thou shalt sprinkle me withhyssop, O Lord, and I shall be cleansed; thou shalt wash me, and I shallbe made whiter than snow. ")

On the other side of the lines the Germans were suffering in the sameway, lousy also, and they, too, were organizing bath-houses. After theirfirst retreat I saw a queer name on a wooden shed: Entlausunganstalt. Ipuzzled over it a moment, and then understood. It was a new word createdout of the dirt of modern war--"Delousing station. "

XIV

It was harvest-time in the summer of '15, and Death was not the onlyreaper who went about the fields, although he was busy and did not resteven when the sun had flamed down below the belt of trees on the farridge, and left the world in darkness. 

On a night in August two of us stood in a cornfield, silent, under thegreat dome, staring up at the startling splendor of it. The red balljust showed above the far line of single trees which were black ascharcoal on the edge of a long, straight road two miles away, and fromits furnace there were flung a million feathers of flame against thesilk-blue canopy of the evening sky. The burning colors died out ina few minutes, and the fields darkened, and all the corn-shocks paleduntil they became quite white, like rows of tents, under the harvestmoon. Another night had come in this year of war. 

Up Ypres way the guns were busy, and at regular intervals the earthtrembled, and the air vibrated with dull, thunderous shocks. 

"The moon's face looks full of irony to-night, " said the man by my side. "It seems to say, `What fools those creatures are down there, spoilingtheir harvest-time with such a mess of blood!'"

The stars were very bright in some of those Flemish nights. I saw theMilky Way clearly tracked across the dark desert. The Pleiades andOrion's belt were like diamonds on black velvet. But among all theseworlds of light other stars, unknown to astronomers, appeared anddisappeared. On the road back from a French town one night I lookedArras way, and saw what seemed a bursting planet. It fell with a scatterof burning pieces. Then suddenly the thick cloth of the night was rentwith stabs of light, as though flashing swords were hacking it, and amoment later a finger of white fire was traced along the black edge ofthe far-off woods, so that the whole sky was brightened for a momentand then was blotted out by a deeper darkness. .. Arras was being shelledagain, as I saw it many times in those long years of war. 

The darkness of all the towns in the war zone was rather horrible. Theirstrange, intense quietude, when the guns were not at work, made themdead, as the very spirit of a town dies on the edge of war. One night, as on many others, I walked through one of them with a friend. Everyhouse was shuttered, and hardly a gleam came through any crack. Nofootstep, save our own, told of life. The darkness was almost palpable. It seemed to press against one's eyeballs like a velvet mask. My nerveswere so on edge with a sense of the uncanny silence and invisibilitythat I started violently at the sound of a quiet voice speaking threeinches from my ear. 

"Halte! Qui va la?"

It was a French sentry, who stood with his back to the wall of a housein such a gulf of blackness that not even his bayonet was revealed by aglint. 

Another day of war came. The old beauty of the world was there, closeto the lines of the bronzed cornfields splashed with the scarlet ofpoppies, and the pale yellow of the newly cut sheaves, stretching awayand away, without the break of a hedge, to the last slopes which met thesky. 

I stood in some of those harvest-fields, staring across to a slope ofrising ground where there was no ripening wheat, and where the grassitself came to a sudden halt, as though afraid of something. I knew thereason of this, and of the long white lines of earth thrown up for mileseach way. Those were the parapets of German trenches, and in the ditchesbelow them were earth-men, armed with deadly weapons, staring out acrossthe beauty of France and wondering, perhaps, why they should be thereto mar it, and watching me, a little black dot in their range of vision, with an idle thought as to whether it were worth their while to let abullet loose and end my walk. They could have done so easily, but didnot bother. No shot or shell came to break through the hum of bees orto crash through the sigh of the wind, which was bending all the ears ofcorn to listen to the murmurous insect-life in these fields of France. 

Close to me was a group of peasants--a study for a painter like Millet. One of them shouted out to me, "Voilà les Boches!" waving his arm toleft and right, and then shaking a clenched fist at them. 

A sturdy girl with a brown throat showing through an open bodice munchedan apple, like Audrey in "As You Like It, " and between her bites toldme that she had had a brother killed in the war, and that she had beennearly killed herself, a week ago, by shells that came bursting allround her as she was tying up her sheaves (she pointed to great holesin the field), and described the coming of the Germans into her villageover there, when she had lied to some Uhlans about the whereabouts ofFrench soldiers and had given one of those fat Germans a blow on theface when he had tried to make love to her in her father's barn. Hermother had been raped. 

In further fields out of view of the German trenches, but well withinshell-range, the harvesting was being done by French soldiers. One ofthem was driving the reaping--machine and looked like a gunner on hislimber, with his kepi thrust to the back of his head. The trousers ofhis comrades were as red as the poppies that grew on the edge of thewheat, and three of these poilus had ceased their work to drink out of aleather wine-bottle which had been replenished from a hand-cart. It wasa pretty scene if one could forget the grim purpose which had put thoseharvesters in uniform. 

The same thought was in the mind of a British officer. 

"A beautiful country, this, " he said. "It's a pity to cut it up withtrenches and barbed wire. "

Battalions of New Army men were being reviewed but a furlong or two awayfrom that Invisible Man who was wielding a scythe which had no mercyfor unripe wheat. Out of those lines of eyes stared the courage of men'ssouls, not shirking the next ordeal. 

It was through red ears of corn, in that summer of '15, that one foundone's way to many of the trenches that marked the boundary-lines of theyear's harvesting, and in Belgium (by Kemmel Hill) the shells of ourbatteries, answered by German guns, came with their long-drawn howls ofmurder across the heads of peasant women who were gleaning, with bentbacks. 

In Plug Street Wood the trees had worn thin under showers of shrapnel, but the long avenues between the trenches were cool and pleasant in theheat of the day. It was one of the elementary schools where many of oursoldiers learned the A B C of actual warfare after their training incamps behind the lines. Here one might sport with Amaryllis in theshade, but for the fact that country wenches were not allowed in thedugouts and trenches, where I found our soldiers killing flies in theintervals between pot-shots at German periscopes. 

The enemy was engaged, presumably, in the same pursuit of killing timeand life (with luck), and sniping was hot on both sides, so that thewood resounded with sharp reports as though hard filbert nuts were beingcracked by giant teeth. Each time I went there one of our men was hit bya sniper, and his body was carried off for burial as I went toward thefirst line of trenches, hoping that my shadow would not fall acrossa German periscope. The sight of that dead body passing chilled one alittle. There were many graves in the bosky arbors--eighteen under onemound--but some of those who had fallen six months before still laywhere the gleaners could not reach them. 

I used to peer through the leaves of Plug Street Wood at No Man's Landbetween the lines, where every creature had been killed by the sweepingflail of machine-guns and shrapnel. Along the harvest-fields there weremany barren territories like that, and up by Hooge, along the edge ofthe fatal crater, and behind the stripped trees of Zouave Wood therewas no other gleaning to be had but that of broken shells and shrapnelbullets and a litter of limbs. 

XV

For some time the War Office would not allow military bands at thefront, not understanding that music was like water to parched souls. By degrees divisional generals realized the utter need of entertainmentamong men dulled and dazed by the routine of war, and encouraged"variety" shows, organized by young officers who had been amateur actorsbefore the war, who searched around for likely talent. There wasplenty of it in the New Army, including professional "funny men, " trickcyclists, conjurers, and singers of all kinds. So by the summer of '15most of the divisions had their dramatic entertainments: "The Follies, ""The Bow Bells, " "The Jocks, " "The Pip-Squeaks, " "The Whizz-Bangs, " "TheDiamonds, " "The Brass Hats, " "The Verey Lights, " and many others withfancy names. 

I remember going to one of the first of them in the village of Acheux, a few miles from the German lines. It was held in an old sugar-factory, and I shall long remember the impressions of the place, with seven oreight hundred men sitting in the gloom of that big, broken, barn-likebuilding, where strange bits of machinery looked through the darkness, and where through gashes in the walls stars twinkled. 

There was a smell of clay and moist sugar and tarpaulins and damp khaki, and chloride of lime, very pungent in one's nostrils, and when thecurtain went up on a well--fitted stage and "The Follies" began theirperformance, the squalor of the place did not matter. What matteredwas the enormous whimsicality of the Bombardier at the piano, and theoutrageous comicality of a tousle-haired soldier with a red nose, whodescribed how he had run away from Mons "with the rest of you, " and thelight--heartedness of a performance which could have gone straight to aLondon music-hall and brought down the house with jokes and songs madeup in dugouts and front--line trenches. 

At first the audience sat silent, with glazed eyes. It was difficult toget a laugh out of them. The mud of the trenches was still on them. Theystank of the trenches, and the stench was in their souls. Presently theybegan to brighten up. Life came back into their eyes. They laughed!. .. Later, from this audience of soldiers there were yells of laughter, though the effect of shells arriving at unexpected moments, in untowardcircumstances, was a favorite theme of the jesters. Many of the men weregoing into the trenches that night again, and there would be no funin the noise of the shells, but they went more gaily and with strongerhearts, I am sure, because of the laughter which had roared through theold sugar--factory. 

A night or two later I went to another concert and heard the same gaietyof men who had been through a year of war. It was in an open field, under a velvety sky studded with innumerable stars. Nearly a thousandsoldiers trooped through the gates and massed before the little canvastheater. In front a small crowd of Flemish children squatted on thegrass, not understanding a word of the jokes, but laughing in shrilldelight at the antics of soldier-Pierrots. The corner-man was a funnyfellow, and his by-play with a stout Flemish woman round the flap of thecanvas screen, to whom he made amorous advances while his comrades weresinging sentimental ballads, was truly comic. The hit of the evening waswhen an Australian behind the stage gave an unexpected imitation of alaughing-jackass. 

There was something indescribably weird and wild and grotesque in thatprolonged cry of cackling, unnatural mirth. An Australian by my sidesaid: "Well done! Exactly right!" and the Flemish children shriekedwith joy, without understanding the meaning of the noise. Old, old songsbelonging to the early Victorian age were given by the soldiers, who hadgreat emotion and broke down sometimes in the middle of a verse. Therewere funny men dressed in the Widow Twankey style, or in burlesqueuniforms, who were greeted with yells of laughter by their comrades. AnAustralian giant played some clever card tricks, and another Australianrecited Kipling's "Gunga Din" with splendid fire. And between every"turn" the soldiers in the field roared out a chorus:

"Jolly good song, Jolly well sung. If you can think of a better you'rewelcome to try. But don't forget the singer is dry; Give the poor beggarsome beer!"

A touring company of mouth-organ musicians was having a great successin the war zone. But, apart from all those organized methods of mirth, there was a funny man in every billet who played the part of courtjester, and clowned it whatever the state of the weather or the risksof war. The British soldier would have his game of "house" or "crown andanchor" even on the edge of the shell-storm, and his little bit ofsport wherever there was room to stretch his legs. It was a jesting army(though some of its jokes were very grim), and those who saw, as I did, the daily tragedy of war, never ceasing, always adding to the sum ofhuman suffering, were not likely to discourage that sense of humor. 

A successful concert with mouth-organs, combs, and tissue-paper andpenny whistles was given by the Guards in the front-line trenches nearLoos. They played old English melodies, harmonized with great emotionand technical skill. It attracted an unexpected audience. The Germanscrowded into their front line--not far away--and applauded each number. Presently, in good English, a German voice shouted across:

"Play 'Annie Laurie' and I will sing it. "

The Guards played "Annie Laurie, " and a German officer stood up onthe parapet--the evening sun was red behind him--and sang the old songadmirably, with great tenderness. There was applause on both sides. 

"Let's have another concert to-morrow!" shouted the Germans. 

But there was a different kind of concert next day, and the musicwas played by trench-mortars, Mills bombs, rifle-grenades, and otherinstruments of death in possession of the Guards. There were cries ofagony and terror from the German trenches, and young officers of theGuards told the story as an amusing anecdote, with loud laughter. 

XVI

It was astonishing how loudly one laughed at tales of gruesome things, of war's brutality-I with the rest of them. I think at the bottom of itwas a sense of the ironical contrast between the normal ways of civilianlife and this hark-back to the caveman code. It made all our oldphilosophy of life monstrously ridiculous. It played the "hat trick"with the gentility of modern manners. Men who had been brought up toChristian virtues, who had prattled their little prayers at mothers'knees, who had grown up to a love of poetry, painting, music, the gentlearts, over-sensitized to the subtleties of half-tones, delicate scalesof emotion, fastidious in their choice of words, in their sense ofbeauty, found themselves compelled to live and act like ape-men; and itwas abominably funny. They laughed at the most frightful episodes, whichrevealed this contrast between civilized ethics and the old beastlaw. The more revolting it was the more, sometimes, they shouted withlaughter, especially in reminiscence, when the tale was told in thegilded salon of a French chateau, or at a mess-table. 

It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had beenplayed on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe thatthe whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and thatmankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth andclaw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preachedthis gospel and this promise. 

Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. Thecontrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormousworld-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morningcoat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on apiece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying, in a filthy gutter. The war-time humor of the soul roared with mirth atthe sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled. 

So we laughed merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeantstood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and asthe Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull afteranother with a steel-studded bludgeon--a weapon which he had made withloving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore's club in the picturesof a fairy-tale. 

So we laughed at the adventures of a young barrister (a brilliant fellowin the Oxford "Union") whose pleasure it was to creep out o' nights intoNo Man's Land and lie doggo in a shell-hole close to the enemy's barbedwire, until presently, after an hour's waiting or two, a German soldierwould crawl out to fetch in a corpse. The English barrister lay with hisrifle ready. Where there had been one corpse there were two. Each nighthe made a notch on his rifle--three notches one night--to check thenumber of his victims. Then he came back to breakfast in his dugout witha hearty appetite. 

In one section of trenches the men made a habit of betting uponthose who would be wounded first. It had all the uncertainty of theroulette-table. .. One day, when the German gunners were putting over aspecial dose of hate, a sergeant kept coming to one dugout to inquireabout a "new chum, " who had come up with the drafts. 

"Is Private Smith all right?" he asked. 

"Yes, Sergeant, he's all right, " answered the men crouching in the darkhole. 

"Private Smith isn't wounded yet?" asked the, sergeant again, fiveminutes later. 

"No, Sergeant. "

Private Smith was touched by this interest in his well-being. 

"That sergeant seems a very kind man, " said the boy. "Seems to love melike a father!"

A yell of laughter answered him. 

"You poor, bleeding fool!" said one of his comrades. "He's drawn you ina lottery! Stood to win if you'd been hit. "

In digging new trenches and new dugouts, bodies and bits of bodies wereunearthed, and put into sand-bags with the soil that was sent back downa line of men concealing their work from German eyes waiting for any newactivity in our ditches. 

"Bit of Bill, " said the leading man, putting in a leg. 

"Another bit of Bill, " he said, unearthing a hand. 

"Bill's ugly mug, " he said at a later stage in the operations, when ahead was found. 

As told afterward, that little episode in the trenches seemed immenselycomic. Generals chuckled over it. Chaplains treasured it. 

How we used to guffaw at the answer of the cockney soldier who met aGerman soldier with his hands up, crying: "Kamerad! Kamerad! Mercy!"

"Not so much of your 'Mercy, Kamerad, '" said the cockney. "'And us overyour bloody ticker!"

It was the man's watch he wanted, without sentiment. 

One tale was most popular, most mirth-arousing in the early days of thewar. 

"Where's your prisoner?" asked an Intelligence officer waiting toreceive a German sent down from the trenches under escort of an honestcorporal. 

"I lost him on the way, sir, " said the corporal. 

"Lost him?"

The corporal was embarrassed. 

"Very sorry, sir. My feelings overcame me, sir. It was like this, sir. The man started talking on the way down. Said he was thinking of hispoor wife. I'd been thinking of mine, and I felt sorry for him. Then hementioned as how he had two kiddies at home. I 'ave two kiddies at 'ome, sir, and I couldn't 'elp feeling sorry for him. Then he said as how hisold mother had died awhile ago and he'd never see her again. When hestarted cryin' I was so sorry for him I couldn't stand it any longer, sir. So I killed the poor blighter. "

Our men in the trenches, and out of them, up to the waist in watersometimes, lying in slimy dugouts, lice--eaten, rat-haunted, on theedge of mine-craters, under harassing fire, with just the fluke of luckbetween life and death, seized upon any kind of joke as an excuse forlaughter, and many a time in ruins and in trenches and in dugouts I haveheard great laughter. It was the protective armor of men's souls. Theyknew that if they did not laugh their courage would go and nothing wouldstand between them and fear. 

"You know, sir, " said a sergeant-major, one day, when I walked with himdown a communication trench so waterlogged that my top-boots were fullof slime, "it doesn't do to take this war seriously. "

And, as though in answer to him, a soldier without breeches and withhis shirt tied between his legs looked at me and remarked, in aphilosophical way, with just a glint of comedy in his eyes:

"That there Grand Fleet of ours don't seem to be very active, sir. It'sa pity it don't come down these blinkin' trenches and do a bit of work!"

"Having a clean-up, my man?" said a brigadier to a soldier trying towash in a basin about the size of a kitchen mug. 

"Yes, sir, " said the man, "and I wish I was a blasted canary. "

One of the most remarkable battles on the front was fought by abattalion of Worcesters for the benefit of two English members ofParliament. It was not a very big battle, but most dramatic while itlasted. The colonel (who had a sense of humor) arranged it after atelephone message to his dugout telling him that two politicians wereabout to visit his battalion in the line, and asking him to show themsomething interesting. 

"Interesting?" said the colonel. "Do they think this war is a peep-showfor politicians? Do they want me to arrange a massacre to make a Londonholiday?" Then his voice changed and he laughed. "Show them somethinginteresting? Oh, all right; I dare say I can do that. "

He did. When the two M. P. 's arrived, apparently at the front-linetrenches, they were informed by the colonel that, much to his regret, for their sake, the enemy was just attacking, and that his men weredefending their position desperately. 

"We hope for the best, " he said, "and I think there is just a chancethat you will escape with your lives if you stay here quite quietly. "

"Great God!" said one of the M. P. 's, and the other was silent, butpale. 

Certainly there was all the noise of a big attack. The Worcesters werestanding-to on the fire-step, firing rifle--grenades and throwingbombs with terrific energy. Every now and then a man fell, and thestretcher-bearers pounced on him, tied him up in bandages, and carriedhim away to the field dressing-station, whistling as they went, "Wewon't go home till morning, " in a most heroic way. .. The battle lastedtwenty minutes, at the end of which time the colonel announced to hisvisitors:

"The attack is repulsed, and you, gentlemen, have nothing more to fear. "

One of the M. P. 's was thrilled with excitement. "The valor of your menwas marvelous, " he said. "What impressed me most was the cheerfulnessof the wounded. They were actually grinning as they came down on thestretchers. "

The colonel grinned, too. In fact, he stifled a fit of coughing. "Funnydevils!" he said. "They are so glad to be going home. "

The members of Parliament went away enormously impressed, but they hadnot enjoyed themselves nearly as well as the Worcesters, who had foughta sham battle--not in the front-line trenches, but in the supporttrenches two miles back! They laughed for a week afterward. 

XVII

On the hill at Wizerne, not far from the stately old town of St. -Omer(visited from time to time by monstrous nightbirds who droppedhigh-explosive eggs), was a large convent. There were no nuns there, butgenerally some hundreds of young officers and men from many differentbattalions, attending a machine-gun course under the direction ofGeneral Baker-Carr, who was the master machine-gunner of the Britisharmy (at a time when we were very weak in those weapons compared withthe enemy's strength) and a cheery, vital man. 

"This war has produced two great dugouts, " said Lord Kitchener on avisit to the convent. "Me and Baker-Carr. "

It was the boys who interested me more than the machines. (I was nevermuch interested in the machinery of war. ) They came down from thetrenches to this school with a sense of escape from prison, and for theten days of their course they were like "freshers" at Oxford and madethe most of their minutes, organizing concerts and other entertainmentsin the evenings after their initiation into the mysteries of Vickersand Lewis. I was invited to dinner there one night, and sat between twoyoung cavalry officers on long benches crowded with subalterns of manyregiments. It was a merry meal and a good one--to this day I remember apotato pie, gloriously baked, and afterward, as it was the last nightof the course, all the officers went wild and indulged in a "rag" of thepublic-school kind. They straddled across the benches and barged ateach other in single tourneys and jousts, riding their hobby-horses withviolent rearings and plungings and bruising one another without grievoushurt and with yells of laughter. Glasses broke, crockery crashed uponthe polished boards. One boy danced the Highland fling on the tables, others were waltzing down the corridors. There was a Rugby scrum in therefectory, and hunting-men cried the "View halloo!" and shouted "Yoicks!yoicks!" . .. General Baker-Carr was a human soul, and kept to his ownroom that night and let discipline go hang. .. . 

When the battles of the Somme began it was those young officers wholed their machine-gun sections into the woods of death--Belville Wood, Mametz Wood, High Wood, and the others. It was they who afterward heldthe outpost lines in Flanders. Some of them were still alive on March21, 1918, when they were surrounded by a sea of Germans and fought untilthe last, in isolated redoubts north and south of St. -Quentin. Two ofthem are still alive, those between whom I sat at dinner that night, and who escaped many close calls of death before the armistice. Ofthe others who charged one another with wooden benches, their laughterringing out, some were blown to bits, and some were buried alive, andsome were blinded and gassed, and some went "missing" for evermore. 

XVIII

In those long days of trench warfare and stationary lines it was boredomthat was the worst malady of the mind; a large, overwhelming boredom tothousands of men who were in exile from the normal interests of life andfrom the activities of brain-work; an intolerable, abominable boredom, sapping the will-power, the moral code, the intellect; a boredom fromwhich there seemed no escape except by death, no relief except by vice, no probable or possible change in its dreary routine. It was bad enoughin the trenches, where men looked across the parapet to the same cornerof hell day by day, to the same dead bodies rotting by the edge of thesame mine-crater, to the same old sand-bags in the enemy's line, to theblasted tree sliced by shell-fire, the upturned railway--truck of whichonly the metal remained, the distant fringe of trees like gallows on thesky-line, the broken spire of a church which could be seen in theround O of the telescope when the weather was not too misty. In "quiet"sections of the line the only variation to the routine was the numberof casualties day by day, by casual shell-fire or snipers' bullets, andthat became part of the boredom. "What casualties?" asked the adjutantin his dugout. 

"Two killed, three wounded, sir. "

"Very well. .. You can go. "

A salute in the doorway of the dugout, a groan from the adjutantlighting another cigarette, leaning with his elbow on the deal table, staring at the guttering of the candle by his side, at the pile of formsin front of him, at the glint of light on the steel helmet hangingby its strap on a nail near the shelf where he kept his safety-razor, flash--lamp, love-letters (in an old cigar-box), soap, whisky--bottle(almost empty now), and an unread novel. 

"Hell!. .. What a life!"

But there was always work to do, and odd incidents, and frights, andresponsibilities. 

It was worse--this boredom--for men behind the lines; in lorry columnswhich went from rail-head to dump every damned morning, and back againby the middle of the morning, and then nothing else to do for all theday, in a cramped little billet with a sulky woman in the kitchen, andsquealing children in the yard, and a stench of manure through the smallwindow. A dull life for an actor who had toured in England and America(like one I met dazed and stupefied by years of boredom--paying too muchfor safety), or for a barrister who had many briefs before the war andnow found his memory going, though a young man, because of the narrowlimits of his life between one Flemish village and another, which wasthe length of his lorry column and of his adventure of war. Nothing everhappened to break the monotony--not even shell-fire. So it was also insmall towns like Hesdin, St. -Pol, Bruay, Lillers--a hundred otherswhere officers stayed for years in charge of motor-repair shops, ordnance-stores, labor battalions, administration offices, claimcommissions, graves' registration, agriculture for soldiers, all kindsof jobs connected with that life of war, but not exciting. 

Not exciting. So frightful in boredom that men were tempted to take todrink, to look around for unattached women, to gamble at cards withany poor devil like themselves. Those were most bored who weremost virtuous. For them, with an ideal in their souls, there was nopossibility of relief (for virtue is not its own reward), unless theywere mystics, as some became, who found God good company and needed noother help. They had rare luck, those fellows with an astounding faithwhich rose above the irony and the brutality of that business being donein the trenches, but there were few of them. 

Even with hours of leisure, men who had been "bookish" could not read. That was a common phenomenon. I could read hardly at all, for years, and thousands were like me. The most "exciting" novel was dull stuff upagainst that world convulsion. What did the romance of love mean, thelittle tortures of one man's heart, or one woman's, troubled in theirmating, when thousands of men were being killed and vast populationswere in agony? History--Greek or Roman or medieval--what was the useof reading that old stuff, now that world history was being made witha rush? Poetry--poor poets with their love of beauty! What did beautymatter, now that it lay dead in the soul of the world, under the filthof battlefields, and the dirt of hate and cruelty, and the law of theapelike man? No--we could not read; but talked and talked about theold philosophy of life, and the structure of society, and Democracy andLiberty and Patriotism and Internationalism, and Brotherhood of Men, andGod, and Christian ethics; and then talked no more, because all wordswere futile, and just brooded and brooded, after searching the dailypaper (two days old) for any kind of hope and light, not finding either. 

XIX

At first, in the beginning of the war, our officers and men believedthat it would have a quick ending. Our first Expeditionary Force cameout to France with the cheerful shout of "Now we sha'n't be long!"before they fell back from an advancing tide of Germans from Mons to theMarne, and fell in their youth like autumn leaves. The New Army boys whofollowed them were desperate to get out to "the great adventure. " Theycursed the length of their training in English camps. "We sha'n't getout till it's too late!" they said. Too late, O God! Even when theyhad had their first spell in the trenches and came up against Germanstrength they kept a queer faith, for a time, that "something" wouldhappen to bring peace as quickly as war had come. Peace was alwayscoming three months ahead. Generals and staff-officers, as well assergeants and privates, had that strong optimism, not based on any kindof reason; but gradually it died out, and in its place came the awfulconviction which settled upon the hearts of the fighting-men, thatthis war would go on forever, that it was their doom always to livein ditches and dugouts, and that their only way of escape was by a"Blighty" wound or by death. 

A chaplain I knew used to try to cheer up despondent boys by pretendingto have special knowledge of inside politics. 

"I have it on good authority, " he said, "that peace is near at hand. There have been negotiations in Paris--"

Or:

"I don't mind telling you lads that if you get through the next scrapyou will have peace before you know where you are. "

They were not believing, now. He had played that game too often. 

"Old stuff, padre!" they said. 

That particular crowd did not get through the next scrap. But thepadre's authority was good. They had peace long before the armistice. 

It was worst of all for boys of sensitive minds who were lucky enoughto get a "cushie" wound, and so went on and on, or who were patched upagain quickly after one, two, or three wounds, and came back again. It was a boy like that who revealed his bitterness to me one day as westood together in the salient. 

"It's the length of the war, " he said, "which does one down. At first itseemed like a big adventure, and the excitement of it, horrible thoughit was, kept one going. Even the first time I went over the top wasn'tso bad as I thought it would be. I was dazed and drunk with all sorts ofemotions, including fear, that were worse before going over. I had whatwe call `the needle. ' They all have it. Afterward one didn't know whatone was doing--even the killing part of the business--until one reachedthe objective and lay down and had time to think and to count the deadabout. .. Now the excitement has gone out of it, and the war looks asthough it would go on forever. At first we all searched the papers forsome hope that the end was near. We don't do that now. We know thatwhenever the war ends, this year or next, this little crowd will bemostly wiped out. Bound to be. And why are we going to die? That's whatall of us want to know. What's it all about? Oh yes, I know the usualanswers: 'In defense of liberty, ' 'To save the Empire. ' But we'veall lost our liberty. We're slaves under shell-fire. And as for theEmpire--I don't give a curse for it. I'm thinking only of my littlehome at Streatham Hill. The horrible Hun? I've no quarrel with the poorblighters over there by Hooge. They are in the same bloody mess as weare. They hate it just as much. We're all under a spell together, whichsome devils have put on us. I wonder if there's a God anywhere. "

This sense of being under a black spell I found expressed by other men, and by German prisoners who used the same phrase. I remember one of themin the battles of the Somme, who said, in good English: "This war wasnot made in any sense by mankind. We are under a spell. " This belief wasdue, I think, to the impersonal character of modern warfare, in whichgun-fire is at so long a range that shell-fire has the quality ofnatural and elemental powers of death--like thunderbolts--and men killedtwenty miles behind the lines while walking over sunny fields or inbusy villages had no thought of a human enemy desiring their individualdeath. 

God and Christianity raised perplexities in the minds of simple ladsdesiring life and not death. They could not reconcile the Christianprecepts of the chaplain with the bayoneting of Germans and the shamblesof the battlefields. All this blood and mangled flesh in the fields ofFrance and Flanders seemed to them--to many of them, I know--a certainproof that God did not exist, or if He did exist was not, as they weretold, a God of Love, but a monster glad of the agonies of men. That atleast was the thought expressed to me by some London lads who arguedthe matter with me one day, and that was the thought which our armychaplains had to meet from men who would not be put off by conventionalwords. It was not good enough to tell them that the Germans were guiltyof all this crime and that unless the Germans were beaten the worldwould lose its liberty and life. "Yes, we know all that, " they said, "but why did God allow the Germans, or the statesmen who arranged theworld by force, or the clergy who christened British warships? And howis it that both sides pray to the same God for victory? There must besomething wrong somewhere. "

It was not often men talked like that, except to some chaplain who wasa human, comradely soul, some Catholic "padre" who devoted himselffearlessly to their bodily and spiritual needs, risking his life withthem, or to some Presbyterian minister who brought them hot cocoa undershell-fire, with a cheery word or two, as I once heard, of "Keep yourhearts up, my lads, and your heads down. "

Most of the men became fatalists, with odd superstitions in the place offaith. "It's no good worrying, " they said. 

"If your name is written on a German shell you can't escape it, and ifit isn't written, nothing can touch you. "

Officers as well as men had this fatalistic belief and superstitionswhich amused them and helped them. "Have the Huns found you out yet?" Iasked some gunner officers in a ruined farmhouse near Kemmel Hill. "Notyet, " said one of them, and then they all left the table at which wewere at lunch and, making a rush for some oak beams, embraced themardently. They were touching wood. 

"Take this with you, " said an Irish officer on a night I went to Ypres. "It will help you as it has helped me. It's my lucky charm. " He gaveme a little bit of coal which he carried in his tunic, and he was soearnest about it that I took it without a smile and felt the safer forit. 

Once in a while the men went home on seven days' leave, or four, andthen came back again, gloomily, with a curious kind of hatred of Englandbecause the people there seemed so callous to their suffering, soutterly without understanding, so "damned cheerful. " They hated thesmiling women in the streets. They loathed the old men who said, "IfI had six sons I would sacrifice them all in the Sacred Cause. " Theydesired that profiteers should die by poison-gas. They prayed God to getthe Germans to send Zeppelins to England--to make the people know whatwar meant. Their leave had done them no good at all. 

From a week-end at home I stood among a number of soldiers who weregoing back to the front, after one of those leaves. The boat warped awayfrom the pier, the M. T. O. And a small group of officers, detectives, and Red Cross men disappeared behind an empty train, and the "revenants"on deck stared back at the cliffs of England across a widening strip ofsea. 

"Back to the bloody old trenches, " said a voice, and the words endedwith a hard laugh. They were spoken by a young officer of the Guards, whom I had seen on the platform of Victoria saying good-by to a prettywoman, who had put her hand on his shoulder for a moment, and said, "Dobe careful, Desmond, for my sake!" Afterward he had sat in the corner ofhis carriage, staring with a fixed gaze at the rushing countryside, butseeing nothing of it, perhaps, as his thoughts traveled backward. (A fewdays later he was blown to bits by a bomb--an accident of war. )

A little man on deck came up to me and said, in a melancholy way, "Youknow who I am, don't you, sir?"

I hadn't the least idea who he was--this little ginger--hairedsoldier with a wizened and wistful face. But I saw that he wore theclaret-colored ribbon of the V. C. On his khaki tunic. He gave me hisname, and said the papers had "done him proud, " and that they had madea lot of him at home--presentations, receptions, speeches, Lord Mayor'saddresses, cheering crowds, and all that. He was one of our Heroes, though one couldn't tell it by the look of him. 

"Now I'm going back to the trenches, " he said, gloomily. "Same oldbusiness and one of the crowd again. " He was suffering from the reactionof popular idolatry. He felt hipped because no one made a fuss of himnow or bothered about his claret-colored ribbon. The staff-officers, chaplains, brigade majors, regimental officers, and army nurses weremore interested in an airship, a silver fish with shining gills and ahumming song in its stomach. 

France. .. And the beginning of what the little V. C. Had called "thesame old business. " There was the long fleet of motor-ambulances as areminder of the ultimate business of all those young men in khaki whomI had seen drilling in the Embankment gardens and shouldering their waydown the Strand. 

Some stretchers were being carried to the lift which goes down to thedeck of the hospital-ship, on which an officer was ticking off eachwounded body after a glance at the label tied to the man's tunic. Several young officers lay under the blankets on those stretchers andone of them caught my eye and smiled as I looked down upon him. The sameold business and the same old pluck. 

I motored down the long, straight roads of France eastward, toward thatnetwork of lines which are the end of all journeys after a few days'leave, home and back again. The same old sights and sounds and smellswhich, as long as memory lasts, to men who had the luck to live throughthe war, will haunt them for the rest of life, and speak of Flanders. 

The harvest was nearly gathered in, and where, a week or two before, there had been fields of high, bronzed corn there were now longstretches of stubbled ground waiting for the plow. The wheat-sheaves hadbeen piled into stacks or, from many great fields, carted away tothe red-roofed barns below the black old windmills whose sails weremotionless because no breath of air stirred on this September afternoon. The smell of Flemish villages--a mingled odor of sun-baked thatch andbakeries and manure heaps and cows and ancient vapors stored up throughthe centuries--was overborne by a new and more pungent aroma which creptover the fields with the evening haze. 

It was a sad, melancholy smell, telling of corruption and death. Itwas the first breath of autumn, and I shivered a little. Must therebe another winter of war? The old misery of darkness and dampness wascreeping up through the splendor of September sunshine. 

Those soldiers did not seem to smell it, or, if their nostrils werekeen, to mind its menace--those soldiers who came marching down theroad, with tanned faces. How fine they looked, and how hard, and howcheerful, with their lot! Speak to them separately and every man would"grouse" at the duration of the war and swear that he was "fed up" withit. Homesickness assailed them at times with a deadly nostalgia. Thehammering of shell-fire, which takes its daily toll, spoiled theirtemper and shook their nerves, as far as a British soldier hadany nerves, which I used to sometimes doubt, until I saw again theshell-shock cases. 

But again I heard their laughter and an old song whistled vilely out oftune, but cheerful to the tramp of their feet. They were going back tothe trenches after a spell in a rest-camp, to the same old business ofwhizz-bangs and pip-squeaks, and dugouts, and the smell of wet clayand chloride of lime, and the life of earth-men who once belonged toa civilization which had passed. And they went whistling on their way, because it was the very best thing to do. 

One picked up the old landmarks again, and got back into the "feel"of the war zone. There were the five old windmills of Cassel that wavetheir arms up the hill road, and the estaminets by which one found one'sway down country lanes--"The Veritable Cuckoo" and "The Lost Corner" and"The Flower of the Fields"--and the first smashed roofs and broken barnswhich led to the area of constant shell-fire. Ugh!

So it was still going on, this bloody murder! There were some morecottages down in the village, where we had tea a month before. And inthe market-place of a sleepy old town the windows were mostly brokenand some shops had gone into dust and ashes. That was new since we lastpassed this way. 

London was only seven hours away, but the hours on leave there seemeda year ago already. The men who had come back, after sleeping incivilization with a blessed sense of safety, had a few minutes of queersurprise that, after all, this business of war was something more realthan a fantastic nightmare, and then put on their moral cloaks againstthe chill and grim reality, for another long spell of it. Very quicklythe familiarity of it all came back to them and became the normalinstead of the abnormal. They were back again to the settled state ofwar, as boys go back to public schools after the wrench from home, andfind that the holiday is only the incident and school the more enduringexperience. 

There were no new impressions, only the repetition of old impressions. So I found when I heard the guns again and watched the shells burstingabout Ypres and over Kemmel Ridge and Messines church tower. 

Two German airplanes passed overhead, and the hum of their engines wasloud in my ears as I lay in the grass. Our shrapnel burst about them, but did not touch their wings. All around there was the slammingof great guns, and I sat chewing a bit of straw by the side of ashell-hole, thinking in the same old way of the utter senselessness ofall this noise and hate and sudden death which encircled me for miles. No amount of meditation would screw a new meaning out of it all. It wasjust the commonplace of life out here. 

The routine of it went on. The officer who came back from home steppedinto his old place, and after the first greeting of, "Hullo, old man!Had a good time?" found his old job waiting for him. So there was a newbrigadier-general? Quick promotion, by Jove!

Four men had got knocked out that morning at D4, and it was rotten badluck that the sergeant-major should have been among them. A real goodfellow. However, there's that court martial for this afternoon, and, by the by, when is that timber coming up? Can't build the new dugout ifthere's no decent wood to be got by stealing or otherwise. You heard howthe men got strafed in their billets the other day? Dirty work!

The man who had come back went into the trenches and had a word or twowith the N. C. O. 's. Then he went into his own dugout. The mice had beengetting at his papers. Oh yes, that's where he left his pipe! It waslying under the trestle-table, just where he dropped it before going onleave. The clay walls were a bit wet after the rains. He stood with achilled feeling in this little hole of his, staring at every familiarthing in it. 

Tacked to the wall was the portrait of a woman. He said good-by to herat Victoria Station. How long ago? Surely more than seven hours, orseven years. .. Outside there were the old noises. The guns were at itagain. That was a trench-mortar. The enemy's eight-inch howitzers wereplugging away. What a beastly row that machine-gun was making! Playingon the same old spot. Why couldn't they leave it alone, the asses?. .. Anyhow, there was no doubt about it--he had come back again. Back to thetrenches and the same old business. 

There was a mine to be blown up that night and it would make a prettymess in the enemy's lines. The colonel was very cheerful about it, andexplained that a good deal of sapping had been done. "We've got thebulge on 'em, " he said, referring to the enemy's failures in this classof work. In the mess all the officers were carrying on as usual, makingthe same old jokes. 

The man who had come back got back also the spirit of the thing withastonishing rapidity. That other life of his, away there in old London, was shut up in the cupboard of his heart. 

So it went on and on until the torture of its boredom was broken bythe crash of big battles, and the New Armies, which had been learninglessons in the School of Courage, went forward to the great test, andpassed, with honor. 

PART THREE. THE NATURE OF A BATTLE

I

In September of 1915 the Commander-in-Chief and his staff were busy withpreparations for a battle, in conjunction with the French, which hadambitious objects. These have never been stated because they werenot gained (and it was the habit of our High Command to concealits objectives and minimize their importance if their hopes wereunfulfilled), but beyond doubt the purpose of the battle was to gainpossession of Lens and its coal-fields, and by striking through Hulluchand Haisnes to menace the German occupation of Lille. On the Britishfront the key of the enemy's position was Hill 70, to the north of Lens, beyond the village of Loos, and the capture of that village and thathill was the first essential of success. 

The assault on these positions was to be made by two New Army divisionsof the 4th Corps: the 47th (London) Division, and the 15th (Scottish)Division. They were to be supported by the 11th Corps, consisting ofthe Guards and two new and untried divisions, the 21st and the 24th. TheCavalry Corps (less the 3d Cavalry Division under General Fanshawe) wasin reserve far back at St. -Pol and Pernes; and the Indian Cavalry Corpsunder General Remington was at Doullens; "to be in readiness, " wrote SirJohn French, "to co-operate with the French cavalry in exploiting anysuccess which might be attained by the French and British forces. ". .. Oh, wonderful optimism! In that Black Country of France, scattered withmining villages in which every house was a machine-gun fort, with slagheaps and pit-heads which were formidable redoubts, with trenches andbarbed wire and brick-stacks, and quarries, organized for defense insiege-warfare, cavalry might as well have ridden through hell with hopeof "exploiting" success. .. "Plans for effective co-operation were fullyarranged between the cavalry commanders of both armies, " wrote ourCommander-in-Chief in his despatch. I can imagine those gallant oldgentlemen devising their plans, with grave courtesy, over large maps, and A. D. C. 's clicking heels in attendance, and an air of immensewisdom and most cheerful assurance governing the proceedings in thesalon of a French chateau. . . The 3d Cavalry Division, less one brigade, was assigned to the First Army as a reserve, and moved into the area ofthe 4th Corps on the 2lst and 22d of September. 

II

The movements of troops and the preparations for big events revealedto every British soldier in France the "secret" of the coming battle. Casualty clearing-stations were ordered to make ready for big numbers ofwounded. That was always one of the first signs of approaching massacre. Vast quantities of shells were being brought up to the rail-heads andstacked in the "dumps. " They were the first-fruit of the speeding upof munition-factories at home after the public outcry against shellshortage and the lack of high explosives. Well, at last the guns wouldnot be starved. There was enough high-explosive force available to blastthe German trenches off the map. So it seemed to our innocence--thoughyears afterward we knew that no bombardment would destroy all earthworkssuch as Germans made, and that always machine-guns would slash ourinfantry advancing over the chaos of mangled ground. 

Behind our lines in France, in scores of villages where our men werequartered, there was a sense of impending fate. Soldiers of the New Armyknew that in a little while the lessons they had learned in the Schoolof Courage would be put to a more frightful test than that of holdingtrenches in stationary warfare. Their boredom, the intolerable monotonyof that routine life, would be broken by more sensational drama, and some of them were glad of that, and said: "Let's get on with it. Anything rather than that deadly stagnation. " And others, who guessedthey were chosen for the coming battle, and had a clear vision of whatkind of things would happen (they knew something about the losses atNeuve Chapelle and Festubert), became more thoughtful than usual, deeplyintrospective, wondering how many days of life they had left to them. 

Life was good out of the line in that September of '15. The land ofFrance was full of beauty, with bronzed corn-stooks in the fields, andscarlet poppies in the grass, and a golden sunlight on old barns and onlittle white churches and in orchards heavy with fruit. It was good togo into the garden of a French chateau and pluck a rose and smell itssweetness, and think back to England, where other roses were blooming. England!. .. And in a few days--who could say?--perhaps eternal sleepsomewhere near Lens. 

Some officers of the Guards came into the garden of the little housewhere I lived at that time with other onlookers. It was an untidygarden, with a stretch of grass-plot too rough to be called a lawn, butwith pleasant shade under the trees, and a potager with raspberriesand currants on the bushes, and flower-beds where red and white rosesdropped their petals. 

Two officers of the Scots Guards, inseparable friends, came to gossipwith us, and read the papers, and drink a little whisky in the evenings, and pick the raspberries. They were not professional soldiers. One ofthem had been a stock-broker, the other "something in the city. " Theydisliked the army system with an undisguised hatred and contempt. Theyhated war with a ferocity which was only a little "camouflaged" by theirony and the brutality of their anecdotes of war's little comedies. They took a grim delight in the humor of corpses, lice, bayonet--work, and the sniping of fair-haired German boys. They laughed, almostexcessively, at these attributes of warfare, and one of them used toremark, after some such anecdote, "And once I was a little gentleman!"

He was a gentleman still, with a love of nature in his heart--I saw himtouch the petals of living roses with a caress in his finger-tips--andwith a spiritual revolt against the beastliness of this new job of his, although he was a strong, hard fellow, without weakness of sentiment. His close comrade was of more delicate fiber, a gentle soul, not madefor soldiering at all, but rather for domestic life, with children abouthim, and books. As the evenings passed in this French village, drawinghim closer to Loos by the flight of time, I saw the trouble in his eyeswhich he tried to hide by smiling and by courteous conversation. Hewas being drawn closer to Loos and farther away from the wife who knewnothing of what that name meant to her and to him. 

Other officers of the Guards came into the garden--Grenadiers. Therewere two young brothers of an old family who had always sent their sonsto war. They looked absurdly young when they took off their tunics andplayed a game of cricket, with a club for a bat, and a tennis-ball. Theywere just schoolboys, but with the gravity of men who knew that life isshort. I watched their young athletic figures, so clean-limbed, sofull of grace, as they threw the ball, and had a vision of them lyingmangled. 

An Indian prince came into the garden. It was "Ranjitsinji, " who hadcarried his bat to many a pavilion where English men and women hadclapped their hands to him, on glorious days when there was sunlight onEnglish lawns. He took the club and stood at the wicket and was bowledthird ball by a man who had only played cricket after ye manner ofStratford-atte-Bow. But then he found himself, handled the club like asword, watched the ball with a falcon's eye, played with it. He wason the staff of the Indian Cavalry Corps, which was "to co-operate inexploiting any success. "

"To-morrow we move, " said one of the Scots Guards officers. The colonelof the battalion came to dinner at our mess, sitting down to a whitetablecloth for the last time in his life. They played a game of cards, and went away earlier than usual. 

Two of them lingered after the colonel had gone. They drank more whisky. 

"We must be going, " they said, but did not go. 

The delicate-looking man could not hide the trouble in his eyes. 

"I sha'n't be killed this time, " he said to a friend of mine. "I shallbe badly wounded. "

The hard man, who loved flowers, drank his fourth glass of whisky. 

"It's going to be damned uncomfortable, " he said. "I wish the filthything were over. Our generals will probably arrange some glorious littlemassacres. I know 'em!. .. Well, good night, all. "

They went out into the darkness of the village lane. Battalions werealready on the move, in the night. Their steady tramp of feet beat onthe hard road. Their dark figures looked like an army of ghosts. Sparkswere spluttering out of the funnels of army cookers. A British soldierin full field kit was kissing a woman in the shadow-world of anestaminet. I passed close to them, almost touching them before I wasaware of their presence. 

"Bonne chance!" said the woman. "Quand to reviens--"

"One more kiss, lassie, " said the man. 

"Mans comme to es gourmand, toi!"

He kissed her savagely, hungrily. Then he lurched off the sidewalk andformed up with other men in the darkness. 

The Scots Guards moved next morning. I stood by the side of the colonel, who was in a gruff mood. 

"It looks like rain, " he said, sniffing the air. "It will probably rainlike hell when the battle begins. "

I think he was killed somewhere by Fosse 8. The two comrades in theScots Guards were badly wounded. One of the young brothers was killedand the other maimed. I found their names in the casualty lists whichfilled columns of The Times for a long time after Loos. 

III

The town of Bethune was the capital of our army in the Black Country ofthe French coal-fields. It was not much shelled in those days, thoughafterward--years afterward--it was badly damaged by long-range guns, sothat its people fled, at last, after living so long on the edge of war. 

Its people were friendly to our men, and did not raise their pricesexorbitantly. There were good shops in the town--"as good as Paris, "said soldiers who had never been to Paris, but found these plate-glasswindows dazzling, after trench life, and loved to see the "mamzelles"behind the counters and walking out smartly, with little high-heeledshoes. There were tea-shops, crowded always with officers on their wayto the line or just out of it, and they liked to speak French with thegirls who served them. Those girls saw the hunger in those men's eyes, who watched every movement they made, who tried to touch their hands andtheir frocks in passing. They knew they were desired, as daughters ofEve, by boys who were starved of love. They took that as part of theirbusiness, distributing cakes and buns without favor, with laughterin their eyes, and a merry word or two. Now and then, when they hadleisure, they retired to inner rooms, divided by curtains from the shop, and sat on the knees of young British officers, while others playedragtime or sentimental ballads on untuned pianos. There was champagne aswell as tea to be had in these bun--shops, but the A. P. M. Was down ondisorder or riotous gaiety, and there were no orgies. "Pas d'orgies, "said the young ladies severely when things were getting a little toolively. They had to think of their business. 

Down side-streets here and there were houses where other women lived, not so severe in their point of view. Their business, indeed, did notpermit of severity, and they catered for the hunger of men exiled yearafter year from their own home-life and from decent womanhood. They gavethe base counterfeit of love in return for a few francs, and there werelong lines of men--English, Irish, and Scottish soldiers--who waitedtheir turn to get that vile imitation of life's romance from women whowere bought and paid for. Our men paid a higher price than a few francsfor the Circe's cup of pleasure, which changed them into swine for awhile, until the spell passed, and would have blasted their souls if Godwere not understanding of human weakness and of war. They paid in theirbodies, if not in their souls, those boys of ours who loved life andbeauty and gentle things, and lived in filth and shell-fire, and weretrained to kill, and knew that death was hunting for them and had allthe odds of luck. Their children and their children's children willpay also for the sins of their fathers, by rickety limbs andwater--on-the-brain, and madness, and tuberculosis, and other evilswhich are the wages of sin, which flourished most rankly behind thefields of war. 

The inhabitants of Bethune--the shopkeepers, and brave little familiesof France, and bright-eyed girls, and frowzy women, and heroines, and harlots--came out into the streets before the battle of Loos, andwatched the British army pouring through--battalions of Londoners andScots, in full fighting-kit, with hot sweat on their faces, andgrim eyes, and endless columns of field-guns and limbers, drawn byhard-mouthed mules cursed and thrashed by their drivers, and ambulances, empty now, and wagons, and motor-lorries, hour after hour, day afterday. 

"Bonne chance!" cried the women, waving hands and handkerchiefs. 

"Les pauvres enfants!" said the old women, wiping their eyes on dirtyaprons. "We know how it is. They will be shot to pieces. It is alwayslike that, in this sacred war. Oh, those sacred pigs of Germans! Thosedirty Boches! Those sacred bandits!"

"They are going to give the Boches a hard knock, " said grizzled men, whoremembered in their boyhood another war. "The English army is ready. Howsplendid they are, those boys! And ours are on the right of them. Thistime--!"

"Mother of God, hark at the guns!"

At night, as dark fell, the people of Bethune gathered in the greatsquare by the Hotel de Ville, which afterward was smashed, and listenedto the laboring of the guns over there by Vermelles and Noeux-les-Mines, and Grenay, and beyond Notre Dame de Lorette, where the French guns wereat work. There were loud, earth--shaking rumblings, and now and thenenormous concussions. In the night sky lights rose in long, spreadingbars of ruddy luminance, in single flashes, in sudden torches of scarletflame rising to the clouds and touching them with rosy feathers. 

"'Cre nom de Dieu!" said French peasants, on the edge of all that, in villages like Gouy, Servins, Heuchin, Houdain, Grenay, Bruay, andPernes. "The caldron is boiling up. .. There will be a fine pot-au-feu. "

They wondered if their own sons would be in the broth. Some of themknew, and crossed themselves by wayside shrines for the sake of theirsons' souls, or in their estaminets cursed the Germans with the same oldcurses for having brought all this woe into the world. 

IV

In those villages--Heuchin, Houdain, Lillers, and others--on the edgeof the Black Country the Scottish troops of the 15th Division were intraining for the arena, practising attacks on trenches and villages, getting a fine edge of efficiency on to bayonet-work and bombing, and having their morale heightened by addresses from brigadiers anddivisional commanders on the glorious privilege which was about to betheirs of leading the assault, and on the joys as well as the duty ofkilling Germans. 

In one battalion of Scots--the 10th Gordons, who were afterward the8/10th--there were conferences of company commanders and whisperedconsultations of subalterns. They were "Kitchener" men, from Edinburghand Aberdeen and other towns in the North. I came to know them all afterthis battle, and gave them fancy names in my despatches: the Georgiangentleman, as handsome as Beau Brummell, and a gallant soldier, who wasseveral times wounded, but came back to command his old battalion, andthen was wounded again nigh unto death, but came back again; and HonestJohn, slow of speech, with a twinkle in his eyes, careless of shellsplinters flying around his bullet head, hard and tough and cunning inwar; and little Ginger, with his whimsical face and freckles, and loveof pretty girls and all children, until he was killed in Flanders; andthe Permanent Temporary Lieutenant who fell on the Somme; and theGiant who had a splinter through his brain beyond Arras; and many otherHighland gentlemen, and one English padre who went with them always tothe trenches, until a shell took his head off at the crossroads. 

It was the first big attack of the 15th Division. They were determinedto go fast and go far. Their pride of race was stronger than the strainon their nerves. Many of them, I am certain, had no sense of fear, noapprehension of death or wounds. Excitement, the comradeship of courage, the rivalry of battalions, lifted them above anxiety before the battlebegan, though here and there men like Ginger, of more delicate fiber, ofimagination as well as courage, must have stared in great moments at thegrisly specter toward whom they would soon be walking. 

In other villages were battalions of the 47th London Division. They, too, were to be in the first line of attack, on the right of the Scots. They, too, had to win honor for the New Army and old London. They were adifferent crowd from the Scots, not so hard, not so steel--nerved, withmore sensibility to suffering, more imagination, more instinctive revoltagainst the butchery that was to come. But they, too, had been "doped"for morale, their nervous tension had been tightened up by speechesaddressed to their spirit and tradition. It was to be London's day out. They were to fight for the glory of the old town. .. The old town wherethey had lived in little suburban houses with flower-gardens, where theyhad gone up by the early morning trains to city offices and governmentoffices and warehouses and shops, in days before they ever guessed theywould go a-soldiering, and crouch in shell-holes under high explosives, and thrust sharp steel into German bowels. But they would do their best. They would go through with it. They would keep their sense of humor andmake cockney jokes at death. They would show the stuff of London pride. 

"Domine, dirige nos!"

I knew many of those young Londoners. I had sat in tea-shops with themwhen they were playing dominoes, before the war, as though that were themost important game in life. I had met one of them at a fancy-dress ballin the Albert Hall, when he was Sir Walter Raleigh and I was RichardSheridan. Then we were both onlookers of life--chroniclers of passinghistory. I remained the onlooker, even in war, but my friend went intothe arena. He was a Royal Fusilier, and the old way of life becamea dream to him when he walked toward Loos, and afterward sat inshell-craters in the Somme fields, and knew that death would find him, as it did, in Flanders. I had played chess with one man whom afterwardI met as a gunner officer at Heninel, near Arras, on an afternoon whena shell had killed three of his men bathing in a tank, and other shellsmade a mess of blood and flesh in his wagon-lines. We both wore steelhats, and he was the first to recognize a face from the world of peace. After his greeting he swore frightful oaths, cursing the war and theStaff. His nerves were all jangled. There was another officer in the47th London Division whom I had known as a boy. He was only nineteenwhen he enlisted, not twenty when he had fought through several battles. He and hundreds like him had been playing at red Indians in KensingtonGardens a few years before an August in 1914. .. The 47th LondonDivision, going forward to the battle of Loos, was made up of men whosesouls had been shaped by all the influences of environment, habit, and tradition in which I had been born and bred. Their cradle had beenrocked to the murmurous roar of London traffic. Their first adventureshad been on London Commons. The lights along the Embankment, the excitement of the streets, the faces of London crowds, royalpageantry--marriages, crownings, burials--on the way to Westminster, the little dramas of London life, had been woven into the fiber of theirthoughts, and it was the spirit of London which went with them whereverthey walked in France or Flanders, more sensitive than country men tothe things they saw. Some of them had to fight against their nerveson the way to Loos. But their spirit was exalted by a nervous stimulusbefore that battle, so that they did freakish and fantastic things ofcourage. 

V

I watched the preliminary bombardment of the Loos battlefields froma black slag heap beyond Noeux-les-Mines, and afterward went on thebattleground up to the Loos redoubt, when our guns and the enemy's werehard at work; and later still, in years that followed, when there wasnever a silence of guns in those fields, came to know the ground frommany points of view. It was a hideous territory, this Black Countrybetween Lens and Hulluch. From the flat country below the distant ridgesof Notre Dame de Lorette and Vimy there rose a number of high blackcones made by the refuse of the coal-mines, which were called Fosses. Around those black mounds there was great slaughter, as at Fosse 8 andFosse 10 and Puits 14bis, and the Double Crassier near Loos, becausethey gave observation and were important to capture or hold. Near themwere the pit-heads, with winding-gear in elevated towers of steel whichwere smashed and twisted by gun-fire; and in Loos itself were two ofthose towers joined by steel girders and gantries, called the "TowerBridge" by men of London. Rows of red cottages where the French minershad lived were called corons, and where they were grouped into largeunits they were called cites, like the Cite St. -Auguste, the CiteSt. -Pierre, and the Cite St. -Laurent, beyond Hill 70, on the outskirtsof Lens. All those places were abandoned now by black-grimed men who hadfled down mine-shafts and galleries with their women and children, andhad come up on our side of the lines at Noeux-les-Mines or Bruay orBully-Grenay, where they still lived close to the war. Shells piercedthe roof of the church in that squalid village of Noeux--les-Mines andsmashed some of the cottages and killed some of the people now and then. Later in the war, when aircraft dropped bombs at night, a new perilover--shadowed them with terror, and they lived in their cellars afterdusk, and sometimes were buried there. But they would not retreatfarther back--not many of them--and on days of battle I saw groups ofFrench miners and dirty-bloused girls excited by the passage of ourtroops and by the walking wounded who came stumbling back, and bystretcher cases unloaded from ambulances to the floors of their dirtycottages. High velocities fell in some of the streets, shrapnel-shellswhined overhead and burst like thunderclaps. Young hooligans of Franceslouched around with their hands in their pockets, talking to our menin a queer lingua franca, grimacing at those noises if they did not cometoo near. I saw lightly wounded girls among them, with bandaged headsand hands, but they did not think that a reason for escape. Withsmoothly braided hair they gathered round British soldiers in steel hatsand clasped their arms or leaned against their shoulders. They had knownmany of those men before. They were their sweethearts. In those foullittle mining towns the British troops had liked their billets, becauseof the girls there. London boys and Scots "kept company" with prettyslatterns, who stole their badges for keepsakes, and taught them a basepatois of French, and had a smudge of tears on their cheeks whenthe boys went away for a spell in the ditches of death. They werekind-hearted little sluts with astounding courage. 

"Aren't you afraid of this place?" I asked one of them in Bully-Grenaywhen it was "unhealthy" there. "You might be killed here any minute. "

She shrugged her shoulders. 

"Je m'en fiche de la mort!" ("I don't care a damn about death. ")

I had the same answer from other girls in other places. 

That was the mise-en-scene of the battle of Loos--those mining townsbehind the lines, then a maze of communication trenches entered froma place called Philosophe, leading up to the trench-lines beyondVermelles, and running northward to Cambrin and Givenchy, oppositeHulluch, Haisnes, and La Bassee, where the enemy had his trenches andearthworks among the slag heaps, the pit-heads, the corons and thecites, all broken by gun-fire, and nowhere a sign of human lifeaboveground, in which many men were hidden. 

Storms of gun-fire broke loose from our batteries a week before thebattle. It was our first demonstration of those stores of high-explosiveshells which had been made by the speeding up of munition-work inEngland, and of a gun-power which had been growing steadily sincethe coming out of the New Army. The weather was heavy with mist and adrizzle of rain. Banks of smoke made a pall over all the arena of war, and it was stabbed and torn by the incessant flash of bursting shells. I stood on the slag heap, staring at this curtain of smoke, hour afterhour, dazed by the tumult of noise and by that impenetrable veilwhich hid all human drama. There was no movement of men to be seen, no slaughter, no heroic episode--only through rifts in the smoke theblurred edges of slag heaps and pit-heads, and smoking ruins. Germantrenches were being battered in, German dugouts made into the tombs ofliving men, German bodies tossed up with earth and stones--all that wascertain but invisible. 

"Very boring, " said an officer by my side. "Not a damn thing to beseen. "

"Our men ought to have a walk-over, " said an optimist. "Any livingGerman must be a gibbering idiot with shell-shock. "

"I expect they're playing cards in their dugouts, " said the officer whowas bored. "Even high explosives don't go down very deep. "

"It's stupendous, all the same. By God! hark at that! It seems more thanhuman. It's like some convulsion of nature. "

"There's no adventure in modern war, " said the bored man. "It's a dirtyscientific business. I'd kill all chemists and explosive experts. "

"Our men will have adventure enough when they go over the top at dawn. Hell must be a game compared with that. "

The guns went on pounding away, day after day, laboring, pummeling, hammering, like Thor with his thunderbolts. It was the preparation forbattle. No men were out of the trenches yet, though some were beingkilled there and elsewhere, at the crossroads by Philosophe, and outsidethe village of Masingarbe, and in the ruins of Vermelles, and away upat Cambrin and Givenchy. The German guns were answering backintermittently, but holding most of their fire until human flesh cameout into the open. The battle began at dawn on September 25th. 

VI

In order to distract the enemy's attention and hold his troops away fromthe main battle-front, "subsidiary attacks" were made upon the Germanlines as far north as Bellewarde Farm, to the east of Ypres, andsouthward to La Bassee Canal at Givenchy, by the troops of the Secondand Third Armies. This object, wrote Sir John French, in his despatch, "was most effectively achieved. " It was achieved by the bloody sacrificeof many brave battalions in the 3d and 14th Divisions (Yorkshire, RoyalScots, King's Royal Rifles, and others), and by the Meerut Divisionof the Indian Corps, who set out to attack terrible lines withoutsufficient artillery support, and without reserves behind them, andwithout any chance of holding the ground they might capture. It was partof the system of war. They were the pawns of "strategy, " serving a highpurpose in a way that seemed to them without reason. Not for them wasthe glory of a victorious assault. Their job was to "demonstrate" byexposing their bodies to devouring fire, and by attacking earthworkswhich they were not expected to hold. Here and there men of ours, aftertheir rush over No Man's Land under a deadly sweep of machine-gun fire, flung themselves into the enemy's trenches, bayoneting the Germans andcapturing the greater part of their first line. There they lay pantingamong wounded and dead, and after that shoveled up earth and burrowed toget cover from the shelling which was soon to fall on them. Quickly theenemy discovered their whereabouts and laid down a barrage fire which, with deadly accuracy, plowed up their old front line and tossed it abouton the pitchforks of bursting shells. Our men's bodies were mangledin that earth. High explosives plunged into the midst of little groupscrouching in holes and caverns of the ground, and scattered their limbs. Living, unwounded men lay under those screaming shells with the pantinghearts of toads under the beat of flails. Wounded men crawled back overNo Man's Land, and some were blown to bits as they crawled, and othersgot back. Before nightfall, in the dark, a general retirement wasordered to our original line in that northern sector, owing to theincreasing casualties under the relentless work of the German guns. Likeants on the move, thousands of men rose from the upheaved earth, andwith their stomachs close to it, crouching, came back, dragging theirwounded. The dead were left. 

"On the front of the Third Army, " wrote Sir John French, "subsidiaryoperations of a similar nature were successfully carried out. "

From the point of view of high generalship those holding attacks hadserved their purpose pretty well. From the point of view of mothers'sons they had been a bloody shambles without any gain. The point of viewdepends on the angle of vision. 

VII

Let me now tell the story of the main battle of Loos as I was able topiece it together from the accounts of men in different parts of thefield--no man could see more than his immediate neighborhood--and fromthe officers who survived. It is a story full of the psychology ofbattle, with many strange incidents which happened to men when theirspirit was uplifted by that mingling of exultation and fear which isheroism, and with queer episodes almost verging on comedy in themidst of death and agony, at the end of a day of victory, most ghastlyfailure. 

The three attacking divisions from left to right on the line oppositethe villages of Hulluch and Loos were the 1st, the 15th (Scottish), and the 47th (London). Higher up, opposite Hulluch and Haisnes, the9th (Scottish) Division and the 7th Division were in front of theHohenzollern redoubt (chalky earthworks thrust out beyond the Germanfront-line trenches, on rising ground) and some chalk-quarries. 

The men of those divisions were lined up during the night in thecommunication trenches, which had been dug by the sappers and laidwith miles of telephone wire. They were silent, except for the chink ofshovels and side arms, the shuffle of men's feet, their hard breathing, and occasional words of command. At five-thirty, when the guns in allour batteries were firing at full blast, with a constant scream ofshells over the heads of the waiting men, and when the first faint lightof day stole into the sky, there was a slight rain falling, and the windblew lightly from the southwest. 

In the front-line trenches a number of men were busy with some long, narrow cylinders, which had been carried up a day before. They werearranging them in the mud of the parapets with their nozles facing theenemy lines. 

"That's the stuff to give them!"

"What is it?"

"Poison-gas. Worse than they used at Ypres. "

"Christ!. .. Supposing we have to walk through it?"

"We shall walk behind it. The wind will carry it down the throat of theFritzes. We shall find 'em dead. "

So men I met had talked of that new weapon which most of them hated. 

It was at five-thirty when the men busy with the cylinders turned onlittle taps. There was a faint hissing noise, the escape of gas frommany pipes. A heavy, whitish cloud came out of the cylinders andtraveled aboveground as it was lifted and carried forward by the breeze. 

"How's the gas working?" asked a Scottish officer. 

"Going fine!" said an English officer. But he looked anxious, and wetteda finger and held it up, to get the direction of the wind. 

Some of the communication trenches were crowded with the Black Watch ofthe 1st Division, hard, bronzed fellows, with the red heckle in theirbonnets. (It was before the time of steel hats. ) They were leaning upagainst the walls of the trenches, waiting. They were strung round withspades, bombs, and sacks. 

"A queer kind o' stink!" said one of them, sniffing. 

Some of the men began coughing. Others were rubbing their eyes, asthough they smarted. 

The poison-gas. .. The wind had carried it half way across No Man's Land, then a swirl changed its course, and flicked it down a gully, and sweptit right round to the Black Watch in the narrow trenches. Some Germanshell-fire was coming, too. In one small bunch eight men fell in a mushof blood and raw flesh. But the gas was worse. There was a movement inthe trenches, the huddling together of frightened men who had been verybrave. They were coughing, spitting, gasping. Some of them fell limpagainst their fellows, with pallid cheeks which blackened. Others tiedhandkerchiefs about their mouths and noses, but choked inside thosebandages, and dropped to earth with a clatter of shovels. Officers andmen were cursing and groaning. An hour later, when the whistles blew, there were gaps in the line of the 1st Division which went over the top. In the trenches lay gassed men. In No Man's Land others fell, swept bymachine-gun bullets, shrapnel, and high explosives. The 1st Division was"checked. ". .. 

"We caught it badly, " said some of them I met later in the day, bandaged and bloody, and plastered in wet chalk, while gassed men lay onstretchers about them, unconscious, with laboring lungs. 

VIII

Farther south the front-lines of the 15th (Scottish) Division climbedover their parapets at six-thirty, and saw the open ground before them, and the dusky, paling sky above them, and broken wire in front of theenemy's churned-up trenches; and through the smoke, faintly, and faraway, three and a half miles away, the ghostly outline of the "TowerBridge" of Loos, which was their goal. For an hour there were steadytides of men all streaming slowly up those narrow communication ways, cut through the chalk to get into the light also, where death was inambush for many of them somewhere in the shadows of that dawn. 

By seven-forty the two assaulting brigades of the 15th Division had leftthe trenches and were in the open. Shriller than the scream of shellsabove them was the skirl of pipes, going with them. The Pipe Major ofthe 8th Gordons was badly wounded, but refused to be touched until theother men were tended. He was a giant, too big for a stretcher, and hadto be carried back on a tarpaulin. At the dressing-station his leg wasamputated, but he died after two operations, and the Gordons mournedhim. 

While the Highlanders went forward with their pipes, two brigades of theLondoners, on their right, were advancing in the direction of the long, double slag heap, southwest of Loos, called the Double Crassier. Some ofthem were blowing mouth-organs, playing the music-hall song of "Hullo, hullo, it's a different girl again!" and the "Robert E. Lee, " until oneafter another a musician fell in a crumpled heap. Shrapnel burst overthem, and here and there shells plowed up the earth where they weretrudging. On the right of the Londoners the French still stayed in theirtrenches--their own attack was postponed until midday--and they cheeredthe London men, as they went forward, with cries of, "Vivent lesAngdais!" "A mort--les Boches!" It was they who saw one man kicking afootball in advance of the others. 

"He is mad!" they said. "The poor boy is a lunatic!"

"He is not mad, " said a French officer who had lived in England. "It isa beau geste. He is a sportsman scornful of death. That is the Britishsport. "

It was a London Irishman dribbling a football toward the goal, and heheld it for fourteen hundred yards--the best-kicked goal in history. 

Many men fell in the five hundred yards of No Man's Land. But they werenot missed then by those who went on in waves--rather, like molecules, separating, collecting, splitting up into smaller groups, bunchingtogether again, on the way to the first line of German trenches. A glintof bayonets made a quickset hedge along the line of churned-up earthwhich had been the Germans' front--line trench. Our guns had cut thewire or torn gaps into it. Through the broken strands went the Londonerson the right, the Scots on the left, shouting hoarsely now. They sawred. They were hunters of human flesh. They swarmed down into the firstlong ditch, trampling over dead bodies, falling over them, clawing theearth and scrambling up the parados, all broken and crumbled, thenon again to another ditch. Boys dropped with bullets in their brains, throats, and bodies. German machine-guns were at work at close range. 

"Give'em hell!" said an officer of the Londoners--a boy of nineteen. There were a lot of living Germans in the second ditch, and in holesabout. Some of them stood still, as though turned to clay, until theyfell with half the length of a bayonet through their stomachs. Othersshrieked and ran a little way before they died. Others sat behindhillocks of earth, spraying our men with machine-gun bullets until bombswere hurled on them and they were scattered into lumps of flesh. 

Three lines of trench were taken, and the Londoners and the Scots wentforward again in a spate toward Loos. All the way from our old lines menwere streaming up, with shells bursting among them or near them. 

On the way to Loos a company of Scots came face to face with a tallGerman. He was stone-dead, with a bullet in his brain, his face allblackened with the grime of battle; but he stood erect in the path, wedged somehow in a bit of trench. The Scots stared at this figure, andtheir line parted and swept each side of him, as though some obscenespecter barred the way. Rank after rank streamed up, and then a bigtide of men poured through the German trench systems and rushed forward. Three--quarters of a mile more to Loos. Some of them were panting, outof breath, speechless. Others talked to the men about them in straysentences. Most of them were silent, staring ahead of them and lickingtheir lips with swollen tongues. They were parched with thirst, someof them told me. Many stopped to drink the last drop out of theirwater-bottles. As one man drank he spun round and fell with a thud onhis face. Machine-gun bullets were whipping up the earth. From Loos camea loud and constant rattle of machine-guns. Machine-guns were firingout of the broken windows of the houses and from the top of the "TowerBridge, " those steel girders which rose three hundred feet high from thecenter of the village, and from slit trenches across the narrow streets. There were one hundred machine-guns in the cemetery to the southwestof the town, pouring out lead upon the Londoners who had to pass thatplace. 

Scots and London men were mixed up, and mingled in crowds whichencircled Loos, and forced their way into the village; but roughlystill, and in the mass, they were Scots who assaulted Loos itself, and London men who went south of it to the chalk-pits and the DoubleCrassier. 

It was eight o'clock in the morning when the first crowds reached thevillage, and for nearly two hours afterward there was street-fighting. 

It was the fighting of men in the open, armed with bayonets, rifles, and bombs, against men invisible and in hiding, with machine-guns. Smallgroups of Scots, like packs of wolves, prowled around the houses, wherethe lower rooms and cellars were crammed with Germans, trapped andterrified, but still defending themselves. In some of the houses theywould not surrender, afraid of certain death, anyhow, and kept the Scotsat bay awhile until those kilted men flung themselves in and killedtheir enemy to the last man. Outside those red-brick houses lay deadand wounded Scots. Inside there were the curses and screams of a bloodyvengeance. In other houses the machine-gun garrisons ceased fire and putwhite rags through the broken windows, and surrendered like sheep. Soit was in one house entered by a little kilted signaler, who shot downthree men who tried to kill him. Thirty others held their hands up andsaid, in a chorus of fear, "Kamerad! Kamerad!"

A company of the 8th Gordons were among the first into Loos, led bysome of those Highland officers I have mentioned on another page. Itwas "Honest John" who led one crowd of them, and he claims now, witha laugh, that he gained his Military Cross for saving the lives of twohundred Germans. "I ought to have got the Royal Humane Society's medal, "he said. Those Germans--Poles, really, from Silesia--came swarming outof a house with their hands up. But the Gordons had tasted blood. Theywere hungry for it. They were panting and shouting, with red bayonets, behind their officer. 

That young man thought deeply and quickly. If there were "no quarter" itmight be ugly for the Gordons later in the day, and the day was young, and Loos was still untaken. 

He stood facing his own men, ordered them sternly to keep steady. Thesemen were to be taken prisoners and sent back under escort. He had hisrevolver handy, and, anyhow, the men knew him. They obeyed, grumblingsullenly. 

There was the noise of fire in other parts of the village, and thetap-tap-tap of machine-guns from many cellars. Bombing-parties of Scotssilenced those machine-gunners at last by going to the head of thestairways and flinging down their hand-grenades. The cellars of Looswere full of dead. 

In one of them, hours after the fighting had ceased among the ruins ofthe village, and the line of fire was forward of Hill 70, a living manstill hid and carried on his work. The colonel of one of our forwardbattalions came into Loos with his signalers and runners, andestablished his headquarters in a house almost untouched by shell-fire. At the time there was very little shelling, as the artillery officers oneither side were afraid of killing their own men, and the house seemedfairly safe for the purpose of a temporary signal-station. 

But the colonel noticed that shortly after his arrival heavy shellsbegan to fall very close and the Germans obviously were aiming directlyfor this building. He ordered the cellars to be searched, and threeGermans were found. It was only after he had been in the house for fortyminutes that in a deeper cellar, which had not been seen before, thediscovery was made of a German officer who was telephoning to his ownbatteries and directing their fire. Suspecting that the colonel and hiscompanions were important officers directing general operations, he hadcaused the shells to fall upon the house knowing that a lucky shot wouldmean his own death as well as theirs. 

As our searchers came into the cellar, he rose and stood there, waiting, with a cold dignity, for the fate which he knew would come to him, as itdid. He was a very brave man. 

Another German officer remained hiding in the church, which was soheavily mined that it would have blown half the village into dust andashes if he had touched off the charges. He was fumbling at the job whenour men found and killed him. 

In the southern outskirts of Loos, and in the cemetery, the Londonershad a bloody fight among the tombstones, where nests of Germanmachine-guns had been built into the vaults. New corpses, stillbleeding, lay among old dead torn from their coffins by shell-fire. Londoners and Siiesian Germans lay together across one another's bodies. The London men routed out most of the machine-gunners and bayoneted someand took prisoners of others. They were not so fierce as the Scots, butin those hours forgot the flower-gardens in Streatham and Tooting Becand the manners of suburban drawing rooms. . . It is strange thatone German machine-gun, served by four men, remained hidden behind agravestone all through that day, and Saturday, and Sunday, and snipedstray men of ours until routed at last by moppers-up of the Guardsbrigade. 

As the Londoners came down the slope to the southern edge of Loosvillage, through a thick haze of smoke from shell-fire and burninghouses, they were astounded to meet a crowd of civilians, mostly womenand children, who came streaming across the open in panic-strickengroups. Some of them fell under machine-gun fire snapping from thehouses or under shrapnel bursting overhead. The women were haggardand gaunt, with wild eyes and wild hair, like witches. They held theirchildren in tight claws until they were near our soldiers, when they allset up a shrill crying and wailing. The children were dazed with terror. Other civilians crawled up from their cellars in Loos, spatteredwith German blood, and wandered about among soldiers of many Britishbattalions who crowded amid the scarred and shattered houses, and amongthe wounded men who came staggering through the streets, where armydoctors were giving first aid in the roadway, while shells were burstingoverhead and all the roar of the battle filled the air for miles aroundwith infernal tumult. 

Isolated Germans still kept sniping from secret places, and some of themfired at a dressing-station in the market-place, until a French girl, afterward decorated for valor--she was called the Lady of Loos byLondoners and Scots--borrowed a revolver and shot two of them dead ina neighboring house. Then she came back to the soup she was making forwounded men. 

Some of the German prisoners were impressed as stretcher-bearers, andone, "Jock, " had compelled four Germans to carry him in, while helay talking to them in broadest Scots, grinning despite his blood andwounds. 

A London lieutenant called out to a stretcher-bearer helping to carrydown a German officer, and was astounded to be greeted by the woundedman. 

"Hullo, Leslie!. .. I knew we should meet one day. "

Looking at the man's face, the Londoner saw it was his own cousin. .. There was all the drama of war in that dirty village of Loos, whichreeked with the smell of death then, and years later, when I wentwalking through it on another day of war, after another battle on Hill70, beyond. 

IX

While the village of Loos was crowded with hunters of men, wounded, dead, batches of panic-stricken prisoners, women, doctors, Highlandersand Lowlanders "fey" with the intoxication of blood, London soldierswith tattered uniforms and muddy rifles and stained bayonets, mixedbrigades were moving forward to new objectives. The orders of theScottish troops, which I saw, were to go "all out, " and to press on asfar as they could, with the absolute assurance that all the ground theygained would be held behind them by supporting troops; and having thatpromise, they trudged on to Hill 70. The Londoners had been orderedto make a defensive flank on the right of the Scots by capturing thechalk-pit south of Loos and digging in. They did this after savagefighting in the pit, where they bayoneted many Germans, though rakedby machine-gun bullets from a neighboring copse, which was a fringe ofgashed and tattered trees. But some of the London boys were mixed upwith the advancing Scots and went on with them, and a battalion of ScotsFusiliers who had been in the supporting brigade of the 15th Division, which was intended to follow the advance, joined the first assault, either through eagerness or a wrong order, and, unknown to theirbrigadier, were among the leaders in the bloody struggle in Loos, andlabored on to Hill 70, where Camerons, Gordons, Black Watch, Seaforths, Argyll, and Sutherland men and Londoners were now up the slopes, stabbing stray Germans who were trying to retreat to a redoubt on thereverse side of the hill. 

For a time there was a kind of Bank Holiday crowd on Hill 70. The Germangunners, knowing that the redoubt on the crest was still held by theirmen, dared not fire; and many German batteries were on the move, out ofLens and from their secret lairs in the country thereabouts, in a stateof panic. On our right the French were fighting desperately at Souchezand Neuville St. -Vaast and up the lower slopes of Vimy, sufferinghorrible casualties and failing to gain the heights in spite of thereckless valor of their men, but alarming the German staffs, who fora time had lost touch with the situation--their telephones had beendestroyed by gun-fire--and were filled with gloomy apprehensions. So Hill 70 was quiet, except for spasms of machine-gun fire from theredoubt on the German side of the slope and the bombing of Germandugouts, or the bayoneting of single men routed out from holes in theearth. 

One of our men came face to face with four Germans, two of whom werearmed with rifles and two with bombs. They were standing in the wreckageof a trench, pallid, and with the fear of death in their eyes. Therifles clattered to the earth, the bombs fell at their feet, and theirhands went up when the young Scot appeared before them with his bayonetdown. He was alone, and they could have killed him, but surrendered, and were glad of the life he granted them. As more men came up the slopethere were greetings between comrades, of:

"Hullo, Jock!"

"Is that you, Alf?"

They were rummaging about for souvenirs in half-destroyed dugoutswhere dead bodies lay. They were "swapping" souvenirs--taken fromprisoners--silver watches, tobacco-boxes, revolvers, compasses. Manyof them put on German field-caps, like schoolboys with paper caps fromChristmas crackers, shouting with laughter because of their Germanlook. They thought the battle was won. After the first wild rush theshell-fire, the killing, the sight of dead comrades, the smell of blood, the nightmare of that hour after dawn, they were beginning to get normalagain, to be conscious of themselves, to rejoice in their luck at havinggot so far with whole skins. It had been a fine victory. The enemy wasnowhere. He had "mizzled off. "

Some of the Scots, with the hunter's instinct still strong, decided togo on still farther to a new objective. They straggled away in batchesto one of the suburbs of Lens--the Cite St. -Auguste. Very few of themcame back with the tale of their comrades' slaughter by sudden bursts ofmachine-gun fire which cut off all chance of retreat. .. . 

The quietude of Hill 70 was broken by the beginning of a new bombardmentfrom German guns. 

"Dig in, " said the officers. "We must hold on at all costs until thesupports come up. "

Where were the supporting troops which had been promised? There was nosign of them coming forward from Loos. The Scots were strangely isolatedon the slopes of Hill 70. At night the sky above them was lit up by thered glow of fires in Lens, and at twelve-thirty that night, under thatruddy sky, dark figures moved on the east of the hill and a storm ofmachine-gun bullets swept down on the Highlanders and Lowlanders, whocrouched low in the mangled earth. It was a counter-attack by masses ofmen crawling up to the crest from the reverse side and trying to get theScots out of the slopes below. But the men of the 15th Division answeredby volleys of rifle-fire, machine-gun fire, and bombs. They held on inspite of dead and wounded men thinning out their fighting strength. At five-thirty in the morning there was another strong counter-attack, repulsed also, but at another price of life in those holes and ditcheson the hillside. 

Scottish officers stared anxiously back toward their old lines. Wherewere the supports? Why did they get no help? Why were they left clinginglike this to an isolated hill? The German artillery had reorganized. They were barraging the ground about Loos fiercely and continuously. They were covering a great stretch of country up to Hulluch, and northof it, with intense harassing fire. Later on that Saturday morning the15th Division received orders to attack and capture the German earthworkredoubt on the crest of the hill. A brigade of the 21st Division wasnominally in support of them, but only small groups of that brigadeappeared on the scene, a few white-faced officers, savage with anger, almost mad with some despair in them, with batches of English lads wholooked famished with hunger, weak after long marching, demoralized bysome tragedy that had happened to them. They were Scots who did most ofthe work in trying to capture the redoubt, the same Scots who hadfought through Loos. They tried to reach the crest. Again and again theycrawled forward and up, but the blasts of machine-gun fire mowed themdown, and many young Scots lay motionless on those chalky slopes, withtheir kilts riddled with bullets. Others, hit in the head, or arms, orlegs, writhed like snakes back to the cover of broken trenches. 

"Where are the supports?" asked the Scottish officers. "In God's name, where are the troops who were to follow on? Why did we do all thisbloody fighting to be hung up in the air like this?"

The answer to their question has not been given in any officialdespatch. It is answered by the tragedy of the 21st and 24th Divisions, who will never forget the misery of that day, though not many are nowalive who suffered it. Their part of the battle I will tell later. 

X

To onlookers there were some of the signs of victory on that day ofSeptember 25th--of victory and its price. I met great numbers of thelightly wounded men, mostly "Jocks, " and they were in exalted spiritsbecause they had done well in this ordeal and had come through it, andout of it--alive. They came straggling back through the villages behindthe lines to the casualty clearing--stations and ambulance-trains. Some of them had the sleeves of their tunics cut away and showed brown, brawny arms tightly bandaged and smeared with blood. Some of them werewounded in the legs and hobbled with their arms about their comrades'necks. Their kilts were torn and plastered with chalky mud. Nearlyall of them had some "souvenir" of the fighting--German watches, caps, cartridges. They carried themselves with a warrior look, so hard, solean, so clear-eyed, these young Scots of the Black Watch and Cameronsand Gordons. They told tales of their own adventure in broad Scots, hardto understand, and laughed grimly at the killing they had done, thoughhere and there a lad among them had a look of bad remembrance in hiseyes, and older men spoke gravely of the scenes on the battlefield andcalled it "hellish. " But their pride was high. They had done what theyhad been asked to do. The 15th Division had proved its quality. Theirold battalions, famous in history, had gained new honor. 

Thousands of those lightly wounded men swarmed about a longambulance-train standing in a field near the village of Choques. Theycrowded the carriages, leaned out of the windows with their bandagedheads and arms, shouting at friends they saw in the other crowds. Thespirit of victory, and of lucky escape, uplifted those lads, druggedthem. And now they were going home for a spell. Home to bonny Scotland, with a wound that would take some time to heal. 

There were other wounded men from whom no laughter came, nor any sound. They were carried to the train on stretchers, laid down awhile on thewooden platforms, covered with blankets up to their chins--unless theyuncovered themselves with convulsive movements. I saw one young Londonerso smashed about the face that only his eyes were uncovered betweenlayers of bandages, and they were glazed with the first film of death. Another had his jaw blown clean away, so the doctor told me, and theupper half of his face was livid and discolored by explosive gases. Asplendid boy of the Black Watch was but a living trunk. Both his armsand both his legs were shattered. If he lived after butcher's work ofsurgery he would be one of those who go about in boxes on wheels, fromwhom men turn their eyes away, sick with a sense of horror. There wereblind boys led to the train by wounded comrades, groping, very quiet, thinking of a life of darkness ahead of them--forever in the darknesswhich shut in their souls. For days and weeks that followed there wasalways a procession of ambulances on the way to the dirty little town ofLillers, and going along the roads I used to look back at them and seethe soles of muddy boots upturned below brown blankets. It was morehuman wreckage coming down from the salient of Loos, from the chalkpitsof Hulluch and the tumbled earth of the Hohenzollern redoubt, which hadbeen partly gained by the battle which did not succeed. Outside a squarebrick building, which was the Town Hall of Lillers, and for a timea casualty clearing-station, the "bad" cases were unloaded; men withchunks of steel in their lungs and bowels were vomiting great gobs ofblood, men with arms and legs torn from their trunks, men without noses, and their brains throbbing through opened scalps, men without faces. .. 

XI

To a field behind the railway station near the grimy village of Choques, on the edge of this Black Country of France, the prisoners were brought;and I went among them and talked with some of them, on a Sunday morning, when now the rain had stopped and there was a blue sky overhead and goodvisibility for German guns and ours. 

There were fourteen hundred German prisoners awaiting entrainment, a mass of slate-gray men lying on the wet earth in huddled heaps ofmisery, while a few of our fresh-faced Tommies stood among them withfixed bayonets. They were the men who had surrendered from deep dugoutsin the trenches between us and Loos and from the cellars of Loositself. They had seen many of their comrades bayoneted. Some of them hadshrieked for mercy. Others had not shrieked, having no power of soundin their throats, but had shrunk back at the sight of glinting bayonets, with an animal fear of death. Now, all that was a nightmare memory, andthey were out of it all until the war should end, next year, the yearafter, the year after that--who could tell?

They had been soaked to the skin in the night and their gray uniformswere still soddened. Many of them were sleeping, in huddled, grotesquepostures, like dead men, some lying on their stomachs, face downward. Others were awake, sitting hunched up, with drooping heads and a beaten, exhausted look. Others paced up and down, up and down, like cagedanimals, as they were, famished and parched, until we could distributethe rations. Many of them were dying, and a German ambulanceman wentamong them, injecting them with morphine to ease the agony whichmade them writhe and groan. Two men held their stomachs, moaning andwhimpering with a pain that gnawed their bowels, caused by cold anddamp. They cried out to me, asking for a doctor. A friend of minecarried a water jar to some of the wounded and held it to their lips. One of them refused. He was a tall, evil-looking fellow, with a bloodyrag round his head--a typical "Hun, " I thought. But he pointed to acomrade who lay gasping beside him and said, in German, "He needs itfirst. " This man had never heard of Sir Philip Sidney, who at Zutphen, when thirsty and near death, said, "His need is greater than mine, " buthe had the same chivalry in his soul. 

The officer in charge of their escort could not speak German and had nomeans of explaining to the prisoners that they were to take their turnto get rations and water at a dump nearby. It was a war correspondent, young Valentine Williams, afterward a very gallant officer in the IrishGuards who gave the orders in fluent and incisive German. He beganwith a hoarse shout of "Achtung!" and that old word of command had anelectrical effect on many of the men. Even those who had seemed asleepstaggered to their feet and stood at attention. The habit of disciplinewas part of their very life, and men almost dead strove to obey. 

The non-commissioned officers formed parties to draw and distribute therations, and then those prisoners clutched at hunks of bread and atein a famished way, like starved beasts. Some of them had been four dayshungry, cut off from their supplies by our barrage fire, and intensehunger gave them a kind of vitality when food appeared. The sight ofthat mass of men reduced to such depths of human misery was horrible. One had no hate in one's heart for them then. 

"Poor devils!" said an officer with me. "Poor beasts! Here we see the`glory' of war! the `romance' of war!"

I spoke to some of them in bad German, and understood their answer. 

"It is better here than on the battlefield, " said one of them. "We areglad to be prisoners. "

One of them waved his hand toward the tumult of guns which were firingceaselessly. 

"I pity our poor people there, " he said. 

One of them, who spoke English, described all he had seen of the battle, which was not much, because no man at such a time sees more than whathappens within a yard or two. 

"The English caught us by surprise when the attack came at last, " hesaid. "The bombardment had been going on for days, and we could notguess when the attack would begin. I was in a deep dugout, wonderinghow long it would be before a shell came through the roof and blow usto pieces. The earth shook above our heads. Wounded men crawled into thedugout, and some of them died down there. We sat looking at their bodiesin the doorway and up the steps. I climbed over them when a lull came. A friend of mine was there, dead, and I stepped on his stomach to getupstairs. The first thing I saw was a crowd of your soldiers streamingpast our trenches. We were surrounded on three sides, and our positionwas hopeless. Some of our men started firing, but it was only asking fordeath. Your men killed them with bayonets. I went back into my dugoutand waited. Presently there was an explosion in the doorway and part ofthe dugout fell in. One of the men with me had his head blown off, andhis blood spurted on me. I was dazed, but through the fumes I saw anEnglish soldier in a petticoat standing at the doorway, making ready tothrow another bomb. 

"I shouted to him in English:

"'Don't kill us! We surrender!'

"He was silent for a second or two, and I thought he would throw hisbomb. Then he said:

"'Come out, you swine. '

"So we went out, and saw many soldiers in petticoats, your Highlanders, with bayonets. They wanted to kill us, but one man argued with them inwords I could not understand-a dialect-and we were told to go alonga trench. Even then we expected death, but came to another group ofprisoners, and joined them on their way back. Gott sei dank!"

He spoke gravely and simply, this dirty, bearded man, who had been aclerk in a London office. He had the truthfulness of a man who had justcome from great horrors. 

Many of the men around him were Silesians-more Polish than German. Someof them could not speak more than a few words of German, and were trueSlavs in physical type, with flat cheek-bones. 

A group of German artillery officers had been captured and they werebehaving with studied arrogance and insolence as they smoked cigarettesapart from the men, and looked in a jeering way at our officers. 

"Did you get any of our gas this morning?" I asked them, and one of themlaughed and shrugged his shoulders. 

"I smelled it a little. It was rather nice. .. The English always imitatethe German war-methods, but without much success. "

They grinned and imitated my way of saying "Guten Tag" when I left them. It took a year or more to tame the arrogance of the German officer. Atthe end of the Somme battles he changed his manner when captured, andwas very polite. 

In another place--a prison in St. -Omer--I had a conversation with twoother officers of the German army who were more courteous than thegunners. They had been taken at Hooge and were both Prussians--one astout captain, smiling behind horn spectacles, with a false, jovialmanner, hiding the effect of the ordeal from which he had just escaped, and his hatred of us; the other a young, slim fellow, with clear-cutfeatures, who was very nervous, but bowed repeatedly, with his heelstogether, as though in a cafe at Ehrenbreitstein, when high officerscame in. A few hours before he had been buried alive. One of our mineshad exploded under him, flinging a heap of earth over him. The fat manby his side--his captain--had been buried, too, in the dugout. They hadscraped themselves out by clawing at the earth. 

They were cautious about answering questions on the war, but the youngerman said they were prepared down to the last gaiter for anotherwinter campaign and--that seemed to me at the time a fine touch ofaudacity--for two more winter campaigns if need be. The winter of '16, after this autumn and winter of '15, and then after that the winter of'17! The words of that young Prussian seemed to me, the more I thoughtof them, idiotic and almost insane. Why, the world itself could notsuffer two more years of war. It would end before then in generalanarchy, the wild revolutions of armies on all fronts. Humanity of everynation would revolt against such prolonged slaughter. .. It was I who wasmad, in the foolish faith that the war would end before another year hadpassed, because I thought that would be the limit of endurance of suchmutual massacre. 

In a room next to those two officers--a week before this battle, thecaptain had been rowing with his wife on the lake at Potsdam--wasanother prisoner, who wept and wept. He had escaped to our lines beforethe battle to save his skin, and now was conscience-stricken and thoughthe had lost his soul. What stabbed his conscience most was the thoughtthat his wife and children would lose their allowances because of histreachery. He stared at us with wild, red eyes. 

"Ach, mein armes Weib! Meine Kinder!. .. Ach, Gott in Himmel!"

He had no pride, no dignity, no courage. 

This tall, bearded man, father of a family, put his hands against thewall and laid his head on his arm and wept. 

XII

During the battle, for several days I went with other men to variouspoints of view, trying to see something of the human conflict from slagheaps and rising ground, but could only see the swirl and flurry ofgun-fire and the smoke of shells mixing with wet mist, and the backwashof wounded and prisoners, and the traffic of guns, and wagons, andsupporting troops. Like an ant on the edge of a volcano I sat amongthe slag heaps with gunner observers, who were listening at telephonesdumped down in the fields and connected with artillery brigades andfield batteries. 

"The Guards are fighting round Fosse 8, " said one of these observers. 

Through the mist I could see Fosse 8, a flat-topped hill of coal-dust. Little glinting lights were playing about it, like confetti shiningin the sun. That was German shrapnel. Eruptions of red flame and blackearth vomited out of the hill. That was German high explosive. For atime on Monday, September 27th, it was the storm-center of battle. 

"What's that?" asked an artillery staff-officer, with his ear to thefield telephone. "What's that?. .. Hullo!. .. Are you there?. .. The Guardshave been kicked off Fosse 8. .. Oh, hell!"

From all parts of the field of battle such whispers came to listeningmen and were passed on to headquarters, where other men listened. Thisbrigade was doing pretty well. That was hard pressed. The Germans werecounter-attacking heavily. Their barrage was strong and our casualtiesheavy. "Oh, hell!" said other men. From behind the mist came the news oflife and death, revealing things which no onlooker could see. 

I went closer to see--into the center of the arc of battle, up by theLoos redoubt, where the German dead and ours still lay in heaps. JohnBuchan was my companion on that walk, and together we stood staringover the edge of a trench to where, grim and gaunt against the gray sky, loomed the high, steel columns of the "Tower Bridge, " the mining-workswhich I had seen before the battle as an inaccessible landmark in theGerman lines. Now they were within our lines in the center of Loos, andno longer "leering" at us, as an officer once told me they used to dowhen he led his men into communication trenches under their observation. 

Behind us now was the turmoil of war--thousands and scores of thousandsof men moving in steady columns forward and backward in the queer, tangled way which during a great battle seems to have no purpose ormeaning, except to the directing brains on the Headquarters Staff, and, sometimes in history, none to them. 

Vast convoys of transports choked the roads, with teams of mulesharnessed to wagons and gun-limbers, with trains of motor ambulancespacked with wounded men, with infantry brigades plodding through theslush and slime, with divisional cavalry halted in the villages, andgreat bivouacs in the boggy fields. 

The men, Londoners, and Scots, and Guards, and Yorkshires, andLeinsters, passed and repassed in dense masses, in small battalions, inscattered groups. One could tell them from those who were filling theirplaces by the white chalk which covered them from head to foot, andsometimes by the blood which had splashed them. 

Regiments which had lost many of their comrades and had fought in attackand counter-attack through those days and nights went very silently, and no man cheered them. Legions of tall lads, who a few monthsbefore marched smart and trim down English lanes, trudged toward thefighting-lines under the burden of their heavy packs, with all theirsmartness befouled by the business of war, but wonderful and pitiful tosee because of the look of courage and the gravity in their eyes as theywent up to dreadful places. Farther away within the zone of the enemy'sfire the traffic ceased, and I came into the desolate lands of death, where there is but little movement, and the only noise is that of guns. I passed by ruined villages and towns. 

To the left was Vermelles (two months before death nearly caught methere), and I stared at those broken houses and roofless farms andfallen churches which used to make one's soul shiver even when theystood clear in the daylight. 

To the right, a few hundred yards away, was Masingarbe, from which manyof our troops marched out to begin the great attack. Farther back werethe great slag heaps of Noeux-les-Mines, and all around other blackhills of this mining country which rise out of the flat plain. It was along walk through narrow trenches toward that Loos redoubt where at lastI stood. There was the smell of death in those narrow, winding ways. One boy, whom death had taken almost at the entrance-way, knelt on thefire-step, with his head bent and his forehead against the wet clay, asthough in prayer. Farther on other bodies of London boys and Scots layhuddled up. 

We were in the center of a wide field of fire, with the enemy'sbatteries on one side and ours on the other in sweeping semicircles. The shells of all these batteries went crying through the air with high, whining sighs, which ended in the cough of death. The roar of the gunswas incessant and very close. The enemy was sweeping a road to my right, and his shells went overhead with a continual rush, passing our shells, which answered back. The whole sky was filled with these thunderbolts. Many of them were "Jack Johnsons, " which raised a volume of black smokewhere they fell. I wondered how it would feel to be caught by one ofthem, whether one would have any consciousness before being scattered. Fear, which had walked with me part of the way, left me for a time. Ihad a strange sense of exhilaration, an intoxicated interest in thisfoul scene and the activity of that shell-fire. 

Peering over the parapet, we saw the whole panorama of the battleground. It was but an ugly, naked plain, rising up to Hulluch and Haisnes on thenorth, falling down to Loos on the east, from where we stood, and risingagain to Hill 70 (now in German hands again), still farther east and alittle south. 

The villages of Haisnes and Hulluch fretted the skyline, and Fosse 8 wasa black wart between them. The "Tower Bridge, " close by in the townof Loos, was the one high landmark which broke the monotony of thisdesolation. 

No men moved about this ground. Yet thousands of men were hidden aboutus in the ditches, waiting for another counter-attack behind storms offire. The only moving things were the shells which vomited up earth andsmoke and steel as they burst in all directions over the whole zone. We were shelling Hulluch and Haisnes and Fosse 8 with an intense, concentrated fire, and the enemy was retaliating by scatteringshells over the town of Loos and our new line between Hill 70 and thechalk-pit, and the whole length of our line from north to south. 

Only two men moved about above the trenches. They were two London boyscarrying a gas-cylinder, and whistling as though it were a health resortunder the autumn sun. .. It was not a health resort. It stank of death, from piles of corpses, all mangled and in a mush of flesh and boneslying around the Loos redoubt and all the ground in this neighborhood, and for a long distance north. 

Through the streets of Bethune streamed a tide of war: the transportof divisions, gun-teams with their limber ambulance convoys, ammunition wagons, infantry moving up to the front, despatch riders, staff-officers, signalers, and a great host of men and mules andmotor-cars. The rain lashed down upon the crowds; waterproofs andburberries and the tarpaulin covers of forage-carts streamed with water, and the bronzed faces of the soldiers were dripping wet. Mud splashedthem to the thighs. Fountains of mud spurted up from the wheelsof gun-carriages. The chill of winter made Highlanders as well asIndians--those poor, brave, wretched Indians who had been flung intothe holding attack on the canal at La Bassee, and mown down in theinevitable way by shrapnel and machine-gun bullets--shiver in the wind. 

Yet, in spite of rain and great death, there was a spirit of exultationamong many fighting-men. At last there was a break in the months ofstationary warfare. We were up and out of the trenches. The first proofsof victory were visible there in a long line of German guns captured atLoos, guarded on each side by British soldiers with fixed bayonets. Menmoving up did not know the general failure that had swamped a partialsuccess. They stared at the guns and said, "By God--we've got 'em goingthis time!"

A group of French civilians gathered round them, excited at the sight. Artillery officers examined their broken breech-blocks and theirinscriptions:

"Pro Gloria et Patria. "

"Ultima ratio regis. "

The irony of the words made some of the onlookers laugh. A Frenchinterpreter spoke to some English officers with a thrill of joy inhis voice. Had they heard the last news from Champagne? The French hadbroken through the enemy's line. The Germans were in full retreat. . . It was utterly untrue, because after the desperate valor of heroic youthand horrible casualties, the French attack had broken down. But thespirit of hope came down the cold wind and went with the men whom I sawmarching to the fields of fate in the slanting rain, as the darkness andthe mist came to end another day of battle. 

Outside the headquarters of a British army corps stood another line ofcaptured field-guns and several machine-guns, of which one had a strangehistory of adventure. It was a Russian machine-gun, taken by the Germanson the eastern front and retaken by us on the western front. 

In General Rawlinson's headquarters I saw a queer piece of booty. Itwas a big bronze bell used by the Germans in their trenches to signal aBritish gas-attack. 

General Rawlinson was taking tea in his chateau when I called on him, and was having an animated argument with Lord Cavan, commanding theGuards, as to the disposal of the captured artillery and other trophies. Lord Cavan claimed some for his own, with some violence of speech. ButGeneral Rawlinson was bright and breezy as usual. Our losses were notworrying him. As a great general he did not allow losses to worry him. He ate his tea with a hearty appetite, and chaffed his staff-officers. They were anticipating the real German counter-attack--a big affair. Away up the line there would be more dead piled up, more filth andstench of human slaughter, but the smell of it would not reach back toheadquarters. 

XIII

In a despatch by Sir John French, dated October 15, 1915, and issuedby the War Office on November 1st of that year, the Commander-in-Chiefstated that: "In view of the great length of line along which theBritish troops were operating it was necessary to keep a strong reservein my own hand. The 11th Corps, consisting of the Guards, the 21st andthe 24th Divisions, were detailed for this purpose. This reserve wasthe more necessary owing to the fact that the Tenth French Army had topostpone its attack until one o'clock in the day; and further, that thecorps operating on the French left had to be directed in a more orless southeasterly direction, involving, in case of our success, a considerable gap in our line. To insure, however, the speedy andeffective support of the 1st and 4th Corps in the case of their success, the 21st and 24th Divisions passed the night of the 24th and 25th onthe line Beuvry (to the east of Bethune)-Noeux-les-Mines. The GuardsDivision was in the neighborhood of Lillers on the same night. "

By that statement, and by the facts that happened in accordance with it, the whole scheme of attack in the battle of Loos will stand challengedin history. Lord French admits in that despatch that he held hisreserves "in his own hand, " and later he states that it was not untilnine-thirty on the morning of battle that "I placed the 21st and 24thDivisions at the disposal of the General Officer commanding First Army. "He still held the Guards. He makes, as a defense of the decision to holdback the reserves, the extraordinary statement that there "would be aconsiderable gap in our line in case of our success. " That is to say, he was actually envisaging a gap in the line if the attack succeededaccording to his expectations, and risking the most frightfulcatastrophe that may befall any army in an assault upon a powerfulenemy, provided with enormous reserves, as the Germans were at thattime, and as our Commander-in-Chief ought to have known. 

But apart from that the whole time-table of the battle was, as it nowappears, fatally wrong. To move divisions along narrow roads requiresan immense amount of time, even if the roads are clear, and those roadstoward Loos were crowded with the transport and gun-limbers of theassaulting troops. To move them in daylight to the trenches meantinevitable loss of life and almost certain demoralization under theenemy's gun-fire. 

"Between 11 A. M. And 12 noon the central brigade of these divisionsfiled past me at Bethune and Noeux-les-Mines, respectively, " wrote SirJohn French. It was not possible for them to reach our old trenchesuntil 4 P. M. It was Gen. Sir Frederick Maurice, the Chief of Staff, whorevealed that fact to me afterward in an official explanation, and itwas confirmed by battalion officers of the 24th Division whom I met. 

That time-table led to disaster. By eight o'clock in the morning therewere Scots on Hill 70. They had been told to go "all out, " with thepromise that the ground they gained would be consolidated by followingtroops. Yet no supports were due to arrive until 4 P. M. At our originalline of attack--still away back from Hill 70--by which time the enemyhad recovered from his first surprise, had reorganized his guns, and wasmoving up his own supports. Tragedy befell the Scots on Hill 70 and inthe Cite St. -Auguste, as I have told. Worse tragedy happened to the 21stand 24th Divisions. They became hopelessly checked and tangled in thetraffic of the roads, and in their heavy kit were exhausted long beforethey reached the battlefield. They drank the water out of their bottles, and then were parched. They ate their iron rations, and then werehungry. Some of their transport moved too far forward in daylight, wasseen by German observers, ranged on by German guns, and blown to bits onthe road. The cookers were destroyed, and with them that night's food. None of the officers had been told that they were expected to attack onthat day. All they anticipated was the duty of holding the old supporttrenches. In actual fact they arrived when the enemy was preparinga heavy counter-attack and flinging over storms of shell-fire. Theofficers had no maps and no orders. They were utterly bewildered withthe situation, and had no knowledge as to the where-abouts of the enemyor their own objectives. Their men met heavy fire for the first timewhen their physical and moral condition was weakened by the long march, the lack of food and water, and the unexpected terror ahead of them. They crowded into broken trenches, where shells burst over them and intothem. Young officers acting on their own initiative tried to lead theirmen forward, and isolated parties went forward, but uncertainly, not knowing the ground nor their purpose. Shrapnel lashed them, andhigh-explosive shells plowed up the earth about them and with them. Dusk came, and then darkness. Some officers were cursing, and somewept, fearing dishonor. The men were huddled together like sheep withoutshepherds when wolves are about, and saw by the bewilderment of theofficers that they were without leadership. It is that which makes fordemoralization, and these men, who afterward in the battle of the Sommein the following year fought with magnificent valor, were on that dayat Loos demoralized in a tragic and complete way. Those who had goneforward came back to the crowded trenches and added to the panic andthe rage and the anguish. Men smashed their rifles in a kind of madness. Boys were cursing and weeping at the same time. They were too hopelesslydisordered and dismayed by the lack of guidance and by the shock totheir sense of discipline to be of much use in that battle. Some bodiesof them in both these unhappy divisions arrived in front of Hill 70 atthe very time when the enemy launched his first counter-attack, andwere driven back in disorder. .. Some days later I saw the 21st Divisionmarching back behind the lines. Rain slashed them. They walked with bentheads. The young officers were blanched and had a beaten look. The sightof those dejected men was tragic and pitiful. 

XIV

Meanwhile, at 6 P. M. On the evening of the first day of battle, theGuards arrived at Noeux-les-Mines. As I saw them march up, splendidin their height and strength and glory of youth, I looked out for theofficers I knew, yet hoped I should not see them--that man who had givena farewell touch to the flowers in the garden of our billet, that otherone who knew he would be wounded, those two young brothers who hadplayed cricket on a sunny afternoon. I did not see them, but saw onlycolumns of men, staring grimly ahead of them, with strange, unspeakablethoughts behind their masklike faces. 

It was not until the morning of the 26th that the Commander-in-Chief"placed them at the disposal of the General Officer commanding FirstArmy, " and it was on the afternoon of Monday, the 27th, that they wereordered to attack. 

By that time we had lost Fosse 8, one brigade of the 9th ScottishDivision having been flung back to its own trenches after desperatefighting, at frightful cost, after the capture of the Hohenzollernredoubt by the 26th Brigade of that division. To the north of them the7th Division was also suffering horrible losses after the capture of thequarries, near Hulluch, and the village of Haisnes, which afterward waslost. The commanding officers of both divisions, General Capper of the7th, and General Thesiger of the 9th, were killed as they reconnoiteredthe ground, and wounded men were pouring down to the casualty clearingstations if they had the luck to get so far. Some of them had notthat luck, but lay for nearly two days before they were rescued by thestretcher-bearers from Quality Street and Philosophe. 

It was bad all along the line. The whole plan had gone astray fromthe beginning. With an optimism which was splendid in fighting-men andcostly in the High Command, our men had attacked positions of enormousstrength--held by an enemy in the full height of his power--withoutsufficient troops in reserve to follow up and support theinitial attack, to consolidate the ground, and resist inevitablecounter-attacks. What reserves the Commander-in-Chief had he held "inhis own hand" too long and too far back. 

The Guards went in when the enemy was reorganized to meet them. The 28thDivision, afterward in support, was too late to be a decisive factor. 

I do not blame Lord French. I have no right to blame him, as I am nota soldier nor a military expert. He did his best, with the highestmotives. The blunders he made were due to ignorance of modern battles. Many other generals made many other blunders, and our men paid withtheir lives. Our High Command had to learn by mistakes, by ghastlymistakes, repeated often, until they became visible to the military mindand were paid for again by the slaughter of British youth. One does notblame. A writing-man, who was an observer and recorder, like myself, does not sit in judgment. He has no right to judge. He merely cries out, "O God!. .. O God!" in remembrance of all that agony and that waste ofsplendid boys who loved life, and died. 

On Sunday, as I have told, the situation was full of danger. The Scotsof the 15th Division, weakened by many losses and exhausted by theirlong fatigue, had been forced to abandon the important position of Puits14--a mine-shaft half a mile north of Hill 70, linked up in defense withthe enemy's redoubt on the northeast side of Hill 70. The Germans hadbeen given time to bring up their reserves, to reorganize their brokenlines, and to get their batteries into action again. 

There was a consultation of anxious brigadiers in Loos when no man couldfind safe shelter owing to the heavy shelling which now ravaged amongthe houses. Rations were running short, and rain fell through theroofless ruins, and officers and men shivered in wet clothes. Deadbodies blown into bits, headless trunks, pools of blood, made a ghastlymess in the roadways and the houses. Badly wounded men were dragged downinto the cellars, and lay there in the filth of Friday's fighting. Theheadquarters of one of the London brigades had put up in a rooflessbarn, but were shelled out, and settled down on some heaps of brick inthe open. It was as cold as death in the night, and no fire could belighted, and iron rations were the only food, until two chaplains, "R. C. " and Church of England (no difference of dogma then), came upas volunteers in a perilous adventure, with bottles of hot soup inmackintoshes. They brought a touch of human warmth to the brigadestaff, made those hours of the night more endurable, but the men fartherforward had no such luck. They were famishing and soaked, in a cold hellwhere shells tossed up the earth about them and spattered them with theblood and flesh of their comrades. 

On Monday morning the situation was still more critical, all along theline, and the Guards were ordered up to attack Hill 70, to which onlya few Scots were clinging on the near slopes. The 6th Cavalry Brigadedismounted--no more dreams of exploiting success and galloping roundLens--were sent into Loos with orders to hold the village at all cost, with the men of the 15th Division, who had been left there. 

The Londoners were still holding on to the chalk-pit south of Loos, under murderous fire. 

It was a bad position for the troops sent into action at that stage. The result of the battle on September 25th had been to create a salientthrust like a wedge into the German position and enfiladed by theirguns. The sides of the salient ran sharply back--from Hulluch in thenorth, past the chalk-quarries to Givenchy, and in the south from thelower slopes of Hill 70 past the Double Crassier to Grenay. The ordersgiven to the Guards were to straighten out this salient on the north bycapturing the whole of Hill 70, Puits 14, to the north of it, and thechalk-pit still farther north. 

It was the 2d Brigade of Guards, including Grenadiers, Welsh and ScotsGuards, which was to lead the assault, while the 1st Brigade on theleft maintained a holding position and the 3d Brigade was in support, immediately behind. 

As soon as the Guards started to attack they were met by a heavy stormof gas-shells. This checked them for a time, as smoke-helmets--the oldfashioned things of flannel which were afterward changed for the maskswith nozzles--had to be served out, and already men were choking andgasping in the poisonous fumes. Among them was the colonel of theGrenadiers, whose command was taken over by the major. Soon the menadvanced again, looking like devils, as, in artillery formation (smallseparate groups), they groped their way through the poisoned clouds. Shrapnel and high explosives burst over them and among them, and manymen fell as they came within close range of the enemy's positionsrunning from Hill 70 northward to the chalk-pit. 

The Irish Guards, supported by the Coldstreamers, advanced down thevalley beyond Loos and gained the lower edge of Bois Hugo, near thechalk-pit, while the Scots Guards assaulted Puits 14 and the building inits group of houses known as the Keep. Another body of Guards, includingGrenadiers and Welsh, attacked at the same time the lower slopes of Hill70. 

Puits 14 itself was won by a party of Scots Guards, led by an officernamed Captain Cuthbert, which engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, routingout the enemy from the houses. Some companies of the Grenadiers came tothe support of their comrades in the Scots Guards, but suffered heavylosses themselves. A platoon under a young lieutenant named AyresRitchie reached the Puits, and, storming their way into the Keep, knocked out a machine-gun, mounted on the second floor, by a desperatebombing attack. The officer held on in a most dauntless way to theposition, until almost every man was either killed or wounded, unable toreceive support, owing to the enfilade fire of the German machine-guns. 

Night had now come on, the sky lightened by the bursting of shells andflares, and terrible in its tumult of battle. Some of the Coldstreamershad gained possession of the chalk-pit, which they were organizinginto a strong defensive position, and various companies of the Guardsdivisions, after heroic assaults upon Hill 70, where they were shatteredby the fire which met them on the crest from the enemy's redoubt on thenortheast side, had dug themselves into the lower slopes. 

There was a strange visitor that day at the headquarters of the Guardsdivision, where Lord Cavan was directing operations. A young officercame in and said, quite calmly: "Sir, I have to report that my battalionhas been cut to pieces. We have been utterly destroyed. "

Lord Cavan questioned him, and then sent for another officer. "Lookafter that young man, " he said, quietly. "He is mad. It is a case ofshell-shock. "

Reports came through of a mysterious officer going the round of thebatteries, saying that the Germans had broken through and that they hadbetter retire. Two batteries did actually move away. 

Another unknown officer called out, "Retire! Retire!" until he was shotthrough the head. "German spies!" said some of our officers and men, butthe Intelligence branch said, "Not spies. .. Madmen. .. Poor devils!"

Before the dawn came the Coldstreamers made another desperate attempt toattack and hold Puits 14, but the position was too deadly even for theirheight of valor, and although some men pushed on into this raging fire, the survivors had to fall back to the woods, where they strengthenedtheir defensive works. 

On the following day the position was the same, the sufferings ofour men being still further increased by heavy shelling from 8-inchhowitzers. Colonel Egerton of the Coldstream Guards and his adjutantwere killed in the chalk-pit. 

It was now seen by the headquarters staff of the Guards Division thatPuits 14 was untenable, owing to its enfilading by heavy artillery, andthe order was given for a retirement to the chalk-pit, which was a placeof sanctuary owing to the wonderful work done throughout the night tostrengthen its natural defensive features by sand--bags and barbed wire, in spite of machine-guns which raked it from the neighboring woods. 

The retirement was done as though the men were on parade, slowly, andin perfect order, across the field of fire, each man bearing himself, sotheir officers told me, as though at the Trooping of the Colors, untilnow one and then another fell in a huddled heap. It was an astonishingtribute to the strength of tradition among troops. To safeguard thehonor of a famous name these men showed such dignity in the presence ofdeath that even the enemy must have been moved to admiration. 

But they had failed, after suffering heavy losses, and theCommander-in-Chief had to call upon the French for help, realizing thatwithout strong assistance the salient made by that battle of Loos wouldbe a death-trap. The French Tenth Army had failed, too, at Vimy, thusfailing to give the British troops protection on their right flank. 

"On representing this to General Joffre, " wrote Sir John French, "he waskind enough to ask the commander of the northern group of French armiesto render us assistance. General Foch met those demands in the samefriendly spirit which he has always displayed throughout the courseof the whole campaign, and expressed his readiness to give me all thesupport he could. On the morning of the 28th we discussed the situation, and the general agreed to send the 9th French Corps to take overthe ground occupied by us, extending from the French left up to andincluding that portion of Hill 70 which we were holding, and alsothe village of Loos. This relief was commenced on September 30th, andcompleted on the two following nights. "

So ended the battle of Loos, except for a violent counter--attackdelivered on October 8th all along the line from Fosse 8 on the northto the right of the French 9th Corps on the south, with twenty-eightbattalions in the first line of assault. It was preceded by a stupendousbombardment which inflicted heavy casualties upon our 1st Divisionin the neighborhood of the chalk-pit, and upon the Guards holding theHohenzollern redoubt near Hulluch. Once again those brigades, which hadbeen sorely tried, had to crouch under a fury of fire, until the livingwere surrounded by dead, half buried or carved up into chunks of fleshin the chaos of broken trenches. The Germans had their own shambles, more frightful, we were told, than ours, and thousands of dead lay infront of our lines when the tide of their attack ebbed back and wavesof living men were broken by the fire of our field-guns, rifles, andmachine-guns. Sir John French's staff estimated the number of Germandead as from eight to nine thousand. It was impossible to make anyaccurate sum in that arithmetic of slaughter, and always the enemy'slosses were exaggerated because of the dreadful need of balancingaccounts in new-made corpses in that Debit and Credit of war'sbookkeeping. 

What had we gained by great sacrifices of life? Not Lens, nor Lille, noreven Hill 70 (for our line had to be withdrawn from those bloody slopeswhere our men left many of their dead), but another sharp-edged salientenfiladed by German guns for two years more, and a foothold on one slagheap of the Double Crassier, where our men lived, if they could, afew yards from Germans on the other; and that part of the Hohenzollernredoubt which became another Hooge where English youth was blown up bymines, buried by trench-mortars, condemned to a living death in lousycaves dug into the chalk. Another V-shaped salient, narrower than thatof Ypres, more dismal, and as deadly, among the pit-heads and the blackdust hills and the broken mine-shafts of that foul country beyond Loos. 

The battle which had been begun with such high hopes ended in ghastlyfailure by ourselves and by the French. Men who came back from it spokein whispers of its generalship and staff work, and said things whichwere dangerous to speak aloud, cursing their fate as fighting-men, asking of God as well as of mortals why the courage of the soldiers theyled should be thrown away in such a muck of slaughter, laughing withdespairing mirth at the optimism of their leaders, who had been luredon by a strange, false, terrible belief in German weakness, and lookingahead at unending vistas of such massacre as this which would lead onlyto other salients, after desperate and futile endeavor. 

PART FOUR. A WINTER OF DISCONTENT

I

The winter of 1915 was, I think, the worst of all. There was a settledhopelessness in it which was heavy in the hearts of men--ours and theenemy's. In 1914 there was the first battle of Ypres, when the bodiesof British soldiers lay strewn in the fields beyond this city and theirbrown lines barred the way to Calais, but the war did not seem likely togo on forever. Most men believed, even then, that it would end quickly, and each side had faith in some miracle that might happen. In 1916-17the winter was foul over the fields of the Somme after battles which hadcut all our divisions to pieces and staggered the soul of the worldby the immense martyrdom of boys--British, French, and German--on thewestern front. But the German retreat from the Somme to the shelter oftheir Hindenburg line gave some respite to our men, and theirs, from thelong-drawn fury of attack and counter-attack, and from the intensity ofgun-fire. There was at best the mirage of something like victory onour side, a faint flickering up of the old faith that the Germans hadweakened and were nearly spent. 

But for a time in those dark days of 1915 there was no hope ahead. Nomental dope by which our fighting-men could drug themselves into seeinga vision of the war's end. 

The battle of Loos and its aftermath of minor massacres in the groundwe had gained--the new horror of that new salient--had sapped into theconfidence of those battalion officers and men who had been assured ofGerman weakness by cheery, optimistic, breezy-minded generals. It was nogood some of those old gentlemen saying, "We've got 'em beat!" whenfrom Hooge to the Hohenzollern redoubt our men sat in wet trenches underceaseless bombardment of heavy guns, and when any small attack they madeby the orders of a High Command which believed in small attacks, without much plan or purpose, was only "asking for trouble" from Germancounterattacks by mines, trench-mortars, bombing sorties, poison-gas, flame-throwers, and other forms of frightfulness which made a dirty messof flesh and blood, without definite result on either side beyond pilingup the lists of death. 

"It keeps up the fighting spirit of the men, " said the generals. "Wemust maintain an aggressive policy. "

They searched their trench maps for good spots where another "smalloperation" might be organized. There was a competition among thecorps and divisional generals as to the highest number of raids, mineexplosions, trench-grabbings undertaken by their men. 

"My corps, " one old general told me over a cup of tea in hisheadquarters mess, "beats the record for raids. " His casualties alsobeat the record, and many of his officers and men called him, justbluntly and simply, "Our old murderer. " They disliked the necessity ofdying so that he might add one more raid to his heroic competition withthe corps commander of the sector on the left. When they waited for theexplosion of a mine which afterward they had to "rush" in a race withthe German bombing-parties, some of them saw no sense in the proceeding, but only the likelihood of having legs and arms torn off by Germanstick-bombs or shells. "What's the good of it?" they asked, and couldfind no answer except the satisfaction of an old man listening to thedistant roar of the new tumult by which he had "raised hell" again. 

II

The autumn of 1915 was wet in Flanders and Artois, where our men settleddown--knee-deep where the trenches were worst--for the winter campaign. On rainy days, as I remember, a high wind hurtled over the Flemishfields, but it was moist, and swept gusts of rain into the faces of menmarching through mud to the fighting-lines and of other men doing sentryon the fire-steps of trenches into which water came trickling down theslimy parapets. 

When the wind dropped at dusk or dawn a whitish fog crept out ofthe ground, so that rifles were clammy to the touch and a blanket ofmoisture settled on every stick in the dugouts, and nothing could beseen through the veil of vapor to the enemy's lines, where he stayedinvisible. 

He was not likely to attack on a big scale while the battlefields werein that quagmire state. An advancing wave of men would have been cloggedin the mud after the first jump over the slimy sand-bags, and to advanceartillery was sheer impossibility. Nothing would be done on either sidebut stick-in-the-mud warfare and those trench-raids and minings whichhad no object except "to keep up the spirit of the men. " There wasalways work to do in the trenches--draining them, strengthening theirparapets, making their walls, tiling or boarding their floorways, timbering the dugouts, and after it was done another rainstorm orsnowstorm undid most of it, and the parapets slid down, the water pouredin, and spaces were opened for German machine-gun fire, and there wasless head cover against shrapnel bullets which mixed with the raindrops, and high explosives which smashed through the mud. The working partieshad a bad time and a wet one, in spite of waders and gum boots whichwere served out to lucky ones. Some of them wore a new kind of hat, seenfor the first time, and greeted with guffaws--the "tin" hat which laterbecame the headgear of all fighting-men. It saved many head wounds, butdid not save body wounds, and every day the casualty lists grew longerin the routine of a warfare in which there was "Nothing to report. "

Our men were never dry. They were wet in their trenches and wet in theirdugouts. They slept in soaking clothes, with boots full of water, andthey drank rain with their tea, and ate mud with their "bully, " andendured it all with the philosophy of "grin and bear it!" and laughter, as I heard them laughing in those places between explosive curses. 

On the other side of the barbed wire the Germans were more miserable, not because their plight was worse, but because I think they lacked theEnglish sense of humor. In some places they had the advantage of our menin better trenches, with better drains and dugouts--due to an industrywith which ours could never compete. Here and there, as in the groundto the north of Hooge, they were in a worse state, with such riversin their trenches that they went to enormous trouble to drain theBellewarde Lake which used to slop over in the rainy season. Thosefield-gray men had to wade through a Slough of Despond to get to theirline, and at night by Hooge where the lines were close together--onlya few yards apart--our men could hear their boots squelching in the mudwith sucking, gurgling noises. 

"They're drinking soup again!" said our humorists. 

There, at Hooge, Germans and English talked to one another, out of theircommon misery. 

"How deep is it with you?" shouted a German soldier. 

His voice came from behind a pile of sand-bags which divided the enemyand ourselves in a communication trench between the main lines. 

"Up to our blooming knees, " said an English corporal, who was trying tokeep his bombs dry under a tarpaulin. 

"So?. .. You are lucky fellows. We are up to our belts in it. "

It was so bad in parts of the line during November storms that wholesections of trench collapsed into a chaos of slime and ooze. It was thefrost as well as the rain which caused this ruin, making the earthworkssink under their weight of sand-bags. German and English soldiers wereexposed to one another like ants upturned from their nests by a minorlandslide. They ignored one another. They pretended that the otherfellows were not there. They had not been properly introduced. Inanother place, reckless because of their discomfort, the Germans crawledupon their slimy parapets and sat on top to dry their legs, and shouted:"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

Our men did not shoot. They, too, sat on the parapets drying theirlegs, and grinning at the gray ants yonder, until these incidents werereported back to G. H. Q. --where good fires were burning under dryroofs--and stringent orders came against "fraternization. " Every Germanwho showed himself was to be shot. Of course any Englishman who showedhimself--owing to a parapet falling in--would be shot, too. It was sixof one and half a dozen of the other, as always, in this trench warfare, but the dignity of G. H. Q. Would not be outraged by the thought of suchindecent spectacles as British and Germans refusing to kill each otheron sight. Some of the men obeyed orders, and when a German sat up andsaid, "Don't shoot!" plugged him through the head. Others were extremelyshort-sighted. .. Now and again Germans crawled over to our trenches andasked meekly to be taken prisoner. I met a few of these men and spokewith them. 

"There is no sense in this war, " said one of them. "It is misery on bothsides. There is no use in it. "

That thought of war's futility inspired an episode which was narratedthroughout the army in that winter of '15, and led to curiousconversations in dugouts and billets. Above a German front-line trenchappeared a plank on which, in big letters, was scrawled these words

"The English are fools. "

"Not such bloody fools as all that!" said a sergeant, and in a fewminutes the plank was smashed to splinters by rifle-fire. 

Another plank appeared, with other words:

"The French are fools. "

Loyalty to our allies caused the destruction of that board. 

A third plank was put up:

"We're all fools. Let's all go home. "

That board was also shot to pieces, but the message caused somelaughter, and men repeating it said: "There's a deal of truth in thosewords. Why should this go on? What's it all about? Let the old men whomade this war come and fight it out among themselves, at Hooge. Thefighting-men have no real quarrel with one another. We all want to gohome to our wives and our work. "

But neither side was prepared to "go home" first. Each side was in atrap--a devil's trap from which there was no escape. Loyalty to theirown side, discipline, with the death penalty behind it, spell words ofold tradition, obedience to the laws of war or to the caste which ruledthem, all the moral and spiritual propaganda handed out by pastors, newspapers, generals, staff-officers, old men at home, exalted women, female furies, a deep and simple love for England and Germany, prideof manhood, fear of cowardice--a thousand complexities of thought andsentiment prevented men, on both sides, from breaking the net of fate inwhich they were entangled, and revolting against that mutual, unceasingmassacre, by a rising from the trenches with a shout of, "We're allfools!. .. Let's all go home!"

In Russia they did so, but the Germans did not go home, too. As an armyand a nation they went on to the Peace of Brest-Litovsk and their doom. But many German soldiers were converted to that gospel of "We're allfools!" and would not fight again with any spirit, as we found at times, after August 8th, in the last year of war. 

III

The men remained in the trenches, and suffered horribly. I have toldabout lice and rats and mine-shafts there. Another misery came totorture soldiers in the line, and it was called "trench-foot. " Many menstanding in slime for days and nights in field boots or puttees lost allsense of feeling in their feet. These feet of theirs, so cold and wet, began to swell, and then to go "dead, " and then suddenly to burn asthough touched by red-hot pokers. When the "reliefs" went up scoresof men could not walk back from the trenches, but had to crawl, or becarried pick-a-back by their comrades, to the field dressing stations. So I saw hundreds of them, and, as the winter dragged on, thousands. Themedical officers cut off their boots and their puttees, and the socksthat had become part of their skins, exposing blackened and rottingfeet. They put oil on them, and wrapped them round with cotton-wool, and tied labels to their tunics with the name of that newdisease--"trench-foot. " Those medical officers looked serious as thenumber of cases increased. 

"This is getting beyond a joke, " they said. "It is pulling down thebattalion strength worse than wounds. "

Brigadiers and divisional generals were gloomy, and cursed the newaffliction of their men. Some of them said it was due to damnedcarelessness, others were inclined to think it due to deliberatemalingering at a time when there were many cases of self-inflictedwounds by men who shot their fingers away, or their toes, to get out ofthe trenches. 

There was no look of malingering on the faces of those boys who werebeing carried pick-a-back to the ambulance-trains at Remy siding, near Poperinghe, with both feet crippled and tied up in bundles ofcotton-wool. The pain was martyrizing, like that of men tied to burningfagots for conscience' sake. In one battalion of the 49th (West Riding)Division there were over four hundred cases in that winter of '15. Otherbattalions in the Ypres salient suffered as much. 

It was not until the end of the winter, when oil was taken up to thetrenches and rubbing drill was ordered, two or three times a day, thatthe malady of trench-foot was reduced, and at last almost eliminated. 

The spirit of the men fought against all that misery, resisted it, andwould not be beaten by it. 

A sergeant of the West Riding Division was badly wounded as he stoodthigh-high in water. A bomb or a trench-mortar smashed one of his legsinto a pulp of bloody flesh and splintered bone. Word was passed down tothe field ambulance, and a surgeon came up, splashed to the neck in mud, with his instruments held high. The operation was done in the water, red with the blood of the wounded man, who was then brought down, lessa leg, to the field hospital. He was put on one side as a man about todie. .. But that evening he chattered cheerfully, joked with the priestwho came to anoint him, and wrote a letter to his wife. 

"I hope this will find you in the pink, as it leaves me, " he began. Hementioned that he had had an "accident" which had taken one of his legsaway. "But the youngsters will like to play with my wooden peg, " hewrote, and discussed the joke of it. The people round his bed marveledat him, though day after day they saw great courage; such courage asthat of another man who was brought in mortally wounded and lay next toa comrade on the operating table. 

"Stick it, lad!" he said, "stick it!" and turned his head a little tolook at his friend. 

Many of our camps were hardly better than the trenches. Only byduck-boards could one walk about the morass in which huts were built andtents were pitched. In the wagon lines gunners tried in vain to groomtheir horses, and floundered about in their gum boots, cursing the mudwhich clogged bits and chains and bridles, and could find no comfortanywhere between Dickebusch and Locre. 

IV

The Hohenzollern redoubt, near Fosse 8, captured by the 9th ScottishDivision in the battle of Loos, could not be held then underconcentrated gun-fire from German batteries, and the Scots, and theGuards who followed them, after heavy losses, could only cling on topart of a communication trench (on the southeast side of the earthworks)nicknamed "Big Willie, " near another trench called "Little Willie. " Ourenemies forced their way back into some of their old trenches in thisoutpost beyond their main lines, and in spite of the chaos produced byour shell-fire built up new parapets and sand-bag barricades, flung outbarbed wire, and dug themselves into this graveyard where their dead andours were strewn. 

Perhaps there was some reason why our generals should covet possessionof the Hohenzollern redoubt, some good military reason beyond the spellof a high-sounding name. I went up there one day when it was partly oursand stared at its rigid waves of mine-craters and trench parapets andupheaved chalk, dazzling white under a blue sky, and failed to see anybeauty in the spot, or any value in it--so close to the German linesthat one could not cough for fear of losing one's head. It seemed to mea place not to gain and not to hold. If I had been a general (appallingthought!) I should have said: "Let the enemy have that little hell ofhis. Let men live there among half-buried bodies and crawling lice, andthe stench of rotting flesh. There is no good in it for us, and for himwill be an abomination, dreaded by his men. "

But our generals desired it. They hated to think that the enemy shouldhave crawled back to it after our men had been there. They decided to"bite it off, " that blunt nose which was thrust forward to our line. It was an operation that would be good to report in the officialcommunique. Its capture would, no doubt, increase the morale of our menafter their dead had been buried and their wounded patched up and theirlosses forgotten. 

It was to the 46th Midland Division that the order of assault wasgiven on October 13th, and into the trenches went the lace-makers ofNottingham, and the potters of the Five Towns, and the boot-makers ofLeicester, North Staffordshires, and Robin Hoods and Sherwood Foresters, on the night of the 12th. 

On the following morning our artillery concentrated a tremendous fireupon the redoubt, followed at 1 P. M. By volumes of smoke and gas. Thechief features on this part of the German line were, on the right, agroup of colliers' houses known as the Corons de Pekin, and a slag heapknown as the Dump, to the northeast of that bigger dump called Fosse8, and on the left another group of cottages, and another black hillockfarther to the right of the Fosse. These positions were in advance ofthe Hohenzollern redoubt which our troops were to attack. 

It was not an easy task. It was hellish. Intense as our artilleryfire had been, it failed to destroy the enemy's barbed wire and fronttrenches sufficiently to clear the way, and the Germans were stillworking their machine-guns when the fuses were lengthened, the firelifted, and the gas-clouds rolled away. 

I saw that bombardment on the morning of Wednesday, October 13th, andthe beginning of the attack from a slag heap close to some of our heavyguns. It was a fine, clear day, and some of the French miners livinground the pit-heads on our side of the battle line climbed up ironladders and coal heaps, roused to a new interest in the spectacle of warwhich had become a monotonous and familiar thing in their lives, becausethe intensity of our gun-fire and the volumes of smoke-clouds, and acertain strange, whitish vapor which was wafted from our lines towardthe enemy stirred their imagination, dulled by the daily din of guns, toa sense of something beyond the usual flight of shells in their part ofthe war zone. 

"The English are attacking again!" was the message which broughtout these men still living among ruined cottages on the edge ofthe slaughter-fields. They stared into the mist, where, beyond thebrightness of the autumn sun, men were about to fight and die. It wasthe same scene that I had watched when I went up to the Loos redoubt inthe September battle--a flat, bare, black plain, crisscrossed withthe whitish earth of the trenches rising a little toward Loos and thenfalling again so that in the village there only the Tower Bridge wasvisible, with its steel girders glinting, high over the horizon line. Tothe left the ruins of Hulluch fretted the low-lying clouds of smoke, andbeyond a huddle of broken houses far away was the town of Haisnes. Fosse8 and the Hohenzollern redoubt were hummocks of earth faintly visiblethrough drifting clouds of thick, sluggish vapor. 

On the edge of this battleground the fields were tawny under the goldenlight of the autumn sun, and the broken towers of village churches, redroofs shattered by shell-fire, trees stripped bare of all leaves beforethe wind of autumn touched them, were painted in clear outlines againstthe gray-blue of the sky. 

Our guns had been invisible. Not one of all those batteries which weremassed over a wide stretch of country could be located before the battleby a searching glass. But when the bombardment began it seemed as thoughour shells came from every field and village for miles back, behind thelines. 

The glitter of those bursting shells stabbed through the smoke oftheir explosion with little, twinkling flashes, like the sparkle ofinnumerable mirrors heliographing messages of death. There was oneincessant roar rising and falling in waves of prodigious sound. The whole line of battle was in a grayish murk, which obscured alllandmarks, so that even the Tower Bridge was but faintly visible. 

Presently, when our artillery lifted, there were new clouds rising fromthe ground and spreading upward in a great dense curtain of a fleecytexture. They came from our smoke-shells, which were to mask ourinfantry attack. Through them and beyond them rolled another wave ofcloud, a thinner, whiter vapor, which clung to the ground and thencurled forward to the enemy's lines. 

"That's our gas!" said a voice on one of the slag heaps, amid a group ofobservers--English and French officers. 

"And the wind is dead right for it, " said another voice. "The Germanswill get a taste of it this time!"

Then there was silence, and some of those observers held their breath asthough that gas had caught their own throats and choked them a little. They tried to pierce through that bar of cloud to see the drama behindits curtain--men caught in those fumes, the terror-stricken flightbefore its advance, the sudden cry of the enemy trapped in theirdugouts. Imagination leaped out, through invisibility, to therealization of the things that were happening beyond. 

From our place of observation there were brief glimpses of the humanelement in this scene of impersonal powers and secret forces. Acrossa stretch of flat ground beyond some of those zigzag lines of trencheslittle black things were scurrying forward. They were not bunchedtogether in close groups, but scattered. Some of them seemed tohesitate, and then to fall and lie where they fell, others hurrying onuntil they disappeared in the drifting clouds. 

It was the foremost line of our infantry attack, led by the bombers. The Germans were firing tempests of shells. Some of them were curiouslycolored, of a pinkish hue, or with orange-shaped puffs of vivid green. They were poison-shells giving out noxious gases. All the chemistry ofdeath was poured out on both sides--and through it went the men of theMidland Division. 

The attack on the right was delivered by a brigade of Staffordshire men, who advanced in four lines toward the Big Willie trench which formed thesoutheast side of the Hohenzollern redoubt. The leading companies, whowere first over our own parapets, made a quick rush, half blinded bythe smoke and the gaseous vapors which filled the air, and were at oncereceived by a deadly fire from many machine-guns. It swept their ranks, and men fell on all sides. Others ran on in little parties flung out inextended order. 

Young officers behaved with desperate gallantry, and as they fellcheered their men on, while others ran forward shouting, followed bynumbers which dwindled at every yard, so that only a few reached the BigWillie trench in the first assault. 

A bombing-party of North Staffordshire men cleared thirty yards of thetrench by the rapidity with which they flung their hand-grenades at theGerman bombers who endeavored to keep them out, and again and again theykept at bay a tide of field-gray men, who swarmed up the communicationtrenches, by a series of explosions which blew many of them to bitsas bomb after bomb was hurled into their mass. Other Germans followed, flinging their own stick-bombs. 

The Staffordshires did not yield until nearly every man was wounded andmany were killed. Even then they retreated yard by yard, still flinginggrenades almost with the rhythm of a sower who scatters his seed, eachmotion of the hand and arm letting go one of those steel pomegranateswhich burst with the noise of a high-explosive shell. 

The survivors fell back to the other side of a barricade made in the BigWillie trench by some of their men behind. Behind them again was anotherbarrier, in case the first should be rushed. 

It seemed as if they might be rushed now, for the Germans were swarmingup Big Willie with strong bombing-parties, and would soon blast a waythrough unless they were thrust beyond the range of hand-grenades. Itwas a young lieutenant named Hawker, with some South Staffordshire men, who went forward to meet this attack and kept the enemy back until fouro'clock in the afternoon, when only a few living men stood among thedead and they had to fall back to the second barrier. 

Darkness now crept over the battlefield and filled the trenches, and inthe darkness the wounded men were carried back to the rear, while thosewho had escaped worked hard to strengthen their defenses by sand-bagsand earthworks, knowing that their only chance of life lay in fierceindustry. 

Early next morning an attempt was made by other battalions to come tothe relief of those who held on behind those barriers in Big Willietrench. They were Nottingham men--Robin Hoods and other Sherwoodlads--and they came across the open ground in two directions, attackingthe west as well as the east ends of the German communication trencheswhich formed the face of the Hohenzollern redoubt. 

They were supported by rifle grenade-fire, but their advance was met byintense fire from artillery and machine-guns, so that many were blownto bits or mangled or maimed, and none could reach their comrades in BigWillie trench. 

While one brigade of the Midland men had been fighting like this onthe right, another brigade had been engaged on the left. It containedSherwood, Leicester, and Lincoln men, who, on the afternoon of October13th, went forward to the assault with very desperate endeavor. Advancing in four lines, the leading companies were successful inreaching the Hohenzollern redoubt, smashed through the barbed wire, partof which was uncut, and reached the Fosse trench which forms the northbase of the salient. 

Machine-gun fire cut down the first two lines severely and the tworemaining lines were heavily shelled by German artillery. It was an hourin which the courage of those men was agonized. They were exposed onnaked ground swept by bullets, the atmosphere was heavy with gas andsmoke; all the abomination of battle--he moaning of the wounded, thelast cries of the dying, the death-crawl of stricken beings holdingtheir broken limbs and their entrails--was around them, and in fronta hidden enemy with unlimited supplies of ammunition and a betterposition. 

The Robin Hoods and the men of Lincoln and Leicestershire were sustainedin that shambles by the spirit that had come to them through the oldyeoman stock in which their traditions were rooted, and those who hadnot fallen went forward, past their wounded comrades, past these poor, bloody, moaning men, to the German trenches behind the redoubt. 

At 2. 15 P. M. Some Monmouth men came up in support, and while theirbombers were at work some of the Lincolns pushed up with a machine-gunto a point within sixty yards from the Fosse trench, where they stayedtill dark, and then were forced to fall back. 

At this time parties of bombers were trying to force their way upthe Little Willie trench on the extreme left of the redoubt, and hereghastly fighting took place. Some of the Leicesters made a dash threehundred yards up the trench, but were beaten back by overpoweringnumbers of German bombers and bayonet-men, and again and again otherMidland lads went up that alleyway of death, flinging their grenadesuntil they fell or until few comrades were left to support them as theystood among their dead and dying. 

Single men held on, throwing and throwing, until there was no strengthin their arms to hurl another bomb, or until death came to them. Yetthe business went on through the darkness of the afternoon, and intothe deeper darkness of the night, lit luridly at moments by the whiteillumination of German flares and by the flash of bursting shells. 

Isolated machine-guns in uncaptured parts of the redoubt still beat atattoo like the ruffle of war-drums, and from behind the barriers inthe Big Willie trench came the sharp crack of English rifles, and dullexplosions of other bombs flung by other Englishmen very hard pressedthat night. 

In the outer trenches, at the nose of the salient, fresh companies ofSherwood lads were feeling their way along, mixed up confusedly withcomrades from other companies, wounded or spent with fighting, butdetermined to hold the ground they had won. 

Some of the Robin Hoods up Little Willie trench were holding outdesperately and almost at the last gasp, when they were relieved byother Sherwoods, and it was here that a young officer named Vickers wasfound in the way that won him his V. C. 

Charles Geoffrey Vickers stood there for hours against a horde of meneager for his death, eager to get at the men behind him. But they couldnot approach. He and his fellow-bombers kept twenty yards or more clearbefore them, and any man who flung himself forward was the target of ahand-grenade. 

From front and from flank German bombs came whizzing, falling shortsometimes, with a blasting roar that tore down lumps of trench, andsometimes falling very close--close enough to kill. 

Vickers saw some of his best men fall, but he kept the barrier stillintact by bombing and bombing. 

When many of his comrades were dead or wounded, he wondered how long thebarrier would last, and gave orders for another to be built behind him, so that when the rush came it would be stopped behind him--and over him. 

Men worked at that barricade, piling up sand-bags, and as it was builtthat young lieutenant knew that his own retreat was being cut off andthat he was being coffined in that narrow space. Two other men were withhim--I never learned their names--and they were hardly enough to hand upbombs as quickly as he wished to throw them. 

Away there up the trench the Germans were waiting for a pounce. Thoughwounded so that he felt faint and giddy, he called out for more bombs. "More!" he said, "More!" and his hand was like a machine reaching outand throwing. 

Rescue came at last, and the wounded officer was hauled over thebarricade which he had ordered to be built behind him, closing up hisway of escape. 

All through October 14th the Midland men of the 46th Division held on totheir ground, and some of the Sherwoods made a new attack, clearing theenemy out of the east portion of the redoubt. 

It was lucky that it coincided with a counter-attack made by the enemyat a different point, because it relieved the pressure there. Bombingduels continued hour after hour, and human nature could hardly haveendured so long a struggle without fatigue beyond the strength of men. 

So it seems; yet when a brigade of Guards came up on the night ofOctober 15th the enemy attacked along the whole line of redoubts, and the Midland men, who were just about to leave the trenches, foundthemselves engaged in a new action. They had to fight again before theycould go, and they fought like demons or demigods for their right of wayand home, and bombed the enemy back to his holes in the ground. 

So ended the assault on the Hohenzollern by the Midland men of England, whose division, years later, helped to break the Hindenburg line alongthe great canal south of St. -Quentin. 

What good came of it mortal men cannot say, unless the generals whoplanned it hold the secret. It cost a heavy price in life and agony. Itdemonstrated the fighting spirit of many English boys who did the bestthey could, with the rage, and fear, and madness of great courage, before they died or fell, and it left some living men, and others whorelieved them in Big Willie and Little Willie trenches, so close to theenemy that one could hear them cough, or swear in guttural whispers. 

And through the winter of '15, and the years that followed, theHohenzollern redoubt became another Hooge, as horrible as Hooge, asdeadly, as damnable in its filthy perils, where men of English blood, and Irish, and Scottish, took their turn, and hated it, and countedthemselves lucky if they escaped from its prison-house, whose wallsstank of new and ancient death. 

* * *

Among those who took their turn in the hell of the Hohenzollern werethe men of the 12th Division, New Army men, and all of the old stock andspirit of England, bred in the shires of Norfolk and Suffolk, Gloucesterand Bedford, and in Surrey, Kent, Sussex, and Middlesex (which meantLondon), as the names of their battalions told. In September theyrelieved the Guards and cavalry at Loos; in December they moved on toGivenchy, and in February they began a long spell at the Hohenzollern. It was there the English battalions learned the worst things of war andshowed the quality of English courage. 

A man of Kent, named Corporal Cotter, of the Buffs, was marvelous inspirit, stronger than the flesh. 

On the night of March 6th an attack was made by his company along anenemy trench, but his own bombing--party was cut off, owing to heavycasualties in the center of the attack. Things looked serious and Cotterwent back under heavy fire to report and bring up more bombs. 

On the return journey his right leg was blown off close below the kneeand he was wounded in both arms. By a kind of miracle--the miracle ofhuman courage--he did not drop down and die in the mud of the trench, mud so deep that unwounded men found it hard to walk--but made his wayalong fifty yards of trench toward the crater where his comrades werehard pressed. He came up to Lance-corporal Newman, who was bombingwith his sector to the right of the position. Cotter called to him anddirected him to bomb six feet toward where help was most needed, andworked his way forward to the crater where the Germans had developed aviolent counter-attack. 

Men fell rapidly under the enemy's bomb-fire, but Cotter, with onlyone leg, and bleeding from both arms, steadied his comrades, who werebeginning to have the wind-up, as they say, issued orders, controlledthe fire, and then altered dispositions to meet the attack. It wasrepulsed after two hours' fighting, and only then did Cotter allowhis wounds to be bandaged. From the dug--out where he lay while thebombardment still continued he called out cheery words to the men, untilhe was carried down, fourteen hours later. He received the V. C. , butdied of his wounds. 

Officers and men vied with one another, yet not for honor or reward, round these craters of the Hohenzollern, and in the mud, and the fumesof shells, and rain-swept darkness, and all the black horror of such atime and place, sometimes in groups and sometimes quite alone, did actsof supreme valor. When all the men in one of these infernal craters weredead or wounded Lieut. Lea Smith, of the Buffs, ran forward with a Lewisgun, helped by Private Bradley, and served it during a fierce attack byGerman bombers until it jammed. 

Then he left the gun and took to bombing, and that single figure of his, flinging grenades like an overarm bowler, kept the enemy at bay untilreinforcements reached him. 

Another officer of the Buff's--by name Smeltzer--withdrew his platoonunder heavy fire, and, although he was wounded, fought his way backslowly to prevent the enemy from following up. The men were proud ofhis gallantry, but when he was asked what he had done he could think ofnothing except that "when the Boches began shelling I got into a dugout, and when they stopped I came out again. "

There were many men like that who did amazing things and, in the Englishway, said nothing of them. Of that modesty was Capt. Augrere Dawson, ofthe West Kents, who did not bother much about a bullet he met on his wayto a crater, though it traveled through his chest to his shoulder-blade. He had it dressed, and then went back to lead his men, and remained withthem until the German night attack was repulsed. He was again wounded, this time in the thigh, but did not trouble the stretcher-men (theyhad a lot to do on the night of March 18th and 19th), and trudged backalone. 

It was valor that was paid for by flesh and blood. The honors gained bythe 12th Division in a few months of trench warfare--one V. C. , sixteen D. S. C. 's, forty-five Military Crosses, thirty-four MilitaryMedals--were won by the loss in casualties of more than fourteenthousand men. That is to say, the losses of their division in that time, made up by new drafts, was 100 per cent. ; and the Hohenzollern took thehighest toll of life and limbs. 

V

I heard no carols in the trenches on Christmas Eve in 1915, butafterward, when I sat with a pint of water in each of my top-boots, among a company of men who were wet to the knees and slathered withmoist mud, a friend of mine raised his hand and said, "Listen!"

Through the open door came the music of a mouth--organ, and it wasplaying an old tune:

God rest ye, merry gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born on Christmas Day. 

Outside the wind was howling across Flanders with a doleful whine, rising now and then into a savage violence which rattled thewindow-panes, and beyond the booming of its lower notes was the faint, dull rumble of distant guns. 

"Christmas Eve!" said an officer. "Nineteen hundred and fifteen yearsago. .. And now--this!"

He sighed heavily, and a few moments later told a funny story, which wasfollowed by loud laughter. And so it was, I think, in every billet inFlanders and in every dugout that Christmas Eve, where men thought ofthe meaning of the day, with its message of peace and goodwill, andcontrasted it with the great, grim horror of the war, and spoke a fewwords of perplexity; and then, after that quick sigh (how many comradeshad gone since last Christmas Day!), caught at a jest, and had thecourage of laughter. It was queer to find the spirit of Christmas, thelittle tendernesses of the old tradition, the toys and trinkets of itsfeast-day, in places where Death had been busy--and where the spirit ofevil lay in ambush!

So it was when I went through Armentieres within easy range ofthe enemy's guns. Already six hundred civilians--mostly women andchildren--had been killed there. But, still, other women were chattingtogether through broken window-panes, and children were staring intolittle shops (only a few yards away from broken roofs and shell-brokenwalls) where Christmas toys were on sale. 

A wizened boy, in a pair of soldier's boots--a French Hop o' My Thumb inthe giant's boots--was gazing wistfully at some tin soldiers, and insidethe shop a real soldier, not a bit like the tin one, was buying someChristmas cards worked by a French artist in colored wools for thebenefit of English Tommies, with the aid of a dictionary. Other soldiersread their legends and laughed at them: "My heart is to you. " "Goodluck. " "To the success!" "Remind France. "

The man who was buying the cards fumbled with French money, and lookedup sheepishly at me, as if shy of the sentiment upon which he wasspending it. 

"The people at home will be glad of 'em, " he said. "I s'pose one can'tforget Christmas altogether. Though it ain't the same thing out here. "

Going in search of Christmas, I passed through a flooded countryside andfound only scenes of war behind the lines, with gunners driving theirbatteries and limber down a road that had become a river-bed, fountainsof spray rising about their mules and wheels, military motor-carslurching in the mud beyond the pave, despatch-riders side-slipping in awild way through boggy tracks, supply--columns churning up deep ruts. 

And then into the trenches at Neuve Chapelle. If Santa Claus had comethat way, remembering those grown-up boys of ours, the old man withhis white beard must have lifted his red gown high--waist-high--when hewaded up some of the communication trenches to the firing-lines, andhe would have staggered and slithered, now with one top-boot deep insludge, now with the other slipping off the trench boards into five feetof water, as I had to do, grasping with futile hands at slimy sandbagsto save a headlong plunge into icy water. 

And this old man of peace, who loved all boys and the laughter ofyouth, would have had to duck very low and make sudden bolts across openspaces, where parapets and earthworks had silted down, in order to avoidthose sniping bullets which came snapping across the dead ground from arow of slashed trees and a few scarred ruins on the edge of the enemy'slines. 

But sentiment of that sort was out of place in trenches less than ahundred yards away from men lying behind rifles and waiting to kill. 

There was no spirit of Christmas in the tragic desolation of the sceneryof which I had brief glimpses when I stood here and there nakedly (Ifelt) in those ugly places, when the officer who was with me said, "It'sbest to get a move on here, " and, "This road is swept by machine--gunfire, " and, "I don't like this corner; it's quite unhealthy. "

But that absurd idea--of Santa Claus in the trenches--came into myhead several times, and I wondered whether the Germans would fire awhizz-bang at him or give a burst of machine-gun fire if they caught theglint of his red cloak. 

Some of the soldiers had the same idea. In the front-line trench a smallgroup of Yorkshire lads were chaffing one another. 

"Going to hang your boots up outside the dugout?" asked a lad, grinningdown at an enormous pair of waders belonging to a comrade. 

"Likely, ain't it?" said the other boy. "Father Christmas would be abloody fool to come out here. .. They'd be full of water in the morning. "

"You'll get some presents, " I said. "They haven't forgotten you athome. "

At that word "home" the boy flushed and something went soft in his eyesfor a moment. In spite of his steel helmet and mud-stained uniform, hewas a girlish-looking fellow--perhaps that was why his comrades werechaffing him--and I fancy the thought of Christmas made him yearn backto some village in Yorkshire. 

Most of the other men with whom I spoke treated the idea of Christmaswith contemptuous irony. 

"A happy Christmas!" said one of them, with a laugh. "Plenty of crackersabout this year! Tom Smith ain't in it. "

"And I hope we're going to give the Boches some Christmas presents, "said another. "They deserve it, I don't think!"

"No truce this year?" I asked. 

"A truce?. .. We're not going to allow any monkey--tricks on theparapets. To hell with Christmas charity and all that tosh. We've got toget on with the war. That's my motto. "

Other men said: "We wouldn't mind a holiday. We're fed up to the neckwith all this muck. "

The war did not stop, although it was Christmas Eve, and the only carolI heard in the trenches was the loud, deep chant of the guns on bothsides, and the shrill soprano of whistling shells, and the rattle on thekeyboards of machine-guns. The enemy was putting more shells into a bitof trench in revenge for a raid. To the left some shrapnel shells werebursting, and behind the lines our "heavies" were busily at work firingat long range. 

"On earth peace, good-will toward men. "

The message was spoken at many a little service on both sides of thatlong line where great armies were entrenched with their death-machines, and the riddle of life and faith was rung out by the Christmas bellswhich came clashing on the rain-swept wind, with the reverberation ofgreat guns. 

Through the night our men in the trenches stood in their waders, andthe dawn of Christmas Day was greeted, not by angelic songs, but by thesplutter of rifle-bullets all along the line. 

VI

There was more than half a gale blowing on the eve of the new year, and the wind came howling with a savage violence across the rain-sweptfields, so that the first day of a fateful year had a stormy birth, andthere was no peace on earth. 

Louder than the wind was the greeting of the guns to another year ofwar. I heard the New-Year's chorus when I went to see the last of theyear across the battlefields. Our guns did not let it die in silence. It went into the tomb of the past, with all its tragic memories, to thunderous salvos, carrying death with them. The "heavies" wereindulging in a special strafe this New--Year's eve. As I went down aroad near the lines by Loos I saw, from concealed positions, the flashof gun upon gun. The air was swept by an incessant rush of shells, andthe roar of all this artillery stupefied one's sense of sound. All aboutme in the village of Annequin, through which I walked, there was noother sound, no noise of human life. There were no New-Year's everejoicings among those rows of miners' cottages on the edge of thebattlefield. Half those little red-brick houses were blown to pieces, and when here and there through a cracked window-pane I saw a woman'swhite face peering out upon me as I passed I felt as though I had seen aghost-face in some black pit of hell. 

For it was hellish, this place wrecked by high explosives and alwaysunder the fire of German guns. That any human being should be therepassed all belief. From a shell-hole in a high wall I looked across thefield of battle, where many of our best had died. The Tower Bridge ofLoos stood grim and gaunt above the sterile fields. Through the rainand the mist loomed the long black ridge of Notre Dame de Lorette, wheremany poor bodies lay in the rotting leaves. The ruins of Haisnes andHulluch were jagged against the sky-line. And here, on New--Year's eve, I saw no sign of human life and heard no sound of it, but stared at thebroad desolation and listened to the enormous clangor of great guns. 

* * *

Coming back that day through Bethune I met some very human life. It wasa big party of bluejackets from the Grand Fleet, who had come to seewhat "Tommy" was doing in the war. They went into the trenches and sawa good deal, because the Germans made a bombing raid in that sector andthe naval men did their little bit by the side of the lads in khaki, who liked this visit. They discovered the bomb store and opened such aBrock's benefit that the enemy must have been shocked with surprise. One young marine was bomb-slinging for four hours, and grinned at theprodigious memory as though he had had the time of his life. Anotherconfessed to me that he preferred rifle-grenades, which he fired off allnight until the dawn. There was no sleep in the dugouts, and every hourwas a long thrill. 

"I don't mind saying, " said a petty officer who had fought in severalnaval actions during the war and is a man of mark, "that I had a fairfright when I was doing duty on the fire-step. 'I suppose I've got tolook through a periscope, ' I said. 'Not you, ' said the sergeant. 'Atnight you puts your head over the parapet. ' So over the parapet I put myhead, and presently I saw something moving between the lines. My riflebegan to shake. Germans! Moving, sure enough, over the open ground. Ifixed bayonet and prepared for an attack. .. But I'm blessed if it wasn'ta swarm of rats!"

The soldiers were glad to show Jack the way about the trenches, and someof them played up a little audaciously, as, for instance, when a youngfellow sat on the top of the parapet at dawn. 

"Come up and have a look, Jack, " he said to one of the bluejackets. 

"Not in these trousers, old mate!" said that young man. 

"All as cool as cucumbers, " said a petty officer, "and take thediscomforts of trench life as cheerily as any men could. It's marvelous. Good luck to them in the new year!"

* * *

Behind the lines there was banqueting by men who were mostly doomedto die, and I joined a crowd of them in a hall at Lillers on thatNew-Year's day. 

They were the heroes of Loos--or some of them--Camerons and Seaforths, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Gordons and King's Own ScottishBorderers, who, with the London men, were first on Hill 70 and awayto the Cite St. -Auguste. They left many comrades there, and theirbattalions have been filled up with new drafts--of the same type asthemselves and of the same grit--but that day no ghost of grief, no darkshadow of gloom, was upon any of the faces upon which I looked rounda festive board in a long, French hall, to which their wounded came inthose days of the September battle. 

There were young men there from the Scottish universities and fromHighland farms, sitting shoulder to shoulder in a jolly comradeshipwhich burst into song between every mouthful of the feast. On theplatform above the banqueting-board a piper was playing, when I came in, and this hall in France was filled with the wild strains of it. 

"And they're grand, the pipes, " said one of the Camerons. "When I'vebeen sae tired on the march I could have laid doon an' dee'd the toucho' the pipes has fair lifted me up agen. "

The piper made way for a Kiltie at the piano, and for Highlanders, whosang old songs full of melancholy, which seemed to make the hearts ofhis comrades grow glad as when they helped him with "The Bonnie, BonnieBanks of Loch Lomond. " But the roof nearly flew off the hall to "TheMarch of the Cameron Men, " and the walls were greatly strained when theregimental marching song broke at every verse into wild Highlandshouts and the war-cry which was heard at Loos of "Camerons, forward!""Forward, Camerons!"

"An Englishman is good, " said one of the Camerons, leaning over thetable to me, "and an Irishman is good, but a Scot is the best of all. "Then he struck the palm of one hand with the fist of another. "But theLondon men, " he said, with a fine, joyous laugh at some good memory, "are as good as any fighting-men in France. My word, ye should have seen'em on September 25th. And the London Irish were just lions!"

Out in the rain-slashed street I met the colonel of a battalion ofArgylls and Sutherlands, with several of his officers; a tall, thinofficer with a long stride, who was killed when another year had passed. He beckoned to me and said: "I'm going the rounds of the billets to wishthe men good luck in the new year. It's a strain on the constitution, asI have to drink their health each time!"

He bore the strain gallantly, and there was something noble andchivalrous in the way he spoke to all his men, gathered together invarious rooms in old Flemish houses, round plum-pudding from home orfeasts provided by the army cooks. To each group of men he made the samekind of speech, thanking them from his heart for all their courage. 

"You were thanked by three generals, " he said, "after your attack atLoos, and you upheld the old reputation of the regiment. I'm proud ofyou. And afterward, in November, when you had the devil of a time in thetrenches, you stuck it splendidly and came out with high spirits. I wishyou all a happy new year, and whatever the future may bring I know I cancount on you. "

In every billet there were three cheers for the colonel, and anotherthree for the staff captain, and though the colonel protested that hewas afraid of spending a night in the guard-room (there were shouts oflaughter at this), he drank his sip of neat whisky, according to thecustom of the day. 

"Toodle-oo, old bird!" said a kilted cockney, halfway up a ladder, onwhich he swayed perilously, being very drunk; but the colonel did nothear this familiar way of address. 

In many billets and in many halls the feast of New Year's day was keptin good comradeship by men who had faced death together, and who in theyear that was coming fought in many battles and fell on many fields. 

VII

The Canadians who were in the Ypres salient in January, 1916, and fora long time afterward, had a grim way of fighting. The enemy neverknew what they might do next. When they were most quiet they weremost dangerous. They used cunning as well as courage, and went outon red-Indian adventures over No Man's Land for fierce and scientificslaughter. 

I remember one of their early raids in the salient, when a big party ofthem--all volunteers--went out one night with intent to get through thebarbed wire outside a strong German position, to do a lot of killingthere. They had trained for the job and thought out every detail of thishunting expedition. They blacked their faces so that they would not showwhite in the enemy's flares. They fastened flash-lamps to their bayonetsso that they might see their victims. They wore rubber gloves to savetheir hands from being torn on the barbs of the wire. 

Stealthily they crawled over No Man's Land, crouching in shell-holesevery time a rocket rose and made a glimmer of light. They took theirtime at the wire, muffling the snap of it by bits of cloth. Reliefscrawled up with more gloves, and even with tins of hot cocoa. Thenthrough the gap into the German trenches, and there were screams ofGerman soldiers, terror-shaken by the flash of light in their eyes, and black faces above them, and bayonets already red with blood. Itwas butcher's work, quick and skilful, like red-Indian scalping. ThirtyGermans were killed before the Canadians went back, with only twocasualties. .. The Germans were horrified by this sudden slaughter. Theydared not come out on patrol work. Canadian scouts crawled down to themand insulted them, ingeniously, vilely, but could get no answer. Laterthey trained their machine--guns on German working-parties and sweptcrossroads on which supplies came up, and the Canadian sniper, in oneshell-hole or another, lay for hours in sulky patience, and at last gothis man. .. They had to pay for all this, at Maple Copse, in June of '15, as I shall tell. But it was a vendetta which did not end until thewar ended, and the Canadians fought the Germans with a long, enduring, terrible, skilful patience which at last brought them to Mons on the daybefore armistice. 

I saw a good deal of the Canadians from first to last, and on manydays of battle saw the tough, hard fighting spirit of these men. Theirgenerals believed in common sense applied to war, and not in highmysteries and secret rites which cannot be known outside the circle ofinitiation. I was impressed by General Currie, whom I met for the firsttime in that winter of 1915-16, and wrote at the time that I saw in him"a leader of men who in open warfare might win great victories by doingthe common-sense thing rapidly and decisively, to the surprise of anenemy working by elaborate science. He would, I think, astound themby the simplicity of his smashing stroke. " Those words of minewere fulfilled--on the day when the Canadians helped to break theDrocourt-Queant line, and when they captured Cambrai, with Englishtroops on their right, who shared their success. General Currie, whobecame the Canadian Corps Commander, did not spare his men. He led themforward whatever the cost, but there was something great and terrible inhis simplicity and sureness of judgment, and this real--estate agent(as he was before he took to soldiering) was undoubtedly a man ofstrong ability, free from those trammels of red tape and tradition whichswathed round so many of our own leaders. 

He cut clean to the heart of things, ruthlessly, like a surgeon, and asI watched that man, immense in bulk, with a heavy, thoughtful face andstern eyes that softened a little when he smiled, I thought of him asOliver Cromwell. He was severe as a disciplinarian, and not beloved bymany men. But his staff-officers, who stood in awe of him, knew thathe demanded truth and honesty, and that his brain moved quickly to suredecisions and saw big problems broadly and with understanding. He hadgood men with him--mostly amateurs--but with hard business heads and thesame hatred of red tape and niggling ways which belonged to their chief. So the Canadian Corps became a powerful engine on our side when ithad learned many lessons in blood and tragedy. They organized theirpublicity side in the same masterful way, and were determined that whatCanada did the world should know--and damn all censorship. They boughtup English artists, photographers, and writing--men to record theirexploits. With Lord Beaverbrook in England they engineered Canadianpropaganda with immense energy, and Canada believed her men made up theBritish army and did all the fighting. I do not blame them, and onlywish that the English soldier should have been given his share of thehonors that belonged to him--the lion's share. 

VIII

The Canadians were not the only men to go out raiding. It became partof the routine of war, that quick killing in the night, for English andScottish and Irish and Welsh troops, and some had luck with it, and somemen liked it, and to others it was a horror which they had to do, and always it was a fluky, nervy job, when any accident might lead totragedy. 

I remember one such raid by the 12th West Yorks in January of '15, whichwas typical of many others, before raids developed into minor battles, with all the guns at work. 

There were four lieutenants who drew up the plan and called forvolunteers, and it was one of these who went out first and alone toreconnoiter the ground and to find the best way through the Germanbarbed wire. He just slipped out over the parapet and disappeared intothe darkness. When he came back he had a wound in the wrist--it was justthe bad luck of a chance bullet--but brought in valuable knowledge. Hehad found a gap in the enemy's wire which would give an open door tothe party of visitors. He had also tested the wire farther along, andthought it could be cut without much bother. 

"Good enough!" was the verdict, and a detachment started out for NoMan's Land, divided into two parties. 

The enemy trenches were about one hundred yards away, which seems amile in the darkness and the loneliness of the dead ground. At regularintervals the German rockets flared up so that the hedges and wireand parapets along their line were cut out ink-black against the whiteillumination, and the two patrols of Yorkshiremen who had been crawlingforward stopped and crouched lower and felt themselves revealed, andthen when darkness hid them again went on. 

The party on the left were now close to the German wire and under theshelter of a hedge. They felt their way along until the two subalternswho were leading came to the gap which had been reported by the firstexplorer. They listened intently and heard the German sentry stampinghis feet and pacing up and down. Presently he began to whistle softly, utterly unconscious of the men so close to him--so close now that anystumble, any clatter of arms, any word spoken, would betray them. 

The two lieutenants had their revolvers ready and crept forward to theparapet. The men had to act according to instinct now, for no ordercould be given, and one of them found his instinct led him to clamberright into the German trench a few yards away from the sentry, but onthe other side of the traverse. He had not been there long, holding hisbreath and crouching like a wolf, before footsteps came toward him andhe saw the glint of a cigarette. 

It was a German officer going his round. The Yorkshire boy sprang on tothe parapet again, and lay across it with his head toward our linesand his legs dangling in the German trench. The German officer's cloakbrushed his heels, but the boy twisted round a little and stared at himas he passed. But he passed, and presently the sentry began to whistleagain, some old German tune which cheered him in his loneliness. Heknew nothing of the eyes watching him through the darkness nor of hisnearness to death. 

It was the first lieutenant who tried to shoot him. But the revolver wasmuddy and would not fire. Perhaps a click disturbed the sentry. Anyhow, the moment had come for quick work. It was the sergeant who sprang uponhim, down from the parapet with one pounce. A frightful shriek, with theshrill agony of a boy's voice, wailed through the silence. The sergeanthad his hand about the German boy's throat and tried to strangle him andto stop another dreadful cry. 

The second officer made haste. He thrust his revolver close to thestruggling sentry and shot him dead, through the neck, just as he wasfalling limp from a blow on the head given by the butt-end of the weaponwhich had failed to fire. The bullet did its work, though it passedthrough the sergeant's hand, which had still held the man by the throat. The alarm had been raised and German soldiers were running to therescue. 

"Quick!" said one of the officers. 

There was a wild scramble over the parapet, a drop into the wet ditch, and a race for home over No Man's Land, which was white under the Germanflares and noisy with the waspish note of bullets. 

The other party were longer away and had greater trouble to find a waythrough, but they, too, got home, with one officer badly wounded, andwonderful luck to escape so lightly. The enemy suffered from "the jumps"for several nights afterward, and threw bombs into their own barbedwire, as though the English were out there again. And at the sound ofthose bombs the West Yorks laughed all along their trenches. 

IX

It was always astonishing, though afterward familiar in thosebattlefields of Flanders, to find oneself in the midst of so manynationalities and races and breeds of men belonging to that Britishfamily of ours which sent its sons to sacrifice. In those trenches therewere all the ways of speech, all the sentiment of place and history, allthe creeds and local customs and songs of old tradition which belong tothe mixture of our blood wherever it is found about the world. 

The skirl of the Scottish bagpipes was heard through all the yearsof war over the Flemish marshlands, and there were Highlanders andLowlanders with every dialect over the border. In one line of trenchesthe German soldiers listened to part-songs sung in such trained harmonythat it was as if a battalion of opera-singers had come into thefiring-line. The Welshmen spoke their own language. For a time noofficer received his command unless he spoke it as fluently as runningwater by Aberystwyth, and even orders were given in this tongue until afew Saxons, discovered in the ranks, failed to form fours and know theirleft hand from their right in Welsh. 

The French-Canadians did not need to learn the language of the peasantsin these market towns. Soldiers from Somerset used many old Saxon wordswhich puzzled their cockney friends, and the Lancashire men brought thenorthern bur with them and the grit of the northern spirit. And Ireland, though she would not have conscription, sent some of the bravest of herboys out there, and in all the bloodiest battles since that day at Monsthe old fighting qualities of the Irish race shone brightly again, andthe blood of her race has been poured out upon these tragic fields. 

One of the villages behind the lines of Arras was so crowded with Irishboys at the beginning of '16 that I found it hard not to believe thata part of old Ireland itself had found its way to Flanders. In oneold outhouse the cattle had not been evicted. Twelve Flemish cows laycuddled up together on the ground floor in damp straw, which gave outa sweet, sickly stench, while the Irish soldiers lived upstairs in theloft, to which they climbed up a tall ladder with broken rungs. 

I went up the ladder after them--it was very shaky in the middle--and, putting my head through the loft, gave a greeting to a number of darkfigures lying in the same kind of straw that I had smelled downstairs. One boy was sitting with his back to the beams, playing a penny whistlevery softly to himself, or perhaps to the rats under the straws. 

"The craytures are that bold, " said a boy from County Cork, "that whenwe first came in they sat up smilin' and sang 'God Save Ireland. ' Bedad, and it's the truth I'm after tellin' ye. "

The billets were wet and dirty. But it was good to be away from theshells, even if the rain came through the beams of a broken roof andsoaked through the plaster of wattle walls. The Irish boys were good atmaking wood fires in these old barns and pigsties, if there were afew bricks about to make a hearth, and, sure, a baked potato was noProtestant with a grudge against the Pope. 

There were no such luxuries in the trenches when the Dublins and theMunsters were up in the firing-line at the Hohenzollern. The shellingwas so violent that it was difficult to get up the supplies, and someof the boys had to fall back on their iron rations. It was the onlycomplaint which one of them made when I asked him what he thought of hisfirst experience under fire. 

"It was all right, sorr, and not so bad as I'd been after thinking, ifonly my appetite had not been bigger than my belt, at all. "

The spirit of these Irishmen was shown by some who had just come outfrom the old country to join their comrades in the firing-line. When theGermans put over a number of shells, smashing the trenches and woundingmen, the temper of the lads broke out, and they wanted to get over theparapet and make a dash for the enemy. "'Twould taych him a lesson, "they told their officers, who had some trouble in restraining them. 

These newcomers had to take part in the digging which goes on behind thelines at night--out in the open, without the shelter of a trench. It wasnervous work, especially when the German flares went up, silhouettingtheir figures on the sky-line, and when one of the enemy's machine-gunsbegan to chatter. But the Irish boys found the heart for a jest, and oneof them, resting on his spade a moment, stared over to the enemy'slines and said, "May the old devil take the spalpeen who works thattypewriter!"

It was a scaring, nerve-racking time for those who had come fresh to thetrenches, some of those boys who had not guessed the realities of waruntil then. But they came out proudly--"with their tails up, " said oneof their officers--after their baptism of fire. 

The drum-and-fife band of the Munsters was practising in an old barn onthe wayside, and presently, in honor of visitors--who were myself andanother--the pipers were sent for. They were five tall lads, who camestriding down the street of Flemish cottages, with the windbags undertheir arms, and then, with the fife men sitting on the straw aroundthem and the drummers standing with their sticks ready, they took theirbreath for "the good old Irish tune" demanded by the captain. 

It was a tune which men could not sing very safely in Irish yesterdays, and it held the passion of many rebellious hearts and the yearning ofthem. 

Oh, Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that's going round? Theshamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground. 

She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen; They'rehanging men and women there for wearing of the green. 

Then the pipers played the "March of O'Neill, " a wild old air asshrill and fierce as the spirit of the men who came with their Irishbattle-cries against Elizabeth's pikemen and Cromwell's Ironsides. 

I thought then that the lads who still stayed back in Ireland, and theold people there, would have been glad to stand with me outside thatFlemish barn and to hear the old tunes of their race played by the boyswho were out there fighting. 

I think they would have wept a little, as I saw tears in the eyes of anIrish soldier by my side, for it was the spirit of Ireland herself, with all her poetry, and her valor, and her faith in liberty, which camecrying from those pipes, and I wished that the sound of them could carryacross the sea. 

That was a year before I saw the Irish battalions come out of Guichy, a poor remnant of the strength that had gone in, all tattered and torn, and caked with the filth of battle, and hardly able to stagger along. But they pulled themselves up a little, and turned eyes left when theypassed their brigadier, who called out words of praise to them. 

It was more than a year later than that when I saw the last of them, after a battle in Flanders, when they were massacred, and lay in heapsround German redoubts, up there in the swamps. 

X

Early in the morning of February 23d there was a clear sky with a glintof sun in it, and airplanes were aloft as though it would be a goodflying-day. But before midday the sky darkened and snow began tofall, and then it snowed steadily for hours, so that all the fields ofFlanders were white. 

There was a strange, new beauty in the war zone which had changed allthe pictures of war by a white enchantment. The villages where oursoldiers were billeted looked as though they were expecting a visit fromSanta Claus. The snow lay thick on the thatch and in soft, downy ridgeson the red-tiled roofs. It covered, with its purity, the rubbish heapsin Flemish farmyards and the old oak beams of barns and sheds whereBritish soldiers made their beds of straw. Away over the lonely countrywhich led to the trenches, every furrow in the fields was a thin whiteridge, and the trees, which were just showing a shimmer of green, stoodink-black against the drifting snow-clouds, with a long white streakdown each tall trunk on the side nearest to the wind. The old windmillsof Flanders which looked down upon the battlefields had been touched bythe softly falling flakes, so that each rib of their sails and each rungof their ladders and each plank of their ancient timbers was outlinedlike a frosty cobweb. 

Along the roads of war our soldiers tramped through the blizzard withermine mantles over their mackintosh capes, and mounted men with theirheads bent to the storm were like white knights riding through a whitewilderness. The long columns of motor-lorries, the gun--limbers drawn upby their batteries, the field ambulances by the clearing hospitals, wereall cloaked in snow, and the tramp and traffic of an army were hushed inthe great quietude. 

In the trenches the snow fell thickly and made white pillows of thepiled sand-bags and snow-men of sentries standing in the shelter of thetraverses. The tarpaulin roofs and timbered doorways of dugouts were sochanged by the snowflakes that they seemed the dwelling-places offairy folks or, at least, of Pierrot and Columbine in a Christmashiding-place, and not of soldiers stamping their feet and blowing ontheir fingers and keeping their rifles dry. 

In its first glamour of white the snow gave a beauty even to No Man'sLand, making a lace-work pattern of barbed wire, and lying very softlyover the tumbled ground of mine-fields, so that all the ugliness ofdestruction and death was hidden under this canopy. The snowflakesfluttered upon stark bodies there, and shrouded them tenderly. It was asthough all the doves of peace were flying down to fold their wings abovethe obscene things of war. 

For a little while the snow brought something like peace. The guns werequieter, for artillery observation was impossible. There could be nosniping, for the scurrying flakes put a veil between the trenches. Theairplanes which went up in the morning came down quickly to the powderedfields and took shelter in their sheds. A great hush was over the warzone, but there was something grim, suggestive of tragic drama, in thissilent countryside, so white even in the darkness, where millions of menwere waiting to kill one another. 

Behind the lines the joke of the snow was seen by soldiers, who werequick to see a chance of fun. Men who had been hurling bombs in theYpres salient bombarded one another with hand-grenades, which burstnoiselessly except for the shouts of laughter that signaled a good hit. 

French soldiers were at the same game in one village I passed, where thesnow-fight was fast and furious, and some of our officers led an attackupon old comrades with the craft of trappers and an expert knowledge ofenfilade fire. The white peace did not last long. The ermine mantle onthe battlefield was stained by scarlet patches as soon as men could seeto fight again. 

XI

For some days in that February of 1916 the war correspondents in theChateau of Tilques, from which they made their expeditions to the line, were snowed up like the army round them. Not even the motor-cars couldmove through that snow which drifted across the roads. We sat indoorstalking--high treason sometimes--pondering over the problem of awar from which there seemed no way out, becoming irritable with oneanother's company, becoming passionate in argument about the ethics ofwar, the purpose of man, the gospel of Christ, the guilt of Germany, andthe dishonesty of British politicians. Futile, foolish arguments, while men were being killed in great numbers, as daily routine, withoutresult!

Officers of a division billeted nearby came in to dine with us, some ofthem generals with elaborate theories on war and a passionate hatred ofGermany, seeing no other evil in the world; some of them brigadiers withtales of appalling brutality (which caused great laughter), some of thembattalion officers with the point of view of those who said, "Moriturite saluant!"

There was one whose conversation I remember (having taken notes ofit before I turned in that night). It was a remarkable conversation, summing up many things of the same kind which I had heard in straysentences by other officers, and month by month, years afterward, heardagain, spoken with passion. This officer who had come out to France in1914 and had been fighting ever since by a luck which had spared hislife when so many of his comrades had fallen round him, did not speakwith passion. He spoke with a bitter, mocking irony. He said that G. H. Q. Was a close corporation in the hands of the military clique who hadmuddled through the South African War, and were now going to muddlethrough a worse one. They were, he said, intrenched behind impregnablebarricades of old, moss-eaten traditions, red tape, and caste privilege. They were, of course, patriots who believed that the Empire dependedupon their system. They had no doubt of their inherent right to conductthe war, which was "their war, " without interference or criticism orpublicity. They spent many hours of the days and nights in writingletters to one another, and those who wrote most letters received mostdecorations, and felt, with a patriotic fire within their breasts, thatthey were getting on with the war. 

Within their close corporation there were rivalries, intrigues, perjuries, and treacheries like those of a medieval court. Each generaland staff-officer had his followers and his sycophants, who jostled forone another's jobs, fawned on the great man, flattered his vanity, andmade him believe in his omniscience. Among the General Staff there werevarious grades--G. S. O. I, G. S. O. II, G. S. O. III, and those in the lowergrades fought for a higher grade with every kind of artfulness, anddiplomacy and back-stair influence. They worked late into the night. That is to say, they went back to their offices after dining atmess--"so frightfully busy, you know, old man!"--and kept their lightsburning, and smoked more cigarettes, and rang one another up on thetelephone with futile questions, and invented new ways of preventingsomething from being down somewhere. The war to them was a far-offthing essential to their way of life, as miners in the coal-fields areessential to statesmen in Downing Street, especially in cold weather. But it did not touch their souls or their bodies. They did not see itsagony, or imagine it, or worry about it. They were always cheerful, breezy, bright with optimism. They made a little work go a long way. They were haughty and arrogant with subordinate officers, or at the bestaffable and condescending, and to superior officers they said, "Yes, sir, " "No, sir, " "Quite so, sir, " to any statement, however absurd inits ignorance and dogmatism. If a major-general said, "Wagner was amountebank in music, " G. S. O. III, who had once studied at Munich, said, "Yes, sir, " or, "You think so, sir? Of course you're right. "

If a lieutenant-colonel said, "Browning was not a poet, " a staffcaptain, who had read Browning at Cambridge with passionate admiration, said: "I quite agree with you, sir. And who do you think was a poet, sir?"

It was the army system. The opinion of a superior officer was correct, always. It did not admit of contradiction. It was not to be criticized. Its ignorance was wisdom. 

G. H. Q. Lived, said our guest, in a world of its own, rose-colored, remote from the ugly things of war. They had heard of the trenches, yes, but as the West End hears of the East End--a nasty place where commonpeople lived. Occasionally they visited the trenches as society folkgo slumming, and came back proud of having seen a shell burst, havingbraved the lice and the dirt. 

"The trenches are the slums, " said our guest. "We are the GreatUnwashed. We are the Mud-larks. "

There was a trench in the salient called J. 3. It was away out inadvance of our lines. It was not connected with our own trench system. It had been left derelict by both sides and was a ditch in No Man'sLand. But our men were ordered to hold it--"to save sniping. " Abattalion commander protested to the Headquarters Staff. There was noobject in holding J. 3. It was a target for German guns and a temptationto German miners. 

"J. 3, " came the staff command, "must be held until further orders. "

We lost five hundred men in holding it. The trench and all in it werethrown up by mines. Among those killed was the Hon. Lyndhurst Bruce, thehusband of Camille Clifford, with other husbands of women unknown. 

Our guest told the story of the massacre in Neuve Chapelle. "This is adeath sentence, " said the officers who were ordered to attack. But theyattacked, and died, with great gallantry, as usual. 

"In the slums, " said our guest, "we are expected to die if G. H. Q. Tells us so, or if the corps arranges our funeral. And generally we do. "

That night, when the snow lay on the ground, I listened to the rumblingof the gunning away in the salient, and seemed to hear the groans of menat Hooge, at St. -Eloi, in other awful places. The irony of that guest ofours was frightful. It was bitter beyond justice, though with truthin the mockery, the truth of a soul shocked by the waste of life andheroism;. .. When I met him later in the war he was on the staff. 

XII

The world--our side of it--held its breath and felt its own heart-beatwhen, in February of that year '15, the armies of the German CrownPrince launched their offensive against the French at Verdun. It was thebiggest offensive since their first drive down to the Marne; and as thedays passed and they hurled fresh masses of men against the French andbrought up new guns to replace their losses, there was no doubt that inthis battle the Germans were trying by all their weight to smash theirway to victory through the walls which the French had built against themby living flesh and spirit. 

"Will they hold?" was the question which every man among us asked of hisneighbor and of his soul. 

On our front there was nothing of war beyond the daily routine of thetrenches and the daily list of deaths and wounds. Winter had closed downupon us in Flanders, and through its fogs and snows came the news ofthat conflict round Verdun to the waiting army, which was ours. The newswas bad, yet not the worst. Poring over maps of the French front, we inour winter quarters saw with secret terror, some of us with a blusterof false optimism, some of us with unjustified despair, that the Frenchwere giving ground, giving ground slowly, after heroic resistance, afterdreadful massacre, and steadily. They were falling back to the innerline of forts, hard pressed. The Germans, in spite of monstrous lossesunder the flail of the soixante-quinzes, were forcing their way fromslope to slope, capturing positions which all but dominated the whole ofthe Verdun heights. 

"If the French break we shall lose the war, " said the pessimist. 

"The French will never lose Verdun, " said the optimist. 

"Why not? What are your reasons beyond that cursed optimism whichhas been our ruin? Why announce things like that as though divinelyinspired? For God's sake let us stare straight at the facts. "

"The Germans are losing the war by this attack on Verdun. They are justpouring their best soldiers into the furnace--burning the flower oftheir army. It is our gain. It will lead in the end to our victory. "

"But, my dear good fool, what about the French losses? Don't they getkilled, too? The German artillery is flogging them with shell-fire fromseventeen-inch guns, twelve-inch, nine-inch, every bloody and monstrousengine. The French are weak in heavy artillery. For that error, whichhas haunted them from the beginning, they are now paying with theirlife's blood--the life blood of France. "

"You are arguing on emotion and fear. Haven't you learned yet that theattacking side always loses more than the defense?"

"That is a sweeping statement. It depends on relative man-power andgun-power. Given a superiority of guns and men, and attack is cheap. Defense is blown off the earth. Otherwise how could we ever hope towin?"

"I agree. But the forces at Verdun are about equal, and the French havethe advantage of position. The Germans are committing suicide. "

"Humbug! They know what they are doing. They are the greatest soldiersin Europe. "

"Led by men with bone heads. "

"By great scientists. "

"By the traditional rules of medievalism. By bald--headed vultures inspectacles with brains like penny-in--the-slot machines. Put in a pennyand out comes a rule of war. Mad egoists! Colossal blunderers! Efficientin all things but knowledge of life. "

"Then God help our British G. H. Q. !"

A long silence. The silence of men who see monstrous forces at work, inwhich human lives are tossed like straws in flame. A silence reachingback to old ghosts of history, reaching out to supernatural aid. Thenfrom one speaker or another a kind of curse and a kind of prayer. 

"Hell!. .. God help us all!"

So it was in our mess where war correspondents and censors satdown together after futile journeys to dirty places to see a bit ofshell-fire, a few dead bodies, a line of German trenches through aperiscope, a queue of wounded men outside a dressing station, thesurvivors of a trench raid, a bombardment before a "minor operation, "a trench-mortar "stunt, " a new part of the line. .. Verdun was the onlything that mattered in March and April until France had saved herselfand all of us. 

XIII

The British army took no part in that battle of Verdun, but renderedgreat service to France at that time. By February of 1915 we had takenover a new line of front, extending from our positions round Loossouthward to the country round Lens and Arras. It was to this movementin February that Marshal Joffre made allusion when, in a message to ourCommander-in-Chief on March 2d, he said that "the French army rememberedthat its recent call on the comradeship of the British army met with animmediate and complete response. "

By liberating an immense number of French troops of the Tenth Army anda mass of artillery from this part of the front, we had the good fortuneto be of great service to France at a time when she needed many men andguns to repel the assault upon Verdun. 

Some of her finest troops--men who had fought in many battles and hadheld the trenches with most dogged courage--were here in this sector ofthe western front, and many batteries of heavy and light artilleryhad been in these positions since the early months of the war. It was, therefore, giving a new and formidable strength to the defense of Verdunwhen British troops replaced them at the time the enemy made his greatattack. 

The French went away from this part of their battlefront with regret andemotion. To them it was sacred ground, this line from the long ridgeof Notre Dame de Lorette, past Arras, the old capital of Artois, toHebuterne, where it linked up with the British army already on theSomme. Every field here was a graveyard of their heroic dead. 

I went over all the ground which we now held, and saw the visiblereminders of all that fighting which lay strewn there, and told thestory of all the struggle there by the upheaval of earth, the wreckageof old trenches, the mine--craters and shell-holes, and the litter ofbattle in every part of that countryside. 

I went there first--to the hill of Notre Dame de Lorette lookingnorthward to Lens, and facing the Vimy Ridge, which the enemy held asa strong barrier against us above the village of Souchez and AblainSt. -Nazaire and Neuville St. -Vaast, which the French had captured--whenthey were still there; and I am glad of that, for I saw in their placesthe men who had lived there and fought there as one may read in theterrible and tragic narrative of war by Henri Barbusse in Le Feu. 

I went on such a day as Barbusse describes. (Never once did he admitany fine weather to alleviate the suffering of his comrades, therebyexaggerating their misery somewhat. ) It was raining, and there was awhite, dank mist through the trees of the Bois de Bouvigny on the way tothe spur of Notre Dame. It clung to the undergrowth, which was torn byshell-fire, and to every blade of grass growing rankly round the lipsof shell-craters in which were bits of red rag or old bones, the redpantaloons of the first French armies who had fought through those woodsin the beginning of the war. 

I roamed about a graveyard there, where shells had smashed down some ofthe crosses, but had not damaged the memorial to the men who had stormedup the slope of Notre Dame de Lorette and had fallen when their comradeschased the Germans to the village below. 

A few shells came over the hill as I pushed through the undergrowth witha French captain, and they burst among the trees with shattering boughs. I remember that little officer in a steel helmet, and I could see aNorman knight as his ancestor with a falcon as his crest. He stood sooften on the sky-line, in full view of the enemy (I was thankful for themist), that I admired but deplored his audacity. Without any screen tohide us we walked down the hillside, gathering clots of greasy mud inour boots, stumbling, and once sprawling. Another French captain joinedus and became the guide. 

"This road is often 'Marmite, '" he said, "but I have escaped so often Ihave a kind of fatalism. "

I envied his faith, remembering two eight-inch shells which a fewminutes before had burst in our immediate neighborhood, cutting offtwigs of trees and one branch with a scatter of steel as sharp as knivesand as heavy as sledge-hammers. 

Then for the first time I went into Ablain St. -Nazaire, which afterwardI passed through scores of times on the way to Vimy when that ridge wasours. The ragged ruin of its church was white and ghostly in the mist. On the right of the winding road which led through it was Souchez Wood, all blasted and riven, and beyond a huddle of bricks which once wasSouchez village. 

"Our men have fallen on every yard of this ground, " said the Frenchofficer. "Their bodies lie thick below the soil. Poor France! PoorFrance!"

He spoke with tragedy in his eyes and voice, seeing the vision of allthat youth of France which even then, in March of '16, had been offeredup in vast sacrifice to the greedy devils of war. Rain was slashing downnow, beating a tattoo on the steel helmets of a body of French soldierswho stood shivering by the ruined walls while trench-mortars were makinga tumult in the neighborhood. They were the men of Henri Barbusse--hiscomrades. There were middle-aged men and boys mixed together in aconfraternity of misery. They were plastered with wet clay, and theirboots were enlarged grotesquely by the clots of mud on them. Their bluecoats were soddened, and the water dripped out of them and made poolsround their feet. They were unshaven, and their wet faces were smearedwith the soil of the trenches. 

"How goes it?" said the French captain with me. 

"It does not go, " said the French sergeant. "'Cre nom de Dieu!--my menare not gay to-day. They have been wet for three weeks and their bonesare aching. This place is not a Bal Tabourin. If we light even a littlefire we ask for trouble. At the sight of smoke the dirty Boche startsshelling again. So we do not get dry, and we have no warmth, and wecannot make even a cup of good hot coffee. That dirty Boche up thereon Vimy looks out of his deep tunnels and laughs up his sleeve and saysthose poor devils of Frenchmen are not gay to-day! That is true, monCapitaine. Mais, que voulez-vous? C'est pour la France. "

"Oui. C'est pour la France. "

The French captain turned away and I could see that he pitied thosecomrades of his as we went over cratered earth to the village ofNeuville St. -Vaast. 

"Poor fellows, " he said, presently. "Not even a cup of hot coffee!. .. That is war! Blood and misery. Glory, yes--afterward! But at what aprice!"

So we came to Neuville St. -Vaast, a large village once with a finechurch, old in history, a schoolhouse, a town hall, many little streetsof comfortable houses under the shelter of the friendly old hill ofVimy, and within easy walk of Arras; then a frightful rubbishheap mingled with unexploded shells, the twisted iron of babies'perambulators, bits of dead bodies, and shattered farm-carts. 

Two French soldiers carried a stretcher on which a heavy burden layunder a blood-soaked blanket. 

"It is a bad wound?" asked the captain. 

The men laid the stretcher down, breathing hard, and uncovered a face, waxen, the color of death. It was the face of a handsome man with apointed beard, breathing snuffily through his nose. 

"He may live as far as the dressing station, " said one of the Frenchmen. "It was a trench-mortar which blew a hole in his body just now, overthere. "

The man jerked his head toward a barricade of sand--bags at the end of astreet of ruin. 

Two other men walked slowly toward us with a queer, hobbling gait. Bothof them were wounded in the legs, and had tied rags round their woundstightly. They looked grave, almost sullen, staring at us as they passed, with brooding eyes. 

"The German trench-mortars are very evil, " said the captain. 

We poked about the ruins, raising our heads cautiously above sand-bagsto look at the German lines cut into the lower slopes of Vimy, andthrust out by communication trenches to the edge of the village in whichwe walked. A boy officer came up out of a hole and saluted the captain, who stepped back and said, in an emotional way:

"Tiens! C'est toi, Edouard?"

"Oui, mon Capitaine. "

The boy had a fine, delicate, Latin face, with dark eyes and long, blackeyelashes. 

"You are a lieutenant, then? How does it go, Edouard?"

"It does not go, " answered the boy like that French sergeant in AblainSt. -Nazaire. "This is a bad place. I lose my men every day. There werethree killed yesterday, and six wounded. To-day already there are twokilled and ten wounded. "

Something broke in his voice. 

"Ce n'est pas bon du tout, du tout!" ("It is not good at all, at all!")

The captain clapped him on the shoulders, tried to cheer him. 

"Courage, mon vieux!"

The rain shot down on us. Our feet slithered in deep, greasy mud. Sharpstabs of flame vomited out of the slopes of Vimy. There was thehigh, long-drawn scream of shells in flight to Notre Dame de Lorette. Batteries of soixante-quinzes were firing rapidly, and their shells cutthrough the air above us like scythes. The caldron in this pit of warwas being stirred up. Another wounded poilu was carried past us, coveredby a bloody blanket like the other one. From slimy sand-bags and wetruins came the sickening stench of human corruption. A boot with somepulp inside protruded from a mud--bank where I stood, and there was ahuman head, without eyes or nose, black, and rotting in the puddle ofa shell--hole. Those were relics of a battle on May 9th, a year before, when swarms of boys, of the '16 class, boys of eighteen, the flower ofFrench youth, rushed forward from the crossroads at La Targette, a fewhundred yards away, to capture these ruins of Neuville St. -Vaast. Theycaptured them, and it cost them seven thousand in killed and wounded--atleast three thousand dead. They fought like young demons through theflaming streets. They fell in heaps under the German barrage-fire. Machine--guns cut them down as though they were ripe corn under thesickle. But these French boys broke the Prussian Guard that day. 

Round about, over all this ground below Notre Dame de Lorette and thefields round Souchez, the French had fought ferociously, burrowing belowearth at the Labyrinth--sapping, mining, gaining a network of trenches, an isolated house, a huddle of ruins, a German sap-head, by frequentrushes and the frenzy of those who fight vith their teeth and hands, flinging themselves on the bodies of their enemy, below ground inthe darkness, or above ground between ditches and sand-bags. So forsomething like fifteen months they fought, by Souchez and the Labyrinth, until in February of '16 they went away after greeting our khaki men whocame into their old places and found the bones and bodies of Frenchmenthere, as I found, white, rat-gnawed bones, in disused trenches belowNotre Dame when the rain washed the earth down and uncovered them. 

XIV

It was then, in that February of '15, that the city of Arras passedfor defense into British hands and became from that time on one of ourstrongholds on the edge of the battlefields so that it will be hauntedforever by the ghosts of those men of ours whom I saw there on many daysof grim fighting, month after month, in snow and sun and rain, in steelhelmets and stink-coats, in muddy khaki and kilts, in queues of wounded(three thousand at a time outside the citadel), in billets where theirlaughter and music were scornful of high velocities, in the surging tideof traffic that poured through to victory that cost as much sometimes asdefeat. 

When I first went into Arras during its occupation by the French Iremembered a day, fifteen months before, near the town of St. -Pol inArtois, where I was caught up in one of those tides of fugitives whichin those early days of war used to roll back in a state of terror beforethe German invasion. "Where do they come from?" I asked, watchingthis long procession of gigs and farmers' carts and tramping women andchildren. The answer told me everything. "They are bombarding Arras, m'sieur. "

Since then "They" had never ceased to bombard Arras. From many pointsof view, as I had come through the countryside at night, I had seen theflashes of shells over that city and had thought of the agony inside. Four days before I went in first it was bombarded with one hundredand fifty seventeen-inch shells, each one of which would destroy acathedral. It was with a sense of being near to death--not a pleasantfeeling, you understand--that I went into Arras for the first time andsaw what had happened to it. 

I was very near to the Germans. No more than ten yards away, when Istood peering through a hole in the wall of the Maison Rouge in thesuburb of Blangy--it was a red-brick villa, torn by shells, with apiano in the parlor which no man dared to play, behind a shelter ofsand-bags--and no more than two hundred yards away from the enemy'slines when I paced up and down the great railway station of Arras, where no trains ever traveled. For more than a year the enemy had beenencamped outside the city, and for all that time had tried to battera way into and through it. An endless battle had surged up against itswalls, but in spite of all their desperate attacks no German soldier hadset foot inside the city except as a prisoner of war. Many thousands ofyoung Frenchmen had given their blood to save it. 

The enemy had not been able to prevail over flesh and blood and thespirit of heroic men, but he had destroyed the city bit by bit. It waspitiful beyond all expression. It was worse than looking upon a womanwhose beauty had been scarred by bloody usage. 

For Arras was a city of beauty--a living expression in stone of all theidealism in eight hundred years of history, a most sweet and graciousplace. Even then, after a year's bombardment, some spiritual exhalationof human love and art came to one out of all this ruin. When I enteredthe city and wandered a little in its public gardens before going intoits dead heart--the Grande Place--I felt the strange survival. The treeshere were slashed by shrapnel. Enormous shell-craters had plowed upthose pleasure-grounds. The shrubberies were beaten down. 

Almost every house had been hit, every building was scarred and slashed, but for the most part the city still stood, so that I went through manylong streets and passed long lines of houses, all deserted, all dreadfulin their silence and desolation and ruin. 

Then I came to the cathedral of St. -Vaast. It was an enormous buildingof the Renaissance, not beautiful, but impressive in its spaciousnessand dignity. Next to it was the bishop's palace, with long corridorsand halls, and a private chapel. Upon these walls and domes the fury ofgreat shells had spent itself. Pillars as wide in girth as giant treeshad been snapped off to the base. The dome of the cathedral opened witha yawning chasm. High explosives burst through the walls. The keystonesof arches were blown out, and masses of masonry were piled into the naveand aisles. 

As I stood there, rooks had perched in the broken vaulting and flew withnoisy wings above the ruined altars. Another sound came like a greatbeating of wings, with a swifter rush. It was a shell, and the vibrationof it stirred the crumbling masonry, and bits of it fell with a clatterto the littered floor. On the way to the ruin of the bishop's chapel Ipassed a group of stone figures. They were the famous "Angels of Arras"removed from some other part of the building to what might have been asafer place. 

Now they were fallen angels, mangled as they lay. But in thechapel beyond, where the light streamed through the broken panes ofstained-glass windows, one figure stood untouched in all this ruin. It was a tall statue of Christ standing in an attitude of meekness andsorrow, as though in the presence of those who crucified Him. 

Yet something more wonderful than this scene of tragedy lived in themidst of it. Yet there were still people living in Arras. 

They lived an underground life, for the most part, coming up from theunderworld to blink in the sunlight, to mutter a prayer or a curse ortwo, to gaze for a moment at any change made by a new day's bombardment, and then to burrow down again at the shock of a gun. 

Through low archways just above the pavement, I looked down into some ofthe deep-vaulted cellars where the merchants used to stock their wine, and saw old women, and sometimes young women there, cooking over littlestoves, pottering about iron bedsteads, busy with domestic work. Someof them looked up as I passed, and my eyes and theirs stared into eachother. The women's faces were lined and their eyes sunken. They hadthe look of people who have lived through many agonies and have more tosuffer. 

Not all these citizens of Arras were below ground. There was agreengrocer's shop still carrying on a little trade. I went into anothershop and bought some picture post-cards of the ruins within a few yardsof it. The woman behind the counter was a comely soul, and laughedbecause she had no change. Only two days before a seventeen-inch shellhad burst fifty yards or so away from her shop, which was close enoughfor death. I marveled at the risk she took with cheerful smiles. Was itcourage or stupidity?

One of the old women in the street grasped my arm in a friendly way andcalled me cher petit ami, and described how she had been nearly killeda hundred times. When I asked her why she stayed she gave an old woman'scackling laugh and said, "Que voulez-vous, jeune homme?" which did notseem a satisfactory answer. As dusk crept into the streets of Arras Isaw small groups of boys and girls. They seemed to come out of holes inthe ground to stare at this Englishman in khaki. "Are you afraid of theshells?" I asked. They grimaced up at the sky and giggled. They had gotused to the hell of it all, and dodged death as they would a man witha whip, shouting with laughter beyond the length of his lash. In one ofthe vaulted cellars underground, when English soldiers first went in, there lived a group of girls who gave them wine to drink, and kisses fora franc or two, and the Circe cup of pleasure, if they had time to stay. Overhead shells were howling. Their city was stricken with death. Thesewomen lived like witches in a cave--a strange and dreadful life. 

I walked to the suburb of Blangy by way of St. -Nicolas and came toa sinister place. Along the highroad from Arras to Douai was a greatfactory of some kind--probably for beet sugar--and then a street ofsmall houses with back yards and gardens much like those in our ownsuburbs. Holes had been knocked through the walls of the factory andhouses, the gardens had been barricaded with barbed wire and sand-bags, and the passage from house to house and between the overturned boilersof the factory formed a communication trench to the advanced outpostin the last house held by the French, on the other side of which is theenemy. As we made our way through these ruined houses we had to walkvery quietly and to speak in whispers. In the last house of all, whichwas a combination of fort and dugout, absolute silence was necessary, for there were German soldiers only ten yards away, with trench-mortarsand bombs and rifles always ready to snipe across the walls. Througha chink no wider than my finger I could see the red-brick ruins of thehouses inhabited by the enemy and the road to Douai. .. The road to Douaias seen through this chink was a tangle of broken bricks. 

The enemy was so close to Arras when the French held it that there weremany places where one had to step quietly and duck one's head, or getbehind the shelter of a broken wall, to avoid a sniper's bullet or therattle of bullets from a machine-gun. 

As I left Arras in that November evening, darkness closed in itsruined streets and shells were crashing over the city from Frenchguns, answered now and then by enemy batteries. But in a moment of raresilence I heard the chime of a church clock. It seemed like the sweetvoice of that old-time peace in Arras before the days of its agony, andI thought of that solitary bell sounding above the ruins in a ghostlyway. 

XV

While we hung on the news from Verdun--it seemed as though the fate ofthe world were in Fort Douaumont--our own lists of death grew longer. 

In the casualty clearing station by Poperinghe more mangled men lay ontheir stretchers, hobbled to the ambulance-trains, groped blindly withone hand clutching at a comrade's arm. More, and more, and more, withhead wounds, and body wounds, with trench-feet, and gas. 

"O Christ!" said one of them whom I knew. He had been laid on aswing-bed in the ambulance-train. 

"Now you will be comfortable and happy, " said the R. A. M. C. Orderly. 

The boy groaned again. He was suffering intolerable agony, and, graspinga strap, hauled himself up a little with a wet sweat breaking out on hisforehead. 

Another boy came along alone, with one hand in a big bandage. He told methat it was smashed to bits, and began to cry. Then he smudged the tearsaway and said:

"I'm lucky enough. I saw many fellows killed. "

So it happened, day by day, but the courage of our men endured. 

It seemed impossible to newcomers that life could exist at all under theshell-fire which the Germans flung over our trenches and which we flungover theirs. So it seemed to the Irish battalions when they held thelines round Loos, by that Hohenzollern redoubt which was one of ourlittle hells. 

"Things happened, " said one of them, "which in other times would havebeen called miracles. We all had hairbreadth escapes from death. " Fordays they were under heavy fire, with 9. 2's flinging up volumes ofsand and earth and stones about them. Then waves of poison-gas. Thentrench-mortars and bombs. 

"It seemed like years!" said one of the Irish crowd. "None of usexpected to come out alive. "

Yet most of them had the luck to come out alive that time, and over amidday mess in a Flemish farmhouse they had hearty appetites for bullybeef and fried potatoes, washed down by thin red wine and strong blackcoffee. 

Round Ypres, and up by Boesinghe and Hooge--you remember Hooge?--the14th, 20th, and 6th Divisions took turns in wet ditches and inshell-holes, with heavy crumps falling fast and roaring beforethey burst like devils of hell. On one day there were three hundredcasualties in one battalion The German gun-fire lengthened, and men werekilled on their way out to "rest"--camps to the left of the road betweenPoperinghe and Vlamertinghe. 

* * *

On March 28th the Royal Fusiliers and the Northumberland Fusiliers--theold Fighting Fifth--captured six hundred yards of German trenches nearSt. -Eloi and asked for trouble, which, sure enough, came to them whofollowed them. Their attack was against a German stronghold built ofearth and sand-bags nine feet high, above a nest of trenches in the forkof two roads from St. -Eloi to Messines. They mined beneath this placeand it blew up with a roaring blast which flung up tons of soil in ablack mass. Then the Fusiliers dashed forward, flinging bombs throughbarbed wire and over sand-bags which had escaped the radius of themine-burst--in one jumbled mass of human bodies in a hurry to get on, tokill, and to come back. One German machine-gun got to work on them. Itwas knocked out by a bomb flung by an officer who saved his company. Themachine--gunners were bayoneted. Elsewhere there was chaos out of whichliving men came, shaking and moaning. 

I saw the Royal Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers come back fromthis exploit, exhausted, caked from head to foot in wet clay. Theirsteel helmets were covered with sand-bagging, their trench-waders, theirrifles, and smoke helmets were all plastered by wet, white earth, andthey looked a ragged regiment of scarecrows gathered from the fields ofFrance. Some of them had shawls tied about their helmets, and some ofthem wore the shiny black helmets of the Jaeger Regiment and the graycoats of German soldiers. They had had luck. They had not left manycomrades behind, and they had come out with life to the good world. Tired as they were, they came along as though to carnival. They hadproved their courage through an ugly job. They had done "damn well, " asone of them remarked; and they were out of the shell-fire which ravagedthe ground they had taken, where other men lay. 

XVI

At the beginning of March there was a little affair--costing a lot oflives--in the neighborhood of St. -Eloi, up in the Ypres salient. It wasa struggle for a dirty hillock called the Bluff, which had been held fora long time by the 3d Division under General Haldane, whose men were atlast relieved, after weary months in the salient, by the 17th Divisioncommanded by General Pilcher. The Germans took advantage of the changein defense by a sudden attack after the explosion of a mine, and the menof the 17th Division, new to this ground, abandoned a position of somelocal importance. 

General Haldane was annoyed. It was ground of which he knew everyinch. It was ground which men of his had died to hold. It was veryannoying--using a feeble word--to battalion officers and men of the3d Division--Suffolks and King's Own Liverpools, Gordons and RoyalScots--who had first come out of the salient, out of its mud and snowand slush and shell-fire, to a pretty village far behind the lines, onthe road to Calais, where they were getting back to a sense of normallife again. Sleeping in snug billets, warming their feet at wood fires, listening with enchantment to the silence about them, free from thenoise of artillery. They were hugging themselves with the thought of amonth of this. .. Then because they had been in the salient so longand had held this line so stubbornly, they were ordered back again torecapture the position lost by new men. 

After a day of field sports they were having a boxing--match in an oldbarn, very merry and bright, before that news came to them. GeneralHaldane had given me a quiet word about it, and I watched the boxing, and the faces of all those men, crowded round the ring, with pity forthe frightful disappointment that was about to fall on them, like asledge-hammer. I knew some of their officers--Colonel Dyson of the RoyalScots, and Captain Heathcote, who hated the war and all its ways witha deadly hatred, having seen much slaughter of men and of their ownofficers. Colonel Dyson was the seventeenth commanding officer of hisbattalion, which had been commanded by every officer down to secondlieutenant, and had only thirty men left of the original crowd. Theyhad been slain in large numbers in that "holding attack" by Hooge onSeptember 25th, during the battle of Loos, as I have told. Now theywere "going in" again, and were very sorry for themselves, but hid theirfeelings from their men. The men were tough and stalwart lads, tanned bythe wind and rain of a foul winter, thinned down by the ordeal of thosemonths in the line under daily bouts of fire. In a wooden gallery ofthe barn a mass of them lay in deep straw, exchanging caps, whistling, shouting, in high spirits. Not yet did they know the call-back to thesalient. Then word was passed to them after the boxing finals. Thatnight they had to march seven miles to entrain for the railroad nearestto Ypres. I saw them march away, silently, grimly, bravely, without manycurses. 

They were to recapture the Bluff, and early on the morning of March2d, before dawn had risen, I went out to the salient and watched thebombardment which preceded the attack. There was an incessant tumultof guns, and the noise rolled in waves across the flat country of thesalient and echoed back from Kemmel Hill and the Wytschaete Ridge. Therewas a white frost over the fields, and all the battle-front was veiledby a mist which clung round the villages and farmsteads behind the linesand made a dense bank of gray fog below the rising ground. 

This curtain was rent with flashes of light and little glinting starsburst continually over one spot, where the Bluff was hidden beyondZillebeke Lake. When daybreak came, with the rim of a red sun over aclump of trees in the east, the noise of guns increased in spasms ofintensity like a rising storm. Many batteries of heavy artillery werefiring salvos. Field-guns, widely scattered, concentrated their fireupon one area, where their shells were bursting with a twinkle of light. Somewhere a machine-gun was at work with sharp, staccato strokes, like an urgent knocking at the door. High overhead was the song of anairplane coming nearer, with a high, vibrant humming. It was an enemysearching through the mist down below him for any movement of troops ortrains. 

It was the 76th Brigade of the 3d Division which attacked at fourthirty-two that morning, and they were the Suffolks, Gordons, and King'sOwn Liverpools who led the assault, commanded by General Pratt. Theyflung themselves into the German lines in the wake of a heavy barragefire, smashing through broken belts of wire and stumbling in and out ofshell-craters. The Germans, in their front-lines, had gone to cover indeep dugouts which they had built with feverish haste on the Bluff andits neighborhood during the previous ten days and nights. At first onlya few men, not more than a hundred or so, could be discovered alive. The dead were thick in the maze of trenches, and our men stumbled acrossthem. 

The living were in a worse state than the dead, dazed by the shell-fire, and cold with terror when our men sprang upon them in the darknessbefore dawn. Small parties were collected and passed back asprisoners--marvelously lucky men if they kept their sanity as wellas their lives after all that hell about them. Hours later, when ourbattalions had stormed their way up other trenches into a salientjutting out of the German line and beyond the boundary of the objectivethat had been given to them, other living men were found to be stillhiding in the depths of other dugouts and could not be induced to comeout. Terror kept them in those holes, and they were like wild beastsat bay, still dangerous because they had their bombs and rifles. Anultimatum was shouted down to them by men too busy for persuasive talk. "If you don't come out you'll be blown in. " Some of them came out andothers were blown to bits. After that the usual thing happened, thething that inevitably happened in all these little murderous attacks andcounter-attacks. The enemy concentrated all its power of artillery onthat position captured by our men, and day after day hurled over stormsof shrapnel and high explosives, under which our men cowered until manywere killed and more wounded. The first attack on the Bluff and itsrecapture cost us three thousand casualties, and that was only thebeginning of a daily toll of life and limbs in that neighborhoodof hell. Through driving snowstorms shells went rushing across thatbattleground, ceaselessly in those first weeks of March, but the 3dDivision repulsed the enemy's repeated attacks in bombing fights whichwere very fierce on both sides. 

I went to General Pilcher's headquarters at Reninghelst on March 4th, and found the staff of the 17th Division frosty in their greeting, whileGeneral Pratt, the brigadier of the 3d Division, was conducting theattack in their new territory. General Pilcher himself was much shaken. The old gentleman had been at St. -Eloi when the bombardment had begun onhis men. With Captain Rattnag his A. D. C. He lay for an hour in a ditchwith shells screaming overhead and bursting close. More than once when Italked with him he raised his head and listened nervously and said: "Doyou hear the guns?. .. They are terrible. "

I was sorry for him, this general who had many theories on war andexperimented in light-signals, as when one night I stood by his side ina dark field, and had a courteous old-fashioned dignity and gentlenessof manner. He was a fine old English gentleman and a gallant soldier, but modern warfare was too brutal for him. Too brutal for all those whohated its slaughter. 

Those men of the 3d Division--the "Iron Division, " as it was calledlater in the war--remained in a hideous turmoil of wet earth up by theBluff until other men came to relieve them and take over this corner ofhell. 

What remained of the trenches was deep in water and filthy mud, wherethe bodies of many dead Germans lay under a litter of broken sand-bagsand in the holes of half-destroyed dugouts. Nothing could be done tomake it less horrible. Then the weather changed and became icily cold, with snow and rain. 

One dugout which had been taken for battalion headquarters was sixfeet long by four wide, and here in this waterlogged hole lived threeofficers of the Royal Scots to whom a day or two before I had wished"good luck. "

The servants lived in the shaft alongside which was a place measuringfour feet by four feet. There were no other dugouts where men couldget any shelter from shells or storms, and the enemy's guns were neversilent. 

But the men held on, as most of our men held on, with a resignation tofate and a stoic endurance beyond that ordinary human courage which weseemed to know before the war. 

The chaplain of this battalion had spent all the long night behind thelines, stoking fires and going round the cook-houses and looking at hiswrist-watch to see how the minutes were crawling past. He had tea, rum, socks, oil, and food all ready for those who were coming back, and thelighted braziers were glowing red. 

At the appointed time the padre went out to meet his friends, pressingforward through the snow and listening for any sound of footstepsthrough the great hush. 

But there was no sound except the soft flutter of snowflakes. Hestrained his eyes for any moving shadows of men. But there was onlydarkness and the falling snow. 

Two hours passed, and they seemed endless to that young chaplain whosebrain was full of frightful apprehensions, so that they were hours ofanguish to him. 

Then at last the first men appeared. "I've never seen anything sosplendid and so pitiful, " said the man who had been waiting for them. 

They came along at about a mile an hour, sometimes in groups, sometimesby twos or threes, holding on to each other, often one by one. In thisorder they crept through the ruined villages in the falling snow, which lay thick upon the masses of fallen masonry. There was a profoundsilence about them, and these snow-covered men were like ghosts walkingthrough cities of death. 

No man spoke, for the sound of a human voice would have seemed adanger in this great white quietude. They were walking like old men, weak-kneed, and bent under the weight of their packs and rifles. 

Yet when the young padre greeted them with a cheery voice that hid thewater in his heart every one had a word and a smile in reply, and madelittle jests about their drunken footsteps, for they were like drunkenmen with utter weariness. 

"What price Charlie Chaplin now, sir?" was one man's joke. 

The last of those who came back--and there were many who never cameback--were some hours later than the first company, having found it hardto crawl along that Via Dolorosa which led to the good place where thebraziers were glowing. 

It was a heroic episode, for each one of these men was a hero, thoughhis name will never be known in the history of that silent and hiddenwar. And yet it was an ordinary episode, no degree worse in its hardshipthan what happened all along the line when there was an attack orcounter-attack in foul weather. 

The marvel of it was that our men, who were very simple men, should have"stuck it out" with that grandeur of courage which endured all thingswithout self-interest and without emotion. They were unconscious of thevirtue that was in them. 

XVII

Going up to the line by Ypres, or Armentieres, or Loos, I noticed inthose early months of 1916 an increasing power of artillery on our sideof the lines and a growing intensity of gun-fire on both sides. 

Time was, a year before, when our batteries were scattered thinly behindthe lines and when our gunners had to be thrifty of shells, saving themup anxiously for hours of great need, when the S O S rocket shot upa green light from some battered trench upon which the enemy wasconcentrating "hate. "

Those were ghastly days for gunner officers, who had to answer telephonemessages calling for help from battalions whose billets were beingshelled to pieces by long--range howitzers, or from engineers whoseworking-parties were being sniped to death by German field-guns, or froma brigadier who wanted to know, plaintively, whether the artillery couldnot deal with a certain gun which was enfilading a certain trench andpiling up the casualties. It was hard to say: "Sorry!. .. We've got to goslow with ammunition. "

That, now, was ancient history. For some time the fields had grown anew crop of British batteries. Month after month our weight of metalincreased, and while the field-guns had been multiplying at a great ratethe "heavies" had been coming out, too, and giving a deeper and moresonorous tone to that swelling chorus which rolled over the battlefieldsby day and night. 

There was a larger supply of shells for all those pieces, and no longerthe same need for thrift when there was urgent need for artillerysupport. Retaliation was the order of the day, and if the enemy askedfor trouble by any special show of "hate" he got it quickly and with adouble dose. 

Compared with the infantry, the gunners had a chance of life, exceptin places where, as in the salient, the German observers stared downat them from high ground and saw every gun flash and registered everybattery. Going round the salient one day with General Burstall--and avery good name, too!--who was then the Canadian gunner-general, I washorrified at the way in which the enemy had the accurate range of ourguns and gun-pits and knocked them out with deadly shooting. 

Here and there our amateur gunners--quick to learn their job--found agood place, and were able to camouflage their position for a time, andgive praise to the little god of Luck, until one day sooner or laterthey were discovered and a quick move was necessary if they were notcaught too soon. 

So it was with a battery in the open fields beyond Kemmel village, whereI went to see a boy who had once been a rising hope of Fleet Street. 

He was new to his work and liked the adventure of it--that was beforehis men were blown to bits around him and he was sent down as a tragiccase of shell-shock--and as we walked through the village of Kemmel hechatted cheerfully about his work and life and found it topping. Hisbright, luminous eyes were undimmed by the scene around him. He walkedin a jaunty, boyish way through that ruined place. It was not a pleasantplace. Kemmel village, even in those days, had been blown to bits, except where, on the outskirts, the chateau with its racing-stablesremained untouched--"German spies!" said the boy--and where a littlegrotto to Our Lady of Lourdes was also unscathed. The church wasbattered and broken, and there were enormous shell-pits in thechurchyard and open vaults where old dead had been tumbled out of theirtombs. We walked along a sunken road and then to a barn in open fields. The roof was pierced by shrapnel bullets, which let in the rain on wetdays and nights, but it was cozy otherwise in the room above the ladderwhere the officers had their mess. There were some home-made chairs upthere, and Kirchner prints of naked little ladies were tacked up to thebeams, among the trench maps, and round the fireplace where logs wereburning was a canvas screen to let down at night. A gramophone playedmerry music and gave a homelike touch to this parlor in war. 

"A good spot!" I said. "Is it well hidden?"

"As safe as houses, " said the captain of the battery. "Touching wood, Imean. "

There were six of us sitting at a wooden plank on trestles, and atthose words five young men rose with a look of fright on their faces andembraced the beam supporting the roof of the barn. 

"What's happened?" I asked, not having heard the howl of a shell. 

"Nothing, " said the boy, "except touching wood. The captain spoke tooloudly. "

We went out to the guns which were to do a little shooting, andfound them camouflaged from aerial eyes in the grim desolation of thebattlefield, all white after a morning's snowstorm, except where thebroken walls of distant farmhouses and the windmills on Kemmel Hillshowed black as ink. 

The gunners could not see their target, which had been given to themthrough the telephone, but they knew it by the figures giving the angleof fire. 

"It's a pumping-party in a waterlogged trench, " said a bright-eyed boyby my side (he was one of the rising hopes of Fleet Street before hebecame a gunner officer in Flanders). "With any luck we shall get 'emin the neck, and I like to hear the Germans squeal. .. And my gun's readyfirst, as usual. "

The officer commanding shouted through a tin megaphone, and the batteryfired, each gun following its brother at a second interval, with thestaccato shock of a field-piece, which is more painful than the dullroar of a "heavy. "

A word came along the wire from the officer in the observation post amile away. 

Another order was called through the tin mouthpiece. 

"Repeat!"

"We've got'em, " said the young gentleman by my side, in a cheerful way. 

The officer with the megaphone looked across and smiled. 

"We may as well give them a salvo. They won't like it a bit. "

A second or two later there was a tremendous crash as the four gunsfired together. "Repeat!" came the high voice through the megaphone. 

The still air was rent again. .. In a waterlogged trench, which we couldnot see, a German pumping-party had been blown to bits. 

The artillery officers took turns in the observation posts, sleeping forthe night in one of the dugouts behind the front trench instead of inthe billet below. 

The way to the observation post was sometimes a little vague, especiallyin frost-and-thaw weather, when parts of the communication trenchesslithered down under the weight of sand-bags. 

The young officer who walked with luminous eyes and eager step found itnecessary to crawl on his stomach before he reached his lookout stationfrom which he looked straight across the enemy's trenches. But, oncethere, it was pretty comfortable and safe, barring a direct hit fromabove or a little mining operation underneath. 

He made a seat of a well-filled sand-bag (it was rather a shock whenhe turned it over one day to get dry side up and found a dead Frenchmanthere), and smoked Belgian cigars for the sake of their aroma, and satthere very solitary and watchful. 

The rats worried him a little--they were bold enough to bare their teethwhen they met him down a trench, and there was one big fellow calledCuthbert, who romped round his dugout and actually bit his ear onenight. But these inconveniences did not seem to give any real distressto the soul of youth, out there alone and searching for human targets tokill. .. Until one day, as I have said, everything snapped in him and theboy was broken. 

It was on the way back from Kemmel village one day that I met a queerapparition through a heavy snowstorm. It was a French civilian inevening dress--boiled shirt, white tie, and all--with a bowler hat bentto the storm. 

Tomlinson, the great Tomlinson, was with me, and shook his head. 

"It isn't true, " he said. "I don't believe it. .. We're mad, that'sall!. .. The whole world is mad, so why should we be sane?"

We stared after the man who went into the ruin of Kemmel, to the noiseof gun-fire, in evening dress, without an overcoat, through a blizzardof snow. 

A little farther down the road we passed a signboard on the edge of acratered field. New words had been painted on it in good Roman letters. 

Cimetiere reserve

Tomlinson, the only Tomlinson, regarded it gravely and turned to me witha world of meaning in his eyes. Then he tapped his forehead and laughed. 

"Mad!" he said. "We're all mad!"

XVIII

In that winter of discontent there was one great body of splendid menwhose spirits had sunk to zero, seeing no hope ahead of them in thatwarfare of trenches and barbed wire. The cavalry believed they were"bunkered" forever, and that all their training and tradition were madefutile by the digging in of armies. Now and again, when the infantry washard pressed, as in the second battle of Ypres and the battle of Loos, they were called on to leave their horses behind and take a turn in thetrenches, and then they came back again, less some of their comrades, into dirty billets remote from the fighting-lines, to exercise theirhorses and curse the war. 

Before they went into the line in February of '16 I went to see someof those cavalry officers to wish them good luck, and saw them in thetrenches and afterward when they came out. In the headquarters ofa squadron of "Royals"--the way in was by a ladder through thewindow--billeted in a village, which on a day of frost looked as quaintand pretty as a Christmas card, was a party of officers typical of theBritish cavalry as a whole. 

A few pictures cut out of La Vie Parisienne were tacked on to the wallsto remind them of the arts and graces of an older mode of life, and tokeep them human by the sight of a pretty face (oh, to see a pretty girlagain!). 

Now they were going to change this cottage for the trenches, this quietvillage with a church-bell chiming every hour, for the tumult in thebattle-front--this absolute safety for the immediate menace of death. They knew already the beastliness of life in trenches. They had noillusions about "glory. " But they were glad to go, because activity wasbetter than inactivity, and because the risk would give them back theirpride, and because the cavalry should fight anyhow and somehow, even ifa charge or a pursuit were denied them. 

They had a hot time in the trenches. The enemy's artillery was active, and the list of casualties began to tot up. A good officer and a finefellow was killed almost at the outset, and men were horribly wounded. But all those troopers showed a cool courage. 

Things looked bad for a few minutes when a section of trenches was blownin, isolating one platoon from another. A sergeant-major made his wayback from the damaged section, and a young officer who was going forwardto find out the extent of damage met him on the way. 

"Can I get through?" asked the officer. 

"I've got through, " was the answer, "but it's chancing one's luck. "

The officer "chanced his luck, " but did not expect to come back alive. Afterward he tried to analyze his feelings for my benefit. 

"I had no sense of fear, " he said, "but a sort of subconscious knowledgethat the odds were against me if I went on, and yet a consciousdetermination to go on at all costs and find out what had happened. "

He came back, covered with blood, but unwounded. In spite of all theunpleasant sights in a crumpled trench, he had the heart to smile whenin the middle of the night one of the sergeants approached him with anamiable suggestion. 

"Don't you think it would be a good time, sir, to make a slight attackupon the enemy?"

There was something in those words, "a slight attack, " which isirresistibly comic to any of us who know the conditions of modern trenchwar. But they were not spoken in jest. 

So the cavalry did its "bit" again, though not as cavalry, and I sawsome of them when they came back, and they were glad to have gonethrough that bloody business so that no man might fling a scornful wordas they passed with their horses. 

"It is queer, " said my friend, "how we go from this place of peace tothe battlefield, and then come back for a spell before going up again. It is like passing from one life to another. "

In that cavalry mess I heard queer conversations. Those officersbelonged to the old families of England, the old caste of aristocracy, but the foul outrage of the war--the outrage against all ideals ofcivilization--had made them think, some of them for the first time, about the structure of social life and of the human family. 

They hated Germany as the direct cause of war, but they looked deeperthan that and saw how the leaders of all great nations in Europe hadmaintained the philosophy of forms and had built up hatreds and fearsand alliances over the heads of the peoples whom they inflamed withpassion or duped with lies. 

"The politicians are the guilty ones, " said one cavalry officer. "Iam all for revolution after this bloody massacre. I would hangall politicians, diplomats, and so-called statesmen with strictimpartiality. "

"I'm for the people, " said another. "The poor, bloody people, who arekept in ignorance and then driven into the shambles when their rulersdesire to grab some new part of the earth's surface or to get theirarmies going because they are bored with peace. "

"What price Christianity?" asked another, inevitably. "What have thechurches done to stop war or preach the gospel of Christ? The Bishop ofLondon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, all those conventional, patriotic, cannon--blessing, banner-baptizing humbugs. God! They make me tired!"

Strange words to hear in a cavalry mess! Strange turmoil in the soulsof men! They were the same words I had heard from London boys in Ypres, spoken just as crudely. But many young gentlemen who spoke those wordshave already forgotten them or would deny them. 

XIX

The winter of 1915-16 passed with its misery, and spring came again toFrance and Flanders with its promise of life, fulfilled in the beauty ofwild flowers and the green of leaves where the earth was not made barrenby the fire of war and all trees killed. 

For men there was no promise of life, but only new preparations fordeath, and continued killing. 

The battle of Verdun was still going on, and France had saved herselffrom a mortal blow at the heart by a desperate, heroic resistance whichcost her five hundred and fifty thousand in dead and wounded. On theBritish front there were still no great battles, but those trench raids, artillery duels, mine fighting, and small massacres which filled thecasualty clearing stations with the average amount of human wreckage. The British armies were being held in leash for a great offensive in thesummer. New divisions were learning the lessons of the old divisions, and here and there generals were doing a little fancy work to keepthings merry and bright. 

So it was when some mines were exploded under the German earthworks onthe lower slopes of the Vimy Ridge, where the enemy had already blownseveral mines and taken possession of their craters. It was to gainthose craters, and new ones to be made by our mine charges, that the74th Brigade of the 25th Division, a body of Lancashire men, the 9thLoyal North Lancashires and the 11th Royal Fusiliers, with a company ofRoyal Engineers and some Welsh pioneers, were detailed for the perilousadventure of driving in the mine shafts, putting tremendous charges ofhigh explosives in the sapheads, and rushing the German positions. 

It was on the evening of May 15th, after two days of wet and cloudyweather preventing the enemy's observation, that our heavy artilleryfired a short number of rounds to send the Germans into their dugouts. Afew minutes later the right group of mines exploded with a terrific roarand blew in two of the five old German craters. After the long rumbleof heaving earth had been stilled there was just time enough to hearthe staccato of a German machine-gun. Then there was a second roar and awild upheaval of soil when the left group of mines destroyed two more ofthe German craters and knocked out the machine-gun. 

The moment for the infantry attack had come, and the men were ready. The first to get away were two lieutenants of the 9th Loyal NorthLancashires, who rushed forward with their assaulting-parties to theremaining crater on the extreme left, which had not been blown up. 

With little opposition from dazed and terror-stricken Germans, bayonetedas they scrambled out of the chaotic earth, our men flungthemselves into those smoking pits and were followed immediately byworking-parties, who built up bombing posts with earth and sand-bags onthe crater lip and began to dig out communication trenches leading tothem. The assaulting-parties of the Lancashire Fusiliers were away atthe first signal, and were attacking the other groups of craters underheavy fire. 

The Germans were shaken with terror because the explosion of the mineshad killed and wounded a large number of them, and through the darknessthere rang out the cheers of masses of men who were out for blood. Through the darkness there now glowed a scarlet light, flooding all thatturmoil of earth and men with a vivid, red illumination, as flare afterflare rose high into the sky from several points of the German line. Later the red lights died down, and then other rockets were fired, giving a green light to this scene of war. 

The German gunners were now at work in answer to those beacons ofdistress, and with every caliber of gun from howitzers to minenwerfersthey shelled our front-lines for two hours and killed for vengeance. They were too late to stop the advance of the assaulting troops, whowere fighting in the craters against groups of German bombers who triedto force their way up to the rescue of a position already lost. One ofour officers leading the assault on one of the craters on the right waskilled very quickly, but his men were not checked, and with individualresolution and initiative, and the grit of the Lancashire man in a tightplace, fought on grimly, and won their purpose. 

A young lieutenant fell dead from a bullet wound after he had directedhis men to their posts from the lip of a new mine-crater, as coolly asthough he were a master of ceremonies in a Lancashire ballroom. Another, a champion bomb-thrower, with a range of forty yards, flunghis hand-grenades at the enemy with untiring skill and with a fiercecontempt of death, until he was killed by an answering shot. TheN. C. O. 's took up the command and the men "carried on" until they heldall the chain of craters, crouching and panting above mangled men. 

They were hours of anguish for many Germans, who lay wounded andhalf buried, or quite buried, in the chaos, of earth made by thosemine-craters now doubly upheaved. Their screams and moans sounding abovethe guns, the frantic cries of men maddened under tons of earth, whichkept them prisoners in deep pits below the crater lips, and awfulinarticulate noises of human pain coming out of that lower darknessbeyond the light of the rockets, made up a chorus of agony more than ourmen could endure, even in the heat of battle. They shouted across to theGerman grenadiers:

"We will cease fire if you will, and let you get in your wounded. .. Cease fire for the wounded!"

The shout was repeated, and our bombers held their hands, still waitingfor an answer. But the answer was a new storm of bombs, and the fightingwent on, and the moaning of the men who were helpless and unhelped. 

Working-parties followed up the assault to "consolidate" the position. They did amazing things, toiling in the darkness under abominableshell-fire, and by daylight had built communication trenches withhead-cover from the crater lips to our front-line trenches. 

But now it was the enemy's turn--the turn of his guns, which pouredexplosive fire into those pits, churning up the earth again, mixing itwith new flesh and blood, and carving up his own dead; and it was theturn of his bombers, who followed this fire in strong assaults upon theLancashire lads, who, lying among their killed and wounded, had to repelthose fierce attacks. 

On May 17th I went to see General Doran of the 25th Division, anoptimistic old gentleman who took a bright view of things, and ColonelCrosby, who was acting--brigadier of the 74th Brigade, which had madethe attack. He, too, was enthusiastic about the situation, though hisbrigade had suffered eight hundred casualties in a month of routinewarfare. 

In my simple way I asked him a direct question:

"Do you think your men can hold on to the craters, sir?"

Colonel Crosby stared at me sternly. 

"Certainly. The position cannot be retaken overground. We hold itstrongly. "

As he spoke an orderly came into his billet (a small farmhouse), saluted, and handed him a pink slip, which was a telephone message. Iwatched him read it, and saw the sudden pallor of his face, and noticedhow the room shook with the constant reverberation of distant gun-fire. A big bombardment was in progress over Vimy way. 

"Excuse me, " said the colonel; "things seem to be happening. I must goat once. "

He went through the window, leaping the sill, and a look of bad tidingswent with him. 

His men had been blown out of the craters. 

A staff officer sat in the brigade office, and when the acting-brigadierhad gone raised his head and looked across to me. 

"I am a critic of these affairs, " he said. "They seem to me tooexpensive. But I'm here to do what I am told. "

We did not regain the Vimy craters until a year afterward, when theCanadians and Scottish captured all the Vimy Ridge in a great assault. 

XX

The winter of discontent had passed. Summer had come with a wealth ofbeauty in the fields of France this side the belt of blasted earth. Thegrass was a tapestry of flowers, and tits and warblers and the goldenoriole were making music in the woods. At dusk the nightingale sang asthough no war were near its love, and at broad noonday a million larksrose above the tall wheat with a great high chorus of glad notes. 

Among the British armies there was hope again, immense faith thatbelieved once more in an ending to the war. Verdun had been saved. Theenemy had been slaughtered. His reserves were thin and hard to get (sosaid Intelligence) and the British, stronger than they had ever been, inmen, and guns, and shells, and aircraft, and all material of war, weregoing to be launched in a great offensive. No more trench warfare. No more dying in ditches. Out into the open, with an Army of Pursuit(Rawlinson's) and a quick break-through. It was to be "The Great Push. "The last battles were to be fought before the year died again, thoughmany men would die before that time. 

Up in the salient something happened to make men question the weaknessof the enemy, but the news did not spread very far and there was a lotto do elsewhere, on the Somme, where the salient seemed a long way off. It was the Canadians to whom it happened, and it was an ugly thing. 

On June 2d a flame of fire from many batteries opened upon their linesin Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse, beyond the lines of Ypres, andtragedy befell them. I went to see those who lived through it and stoodin the presence of men who had escaped from the very pits of that hellwhich had been invented by human beings out of the earth's chemistry, and yet had kept their reason. 

The enemy's bombardment began suddenly, with one great crash of guns, athalf past eight on Friday morning. Generals Mercer and Williams had goneup to inspect the trenches at six o'clock in the morning. 

It had been almost silent along the lines when the enemy's batteriesopened fire with one enormous thunderstroke, which was followed bycontinuous salvos. The shells came from nearly every point of thecompass--north, east, and south. The evil spell of the salient was overour men again. 

In the trenches just south of Hooge were the Princess Patricia's LightInfantry, with some battalions of the Royal Canadian Regiment southof them, and some of the Canadian Mounted Rifles (who had longbeen dismounted), and units from another Canadian division (at saidIntelligence) and the British, stronger than they had ever been, in men, and guns, and shells, and aircraft, and all material of war, were goingto be launched in a great offensive. No more trench warfare. Nomore dying in ditches. Out into the open, with an Army of Pursuit(Rawlinson's) and a quick break-through. It was to be "The Great Push. "The last battles were to be fought before the year died again, thoughmany men would die before that time. 

Up in the salient something happened to make men question the weaknessof the enemy, but the news did not spread very far and there was a lotto do elsewhere, on the Somme, where the salient seemed a long way off. It was the Canadians to whom it happened, and it was an ugly thing. 

On June 2nd a flame of fire from many batteries opened upon theirlines in Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse, beyond the lines of Ypres, andtragedy befell them. I went to see those who lived through it and stoodin the presence of men who had escaped from the very pits of that hellwhich had been invented by human beings out of the earth's chemistry, and yet had kept their reason. 

The enemy's bombardment began suddenly, with one great crash of guns, athalf past eight on Friday morning. Generals Mercer and Williams had goneup to inspect the trenches at six o'clock in the morning. 

It had been almost silent along the lines when the enemy's batteriesopened fire with one enormous thunderstroke, which was followed bycontinuous salvos. The shells came from nearly every point of thecompass--north, east, and south. The evil spell of the salient was overour men again. 

In the trenches just south of Hooge were the Princess Patricia's LightInfantry, with some battalions of the Royal Canadian Regiment southof them, and some of the Canadian Mounted Rifles (who had long beendismounted), and units from another Canadian division at says one ofhis comrades--as he fired his revolver and then flung it into a German'sface. 

Colonel Shaw of the 1st Battalion, C. M. R. , rallied eighty men out of theCumberland dugouts, and died fighting. The Germans were kept at bay forsome time, but they flung their bombs into the square of men, so thatvery few remained alive. When only eight were still fighting among thebodies of their comrades these tattered and blood-splashed men, standingthere fiercely contemptuous of the enemy and death, were ordered toretire by Major Palmer, the last officer among them. 

Meanwhile the battalions in support were holding firm in spite of theshell-fire, which raged above them also, and it was against this secondline of Canadians that the German infantry came up--and broke. 

In the center the German thrust was hard toward Zillebeke Lake. Heresome of the Canadian Rifles were in support, and as soon as the infantryattack began they were ordered forward to meet and check the enemy. Anofficer in command of one of their battalions afterward told me that heled his men across country to Maple Copse under such a fire as he hadnever seen. Because of the comrades in front, in dire need of help, nonotice was taken as the wounded fell, but the others pressed on as fastas they could go. 

Maple Copse was reached, and here the men halted and awaited the enemywith another battalion who were already holding this wood of six orseven acres. When the German troops arrived they may have expected tomeet no great resistance. They met a withering fire, which caused thembloody losses. The Canadians had assembled at various points, whichbecame strongholds of defense with machine-guns and bomb stores, and themen held their fire until the enemy was within close range, so thatthey worked havoc among them. But the German guns never ceased and manyCanadians fell. Col. E. H. Baker, a member of the Canadian Parliament, fell with a piece of shell in his lung. 

Hour after hour our gunners fed their breeches and poured out shells. The edge of the salient was swept with fire, and, though the Canadianlosses were frightful, the Germans suffered also, so that thebattlefield was one great shambles. Our own wounded, who were broughtback, owe their lives to the stretcher-bearers, who were supreme indevotion. They worked in and out across that shell-swept ground hourafter hour through the day and night, rescuing many stricken men at agreat cost in life to themselves. Out of one party of twenty only fiveremained alive. "No one can say, " said one of their officers, "that theCanadians do not know how to die. "

No one would deny that. 

Out of three thousand men in the Canadian 8th Brigade their casualtieswere twenty-two hundred. 

There were 151 survivors from the 1st Battalion Canadian Mounted Rifles, 130 from the 4th Battalion, 350 from the 5th, 520 from the 2nd. Thoseare the figures of massacre. 

Eleven days later the Canadians took their revenge. Their own guns werebut a small part of the huge orchestra of "heavies" and field batterieswhich played the devil's tattoo upon the German positions in our oldtrenches. It was annihilating, and the German soldiers had to endure thesame experience as their guns had given to Canadian troops on the sameground. Trenches already battered were smashed again. The earth, whichwas plowed with shells in their own attack, was flung up again by ourshells. It was hell again for poor human wretches. 

The Canadian troops charged at two o'clock in the morning. Their attackwas directed to the part of the line from the southern end of SanctuaryWood to Mount Gorst, about a mile, which included Armagh Wood, Observatory Hill, and Mount Gorst itself. 

The attack went quickly and the men expected greater trouble. Theenemy's shell-fire was heavy, but the Canadians got through undercover of their own guns, which had lengthened their fuses a little andcontinued an intense bombardment behind the enemy's first line. The menadvanced in open order and worked downward and southward into their oldpositions. 

In one place of attack about forty Germans, who fought desperately, werekilled almost to a man, just as Colonel Shaw had died on June 2d withhis party of eighty men who had rallied round him. It was one shamblesfor another, and the Germans were not less brave, it seems. 

One officer and one hundred and thirteen men surrendered. The officerwas glad to escape from the death to which he had resigned himself whenour bombardment began. 

"I knew how it would be, " he said. "We had orders to take this ground, and took it; but we knew you would come back again. You had to do so. Sohere I am. "

Parts of the line were deserted, except by the dead. In one place thestores which had been buried by the Canadians before they left werestill there, untouched by the enemy. Our bombardment had made itimpossible for his troops to consolidate their position and to hold theline steady. 

They had just taken cover in the old bits of trench, in shell-holes andcraters, and behind scattered sand-bags, and had been pounded there. TheCanadians were back again. 

PART FIVE. THE HEART OF A CITY

AMIENS IN TIME OF WAR

I

During the battles of the Somme in 1916, and afterward in periods ofprogress and retreat over the abominable fields, the city of Amiens wasthe capital of the British army. When the battles began in July of thatyear it was only a short distance away from the fighting-lines; nearenough to hear the incessant roar of gun-fire on the French front andours, and near enough to get, by motor-car or lorry, in less than thirtyminutes, to places where men were being killed or maimed or blindedin the routine of the day's work. One went out past Amiens station andacross a little stone bridge which afterward, in the enemy's advanceof 1918, became the mark for German high velocities along the road toQuerrieux, where Rawlinson had his headquarters of the Fourth Army inan old chateau with pleasant meadows round it and a stream meanderingthrough fields of buttercups in summer-time. Beyond the dusty villageof Querrieux with its white cottages, from which the plaster fell offin blotches as the war went on, we went along the straight highroad toAlbert, through the long and straggling village of Lahoussoye, whereScottish soldiers in reserve lounged about among frowsy peasant womenand played solemn games with "the bairns"; and so, past camps andhutments on each side of the road, to the ugly red-brick town where theGolden Virgin hung head downward from the broken tower of the churchwith her Babe outstretched above the fields of death as though as apeace-offering to this world at war. 

One could be killed any day in Albert. I saw men blown to bits therethe clay after the battles of the Somme began. It was in the roadthat turned to the right, past the square to go to Meaulte and on toFricourt. There was a tide of gun transport swirling down the road, bringing up new ammunition for the guns that were firing without a pauseover Fricourt and Mametz. The high scream of a shell came through a bluesky and ended on its downward note with a sharp crash. For a few minutesthe transport column was held up while a mass of raw flesh which asecond before had been two living men and their horses was cleared outof the way. Then the gun wagons went at a harder pace down the road, raising a cloud of white dust out of which I heard the curses of thedrivers, swearing in a foul way to disguise their fear. 

I went through Albert many scores of times to the battlefields beyond, and watched its process of disintegration through those years, until itwas nothing but a wild scrap heap of read brick and twisted iron, and, in the last phase, even the Golden Virgin and her Babe, which had seemedto escape all shell-fire by miraculous powers, lay buried beneath a massof masonry. Beyond were the battlefields of the Somme where every yardof ground is part of the great graveyard of our youth. 

So Amiens, as I have said, was not far away from the red heart of war, and was clear enough to the lines to be crowded always with officers andmen who came out between one battle and another, and by "lorry-jumping"could reach this city for a few hours of civilized life, according totheir views of civilization. To these men--boys, mostly--who had beenliving in lousy ditches under hell fire, Amiens was Paradise, withlittle hells for those who liked them. There were hotels in which theycould go get a bath, if they waited long enough or had the luck to beearly on the list. There were streets of shops with plate-glass windowsunbroken, shining, beautiful. There were well-dressed women walkingabout, with kind eyes, and children as dainty, some of them, as in HighStreet, Kensington, or Prince's Street, Edinburgh. Young officers, whohad plenty of money to spend--because there was no chance of spendingmoney between a row of blasted trees and a ditch in which bits of deadmen were plastered into the parapet--invaded the shops and bought fancysoaps, razors, hair-oil, stationery, pocketbooks, knives, flash-lamps, top-boots (at a fabulous price), khaki shirts and collars, gramophonerecords, and the latest set of Kirchner prints. It was the delight ofspending, rather than the joy of possessing, which made them go fromone shop to another in search of things they could carry hack tothe line--that and the lure of girls behind the counters, laughing, bright-eyed girls who understood their execrable French, even Englishspoken with a Glasgow accent, and were pleased to flirt for five minuteswith any group of young fighting-men--who broke into roars of laughterat the gallantry of some Don Juan among them with the gift of audacity, and paid outrageous prices for the privilege of stammering out somefoolish sentiment in broken French, blushing to the roots of their hair(though captains and heroes) at their own temerity with a girl who, inanother five minutes, would play the same part in the same scene with adifferent group of boys. 

I used to marvel at the patience of these girls. How bored they musthave been with all this flirtation, which led to nothing except, perhaps, the purchase of a bit of soap at twice its proper price! Theyknew that these boys would leave to go back to the trenches in a fewhours and that some of them would certainly be dead in a few days. Therecould be no romantic episode, save of a transient kind, between themand these good-looking lads in whose eyes there were desire and hunger, because to them the plainest girl was Womanhood, the sweet, gentle, and feminine side of life, as opposed to the cruelty, brutality, andugliness of war and death. The shopgirls of Amiens had no illusions. They had lived too long in war not to know the realities. They knew therisks of transient love and they were not taking them--unless conditionswere very favorable. They attended strictly to business and hopedto make a lot of money in the shop, and were, I think, mostly goodgirls--as virtuous as life in war-time may let girls be--wise beyondtheir years, and with pity behind their laughter for these soldiers whotried to touch their hands over the counters, knowing that many ofthem were doomed to die for France and England. They had theirown lovers--boys in blue somewhere between Vaux-sur-Somme andHartmanns--weilerkopf--and apart from occasional intimacies with Englishofficers quartered in Amiens for long spells, left the traffic ofpassion to other women who walked the streets. 

II

The Street of the Three Pebbles--la rue des Trois Cailloux--whichgoes up from the station through the heart of Amiens, was the crowdedhighway. Here were the best shops--the hairdresser, at the left-handside, where all day long officers down from the line came in to haveelaborate luxury in the way of close crops with friction d'eau dequinine, shampooing, singeing, oiling, not because of vanity, butbecause of the joyous sense of cleanliness and perfume after the filthand stench of life in the desolate fields; then the booksellers' (MadameCarpentier et fille) on the right-hand side, which was not only therendezvous of the miscellaneous crowd buying stationery and La VieParisienne, but of the intellectuals who spoke good French and boughtgood books and liked ten minutes' chat with the mother and daughter. (Madame was an Alsatian lady with vivid memories of 1870, when, as achild, she had first learned to hate Germans. ) She hated them now witha fresh, vital hatred, and would have seen her own son dead a hundredtimes--he was a soldier in Saloniki--rather than that France should makea compromise peace with the enemy. She had been in Amiens, as I was, ona dreadful night of August of 1914, when the French army passed throughin retreat from Bapaume, and she and the people of her city knew for thefirst time that the Germans were close upon them. She stood in the crowdas I did--in the darkness, watching that French column pass with theirtransport, and their wounded lying on the baggage wagons, men of manyregiments mixed up, the light of the street lamps shining on the casquesof cuirassiers with their long horsehair tails, leading their stumblinghorses, and foot soldiers, hunched under their packs, marching silentlywith dragging steps. Once in a while one of the soldiers left the ranksand came on to the sidewalk, whispering to a group of dark shadows. The crowds watched silently, in a curious, dreadful silence, as thoughstunned. A woman near me spoke in a low voice, and said, "Nous sommesperdus!" Those were the only words I heard or remembered. 

That night in the station of Amiens the boys of a new class were beinghurried away in truck trains, and while their army was in retreat sang"La Marseillaise, " as though victory were in their hearts. Next daythe German army under von Kluck entered Amiens, and ten days afterwardpassed through it on the way to Paris. Madame Carpentier told me of thefirst terror of the people when the field-gray men came down the Streetof the Three Pebbles and entered their shops. A boy selling orangesfainted when a German stretched out his hand to buy some. Women hidbehind their counters when German boots stamped into their shops. But Madame Carpentier was not afraid. She knew the Germans and theirlanguage. She spoke frank words to German officers, who saluted herrespectfully enough. "You will never get to Paris. .. France and Englandwill be too strong for you. .. Germany will be destroyed before this warends. " They laughed at her and said: "We shall be in Paris in a weekfrom now. Have you a little diary, Madame?" Madame Carpentier washaughty with them. Some women of Amiens--poor drabs--did not show anyhaughtiness, nor any pride, with the enemy who crowded into the city ontheir way toward Paris. A girl told me that she was looking through thewindow of a house that faced the Place de la Gare, and saw a number ofGerman soldiers dancing round a piano-organ which was playing tothem. They were dancing with women of the town, who were laughingand screeching in the embrace of big, blond Germans. The girl who waswatching was only a schoolgirl then. She knew very little of the evilof life, but enough to know that there was something in this scenedegrading to womanhood and to France. She turned from the window andflung herself on her bed and wept bitterly. .. 

I used to call in at the bookshop for a chat now and then with Madameand Mademoiselle Carpentier, while a crowd of officers came in and out. Madame was always merry and bright in spite of her denunciations ofthe "Sale Boches--les brigands, les bandits!" and Mademoiselle putmy knowledge of French to a severe but pleasant test. She spoke withalarming rapidity, her words tumbling over one another in a cascade ofvolubility delightful to hear but difficult to follow. She had a strongmind--masterly in her methods of business--so that she could servesix customers at once and make each one think that her attention wasentirely devoted to his needs--and a very shrewd and critical ideaof military strategy and organization. She had but a poor opinion ofBritish generals and generalship, although a wholehearted admirationfor the gallantry of British officers and men; and she had an intimateknowledge of our preparations, plans, failures, and losses. Frenchliaison-officers confided to her the secrets of the British army; andEnglish officers trusted her with many revelations of things "in thewind. " But Mademoiselle Carpentier had discretion and loyalty and didnot repeat these things to people who had no right to know. She wouldhave been far more efficient as a staff officer than many of the younggentlemen with red tabs on their tunics who came into the shop, flippingbeautiful top-boots with riding-crops, sitting on the counter, andturning over the pages of La Vie for the latest convention in ladies'legs. 

Mademoiselle was a serious musician, so her mother told me, but hermusical studies were seriously interrupted by business and air raids, which one day ceased in Amiens altogether after a night of horror, whenhundreds of houses were smashed to dust and many people killed, and theGermans brought their guns close to the city--close enough to scatterhigh velocities about its streets--and the population came up out oftheir cellars, shaken by the terror of the night, and fled. I passed thebookshop where Mademoiselle was locking up the door of this house whichhad escaped by greater luck than its neighbors. She turned as I passedand raised her hand with a grave gesture of resignation and courage. "Ils ne passeront pas!" she said. It was the spirit of the courage ofFrench womanhood which spoke in those words. 

III

That was in the last phase of the war, but the Street of the ThreePebbles had been tramped up and down for two years before then by theBritish armies on the Somme, with the French on their right. I was nevertired of watching those crowds and getting into the midst of them, andstudying their types. All the types of young English manhood came downthis street, and some of their faces showed the strain and agony of war, especially toward the end of the Somme battles, after four months ormore of slaughter. I saw boys with a kind of hunted look in their eyes;and Death was the hunter. They stared into the shop windows in a dazedway, or strode along with packs on their backs, looking neither to theright nor to the left, and white, haggard faces, as expressionless asmasks. Tomorrow or the next day, perhaps, the Hunter would track themdown. Other English officers showed no sign at all of apprehension orlack of nerve-control, although the psychologist would have detecteddisorder of soul in the rather deliberate note of hilarity with whichthey greeted their friends, in gusts of laughter, for no apparent cause, at "Charlie's bar, " where they would drink three cocktails apiece on anempty stomach, and in their tendency to tell tales of horror as thingsthat were very funny. They dined and wined in Amiens at the "Rhin, " the"Godebert, " or the "Cathedrale, " with a kind of spiritual exaltation ingood food and drink, as though subconsciously they believed that thismight be their last dinner in life, with good pals about them. Theywanted to make the best of it--and damn the price. In that spirit manyof them went after other pleasures--down the byways of the city, anddamned the price again, which was a hellish one. Who blames them? It waswar that was to blame, and those who made war possible. 

Down the rue des Trois Cailloux, up and down, up and down, went English, and Scottish, and Irish, and Welsh, and Canadian, and Australian, andNew Zealand fighting--men. In the winter they wore their trench-coatsall splashed and caked up to the shoulders with the white, chalky mud ofthe Somme battlefields, and their top--boots and puttees were plasteredwith this mud, and their faces were smeared with it after a lorry driveor a tramp down from the line. The rain beat with a metallic tattoo ontheir steel hats. Their packs were all sodden. 

French poilus, detrained at Amiens station for a night on their way tosome other part of the front, jostled among British soldiers, and theirpacks were a wonder to see. They were like traveling tinkers, with potsand pans and boots slung about their faded blue coats, and packs bulgingwith all the primitive needs of life in the desert of the battlefieldsbeyond civilization. They were unshaven, and wore their steel casqueslow over their foreheads, without gaiety, without the means of buyinga little false hilarity, but grim and sullen--looking and resentful ofEnglish soldiers walking or talking with French cocottes. 

IV

I saw a scene with a French poilu one day in the Street of the ThreePebbles, during those battles of the Somme, when the French troops werefighting on our right from Maricourt southward toward Roye. It was likea scene from "Gaspard. " The poilu was a middle-aged man, and very drunkon some foul spirit which he had bought in a low cafe down by the river. In the High Street he was noisy, and cursed God for having allowed thewar to happen, and the French government for having sentenced him andall poor sacre poilus to rot to death in the trenches, away fromtheir wives and children, without a thought for them; and nothing buttreachery in Paris:

"Nous sommes trahis!" said the man, raising his arms. "For the hundredthtime France is betrayed. "

A crowd gathered round him, listening to his drunken denunciations. Noone laughed. They stared at him with a kind of pitying wonderment. Anagent de police pushed his way between the people and caught hold of thesoldier by the wrist and tried to drag him away. The crowd murmured aprotest, and then suddenly the poilu, finding himself in the handsof the police, on this one day out of the trenches--after fivemonths--flung himself on the pavement in a passion of tears andsupplication. 

"Je suis pere de famille!. .. Je suis un soldat de France!. .. Dans lestranchees pour cinq mois!. .. Qu'est-ce que mes camarades vont dire, 'crenom de Dieu? et mon capitaine? C'est emmordant apres toute ma servicecomme brave soldat. Mais, quoi donc, mon vieux!"

"Viens donc, saligaud, " growled the agent de police. 

The crowd was against the policeman. Their murmurs rose to violentprotest on behalf of the poilu. 

"C'est un heros, tout de meme. Cinq mois dans les tranches! C'estaffreux! Mais oui, il est soul, mais pour--quoi pas! Apres cinq mois surle front qu'est-ce que cela signifie? Ca n'a aucune importance!"

A dandy French officer of Chasseurs Alpins stepped into the center ofthe scene and tapped the policeman on the shoulder. 

"Leave him alone. Don't you see he is a soldier? Sacred name of God, don't you know that a man like this has helped to save France, while youpigs stand at street corners watching petticoats?"

He stooped to the fallen man and helped him to stand straight. 

"Be off with you, mon brave, or there will be trouble for you. "

He beckoned to two of his own Chasseurs and said:

"Look after that poor comrade yonder. He is un peu etoile. "

The crowd applauded. Their sympathy was all for the drunken soldier ofFrance. 

V

Into a small estaminet at the end of the rue des Trois Cailloux, beyondthe Hotel de Ville, came one day during the battles of the Somme twopoilus, grizzled, heavy men, deeply bronzed, with white dust in theirwrinkles, and the earth of the battlefields ingrained in the skin oftheir big, coarse hands. They ordered two "little glasses" and drankthem at one gulp. Then two more. 

"See what I have got, my little cabbage, " said one of them, stooping tothe heavy pack which he had shifted from his shoulders to the other seatbeside him. "It is something to make you laugh. "

"And what is that, my old one?" said a woman sitting on the other sideof the marble-topped table, with another woman of her own class, fromthe market nearby. 

The man did not answer the question, but fumbled into his pack, laughinga little in a self-satisfied way. 

"I killed a German to get it, " he said. "He was a pig of an officer, adirty Boche. Very chic, too, and young like a schoolboy. "

One of the women patted him on the shoulder. Her eyes glistened. 

"Did you slit his throat, the dirty dog? Eh, I'd like to get my fingersround the neck of a dirty Boche!"

"I finished him with a grenade, " said the poilu. "It was good enough. Itknocked a hole in him as large as a cemetery. See then, my cabbage. Itwill make you smile. It is a funny kind of mascot, eh?"

He put on the table a small leather pouch stained with a blotch ofreddish brown. His big, clumsy fingers could hardly undo the littleclasp. 

"He wore this next his heart, " said the man. "Perhaps he thought itwould bring him luck. But I killed him all the same! 'Cre nom de Dieu!"

He undid the clasp, and his big fingers poked inside the flap of thepouch. 

"It was from his woman, his German grue. Perhaps even now she doesn'tknow he's dead. She thinks of him wearing this next to his heart. 'Crenom de Dieu! It was I that killed him a week ago!"

He held up something in his hand, and the light through the estaminetwindow gleamed on it. It was a woman's lock of hair, like fine-spungold. 

The two women gave a shrill cry of surprise, and then screamed withlaughter. One of them tried to grab the hair, but the poilu held ithigh, beyond her reach, with a gruff command of, "Hands off!" Othersoldiers and women in the estaminet gathered round staring at the yellowtress, laughing, making ribald conjectures as to the character of thewoman from whose head it had come. They agreed that she was fat andugly, like all German women, and a foul slut. 

"She'll never kiss that fellow again, " said one man. "Our old one hascut the throat of that pig of a Boche!"

"I'd like to cut off all her hair and tear the clothes off her back, "said one of the women. "The dirty drab with yellow hair! They ought tobe killed, every one of them, so that the human race should by rid ofthem!"

"Her lover is a bit of clay, anyhow, " said the other woman. "A bit ofdirt, as our poilus will do for all of them. "

The soldier with the woman's hair in his hand stroked it across hisforefinger. 

"All the same it is pretty. Like gold, eh? I think of the woman, sometimes. With blue eyes, like a German girl I kissed in Paris-adancing-girl!"

There was a howl of laughter from the two women. 

"The old one is drunk. He is amorous with the German cow!"

"I will keep it as a mascot, " said the poilu, scrunching it up andthrusting it into his pouch. "It'll keep me in mind of that saligaud ofa German officer I killed. He was a chic fellow, tout de meme. A boy. "

VI

Australians slouched up the Street of the Three Pebbles with a grim lookunder their wide-brimmed hats, having come down from Pozieres, where itwas always hell in the days of the Somme fighting. I liked the lookof them, dusty up to the eyes in summer, muddy up to their eyes inwinter--these gipsy fellows, scornful of discipline for discipline'ssake, but desperate fighters, as simple as children in their ways ofthought and speech (except for frightful oaths), and looking at life, this life of war and this life in Amiens, with frank, curious eyes, anda kind of humorous contempt for death, and disease, and English Tommies, and French girls, and "the whole damned show, " as they called it. Theywere lawless except for the laws to which their souls gave allegiance. They behaved as the equals of all men, giving no respect to generals orstaff-officers or the devils of hell. There was a primitive spirit ofmanhood in them, and they took what they wanted, and were ready topay for it in coin or in disease or in wounds. They had no conceit ofthemselves in a little, vain way, but they reckoned themselves the onlyfighting-men, simply, and without boasting. They were hard as steel, andfinely tempered. Some of them were ruffians, but most of them were, Iimagine, like those English yeomen who came into France with the BlackPrince, men who lived "rough, " close to nature, of sturdy independence, good-humored, though fierce in a fight, and ruthless. That is how theyseemed to me, in a general way, though among them were boys of a moredelicate fiber, and sensitive, if one might judge by their clear-cutfeatures and wistful eyes. They had money to spend beyond the dreams ofour poor Tommy. Six shillings and sixpence a day and remittances fromhome. So they pushed open the doors of any restaurant in Amiens andsat down to table next to English officers, not abashed, and orderedanything that pleased their taste, and wine in plenty. 

In that High Street of Amiens one day I saw a crowd gathered round anAustralian, so tall that he towered over all other heads. It was at thecorner of the rue de Corps Nu sans Teste, the Street of the Naked Bodywithout a Head, and I suspected trouble. As I pressed on the edge of thecrowd I heard the Australian ask, in a loud, slow drawl, whether therewas any officer about who could speak French. He asked the questiongravely, but without anxiety. I pushed through the crowd and said:

"I speak French. What's the trouble?"

I saw then that, like the French poilu I have described, this tallAustralian was in the grasp of a French agent de police, a small man ofwhom he took no more notice than if a fly had settled on his wrist. TheAustralian was not drunk. I could see that he had just drunk enoughto make his brain very clear and solemn. He explained the matterdeliberately, with a slow choice of words, as though giving evidenceof high matters before a court. It appeared that he had gone into theestaminet opposite with four friends. They had ordered five glasses ofporto, for which they had paid twenty centimes each, and drank them. They then ordered five more glasses of porto and paid the same price, and drank them. After this they took a stroll up and down the street, and were bored, and went into the estaminet again, and ordered fivemore glasses of porto. It was then the trouble began. But it was notthe Australian who began it. It was the woman behind the bar. She servedfive glasses more of porto and asked for thirty centimes each. 

"Twenty centimes, " said the Australian. "Vingt, Madame. "

"Mais non! Trente centimes, chaque verre! Thirty, my old one. Six sous, comprenez?"

"No comprennye, " said the Australian. "Vingt centimes, or go to hell. "

The woman demanded the thirty centimes; kept on demanding with a voicemore shrill. 

"It was her voice that vexed me, " said the Australian. "That and thebloody injustice. "

The five Australians drank the five glasses of porto, and the tallAustralian paid the thirty centimes each without further argument. Lifeis too short for argument. Then, without words, he took each of the fiveglasses, broke it at the stem, and dropped it over the counter. 

"You will see, sir, " he said, gravely, "the justice of the matter on myside. "

But when they left the estaminet the woman came shrieking into thestreet after them. Hence the agent de police and the grasp on theAustralian's wrist. 

"I should be glad if you would explain the case to this littleFrenchman, " said the soldier. "If he does not take his hand off my wristI shall have to kill him. "

"Perhaps a little explanation might serve, " I said. 

I spoke to the agent de police at some length, describing the incidentin the cafe. I took the view that the lady was wrong in increasing theprice so rapidly. The agent agreed gravely. I then pointed out that theAustralian was a very large-sized man, and that in spite of his quietudehe was a man in the habit of killing Germans. He also had a curiousdislike of policemen. 

"It appears to me, " I said, politely, "that for the sake of your healththe other end of the street is better than this. "

The agent de police released his grip from the Australian's wrist andsaluted me. 

"Vous avez raison, monsieur. Je vous remercie. Ces Australiens sontvraiment formidables, n'est-ce pas?"

He disappeared through the crowd, who were smiling with a keen sense ofunderstanding. Only the lady of the estaminet was unappeased. 

"They are bandits, these Australians!" she said to the world about her. 

The tall Australian shook hands with me in a comradely way. 

"Thanks for your trouble, " he said. "It was the injustice I couldn'tstick. I always pay the right price. I come from Australia. "

I watched him go slouching down the rue des Trois Cailloux, head aboveall the passers-by. He would be at Pozieres again next day. 

VII

I was billeted for a time with other war correspondents in an old housein the rue Amiral Courbet, on the way to the river Somme from the Streetof the Three Pebbles, and with a view of the spire of the cathedral, awonderful thing of delicate lines and tracery, graven with love in everyline, by Muirhead Bone, and from my dormer window. It was the house ofMme. De la Rochefoucauld, who lived farther out of the town, but drovein now and then to look at this little mansion of hers at the end of acourtyard behind wrought-iron gates. It was built in the days beforethe Revolution, when it was dangerous to be a fine lady with the nameof Rochefoucauld. The furniture was rather scanty, and was of the LouisQuinze and Empire periods. Some portraits of old gentlemen and ladies ofFrance, with one young fellow in a scarlet coat, who might have beenin the King's Company of the Guard about the time when Wolfe scaled theHeights of Abraham, summoned up the ghosts of the house, and I liked tothink of them in these rooms and going in their sedan-chairs across thelittle courtyard to high mass at the cathedral or to a game of beziquein some other mansion, still standing in the quiet streets of Amiens, unless in a day in March of 1918 they were destroyed with many hundredsof houses by bombs and gun-fire. My little room was on the floor belowthe garret, and here at night, after a long day in the fields up byPozieres or Martinpuich or beyond, by Ligny-Tilloy, on the way toBapaume, in the long struggle and slaughter over every inch of ground, Iused to write my day's despatch, to be taken next day (it was before wewere allowed to use the military wires) by King's Messenger to England. 

Those articles, written at high speed, with an impressionism born outof many new memories of tragic and heroic scenes, were interruptedsometimes by air-bombardments. Hostile airmen came often to Amiensduring the Somme fighting, to unload their bombs as near to the stationas they could guess, which was not often very near. Generally theykilled a few women and children and knocked a few poor houses and a shopor two into a wild rubbish heap of bricks and timber. While I wrote, listening to the crashing of glass and the anti-aircraft fire of Frenchguns from the citadel, I used to wonder subconsciously whether I shouldsuddenly be hurled into chaos at the end of an unfinished sentence, and now and again in spite of my desperate conflict with time to get mymessage done (the censors were waiting for it downstairs) I had to getup and walk into the passage to listen to the infernal noise in thedark city of Amiens. But I went back again and bent over my paper, concentrating on the picture of war which I was trying to set down sothat the world might see and understand, until once again, ten minuteslater or so, my will-power would weaken and the little devil of fearwould creep up to my heart and I would go uneasily to the door again tolisten. Then once more to my writing. .. Nothing touched the house in therue Amiral Courbet while we were there. But it was into my bedroom thata shell went crashing after that night in March when Amiens was badlywrecked, and we listened to the noise of destruction all around us froma room in the Hotel du Rhin on the other side of the way. I should havebeen sleeping still if I had slept that night in my little old bedroomwhen the shell paid a visit. 

There were no lights allowed at night in Amiens, and when I think ofdarkness I think of that city in time of war, when all the streetswere black tunnels and one fumbled one's way timidly, if one had noflash-lamp, between the old houses with their pointed gables, cominginto sharp collision sometimes with other wayfarers. But up to midnightthere were little lights flashing for a second and then going out, alongthe Street of the Three Pebbles and in the dark corners of side-streets. They were carried by girls seeking to entice English officers on theirway to their billets, and they clustered like glowworms about the sidedoor of the Hotel du Rhin after nine o'clock, and outside the railingsof the public gardens. As one passed, the bright bull's-eye from apocket torch flashed in one's eyes, and in the radiance of it one sawa girl's face, laughing, coming very close, while her fingers felt forone's badge. 

"How dark it is to-night, little captain! Are you not afraid ofdarkness? I am full of fear. It is so sad, this war, so dismal! It iscomradeship that helps one now!. .. A little love. .. A little laughter, and then--who knows?"

A little love. .. A little laughter--alluring words to boys out of onebattle, expecting another, hating it all, lonely in their souls becauseof the thought of death, in exile from their own folk, in exile fromall womanhood and tender, feminine things, up there in the ditchesand shellcraters of the desert fields, or in the huts of headquartersstaffs, or in reserve camps behind the fighting-line. A little love, alittle laughter, and then--who knows? The sirens had whispered their ownthoughts. They had translated into pretty French the temptation of allthe little devils in their souls. 

"Un peu d'amour-"

One flash-lamp was enough for two down a narrow street toward theriverside, and then up a little dark stairway to a lamp-lit room. .. Presently this poor boy would be stricken with disease and wish himselfdead. 

VIII

In the Street of the Three Pebbles there was a small estaminet intowhich I went one morning for a cup of coffee, while I read an Amiensnews-sheet made up mostly of extracts translated from the leadingarticles of English papers. (There was never any news of French fightingbeyond the official communique and imaginary articles of a romantic kindwritten by French journalists in Paris about episodes of war. ) In onecorner of the estaminet was a group of bourgeois gentlemen talkingbusiness for a time, and then listening to a monologue from the womanbehind the counter. I could not catch many words of the conversation, owing to the general chatter, but when the man went out the woman and Iwere left alone together, and she came over to me and put a photographdown on the table before me, and, as though carrying on her previoustrain of thought, said, in French, of course:

"Yes, that is what the war has done to me. "

I could not guess her meaning. Looking at the photograph, I saw it wasof a young girl in evening dress with her hair coiled in an artistic wayand a little curl on each cheek. Madame's daughter, I thought, lookingup at the woman standing in front of me in a grubby bodice and tousledhair. She looked a woman of about forty, with a wan face and beateneyes. 

"A charming young lady, " I said, glancing again at the portrait. 

The woman repeated her last sentence, word for word. 

"Yes. .. That is what the war has done to me. "

I looked up at her again and saw that she had the face of the young girlin the photograph, but coarsened, aged, raddled, by the passing yearsand perhaps by tragedy. 

"It is you?" I asked. 

"Yes, in 1913, before the war. I have changed since then--n'est-ce pas, Monsieur?"

"There is a change, " I said. I tried not to express my thought of howmuch change. 

"You have suffered in the war--more than most people?"

"Ah, I have suffered!"

She told me her story, and word for word, if I could have written itdown then, it would have read like a little novel by Guy de Maupassant. She was the daughter of people in Lille, well-to-do merchants, andbefore the war married a young man of the same town, the son of othermanufacturers. They had two children and were very happy. Then the warcame. The enemy drove down through Belgium, and one day drew near andthreatened Lille. The parents of the young couple said: "We will stay. We are too old to leave our home, and it is better to keep watch overthe factory. You must go, with the little ones, and there is no time tolose. "

There was no time to lose. The trains were crowded with fugitives andsoldiers--mostly soldiers. It was necessary to walk. Weeping, the younghusband and wife said farewell to their parents and set out on the longtrail, with the two babies in a perambulator, under a load of bread andwine, and a little maid carrying some clothes in a bundle. For days theytramped the roads until they were all dusty and bedraggled and footsore, but glad to be getting farther away from that tide of field-gray menwhich had now swamped over Lille. The young husband comforted his wife. "Courage!" he said. "I have money enough to carry us through the war. We will set up a little shop somewhere. " The maid wept bitterly now andthen, but the young husband said: "We will take care of you, Margot. There is nothing to fear. We are lucky in our escape. " He was a delicatefellow, rejected for military service, but brave. They came to Amiens, and hired the estaminet and set up business. There was a heavy debt towork off for capital and expenses before they would make money, but theywere doing well. The mother was happy with her children, and the littlemaid had dried her tears. Then one day the young husband went away withthe little maid and all the money, leaving his wife in the estaminetwith a big debt to pay and a broken heart. 

"That is what the war has done to me, " she said again, picking up thephotograph of the girl in the evening frock with a little curl on eachcheek. 

"C'est triste, Madame!"

"Oui, c'est triste, Monsieur!"

But it was not war that had caused her tragedy, except that it hadunloosened the roots of her family life. Guy de Maupassant would havegiven just such an ending to his story. 

IX

Some of our officers stationed in Amiens, and billeted in privatehouses, became very friendly with the families who received them. Young girls of good middle class, the daughters of shopkeepers andschoolmasters, and merchants in a good way of business, found itdelightful to wait on handsome young Englishmen, to teach them French, to take walks with them, and to arrange musical evenings with othergirl friends who brought their young officers and sang little old Frenchsongs with them or English songs in the prettiest French accent. Theseyoung officers of ours found the home life very charming. It broke themonotony of exile and made them forget the evil side of war. They paidlittle gallantries to the girls, bought them boxes of chocolate untilfancy chocolate was forbidden in France, and presented flowers todecorate the table, and wrote amusing verses in their autograph albumsor drew sketches for them. As this went on they gained to the privilegeof brotherhood, and there were kisses before saying "good night" outsidebedroom doors, while the parents downstairs were not too watchful, knowing the ways of young people, and lenient because of theirhappiness. Then a day came in each one of these households when theofficer billeted there was ordered away to some other place. What tears!What lamentations! And what promises never to forget little Jeanne withher dark tresses, or Suzanne with the merry eyes! Were they not engaged?Not formally, perhaps, but in honor and in love. For a time lettersarrived, eagerly waited for by girls with aching hearts. Then picturepost-cards with a line or two of affectionate greeting. Then nothing. Nothing at all, month after month, in spite of all the letters addressedwith all the queer initials for military units. So it happened againand again, until bitterness crept into girls' hearts, and hardness andcontempt. 

"In my own little circle of friends, " said a lady of Amiens, "I knoweighteen girls who were engaged to English officers and have beenforsaken. It is not fair. It is not good. Your English young men seemso serious, far more serious than our French boys. They have a look ofshyness which we find delightful. They are timid, at first, and blushwhen one pays a pretty compliment. They are a long time before theytake liberties. So we trust them, and take them seriously, and allowintimacies which we should refuse to French boys unless formallyengaged. But it is all camouflage. At heart your English young men arejust flirts. They play with us, make fools of us, steal our hearts, andthen go away, and often do not send so much as a post-card. Not even onelittle post-card to the girls who weep their hearts out for them! YouEnglish are all hypocrites. You boast that you 'play the game. ' I knowyour phrase. It is untrue. 

"You play with good girls as though they were grues, and that noFrenchman would dare to do. He knows the difference between good girlsand bad girls, and behaves, with reverence to those who are good. When the English army goes away from France it will leave many bittermemories because of that. "

X

It was my habit to go out at night for a walk through Amiens beforegoing to bed, and generally turned river-ward, for even on moonlessnights there was always a luminance over the water and one could see towalk along the quayside. Northward and eastward the sky was quiveringwith flashes of white light, like summer lightning, and now and thenthere was a long, vivid glare of red touching the high clouds with rosyfeathers; one of our dumps, or one of the enemy's, had been blown upby that gun-fire, sullen and menacing, which never ceased for years. Inthat quiet half-hour, alone, or with some comrade, like Frederic Palmeror Beach Thomas, as tired and as thoughtful as oneself after a longday's journeying in the swirl of war, one's brain roved over the scenesof battle, visualizing anew, and in imagination, the agony up there, thedeath which was being done by those guns, and the stupendous sum of allthis conflict. We saw, after all, only one patch of the battlefields ofthe world, and yet were staggered by the immensity of its massacre, by the endless streams of wounded, and by the growth of those littleforests of white crosses behind the fighting-lines. We knew, and couldsee at any moment in the mind's eye--even in the darkness of an Amiensnight--the vastness of the human energy which was in motion alongall the roads to Paris and from Boulogne and Dieppe and Havre to thefighting-lines, and in every village on the way the long columns ofmotor-lorries bringing up food and ammunition, the trains on theirway to the army rail-heads with material of war and more food and moreshells, the Red Cross trains crowded with maimed and injured boys, theambulances clearing the casualty stations, the troops marching forwardfrom back roads to the front, from which many would never come marchingback, the guns and limbers and military transports and spare horses, along hundreds of miles of roads--all the machinery of slaughter onthe move. It was staggering in its enormity, in its detail, and in itsactivity. Yet beyond our sphere in the British section of the westernfront there was the French front, larger than ours, stretching rightthrough France, and all their roads were crowded with the same traffic, and all their towns and villages were stirred by the same activity andfor the same purpose of death, and all their hospitals were crammed withthe wreckage of youth. On the other side of the lines the Germans werebusy in the same way, as busy as soldier ants, and the roads behindtheir front were cumbered by endless columns of transport and marchingmen, and guns and ambulances laden with bashed, blinded, and bleedingboys. So it was in Italy, in Austria, in Saloniki, and Bulgaria, Serbia, Mesopotamia, Egypt. .. In the silence of Amiens by night, under thestars, with a cool breath of the night air on our foreheads, with aglamour of light over the waters of the Somme, our spirit was strickenby the thought of this world-tragedy, and cried out in anguish againstthis bloody crime in which all humanity was involved. The senselessnessof it! The futility! The waste! The mockery of men's faith in God!. .. 

Often Palmer and I--dear, grave old Palmer, with sphinx-like face andhonest soul--used to trudge along silently, with just a sigh now andthen, or a groan, or a sudden cry of "O God!. .. O Christ!" It was I, generally, who spoke those words, and Palmer would say: "Yes. .. And it'sgoing to last a long time yet. A long time. .. It's a question who willhold out twenty-four hours longer than the other side. France is tired, more tired than any of us. Will she break first? Somehow I think not. They are wonderful! Their women have a gallant spirit. .. How good it is, the smell of the trees to-night!"

Sometimes we would cross the river and look back at the cathedral, highand beautiful above the huddle of old, old houses on the quayside, with a faint light on its pinnacle and buttresses and immense blacknessbeyond them. 

"Those builders of France loved their work, " said Palmer. "There wasalways war about the walls of this cathedral, but they went on with it, stone by stone, without hurry. "

We stood there in a long silence, not on one night only, but many times, and out of those little dark streets below the cathedral of Amienscame the spirit of history to teach our spirit with wonderment at thenobility and the brutality of men, and their incurable folly, and theirpatience with tyranny. 

"When is it all going to end, Palmer, old man?"

"The war, or the folly of men?"

"The war. This cursed war. This bloody war. "

"Something will break one day, on our side or the other. Those who holdout longest and have the best reserves of man-power. "

We were starting early next day--before dawn--to see the beginning ofanother battle. We walked slowly over the little iron bridge again, through the vegetable market, where old men and women were unloadingcabbages from a big wagon, then into the dark tunnel of the rue desAugustins, and so to the little old mansion of Mme. De la Rochefoucauldin the rue Amiral Courbet. There was a light burning in the window ofthe censor's room. In there the colonel was reading The Times in theLouis Quinze salon, with a grave pucker on his high, thin forehead. Hecould not get any grasp of the world's events. There was an attack onthe censor by Northcliffe. Now what did he mean by that? It was reallyvery unkind of him, after so much civility to him. Charteris would befurious. He would bang the telephone--but--dear, dear, why shouldpeople be so violent? War correspondents were violent on the slightestprovocation. The world itself was very violent. And it was all sodangerous. Don't you think so, Russell?

The cars were ordered for five o'clock. Time for bed. 

XI

The night in Amiens was dark and sinister when rain fell heavily out ofa moonless sky. Hardly a torch-lamp flashed out except where a solitarywoman scurried down the wet streets to lonely rooms. There were noBritish officers strolling about. They had turned in early, to hot bathsand unaccustomed beds, except for one or two, with their burberriesbuttoned tight at the throat, and sopping field-caps pulled down aboutthe ears, and top--boots which went splash, splash through deep puddlesas they staggered a little uncertainly and peered up at dark corners tofind their whereabouts, by a dim sense of locality and the shapes of thehouses. The rain pattered sharply on the pavements and beat a tattoo onleaden gutters and slate roofs. Every window was shuttered and no lightgleamed through. 

On such a night I went out with Beach Thomas, as often before, wet orfine, after hard writing. 

"A foul night, " said Thomas, setting off in his quick, jerky step. "Ilike to feel the rain on my face. "

We turned down as usual to the river. It was very dark--the rain washeavy on the quayside, where there was a group of people bareheaded inthe rain and chattering in French, with gusts of laughter. 

"Une bouteille de champagne!" The words were spoken in a clear boy'svoice, with an elaborate caricature of French accent, in musicalcadence, but unmistakably English. 

"A drunken officer, " said Thomas. 

"Poor devil!"

We drew near among the people and saw a young officer arm in arm witha French peasant--one of the market porters--telling a tale in brokenFrench to the audience about him, with comic gesticulations andextraordinary volubility. 

A woman put her hand on my shoulder and spoke in French. 

"He has drunk too much bad wine. His legs walk away from him. He willbe in trouble, Monsieur. And a child--no older than my own boy who isfighting in the Argonne. "

"Apportez-moi une bouteille de champagne, vite!. .. " said the youngofficer. Then he waved his arm and said: "J'ai perdu mon cheval" ("Akingdom for a bloody horse!"), "as Shakespeare said. Y a-t'il quelqu'unqui a vu mon sacre cheval? In other words, if I don't find thatfour-legged beast which led to my damnation I shall be shot at dawn. Fusille, comprenez? On va me fusiller par un mur blanc--or is it unemure blanche? quand l'aurore se leve avec les couleurs d'une rose etl'odeur d'une jeune fille lavee et parfumee. Pretty good that, eh, what? But the fact remains that unless I find my steed, my charger, my war-horse, which in reality does not belong to me at all, because Ipinched it from the colonel, I shall be shot as sure as fate, and, alas!I do not want to die. I am too young to die, and meanwhile I desireencore une bouteille de champagne!"

The little crowd of citizens found a grim humor in this speech, one-third of which they understood. They laughed coarsely, and a mansaid:

"Quel drole de type! Quel numero!"

But the woman who had touched me on the sleeve spoke to me again. 

"He says he has lost his horse and will be shot as a deserter. Thosethings happen. My boy in the Argonne tells me that a comrade of his wasshot for hiding five days with his young woman. It would be sad if thispoor child should be condemned to death. "

I pushed my way through the crowd and went up to the officer. 

"Can I help at all?"

He greeted me warmly, as though he had known me for years. 

"My dear old pal, you can indeed! First of all I want a bottle ofchampagne-une bouteille de champagne-" it was wonderful how much musiche put into those words--"and after that I want my runaway horse, as Ihave explained to these good people who do not understand a bloody word, in spite of my excellent French accent. I stole the colonel's horse tocome for a joy-ride to Amiens. The colonel is one of the best of men, but very touchy, very touchy indeed. You would be surprised. He also hasthe worst horse in the world, or did, until it ran away half an hourago into the blackness of this hell which men call Amiens. It is quitecertain that if I go back without that horse most unpleasant things willhappen to a gallant young British officer, meaning myself, who with mostinnocent intentions of cleansing his soul from the filth of battle, fromthe horror of battle, from the disgusting fear of battle--oh yes, I'vebeen afraid all right, and so have you unless you're a damned hero ora damned liar--desired to get as far as this beautiful city (so fairwithout, so foul within!) in order to drink a bottle, or even two orthree, of rich, sparkling wine, to see the loveliness of women as theytrip about these pestilential streets, to say a little prayer in lacathedrale, and then to ride back, refreshed, virtuous, knightly, allthrough the quiet night, to deliver up the horse whence I had pinchedit, and nobody any the wiser in the dewy morn. You see, it was a goodscheme. "

"What happened?" I asked. 

"It happened thuswise, " he answered, breaking out into fresh eloquence, with fantastic similes and expressions of which I can give only thespirit. "Leaving a Pozieres, which, as you doubtless know, unless youare a bloody staff-officer, is a place where the devil goes about likea roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, where he leaves his victims'entrails hanging on to barbed wire, and where the bodies of your friendsand mine lie decomposing in muddy holes--you know the place?--I put mylegs across the colonel's horse, which was in the wagonlines, and setforth for Amiens. That horse knew that I had pinched him--forgive myslang. I should have said it in the French language, vole--and resentedme. Thrice was I nearly thrown from his back. Twice did he entanglehimself in barbed wire deliberately. Once did I have to coerce him withmany stripes to pass a tank. Then the heavens opened upon us and itrained. It rained until I was wet to the skin, in spite of shelteringbeneath a tree, one branch of which, owing to the stubborn temper of mysteed, struck me a stinging blow across the face. So in no joyful spiritI came at last to Amiens, this whited sepulcher, this Circe's capital, this den of thieves, this home of vampires. There I dined, notwisely, but too well. I drank of the flowing cup--une bouteille dechampagne--and I met a maiden as ugly as sin, but beautiful in myeyes after Pozieres--you understand--and accompanied her to her poorlodging--in a most verminous place, sir--where we discoursed upon theproblems of life and love. O youth! O war! O hell!. .. My horse, thatbrute who resented me, was in charge of an 'ostler, whom I believeverily is a limb of Satan, in the yard without. It was late when I leftthat lair of Circe, where young British officers, even as myself, areturned into swine. It was late and dark, and I was drunk. Even now I amvery drunk. I may say that I am becoming drunker and drunker. "

It was true. The fumes of bad champagne were working in the boy's brain, and he leaned heavily against me. 

"It was then that that happened which will undoubtedly lead to myundoing, and blast my career as I have blasted my soul. The horse wasthere in the yard, but without saddle or bridle. 

"'Where is my saddle and where is my bridle, oh, naughty 'ostler?' Ishouted, in dismay. 

"The 'ostler, who, as I informed you, is one of Satan's imps, answeredin incomprehensible French, led the horse forth from the yard, and, giving it a mighty blow on the rump, sent it clattering forth into theouter darkness. In my fear of losing it--for I must be at Pozieres atdawn--I ran after it, but it ran too fast in the darkness, and I stoppedand tried to grope my way back to the stableyard to kill that 'ostler, thereby serving God, and other British officers, for he was the devil'sagent. But I could not find the yard again. It had disappeared! It wasswallowed up in Cimmerian gloom. So I was without revenge and withouthorse, and, as you will perceive, sir--unless you are a bloodystaff-officer who doesn't perceive anything--I am utterly undone. I amalso horribly drunk, and I must apologize for leaning so heavily on yourarm. It's awfully good of you, anyway, old man. "

The crowd was mostly moving, driven indoors by the rain. The womanwho had spoken to me said, "I heard a horse's hoofs upon the bridge, la-bas. "

Then she went away with her apron over her head. 

Thomas and I walked each side of the officer, giving him an arm. Hecould not walk straight, and his legs played freakish tricks with him. All the while he talked in a strain of high comedy interlarded with grimlittle phrases, revealing an underlying sense of tragedy and despair, until his speech thickened and he became less fluent. We spent afantastic hour searching for his horse. It was like a nightmare inthe darkness and rain. Every now and then we heard, distinctly, theklip-klop of a horse's hoofs, and went off in that direction, only to bebaffled by dead silence, with no sign of the animal. Then again, as westood listening, we heard the beat of hoofs on hard pavements, in theopposite direction, and walked that way, dragging the boy, who wasgetting more and more incapable of walking upright. At last we gave uphope of finding the horse, though the young officer kept assuring usthat he must find it at all costs. "It's a point of honor, " hesaid, thickly. "Not my horse, you know Doctor's horse. Devil to payto-morrow. "

He laughed foolishly and said:

"Always devil to pay in morning. "

We were soaked to the skin. 

"Come home with me, " I said. "We can give you a shake-down. "

"Frightfully good, old man. Awfully sorry, you know, and all that. Areyou a blooming general, or something? But I must find horse. "

By some means we succeeded in persuading him that the chase was uselessand that it would be better for him to get into our billet and start outnext morning, early. We dragged him up the rue des Augustins, to the rueAmiral Courbet. Outside the iron gates I spoke to him warningly:

"You've got to be quiet. There are staff-officers inside. .. "

"What?. .. Staff officers?. .. Oh, my God!"

The boy was dismayed. The thought of facing staff-officers almostsobered him; did, indeed, sober his brain for a moment, though not hislegs. 

"It's all right, " I said. "Go quietly, and I will get you upstairssafely. "

It was astonishing how quietly he went, hanging on to me. The littlecolonel was reading The Times in the salon. We passed the open door, andsaw over the paper his high forehead puckered with perplexity as to theways of the world. But he did not raise his head or drop The Times atthe sound of our entry. I took the boy upstairs to my room and guidedhim inside. He said, "Thanks awfully, " and then lay down on the floorand fell into so deep a sleep that I was scared and thought for a momenthe might be dead. I went downstairs to chat with the little colonel andform an alibi in case of trouble. An hour later, when I went into myroom, I found the boy still lying as I had left him, without havingstirred a limb. He was a handsome fellow, with his head hanginglimply across his right arm and a lock of damp hair falling across hisforehead. I thought of a son of mine, who in a few years would be asold as he, and I prayed God mine might be spared this boy's tragedy. .. Through the night he slept in a drugged way, but just at dawn he wokeup and stretched himself, with a queer little moan. Then he sat up andsaid:

"Where am I?"

"In a billet at Amiens. You lost your horse last night and I brought youhere. "

Remembrance came into his eyes and his face was swept with a suddenflush of shame and agony. 

"Yes. .. I made a fool of myself. The worst possible. How can I get backto Pozieres?"

"You could jump a lorry with luck. "

"I must. It's serious if I don't get back in time. In any case, the lossof that horse--"

He thought deeply for a moment, and I could see that his head was achingto the beat of sledge-hammers. 

"Can I wash anywhere?"

I pointed to a jug and basin, and he said, "Thanks, enormously. "

He washed hurriedly, and then stared down with a shamed look at hismuddy uniform, all creased and bedraggled. After that he asked if hecould get out downstairs, and I told him the door was unlocked. 

He hesitated for a moment before leaving my room. 

"I am sorry to have given you all this trouble. It was very decent ofyou. Many thanks. "

The boy was a gentleman when sober. I wonder if he died at Pozieres, or farther on by the Butte de Warlencourt. .. A week later I saw anadvertisement in an Amiens paper: "Horse found. Brown, with white sockon right foreleg. Apply--"

I have a fancy it was the horse for which we had searched in the rain. 

XII

The quickest way to the cathedral is down a turning on the right-handside of the Street of the Three Pebbles. Charlie's bar was on theleft-hand side of the street, always crowded after six o'clock byofficers of every regiment, drinking egg-nogs, Martinis, Bronxes, sherrycobblers, and other liquids, which helped men marvelously to forget thebeastliness of war, and gave them the gift of laughter, and madethem careless of the battles which would have to be fought. Youngstaff-officers were there, explaining carefully how hard worked theywere and how often they went under shell-fire. The fighting officers, English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, jeered at them, laughed hugely at thelatest story of mirthful horror, arranged rendezvous at the Godebertrestaurant, where they would see the beautiful Marguerite (until shetransferred to la cathedrale in the same street) and our checks whichCharlie cashed at a discount, with a noble faith in British honesty, not often, as he told me, being hurt by a "stumor. " Charlie's bar waswrecked by shell-fire afterward, and he went to Abbeville and set up amore important establishment, which was wrecked, too, in a fierce airraid, before the paint was dry on the walls. 

The cathedral was a shrine to which many men and women went all throughthe war, called into its white halls by the spirit of beauty which dweltthere, and by its silence and peace. The great west door was screenedfrom bomb-splinters by sand-bags piled high, and inside there were otherwalls of sand-bags closing in the sanctuary and some of the windows. But these signs of war did not spoil the majesty of the tall columnsand high roof, nor the loveliness of the sculptured flowers below theclerestory arches, nor the spiritual mystery of those great, dim aisles, where light flickered and shadows lurked, and the ghosts of history cameout of their tombs to pace these stones again where five, six, sevencenturies before they had walked to worship God, in joy or in despair, or to show their beauty of young womanhood--peasant girl or princess--tolovers gazing by the pillars, or to plight their troth as royal brides, or get a crown for their heads, or mercy for their dead bodies invelvet-draped coffins. 

Our soldiers went in there, as many centuries before other Englishsoldiers, who came out with Edward the Black Prince, by way of Crecy, or with Harry the King, through Agincourt. Five hundred years hence, if Amiens cathedral still stands, undamaged by some new and monstrousconflict in a world of incurable folly, the generation of that time willthink now and then, perhaps, of the English lads in khaki who trampedup the highway of this nave with their field-caps under their arms, eachfootstep leaving the imprint of a wet boot on the old flagstones, awedby the silence and the spaciousness, with a sudden heartache for acloser knowledge, or some knowledge, of the God worshiped there--theGod of Love--while, not far away, men were killing one another byhigh explosives, shells, hand-grenades, mines, machine-guns, bayonets, poison-gas, trench-mortars, tanks, and, in close fighting, with shortdaggers like butchers' knives, or clubs with steel knobs. I watched thefaces of the men who entered here. Some of them, like the Australiansand New-Zealanders, unfamiliar with cathedrals, and not religious byinstinct or training, wandered round in a wondering way, with a touchof scorn, even of hostility, now and then, for these mysteries--thechanting of the Office, the tinkling of the bells at the highmass--which were beyond their understanding, and which they could notlink up with any logic of life, as they knew it now, away up by Bapaumeor Bullecourt, where God had nothing to do, seemingly, with a night raidinto Boche lines, when they blew a party of Germans to bits by droppingStoke bombs down their dugout, or with the shrieks of German boys, madwith fear, when the Australians jumped on them in the darkness and madehaste with their killing. All the same, this great church was wonderful, and the Australians, scrunching their slouch-hats, stared up at the tallcolumns to the clerestory arches, and peered through the screen to thegolden sun upon the high-altar, and touched old tombs with their muddyhands, reading the dates on them--1250, 1155, 1415--with astonishmentat their antiquity. Their clean-cut hatchet faces, sun--baked, tannedby rain and wind, their simple blue-gray eyes, the fine, strong grace oftheir bodies, as they stood at ease in this place of history, struck meas being wonderfully like all that one imagines of those English knightsand squires--Norman-English--who rode through France with the BlackPrince. It is as though Australia had bred back to the old strain. Ourown English soldiers were less arresting to the eye, more dapper andneat, not such evident children of nature. Gravely they walked up theaisles, standing in groups where a service was in progress, watchingthe movements of the priests, listening to the choir and organ withreverent, dreamy eyes. Some of them--country lads--thought back, Ifancy, to some village church in England where they had sung hymns withmother and sisters in the days before the war. England and that littlechurch were a long way off now, perhaps all eternity away. I saw one boystanding quite motionless, with wet eyes, without self-consciousness. This music, this place of thoughtfulness, had made something break inhis heart. .. Some of our young officers, but not many, knelt on the canechairs and prayed, face in hands. French officers crossed themselvesand their medals tinkled as they walked up the aisles. Always there werewomen in black weeds kneeling before the side--altars, praying to theVirgin for husbands and sons, dead or alive, lighting candles below holypictures and statues. Our men tiptoed past them, holding steel hats orfield--caps, and putting their packs against the pillars. On the stepsof the cathedral I heard two officers talking one day. 

"How can one reconcile all this with the war?"

"Why not?. .. I suppose we're fighting for justice and all that. That'swhat The Daily Mail tells us. "

"Seriously, old man. Where does Christ come in?"

"He wasn't against righteous force. He chased the money-changers out ofthe Temple. "

"Yes, but His whole teaching was love and forgiveness. 'Thou shalt notkill. ' 'Little children, love one another!' 'Turn the other cheek. '. . . Is it all sheer tosh? If so, why go on pretending?. .. Take chaplains inkhaki--these lieutenant-colonels with black crosses. They make me sick. It's either one thing or the other. Brute force or Christianity. I amharking back to the brute--force theory. But I'm not going to say 'Godis love' one day and then prod a man in the stomach the next. Let's beconsistent. "

"The other fellows asked for it. They attacked first. "

"Yes, but we are all involved. Our diplomacy, our secret treaties, ourphilosophical dope over the masses, our imperial egotism, our traderivalries--all that was a direct challenge of Might against Right. TheGermans are more efficient and more logical--that's all. They preparedfor the inevitable and struck first. We knew the inevitable was coming, but didn't prepare, being too damned inefficient. .. I have a leaningtoward religion. Instinctively I'm for Christ. But it doesn't work inwith efficiency and machine-guns. "

"It belongs to another department, that's all. We're spiritual andanimal at the same time. In one part of my brain I'm a gentleman. Inanother, a beast. It's conflict. We can't eliminate the beast, but wecan control it now and then when it gets too obstreperous, and that'swhere religion helps. It's the high ideal--otherworldliness. "

"The Germans pray to the same God. Praise Christ and ask for victory. "

"Let them. It may do them a bit of good. It seems to me God is aboveall the squabbles of humanity--doesn't care a damn about them!--butthe human soul can get into touch with the infinite and the ideal, evenwhile he is doing butcher's work, and beastliness. That doesn't mattervery much. It's part of the routine of life. "

"But it does matter. It makes agony and damnation in the world. Itcreates cruelty and tyranny, and all bloody things. Surely if we believein God--anyhow in Christian ethics--this war is a monstrous crime inwhich all humanity is involved. "

"The Hun started it. .. Let's go and give the glad eye to Marguerite. "

At night, in moonlight, Amiens cathedral was touched with a newspirituality, a white magic beyond all words of beauty. On many nightsof war I walked round the cathedral square, looking up at that grandmass of masonry with all its pinnacles and buttresses gleaming likesilver and its sculptured tracery like lacework, and a flood of milkylight glamorous on walls in which every stone was clear-cut beyond avast shadow-world. How old it was! How many human eyes through manycenturies had come in the white light of the moon to look at this dreamin stone enshrining the faith of men! The Revolution had surged roundthese walls, and the screams of wild women, and their shrill laughter, and their cries for the blood of aristocrats, had risen from thissquare. Pageants of kingship and royal death had passed across thesepavements through the great doors there. Peasant women, in the darkness, had wept against these walls, praying for God's pity for their hearts. Now the English officers were lighting cigarettes in the shelter ofa wall, the outline of their features--knightly faces--touched by themoonlight. There were flashes of gun-fire in the sky beyond the river. 

"A good night for a German air raid, " said one of the officers. 

"Yes, a lovely night for killing women in their sleep, " said the otherman. 

The people of Amiens were sleeping, and no light gleamed through theirshutters. 

XIII

Coming away from the cathedral through a side-street going into the ruedes Trois Cailloux, I used to pass the Palais de Justice--a big, grimbuilding, with a long flight of steps leading up to its doorways, andabove the portico the figure of Justice, blind, holding her scales. There was no justice there during the war, but rooms full of Frenchsoldiers with smashed faces, blind, many of them, like that woman instone. They used to sit, on fine days, on the flight of steps, a tragicexhibition of war for passers-by to see. Many of them revealed no faces, but were white masks of cotton-wool, bandaged round their heads. Othersshowed only the upper parts of their faces, and the places where theirjaws had been were tied up with white rags. There were men withoutnoses, and men with half their scalps torn away. French children usedto stare through the railings at them, gravely, with childish curiosity, without pity. English soldiers gave them a passing glance, and went onto places where they might be made like this, without faces, or jaws, or noses, or eyes. By their uniforms I saw that there were ChasseursAlpins, and Chasseurs d'Afrique, and young infantrymen of the line, andgunners. They sat, without restlessness, watching the passers-by ifthey had eyes to see, or, if blind, feeling the breeze about them, andlistening to the sound of passing feet. 

XIV

The prettiest view of Amiens was from the banks of the Somme outsidethe city, on the east side, and there was a charming walk along thetow-path, past market-gardens going down to the river on the oppositebank, and past the gardens of little chalets built for love-in-idlenessin days of peace. They were of fantastic architecture--these Cottageswhere well-to-do citizens of Amiens used to come for week-ends ofboating and fishing--and their garden gates at the end of wooden bridgesover back-waters were of iron twisted into the shapes of swans orflowers, and there were snails of terra-cotta on the chimney-pots, and painted woodwork on the walls, in the worst taste, yet amusing andpleasing to the eye in their green bowers. I remember one called MonIdee, and wondered that any man should be proud of such a freakishconception of a country house. They were abandoned during the war, except one or two used for casual rendezvous between French officers andtheir light o' loves, and the tow-path was used only by stray coupleswho came out for loneliness, and British soldiers walking out withFrench girls. The market-gardeners punted down the river in long, shallow boats, like gondolas, laden high with cabbages, cauliflowers, and asparagus, and farther up-stream there was a boat-house whereorderlies from the New Zealand hospital in Amiens used to get skiffs foran hour's rowing, leaning on their oars to look at the picture of thecathedral rising like a mirage beyond the willows and the encirclingwater, with fleecy clouds above its glittering roof, or luridstorm-clouds with the red glow of sunset beneath their wings. Inthe dusk or the darkness there was silence along the banks but for aceaseless throbbing of distant gun-fire, rising sometimes to a fury ofdrumming when the French soixante-quinze was at work, outside Roye andthe lines beyond Suzanne. It was what the French call la rafale destambours de la mort--the ruffle of the drums of death. The windingwaters of the Somme flowed in higher reaches through the hell of war byBiaches and St. -Christ, this side of Peronne, where dead bodies floatedin slime and blood, and there was a litter of broken bridges and barges, and dead trees, and ammunition-boxes. The river itself was a highwayinto hell, and there came back upon its tide in slow-moving barges thewreckage of human life, fresh from the torturers. These barges used tounload their cargoes of maimed men at a carpenter's yard just below thebridge, outside the city, and often as I passed I saw human bodies beinglifted out and carried on stretchers into the wooden sheds. They werethe bad cases--French boys wounded in the abdomen or lungs, or withtheir limbs torn off, or hopelessly shattered. It was an agony for themto be moved, even on the stretchers. Some of them cried out in fearfulanguish, or moaned like wounded animals, again and again. Those soundsspoiled the music of the lapping water and the whispering of the willowsand the song of birds. The sight of these tortured boys, made uselessin life, took the color out of the flowers and the beauty out of thatvision of the great cathedral, splendid above the river. Women watchedthem from the bridge, straining their eyes as the bodies were carriedto the bank. I think some of them looked for their own men. One of themspoke to me one day. 

"That is what the Germans do to our sons. Bandits! Assassins!"

"Yes. That is war, Madame. "

She put a skinny hand on my arm. 

"Will it go on forever, this war? Until all the men are killed?"

"Not so long as that, Madame. Some men will be left alive. The very oldand the very young, and the lucky ones, and those behind the lines. "

"The Germans are losing many men, Monsieur?"

"Heaps, Madame. I have seen their bodies strewn about the fields. "

"Ah, that is good! I hope all German women will lose their sons, as Ihave lost mine. "

"Where was that, Madame?"

"Over there. "

She pointed up the Somme. 

"He was a good son. A fine boy. It seems only yesterday he lay at mybreast. My man weeps for him. They were good comrades. "

"It is sad, Madame. "

"Ah, but yes. It is sad! Au revoir, Monsieur. "

"Au revoir, Madame. "

XV

There was a big hospital in Amiens, close to the railway station, organized by New Zealand doctors and nurses. I went there one day in theautumn of 1914, when the army of von Kluck had passed through the cityand gone beyond. The German doctors had left behind the instrumentsabandoned by an English unit sharing the retreat. The French doctor whotook me round told me the enemy had behaved well in Amiens. At least hehad refrained from atrocities. As I went through the long wards I didnot guess that one day I should be a patient there. That was two yearslater, at the end of the Somme battles. I was worn out and bloodlessafter five months of hard strain and nervous wear and tear. Some bug hadbitten me up in the fields where lay the unburied dead. 

"Trench fever, " said the doctor. 

"You look in need of a rest, " said the matron. "My word, how white youare! Had a hard time, eh, like the rest of them?"

I lay in bed at the end of the officers' ward, with only one other bedbetween me and the wall. That was occupied by the gunner-general of theNew Zealand Division. Opposite was another row of beds in which officerslay sleeping, or reading, or lying still with wistful eyes. 

"That's all right. You're going to die!" said a rosy--cheeked youngorderly, after taking my temperature and feeling my pulse. It was hisway of cheering a patient up. He told me how he had been torpedoedin the Dardanelles while he was ill with dysentery. He indulged inreminiscences with the New Zealand general who had a grim gift ofsilence, but glinting eyes. In the bed on my left was a handsome boywith a fine, delicate face, a subaltern in the Coldstream Guards, with apile of books at his elbow--all by Anatole France. It was the first timeI had ever laid in hospital, and I felt amazingly weak and helpless, butinterested in my surroundings. The day nurse, a tall, buxom New Zealandgirl whom the general chaffed with sarcastic humor, and who gave backmore than she got, went off duty with a cheery, "Good night, all!" andthe night nurse took her place, and made a first visit to each bed. Shewas a dainty little woman with the complexion of a delicate rose andlarge, luminous eyes. She had a nunlike look, utterly pure, but with aspiritual fire in those shining eyes of hers for all these men, who werelike children in her hands. They seemed glad at her coming. 

"Good evening, sister!" said one man after another, even one who hadlaid with his eyes closed for an hour or more, with a look of death onhis face. 

She knelt down beside each one, saying, "How are you to-night?" andchatting in a low voice, inaudible to the bed beyond. From one bed Iheard a boy's voice say: "Oh, don't go yet, sister! You have only givenme two minutes, and I want ten, at least. I am passionately in love withyou, you know, and I have been waiting all day for your beauty!"

There was a gust of laughter in the ward. 

"The child is at it again!" said one of the officers. 

"When are you going to write me another sonnet?" asked the nurse. "Thelast one was much admired. "

"The last one was rotten, " said the boy. "I have written a real corkerthis time. Read it to yourself, and don't drop its pearls before theseswine. "

"Well, you must be good, or I won't read it at all. "

An officer of the British army, who was also a poet, hurled thebedclothes off and sat on the edge of his bed in his pajamas. 

"I'm fed up with everything! I hate war! I don't want to be a hero! Idon't want to die! I want to be loved!. .. I'm a glutton for love!"

In his pajamas the boy looked a child, no older than a schoolboy who wasmine and who still liked to be tucked up in bed by his mother. With histousled hair and his petulant grimace, this lieutenant might have beenPeter Pan, from Kensington. The night nurse pretended to chide him. It was a very gentle chiding, but as abruptly as he had thrown off hisclothes he snuggled under them again and said: "All right, I'll be good. Only I want a kiss before I go to sleep. "

I became good friends with that boy, who was a promising young poet, anda joyous creature no more fit for war than a child of ten, hating themuck and horror of it, not ashamed to confess his fear, with a boyishwistfulness of hope that he might not be killed, because he loved life. But he was killed. .. I had a letter from his stricken mother monthsafterward. The child was "Missing" then, and her heart cried out forhim. 

Opposite my bed was a middle-aged man from Lancashire--I suppose hehad been in a cotton-mill or a factory--a hard-headed, simple-heartedfellow, as good as gold, and always speaking of "the wife. " But hisnerves had gone to pieces and he was afraid to sleep because of thedreams that came to him. 

"Sister, " he said, "don't let me go to sleep. Wake me up if you see medozing. I see terrible things in my dreams. Frightful things. I can'tbear it. "

"You will sleep better to-night, " she said. "I am putting something inyour milk. Something to stop the dreaming. "

But he dreamed. I lay awake, feverish and restless, and heard the manopposite muttering and moaning, in his sleep. Sometimes he would give along, quivering sigh, and sometimes start violently, and then wake up ina dazed way, saying:

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" trembling with fear, so that the bed wasshaken. The night nurse was always by his side in a moment when hecalled out, hushing him down, whispering to him. 

"I see pools of blood and bits of dead bodies in my sleep, " he told me. "It's what I saw up at Bazentin. There was a fellow with his face blownoff, walking about. I see him every night. Queer, isn't it? Nerves, youknow. I didn't think I had a nerve in my body before this war. "

The little night nurse came to my bedside. 

"Can't you sleep?"

"I'm afraid not. My heart is thumping in a queer way. May I smoke?"

She put a cigarette between my lips and lighted a match. 

"Take a few whiffs and then try to sleep. You need lots of sleep. "

In the ward there was only the glimmer of night lights in redglasses, and now and then all through the night matches were lighted, illuminating the room for a second, followed by the glowing end of acigarette shining like a star in the darkness. 

The sleeping men breathed heavily, tossed about violently, gave strangejerks and starts. Sometimes they spoke aloud in their sleep. 

"That isn't a dud, you fool! It will blow us to hell. "

"Now then, get on with it, can't you?"

"Look out! They're coming! Can't you see them moving by the wire?"

The spirit of war was in that ward and hunted them even in their sleep;lurking terrors surged up again in their subconsciousness. Sights whichthey had tried to forget stared at them through their closed eyelids. The daylight came and the night nurse slipped away, and the daynurse shook one's shoulders and said: "Time to wash and shave. Nomalingering!"

It was the discipline of the hospital. Men as weak as rats had to sit upin bed, or crawl out of it, and shave themselves. 

"You're merciless!" I said, laughing painfully when the day nurse dabbedmy back with cold iodine at six o'clock on a winter morning, with thewindows wide open. 

"Oh, there's no mercy in this place!" said the strong-minded girl. "It'skill or cure here, and no time to worry. "

"You're all devils, " said the New Zealand general. "You don't care adamn about the patients so long as you have all the beds tidy by thetime the doctor comes around. I'm a general, I am, and you can't orderME about, and if you think I'm going to shave at this time in themorning you are jolly well mistaken. I am down with dysentery, and don'tyou forget it. I didn't get through the Dardanelles to be murdered atAmiens. "

"That's where you may be mistaken, general, " said the imperturbablegirl. "I have to carry out orders, and if they lead to your death it'snot my responsibility. I'm paid a poor wage for this job, but I do myduty, rough or smooth, kill or cure. "

"You're a vampire. That's what you are. "

"I'm a nurse. "

"If ever I hear you're going to marry a New Zealand boy I'll warn himagainst you. "

"He'll be too much of a fool to listen to you. "

"I've a good mind to marry you myself and beat you every morning. "

"Modern wives have strong muscles. Look at my arm!"

* * *

Three nights in one week there were air raids, and as the German markwas the railway station we were in the center of the danger-zone. Therewas a frightful noise of splintering glass and smashing timberbetween each crash of high explosives. The whine of shrapnel from theanti--aircraft guns had a sinister note, abominable in the ears of thoseofficers who had come down from the fighting--lines nerve-racked andfever-stricken. They lay very quiet. The night nurse moved about frombed to bed, with her flash-lamp. Her face was pale, but she showed noother sign of fear and was braver than her patients at that time, thoughthey had done the hero's job all right. 

It was in another hospital a year later, when I lay sick again, that anofficer, a very gallant gentleman, said, "If there is another air raidI shall go mad. " He had been stationed near the blast-furnace of LesIzelquins, near Bethune, and had been in many air raids, when oversixty-three shells had blown his hut to bits and killed his men, untilhe could bear it no more. In the Amiens hospital some of the patientshad their heads under the bedclothes like little children. 

XVI

The life of Amiens ended for a while, and the city was deserted by allits people, after the night of March 30, 1918, which will be rememberedforever to the age-long history of Amiens as its night of greatesttragedy. For a week the enemy had been advancing across the oldbattlefields after the first onslaught in the morning of March 21st, when our lines were stormed and broken by his men's odds against ourdefending troops. We war correspondents had suffered mental agonies likeall who knew what had happened better than the troops themselves. Every day after the first break-through we pushed out in differentdirections--Hamilton Fyfe and I went together sometimes until we came upwith the backwash of the great retreat, ebbing back and back, day afterday, with increasing speed, until it drew very close to Amiens. It wasa kind of ordered chaos, terrible to see. It was a chaos like that ofupturned ant-heaps, but with each ant trying to rescue its eggs andsticks in a persistent, orderly way, directed by some controllingor communal intelligence, only instead of eggs and sticks thesesoldier-ants of ours, in the whole world behind our front-lines, weretrying to rescue heavy guns, motor-lorries, tanks, ambulances, hospitalstores, ordnance stores, steam-rollers, agricultural implements, transport wagons, railway engines, Y. M. C. A. Tents, gun-horse and mulecolumns, while rear-guard actions were being fought within gunfire ofthem and walking wounded were hobbling back along the roads in thisuproar of traffic, and word came that a further retreat was happeningand that the enemy had broken through again. .. 

Amiens seemed threatened on the morning when, to the north, Albert washeld by a mixed crowd of Scottish and English troops, too thin, as Icould see when I passed through them, to fight any big action, with anenemy advancing rapidly from Courcellette and outflanking our line byMontauban and Fricourt. I saw our men marching hastily in retreat toescape that tightening net, and while the southern side of Amiens washeld by a crowd of stragglers with cyclist battalions, clerksfrom headquarters staffs, and dismounted cavalry, commanded byBrigadier-General Carey, sent down hurriedly to link them together andstop a widening gap until the French could get to our relief on theright and until the Australians had come down from Flanders. There wasnothing on that day to prevent the Germans breaking through to Amiensexcept the courage of exhausted boys thinly strung out, and the laggingfootsteps of the Germans themselves, who had suffered heavy lossesall the way and were spent for a while by their progress over the wildground of the old fighting-fields. Their heavy guns were far behind, unable to keep pace with the storm troops, and the enemy was relyingentirely on machine-guns and a few field-guns, but most of our guns werealso out of action, captured or falling back to new lines, and upon thespeed with which the enemy could mass his men for a new assault dependedthe safety of Amiens and the road to Abbeville and the coast. If hecould hurl fresh divisions of men against our line on that last night ofMarch, or bring up strong forces of cavalry, or armored cars, our linewould break and Amiens would be lost, and all our work would be injeopardy. That was certain. It was visible. It could not be concealed byany camouflage of hope or courage. 

It was after a day on the Somme battlefields, passing through ourretiring troops, that I sat down, with other war correspondents andseveral officers, to a dinner in the old Hotel du Rhin in Amiens. Itwas a dismal meal, in a room where there had been much laughter and, throughout the battles of the Somme, in 1916, a coming and going ofgenerals and staffs and officers of all grades, cheery and high-spiritedat these little tables where there were good wine and not bad food, andputting away from their minds for the time being the thought of tragiclosses or forlorn battles in which they might fall. In the quietude ofthe hotel garden, a little square plot of grass bordered by flower-beds, I had had strange conversations with boys who had revealed their souls alittle, after dinner in the darkness, their faces bared now and then bythe light of cigarettes or the flare of a match. 

"Death is nothing, " said one young officer just down from the Sommefields for a week's rest-cure for jangled nerves. "I don't care adamn for death; but it's the waiting for it, the devilishness of itsuncertainty, the sight of one's pals blown to bits about one, and theanimal fear under shell-fire, that break one's pluck. .. My nerves arelike fiddle-strings. "

In that garden, other men, with a queer laugh now and then between theirstories, had told me their experiences in shell-craters and ditchesunder frightful fire which had "wiped out" their platoons or companies. A bedraggled stork, the inseparable companion of a waddling gull, usedto listen to the conferences, with one leg tucked under his wing, andits head on one side, with one watchful, beady eye fixed on the figuresin khaki--until suddenly it would clap its long bill rapidly in awonderful imitation of machine-gun fire--"Curse the bloody bird!" saidofficers startled by this evil and reminiscent noise--and caper withridiculous postures round the imperturbable gull. .. Beyond the lines, from the dining-room, would come the babble of many tongues and thelaughter of officers telling stories against one another over theirbottles of wine, served by Gaston the head-waiter, between ourdiscussions on strategy--he was a strategist by virtue of service in thetrenches and several wounds--or by "Von Tirpitz, " an older, whiskeredman, or by Joseph, who had a high, cackling laugh and strong viewsagainst the fair sex, and the inevitable cry, "C'est la guerre!" whenofficers complained of the service. .. There had been merry parties inthis room, crowded with the ghosts of many heroic fellows, but it was agloomy gathering on that evening at the end of March when we sat therefor the last time. There were there officers who had lost their towns, and "Dadoses" (Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Supplies) whosestores had gone up in smoke and flame, and a few cavalry officers backfrom special leave and appalled by what had happened in their absence, and a group of Y. M. C. A. Officials who had escaped by the skin of theirteeth from huts now far behind the German lines, and censors whoknew that no blue pencil could hide the truth of the retreat, and warcorrespondents who had to write the truth and hated it. 

Gaston whispered gloomily behind my chair: "Mon petit caporal"--hecalled me that because of a fancied likeness to the youngNapoleon--"dites donc. Vous croyex quils vont passer par Amiens? Non, ce n'est pas possible, ca! Pour la deuxieme fois? Non. Je refuse a lecroire. Mais c'est mauvais, c'est affreux, apres tant de sacrifice!"

Madame, of the cash-desk, sat in the dining-room, for company's sake, fixing up accounts as though the last day of reckoning had come. .. As ithad. Her hair, with its little curls, was still in perfect order. Shehad two dabs of color on her cheeks, as usual, but underneath a waxenpallor. She was working out accounts with a young officer, who smokedinnumerable cigarettes to steady his nerves. "Von Tirpitz" was goinground in an absent-minded way, pulling at his long whiskers. 

The war correspondents talked together. We spoke gloomily, in lowvoices, so that the waiters should not hear. 

"If they break through to Abbeville we shall lose the coast. "

"Will that be a win for the Germans, even then?"

"It will make it hell in the Channel. "

"We shall transfer our base to St. -Nazaire. "

"France won't give in now, whatever happens. And England never givesin. "

"We're exhausted, all the same. It's a question of man-power. "

"They're bound to take Albert to-night or to-morrow. "

"I don't see that at all. There's still a line. .. "

"A line! A handful of tired men. "

"It will be the devil if they get into Villers-Bretonneux to-night. Itcommands Amiens. They could blow the place off the map. "

"They won't. "

"We keep on saying, 'They won't. ' We said, 'They won't get the Sommecrossings!' but they did. Let's face it squarely, without any damnedfalse optimism. That has been our curse all through. "

"Better than your damned pessimism. "

"It's quite possible that they will be in this city tonight. What is tokeep them back? There's nothing up the road. "

"It would look silly if we were all captured to-night. How they wouldlaugh!"

"We shouldn't laugh, though. I think we ought to keep an eye on things. "

"How are we to know? We are utterly without means of communication. Anything may happen in the night. "

Something happened then. It was half past seven in the evening. Therewere two enormous crashes outside the windows of the Hotel du Rhin. Allthe windows shook and the whole house seemed to rock. There was a noiseof rending wood, many falls of bricks, and a cascade of falling glass. Instinctively and instantly a number of officers threw themselves on thefloor to escape flying bits of steel and glass splinters blown sideways. Then some one laughed. 

"Not this time!"

The officers rose from the floor and took their places at the table, andlit cigarettes again. But they were listening. We listened to the loudhum of airplanes, the well known "zooz-zooz" of the Gothas' doublefuselage. More bombs were dropped farther into the town, with the samesound of explosives and falling masonry. The anti--aircraft guns got towork and there was the shrill chorus of shrapnel shells winging over theroofs. 

"Bang!. .. Crash!"

That was nearer again. 

Some of the officers strolled out of the dining room. 

"They're making a mess outside. Perhaps we'd better get away before itgets too hot. "

Madame from the cash-desk turned to her accounts again. I noticed theincreasing pallor of her skin beneath the two dabs of red. But shecontrolled her nerves pluckily; even smiled, too, at the young officerwho was settling up for a group of others. 

The moon had risen over the houses of Amiens. It was astoundingly brightand beautiful in a clear sky and still air, and the streets were floodedwith white light, and the roofs glittered like silver above intenseblack shadows under the gables, where the rays were barred by projectingwalls. 

"Curse the moon!" said one officer. "How I hate its damned light"

But the moon, cold and smiling, looked down upon the world at war andinto this old city of Amiens, in which bombs were bursting. Women wererunning close to the walls. Groups of soldiers made a dash from onedoorway to another. Horses galloped with heavy wagons up the Street ofthe Three Pebbles, while shrapnel flickered in the sky above them andpaving-stones were hurled up in bursts of red fire and explosions. Many horses were killed by flying chunks of steel. They lay bleedingmonstrously so that there were large pools of blood around them. 

An officer came into the side door of the Hotel du Rhin. He was whiteunder his steel hat, which he pushed back while he wiped his forehead. 

"A fellow was killed just by my side. " he said. "We were standing in adoorway together and something caught him in the face. He fell like alog, without a sound, as dead as a door-nail. "

There was a flight of midges in the sky, droning with that double notewhich vibrated like 'cello strings, very loudly, and with that sinisternoise I could see them quite clearly now and then as they passed acrossthe face of the moon, black, flitting things, with a glitter of shrapnelbelow them. From time to time they went away until they were specks ofsilver and black; but always they came back again, or others came, withnew stores of bombs which they unloaded over Amiens. So it went on allthrough the night. 

I went up to a bedroom and lay on a bed, trying to sleep. But it wasimpossible. My will-power was not strong enough to disregard thosecrashes in the streets outside, when houses collapsed with frightfulfalling noises after bomb explosions. My inner vision foresaw theceiling above me pierced by one of those bombs, and the room in which Ilay engulfed in the chaos of this wing of the Hotel du Rhin. Many timesI said, "To hell with it all. .. I'm going to sleep, " and then sat up inthe darkness at the renewal of that tumult and switched on the electriclight. No, impossible to sleep! Outside in the corridor there was astampede of heavy boots. Officers were running to get into the cellarsbefore the next crash, which might fling them into the dismal gulfs. Thethought of that cellar pulled me down like the law of gravity. I walkedalong the corridor, now deserted, and saw a stairway littered withbroken glass, which my feet scrunched. There were no lights in thebasement of the hotel, but I had a flash-lamp, going dim, and by itspale eye fumbled my way to a stone passage leading to the cellar. Thatflight of stone steps was littered also with broken glass. In the cellaritself was a mixed company of men who had been dining earlier in theevening, joined by others who had come in from the streets for shelter. Some of them had dragged down mattresses from the bedrooms and werelying there in their trench-coats, with their steel hats beside them. Others were sitting on wooden cases, wearing their steel hats, whilethere were others on their knees, and their faces in their hands, tryingto sleep. There were some of the town majors who had lost their towns, and some Canadian cavalry officers, and two or three private soldiers, and some motor-drivers and orderlies, and two young cooks of the hotellying together on dirty straw. By one of the stone pillars of thevaulted room two American war correspondents--Sims and Mackenzie--weresitting on a packing-case playing cards on a board between them. Theyhad stuck candles in empty wine-bottles, and the flickering light playedon their faces and cast deep shadows under their eyes. I stood watchingthese men in that cellar and thought what a good subject it would be forthe pencil of Muirhead Bone. I wanted to get a comfortable place. Therewas only one place on the bare stones, and when I lay down there mybones ached abominably, and it was very cold. Through an aperture in thewindow came a keen draft and I could see in a square of moonlit sky aglinting star. It was not much of a cellar. A direct hit on the Hoteldu Rhin would make a nasty mess in this vaulted room and end a game ofcards. After fifteen minutes I became restless, and decided that theroom upstairs, after all, was infinitely preferable to this damp cellarand these hard stones. I returned to it and lay down on the bed againand switched off the light. But the noises outside, the loneliness ofthe room, the sense of sudden death fluking overhead, made me sit upagain and listen intently. The Gothas were droning over Amiens again. Many houses round about were being torn and shattered. What a wreckagewas being made of the dear old city! I paced up and down the room, smoking cigarettes, one after another, until a mighty explosion, veryclose, made all my nerves quiver. No, decidedly, that cellar was thebest place. If one had to die it was better to be in the company offriends. Down I went again, meeting an officer whom I knew well. He, too, was a wanderer between the cellar and the abandoned bedrooms. 

"I am getting bored with this, " he said. "It's absurd to think that thisfilthy cellar is any safer than upstairs. But the dugout sense calls onedown. Anyhow, I can't sleep. "

We stood looking into the cellar. There was something comical as well assinister in the sight of the company there sprawled on the mattresses, vainly trying to extract comfort out of packing-cases for pillows, orgas-bags on steel hats. One friend of ours, a cavalry officer of theold school, looked a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Ol' Bill, with afierce frown above his black mustache. Sims and Mackenzie still playedtheir game of cards, silently, between the guttering candles. 

I think I went from the cellar to the bedroom, and from the bedroom tothe cellar, six times that night. There was never ten minutes' relieffrom the drone of Gothas, who were making a complete job of Amiens. It was at four in the morning that I met the same officer who saw mewandering before. 

"Let us go for a walk, " he said. "The birds will be away by dawn. "

It was nothing like dawn when we went out of the side door of the Hoteldu Rhin and strolled into the Street of the Three Pebbles. There wasstill the same white moonlight, intense and glittering, but with a palersky. It shone down upon dark pools of blood and the carcasses of horsesand fragments of flesh, from which a sickly smell rose. The roadwaywas littered with bits of timber and heaps of masonry. Many houses hadcollapsed into wild chaos, and others, though still standing, had beenstripped of their wooden frontages and their walls were scarred bybomb-splinters. Every part of the old city, as we explored it later, hadbeen badly mauled, and hundreds of houses were utterly destroyed. Theair raid ceased at 4. 30 A. M. , when the first light of dawn came into thesky. .. . 

That day Amiens was evacuated, by command of the French militaryauthorities, and the inhabitants trailed out of the city, leavingeverything behind them. I saw the women locking up their shops--wherethere were any doors to shut or their shop still standing. Manypeople must have been killed and buried in the night beneath their ownhouses--I never knew how many. The fugitives escaped the next phase ofthe tragedy in Amiens when, within a few hours, the enemy sent over thefirst high velocities, and for many weeks afterward scattered them aboutthe city, destroying many other houses. A fire started by these shellsformed a great gap between the rue des Jacobins and the rue des TroisCailloux, where there had been an arcade and many good shops and houses. I saw the fires smoldering about charred beams and twisted ironwork whenI went through the city after the day of exodus. 

XVII

It was a pitiful adventure to go through Amiens in the days ofits desolation, and we who had known its people so well hated itsloneliness. All abandoned towns have a tragic aspect--I often thinkof Douai, which was left with all its people under compulsion of theenemy--but Amiens was strangely sinister with heaps of ruins in itsnarrow streets, and the abominable noise of high-velocity shells inflight above its roofs, and crashing now in one direction and now inanother. 

One of our sentries came out of a little house near the Place and said:

"Keep as much as possible to the west side of the town, sir. They'vebeen falling pretty thick on the east side. Made no end of a mess!"

On the way back from Villers-Bretonneux and the Australian headquarters, on the left bank of the Somme, we ate sandwiches in the publicgardens outside the Hotel du Rhin. There were big shell-holes in theflower-beds, and trees had been torn down and flung across the pathway, and there was a broken statue lying on the grass. Some French andEnglish soldiers tramped past. Then there was no living soul about inthe place which had been so crowded with life, with pretty women andchildren, and young officers doing their shopping, and the business of acity at work. 

"It makes one understand what Rome was like after the barbarians hadsacked and left it, " said a friend of mine. 

"There is something ghastly about it, " said another. 

We stood round the Hotel du Rhin, shut up and abandoned. The house nextdoor had been wrecked, and it was scarred and wounded, but still stoodafter that night of terror. 

One day during its desolation I went to a banquet in Amiens, in thecellars of the Hotel de Ville. It was to celebrate the Fourth of July, and an invitation had been sent to me by the French commandant de placeand the English A. P. M. 

It was a beau geste, gallant and romantic in those days of trouble, whenAmiens was still closely beleaguered, but safer now that Australians andBritish troops were holding the lines strongly outside, with French ontheir right southward from Boves and Hangest Wood. The French commandanthad procured a collection of flags and his men had decorated thebattered city with the Tricolor. It even fluttered above some of theruins, as though for the passing of a pageant. But only a few carsentered the city and drew up to the Town Hall, and then took coverbehind the walls. 

Down below, in the cellars, the damp walls were garlanded with flowersfrom the market-gardens of the Somme, now deserted by their gardeners, and roses were heaped on the banqueting-table. General Monash, commanding the Australian corps, was there, with the general of theFrench division on his right. A young American officer sat very graveand silent, not, perhaps, understanding much of the conversation abouthim, because most of the guests were French officers, with Senators andDeputies of Amiens and its Department. There was good wine to drink fromthe cold vaults of the Hotel de Ville, and with the scent of rose andhope for victory in spite of all disasters--the German offensive hadbeen checked and the Americans were now coming over in a tide--it was acheerful luncheon-party. The old general, black-visaged, bullet-headed, with a bristly mustache like a French bull--terrier, sat utterly silent, eating steadily and fiercely. But the French commandant de place, ashandsome as Athos, as gay as D'Artagnan, raised his glass to Englandand France, to the gallant Allies, and to all fair women. He becamereminiscent of his days as a sous-lieutenant. He remembered a girlcalled Marguerite--she was exquisite; and another called Yvonne--he hadadored her. O life! O youth!. .. He had been a careless young devil, withlaughter in his heart. .. . 

XVIII

I suppose it was three months later when I saw the first crowds comingback to their homes in Amiens. The tide had turned and the enemy wasin hard retreat. Amiens was safe again! They had never had any doubtof this homecoming after that day nearly three months before, when, in spite of the enemy's being so close, Foch said, in his calm way, "Iguarantee Amiens. " They believed what Marshal Foch said. He always knew. So now they were coming back again with their little bundles and theirbabies and small children holding their hands or skirts, according asthey had received permits from the French authorities. They were thelucky ones whose houses still existed. They were conscious of their owngood fortune and came chattering very cheerfully from the station up theStreet of the Three Pebbles, on their way to their streets. But everynow and then they gave a cry of surprise and dismay at the damage doneto other people's houses. 

"O la la! Regardez ca! c'est affreux!"

There was the butcher's shop, destroyed; and the house of poor littleMadeleine; and old Christopher's workshop; and the milliner's place, where they used to buy their Sunday hats; and that frightful gap wherethe Arcade had been. Truly, poor Amiens had suffered martyrdom; though, thank God, the cathedral still stood in glory, hardly touched, with onlyone little shellhole through the roof. 

Terrible was the damage up the rue de Beauvais and the streets that wentout of it. To one rubbish heap which had been a corner house two girlscame back. Perhaps the French authorities had not had that one on theirlist. The girls came tripping home, with light in their eyes, staringabout them, ejaculating pity for neighbors whose houses had beendestroyed. Then suddenly they stood outside their own house and saw thatthe direct hit of a shell had knocked it to bits. The light went outof their eyes. They stood there staring, with their mouths open. .. SomeAustralian soldiers stood about and watched the girls, understanding thedrama. 

"Bit of a mess, missy!" said one of them. "Not much left of the oldhome, eh?"

The girls were amazingly brave. They did not weep. They climbed up ahillock of bricks and pulled out bits of old, familiar things. Theyrecovered the whole of a child's perambulator, with its wheels crushed. With an air of triumph and shrill laughter they turned round to theAustralians. 

"Pour les bebes!" they cried. 

"While there's life there's hope, " said one of the Australians, withsardonic humor. 

So the martyrdom of Amiens was at an end, and life came back to the citythat had been dead, and the soul of the city had survived. I have notseen it since then, but one day I hope I shall go back and shake handswith Gaston the waiter and say, "Comment ca va, mon vieux?" ("How goesit, my old one?") and stroll into the bookshop and say, "Bon jour, mademoiselle!" and walk round the cathedral and see its beauty inmoonlight again when no one will look up and say, "Curse the moon!"

There will be many ghosts in the city at night--the ghosts of Britishofficers and men who thronged those streets in the great war and havenow passed on. 

PART SIX. PSYCHOLOGY ON THE SOMME

I

All that had gone before was but a preparation for what now was to come. Until July 1 of 1916 the British armies were only getting ready for thebig battles which were being planned for them by something greater thangeneralship--by the fate which decides the doom of men. 

The first battles by the Old Contemptibles, down from Mons and up byYpres, were defensive actions of rear--guards holding the enemy backby a thin wall of living flesh, while behind the New Armies of our racewere being raised. 

The battles of Festubert, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, and all minor attackswhich led to little salients, were but experimental adventures in thescience of slaughter, badly bungled in our laboratories. They had nomeaning apart from providing those mistakes by which men learn; ghastlymistakes, burning more than the fingers of life's children. They wereonly diversions of impatience in the monotonous routine of trenchwarfare by which our men strengthened the mud walls of their Schoolof Courage, so that the new boys already coming out might learn theirlessons without more grievous interruption than came from the dailyvisits of that Intruder to whom the fees were paid. In those two yearsit was France which fought the greatest battles, flinging her sonsagainst the enemy's ramparts in desperate, vain attempts to breach them. At Verdun, in the months that followed the first month of '16, it wasFrance which sustained the full weight of the German offensive on thewestern front and broke its human waves, until they were spent in a seaof blood, above which the French poilus, the "hairy ones, " stood pantingand haggard, on their death-strewn rocks. The Germans had failed todeal a fatal blow at the heart of France. France held her head upstill, bleeding from many wounds, but defiant still; and the GermanHigh Command, aghast at their own losses--six hundred thousandcasualties--already conscious, icily, of a dwindling man-power which oneday would be cut off at its source, rearranged their order of battle andshifted the balance of their weight eastward, to smash Russia. Somehowor other they must smash a way out by sledge-hammer blows, left andright, west and east, from that ring of nations which girdled them. Onthe west they would stand now on the defensive, fairly sure of theirstrength, but well aware that it would be tried to the utmost by thatenemy which, at the back of their brains (at the back of the narrowbrains of those bald-headed vultures on the German General Staff), theymost feared as their future peril--England. They had been fools to letthe British armies grow up and wax so strong. It was the folly of themadness by which they had flung the gauntlet down to the souls of proudpeoples arrayed against them. 

Our armies were now strong and trained and ready. We had about sixhundred thousand bayonet-men in France and Flanders and in England, immense reserves to fill up the gaps that would be made in their ranksbefore the summer foliage turned to russet tints. 

Our power in artillery had grown amazingly since the beginning of theyear. Every month I had seen many new batteries arrive, with cleanharness and yellow straps, and young gunners who were quick to gettheir targets. We were strong in "heavies, " twelve-inchers, 9. 2's, eight-inchers, 4. 2's, mostly howitzers, with the long-muzzledsixty-pounders terrible in their long range and destructiveness. Ouraircraft had grown fast, squadron upon squadron, and our aviators hadbeen trained in the school of General Trenchard, who sent them out overthe German lines to learn how to fight, and how to scout, and how to dielike little gentlemen. 

For a time our flying-men had gone out on old-fashioned"buses"--primitive machines which were an easy prey to the fast-flyingFokkers who waited for them behind a screen of cloud and then "stooped"on them like hawks sure of their prey. But to the airdrome near St. -Omercame later models, out of date a few weeks after their delivery, replaced by still more powerful types more perfectly equipped forfighting. Our knights-errant of the air were challenging the Germanchampions on equal terms, and beating them back from the lines unlessthey flew in clusters. There were times when our flying-men gained anabsolute supremacy by greater daring--there was nothing they did notdare--and by equal skill. As a caution, not wasting their strength inunequal contests. It was a sound policy, and enabled them to come backagain in force and hold the field for a time by powerful concentrations. But in the battles of the Somme our airmen, at a heavy cost of life, kept the enemy down a while and blinded his eyes. 

The planting of new airdromes between Albert and Amiens, the longtrail down the roads of lorries packed with wings and the furniture ofaircraft factories, gave the hint, to those who had eyes to see, that inthis direction a merry hell was being prepared. 

There were plain signs of massacre at hand all the way from the coast tothe lines. At Etaples and other places near Boulogne hospital huts andtents were growing like mushrooms in the night. From casualty clearingstations near the front the wounded--the human wreckage of routinewarfare--were being evacuated "in a hurry" to the base, and from thebase to England. They were to be cleared out of the way so that all thewards might be empty for a new population of broken men, in enormousnumbers. I went down to see this clearance, this tidying up. There was asinister suggestion in the solitude that was being made for a multitudethat was coming. 

"We shall be very busy, " said the doctors. 

"We must get all the rest we can now, " said the nurses. 

"In a little while every bed will be filled, " said the matrons. 

Outside one hut, with the sun on their faces, were four wounded Germans, Wurtemburgers and Bavarians, too ill to move just then. Each of them hadlost a leg under the surgeon's knife. They were eating strawberries, andseemed at peace. I spoke to one of them. 

"Wie befinden sie sich?"

"Ganz wohl; wir sind zufrieden mit unsere behandlung. "

I passed through the shell-shock wards and a yard where the"shell-shocks" sat about, dumb, or making queer, foolish noises, orstaring with a look of animal fear in their eyes. From a padded roomcame a sound of singing. Some idiot of war was singing between bursts oflaughter. It all seemed so funny to him, that war, so mad!

"We are clearing them out, " said the medical officer. "There will bemany more soon. "

How soon? That was a question nobody could answer. It was the onlysecret, and even that was known in London, where little ladies insociety were naming the date, "in confidence, " to men who were directlyconcerned with it--having, as they knew, only a few more weeks, or days, of certain life. But I believe there were not many officers who wouldhave surrendered deliberately all share in "The Great Push. " In spiteof all the horror which these young officers knew it would involve, they had to be "in it" and could not endure the thought that all theirfriends and all their men should be there while they were "out of it. "A decent excuse for the safer side of it--yes. A staff job, theIntelligence branch, any post behind the actual shambles--and thank Godfor the luck. But not an absolute shirk. 

Tents were being pitched in many camps of the Somme, rows and rows ofbell tents and pavilions stained to a reddish brown. Small citiesof them were growing up on the right of the road between Amiens andAlbert--at Dernancourt and Daours and Vaux-sous-Corbie. I thought theymight be for troops in reserve until I saw large flags hoisted to tallstaffs and men of the R. A. M. C. Busy painting signs on large sheetsstretched out on the grass. It was always the same sign--the Sign of theCross that was Red. 

There was a vast traffic of lorries on the roads, and trains weretraveling on light railways day and night to railroads just beyondshell-range. What was all the weight they carried? No need to ask. The "dumps" were being filled, piled up, with row upon row of shells, covered by tarpaulin or brushwood when they were all stacked. Enormousshells, some of them, like gigantic pigs without legs. Those were forthe fifteen-inchers, or the 9. 2's. There was enough high-explosive forcelittered along those roads above the Somme to blow cities off the map. 

"It does one good to see, " said a cheery fellow. "The people at homehave been putting their backs into it. Thousands of girls have beenpacking those things. Well done, Munitions!"

I could take no joy in the sight, only a grim kind of satisfaction thatat least when our men attacked they would have a power of artillerybehind them. It might help them to smash through to a finish, if thatwere the only way to end this long-drawn suicide of nations. 

My friend was shocked when I said:

"Curse all munitions!"

II

The British armies as a whole were not gloomy at the approach of thatnew phase of war which they called "The Great Push, " as though it wereto be a glorified football-match. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to know the thoughts of vast masses of men moved by some sensationaladventure. But a man would be a liar if he pretended that British troopswent forward to the great attack with hangdog looks or any visible signof fear in their souls. I think most of them were uplifted by the beliefthat the old days of trench warfare were over forever and that theywould break the enemy's lines by means of that enormous gun-power behindthem, and get him "on the run. " There would be movement, excitement, triumphant victories--and then the end of the war. In spite of all risksit would be enormously better than the routine of the trenches. Theywould be getting on with the job instead of standing still and beingshot at by invisible earth-men. 

"If we once get the Germans in the open we shall go straight throughthem. "

That was the opinion of many young officers at that time, and for oncethey agreed with their generals. 

It seemed to be a question of getting them in the open, and I confessthat when I studied the trench maps and saw the enemy's defensiveearthworks thirty miles deep in one vast maze of trenches and redoubtsand barbed wire and tunnels I was appalled at the task which lay beforeour men. They did not know what they were being asked to do. 

They had not seen, then, those awful maps. 

We were at the height and glory of our strength. Out of England had comethe flower of our youth, and out of Scotland and Wales and Canada andAustralia and New Zealand. Even out of Ireland, with the 16th Divisionof the south and west, and the 36th of Ulster. The New Armies were madeup of all the volunteers who had answered the call to the colors, notwaiting for the conscription by class, which followed later. They werethe ardent ones, the young men from office, factory, shop, and field, university and public school. The best of our intelligence were there, the noblest of our manhood, the strength of our heart, the beauty ofour soul, in those battalions which soon were to be flung into explosivefires. 

III

In the month of May a new type of manhood was filling the old roadsbehind the front. 

I saw them first in the little old town of St. -Pol, where always therewas a coming and going of French and English soldiers. It was market-dayand the Grande Place (not very grand) was crowded with booths and oldladies in black, and young girls with checkered aprons over their blackfrocks, and pigs and clucking fowls. Suddenly the people scattered, and there was a rumble and rattle of wheels as a long line of transportwagons came through the square. 

"By Jove!. .. Australians!"

There was no mistaking them. Their slouch-hats told one at a glance, butwithout them I should have known. They had a distinctive type of theirown, which marked them out from all other soldiers of ours along thoseroads of war. 

They were hatchet-faced fellows who came riding through the littleold market town; British unmistakably, yet not English, not Irish, norScottish, nor Canadian. They looked hard, with the hardness of a boyhoodand a breeding away from cities or, at least, away from the softertraining of our way of life. They had merry eyes (especially for thegirls round the stalls), but resolute, clean-cut mouths, and they rodetheir horses with an easy grace in the saddle, as though born to riding, and drove their wagons with a recklessness among the little booths thatwas justified by half an inch between an iron axle and an old woman'stable of colored ribbons. 

Those clean-shaven, sun-tanned, dust-covered men, who had come out ofthe hell of the Dardanelles and the burning drought of Egyptian sands, looked wonderfully fresh in France. Youth, keen as steel, with a flashin the eyes, with an utter carelessness of any peril ahead, came ridingdown the street. 

They were glad to be there. Everything was new and good to them (thoughso old and stale to many of us), and after their adventures in the Eastthey found it splendid to be in a civilized country, with water in thesky and in the fields, with green trees about them, and flowers in thegrass, and white people who were friendly. 

When they came up in the train from Marseilles they were all at thewindows, drinking in the look of the French landscape, and one of theirofficers told me that again and again he heard the same words spoken bythose lads of his. 

"It's a good country to fight for. .. It's like being home again. "

At first they felt chilly in France, for the weather had been bad forthem during the first weeks in April, when the wind had blown cold andrain-clouds had broken into sharp squalls. 

Talking to the men, I saw them shiver a little and heard their teethchatter, but they said they liked a moist climate with a bite in thewind, after all the blaze and glare of the Egyptian sun. 

One of their pleasures in being there was the opportunity of buyingsweets! "They can't have too much of them, " said one of the officers, and the idea that those hard fellows, whose Homeric fighting qualitieshad been proved, should be enthusiastic for lollipops seemed to me anamusing touch of character. For tough as they were, and keen as theywere, those Australian soldiers were but grown-up children with awonderful simplicity of youth and the gift of laughter. 

I saw them laughing when, for the first time, they tried on thegas-masks which none of us ever left behind when we went near thefighting-line. That horror of war on the western front was new to them. 

Poison-gas was not one of the weapons used by the Turks, and thegas-masks seemed a joke to the groups of Australians trying on theheadgear in the fields, and changing themselves into obscene specters. .. But one man watching them gave a shudder and said, "It's a pity suchsplendid boys should have to risk this foul way of death. " They did nothear his words, and we heard their laughter again. 

On that first day of their arrival I stood in a courtyard with a youngofficer whose gray eyes had a fine, clear light, which showed the spiritof the man, and as we talked he pointed out some of the boys whopassed in and out of an old barn. One of them had done fine work on thePeninsula, contemptuous of all risks. Another had gone out under heavyfire to bring in a wounded friend. .. "Oh, they are great lads!" saidthe captain of the company. "But now they want to get at the Germans andfinish the job quickly. Give them a fair chance and they'll go far. "

They went far, from that time to the end, and fought with a simple, terrible courage. 

They had none of the discipline imposed upon our men by Regulartraditions. They were gipsy fellows, with none but the gipsy law intheir hearts, intolerant of restraint, with no respect for rank orcaste unless it carried strength with it, difficult to handle behind thelines, quick-tempered, foul-mouthed, primitive men, but lovable, human, generous souls when their bayonets were not red with blood. Theirdiscipline in battle was the best. They wanted to get to a place ahead. They would fight the devils of hell to get there. 

The New-Zealanders followed them, with rosy cheeks like English boysof Kent, and more gentle manners than the other "Anzacs, " and the samecourage. They went far, too, and set the pace awhile in the last lap. But that, in the summer of '16, was far away. 

In those last days of June, before the big battles began, thecountryside of the Somme valley was filled with splendor. The mustardseed had spread a yellow carpet in many meadows so that they were Fieldsof the Cloth of Gold, and clumps of red clover grew like flowersof blood. The hedges about the villages of Picardy were white withelderflower and drenched with scent. It was haymaking time and Frenchwomen and children were tossing the hay on wooden pitchforks during hotdays which came between heavy rains. Our men were marching through thatbeauty, and were conscious of it, I think, and glad of life. 

IV

Boulogne was a port through which all our youth passed betweenEngland and the long, straight road which led to No Man's Land. Theseven-day-leave men were coming back by every tide, and all other leavewas canceled. 

New "drafts" were pouring through the port by tens of thousands--allmanner of men of all our breed marching in long columns from thequayside, where they had orders yelled at them through megaphones byA. P. M. 's, R. T. O. 's, A. M. L. O. 's, and other blue tabbed officers who dealtwith them as cattle for the slaughterhouses. I watched them landing fromthe transports which came in so densely crowded with the human freightthat the men were wedged together on the decks like herrings in barrels. They crossed from one boat to another to reach the gangways, and one byone, interminably as it seemed, with rifle gripped and pack hunched, and steel hat clattering like a tinker's kettle, came down the inclinedplank and lurched ashore. They were English lads from every country;Scots, Irish, Welsh, of every regiment; Australians, New-Zealanders, South Africans, Canadians, West Indian negroes of the GarrisonArtillery; Sikhs, Pathans, and Dogras of the Indian Cavalry. Some ofthem had been sick and there was a greenish pallor on their faces. Mostof them were deeply tanned. Many of them stepped on the quayside ofFrance for the first time after months of training, and I could tellthose, sometimes, by the furtive look they gave at the crowded sceneabout them, and by a sudden glint in their eyes, a faint reflection ofthe emotion that was in them, because this was another stage on theiradventure of war, and the drawbridge was down at last between them andthe enemy. That was all, just that look, and lips tightened now grimly, and the pack hunched higher. Then they fell in by number and marchedaway, with Redcaps to guard them, across the bridge, into the townof Boulogne and beyond to the great camp near Etaples (and near thehospital, so that German aircraft had a good argument for smashing RedCross huts), where some of them would wait until somebody said, "You'rewanted. " They were wanted in droves as soon as the fighting began on thefirst day of July. 

The bun shops in Boulogne were filled with nurses, V. A. D. 's, all kindsof girls in uniforms which glinted with shoulder-straps and buttons. They ate large quantities of buns at odd hours of mornings andafternoons. Flying-men and officers of all kinds waiting for trainscrowded the Folkestone Hotel and restaurants, where they spent two hoursover luncheon and three hours over dinner, drinking red wine, talking"shop"--the shop of trench-mortar units, machine-gun sections, cavalrysquadrons, air-fighting, gas schools, and anti-gas schools. Regularinhabitants of Boulogne, officers at the base, passed to inner roomswith French ladies of dangerous appearance, and the transients enviedthem and said: "Those fellows have all the luck! What's their secret?How do they arrange these cushie jobs?" From open windows came the musicof gramophones. Through half-drawn curtains there were glimpses of khakitunics and Sam Brown belts in juxtaposition with silk blouses andcoiled hair and white arms. Opposite the Folkestone there was a park ofambulances driven by "Scottish women, " who were always on the movefrom one part of the town to the other. Motor-cars came hooting withstaff-officers, all aglow in red tabs and armbands, thirsty for littlecocktails after a dusty drive. Everywhere in the streets and on theesplanade there was incessant saluting. The arms of men were neverstill. It was like the St. Vitus disease. Tommies and Jocks salutedevery subaltern with an automatic gesture of convulsive energy. Everysubaltern acknowledged these movements and in turn saluted a multitudeof majors, colonels, and generals. The thing became farcical, amonstrous absurdity of human relationship, yet pleasing to the vanity ofmen lifted up above the lowest caste. It seemed to me an intensificationof the snob instinct in the soul of man. Only the Australians stood outagainst it, and went by all officers except their own with a carelessslouch and a look of "To hell with all that handwagging. "

Seated on high stools in the Folkestone, our young officers clinkedtheir cocktails, and then whispered together. 

"When's it coming?"

"In a few days. .. I'm for the Gommecourt sector. "

"Do you think we shall get through?"

"Not a doubt of it. The cavalry are massing for a great drive. As soonas we make the gap they'll ride into the blue. "

"By God!. .. There'll be some slaughter"

"I think the old Boche will crack this time. "

"Well, cheerio!"

There was a sense of enormous drama at hand, and the excitement of it inboys' hearts drugged all doubt and fears. It was only the older men, andthe introspective, who suffered from the torture of apprehension. Eventimid fellows in the ranks were, I imagine, strengthened and exalted bythe communal courage of their company or battalion, for courage aswell as fear is infectious, and the psychology of the crowd upliftsthe individual to immense heights of daring when alone he wouldbe terror--stricken. The public-school spirit of pride in name andtradition was in each battalion of the New Army, extended later to thedivision, which became the unit of esprit de corps. They must not "letthe battalion down. " They would do their damnedest to get farther thanany other crowd, to bag more prisoners, to gain more "kudos. " There wasrivalry even among the platoons and the companies. "A" Company wouldshow "B" Company the way to go! Their sergeant-major was a great fellow!Their platoon commanders were fine kids! With anything like a chance--

In that spirit, as far as I, an outsider could see and hear, didour battalions of boys march forward to "The Great Push, " whistling, singing, jesting, until their lips were dry and their throats parchedin the dust, and even the merriest jesters of all were silent under theweight of their packs and rifles. So they moved up day by day, throughthe beauty of that June in France, thousands of men, hundreds ofthousands to the edge of the battlefields of the Somme, where the enemywas intrenched in fortress positions and where already, before the lastdays of June, gunfire was flaming over a vast sweep of country. 

V

On the 1st of July, 1916, began those prodigious battles which onlylulled down at times during two and a half years more, when our Britisharmies fought with desperate sacrificial valor beyond all previousreckoning; when the flower of our youth was cast into that furnace monthafter month, recklessly, with prodigal, spendthrift haste; whenthose boys were mown down in swaths by machine-guns, blown to bitsby shell-fire, gassed in thousands, until all that country becamea graveyard; when they went forward to new assaults or fell back inrearguard actions with a certain knowledge that they had in their firstattack no more than one chance in five of escape, next time one chancein four, then one chance in three, one chance in two, and after thatno chance at all, on the line of averages, as worked out by theirexperience of luck. More boys came out to take their places, and more, and more, conscripts following volunteers, younger brothers followingelder brothers. Never did they revolt from the orders that came to them. Never a battalion broke into mutiny against inevitable martyrdom. Theywere obedient to the command above them. Their discipline did not break. However profound was the despair of the individual, and it was, I know, deep as the wells of human tragedy in many hearts, the mass moved as itwas directed, backward or forward, this way and that, from one shamblesto another, in mud and in blood, with the same massed valor as thatwhich uplifted them before that first day of July with an intensifiedpride in the fame of their divisions, with a more eager desire forpublic knowledge of their deeds, with a loathing of war's misery, witha sense of its supreme folly, yet with a refusal in their souls toacknowledge defeat or to stop this side of victory. In each battle therewere officers and men who risked death deliberately, and in a kind ofecstasy did acts of superhuman courage; and because of the number ofthese feats the record of them is monotonous, dull, familiar. The massfollowed their lead, and even poor coward-hearts, of whom there weremany, as in all armies, had courage enough, as a rule, to get as far asthe center of the fury before their knees gave way or they dropped dead. 

Each wave of boyhood that came out from England brought a new mass ofphysical and spiritual valor as great as that which was spent, and inthe end it was an irresistible tide which broke down the last barriersand swept through in a rush to victory, which we gained at the costof nearly a million dead, and a high sum of living agony, and all ourwealth, and a spiritual bankruptcy worse than material loss, so thatnow England is for a time sick to death and drained of her old pride andpower. 

VI

I remember, as though it were yesterday in vividness and a hundred yearsago in time, the bombardment which preceded the battles of the Somme. With a group of officers I stood on the high ground above Albert, looking over to Gommecourt and Thiepval and La Boisselle, on the leftside of the German salient, and then, by crossing the road, to Fricourt, Mametz, and Montauban on the southern side. From Albert westward pastThiepval Wood ran the little river of the Ancre, and on the German sidethe ground rose steeply to Usna Hill by La Boisselle, and to ThiepvalChateau above the wood. It was a formidable defensive position, onefortress girdled by line after line of trenches, and earthwork redoubts, and deep tunnels, and dugouts in which the German troops could livebelow ground until the moment of attack. The length of our front ofassault was about twenty miles round the side of the salient to thevillage of Bray, on the Somme, where the French joined us and continuedthe battle. 

From where we stood we could see a wide panorama of the Germanpositions, and beyond, now and then, when the smoke of shellfiredrifted, I caught glimpses of green fields and flower patches beyond thetrench lines, and church spires beyond the range of guns rising aboveclumps of trees in summer foliage. Immediately below, in the foreground, was the village of Albert, not much ruined then, with its red-brickchurch and tower from which there hung, head downward, the Golden Virginwith her Babe outstretched as though as a peace-offering over all thisstrife. That leaning statue, which I had often passed on the way to thetrenches, was now revealed brightly with a golden glamour, as sheets offlame burst through a heavy veil of smoke over the valley. In a fieldclose by some troops were being ticketed with yellow labels fastenedto their backs. It was to distinguish them so that artillery observersmight know them from the enemy when their turn came to go into thebattleground. Something in the sight of those yellow tickets made mefeel sick. Away behind, a French farmer was cutting his grass with along scythe, in steady, sweeping strokes. Only now and then did he standto look over at the most frightful picture of battle ever seen untilthen by human eyes. I wondered, and wonder still, what thoughts werepassing through that old brain to keep him at his work, quietly, steadily, on the edge of hell. For there, quite close and clear, washell, of man's making, produced by chemists and scientists, aftercenturies in search of knowledge. There were the fires of hate, producedout of the passion of humanity after a thousand years of Christendom andof progress in the arts of beauty. There was the devil-worship of ourpoor, damned human race, where the most civilized nations of the worldwere on each side of the bonfires. It was worth watching by a human ant. 

I remember the noise of our guns as all our batteries took their partsin a vast orchestra of drumfire. The tumult of the fieldguns merged intothunderous waves. Behind me a fifteen-inch "Grandmother" fired singlestrokes, and each one was an enormous shock. Shells were rushing throughthe air like droves of giant birds with beating wings and with strangewailings. The German lines were in eruption. Their earthworks were beingtossed up, and fountains of earth sprang up between columns of smoke, black columns and white, which stood rigid for a few seconds and thensank into the banks of fog. Flames gushed up red and angry, rendingthose banks of mist with strokes of lightning. In their light I sawtrees falling, branches tossed like twigs, black things hurtling throughspace. In the night before the battle, when that bombardment had lastedseveral days and nights, the fury was intensified. Red flames dartedhither and thither like little red devils as our trench mortars got towork. Above the slogging of the guns there were louder, earth-shakingnoises, and volcanoes of earth and fire spouted as high as the clouds. One convulsion of this kind happened above Usna Hill, with a long, terrifying roar and a monstrous gush of flame. 

"What is that?" asked some one. 

"It must be the mine we charged at La Boisselle. The biggest that hasever been. "

It was a good guess. When, later in the battle, I stood by the crater ofthat mine and looked into its gulf I wondered how many Germans had beenhurled into eternity when the earth had opened. The grave was big enoughfor a battalion of men with horses and wagons, below the chalk of thecrater's lips. Often on the way to Bapaume I stepped off the road tolook into that white gulf, remembering the moment when I saw the gust offlame that rent the earth about it. 

VII

There was the illusion of victory on that first day of the Sommebattles, on the right of the line by Fricourt, and it was not until aday or two later that certain awful rumors I had heard from wounded menand officers who had attacked on the left up by Gommecourt, Thiepval, and Serre were confirmed by certain knowledge of tragic disaster on thatside of the battle-line. 

The illusion of victory, with all the price and pain of it, came to mewhen I saw the German rockets rising beyond the villages of Mametz andMontauban and our barrage fire lifting to a range beyond the first linesof German trenches, and our support troops moving forward in masses tocaptured ground. We had broken through! By the heroic assault of ourEnglish and Scottish troops. West Yorks, Yorks and Lancs, Lincolns, Durhams, Northumberland Fusiliers, Norfolks and Berkshires, Liverpools, Manchesters, Gordons, and Royal Scots, all those splendid men I hadseen marching to their lines. We had smashed through the ramparts of theGerman fortress, through that maze of earthworks and tunnels which hadappalled me when I saw them on the maps, and over which I had gazedfrom time to time from our front-line trenches when those places seemedimpregnable. I saw crowds of prisoners coming back under escort, fifteenhundred had been counted in the first day, and they had the look of adefeated army. Our lightly wounded men, thousands of them, were shoutingand laughing as they came down behind the lines, wearing German caps andhelmets. From Amiens civilians straggled out along the roads as far asthey were allowed by military police, and waved hands and cheered thoseboys of ours. "Vive l'Angleterre!" cried old men, raising their hats. Old women wept at the sight of those gay wounded, the lightly touched, glad of escape, rejoicing in their luck and in the glory of life whichwas theirs still and cried out to them with shrill words of praise andexultation. 

"Nous les aurons les sales Boches! Ah, ils sont foutus, ces bandits!C'est la victoire, grace a vous, petits soldats anglais!"

Victory! The spirit of victory in the hearts of fighting men, and ofwomen excited by the sight of those bandaged heads, those bare, brawnyarms splashed with blood, those laughing heroes. 

It looked like victory, in those days, as war correspondents, we werenot so expert in balancing the profit and loss as afterward we became. When I went into Fricourt on the third day of battle, after the lastGermans, who had clung on to its ruins, had been cleared out by theYorkshires and Lincolns of the 21st Division, that division which hadbeen so humiliated at Loos and now was wonderful in courage, and whenthe Manchesters and Gordons of the 30th Division had captured Montaubanand repulsed fierce counter-attacks. 

It looked like victory, because of the German dead that lay there intheir battered trenches and the filth and stench of death over all thatmangled ground, and the enormous destruction wrought by our guns, andthe fury of fire which we were still pouring over the enemy's lines frombatteries which had moved forward. 

I went down flights of steps into German dugouts, astonished by theirdepth and strength. Our men did not build like this. This Germanindustry was a rebuke to us, yet we had captured their work and thedead bodies of their laborers lay in those dark caverns, killed by ourbombers, who had flung down handgrenades. I drew back from those fatcorpses. They looked monstrous, lying there crumpled up, amid a foullitter of clothes, stickbombs, old boots, and bottles. Groups of deadlay in ditches which had once been trenches, flung into chaos by thatbombardment I had seen. They had been bayoneted. I remember one man, anelderly fellow sitting up with his back to a bit of earth with his handshalf raised. He was smiling a little, though he had been stabbed throughthe belly and was stone dead. Victory! some of the German dead wereyoung boys, too young to be killed for old men's crimes, and othersmight have been old or young. One could not tell, because they had nofaces, and were just masses of raw flesh in rags and uniforms. Legs andarms lay separate, without any bodies thereabouts. 

Outside Montauban there was a heap of our own dead. Young Gordons andManchesters of the 30th Division, they had been caught by blasts ofmachinegun fire, but our dead seemed scarce in the places where Iwalked. 

Victory? Well, we had gained some ground, and many prisoners, and hereand there some guns. But as I stood by Montauban I saw that our linewas a sharp salient looped round Mametz village and then dipping sharplysouthward to Fricourt. O God! had we only made another salient after allthat monstrous effort? To the left there was fury at La Boisselle, wherea few broken trees stood black on the skyline on a chalky ridge. Stormsof German shrapnel were bursting there, and machineguns were firing inspasms. In Contalmaison, round a chateau which stood high above ruinedhouses, shells were bursting with thunderclaps, our shells. Germangunners in invisible batteries were sweeping our lines with barragefire, it roamed up and down this side of Montauban Wood, just aheadof me, and now and then shells smashed among the houses and barns ofFricourt, and over Mametz there was suddenly a hurricane of "hate. " Ourmen were working like ants in those muck heaps, a battalion moved uptoward Boisselle. From a ridge above Fricourt, where once I had seen atall crucifix between two trees, which our men called the "Poodles, " abody of men came down and shrapnel burst among them and they felland disappeared in tall grass. Stretcher bearers came slowly throughFricourt village with living burdens. Some of them were German soldierscarrying our wounded and their own. Walking wounded hobbled slowly withtheir arms round each other's shoulders, Germans and English together. A boy in a steel hat stopped me and held up a bloody hand. "A bit ofluck!" he said. "I'm off, after eighteen months of it. "

German prisoners came down with a few English soldiers as their escort. I saw distant groups of them, and a shell smashed into one group andscattered it. The living ran, leaving their dead. Ambulances driven bydaring fellows drove to the far edge of Fricourt, not a healthy place, and loaded up with wounded from a dressing station in a tunnel there. 

It was a wonderful picture of war in all its filth and shambles. But wasit Victory? I knew then that it was only a breach in the German bastion, and that on the left, Gommecourt way, there had been black tragedy. 

VIII

On the left, where the 8th and 10th Corps were directing operations, theassault had been delivered by the 4th, 29th, 36th, 49th, 32nd, 8th, and56th Divisions. 

The positions in front of them were Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel on theleft side of the River Ancre, and Thiepval Wood on the right side of theAncre leading up to Thiepval Chateau on the crest of the cliff. Thesewere the hardest positions to attack, because of the rising ground andthe immense strength of the enemy's earthworks and tunneled defenses. But our generals were confident that the gun power at their disposalwas sufficient to smash down that defensive system and make an easy waythrough for the infantry. They were wrong. In spite of that tornadoof shell-fire which I had seen tearing up the earth, many tunnels werestill unbroken, and out of them came masses of German machine-gunnersand riflemen, when our infantry rose from their own trenches on thatmorning of July 1st. 

Our guns had shifted their barrage forward at that moment, farther aheadof the infantry than was afterward allowed, the men being trained tofollow close to the lines of bursting shells, trained to expect a numberof casualties from their own guns--it needs some training--in order tosecure the general safety gained by keeping the enemy below ground untilour bayonets were round his dugouts. 

The Germans had been trained, too, to an act of amazing courage. Theirdiscipline, that immense power of discipline which dominates men in themass, was strong enough to make them obey the order to rush through thatbarrage of ours, that advancing wall of explosion and, if they livedthrough it, to face our men in the open with massed machine-gun fire. Sothey did; and as English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh battalions of ourassaulting divisions trudged forward over what had been No Man's Land, machine-gun bullets sprayed upon them, and they fell like grass to thescythe. Line after line of men followed them, and each line crumpled, and only small groups and single figures, seeking comradeship, hurriedforward. German machine-gunners were bayoneted as their thumbs werestill pressed to their triggers. In German front-line trenches at thebottom of Thiepval Wood, outside Beaumont Hamel and on the edge ofGommecourt Park, the field-gray men who came out of their dugouts foughtfiercely with stick-bombs and rifles, and our officers and men, inplaces where they had strength enough, clubbed them to death, stuck themwith bayonets, and blew their brains out with revolvers at short range. Then those English and Irish and Scottish troops, grievously weakbecause of all the dead and wounded behind them, struggled through tothe second German line, from which there came a still fiercer rattle ofmachine-gun and rifle-fire. Some of them broke through that line, too, and went ahead in isolated parties across the wild crater land, overchasms and ditches and fallen trees, toward the highest ground, whichhad been their goal. Nothing was seen of them. They disappeared intoclouds of smoke and flame. Gunner observers saw rockets go up in farplaces--our rockets--showing that outposts had penetrated into theGerman lines. Runners came back--survivors of many predecessors who hadfallen on the way--with scribbled messages from company officers. Onecame from the Essex and King's Own of the 4th Division, at a placecalled Pendant Copse, southeast of Serre. "For God's sake send usbombs. " It was impossible to send them bombs. No men could get to themthrough the deep barrage of shell-fire which was between them and oursupporting troops. Many tried and died. 

The Ulster men went forward toward Beaumont Hamel with a grim valorwhich was reckless of their losses. Beaumont Hamel was a Germanfortress. Machine-gun fire raked every yard of the Ulster way. Hundredsof the Irish fell. I met hundreds of them wounded--tall, strong, powerful men, from Queen's Island and Belfast factories, and TynesideIrish and Tyneside Scots. 

"They gave us no chance, " said one of them--a sergeant-major. "They justmurdered us. "

But bunches of them went right into the heart of the German positions, and then found behind them crowds of Germans who had come up out oftheir tunnels and flung bombs at them. Only a few came back alive in thedarkness. 

Into Thiepval Wood men of ours smashed their way through the Germantrenches, not counting those who fell, and killing any German who stoodin their way. Inside that wood of dead trees and charred branches theyreformed, astonished at the fewness of their numbers. Germans coming upfrom holes in the earth attacked them, and they held firm and took twohundred prisoners. Other Germans came closing in like wolves, in packs, and to a German officer who said, "Surrender!" our men shouted, "Nosurrender!" and fought in Thiepval Wood until most were dead and only afew wounded crawled out to tell that tale. 

The Londoners of the 56th Division had no luck at all. Theirs was theworst luck because, by a desperate courage in assault, they did breakthrough the German lines at Gommecourt. Their left was held by theLondon Rifle Brigade. The Rangers and the Queen Victoria Rifles--theold "Vics "--formed their center. Their right was made up by the LondonScottish, and behind came the Queen's Westminsters and the Kensingtons, who were to advance through their comrades to a farther objective. Across a wide No Man's Land they suffered from the bursting of heavycrumps, and many fell. But they escaped annihilation by machine-gun fireand stormed through the upheaved earth into Gommecourt Park, killingmany Germans and sending back batches of prisoners. They had done whatthey had been asked to do, and started building up barricades of earthand sand-bags, and then found they were in a death-trap. There were notroops on their right or left. They had thrust out into a salient, whichpresently the enemy saw. The German gunners, with deadly skill, boxed itround with shell-fire, so that the Londoners were inclosed by explosivewalls, and then very slowly and carefully drew a line of bursting shellsup and down, up and down that captured ground, ravaging its earth anewand smashing the life that crouched there--London life. 

I have written elsewhere (in The Battles of the Somme) how youngofficers and small bodies of these London men held the barricadesagainst German attacks while others tried to break a way back throughthat murderous shell-fire, and how groups of lads who set out on thatadventure to their old lines were shattered so that only a few from eachgroup crawled back alive, wounded or unwounded. 

At the end of the day the Germans acted with chivalry, which I was notallowed to tell at the time. The general of the London Division (PhilipHowell) told me that the enemy sent over a message by a low-flyingairplane, proposing a truce while the stretcher-bearers worked, andoffering the service of their own men in that work of mercy. This offerwas accepted without reference to G. H. Q. , and German stretcher-bearershelped to carry our wounded to a point where they could be reached. 

Many, in spite of that, remained lying out in No Man's Land, some forthree or four days and nights. I met one man who lay out there wounded, with a group of comrades more badly hurt than he was, until July 6th. At night he crawled over to the bodies of the dead and took theirwater-bottles and "iron" rations, and so brought drink and food to hisstricken friends. Then at last he made his way through roving shellsto our lines and even then asked to lead the stretcher-bearers whovolunteered on a search-party for his "pals. "

"Physical courage was very common in the war, " said a friend of mine whosaw nothing of war. "It is proved that physical courage is the commonestquality of mankind, as moral courage is the rarest. " But that soldier'scourage was spiritual, and there were many like him in the battles ofthe Somme and in other later battles as tragic as those. 

IX

I have told how, before "The Big Push, " as we called the beginning ofthese battles, little towns of tents were built under the sign of theRed Cross. For a time they were inhabited only by medical officers, nurses, and orderlies, busily getting ready for a sudden invasion, and spending their surplus energy, which seemed inexhaustible, on thedecoration of their camps by chalk-lined paths, red crosses painted oncanvas or built up in red and white chalk on leveled earth, and flowersplanted outside the tents--all very pretty and picturesque in thesunshine and the breezes over the valley of the Somme. 

On the morning of battle the doctors, nurses, and orderlies waited fortheir patients and said, "Now we shan't be long!" They were merry andbright with that wonderful cheerfulness which enabled them to facethe tragedy of mangled manhood without horror, and almost, it seemed, without pity, because it was their work, and they were there to healwhat might be healed. It was with a rush that their first cases came, and the M. O. 's whistled and said, "Ye gods! how many more?" Many more. The tide did not slacken. It became a spate brought down by waves ofambulances. Three thousand wounded came to Daours on the Somme, threethousand to Corbie, thousands to Dernancourt, Heilly, Puchevillers, Toutencourt, and many other "clearing stations. "

At Daours the tents were filled to overflowing, until there was no moreroom. The wounded were laid down on the grass to wait their turn forthe surgeon's knife. Some of them crawled over to haycocks and coveredthemselves with hay and went to sleep, as I saw them sleeping there, like dead men. Here and there shell-shocked boys sat weeping or moaning, and shaking with an ague. Most of the wounded were quiet and did notgive any groan or moan. The lightly wounded sat in groups, telling theiradventures, cursing the German machine-gunners. Young officers spoke ina different way, and with that sporting spirit which they had learned inpublic schools praised their enemy. 

"The machine-gunners are wonderful fellows--topping. Fight until they'rekilled. They gave us hell. "

Each man among those thousands of wounded had escaped death a dozentimes or more by the merest flukes of luck. It was this luck of theirswhich they hugged with a kind of laughing excitement. 

"It's a marvel I'm here! That shell burst all round me. Killed six ofmy pals. I've got through with a blighty wound. No bones broken. .. God!What luck!"

The death of other men did not grieve them. They could not waste thissense of luck in pity. The escape of their own individuality, thispossession of life, was a glorious thought. They were alive! What luck!What luck!

We called the hospital at Corbie the "Butcher's Shop. " It was in apretty spot in that little town with a big church whose tall whitetowers looked down a broad sweep of the Somme, so that for miles theywere a landmark behind the battlefields. Behind the lines during thosefirst battles, but later, in 1918, when the enemy came nearly to thegates of Amiens, a stronghold of the Australians, who garrisoned it andsniped pigeons for their pots off the top of the towers, and took nogreat notice of "whizz-bangs" which broke through the roofs of cottagesand barns. It was a safe, snug place in July of '16, but that Butcher'sShop at a corner of the square was not a pretty spot. After a visitthere I had to wipe cold sweat from my forehead, and found myselftrembling in a queer way. It was the medical officer--a colonel--whocalled it that name. "This is our Butcher's Shop, " he said, cheerily. "Come and have a look at my cases. They're the worst possible; stomachwounds, compound fractures, and all that. We lop off limbs here all daylong, and all night. You've no idea!"

I had no idea, but I did not wish to see its reality. The M. O. Could notunderstand my reluctance to see his show. He put it down to my desire tosave his time--and explained that he was going the rounds and would takeit as a favor if I would walk with him. I yielded weakly, and cursedmyself for not taking to flight. Yet, I argued, what men are braveenough to suffer I ought to have the courage to see. .. I saw andsickened. 

These were the victims of "Victory" and the red fruit of war'sharvest-fields. A new batch of "cases" had just arrived. More werebeing brought in on stretchers. They were laid down in rows on thefloor-boards. The colonel bent down to some of them and drew theirblankets back, and now and then felt a man's pulse. Most of them wereunconscious, breathing with the hard snuffle of dying men. Their skinwas already darkening to the death-tint, which is not white. They wereall plastered with a gray clay and this mud on their faces was, in somecases, mixed with thick clots of blood, making a hard incrustation fromscalp to chin. 

"That fellow won't last long, " said the M. O. , rising from a stretcher. "Hardly a heart-beat left in him. Sure to die on the operating-tableif he gets as far as that. .. Step back against the wall a minute, willyou?"

We flattened ourselves against the passage wall while ambulance-menbrought in a line of stretchers. No sound came from most of thosebundles under the blankets, but from one came a long, agonizing wail, the cry of an animal in torture. 

"Come through the wards, " said the colonel. "They're pretty bright, though we could do with more space and light. "

In one long, narrow room there were about thirty beds, and in each bedlay a young British soldier, or part of a young British soldier. Therewas not much left of one of them. Both his legs had been amputated tothe thigh, and both his arms to the shoulder-blades. 

"Remarkable man, that, " said the colonel. "Simply refuses to die. Hisvitality is so tremendous that it is putting up a terrific fight againstmortality. .. There's another case of the same kind; one leg gone andthe other going, and one arm. Deliberate refusal to give in. 'You'renot going to kill me, doctor, ' he said. 'I'm going to stick it through. 'What spirit, eh?"

I spoke to that man. He was quite conscious, with bright eyes. His rightleg was uncovered, and supported on a board hung from the ceiling. Itsflesh was like that of a chicken badly carved-white, flabby, and intatters. He thought I was a surgeon, and spoke to me pleadingly:

"I guess you can save that leg, sir. It's doing fine. I should hate tolose it. "

I murmured something about a chance for it, and the M. O. Broke incheerfully. 

"You won't lose it if I can help it. How's your pulse? Oh, not bad. Keepcheerful and we'll pull you through. " The man smiled gallantly. 

"Bound to come off, " said the doctor as we passed to another bed. "Gasgangrene. That's the thing that does us down. "

In bed after bed I saw men of ours, very young men, who had been loppedof limbs a few hours ago or a few minutes, some of them unconscious, some of them strangely and terribly conscious, with a look in their eyesas though staring at the death which sat near to them, and edged nearer. 

"Yes, " said the M. O. , "they look bad, some of 'em, but youth is ontheir side. I dare say seventy-five per cent. Will get through. If itwasn't for gas gangrene--"

He jerked his head to a boy sitting up in bed, smiling at the nurse whofelt his pulse. 

"Looks fairly fit after the knife, doesn't he? But we shall have to cuthigher up. The gas again. I'm afraid he'll be dead before to-morrow. Come into the operating-theater. It's very well equipped. "

I refused that invitation. I walked stiffly out of the Butcher's Shopof Corbie past the man who had lost both arms and both legs, that vitaltrunk, past rows of men lying under blankets, past a stench of mud andblood and anesthetics, to the fresh air of the gateway, where a columnof ambulances had just arrived with a new harvest from the fields of theSomme. 

"Come in again, any time!" shouted out the cheery colonel, waving hishand. 

I never went again, though I saw many other Butcher's Shops in the yearsthat followed, where there was a great carving of human flesh whichwas of our boyhood, while the old men directed their sacrifice, and theprofiteers grew rich, and the fires of hate were stoked up at patrioticbanquets and in editorial chairs. 

X

The failure on the left hardly balanced by the partial success on theright caused a sudden pause in the operations, camouflaged by smallattacks on minor positions around and above Fricourt and Mametz. TheLincolns and others went over to Fricourt Wood and routed out Germanmachine-gunners. The West Yorks attacked the sunken road at Fricourt. The Dorsets, Manchesters, Highland Light Infantry, Lancashire Fusiliers, and Borderers of the 32d Division were in possession of La Boisselle andclearing out communication trenches to which the Germans were hangingon with desperate valor. The 21st Division--Northumberland Fusiliers, Durhams, Yorkshires-were making a flanking attack on Contalmaison, but weakened after their heavy losses on the first day of battle. Thefighting for a time was local, in small copses--Lozenge Wood, PeakWood, Caterpillar Wood, Acid Drop Copse--where English and German troopsfought ferociously for yards of ground, hummocks of earth, ditches. 

G. H. Q. Had been shocked by the disaster on the left and the failure ofall the big hopes they had held for a break-through on both sides ofthe German positions. Rumors came to us that the Commander-in-Chief haddecided to restrict future operations to minor actions for strengtheningthe line and to abandon the great offensive. It was believed by officersI met that Sir Henry Rawlinson was arguing, persuading, in favor ofcontinued assaults on the grand scale. 

Whatever division of opinion existed in the High Command I do not know;it was visible to all of us that for some days there were uncertaintyof direction, hesitation, conflicting orders. On July 7th the 17thDivision, under General Pilcher, attacked Contalmaison, and a wholebattalion of the Prussian Guard hurried up from Valenciennes and, thrownon to the battlefield without maps or guidance, walked into the barragewhich covered the advance of our men and were almost annihilated. Butalthough some bodies of our men entered Contalmaison, in an attack whichI was able to see, they were smashed out of it again by storms of firefollowed by masses of men who poured out from Mametz Wood. The Welshwere attacking Mametz Wood. 

They were handled, as Marbot said of his men in a Napoleonic battle, "like turnips. " Battalion commanders received orders in direct conflictwith one another. Bodies of Welshmen were advanced, and then retired, and left to lie nakedly without cover, under dreadful fire. The 17thDivision, under General Pilcher, did not attack at the expected time. There was no co-ordination of divisions; no knowledge among battalionofficers of the strategy or tactics of a battle in which their men wereinvolved. 

"Goodness knows what's happening, " said an officer I met near Mametz. Hehad been waiting all night and half a day with a body of troops who hadexpected to go forward, and were still hanging about under harassingfire. 

On July 9th Contalmaison was taken. I saw that attack very clearly, soclearly that I could almost count the bricks in the old chateau set ina little wood, and saw the left-hand tower knocked off by the directhit of a fifteen-inch shell. At four o'clock in the afternoon our gunsconcentrated on the village, and under the cover of that fire our menadvanced on three sides of it, hemmed it in, and captured it with thegarrison of the 122d Bavarian Regiment, who had suffered the agonies ofhell inside its ruins. Now our men stayed in the ruins, and this timeGerman shells smashed into the chateau and the cottages and left nothingbut rubbish heaps of brick through which a few days later I went walkingwith the smell of death in my nostrils. Our men were now being shelledin that place. 

Beyond La Boisselle, on the left of the Albert-Bapaume road, there hadbeen a village called Ovillers. It was no longer there. Our guns hasremoved every trace of it, except as it lay in heaps of pounded brick. The Germans had a network of trenches about it, and in their ditches andtheir dugouts they fought like wolves. Our 12th Division was orderedto drive them out--a division of English county troops, including theSussex, Essex, Bedfords, and Middlesex--and those country boys of oursfought their way among communication trenches, burrowed into tunnels, crouched below hummocks of earth and brick, and with bombs and bayonetsand broken rifles, and boulders of stone, and German stick-bombs, andany weapon that would kill, gained yard by yard over the dead bodiesof the enemy, or by the capture of small batches of cornered men, until after seventeen days of this one hundred and forty men of the3rd Prussian Guard, the last of their garrison, without food or water, raised a signal of surrender, and came out with their hands up. Ovillerswas a shambles, in a fight of primitive earth-men like human beasts. Yetour men were not beast-like. They came out from those places--if theyhad the luck to come out--apparently unchanged, without any mark ofthe beast on them, and when they cleansed themselves of mud and filth, boiled the lice out of their shirts, and assembled in a village streetbehind the lines, they whistled, laughed, gossiped, as though nothinghad happened to their souls--though something had really happened, asnow we know. 

It was not until July 14th that our High Command ordered another generalattack after the local fighting which had been in progress since thefirst day of battle. Our field-batteries, and some of our "heavies, " hadmoved forward to places like Montauban and Contalmaison--where Germanshells came searching for them all day long--and new divisions had beenbrought up to relieve some of the men who had been fighting so hard andso long. It was to be an attack on the second German line of defense onthe ridges by the village of Bazentin le Grand and Bazentin le Petit toLongueval on the right and Delville Wood. I went up in the night to seethe bombardment and the beginning of the battle and the swirl of itsbackwash, and I remember now the darkness of villages behind thelines through which our cars crawled, until we reached the edge of thebattlefields and saw the sky rent by incessant flames of gun-fire, whilered tongues of flames leaped up from burning villages. Longueval wason fire, and the two Bazentins, and another belt of land in France, sobeautiful to see, even as I had seen it first between the sand-bags ofour parapets, was being delivered to the charcoal-burners. 

I have described that night scene elsewhere, in all its deviltry, butone picture which I passed on the way to the battlefield could not thenbe told. Yet it was significant of the mentality of our High Command, aswas afterward pointed out derisively by Sixte von Arnim. It proved thestrange unreasoning optimism which still lingered in the breasts ofold-fashioned generals in spite of what had happened on the left on thefirst day of July, and their study of trench maps, and their knowledgeof German machine-guns. By an old mill-house called the Moulin Vivier, outside the village of Meaulte, were masses of cavalry--Indian cavalryand Dragoons--drawn up densely to leave a narrow passageway forfield-guns and horse-transport moving through the village, which wasin utter darkness. The Indians sat like statues on their horses, motionless, dead silent. Now and again there was a jangle of bits. Hereand there a British soldier lit a cigarette and for a second the littleflame of his match revealed a bronzed face or glinted on steel helmets. 

Cavalry!. .. So even now there was a serious purpose behind the joke ofEnglish soldiers who had gone forward on the first day, shouting, "Thisway to the gap!" and in the conversation of some of those who actuallydid ride through Bazentin that day. 

A troop or two made their way over the cratered ground and skirtedDelville Wood; the Dragoon Guards charged a machine-gun in a cornfield, and killed the gunners. Germans rounded up by them clung to theirstirrup leathers crying: "Pity! Pity!" The Indians lowered their lances, but took prisoners to show their chivalry. But it was nothing more thana beau geste. It was as futile and absurd as Don Quixote's charge of thewindmill. They were brought to a dead halt by the nature of the groundand machine-gun fire which killed their horses, and lay out that nightwith German shells searching for their bodies. 

One of the most disappointed men in the army was on General Haldane'sstaff. He was an old cavalry officer, and this major of the old, oldschool (belonging in spirit to the time of Charles Lever) was excitedby the thought that there was to be a cavalry adventure. He was one ofthose who swore that if he had his chance he would "ride into the blue. "It was the chance he wanted and he nursed his way to it by delicateattentions to General Haldane. The general's bed was not so comfortableas his. He changed places. He even went so far as to put a bunch offlowers on the general's table in his dugout. 

"You seem very attentive to me, major, " said the general, smelling arat. 

Then the major blurted out his desire. Could he lead a squadron roundDelville Wood? Could he take that ride into the blue? He would give hissoul to do it. 

"Get on with your job, " said General Haldane. 

That ride into the blue did not encourage the cavalry to the beliefthat they would be of real value in a warfare of trench lines and barbedwire, but for a long time later they were kept moving backward andforward between the edge of the battlefields and the back areas, to thegreat incumbrance of the roads, until they were "guyed" by the infantry, and irritable, so their officers told me, to the verge of mutiny. Theirirritability was cured by dismounting them for a turn in the trenches, and I came across the Household Cavalry digging by the Coniston Steps, this side of Thiepval, and cursing their spade-work. 

In this book I will not tell again the narrative of that, fighting inthe summer and autumn of 1916, which I have written with many detailsof each day's scene in my collected despatches called The Battles ofthe Somme. There is little that I can add to those word-pictures whichI wrote day by day, after haunting experiences amid the ruin of thosefields, except a summing-up of their effect upon the mentality of ourmen, and upon the Germans who were in the same "blood-bath, " as theycalled it, and a closer analysis of the direction and mechanism of ourmilitary machine. 

Looking back upon those battles in the light of knowledge gained inthe years that followed, it seems clear that our High Command was tooprodigal in its expenditure of life in small sectional battles, and thatthe army corps and divisional staffs had not established an efficientsystem of communication with the fighting units under their control. Itseemed to an outsider like myself that a number of separate battles werebeing fought without reference to one another in different parts ofthe field. It seemed as though our generals, after conferring with oneanother over telephones, said, "All right, tell So-and-so to have ago at Thiepval, " or, "To-day we will send such-and-such a division tocapture Delville Wood, " or, "We must get that line of trenches outsideBazentin. " Orders were drawn up on the basis of that decision and passeddown to brigades, who read them as their sentence of death, and obeyedwith or without protest, and sent three or four battalions to assaulta place which was covered by German batteries round an arc of twentymiles, ready to open out a tempest of fire directly a rocket rose fromtheir infantry, and to tear up the woods and earth in that neighborhoodif our men gained ground. If the whole battle-line moved forward theGerman fire would have been dispersed, but in these separate attacks onplaces like Trones Wood and Delville Wood, and later on High Wood, itwas a vast concentration of explosives which plowed up our men. 

So it was that Delville Wood was captured and lost several times andbecame "Devil's" Wood to men who lay there under the crash and fury ofmassed gun-fire until a wretched remnant of what had been a gloriousbrigade of youth crawled out stricken and bleeding when relieved byanother brigade ordered to take their turn in that devil's caldron, or to recapture it when German bombing-parties and machine-gunners hadfollowed in the wake of fire, and had crouched again among the fallentrees, and in the shell-craters and ditches, with our dead and theirdead to keep them company. In Delville Wood the South African Brigadeof the 9th Division was cut to pieces, and I saw the survivors come outwith few officers to lead them. 

In Trones Wood, in Bernafay Wood, in Mametz Wood, there had been greatslaughter of English troops and Welsh. The 18th Division and the 38thsuffered horribly. In Delville Wood many battalions were slashed topieces before these South Africans. And after that came High Wood. . . All that was left of High Wood in the autumn of 1916 was a thin row ofbranchless trees, but in July and August there were still gladesunder heavy foliage, until the branches were lopped off and the leavesscattered by our incessant fire. It was an important position, vital forthe enemy's defense, and our attack on the right flank of the PozieresRidge, above Bazentin and Delville Wood, giving on the reverse slope afine observation of the enemy's lines above Martinpuich and Courcelletteaway to Bapaume. For that reason the Germans were ordered to hold it atall costs, and many German batteries had registered on it to blast ourmen out if they gained a foothold on our side of the slope or theirs. 

So High Wood became another hell, on a day of great battle--September14, 1916--when for the first time tanks were used, demoralizing theenemy in certain places, though they were too few in number to strikea paralyzing blow. The Londoners gained part of High Wood at frightfulcost and then were blown out of it. Other divisions followed them andfound the wood stuffed with machine-guns which they had to capturethrough hurricanes of bullets before they crouched in craters amid deadGermans and dead English, and then were blown out like the Londoners, under shell-fire, in which no human life could stay for long. 

The 7th Division was cut up there. The 33d Division lost six thousandmen in an advance against uncut wire in the wood, which they were toldwas already captured. 

Hundreds of men were vomiting from the effect of gas-shells, choking andblinded. Behind, the transport wagons and horses were smashed to bits. 

The divisional staffs were often ignorant of what was happening tothe fighting-men when the attack was launched. Light signals, rockets, heliographing, were of small avail through the dust--and smoke-clouds. Forward observing officers crouching behind parapets, as I often sawthem, and sometimes stood with them, watched fires burning, red rocketsand green, gusts of flame, and bursting shells, and were doubtful whatto make of it all. Telephone wires trailed across the ground for miles, were cut into short lengths by shrapnel and high explosive. Accidentshappened as part of the inevitable blunders of war. It was all a vasttangle and complexity of strife. 

On July 17th I stood in a tent by a staff-officer who was directing agroup of heavy guns supporting the 3d Division. He was tired, as Icould see by the black lines under his eyes and tightly drawn lips. On acamp-table in front of him, upon which he leaned his elbows, there was atelephone apparatus, and the little bell kept ringing as we talked. Nowand then a shell burst in the field outside the tent, and he raised hishead and said: "They keep crumping about here. Hope they won't tear thistent to ribbons. .. . That sounds like a gas-shell. "

Then he turned to the telephone again and listened to some voicespeaking. 

"Yes, I can hear you. Yes, go on. 'Our men seen leaving High Wood. ' Yes. 'Shelled by our artillery. ' Are you sure of that? I say, are you surethey were our men? Another message. Well, carry on. 'Men digging on roadfrom High Wood southeast to Longueval. ' Yes, I've got that. 'They areour men and not Boches. ' Oh, hell!. .. Get off the line. Get off theline, can't you?. .. 'Our men and not Boches. ' Yes, I have that. 'Heavilyshelled by our guns. '"

The staff-officer tapped on the table with a lead-pencil a tattoo, whilehis forehead puckered. Then he spoke into the telephone again. 

"Are you there, 'Heavies'?. .. Well, don't disturb those fellows for halfan hour. After that I will give you new orders. Try and confirm if theyare our men. "

He rang off and turned to me. 

"That's the trouble. Looks as if we had been pounding our own men likehell. Some damn fool reports 'Boches. ' Gives the reference number. Asksfor the 'Heavies'. Then some other fellow says: 'Not Boches. For God'ssake cease fire!' How is one to tell?"

I could not answer that question, but I hated the idea of our men sentforward to capture a road or a trench or a wood and then "pounded" byour guns. They had enough pounding from the enemy's guns. There seemed amissing link in the system somewhere. Probably it was quite inevitable. 

Over and over again the wounded swore to God that they had been shelledby our own guns. The Londoners said so from High Wood. The Australianssaid so from Mouquet Farm. The Scots said so from Longueval! They said:"Why the hell do we get murdered by British gunners? What's the good offighting if we're slaughtered by our own side?"

In some cases they were mistaken. It was enfilade fire from Germanbatteries. But often it happened according to the way of that telephoneconversation in the tent by Bronfay Farm. 

The difference between British soldiers and German soldiers crawlingover shell-craters or crouching below the banks of a sunken road was nomore than the difference between two tribes of ants. Our flying scouts, however low they flew, risking the Archies and machine-gun bullets, often mistook khaki for field gray, and came back with false reportswhich led to tragedy. 

XI

People who read my war despatches will remember my first descriptions ofthe tanks and those of other correspondents. They caused a sensation, a sense of excitement, laughter which shook the nation because of thecomicality, the grotesque surprise, the possibility of quicker victory, which caught hold of the imagination of people who heard for the firsttime of those new engines of war, so beast-like in appearanceand performance. The vagueness of our descriptions was due to thecensorship, which forbade, wisely enough, any technical and exactdefinition, so that we had to compare them to giant toads, mammoths, andprehistoric animals of all kinds. Our accounts did, however, reproducethe psychological effect of the tanks upon the British troops whenthese engines appeared for the first time to their astonished gaze onSeptember 13th. Our soldiers roared with laughter, as I did, when theysaw them lolloping up the roads. On the morning of the great battle ofSeptember 15th the presence of the tanks going into action excited allthe troops along the front with a sense of comical relief in the midstof the grim and deadly business of attack. Men followed them, laughingand cheering. There was a wonderful thrill in the airman's message, "Tank walking up the High Street of Flers with the British army cheeringbehind. " Wounded boys whom I met that morning grinned in spite of theirwounds at our first word about the tanks. "Crikey!" said a cockney ladof the 47th Division. "I can't help laughing every time I think of themtanks. I saw them stamping down German machine-guns as though they werewasps' nests. " The adventures of Creme de Menthe, Cordon Rouge, and theByng Boys, on both sides of the Bapaume road, when they smashed downbarbed wire, climbed over trenches, sat on German redoubts, and receivedthe surrender of German prisoners who held their hands up to thesemonsters and cried, "Kamerad!" were like fairy-tales of war by H. G. Wells. 

Yet their romance had a sharp edge of reality as I saw in those battlesof the Somme, and afterward, more grievously, in the Cambrai salientand Flanders, when the tanks were put out of action by direct hits offield-guns and nothing of humankind remained in them but the charredbones of their gallant crews. 

Before the battle in September of '16 I talked with the pilots of thefirst tanks, and although they were convinced of the value of these newengines of war and were out to prove it, they did not disguise fromme nor from their own souls that they were going forth upon a perilousadventure with the odds of luck against them. I remember one youngpilot--a tiny fellow like a jockey, who took me on one side and said, "Iwant you to do me a favor, " and then scribbled down his mother's addressand asked me to write to her if "anything" happened to him. 

He and other tank officers were anxious. They had not completeconfidence in the steering and control of their engines. It was adifficult and clumsy kind of gear, which was apt to break down at acritical moment, as I saw when I rode in one on their field of maneuver. These first tanks were only experimental, and the tail arrangement wasvery weak. Worse than all mechanical troubles was the short-sightedpolicy of some authority at G. H. Q. , who had insisted upon A. S. C. Driversbeing put to this job a few days before the battle, without propertraining. 

"It is mad and murderous, " said one of the officers, "These fellowsmay have pluck, all right--I don't doubt it--but they don't know theirengines, nor the double steering trick, and they have never been undershell-fire. It is asking for trouble. "

As it turned out, the A. S. C. Drivers proved their pluck, for the mostpart, splendidly, but many tanks broke down before they reached theenemy's lines, and in that action and later battles there were timeswhen they bitterly disappointed the infantry commanders and the troops. 

Individual tanks, commanded by gallant young officers and served bybrave crews, did astounding feats, and some of these men came back dazedand deaf and dumb, after forty hours or more of fighting and maneuveringwithin steel walls, intensely hot, filled with the fumes of theirengines, jolted and banged about over rough ground, and steering anuncertain course, after the loss of their "tails, " which had snapped atthe spine. But there had not been anything like enough tanks to securean annihilating surprise over the enemy as afterward was attained in thefirst battle of Cambrai; and the troops who had been buoyed up with thehope that at last the machine--gun evil was going to be scotched weredisillusioned and dejected when they saw tanks ditched behind the linesor nowhere in sight when once again they had to trudge forward under theflail of machine-gun bullets from earthwork redoubts. It was afailure in generalship to give away our secret before it could be madeeffective. 

I remember sitting in a mess of the Gordons in the village ofFranvillers along the Albert road, and listening to a long monologueby a Gordon officer on the future of the tanks. He was a dreamer andvisionary, and his fellow-officers laughed at him. 

"A few tanks are no good, " he said. "Forty or fifty tanks are no good ona modern battle-front. We want hundreds of tanks, brought up secretly, fed with ammunition by tank carriers, bringing up field-guns and goinginto action without any preliminary barrage. They can smash through theenemy's wire and get over his trenches before he is aware that anattack has been organized. Up to now all our offensives have been futilebecause of our preliminary advertisement by prolonged bombardment. The tanks can bring back surprise to modern warfare, but we must havehundreds of them. "

Prolonged laughter greeted this speech. But the Celtic dreamer didnot smile. He was staring into the future. .. And what he saw was true, though he did not live to see it, for in the Cambrai battle of November11th the tanks did advance in hundreds, and gained an enormous surpriseover the enemy, and led the way to a striking victory, which turned totragedy because of risks too lightly taken. 

XII

One branch of our military machine developed with astonishing rapidityand skill during those Somme battles. The young gentlemen of the AirForce went "all out" for victory, and were reckless in audacity. Howfar they acted under orders and against their own judgment of what wassensible and sound in fighting-risks I do not know. General Trenchard, their supreme chief, believed in an aggressive policy at all costs, andwas a Napoleon in this war of the skies, intolerant of timidity, notsqueamish of heavy losses if the balance were tipped against the enemy. Some young flying-men complained to me bitterly that they were expectedto fly or die over the German lines, whatever the weather or whateverthe risks. Many of them, after repeated escapes from anti-aircraftshells and hostile craft, lost their nerve, shirked another journey, found themselves crying in their tents, and were sent back home fora spell by squadron commanders, with quick observation for thebreaking-point; or made a few more flights and fell to earth like brokenbirds. 

Sooner or later, apart from rare cases, every man was found to lose hisnerve, unless he lost his life first. That was a physical and mentallaw. But until that time these flying-men were the knights-errant of thewar, and most of them did not need any driving to the risks they tookwith boyish recklessness. 

They were mostly boys--babes, as they seemed to me, when I saw themin their tents or dismounting from their machines. On "dud" days, when there was no visibility at all, they spent their leisure hoursjoy-riding to Amiens or some other town where they could have a "binge. "They drank many cocktails and roared with laughter over, bottles ofcheap champagne, and flirted with any girl who happened to come withintheir orbit. If not allowed beyond their tents, they sulked like babyAchilles, reading novelettes, with their knees hunched up, playing thegramophone, and ragging each other. 

There was one child so young that his squadron leader would not lethim go out across the battle-lines to challenge any German scout in theclouds or do any of the fancy "stunts" that were part of the nextday's program. He went to bed sulkily, and then came back again, in hispajamas, with rumpled hair. 

"Look here, sir, " he said. "Can't I go? I've got my wings. It'sperfectly rotten being left behind. "

The squadron commander, who told me of the tale, yielded. 

"All right. Only don't do any fool tricks. "

Next morning the boy flew off, played a lone hand, chased a Germanscout, dropped low over the enemy's lines, machine-gunned infantry onthe march, scattered them, bombed a train, chased a German motor-car, and after many adventures came back alive and said, "I've had a rare oldtime!"

On a stormy day, which loosened the tent poles and slapped the wetcanvas, I sat in a mess with a group of flying-officers, drinking teaout of a tin mug. One boy, the youngest of them, had just brought downhis first "Hun. " He told me the tale of it with many details, his eyesalight as he described the fight. They had maneuvered round each otherfor a long time. Then he shot his man en passant. The machine crashed onour side of the lines. He had taken off the iron crosses on the wings, and a bit of the propeller, as mementoes. He showed me these things(while the squadron commander, who had brought down twenty-four Germans, winked at me) and told me he was going to send them home to hang besidehis college trophies. .. I guessed he was less than nineteen years old. Such a kid!. .. A few days later, when I went to the tent again, Iasked about him. "How's that boy who brought down his first 'Hun'?" Thesquadron commander said:

"Didn't you hear? He's gone west. Brought down in a dog-fight. He had achance of escape, but went back to rescue a pal. .. A nice boy. "

They became fatalists after a few fights, and believed in their luck, ortheir mascots--teddy-bears, a bullet that had missed them, china dolls, a girl's lock of hair, a silver ring. Yet at the back of their brains, most Of them, I fancy, knew that it was only a question of time beforethey "went west, " and with that subconscious thought they crowded in alllife intensely in the hours that were given to them, seized all chanceof laughter, of wine, of every kind of pleasure within reach, and saidtheir prayers (some of them) with great fervor, between one escape andanother, like young Paul Bensher, who has revealed his soul in verse, his secret terror, his tears, his hatred of death, his love of life, when he went bombing over Bruges. 

On the mornings of the battles of the Somme I saw them as the heralds ofa new day of strife flying toward the lines in the first light of dawn. When the sun rose its rays touched their wings, made them white likecabbage butterflies, or changed them to silver, all a sparkle. I sawthem fly over the German positions, not changing their course. Then allabout them burst black puffs of German shrapnel, so that many timesI held my breath because they seemed in the center of the burst. Butgenerally when the cloud cleared they were flying again, until theydisappeared in the mists over the enemy's country. There they did deadlywork, in single fights with German airmen, or against great odds, until they had an air space to themselves and skimmed the earth likealbatrosses in low flight, attacking machine-gun nests, killing orscattering the gunners by a burst of bullets from their Lewis guns, dropping bombs on German wagon transports, infantry, railway trains(one man cut a train in half and saw men and horses falling out), andammunition--dumps, directing the fire of our guns upon living targets, photographing new trenches and works, bombing villages crowded withGerman troops. That they struck terror into these German troops wasproved afterward when we went into Bapaume and Peronne and manyvillages from which the enemy retreated after the battles of the Somme. Everywhere there were signboards on which was written "Flieger Schutz!"(aircraft shelter) or German warnings of: "Keep to the sidewalks. Thisroad is constantly bombed by British airmen. "

They were a new plague of war, and did for a time gain a completemastery of the air. But later the Germans learned the lesson of lowflying and night bombing, and in 1917 and 1918 came back in greaterstrength and made the nights horrible in camps behind the lines and invillages, where they killed many soldiers and more civilians. 

The infantry did not believe much in our air supremacy at any time, notknowing what work was done beyond their range of vision, and seeingour machines crashed in No Man's Land, and hearing the rattle ofmachine-guns from hostile aircraft above their own trenches. 

"Those aviators of ours, " a general said to me, "are the biggest liarsin the world. Cocky fellows claiming impossible achievements. What proofcan they give of their preposterous tales? They only go into the airservice because they haven't the pluck to serve in the infantry. "

That was prejudice. The German losses were proof enough of our men'sfighting skill and strength, and German prisoners and German lettersconfirmed all their claims. But we were dishonest in our reckoning fromfirst to last, and the British public was hoodwinked about our losses. "Three of our machines are missing. " "Six of our machines are missing. "Yes, but what about the machines which crashed in No Man's Land andbehind our lines? They were not missing, but destroyed, and the boys whohad flown in them were dead or broken. 

To the end of the war those aviators of ours searched the air for theiradventures, fought often against overwhelming numbers, killed the Germanchampions in single combat or in tourneys in the sky, and let down tonsof high explosives which caused great death and widespread destruction;and in this work they died like flies, and one boy's life--one of thoselaughing, fatalistic, intensely living boys--was of no more account inthe general sum of slaughter than a summer midge, except as one littleunit in the Armies of the Air. 

XIII

I am not strong enough in the science of psychology to understand theorigin of laughter and to get into touch with the mainsprings of gaiety. The sharp contrast between normal ethics and an abnormality of actionprovides a grotesque point of view arousing ironical mirth. It isprobable also that surroundings of enormous tragedy stimulate the senseof humor of the individual, so that any small, ridiculous thing assumesthe proportion of monstrous absurdity. It is also likely--certain, Ithink--that laughter is an escape from terror, a liberation of the soulby mental explosion, from the prison walls of despair and brooding. In the Decameron of Boccaccio a group of men and women encompassed byplague retired into seclusion to tell one another mirthful immoralitieswhich stirred their laughter. They laughed while the plague destroyedsociety around them and when they knew that its foul germs were onthe prowl for their own bodies. .. So it was in this war, where in manystrange places and in many dreadful days there was great laughter. Ithink sometimes of a night I spent with the medical officers of a tenthospital in the fields of the Somme during those battles. With me as aguest went a modern Falstaff, a "ton of flesh, " who "sweats to death andlards the lean earth as he walks along. "

He was a man of many anecdotes, drawn from the sinks and stews of life, yet with a sense of beauty lurking under his coarseness, and a voice offine, sonorous tone, which he managed with art and a melting grace. 

On the way to the field hospital he had taken more than one nip ofwhisky. His voice was well oiled when he sang a greeting to a medicalmajor in a florid burst of melody from Italian opera. The major was alittle Irish medico who had been through the South African War and intropical places, where he had drunk fire-water to kill all manner ofmicrobes. He suffered abominably from asthma and had had a heart-seizurethe day before our dinner at his mess, and told us that he would dropdown dead as sure as fate between one operation and another on "thepoor, bloody wounded" who never ceased to flow into his tent. But he wasin a laughing mood, and thirsty for laughter-making liquid. He had twowhiskies before the dinner began to wet his whistle. His fellow-officerswere out for an evening's joy, but nervous of the colonel, an austeresoul who sat at the head of the mess with the look of a man afraid thatmerriment might reach outrageous heights beyond his control. A courteousman he was, and rather sad. His presence for a time acted as a restraintupon the company, until all restraint was broken by the Falstaff withme, who told soul-crashing stories to the little Irish major across thetable and sang love lyrics to the orderly who brought round the cottagepie and pickles. There was a tall, thin young surgeon who had beencarving up living bodies all day and many days, and now listened to thatfat rogue with an intensity of delight that lit up his melancholy eyes, watching him gravely between gusts of deep laughter, which seemed tocome from his boots. There was another young surgeon, once of Barts', who made himself the cup-server of the fat knight and kept his wine atthe brim, and encouraged him to fresh audacities of anecdotry, witha humorous glance at the colonel's troubled face. .. The colonel wasforgotten after dinner. The little Irish major took the lid off theboiling pot of mirth. He was entirely mad, as he assured us, betweendances of a wild and primitive type, stories of adventure in far lands, and spasms of asthmatic coughing, when he beat his breast and said, "Apox in my bleeding heart!"

Falstaff was playing Juliet to the Romeo of the tall young surgeon, singing falsetto like a fat German angel dressed in loose-fitting khaki, with his belt undone. There were charades in the tent. The boy fromBarts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a rival bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing his troops(most comical of all). Several glasses were broken. The corkscrew wasdisregarded as a useless implement, and whisky-bottles were decapitatedagainst the tent poles. I remember vaguely the crowning episode of theevening when the little major was dancing the Irish jig with a kitchenchair; when Falstaff was singing the Prologue of Pagliacci to thestupefied colonel; when the boy, once of Barts', was roaring like a lionunder the mess table, and when the tall, melancholy surgeon was at thetop of the tent pole, scratching himself like a gorilla in his nativehaunts. .. Outside, the field hospital was quiet, under a fleecy skywith a crescent moon. Through the painted canvas of the tent citycandle-light glowed with a faint rose-colored light, and the Red Crosshung limp above the camp where many wounded lay, waking or sleeping, tossing in agony, dying in unconsciousness. Far away over the fields, rockets were rising above the battle-lines. The sky was flickering withthe flush of gun-fire. A red glare rose and spread below the cloudswhere some ammunition-dump had been exploded. .. Old Falstaff fell asleepin the car on the way back to our quarters, and I smiled at the memoryof great laughter in the midst of tragedy. 

XIV

The struggle of men from one low ridge to another low ridge in aterritory forty miles wide by more than twenty miles deep, during fivemonths of fighting, was enormous in its intensity and prolongation ofslaughter, wounding, and endurance of all hardships and terrors of war. As an eye-witness I saw the full scope of the bloody drama. I saw day byday the tidal waves of wounded limping back, until two hundred and fiftythousand men had passed through our casualty clearing stations, andthen were not finished. I went among these men when the blood was weton them, and talked with hundreds of them, and heard their individualnarratives of escapes from death until my imagination was saturatedwith the spirit of their conflict of body and soul. I saw a green, downycountryside, beautiful in its summer life, ravaged by gun-fire so thatthe white chalk of its subsoil was flung above the earth and grass in awide, sterile stretch of desolation pitted with shell-craters, ditchedby deep trenches, whose walls were hideously upheaved by explosive fire, and littered yard after yard, mile after mile, with broken wire, rifles, bombs, unexploded shells, rags of uniform, dead bodies, or bits ofbodies, and all the filth of battle. I saw many villages flung into ruinor blown clean off the map. I walked into such villages as Contalmaison, Martinpuich, Le Sars, Thilloy, and at last Bapaume, when a smell ofburning and the fumes of explosives and the stench of dead flesh rose upto one's nostrils and one's very soul, when our dead and German dead layabout, and newly wounded came walking through the ruins or were carriedshoulder high on stretchers, and consciously and subconsciously theliving, unwounded men who went through these places knew that deathlurked about them and around them and above them, and at any secondmight make its pounce upon their own flesh. I saw our men going intobattle with strong battalions and coming out of it with weak battalions. I saw them in the midst of battle at Thiepval, at Contalmaison, atGuillemont, by Loupart Wood, when they trudged toward lines of Germantrenches, bunching a little in groups, dodging shell-bursts, falling insingle figures or in batches, and fighting over the enemy's parapets. Isat with them in their dugouts before battle and after battle, saw theirbodies gathered up for burial, heard their snuffle of death in hospital, sat by their bedside when they were sorely wounded. So the full tragicdrama of that long conflict on the Somme was burned into my brain andI was, as it were, a part of it, and I am still seared with itsremembrance, and shall always be. 

But however deep the knowledge of tragedy, a man would be a liar if herefused to admit the heroism, the gallantry of youth, even the gaiety ofmen in these infernal months. Psychology on the Somme was not simpleand straightforward. Men were afraid, but fear was not their dominatingemotion, except in the worst hours. Men hated this fighting, but foundexcitement in it, often exultation, sometimes an intense stimulus ofall their senses and passions before reaction and exhaustion. Men becamejibbering idiots with shell-shock, as I saw some of them, but othersrejoiced when they saw our shells plowing into the enemy's earthworks, laughed at their own narrow escapes and at grotesque comicalities ofthis monstrous deviltry. The officers were proud of their men, eagerfor their honor and achievement. The men themselves were in rivalrywith other bodies of troops, and proud of their own prowess. They werescornful of all that the enemy might do to them, yet acknowledged hiscourage and power. They were quick to kill him, yet quick also to givehim a chance of life by surrender, and after that were--nine timesout of ten--chivalrous and kindly, but incredibly brutal on the rareoccasions when passion overcame them at some tale of treachery. They hadthe pride of the skilled laborer in his own craft, as machine-gunners, bombers, raiders, trench-mortar--men, and were keen to show their skill, whatever the risks. They were healthy animals, with animal courage aswell as animal fear, and they had, some of them, a spiritual and moralfervor which bade them risk death to save a comrade, or to save aposition, or to kill the fear that tried to fetter them, or to lead menwith greater fear than theirs. They lived from hour to hour and forgotthe peril or the misery that had passed, and did not forestall thefuture by apprehension unless they were of sensitive mind, with theworst quality men might have in modern warfare--imagination. 

They trained themselves to an intense egotism within narrow boundaries. Fifty yards to the left, or five hundred, men were being pounded todeath by shell-fire. Fifty yards to the right, or five hundred, menwere being mowed down by machine-gun fire. For the time being theirparticular patch was quiet. It was their luck. Why worry about the otherfellow? The length of a traverse in a ditch called a trench might makeall the difference between heaven and hell. Dead bodies were being piledup on one side of the traverse. A shell had smashed into the platoonnext door. There was a nasty mess. Men sat under their own mud-bank andscooped out a tin of bully beef and hoped nothing would scoop themout of their bit of earth. This protective egotism seemed to me theinstinctive soul-armor of men in dangerous places when I saw them in theline. In a little way, not as a soldier, but as a correspondent, takingonly a thousandth part of the risks of fighting-men, I found myselfusing this self-complacency. They were strafing on the left. Shells werepitching on the right. Very nasty for the men in either of those places. Poor devils! But meanwhile I was on a safe patch, it seemed. ThankHeaven for that!

"Here, " said an elderly officer--one of those rare exalted souls whothought that death was a little thing to give for one's country'ssake--"here we may be killed at any moment!"

He spoke the words in Contalmaison with a glow in his voice, as thoughannouncing glad tidings to a friend who was a war artist camouflaged asa lieutenant and new to the scene of battle. 

"But, " said the soldier-artist, adjusting his steel hat nervously, "Idon't want to be killed! I hate the idea of it!"

He was the normal man. The elderly officer was abnormal. The normal man, soldier without camouflage, had no use for death at all, unless it wasin connection with the fellow on the opposite side of the way. He hatedthe notion of it applied to himself. He fought ferociously, desperately, heroically, to escape it. Yet there were times, many times, when hepaid not the slightest attention to the near neighborhood of that grislyspecter, because in immediate, temporary tranquillity he thrust thethought from his mind, and smoked a cigarette, and exchanged a jokewith the fellow at his elbow. There were other times when, in a state ofmental exaltation, or spiritual self-sacrifice, or physical excitement, he acted regardless of all risks and did mad, marvelous, almostmiraculous things, hardly conscious of his own acts, but impelled to doas he did by the passion within him--passion of love, passion of hate, passion of fear, or passion of pride. Those men, moved like that, werethe leaders, the heroes, and groups followed them sometimes because oftheir intensity of purpose and the infection of their emotion, andthe comfort that came from their real or apparent self-confidence infrightful situations. Those who got through were astonished at theirown courage. Many of them became convinced consciously or subconsciouslythat they were immune from shells and bullets. They walked throughharassing fire with a queer sense of carelessness. They had escaped sooften that some of them had a kind of disdain of shell-bursts, until, perhaps, one day something snapped in their nervous system, as often itdid, and the bang of a door in a billet behind the lines, or a wreath ofsmoke from some domestic chimney, gave them a sudden shock of fear. Mendiffered wonderfully in their nerve-resistance, and it was no questionof difference in courage. 

In the mass all our soldiers seemed equally brave. In the mass theyseemed astoundingly cheerful. In spite of all the abomination of thatSomme fighting our troops before battle and after battle--a few daysafter--looked bright-eyed, free from haunting anxieties, and were easyin their way of laughter. It was optimism in the mass, heroism in themass. It was only when one spoke to the individual, some friend whobared his soul a second, or some soldier-ant in the multitude, with whomone talked with truth, that one saw the hatred of a man for his job, the sense of doom upon him, the weakness that was in his strength, thebitterness of his grudge against a fate that forced him to go on inthis way of life, the remembrance of a life more beautiful which hehad abandoned--all mingled with those other qualities of pride andcomradeship, and that illogical sense of humor which made up the strangecomplexity of his psychology. 

XV

It was a colonel of the North Staffordshires who revealed to me theastounding belief that he was "immune" from shell-fire, and I metother men afterward with the same conviction. He had just come out ofdesperate fighting in the neighborhood of Thiepval, where his battalionhad suffered heavily, and at first he was rude and sullen in the hut. I gaged him as a hard Northerner, without a shred of sentiment or theflicker of any imaginative light; a stern, ruthless man. He was bitterin his speech to me because the North Staffords were never mentioned inmy despatches. He believed that this was due to some personal spite--notknowing the injustice of our military censorship under the orders ofG. H. Q. 

"Why the hell don't we get a word?" he asked. "Haven't we done as wellas anybody, died as much?"

I promised to do what I could--which was nothing--to put the matterright, and presently he softened, and, later was amazingly candid inself-revelation. 

"I have a mystical power, " he said. "Nothing will ever hit me as long asI keep that power which comes from faith. It is a question of absolutebelief in the domination of mind over matter. I go through any barrageunscathed because my will is strong enough to turn aside explosiveshells and machine-gun bullets. As matter they must obey myintelligence. They are powerless to resist the mind of a man in touchwith the Universal Spirit, as I am. "

He spoke quietly and soberly, in a matter-of-fact way. I decided that hewas mad. That was not surprising. We were all mad, in one way or anotheror at one time or another. It was the unusual form of madness thatastonished me. I envied him his particular "kink. " I wished I couldcultivate it, as an aid to courage. He claimed another peculiar form ofknowledge. He knew before each action, he told me, what officers and menof his would be killed in battle. He looked at a man's eyes and knew, and he claimed that he never made a mistake. .. He was sorry to possessthat second sight, and it worried him. 

There were many men who had a conviction that they would not be killed, although they did not state it in the terms expressed by the colonel ofthe North Staffordshires, and it is curious that in some cases I knowthey were not mistaken and are still alive. It was indeed a generalbelief that if a man funked being hit he was sure to fall, that beingthe reverse side of the argument. 

I saw the serene cheerfulness of men in the places of death at manytimes and in many places, and I remember one group of friends on theSomme who revealed that quality to a high degree. It was when ourfront-line ran just outside the village of Martinpuich to Courcelette, on the other side of the Bapaume road, and when the 8th-10th Gordonswere there, after their fight through Longueval and over the ridge. Itwas the little crowd I have mentioned before in the battle of Loos, and it was Lieut. John Wood who took me to the battalion headquarterslocated under some sand-bags in a German dug--out. All the way up toContalmaison and beyond there were the signs of recent bloodshed and ofpresent peril. Dead horses lay about, disemboweled by shell-fire. Legsand arms protruded from shell-craters where bodies lay half buried. Heavy crumps came howling through the sky and bursting with enormousnoise here, there, and everywhere over that vast, desolate battlefield, with its clumps of ruin and rows of dead trees. It was the devil'shunting-ground and I hated every yard of it. But John Wood, who livedin it, was astoundingly cheerful, and a fine, sturdy, gallant figure, in his kilted dress, as he climbed over sand-bags, walked on the top ofcommunication trenches (not bothering to take cover) and skirting roundhedges of barbed wire, apparently unconscious of the "crumps" that werebursting around. I found laughter and friendly greeting in a hole in theearth where the battalion staff was crowded. The colonel was courteous, but busy. He rather deprecated the notion that I should go up farther, to the ultimate limit of our line. It was no use putting one's head intotrouble without reasonable purpose, and the German guns had been blowingin sections of his new-made trenches. But John Wood was insistent thatI should meet "old Thom, " afterward in command of the battalion. He hadjust been buried and dug out again. He would like to see me. So we leftthe cover of the dugout and took to the open again. Long lines of Jockswere digging a support trench--digging with a kind of rhythmic movementas they threw up the earth with their shovels. Behind them was anotherline of Jocks, not working. They lay as though asleep, out in the open. They were the dead of the last advance. Captain Thom was leaning upagainst the wall of the front-line trench, smoking a cigarette, with hissteel hat on the back of his head--a handsome, laughing figure. He didnot look like a man who had just been buried and dug out again. 

"It was a narrow shave, " he said. "A beastly shell covered me with a tonof earth. .. Have a cigarette, won't you?"

We gossiped as though in St. James's Street. Other young Scottishofficers came up and shook hands, and said: "Jolly weather, isn't it?What do you think of our little show?" Not one of them gave a glance atthe line of dead men over there, behind their parados. They told me someof the funny things that had happened lately in the battalion, some grimjokes by tough Jocks. They had a fine crowd of men. You couldn't beatthem. "Well, good morning! Must get on with the job. " There was noanguish there, no sense of despair, no sullen hatred of this life, sonear to death. They seemed to like it. .. They did not really like it. They only made the best of it, without gloom. I saw they did not likethis job of battle, one evening in their mess behind the line. Thecolonel who commanded them at the time, Celt of the Celts, was in aqueer mood. He was a queer man, aloof in his manner, a little "fey. " Hewas annoyed with three of his officers who had come back late from threedays' Paris leave. They were giants, but stood like schoolboys beforetheir master while he spoke ironical, bitter words. Later in the eveninghe mentioned casually that they must prepare to go into the lineagain under special orders. What about the store of bombs, small-armsammunition, machine-guns?

The officers were stricken into silence. They stared at one another asthough to say: "What does the old man mean? Is this true?" One of thembecame rather pale, and there was a look of tragic resignation in hiseyes. Another said, "Hell!" in a whisper. The adjutant answered thecolonel's questions in a formal way, but thinking hard and studying thecolonel's face anxiously. 

"Do you mean to say we are going into the line again, sir? At once?"

The colonel laughed. 

"Don't look so scared, all of you! It's only a field-day for training. "

The officers of the Gordons breathed more freely. Poof! They had beenfairly taken in by the "old man's" leg-pulling. .. No, it was clearthey did not find any real joy in the line. They would not choose afront-line trench as the most desirable place of residence. 

XVI

In queer psychology there was a strange mingling of the pitiful andcomic--among a division (the 35th) known as the Bantams. They were allvolunteers, having been rejected by the ordinary recruiting-officer onaccount of their diminutive stature, which was on an average five feethigh, descending to four feet six. Most of them came from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham, and Glasgow, being the dwarfed children of industrialEngland and its mid-Victorian cruelties. Others were from London, bandedtogether in a battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. They gave a shockto our French friends when they arrived as a division at the port ofBoulogne. 

"Name of a dog!" said the quayside loungers. "England is truly in a badway. She is sending out her last reserves!"

"But they are the soldiers of Lilliput!" exclaimed others. 

"It is terrible that they should send these little ones, " saidkind-hearted fishwives. 

Under the training of General Pi, who commanded them, they became smartand brisk in the ranks. They saluted like miniature Guardsmen, marchedwith quick little steps like clockwork soldiers. It was comical to seethem strutting up and down as sentries outside divisional headquarters, with their bayonets high above their wee bodies. In trench warfare theydid well--though the fire-step had to be raised to let them see over thetop--and in one raid captured a German machine-gun which I saw intheir hands, and hauled it back (a heavier weight than ours) like antsstruggling with a stick of straw. In actual battle they were hardlystrong enough and could not carry all that burden of fighting-kit--steelhelmet, rifle, hand-grenades, shovels, empty sand-bags--with which othertroops went into action. So they were used as support troops mostly, behind the Black Watch and other battalions near Bazentin and Longueval, and there these poor little men dug and dug like beavers and crouched inthe cover they made under damnable fire, until many of them were blownto bits. There was no "glory" in their job, only filth and blood, butthey held the ground and suffered it all, not gladly. They had a chanceof taking prisoners at Longueval, where they rummaged in German dugoutsafter the line had been taken by the 15th Scottish Division and the 3d, and they brought back a number of enormous Bavarians who were like theBrobdingnagians to these little men of Lilliput and disgusted with thathumiliation. I met the whole crowd of them after that adventure, asthey sat, half naked, picking the lice out of their shirts, and theconversation I had with them remains in my memory because of itsgrotesque humor and tragic comicality. They were excited and emotional, these stunted men. They cursed the war with the foulest curses ofScottish and Northern dialects. There was one fellow--the jester of themall--whose language would have made the poppies blush. With ironicallaughter, outrageous blasphemy, grotesque imagery, he described thesuffering of himself and his mates under barrage fire, which smashedmany of them into bleeding pulp. He had no use for this war. He cursedthe name of "glory. " He advocated a trade--unionism among soldiersto down tools whenever there was a threat of war. He was a Bolshevistbefore Bolshevism. Yet he had no liking for Germans and desired to cutthem into small bits, to slit their throats, to disembowel them. Helooked homeward to a Yorkshire town and wondered what his missus wouldsay if she saw him scratching himself like an ape, or lying with hishead in the earth with shells bursting around him, or prodding Germanswith a bayonet. "Oh, " said that five-foot hero, "there will be a lot ofmurder after this bloody war. What's human life? What's the value of oneman's throat? We're trained up as murderers--I don't dislike it, mindyou--and after the war we sha'n't get out of the habit of it. It'll comenat'ral like!"

He was talking for my benefit, egged on to further audacities by a groupof comrades who roared with laughter and said: "Go it, Bill! That's thestuff!" Among these Lilliputians were fellows who sat aloof and sullen, or spoke of their adventure with its recent horror in their eyes. Someof them had big heads on small bodies, as though they suffered fromwater on the brain. .. Many of them were sent home afterward. GeneralHaldane, as commander of the 6th Corps, paraded them, and poked hisstick at the more wizened ones, the obviously unfit, the degenerates, and said at each prod, "You can go. .. You. . . You. .. . " The BantamDivision ceased to exist. 

They afforded many jokes to the army. One anecdote went the round. ABantam died--of disease ("and he would, " said General Haldane)--and acomrade came to see his corpse. 

"Shut ze door ven you come out, " said the old woman of his billet. "Fermez la porte, mon vieux. "

The living Bantam went to see the dead one, and came downstairs muchmoved by grief. 

"I've seed poor Bill, " he said. 

"As-tu ferme la porte?" said the old woman, anxiously. 

The Bantam wondered at the anxious inquiry; asked the reason of it. 

"C'est a cause du chat!" said the old woman. "Ze cat, Monsieur, 'e 'ave'ad your friend in ze passage tree time already to-day. Trois fois!"

Poor little men born of diseased civilization! They were volunteers to aman, and some of them with as much courage as soldiers twice their size. 

They were the Bantams who told me of the Anglican padre at Longueval. Itwas Father Hall of Mirfield, attached to the South African Brigade. Hecame out to a dressing station established in the one bit of ruin whichcould be used for shelter, and devoted himself to the wounded with aspiritual fervor. They were suffering horribly from thirst, which madetheir tongues swell and set their throats on fire. 

"Water!" they cried. "Water! For Christ's sake, water!"

There was no water, except at a well in Longueval, under the fire ofGerman snipers, who picked off our men when they crawled down like wilddogs with their tongues lolling out. There was one German officer therein a shell-hole not far from the well, who sat with his revolver handy, and he was a dead shot. 

But he did not shoot the padre. Something in the face and figure of thatchaplain, his disregard of the bullets snapping about him, the upright, fearless way in which he crossed that way of death, held back thetrigger-finger of the German officer and he let him pass. He passed manytimes, untouched by bullets or machine-gun fire, and he went into badplaces, pits of horror, carrying hot tea, which he made from the wellwater for men in agony. 

XVII

During these battles I saw thousands of German prisoners, and studiedtheir types and physiognomy, and, by permission of Intelligenceofficers, spoke with many of them in their barbed-wire cages or on thefield of battle when they came along under escort. Some of them lookeddegraded, bestial men. One could imagine them guilty of the foulestatrocities. But in the mass they seemed to me decent, simple men, remarkably like our own lads from the Saxon counties of England, thoughnot quite so bright and brisk, as was only natural in their positionas prisoners, with all the misery of war in their souls. Afterward theyworked with patient industry in the prison-camps and established theirown discipline, and gave very little trouble if well handled. In eachcrowd of them there were fellows who spoke perfect English, having livedin England as waiters and hairdressers, or clerks or mechanics. It waswith them I spoke most because it was easiest, but I know enough Germanto talk with the others, and I found among them all the same loathingof war, the same bewilderment as to its causes, the same sense of beingdriven by evil powers above them. The officers were different. They losta good deal of their arrogance, but to the last had excuses ready forall that Germany had done, and almost to the last professed to believethat Germany would win. Their sense of caste was in their nature. Theyrefused to travel in the same carriages with their men, to stay even foran hour in the same inclosures with them. They regarded them, for themost part, as inferior beings. And there were castes even among theofficers. I remember that in the last phase, when we captured a numberof cavalry officers, these elegant sky-blue fellows held aloof from theinfantry officers and would not mix with them. One of them paced up anddown all night alone, and all next day, stiff in the corsets below thatsky-blue uniform, not speaking to a soul, though within a few yards ofhim were many officers of infantry regiments. 

Our men treated their prisoners, nearly always, after the blood ofbattle was out of their eyes, with a good--natured kindness thatastonished the Germans themselves. I have seen them filling Germanwater-bottles at considerable trouble, and the escorts, two or three toa big batch of men, were utterly trustful of them. "Here, hold my rifle, Fritz, " said one of our men, getting down from a truck-train to greet afriend. 

An officer standing by took notice of this. 

"Take your rifle back at once! Is that the way to guard your prisoners?"

Our man was astonished. 

"Lor' bless you, sir, they don't want no guarding. They're glad to betook. They guard themselves. "

"Your men are extraordinary, " a German officer told me. "They asked mewhether I would care to go down at once or wait till the barrage hadpassed. "

He seemed amazed at that thoughtfulness for his comfort. It was in theearly days of the Somme fighting, and crowds of our men stood on thebanks above a sunken road, watching the prisoners coming down. Thisofficer who spoke to me had an Iron Cross, and the men wanted to see itand handle it. 

"Will they give it back again?" he asked, nervously, fumbling at theribbon. 

"Certainly, " I assured him. 

He handed it to me, and I gave it to the men, who passed it from one tothe other and then back to the owner. 

"Your men are extraordinary, " he said. "They are wonderful. "

One of the most interesting prisoners I met on the field of battle wasa tall, black-bearded man whom I saw walking away from La Boisselle whenthat place was smoking with shell-bursts. An English soldier was on eachside of him, and each man carried a hand-bag, while this black-beardedgiant chatted with them. 

It was a strange group, and I edged nearer to them and spoke to one ofthe men. 

"Who's this? Why do you carry his bags?"

"Oh, we're giving him special privileges, " said the man. "He stayedbehind to look after our wounded. Said his job was to look afterwounded, whoever they were. So there he's been, in a dugout bandagingour lads; and no joke, either. It's hell up there. We're glad to get outof it. "

I spoke to the German doctor and walked with him. He discussed thephilosophy of the war simply and with what seemed like sincerity. 

"This war!" he said, with a sad, ironical laugh. "We go on killingone another-to no purpose. Europe is being bled to death and willbe impoverished for long years. We Germans thought it was a war forKultur--our civilization. Now we know it is a war against Kultur, against religion, against all civilization. "

"How will it end?" I asked him. 

"I see no end to it, " he answered. "It is the suicide of nations. Germany is strong, and England is strong, and France is strong. It isimpossible for one side to crush the other, so when is the end to come?"

I met many other prisoners then and a year afterward who could see noend of the massacre. They believed the war would go on until livinghumanity on all sides revolted from the unceasing sacrifice. In theautumn of 1918, when at last the end came in sight, by German defeat, unexpected a few months before even by the greatest optimist in theBritish armies, the German soldiers were glad. They did not care howthe war ended so long as it ended. Defeat? What did that matter? Was itworse to be defeated than for the race to perish by bleeding to death?

XVIII

The struggle for the Pozieres ridge and High Wood lasted from thebeginning of August until the middle of September--six weeks of fightingas desperate as any in the history of the world until that time. TheAustralians dealt with Pozieres itself, working round Moquet Farm, where the Germans refused to be routed from their tunnels, and up to theWindmill on the high ground of Pozieres, for which there was unceasingslaughter on both sides because the Germans counter-attacked again andagain, and waves of men surged up and fell around that mound of forsakenbrick, which I saw as a reddish cone through flame and smoke. 

Those Australians whom I had seen arrive in France had proved theirquality. They had come believing that nothing could be worse than theirordeal in the Dardanelles. Now they knew that Pozieres was the last wordin frightfulness. The intensity of the shell-fire under which they layshook them, if it did not kill them. Many of their wounded told me thatit had broken their nerve. They would never fight again without a senseof horror. 

"Our men are more highly strung than the English, " said one Australianofficer, and I was astonished to hear these words, because thoseAustralians seemed to me without nerves, and as tough as gristle intheir fiber. 

They fought stubbornly, grimly, in ground so ravaged with fire that theearth was finely powdered. They stormed the Pozieres ridge yard by yard, and held its crest under sweeping barrages which tore up their trenchesas soon as they were dug and buried and mangled their living flesh. Insix weeks they suffered twenty thousand casualties, and Pozieres now isan Australian graveyard, and the memorial that stands there is to theghosts of that splendid youth which fell in heaps about that plateau andthe slopes below. Many English boys of the Sussex, West Kents, Surrey, and Warwick regiments, in the 18th Division, died at their side, notless patient in sacrifice, not liking it better. Many Scots of the 15thand 9th Divisions, many New-Zealanders, many London men of the 47th and56th Divisions, fell, killed or wounded, to the right of them, on theway to Martinpuich, and Eaucourt l'Abbaye and Flers, from High Woodand Longueval, and Bazentin. The 3d Division of Yorkshires andNorthumberland Fusiliers, Royal Scots and Gordons, were earning thatname of the Iron Division, and not by any easy heroism. Every divisionin the British army took its turn in the blood-bath of the Somme and wasduly blooded, at a cost of 25 per cent. And sometimes 50 per cent. Of their fighting strength. The Canadians took up the struggleat Courcelette and captured it in a fierce and bloody battle. TheAustralians worked up on the right of the Albert-Bapaume road to Thilloyand Ligny Thilloy. On the far left the fortress of Thiepval had fallenat last after repeated and frightful assaults, which I watched fromditches close enough to see our infantry--Wiltshires and Worcesters ofthe 25th Division--trudging through infernal fire. And then atlast, after five months of superhuman effort, enormous sacrifice, mass-heroism, desperate will-power, and the tenacity of each individualhuman ant in this wild ant-heap, the German lines were smashed, the Australians surged into Bapaume, and the enemy, stricken by theprolonged fury of our attack, fell back in a far and wide retreat acrossa country which he laid waste, to the shelter of his Hindenburg line, from Bullecourt to St. -Quentin. 

XIX

The goal of our desire seemed attained when at last we reached Bapaumeafter these terrific battles in which all our divisions, numberingnearly a million men, took part, with not much difference in courage, not much difference in average of loss. By the end of that year'sfighting our casualties had mounted up to the frightful total of fourhundred thousand men. Those fields were strewn with our dead. Ourgraveyards were growing forests of little white crosses. The German deadlay in heaps. There were twelve hundred corpses littered over the earthbelow Loupart Wood, in one mass, and eight hundred of them were German. I could not walk without treading on them there. When I fell in theslime I clutched arms and legs. The stench of death was strong andawful. 

But our men who had escaped death and shell-shock kept their sanitythrough all this wilderness of slaughter, kept--oh, marvelous!--theirspirit of humor, their faith in some kind of victory. I was with theAustralians on that day when they swarmed into Bapaume, and they broughtout trophies like men at a country fair. .. I remember an Australiancolonel who came riding with a German beer-mug at his saddle. .. Nextday, though shells were still bursting in the ruins, some Australianboys set up some painted scenery which they had found among the rubbish, and chalked up the name of the "Coo-ee Theater. "

The enemy was in retreat to his Hindenburg line, over a wide stretchof country which he laid waste behind him, making a desert of Frenchvillages and orchards and parks, so that even the fruit-trees were cutdown, and the churches blown up, and the graves ransacked for theirlead. It was the enemy's first retreat on the western front, and thatferocious fighting of the British troops had smashed the strongestdefenses ever built in war, and our raw recruits had broken the mostfamous regiments of the German army, so in spite of all tragedy andall agony our men were not downcast, but followed up their enemy with asense of excitement because it seemed so much like victory and the endof war. 

When the Germans retreated from Gommecourt, where so many boys of the56th (London) Division had fallen on the 1st of July, I went throughthat evil place by way of Fonquevillers (which we called "FunkyVillas"), and, stumbling over the shell-craters and broken trenches anddead bodies between the dead masts of slashed and branchless trees, came into the open country to our outpost line. I met there a friendlysergeant who surprised me by referring in a casual way to a little oldbook of mine. 

"This place, " he said, glancing at me, "is a strange Street ofAdventure. "

It reminded me of another reference to that tale of mine when I wasamong a crowd of London lads who had just been engaged in a bloody fightat a place called The Hairpin. 

A young officer sent for me and I found him in the loft of a stinkingbarn, sitting in a tub as naked as he was born. 

"I just wanted to ask you, " he said, "whether Katharine married Frank?"

The sergeant at Gommecourt was anxious to show me his own Street ofAdventure. 

"I belong to Toc-emmas, " he said (meaning trench--mortars), "and myofficers would be very pleased if you would have a look at their lateststunt. We've got a 9. 2 mortar in Pigeon Wood, away beyond the infantry. It's never been done before and we're going to blow old Fritz out ofKite Copse. "

I followed him into the blue, as it seemed to me, and we fell in with ayoung officer also on his way to Pigeon Wood. He was in a merry mood, inspite of harassing fire round about and the occasional howl of a 5. 9. He kept stopping to look at enormous holes in the ground and laughing atsomething that seemed to tickle his sense of humor. 

"See that?" he said. "That's old Charlie Lowndes's work. "

At another pit in upheaved earth he said: "That's Charlie Lowndesagain. .. Old Charlie gave 'em hell. He's a topping chap. You must meethim. .. My God! look at that!"

He roared with laughter again, on the edge of an unusually large crater. 

"Who is Charlie?" I asked. "Where can I find him?"

"Oh, we shall meet him in Pigeon Wood. He's as pleased as Punch athaving got beyond the infantry. First time it has ever been done. Took abit of doing, too, with the largest size of Toc-emma. "

We entered Pigeon Wood after a long walk over wild chaos, and, guided bythe officer and sergeant, I dived down into a deep dugout just capturedfrom the Germans, who were two hundred yards away in Kite Copse. 

"What cheer, Charlie!" shouted the young officer. 

"Hullo, fellow-my-lad!. .. Come in. We're getting gloriously binged on arare find of German brandy. "

"Topping and I've brought a visitor. "

Capt. Charles Lowndes--"dear old Charlie"--received us most politely inone of the best dugouts I ever saw, with smoothly paneled walls fittedup with shelves, and good deal furniture made to match. 

"This is a nice little home in hell, " said Charles. "At any moment, ofcourse, we may be blown to bits, but meanwhile it is very comfy downhere, and what makes everything good is a bottle of rare old brandy andan unlimited supply of German soda-water. Also to add to the gaietyof indecent minds there is a complete outfit of ladies' clothing in aneighboring dugout. Funny fellows those German officers. Take a pew, won't you? and have a drink. Orderly!"

He shouted for his man and ordered a further supply of Germansoda-water. 

We drank to the confusion of the enemy, in his own brandy andsoda-water, out of his own mugs, sitting on his own chairs at his owntable, and "dear old Charlie, " who was a little etoile, as afterward Ibecame, with a sense of deep satisfaction (the noise of shells seemedmore remote), discoursed on war, which he hated, German psychology, trench-mortar barrages (they had simply blown the Boche out ofGommecourt), and his particular fancy stunt of stealing a march on theinfantry, who, said Captain Lowndes, are "laps behind. " Other officerscrowded into the dugout. One of them said: "You must come round to mine. It's a blasted palace, " and I went round later and he told me on theway that he had escaped so often from shell-bursts that he thought theaverage of luck was up and he was bound to get "done in" before long. 

Charlie Lowndes dispensed drinks with noble generosity. There was muchlaughter among us, and afterward we went upstairs and to the edge ofthe wood, to which a heavy, wet mist was clinging, and I saw thetrench-mortar section play the devil with Kite Copse, over the way. Latein the afternoon I took my leave of a merry company in that far-flungoutpost of our line, and wished them luck. A few shells crashed throughthe wood as I left, but I was disdainful of them after that admirablebrandy. It was a long walk back to "Funky Villas, " not without theinterest of arithmetical calculations about the odds of luck inharassing fire, but a thousand yards or so from Pigeon Wood I lookedback and saw that the enemy had begun to "take notice. " Heavy shellswere smashing through the trees there ferociously. I hoped my friendswere safe in their dugouts again. .. . 

And I thought of the laughter and gallant spirit of the young men, afterfive months of the greatest battles in the history of the world. Itseemed to me wonderful. 

XX

I have described what happened on our side of the lines, our fearfullosses, the stream of wounded that came back day by day, the "Butchers'Shops, " the agony in men's souls, the shell-shock cases, the welterand bewilderment of battle, the shelling of our own troops, the lackof communication between fighting units and the command, the filthand stench of the hideous shambles which were our battlefields. But tocomplete the picture of that human conflict in the Somme I must now tellwhat happened on the German side of the lines, as I was able to piecethe tale together from German prisoners with whom I talked, Germanletters which I found in their abandoned dugouts, and documents whichfell into the hands of our staff--officers. 

Our men were at least inspirited by the knowledge that they were beatingtheir enemy back, in spite of their own bloody losses. The Germans hadnot even that source of comfort, for whatever it might be worth underbarrage fire. The mistakes of our generalship, the inefficiency of ourstaff-work, were not greater than the blunderings of the German HighCommand, and their problem was more difficult than ours because ofthe weakness of their reserves, owing to enormous preoccupation on theRussian front. The agony of their men was greater than ours. 

To understand the German situation it must be remembered that fromJanuary to May, 1916, the German command on the western front wasconcentrating all its energy and available strength in man-power andgun--power upon the attack of Verdun. The Crown Prince had staked hisreputation upon that adventure, which he believed would end in thecapture of the strongest French fortress and the destruction of theFrench armies. He demanded men and more men, until every unit thatcould be spared from other fronts of the line had been thrown intothat furnace. Divisions were called in from other theaters of war, andincreased the strength on the western front to a total of about onehundred and thirty divisions. 

But the months passed and Verdun still held out above piles of Germancorpses on its slopes, and in June Germany looked east and saw a greatmenace. The Russian offensive was becoming violent. German generals onthe Russian fronts sent desperate messages for help. "Send us moremen, " they said, and from the western front four divisions containingthirty-nine battalions were sent to them. 

They must have been sent grudgingly, for now another menace threatenedthe enemy, and it was ours. The British armies were getting ready tostrike. In spite of Verdun, France still had men enough---withdrawnfrom that part of the line in which they had been relieved by theBritish---to co-operate in a new attack. 

It was our offensive that the German command feared most, for they hadno exact knowledge of our strength or of the quality of our new troops. They knew that our army had grown prodigiously since the assault onLoos, nearly a year before. 

They had heard of the Canadian reinforcements, and the coming of theAustralians, and the steady increase of recruiting in England, and monthby month they had heard the louder roar of our guns along the line, andhad seen their destructive effect spreading and becoming more terrible. They knew of the steady, quiet concentration of batteries and divisionson the west and south of the Ancre. 

The German command expected a heavy blow and, prepared for it, but asyet had no knowledge of the driving force behind it. What confidencethey had of being able to resist the British attack was based uponthe wonderful strength of the lines which they had been digging andfortifying since the autumn of the first year of war--"impregnablepositions, " they had called them--the inexperience of our troops, theirown immense quantity of machine-guns, the courage and skill of theirgunners, and their profound belief in the superiority of Germangeneralship. 

In order to prevent espionage during the coming struggle, and to concealthe movement of troops and guns, they ordered the civil populations tobe removed from villages close behind their positions, drew cordons ofmilitary police across the country, picketed crossroads, and establisheda network of counter espionage to prevent any leakage of information. 

To inspire the German troops with a spirit of martial fervor (not easilyaroused to fever pitch after the bloody losses before Verdun) Ordersof the Day were issued to the battalions counseling them to hold fastagainst the hated English, who stood foremost in the way of peace (thatwas the gist of a manifesto by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, which Ifound in a dugout at Montauban), and promising them a speedy ending tothe war. 

Great stores of material and munitions were concentrated at rail-headsand dumps ready to be sent up to the firing-lines, and the perfectionof German organization may well have seemed flawless--before the attackbegan. 

When they began they found that in "heavies" and in expenditure of highexplosives they were outclassed. 

They were startled, too, by the skill and accuracy of the Britishgunners, whom they had scorned as "amateurs, " and by the daring of ourairmen, who flew over their lines with the utmost audacity, "spotting"for the guns, and registering on batteries, communication trenches, crossroads, rail-heads, and every vital point of organization in theGerman war-machine working opposite the British lines north and south ofthe Ancre. 

Even before the British infantry had left their trenches at dawn on July1st, German officers behind the firing--lines saw with anxiety thatall the organization which had worked so smoothly in times of ordinarytrench--warfare was now working only in a hazardous way under a deadlystorm of shells. 

Food and supplies of all kinds could not be sent up to front-linetrenches without many casualties, and sometimes could not be sent upat all. Telephone wires were cut, and communications broken between thefront and headquarters staffs. Staff-officers sent up to report werekilled on the way to the lines. Troops moving forward from reserve areascame under heavy fire and lost many men before arriving in the supporttrenches. 

Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, sitting aloof from all this in personalsafety, must have known before July 1st that his resources in men andmaterial would be strained to the uttermost by the British attack, buthe could take a broader view than men closer to the scene of battle, andtaking into account the courage of his troops (he had no need to doubtthat), the immense strength of their positions, dug and tunneled beyondthe power of high explosives, the number of his machine-guns, theconcentration of his artillery, and the rawness of the British troops, he could count up the possible cost and believe that in spite of a heavyprice to pay there would be no break in his lines. 

At 7. 30 A. M. On July 1st the British infantry, as I have told, lefttheir trenches and attacked on the right angle down from Gommecourt, Beaumont Hamel, Thiepval, Ovillers, and La Boisselle, and eastwardfrom Fricourt, below Mametz and Montauban. For a week the Germantroops--Bavarians and Prussians--had been crouching in their dugouts, listening to the ceaseless crashing of the British "drum-fire. " Inplaces like Beaumont Hamel, the men down in the deep tunnels--some ofthem large enough to hold a battalion and a half--were safe as long asthey stayed there. But to get in or out was death. Trenches disappearedinto a sea of shell-craters, and the men holding them--for some men hadto stay on duty there--were blown to fragments. 

Many of the shallower dugouts were smashed in by heavy shells, andofficers and men lay dead there as I saw them lying on the first daysof July, in Fricourt and Mametz and Montauban. The living men kept theircourage, but below ground, under that tumult of bursting shells, andwrote pitiful letters to their people at home describing the horror ofthose hours. 

"We are quite shut off from the rest of the world, " wrote one of them. "Nothing comes to us. No letters. The English keep such a barrage on ourapproaches it is terrible. To-morrow evening it will be seven days sincethis bombardment began. We cannot hold out much longer. Everything isshot to pieces. "

Thirst was one of their tortures. In many of the tunneled shelters therewas food enough, but the water could not be sent up. The German soldierswere maddened by thirst. When rain fell many of them crawled out anddrank filthy water mixed with yellow shell-sulphur, and then werekilled by high explosives. Other men crept out, careless of death, butcompelled to drink. They crouched over the bodies of the men who layabove, or in, the shell-holes, and lapped up the puddles and thencrawled down again if they were not hit. 

When our infantry attacked at Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel and Thiepvalthey were received by waves of machine-gun bullets fired by men who, inspite of the ordeal of our seven days' bombardment, came out intothe open now, at the moment of attack which they knew through theirperiscopes was coming. They brought their guns above the shell-cratersof their destroyed trenches under our barrage and served them. They ranforward even into No Man's Land, and planted their machine-guns there, and swept down our men as they charged. Over their heads the Germangunners flung a frightful barrage, plowing gaps in the ranks of our men. 

On the left, by Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel, the British attackfailed, as I have told, but southward the "impregnable" lines weresmashed by a tide of British soldiers as sand castles are overwhelmed bythe waves. Our men swept up to Fricourt, struck straight up to Montaubanon the right, captured it, and flung a loop round Mametz village. 

For the German generals, receiving their reports with great difficultybecause runners were killed and telephones broken, the question was:"How will these British troops fight in the open after their firstassault? How will our men stand between the first line and the second?"

As far as the German troops were concerned, there were no signs ofcowardice, or "low morale" as we called it more kindly, in those earlydays of the struggle. They fought with a desperate courage, holding onto positions in rearguard actions when our guns were slashing them andwhen our men were getting near to them, making us pay a heavy price forevery little copse or gully or section of trench, and above all servingtheir machine-guns at La Boisselle, Ovillers, above Fricourt, roundContalmaison, and at all points of their gradual retreat, with awonderful obstinacy, until they were killed or captured. But fresh wavesof British soldiers followed those who were checked or broken. 

After the first week of battle the German General Staff had learned thetruth about the qualities of those British "New Armies" which had beenmocked and caricatured in German comic papers. They learned thatthese "amateur soldiers" had the qualities of the finest troops in theworld--not only extreme valor, but skill and cunning, not only a greatpower of endurance under the heaviest fire, but a spirit of attack whichwas terrible in its effect. They were fierce bayonet fighters. Oncehaving gained a bit of earth or a ruined village, nothing would budgethem unless they could be blasted out by gun-fire. General Sixt vonArnim put down some candid notes in his report to Prince Rupprecht. 

"The English infantry shows great dash in attack, a factor to whichimmense confidence in its overwhelming artillery greatly contributes. . . It has shown great tenacity in defense. This was especially noticeablein the case of small parties, which, when once established withmachine-guns in the corner of a wood or a group of houses, were verydifficult to drive out. "

The German losses were piling up. The agony of the German troops underour shell-fire was reaching unnatural limits of torture. The earlyprisoners I saw--Prussians and Bavarians of the 14th Reserve Corps--werenerve-broken, and told frightful stories of the way in which theirregiments had been cut to pieces. The German generals had to fill up thegaps, to put new barriers of men against the waves of British infantry. They flung new troops into the line, called up hurriedly from reservedepots. 

Now, for the first time, their staff-work showed signs of disorder anddemoralization. When the Prussian Guards Reserves were brought up fromValenciennes to counter--attack at Contalmaison they were sent on to thebattlefield without maps or local guides, and walked straight into ourbarrage. A whole battalion was cut to pieces and many others sufferedfrightful things. Some of the prisoners told me that they had lostthree-quarters of their number in casualties, and our troops advancedover heaps of killed and wounded. 

The 122d Bavarian Regiment in Contalmaison was among those whichsuffered horribly. Owing to our ceaseless gun-fire, they could get nofood-supplies and no water. The dugouts were crowded, so that they hadto take turns to get into these shelters, and outside our shells werebursting over every yard of ground. 

"Those who went outside, " a prisoner told me, "were killed or wounded. Some of them had their heads blown off, and some of them their arms. But we went on taking turns in the hole, although those who went outsideknew that it was their turn to die, most likely. At last most of thosewho came into the hole were wounded, some of them badly, so that we layin blood. " That is one little picture in a great panorama of bloodshed. 

The German command was not thinking much about the human suffering ofits troops. It was thinking of the next defensive line upon which theywould have to fall back if the pressure of the British offensive couldbe maintained--the Longueval-Bazentin-Pozires line. It was gettingnervous. Owing to the enormous efforts made in the Verdun offensive, thesupplies of ammunition were not adequate to the enormous demand. 

The German gunners were trying to compete with the British in continuityof bombardments and the shells were running short. Guns were wearingout under this incessant strain, and it was difficult to replace them. General von Gallwitz received reports of "an alarmingly large number ofbursts in the bore, particularly in field-guns. "

General von Arnim complained that "reserve supplies of ammunition wereonly available in very small quantities. " The German telephone systemproved "totally inadequate in consequence of the development which thefighting took. " The German air service was surprisingly weak, and theBritish airmen had established temporary mastery. 

"The numerical superiority of the enemy's airmen, " noted General vonArnim, "and the fact that their machines were better made, becamedisagreeably apparent to us, particularly in their direction of theenemy's artillery fire and in bomb-dropping. "

On July 15th the British troops broke the German second line atLongueval and the Bazentins, and inflicted great losses upon the enemy, who fought with their usual courage until the British bayonets wereamong them. 

A day or two later the fortress of Ovillers fell, and the remnantsof the garrison--one hundred and fifty strong--after a desperate andgallant resistance in ditches and tunnels, where they had fought to thelast, surrendered with honor. 

Then began the long battle of the woods--Devil's Wood, High Wood, TronesWood--continued through August with most fierce and bloody fighting, which ended in our favor and forced the enemy back, gradually butsteadily, in spite of the terrific bombardments which filled thosewoods with shell-fire and the constant counter-attacks delivered by theGermans. 

"Counter-attack!" came the order from the German staff, and battalionsof men marched out obediently to certain death, sometimes withincredible folly on the part of their commanding officers, who orderedthese attacks to be made without the slightest chance of success. 

I saw an example of that at close range during a battle at FalfemontFarm, near Guillemont. Our men had advanced from Wedge Wood, and Iwatched them from a trench just south of this, to which I had gone ata great pace over shell-craters and broken wire, with a young observingofficer who had been detailed to report back to the guns. (Old"Falstaff, " whose songs and stories had filled the tent under theRed Cross with laughter, toiled after us gallantly, but grunting andsweating under the sun like his prototype, until we lost him in ourhurry. ) Presently a body of Germans came out of a copse called LeuzeWood, on rising ground, faced round among the thin, slashed trees ofFalfemont, and advanced toward our men, shoulder to shoulder, like asolid bar. It was sheer suicide. I saw our men get their machinegunsinto action, and the right side of the living bar frittered away, andthen the whole line fell into the scorched grass. Another line followed. They were tall men, and did not falter as they came forward, but itseemed to me they walked like men conscious of going to death. Theydied. The simile is outworn, but it was exactly as though some invisiblescythe had mown them down. 

In all the letters written during those weeks of fighting and capturedby us from dead or living men there was one cry of agony and horror. 

"I stood on the brink of the most terrible days of my life, " wrote oneof them. "They were those of the battle of the Somme. It began with anight attack on August 13th and 14th. The attack lasted till the eveningof the 18th, when the English wrote on our bodies in letters of blood, 'It is all over with you. ' A handful of half-mad, wretched creatures, worn out in body and mind, were all that was left of a whole battalion. We were that handful. "

The losses of many of the German battalions were staggering (yet notgreater than our own), and by the middle of August the morale of thetroops was severely shaken. The 117th Division by Pozires sufferedvery heavily. The 11th Reserve and 157th Regiments each lost nearlythree-quarters of their effectives. The 9th Reserve Corps had also lostheavily. The 9th Reserve Jager Battalion lost about three-quarters, the 84th Reserve and 86th Reserve over half. On August 10th the 16thDivision had six battalions in reserve. 

By August 19th, owing to the large number of casualties, the greaterpart of those reserves had been absorbed into the front and supporttrenches, leaving as available reserves two exhausted battalions. 

The weakness of the division and the absolute necessity of reinforcingit led to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment (2d Guards Division) beingbrought up to strengthen the right flank in the Leipzig salient. Thisregiment had suffered casualties to the extent of over 50 percent westof Pozires during the middle of July, and showed no eagerness to returnto the fight. These are but a few examples of what was happening alongthe whole of the German front on the Somme. 

It became apparent by the end of August that the enemy was in troubleto find fresh troops to relieve his exhausted divisions, and that thewastage was faster than the arrival of new men. It was noticeable thathe left divisions in the line until incapable of further effort ratherthan relieving them earlier so that after resting they might again bebrought on to the battlefield. The only conclusion to be drawn from thiswas that the enemy had not sufficient formations available to make thenecessary reliefs. 

In July three of these exhausted divisions were sent to the east, their place being taken by two new divisions, and in August three moreexhausted divisions were sent to Russia, eight new divisions coming tothe Somme front. The British and French offensive was drawing in all theGerman reserves and draining them of their life's blood. 

"We entrained at Savigny, " wrote a man of one of these regiments, "andat once knew our destination. It was our old blood-bath--the Somme. "

In many letters this phrase was used. The Somme was called the "Bath ofBlood" by the German troops who waded across its shell-craters and inthe ditches which were heaped with their dead. But what I have describedis only the beginning of the battle, and the bath was to be filleddeeper in the months that followed. 

XXI

The name (that "blood-bath") and the news of battle could not be hiddenfrom the people of Germany, who had already been chilled with horrorby the losses at Verdun, nor from the soldiers of reserve regimentsquartered in French and Belgian towns like Valenciennes, St. Quentin, Cambrai, Lille, Bruges, and as far back as Brussels, waiting to go tothe front, nor from the civil population of those towns, held for twoyears by their enemy--these blond young men who lived in their houses, marched down their streets, and made love to their women. 

The news was brought down from the Somme front by Red Cross trains, arriving in endless succession, and packed with maimed and mangled men. German military policemen formed cordons round the railway stations, pushed back civilians who came to stare with somber eyes at theseblanketed bundles of living flesh, but when the ambulances rumbledthrough the streets toward the hospitals--long processions of them, withthe soles of men's boots turned up over the stretchers on which they layquiet and stiff--the tale was told, though no word was spoken. 

The tale of defeat, of great losses, of grave and increasing anxiety, was told clearly enough--as I read in captured letters--by the facesof German officers who went about in these towns behind the lines withgloomy looks, and whose tempers, never of the sweetest, became irritableand unbearable, so that the soldiers hated them for all this cursing andbullying. A certain battalion commander had a nervous breakdown becausehe had to meet his colonel in the morning. 

"He is dying with fear and anxiety, " wrote one of his comrades. 

Other men, not battalion commanders, were even more afraid of theirsuperior officers, upon whom this bad news from the Somme had an evileffect. 

The bad news was spread by divisions taken out of the line and sent backto rest. The men reported that their battalions had been cut to pieces. Some of their regiments had lost three-quarters of their strength. Theydescribed the frightful effect of the British artillery--the smashedtrenches, the shell-crater, the horror. 

It was not good for the morale of men who were just going up there totake their turn. 

The man who was afraid of his colonel "sits all day long writing home, with the picture of his wife and children before his eyes. " He wasafraid of other things. 

Bavarian soldiers quarreled with Prussians, accused them (unjustly) ofshirking the Somme battlefields and leaving the Bavarians to go to theblood-bath. 

"All the Bavarian troops are being sent to the Somme (this much iscertain, you can see no Prussians there), and this in spite of thelosses the 1st Bavarian Corps suffered recently at Verdun! And how wedid suffer!. .. It appears that we are in for another turn--at least the5th Bavarian Division. Everybody has been talking about it for a longtime. To the devil with it! Every Bavarian regiment is being sent intoit, and it's a swindle. "

It was in no cheerful mood that men went away to the Somme battlefields. Those battalions of gray-clad men entrained without any of the oldenthusiasm with which they had gone to earlier battles. Their gloom wasnoticed by the officers. 

"Sing, you sheeps' heads, sing!" they shouted. 

They were compelled to sing, by order. 

"In the afternoon, " wrote a man of the 18th Reserve Division, "we hadto go out again; we were to learn to sing. The greater part did not joinin, and the song went feebly. Then we had to march round in a circle andsing, and that went no better. After that we had an hour off, and on theway back to billets we were to sing 'Deutschland uber Alles, ' but thisbroke down completely. One never hears songs of the Fatherland anymore. "

They were silent, grave-eyed men who marched through the streets ofFrench and Belgian towns to be entrained for the Somme front, for theyhad forebodings of the fate before them. Yet none of their forebodingswere equal in intensity of fear to the frightful reality into which theywere flung. 

The journey to the Somme front, on the German side, was a way of terror, ugliness, and death. Not all the imagination of morbid minds searchingobscenely for foulness and blood in the great, deep pits of human agonycould surpass these scenes along the way to the German lines roundCourcelette and Flers, Gueudecourt, Morval, and Lesboeufs. 

Many times, long before a German battalion had arrived near thetrenches, it was but a collection of nerve--broken men bemoaninglosses already suffered far behind the lines and filled with hideousapprehension. For British long-range guns were hurling high explosivesinto distant villages, barraging crossroads, reaching out to rail-headsand ammunition-dumps, while British airmen were on bombing flights overrailway stations and rest-billets and highroads down which the Germantroops came marching at Cambrai, Bapaume, in the valley between Irlesand Warlencourt, at Ligny-Thilloy, Busigny, and many other places on thelines of route. 

German soldiers arriving one morning at Cambrai by train foundthemselves under the fire of a single airplane which flew very low anddropped bombs. They exploded with heavy crashes, and one bomb hit thefirst carriage behind the engine, killing and wounding several men. Asecond bomb hit the station buildings, and there was a clatter of brokenglass, the rending of wood, and the fall of bricks. All lights went out, and the German soldiers groped about in the darkness amid the splintersof glass and the fallen bricks, searching for the wounded by the soundof their groans. It was but one scene along the way to that blood-baththrough which they had to wade to the trenches of the Somme. 

Flights of British airplanes circled over the villages on the way. AtGrevilliers, in August, eleven 112-16 bombs fell in the market square, so that the center of the village collapsed in a state of ruin, buryingsoldiers billeted there. Every day the British airmen paid these visits, meeting the Germans far up the roads on their way to the Somme, andswooping over them like a flying death. Even on the march in opencountry the German soldiers tramping silently along--not singing inspite of orders--were bombed and shot at by these British aviators, who flew down very low, pouring out streams of machine-gun bullets. TheGermans lost their nerve at such times, and scattered into the ditches, falling over one another, struck and cursed by their Unteroffizieren, and leaving their dead and wounded in the roadway. 

As the roads went nearer to the battlefields they were choked withthe traffic of war, with artillery and transport wagons and horseambulances, and always thousands of gray men marching up to the lines, or back from them, exhausted and broken after many days in the fires ofhell up there. Officers sat on their horses by the roadside, directingall the traffic with the usual swearing and cursing, and rode alongsidethe transport wagons and the troops, urging them forward at a quickerpace because of stern orders received from headquarters demandingquicker movement. The reserves, it seemed, were desperately wanted up inthe lines. The English were attacking again. . . God alone knew whatwas happening. Regiments had lost their way. Wounded were pouringback. Officers had gone mad. Into the midst of all this turmoil shellsfell--shells from long-range guns. Transport wagons were blown to bits. The bodies and fragments of artillery horses lay all over the roads. Menlay dead or bleeding under the debris of gun-wheels and broken bricks. Above all the noise of this confusion and death in the night thehard, stern voices of German officers rang out, and German disciplineprevailed, and men marched on to greater perils. 

They were in the shell-zone now, and sometimes a regiment on themarch was tracked all along the way by British gun-fire directed fromairplanes and captive balloons. It was the fate of a captured officer Imet who had detrained at Bapaume for the trenches at Contalmaison. 

At Bapaume his battalion was hit by fragments of twelve-inch shells. Nearer to the line they came under the fire of eight-inch and six-inchshells. Four-point-sevens (4. 7's) found them somewhere by Bazentin. AtContalmaison they marched into a barrage, and here the officer was takenprisoner. Of his battalion there were few men left. 

It was so with the 3d Jager Battalion, ordered up hurriedly to make acounter-attack near Flers. They suffered so heavily on the way to thetrenches that no attack could be made. The stretcher-bearers had all thework to do. 

The way up to the trenches became more tragic as every kilometer waspassed, until the stench of corruption was wafted on the wind, so thatmen were sickened, and tried not to breathe, and marched hurriedly toget on the lee side of its foulness. They walked now through placeswhich had once been villages, but were sinister ruins where death lay inwait for German soldiers. 

"It seems queer to me, " wrote one of them, "that whole villages close tothe front look as flattened as a child's toy run over by a steam-roller. Not one stone remains on another. The streets are one line ofshell--holes. Add to that the thunder of the guns, and you will seewith what feelings we come into the line--into trenches where for monthsshells of all caliber have rained. .. Flers is a scrap heap. "

Again and again men lost their way up to the lines. The reliefs couldonly be made at night lest they should be discovered by British airmenand British gunners, and even if these German soldiers had trench mapsthe guidance was but little good when many trenches had been smashed inand only shell-craters could be found. 

"In the front line of Flers, " wrote one of these Germans, "the menwere only occupying shell-holes. Behind there was the intense smell ofputrefaction which filled the trench--almost unbearably. The corpses lieeither quite insufficiently covered with earth on the edge of the trenchor quite close under the bottom of the trench, so that the earth letsthe stench through. In some places bodies lie quite uncovered in atrench recess, and no one seems to trouble about them. One sees horriblepictures--here an arm, here a foot, here a head, sticking out of theearth. And these are all German soldiers-heroes!

"Not far from us, at the entrance to a dugout, nine men were buried, ofwhom three were dead. All along the trench men kept on gettingburied. What had been a perfect trench a few hours before was in partscompletely blown in. .. The men are getting weaker. It is impossibleto hold out any longer. Losses can no longer be reckoned accurately. Without a doubt many of our people are killed. "

That is only one out of thousands of such gruesome pictures, true as thedeath they described, true to the pictures on our side of the line ason their side, which went back to German homes during the battles of theSomme. Those German soldiers were great letter-writers, and men sittingin wet ditches, in "fox-holes, " as they called their dugouts, "up to mywaist in mud, " as one of them described, scribbled pitiful things whichthey hoped might reach their people at home, as a voice from the dead. For they had had little hope of escape from the blood--bath. "When youget this I shall be a corpse, " wrote one of them, and one finds the sameforeboding in many of these documents. 

Even the lucky ones who could get some cover from the incessantbombardment by English guns began to lose their nerves after a day ortwo. They were always in fear of British infantry sweeping upon themsuddenly behind the Trommelfeuer, rushing their dugouts with bombs andbayonets. Sentries became "jumpy, " and signaled attacks when there wereno attacks. The gas--alarm was sounded constantly by the clang of abell in the trench, and men put on their heavy gas-masks and sat in themuntil they were nearly stifled. 

Here is a little picture of life in a German dugout near the Britishlines, written by a man now dead:

"The telephone bell rings. 'Are you there? Yes, here's Nau's battalion. ''Good. That is all. ' Then that ceases, and now the wire is in againperhaps for the twenty-fifth or thirtieth time. Thus the night isinterrupted, and now they come, alarm messages, one after the other, each more terrifying than the other, of enormous losses through thebombs and shells of the enemy, of huge masses of troops advancing uponus, of all possible possibilities, such as a train broken down, and weare tortured by all the terrors that the mind can invent. Our nervesquiver. We clench our teeth. None of us can forget the horrors of thenight. "

Heavy rain fell and the dugouts became wet and filthy. 

"Our sleeping-places were full of water. We had to try and bail out thetrenches with cooking-dishes. I lay down in the water with G-. We wereto have worked on dugouts, but not a soul could do any more. Only afew sections got coffee. Mine got nothing at all. I was frozen in everylimb, poured the water out of my boots, and lay down again. "

Our men suffered exactly the same things, but did not write about them. 

The German generals and their staffs could not be quite indifferent toall this welter of human suffering among their troops, in spite of thecold, scientific spirit with which they regarded the problem of war. Theagony of the individual soldier would not trouble them. There is no warwithout agony. But the psychology of masses of men had to be considered, because it affects the efficiency of the machine. 

The German General Staff on the western front was becoming seriouslyalarmed by the declining morale of its infantry under the increasingstrain of the British attacks, and adopted stern measures to cure it. But it could not hope to cure the heaps of German dead who were lying onthe battlefields, nor the maimed men who were being carried back to thedressing stations, nor to bring back the prisoners taken in droves bythe French and British troops. 

Before the attack on the Flers line, the capture of Thiepval, and theGerman debacle at Beaumont Hamel, in November, the enemy's commandwas already filled with a grave anxiety at the enormous losses of itsfighting strength; was compelled to adopt new expedients for increasingthe number of its divisions. It was forced to withdraw troops badlyneeded on other fronts, and the successive shocks of the Britishoffensive reached as far as Germany itself, so that the whole of itsrecruiting system had to be revised to fill up the gaps torn out of theGerman ranks. 

XXII

All through July and August the enemy's troops fought with wonderful andstubborn courage, defending every bit of broken woodland, every heap ofbricks that was once a village, every line of trenches smashed by heavyshell-fire, with obstinacy. 

It is indeed fair and just to say that throughout those battles of theSomme our men fought against an enemy hard to beat, grim and resolute, and inspired sometimes with the courage of despair, which was hardlyless dangerous than the courage of hope. 

The Australians who struggled to get the high ground at Pozieres did nothave an easy task. The enemy made many counter-attacks against them. Allthe ground thereabouts was, as I have said, so smashed that the earthbecame finely powdered, and it was the arena of bloody fighting at closequarters which did not last a day or two, but many weeks. Mouquet Farmwas like the phoenix which rose again out of its ashes. In its tunneledways German soldiers hid and came out to fight our men in the rear longafter the site of the farm was in our hands. 

But the German troops were fighting what they knew to be a losingbattle. They were fighting rear-guard actions, trying to gain time forthe hasty digging of ditches behind them, trying to sell their lives atthe highest price. 

They lived not only under incessant gun-fire, gradually weakening theirnerve-power, working a physical as well as a moral change in them, butin constant terror of British attacks. 

They could never be sure of safety at any hour of the day or night, evenin their deepest dugouts. The British varied their times of attack. Atdawn, at noon, when the sun was reddening in the west, just before thedusk, in pitch darkness, even, the steady, regular bombardment that hadnever ceased all through the days and nights would concentrate into thegreat tumult of sudden drum-fire, and presently waves of men--Englishor Scottish or Irish, Australians or Canadians--would be sweeping onto them and over them, rummaging down into the dugouts with bombs andbayonets, gathering up prisoners, quick to kill if men were not quick tosurrender. 

In this way Thiepval was encircled so that the garrison there--the 180thRegiment, who had held it for two years--knew that they were doomed. Inthis way Guillemont and Ginchy fell, so that in the first place hardly aman out of two thousand men escaped to tell the tale of horror in Germanlines, and in the second place there was no long fight against theIrish, who stormed it in a wild, fierce rush which even machine-gunscould not check. The German General Staff was getting flurried, grabbingat battalions from other parts of the line, disorganizing its divisionsunder the urgent need of flinging in men to stop this rot in the lines, ordering counter-attacks which were without any chance of success, sothat thin waves of men came out into the open, as I saw them severaltimes, to be swept down by scythes of bullets which cut them clean tothe earth. Before September 15th they hoped that the British offensivewas wearing itself out. It seemed to them at least doubtful that afterthe struggle of two and a half months the British troops could stillhave spirit and strength enough to fling themselves against new lines. 

But the machinery of their defense was crumbling. Many of their guns hadworn out, and could not be replaced quickly enough. Many batteries hadbeen knocked out in their emplacements along the line of Bazentin andLongueval before the artillery was drawn back to Grand-court and a newline of safety. Battalion commanders clamored for greater supplies ofhand-grenades, intrenching-tools, trench-mortars, signal rockets, andall kinds of fighting material enormously in excess of all previousrequirements. 

The difficulties of dealing with the wounded, who littered thebattlefields and choked the roads with the traffic of ambulances, becameincreasingly severe, owing to the dearth of horses for transport and thelonger range of British guns which had been brought far forward. 

The German General Staff studied its next lines of defense away throughCourcelette, Martinpuich, Lesboeufs, Morval, and Combles, and they didnot look too good, but with luck and the courage of German soldiers, and the exhaustion--surely those fellows were exhausted!--of Britishtroops--good enough. 

On September 15th the German command had another shock when the wholeline of the British troops on the Somme front south of the Ancre roseout of their trenches and swept over the German defenses in a tide. 

Those defenses broke hopelessly, and the waves dashed through. Here andthere, as on the German left at Morval and Lesboeufs, the bulwarks stoodfor a time, but the British pressed against them and round them. On theGerman right, below the little river of the Ancre, Courcelette fell, and Martinpuich, and at last, as I have written, High Wood, which theGermans desired to hold at all costs, and had held against incessantattacks by great concentration of artillery, was captured and leftbehind by the London men. A new engine of war had come as a demoralizinginfluence among German troops, spreading terror among them on the firstday out of the tanks. For the first time the Germans were outwitted ininventions of destruction; they who had been foremost in all enginesof death. It was the moment of real panic in the German lines--a panicreaching back from the troops to the High Command. 

Ten days later, on September 25th, when the British made a newadvance--all this time the French were pressing forward, too, on ourright by Roye--Combles was evacuated without a fight and with a litterof dead in its streets; Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs, and Morval were lost bythe Germans; and a day later Thiepval, the greatest fortress positionnext to Beaumont Hamel, fell, with all its garrison taken prisoners. 

They were black days in the German headquarters, where staff-officersheard the news over their telephones and sent stern orders to artillerycommanders and divisional generals, and after dictating new instructionsthat certain trench systems must be held at whatever price, heard thatalready they were lost. 

It was at this time that the morale of the German troops on the Sommefront showed most signs of breaking. In spite of all their courage, the ordeal had been too hideous for them, and in spite of all theirdiscipline, the iron discipline of the German soldier, they were on theedge of revolt. The intimate and undoubted facts of this break in themorale of the enemy's troops during this period reveal a pitiful pictureof human agony. 

"We are now fighting on the Somme with the English, " wrote a man ofthe 17th Bavarian Regiment. "You can no longer call it war. It is meremurder. We are at the focal-point of the present battle in FoureauxWood (near Guillemont). All my previous experiences in this war--theslaughter at Ypres and the battle in the gravel-pit at Hulluch--are thepurest child's play compared with this massacre, and that is much toomild a description. I hardly think they will bring us into the fightagain, for we are in a very bad way. "

"From September 12th to 27th we were on the Somme, " wrote a man of the10th Bavarians, "and my regiment had fifteen hundred casualties. "

A detailed picture of the German losses under our bombardment was givenin the diary of an officer captured in a trench near Flers, and datedSeptember 22d. 

"The four days ending September 4th, spent in the trenches, werecharacterized by a continual enemy bombardment that did not abate for asingle instant. The enemy had registered on our trenches with light, as well as medium and heavy, batteries, notwithstanding that he had nodirect observation from his trenches, which lie on the other side ofthe summit. His registering was done by his excellent air service, whichrenders perfect reports of everything observed. 

"During the first day, for instance, whenever the slightest movement wasvisible in our trenches during the presence, as is usually the case, ofenemy aircraft flying as low as three and four hundred yards, a heavybombardment of the particular section took place. The very heavy lossesduring the first day brought about the resolution to evacuate thetrenches during the daytime. Only a small garrison was left, theremainder withdrawing to a part of the line on the left of theMartinpuich-Pozieres road. 

"The signal for a bombardment by 'heavies' was given by the Englishairplanes. On the first day we tried to fire by platoons on theairplanes, but a second airplane retaliated by dropping bombs and firinghis machine-gun at our troops. Our own airmen appeared only once for ashort time behind our lines. 

"While many airplanes are observing from early morning till lateat night, our own hardly ever venture near. The opinion is thatour trenches cannot protect troops during a barrage of the shortestduration, owing to lack of dugouts. 

"The enemy understands how to prevent, with his terrible barrage, the bringing up of building material, and even how to hinder the workitself. The consequence is that our trenches are always ready for anassault on his part. Our artillery, which does occasionally put a heavybarrage on the enemy trenches at a great expense of ammunition, cannotcause similar destruction to him. He can bring his building material up, can repair his trenches as well as build new ones, can bring up rationsand ammunition, and remove the wounded. 

"The continual barrage on our lines of communication makes it verydifficult for us to ration and relieve our troops, to supply water, ammunition, and building material, to evacuate wounded, and causes heavylosses. This and the lack of protection from artillery fire and theweather, the lack of hot meals, the continual necessity of lying stillin the same place, the danger of being buried, the long time the woundedhave to remain in the trenches, and chiefly the terrible effect ofthe machine--and heavy-artillery fire, controlled by an excellent airservice, has a most demoralizing effect on the troops. 

"Only with the greatest difficulty could the men be persuaded to stay inthe trenches under those conditions. "

There were some who could not be persuaded to stay if they could see anychance of deserting or malingering. For the first time on our frontthe German officers could not trust the courage of their men, nor theirloyalty, nor their sense of discipline. All this horror of men blownto bits over living men, of trenches heaped with dead and dying, wasstronger than courage, stronger than loyalty, stronger than discipline. A moral rot was threatening to bring the German troops on the Sommefront to disaster. 

Large numbers of men reported sick and tried by every kind of trick tobe sent back to base hospitals. 

In the 4th Bavarian Division desertions were frequent, and severaltimes whole bodies of men refused to go forward into the front line. Themorale of men in the 393d Regiment, taken at Courcelette, seemed to bevery weak. One of the prisoners declared that they gave themselves upwithout firing a shot, because they could trust the English not to killthem. 

The platoon commander had gone away, and the prisoner was ordered toalarm the platoon in case of attack, but did not do so on purpose. Theydid not shoot with rifles or machine-guns and did not throw bombs. 

Many of the German officers were as demoralized as the men, shirkingtheir posts in the trenches, shamming sickness, and even leading theway to surrender. Prisoners of the 351st Regiment, which lost thirteenhundred men in fifteen days, told of officers who had refused to taketheir men up to the front-line, and of whole companies who had declinedto move when ordered to do so. An officer of the 74th Landwehr Regimentis said by prisoners to have told his men during our preliminarybombardment to surrender as soon as we attacked. 

A German regimental order says: "I must state with the greatest regretthat the regiment, during this change of position, had to take noticeof the sad fact that men of four of the companies, inspired by shamefulcowardice, left their companies on their own initiative and did not moveinto line. "

Another order contains the same fact, and a warning of what punishmentmay be meted out:

"Proofs are multiplying of men leaving the position without permissionand hiding at the rear. It is our duty. .. Each at his post--to deal withthis fact with energy and success. "

Many Bavarians complained that their officers did not accompany theminto the trenches, but went down to the hospitals with imaginarydiseases. In any case there was a great deal of real sickness, mentaland physical. The ranks were depleted by men suffering from fever, pleurisy, jaundice, and stomach complaints of all kinds, twisted up withrheumatism after lying in waterlogged holes, lamed for life by bad casesof trench-foot, and nerve-broken so that they could do nothing but weep. 

The nervous cases were the worst and in greatest number. Many men wentraving mad. The shell-shock victims clawed at their mouths unceasingly, or lay motionless like corpses with staring eyes, or trembled in everylimb, moaning miserably and afflicted with a great terror. 

To the Germans (barely less to British troops) the Somme battlefieldswere not only shambles, but a territory which the devil claimed as hisown for the torture of men's brains and souls before they died in thefurnace fires. A spirit of revolt against all this crept into the mindsof men who retained their sanity--a revolt against the people who hadordained this vast outrage against God and humanity. 

Into German letters there crept bitter, burning words against "themillionaires--who grow rich out of the war, " against the high peoplewho live in comfort behind the lines. Letters from home inflamed thesethoughts. 

It was not good reading for men under shell-fire. 

"It seems that you soldiers fight so that official stay-at-homes cantreat us as female criminals. Tell me, dear husband, are you a criminalwhen you fight in the trenches, or why do people treat women andchildren here as such?. .. 

"For the poor here it is terrible, and yet the rich, the gilded ones, the bloated aristocrats, gobble up everything in front of our veryeyes. .. All soldiers--friend and foe--ought to throw down their weaponsand go on strike, so that this war which enslaves the people more thanever may cease. "

Thousands of letters, all in this strain, were reaching the Germansoldiers on the Somme, and they did not strengthen the morale of menalready victims of terror and despair. 

Behind the lines deserters were shot in batches. To those in front cameOrders of the Day warning them, exhorting them, commanding them to holdfast. 

"To the hesitating and faint-hearted in the regiment, " says one of theseOrders, "I would say the following:

"What the Englishman can do the German can do also. Or if, on the otherhand, the Englishman really is a better and superior being, he would bequite justified in his aim as regards this war, viz. , the exterminationof the German. There is a further point to be noted: this is the firsttime we have been in the line on the Somme, and what is more, weare there at a time when things are more calm. The English regimentsopposing us have been in the firing-line for the second, and in somecases even the third, time. Heads up and play the man!"

It was easy to write such documents. It was more difficult to bring upreserves of men and ammunition. The German command was harder pressed bythe end of September. 

From July 1st to September 8th, according to trustworthy information, fifty-three German divisions in all were engaged against the Allies onthe Somme battlefront. Out of these fourteen were still in the line onSeptember 8th. 

Twenty-eight had been withdrawn, broken and exhausted, to quieterareas. Eleven more had been withdrawn to rest-billets. Under theAllies' artillery fire and infantry attacks the average life of a Germandivision as a unit fit for service on the Somme was nineteen days. Morethan two new German divisions had to be brought into the front-lineevery week since the end of June, to replace those smashed in theprocess of resisting the Allied attack. In November it was reckoned bycompetent observers in the field that well over one hundred and twentyGerman divisions had been passed through the ordeal of the Somme, thisnumber including those which have appeared there more than once. 

XXIII

By September 25th, when the British troops made another attack, themorale of the German troops was reaching its lowest ebb. Except on theirright, at Beaumont Hamel and Beaucourt, they were far beyond the greatsystem of protective dugouts which had given them a sense of safetybefore July 1st. Their second and third lines of defense had beencarried, and they were existing in shell-craters and trenches hastilyscraped up under ceaseless artillery fire. 

The horrors of the battlefield were piled up to heights of agony andterror. Living men dwelt among the unburied dead, made their way tothe front-lines over heaps of corpses, breathed in the smell of humancorruption and had always in their ears the cries of the wounded theycould not rescue. They wrote these things in tragic letters--thousandsof them--which never reached their homes in Germany, but lay in theircaptured ditches. 

"The number of dead lying about is awful. One stumbles over them. "

"The stench of the dead lying round us is unbearable. "

"We are no longer men here. We are worse than beasts. "

"It is hell let loose. ". .. "It is horrible. ". .. "We've lived in misery. "

"If the dear ones at home could see all this perhaps there would be achange. But they are never told. "

"The ceaseless roar of the guns is driving us mad. "

Poor, pitiful letters, out of their cries of agony one gets to the realtruth of war-the "glory" and the "splendor" of it preached by theGerman philosophers and British Jingoes, who upheld it as the greatstrengthening tonic for their race, and as the noblest experience ofmen. Every line these German soldiers wrote might have been written byone of ours; from both sides of the shifting lines there was the samedeath and the same hell. 

Behind the lines the German General Staff, counting up the losses ofbattalions and divisions who staggered out weakly, performed jugglingtricks with what reserves it could lay its hands on, and flung upstray units to relieve the poor wretches in the trenches. Many of thosereliefs lost their way in going up, and came up late, already shatteredby the shell-fire through which they passed. 

"Our position, " wrote a German infantry officer, "was, of course, quitedifferent from what we had been told. Our company alone relieved a wholebattalion. We had been told we were to relieve a company of fifty menweakened by casualties. 

"The men we relieved had no idea where the enemy was, how far off hewas, or whether any of our own troops were in front of us. We got noidea of our support position until six o'clock this evening. The Englishare four hundred yards away, by the windmill over the hill. "

One German soldier wrote that the British "seem to relieve theirinfantry very quickly, while the German commands work on the principleof relieving only in the direst need, and leaving the divisions in aslong as possible. "

Another wrote that:

"The leadership of the divisions really fell through. For the most partwe did not get orders, and the regiment had to manage as best it could. If orders arrived they generally came too late or were dealt out 'fromthe green table' without knowledge of the conditions in front, so thatto carry them out was impossible. "

All this was a sign of demoralization, not only among the troops whowere doing the fighting and the suffering, but among the organizinggenerals behind, who were directing the operations. The continualhammer-strokes of the British and French armies on the Sommebattlefields strained the German war-machine on the western front almostto breaking-point. 

It seemed as though a real debacle might happen, and that they would beforced to effect a general retreat--a withdrawal more or less at ease ora retirement under pressure from the enemy. .. . 

But they had luck--astonishing luck. At the very time when the morale ofthe German soldiers was lowest and when the strain on the High Commandwas greatest the weather turned in their favor and gave them just thebreathing-space they desperately needed. Rain fell heavily in the middleof October, autumn mists prevented airplane activity and artillery-work, and the ground became a quagmire, so that the British troops found itdifficult to get up their supplies for a new advance. 

The Germans were able in this respite to bring up new divisions, freshand strong enough to make heavy counter--attacks in the Stuff andSchwaben and Regina trenches, and to hold the lines more securely for atime, while great digging was done farther back at Bapaume and the nextline of defense. Successive weeks of bad weather and our own tragiclosses checked the impetus of the British and French driving power, andthe Germans were able to reorganize and reform. 

As I have said, the shock of our offensive reached as far as Germany, and caused a complete reorganization in the system of obtaining reservesof man-power. The process of "combing out, " as we call it, was pursuedwith astounding ruthlessness, and German mothers, already stricken withthe loss of their elder sons, raised cries of despair when the youngestborn were also seized--boys of eighteen belonging to the 1918 class. 

The whole of the 1917 class had joined the depots in March and May ofthis year, receiving a three months' training before being transferredto the field-recruit depots in June and July. About the middle of Julythe first large drafts joined their units and made their appearance atthe front, and soon after the beginning of our offensive at least halfthis class was in the front-line regiments. The massacre of the boys hadbegun. 

Then older men, men beyond middle age, who correspond to the FrenchTerritorial class, exempted from fighting service and kept on lines ofcommunication, were also called to the front, and whole garrisons ofthese gray heads were removed from German towns to fill up the ranks. 

"The view is held here, " wrote a German soldier of the Somme, "thatthe Higher Command intends gradually to have more and more Landsturmbattalions (men of the oldest reserves) trained in trench warfare fora few weeks, as we have been, according to the quality of the men, andthus to secure by degrees a body of troops on which it can count in anemergency. "

In the month of November the German High Command believed that theBritish attacks were definitely at an end, "having broken down, " as theyclaimed, "in mud and blood, " but another shock came to them when oncemore British troops--the 51st Highland Division and the 63d NavalDivision--left their trenches, in fog and snow, and captured thestrongest fortress position on the enemy's front, at Beaumont Hamel, bringing back over six thousand prisoners. It was after that they begantheir retreat. 

These studies of mine, of what happened on both sides of the shiftinglines in the Somme, must be as horrible to read as they were to write. But they are less than the actual truth, for no pen will ever in onebook, or in hundreds, give the full record of the individual agony, thebroken heart-springs, the soul-shock as well as the shell-shock, of thatfrightful struggle in which, on one side and the other, two million menwere engulfed. Modern civilization was wrecked on those fire-blastedfields, though they led to what we called "Victory. " More died therethan the flower of our youth and German manhood. The Old Order of theworld died there, because many men who came alive out of that conflictwere changed, and vowed not to tolerate a system of thought which hadled up to such a monstrous massacre of human beings who prayed to thesame God, loved the same joys of life, and had no hatred of one anotherexcept as it had been lighted and inflamed by their governors, theirphilosophers, and their newspapers. The German soldier cursed themilitarism which had plunged him into that horror. The British soldiercursed the German as the direct cause of all his trouble, but lookedback on his side of the lines and saw an evil there which was also hisenemy--the evil of a secret diplomacy which juggled with the lives ofhumble men so that war might be sprung upon them without their knowledgeor consent, and the evil of rulers who hated German militarism notbecause of its wickedness, but because of its strength in rivalry andthe evil of a folly in the minds of men which had taught them to regardwar as a glorious adventure, and patriotism as the right to dominateother peoples, and liberty as a catch--word of politicians in search ofpower. After the Somme battles there were many other battles as bloodyand terrible, but they only confirmed greater numbers of men in thefaith that the old world had been wrong in its "make-up" and wrongin its religion of life. Lip service to Christian ethics was not goodenough as an argument for this. Either the heart of the world must bechanged by a real obedience to the gospel of Christ or Christianity mustbe abandoned for a new creed which would give better results betweenmen and nations. There could be no reconciling of bayonet-drill and highexplosives with the words "Love one another. " Or if bayonet-drill andhigh-explosive force were to be the rule of life in preparation foranother struggle such as this, then at least let men put hypocrisy awayand return to the primitive law of the survival of the fittest in ajungle world subservient to the king of beasts. The devotion of militarychaplains to the wounded, their valor, their decorations for gallantryunder fire, their human comradeship and spiritual sincerity, would notbridge the gulf in the minds of many soldiers between a gospel of loveand this argument by bayonet and bomb, gas-shell and high velocity, blunderbuss, club, and trench-shovel. Some time or other, when Germanmilitarism acknowledged defeat by the break of its machine or by therevolt of its people--not until then--there must be a new order ofthings, which would prevent such another massacre in the fair fields oflife, and that could come only by a faith in the hearts of many peoplesbreaking down old barriers of hatred and reaching out to one another ina fellowship of common sense based on common interests, and inspired byan ideal higher than this beast-like rivalry of nations. So thinkingmen thought and talked. So said the soldier--poets who wrote from thetrenches. So said many onlookers. The simple soldier did not talk likethat unless he were a Frenchman. Our men only began to talk like thatafter the war--as many of them are now talking--and the revolt of thespirit, vague but passionate, against the evil that had produced thisdevil's trap of war, and the German challenge, was subconscious as theysat in their dugouts and crowded in their ditches in the battles of theSomme. 

PART SEVEN. THE FIELDS OF ARMAGEDDON

I

During the two years that followed the battles of the Somme I recordedin my daily despatches, republished in book form ("The Struggle inFlanders" and "The Way to Victory"), the narrative of that continuousconflict in which the British forces on the western front were atdeath-grips with the German monster where now one side and then theother heaved themselves upon their adversary and struggled for theknock-out blow, until at last, after staggering losses on both sides, the enemy was broken to bits in the last combined attack by British, Belgian, French, and American armies. There is no need for me to retellall that history in detail, and I am glad to know that there is nothingI need alter in the record of events which I wrote as they happened, because they have not been falsified by any new evidence; and thosedetailed descriptions of mine stand true in fact and in the emotionof the hours that passed, while masses of men were slaughtered in thefields of Armageddon. 

But now, looking back upon those last two years of the war as aneye-witness of many tragic and heroic things, I see the frightful dramaof them as a whole and as one act was related to another, and as theplot which seemed so tangled and confused, led by inevitable stages, notunder the control of any field-marshal or chief of staff, to the climaxin which empires crashed and exhausted nations looked round upon theruin which followed defeat and victory. I see also, as in one picture, the colossal scale of that human struggle in that Armageddon of ourcivilization, which at the time one reckoned only by each day's successor failure, each day's slaughter on that side or the other. One may addup the whole sum according to the bookkeeping of Fate, by double-entry, credit and debit, profit and loss. One may set our attacks in thebattles of Flanders against the strength of the German defense, and sayour losses of three to one (as Ludendorff reckons them, and as many ofus guessed) were in our favor, because we could afford the differenceof exchange and the enemy could not put so many human counters into thepool for the final "kitty" in this gamble with life and death. One maybalance the German offensive in March of '18 with the weight that waspiling up against them by the entry of the Americans. One may also seenow, very clearly, the paramount importance of the human factor in thisarithmetic of war, the morale of men being of greater influence thangeneralship, though dependent on it, the spirit of peoples being asvital to success as the mechanical efficiency of the war-machine; andabove all, one is now able to observe how each side blundered on in ablind, desperate way, sacrificing masses of human life without a clearvision of the consequences, until at last one side blundered more thananother and was lost. It will be impossible to pretend in history thatour High Command, or any other, foresaw the thread of plot as it wasunraveled to the end, and so arranged its plan that events happenedaccording to design. The events of March, 1918, were not foreseen norprevented by French or British. The ability of our generals was notimaginative nor inventive, but limited to the piling up of men andmunitions, always more men and more munitions, against positions ofenormous strength and overcoming obstacles by sheer weight of flesh andblood and high explosives. They were not cunning so far as I couldsee, nor in the judgment of the men under their command, but simple andstraightforward gentlemen who said "once more unto the breach, " and sentup new battering-rams by brigades and divisions. There was no evidencethat I could find of high directing brains choosing the weakest spotin the enemy's armor and piercing it with a sharp sword, or avoiding adirect assault against the enemy's most formidable positions and leapingupon him from some unguarded way. Perhaps that was impossible in theconditions of modern warfare and the limitations of the British frontuntil the arrival of the tanks, which, for a long time, were wasted inthe impassable bogs of Flanders, where their steel skeletons still lierusting as a proof of heroic efforts vainly used. Possible or not, andrare genius alone could prove it one way or another, it appeared to theonlooker, as well as to the soldier who carried out commands that ourmethod of warfare was to search the map for a place which was strongestin the enemy's lines, most difficult to attack, most powerfullydefended, and then after due advertisement, not to take an unfairadvantage of the enemy, to launch the assault. That had always been theEnglish way and that was our way in many battles of the great war, whichwere won (unless they were lost) by the sheer valor of men who at greatcost smashed their way through all obstructions. 

The Germans, on the whole, showed more original genius in militaryscience, varying their methods of attack and defense according tocircumstances, building trenches and dugouts which we never equaled;inventing the concrete blockhouse or "pill-box" for a forward defensivezone thinly held in advance of the main battle zone, in order to lessentheir slaughter under the weight of our gun-fire (it cost us dearly fora time); scattering their men in organized shell-craters in order todistract our barrage fire; using the "elastic system of defense" withfrightful success against Nivelle's attack in the Champagne; creatingthe system of assault of "infiltration" which broke the Italian lines atCaporetto in 1917 and ours and the French in 1918. Against all that wemay set only our tanks, which in the end led the way to victory, but theGerman High Command blundered atrociously in all the larger calculationsof war, so that they brought about the doom of their empire by a seriesof acts which would seem deliberate if we had not known that they weremerely blind. With a folly that still seems incredible, they took therisk of adding the greatest power in the world--in numbers of men andin potential energy--to their list of enemies at a time when their ownman-power was on the wane. With deliberate arrogance they floutedthe United States and forced her to declare war. Their temptation, of course, was great. The British naval blockade was causing severesuffering by food shortage to the German people and denying them accessto raw material which they needed for the machinery of war. 

The submarine campaign, ruthlessly carried out, would and did inflictimmense damage upon British and Allied shipping, and was a deadly menaceto England. But German calculations were utterly wrong, as Ludendorff inhis Memoirs now admits, in estimating the amount of time needed to breakher bonds by submarine warfare before America could send overgreat armies to Europe. The German war lords were wrong again inunderestimating the defensive and offensive success of the Britishnavy and mercantile marine against submarine activities. By thosemiscalculations they lost the war in the long run, and by other errorsthey made their loss more certain. 

One mistake they made was their utter callousness regarding thepsychology and temper of their soldiers and civilian population. Theyput a greater strain upon them than human nature could bear, and bydriving their fighting-men into one shambles after another, while theydoped their people with false promises which were never fulfilled, theysowed the seeds of revolt and despair which finally launched them intogulfs of ruin. I have read nothing more horrible than the cold-bloodedcruelty of Ludendorff's Memoirs, in which, without any attempt atself-excuse, he reveals himself as using the lives of millions of menupon a gambling chance of victory with the hazards weighted against him, as he admits. Writing of January, 1917, he says: "A collapse on thepart of Russia was by no means to be contemplated and was, indeed, notreckoned upon by any one. .. Failing the U-boat campaign we reckonedwith the collapse of the Quadruple Alliance during 1917. " Yet with thatenormous risk visible ahead, Ludendorff continued to play the grand jeu, the great game, and did not advise any surrender of imperial ambitionsin order to obtain a peace for his people, and was furious with theMajority party in the Reichstag for preparing a peace resolution. Thecollapse of Russia inspired him with new hopes of victory in thewest, and again he prepared to sacrifice masses of men in theslaughter-fields. But he blundered again, and this time fatally. Histime-table was out of gear. The U--boat war had failed. American manhoodwas pouring into France, and German soldiers on the Russian front hadbeen infected with ideas most dangerous to German discipline and the"will to win. " At the end, as at the beginning, the German war lordsfailed to understand the psychology of human nature as they had failedto understand the spirit of France, of Belgium, of Great Britain, andof America. One of the most important admissions in history is made byLudendorff when he writes:

"Looking back, I say our decline began clearly with the outbreak of therevolution in Russia. On the one side the government was dominatedby the fear that the infection would spread, and on the other by thefeeling of their helplessness to instil fresh strength into the massesof the people and to strengthen their warlike ardor, waning as it wasthrough a combination of innumerable circumstances. "

So the web of fate was spun, and men who thought they were directingthe destiny of the world were merely caught in those woven threads likepuppets tied to strings and made to dance. It was the old Dance of Deathwhich has happened before in the folly of mankind. 

II

During the German retreat to their Hindenburg line we saw the fullruthlessness of war as never before on the western front, in the layingwaste of a beautiful countryside, not by rational fighting, but bycarefully organized destruction. Ludendorff claims, quite justly, thatit was in accordance with the laws of war. That is true. It is only thatour laws of war are not justified by any code of humanity above that ofprimitive savages. "The decision to retreat, " he says, "was not reachedwithout a painful struggle. It implied a confession of weakness that wasbound to raise the morale of the enemy and to lower our own. But asit was necessary for military reasons we had no choice. It had to becarried out. .. The whole movement was a brilliant performance. .. Theretirement proved in a high degree remunerative. "

I saw the brilliant performance in its operation. I went into beautifullittle towns like Peronne, where the houses were being gutted bysmoldering fire, and into hundreds of villages where the enemy had justgone out of them after touching off explosive charges which had made alltheir cottages collapse like card houses, their roofs spread flat upontheir ruins, and their churches, after centuries of worship in them, fall into chaotic heaps of masonry. I wandered through the ruins ofold French chateaux, once very stately in their terraced gardens, now alitter of brickwork, broken statuary, and twisted iron--work above openvaults where not even the dead had been left to lie in peace. I saw thelittle old fruit-trees of French peasants sawn off at the base, and thetall trees along the roadsides stretched out like dead giants to bar ourpassage. Enormous craters had been blown in the roadways, which hadto be bridged for our traffic of men and guns, following hard upon theenemy's retreat. 

There was a queer sense of illusion as one traveled through thisdesolation. At a short distance many of the villages seemed to stand asbefore the war. One expected to find inhabitants there. But upon closeapproach one saw that each house was but an empty shell blown out fromcellar to roof, and one wandered through the streets of the ruins in asilence that was broken only by the sound of one's own voice or by afew shells crashing into the gutted houses. The enemy was in the nextvillage, or the next but one, with a few field-guns and a rear-guard ofmachine-gunners. 

In most villages, in many of his dugouts, and by contraptions withobjects lying amid the litter, he had left "booby traps" to blow our mento bits if they knocked a wire, or stirred an old boot, or picked up afountain-pen, or walked too often over a board where beneath acid waseating through a metal plate to a high-explosive charge. I littleknew when I walked round the tower of the town hall of Bapaume that inanother week, with the enemy far away, it would go up in dust and ashes. Only a few of our men were killed or blinded by these monkey-tricks. Ourengineers found most of them before they were touched off, but one wentdown dugouts or into ruined houses with a sense of imminent danger. Allthrough the devastated region one walked with an uncanny feeling of anevil spirit left behind by masses of men whose bodies had gone away. Itexuded from scraps of old clothing, it was in the stench of the dugoutsand in the ruins they had made. 

In some few villages there were living people left behind, some hundredsin Nesle and Roye, and, all told, some thousands. They had been drivenin from the other villages burning around them, their own villages, whose devastation they wept to see. I met these people who had livedunder German rule and talked with many of them--old women, wrinkledlike dried-up apples, young women waxen of skin, hollow-eyed, with sharpcheekbones, old peasant farmers and the gamekeepers of French chateaux, and young boys and girls pinched by years of hunger that was not quitestarvation. It was from these people that I learned a good deal aboutthe psychology of German soldiers during the battles of the Somme. They told me of the terror of these men at the increasing fury of ourgun-fire, of their desertion and revolt to escape the slaughter, andof their rage against the "Great People" who used them for gun-fodder. Habitually many of them talked of the war as the "Great Swindle. " TheseFrench civilians hated the Germans in the mass with a cold, deadlyhatred. They spoke with shrill passion at the thought of Germandiscipline, fines, punishments, requisitions, which they had sufferedin these years. The hope of vengeance was like water to parched throats. Yet I noticed that nearly every one of these people had something goodto say about some German soldier who had been billeted with them. "Hewas a good-natured fellow. He chopped wood for me and gave the childrenhis own bread. He wept when he told me that the village was tobe destroyed. " Even some of the German officers had deplored thisdestruction. "The world will have a right to call us barbarians, " saidone of them in Ham. "But what can we do? We are under orders. If we donot obey we shall be shot. It is the cruelty of the High Command. It isthe cruelty of war. "

On the whole it seemed they had not misused the women. I heard notales of actual atrocity, though some of brutal passion. But many womenshrugged their shoulders when I questioned them about this and said:"They had no need to use violence in their way of love--making. Therewere many volunteers. "

They rubbed their thumbs and fingers together as though touching moneyand said, "You understand?"

I understood when I went to a convent in Amiens and saw a crowd ofyoung mothers with flaxen-haired babies, just arrived from the liberateddistricts. "All those are the children of German fathers, " said the oldReverend Mother. "That is the worst tragedy of war. How will God punishall this? Alas! it is the innocent who suffer for the guilty. "

Eighteen months later, or thereabouts, I went into a house in Cologne, where a British outpost was on the Hohenzollern bridge. There was ababies' creche in an upper room, and a German lady was tending thirtylittle ones whose chorus of "Guten Tag! Guten Tag!" was like thequacking of ducks. 

"After to-morrow there will be no more milk for them, " she said. 

"And then?" I asked. 

"And then many of them will die. "

She wept a little. I thought of those other babies in Amiens, and of theold Reverend Mother. 

"How will God punish all this? Alas! it is the innocent who suffer forthe guilty. "

Of those things General Ludendorff does not write in his Memoirs, whichdeal with the strategy and machinery of war. 

III

Sir Douglas Haig was not misled into the error of following up theGerman retreat, across that devastated country, with masses of men. Hesent forward outposts to keep in touch with the German rear-guards andprepared to deliver big blows at the Vimy Ridge and the lines roundArras. This new battle by British troops was dictated by French strategyrather than by ours. General Nivelle, the new generalissimo, wasorganizing a great offensive in the Champagne and desired the Britisharmy to strike first and keep on striking in order to engage and exhaustGerman divisions until he was ready to launch his own legions. The"secret" of his preparations was known by every officer in the Frencharmy and by Hindenburg and his staff, who prepared a new methodof defense to meet it. The French officers with whom I talked weresupremely confident of success. "We shall go through, " they said. "Itis certain. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a traitor who betrays hiscountry by the poison of pessimism. Nivelle will deal the death--blow. "So spoke an officer of the Chasseurs Alpins, and a friend in theinfantry of the line, over a cup of coffee in an estaminet crammed withother French soldiers who were on their way to the Champagne front. 

Nivelle did not launch his offensive until April 16th, seven days afterthe British had captured the heights of Vimy and gone far to the east ofArras. Hindenburg was ready. He adopted his "elastic system of defense, "which consisted in withdrawing the main body of his troops beyondthe range of the French barrage fire, leaving only a few outposts tocamouflage the withdrawal and be sacrificed for the sake of the others(those German outposts must have disliked their martyrdom under orders, and I doubt whether they, poor devils, were exhilarated by the thoughtof their heroic service). He also withdrew the full power of hisartillery beyond the range of French counter-battery work and to sucha distance that when it was the German turn to fire the French infantrywould be beyond the effective protection of their own guns. They wereto be allowed an easy walk through to their death-trap. That is whathappened. The French infantry, advancing with masses of black troopsin the Colonial Corps in the front-line of assault, all exultant andinspired by a belief in victory, swept through the forward zone of theGerman defenses, astonished, and then disconcerted by the scarcityof Germans, until an annihilating barrage fire dropped upon them andsmashed their human waves. From French officers and nurses I heardappalling tales of this tragedy. The death--wail of the black troopsfroze the blood of Frenchmen with horror. Their own losses were immensein a bloody shambles. I was told by French officers that their losses onthe first day of battle were 150, 000 casualties, and these figureswere generally believed. They were not so bad as that, though terrible. Semi-official figures state that the operations which lasted from April16th to April 25th cost France 28, 000 killed on the field of battle, 5, 000 who died of wounds in hospital, 4, 000 prisoners, and 80, 000wounded. General Nivelle's offensive was called off, and French officerswho had said, "We shall break through. .. It is certain, " now said: "Wecame up against a bec de gaz. As you English would say, we 'got it inthe neck. ' It is a great misfortune. "

The battle of Arras, in which the British army was engaged, began onApril 9th, an Easter Sunday, when there was a gale of sleet and snow. From ground near the old city of Arras I saw the preliminary bombardmentwhen the Vimy Ridge was blasted by a hurricane of fire and the Germanlines beyond Arras were tossed up in earth and flame. From one of oldVauban's earthworks outside the walls I saw lines of our men going upin assault beyond the suburbs of Blangy and St. -Laurent to Roclincourt, through a veil of sleet and smoke. Our gun-fire was immense anddevastating, and the first blow that fell upon the enemy wasoverpowering. The Vimy Ridge was captured from end to end by theCanadians on the left and the 51st Division of Highlanders on the right. By the afternoon the entire living German population, more than seventhousand in the tunnels of Vimy, were down below in the valley on ourside of the lines, and on the ridge were many of their dead as I sawthem afterward horribly mangled by shell-fire in the upheaved earth. TheHighland Division, commanded by General Harper--"Uncle Harper, " he wascalled--had done as well as the Canadians, though they had less honor, and took as many prisoners. H. D. Was their divisional sign as I saw itstenciled on many ruined walls throughout the war. "Well, General, " saida Scottish sergeant, "they don't call us Harper's Duds any more!". .. Onthe right English county troops of the 12th Division, 3d Division, andothers, the 15th (Scottish) and the 36th (London) had broken through, deeply and widely, capturing many men and guns after hard fighting roundmachine-gun redoubts. That night masses of German prisoners sufferedterribly from a blizzard in the barbed-wire cages at Etrun, by Arras, where Julius Caesar had his camp for a year in other days of history. They herded together with their bodies bent to the storm, each mansheltering his fellow and giving a little human warmth. All nightthrough a German commandant sat in our Intelligence hut with his headbowed on his breast. Every now and then he said: "It is cold! It iscold!" And our men lay out in the captured ground beyond Arras and onthe Vimy Ridge, under harassing fire and machine-gun fire, cold, too, in that wild blizzard, with British dead and German dead in the mangledearth about them. 

Ludendorff admits the severity of that defeat. 

"The battle near Arras on April 9th formed a bad beginning to thecapital fighting during this year. 

"April 10th and the succeeding days were critical days. A breach twelvethousand to fifteen thousand yards wide and as much as six thousandyards and more in depth is not a thing to be mended without more ado. It takes a good deal to repair the inordinate wastage of men and guns aswell as munitions that results from such a breach. It was the businessof the Supreme Command to provide reserves on a large scale. But in viewof the troops available, and of the war situation, it was simply notpossible to hold a second division in readiness behind each divisionthat might, perhaps, be about to drop out. A day like April 9th upsetall calculations. It was a matter of days before a new front could beformed and consolidated. Even after the troops were ultimately inline the issue of the crisis depended, as always in such cases, verymaterially upon whether the enemy followed up his initial success with afresh attack and by fresh successes made it difficult for us to createa firm front. In view of the weakening of the line that inevitablyresulted, such successes were only too easy to achieve. 

"From April 10th onward the English attacked in the breach in greatstrength, but after all not in the grand manner; they extended theirattack on both wings, especially to the southward as far as Bullecourt. On April 11th they gained Monchy, while we during the night before the12th evacuated the Vimy heights. April 23d and 28th, and also May 3d, were again days of heavy, pitched battle. In between there was somebitter local fighting. The struggle continued, we delivered minorsuccessful counter-attacks, and on the other hand lost ground slightlyat various points. "

I remember many pictures of that fighting round Arras in the days thatfollowed the first day. I remember the sinister beauty of the cityitself, when there was a surging traffic of men and guns through itsruined streets in spite of long-range shells which came crashing intothe houses. Our soldiers, in their steel hats and goatskin coats, lookedlike medieval men-at-arms. The Highlanders who crowded Arras had theirpipe-bands there and they played in the Petite Place, and the skirl ofthe pipes shattered against the gables of old houses. There were tunnelsbeneath Arras through which our men advanced to the German lines, and Iwent along them when one line of men was going into battle and anotherwas coming back, wounded, some of them blind, bloody, vomiting with thefumes of gas in their lungs--their steel hats clinking as they gropedpast one another. In vaults each side of these passages men played cardson barrels, to the light of candles stuck in bottles, or slept untiltheir turn to fight, with gas-masks for their pillows. Outside theCitadel of Arras, built by Vauban under Louis XIV, there were longqueues of wounded men taking their turn to the surgeons who were workingin a deep crypt with a high-vaulted roof. One day there were threethousand of them, silent, patient, muddy, blood-stained. Blind boys ormen with smashed faces swathed in bloody rags groped forward to the darkpassage leading to the vault, led by comrades. On the grass outside laymen with leg wounds and stomach wounds. The way past the station tothe Arras-Cambrai road was a death-trap for our transport and I saw thebodies of horses and men horribly mangled there. Dead horses were thickon each side of an avenue of trees on the southern side of the city, lying in their blood and bowels. The traffic policeman on "point duty"on the Arras-Cambrai road had an impassive face under his steel helmet, as though in Piccadilly Circus; only turned his head a little at thescream of a shell which plunged through the gable of a corner houseabove him. There was a Pioneer battalion along the road out toObservatory Ridge, which was a German target. They were mending the roadbeyond the last trench, through which our men had smashed their way. They were busy with bricks and shovels, only stopping to stare at shellsplowing holes in the fields on each side of them. When I came back onemorning a number of them lay covered with blankets, as though asleep. They were dead, but their comrades worked on grimly, with no joy oflabor in their sweat. 

Monchy Hill was the key position, high above the valley of the Scarpe. I saw it first when there was a white village there, hardly touchedby fire, and afterward when there was no village. I was in the villagebelow Observatory Ridge on the morning of April 11th when cavalrywas massed on that ground, waiting for orders to go into action. Theheadquarters of the cavalry division was in a ditch covered by planks, and the cavalry generals and their staffs sat huddled together with mapsover their knees. "I am afraid the general is busy for the moment, " saida young staff-officer on top of the ditch. He looked about the fieldsand said, "It's very unhealthy here. " I agreed with him. The bodies ofmany young soldiers lay about. Five-point-nines (5. 9's) were coming overin a haphazard way. It was no ground for cavalry. But some squadronsof the 10th Hussars, Essex Yeomanry, and the Blues were ordered to takeMonchy, and rode up the hill in a flurry of snow and were seen by Germangunners and slashed by shrapnel. Most of their horses were killed in thevillage or outside it, and the men suffered many casualties, includingtheir general--Bulkely Johnson--whose body I saw carried back on astretcher to the ruin of Thilloy, where crumps were bursting. It isan astonishing thing that two withered old French women stayed in thevillage all through the fighting. When our troops rode in these womencame running forward, frightened and crying "Camarades!" as though infear of the enemy. When our men surrounded them they were full of joyand held up their scraggy old faces to be kissed by these troopers. Afterward Monchy was filled with a fury of shell-fire and the trooperscrawled out from the ruins, leaving the village on the hill to beattacked and captured again by our infantry of the 15th and 37thDivisions, who were also badly hammered. 

Heroic folly! The cavalry in reserve below Observatory Hill stood totheir horses, staring up at a German airplane which came overhead, careless of our "Archies. " The eye of the German pilot must have widenedat the sight of that mass of men and horses. He carried back gladtidings to the guns. 

One of the cavalry officers spoke to me. 

"You look ill. "

"No, I'm all right. Only cold. "

The officer himself looked worn and haggard after a night in the open. 

"Do you think the Germans will get their range as far as this? I'mnervous about the men and the horses. We've been here for hours, and itseems no good. "

I did not remind him that the airplane was undoubtedly the herald oflong-range shells. They came within a few minutes. Some men and horseswere killed. I was with a Highland officer and we took cover in aditch not more than breast high. Shells were bursting damnably close, scattering us with dirt. 

"Let's strike away from the road, " said Major Schiach. "They always tapeit out. "

We struck across country, back to Arras, glad to get there. .. Other menhad to stay. 

The battles to the east of Arras that went before the capture of Monchyand followed it were hard, nagging actions along the valley of theScarpe, which formed a glacis, where our men were terribly exposed tomachine--gun fire, and suffered heavily day after day, week after week, for no object apparent to our battalion officers and men, who did notknow that they were doing team-work for the French. The Londoners of the56th Division made a record advance through Neuville-Vitasse to Heninand Heninel, and broke a switch-line of the Hindenburg system across thelittle Cojeul River by Wancourt. There was a fatal attack in the dark onMay 3d, when East Kents and Surreys and Londoners saw a gray dawn come, revealing the enemy between them and our main line, and had to hacktheir way through if they could, There were many who could not, and evendivisional generals were embittered by these needless losses and by thehard driving of their men, saying fierce things about our High Command. 

Their language was mild compared with that of some of our youngofficers. I remember one I met near Henin. He was one of a groupof three, all gunner officers who were looking about for better gunpositions not so clearly visible to the enemy, who was in two littlewoods--the Bois de Sart and Bois Vert--which stared down upon them likegreen eyes. Some of their guns had been destroyed, many of their horseskilled; some of their men. A few minutes before our meeting a shellhad crashed into a bath close to their hut, where men were washingthemselves. The explosion filled the bath with blood and bits of flesh. The younger officer stared at me under the tilt forward of his steel hatand said, "Hullo, Gibbs!" I had played chess with him at Groom's Cafe inFleet Street in days before the war. I went back to his hut and had teawith him, close to that bath, hoping that we should not be cut up withthe cake. There were noises "off, " as they say in stage directions, which were enormously disconcerting to one's peace of mind, and not veryfar off. I had heard before some hard words about our generalship andstaff-work, but never anything so passionate, so violent, as from thatgunner officer. His view of the business was summed up in the word"murder. " He raged against the impossible orders sent down fromheadquarters, against the brutality with which men were left in the lineweek after week, and against the monstrous, abominable futility of allour so-called strategy. His nerves were in rags, as I could see by theway in which his hand shook when he lighted one cigarette afteranother. His spirit was in a flame of revolt against the misery of hissleeplessness, filth, and imminent peril of death. Every shell thatburst near Henin sent a shudder through him. I stayed an hour in hishut, and then went away toward Neuville-Vitasse with harassing firefollowing along the way. I looked back many times to the valley, and tothe ridges where the enemy lived above it, invisible but deadly. Thesun was setting and there was a tawny glamour in the sky, and a mysticalbeauty over the landscape despite the desert that war had made there, leaving only white ruins and slaughtered trees where once there weregood villages with church spires rising out of sheltering woods. TheGerman gunners were doing their evening hate. Crumps were burstingheavily again amid our gun positions. 

Heninel was not a choice spot. There were other places of extremeunhealthfulness where our men had fought their way up to the Hindenburgline, or, as the Germans called it, the Siegfried line. Croisille andCherisy were targets of German guns, and I saw them ravaging among theruins, and dodged them. But our men, who lived close to these places, stayed there too long to dodge them always. They were inhabitants, notvisitors. The Australians settled down in front of Bullecourt, capturedit after many desperate fights, which left them with a bitter grudgeagainst tanks which had failed them and some English troops who wereheld up on the left while they went forward and were slaughtered. The4th Australian Division lost three thousand men in an experimentalattack directed by the Fifth Army. They made their gun emplacementsin the Noreuil Valley, the valley of death as they called it, andAustralian gunners made little slit trenches and scuttled into them whenthe Germans ranged on their batteries, blowing gun spokes and wheels andbreech-blocks into the air. Queant, the bastion of the Hindenburg line, stared straight down the valley, and it was evil ground, as I knew whenI went walking there with another war correspondent and an Australianofficer who at a great pace led us round about, amid 5. 9's, anddebouched a little to see one of our ammunition-dumps exploding like aBrock's Benefit, and chattered brightly under "woolly bears" which madea rending tumult above our heads. I think he enjoyed his afternoon outfrom staff-work in the headquarters huts. Afterward I was told that hewas mad, but I think he was only brave. I hated those hours, but puton the mask that royalty wears when it takes an intelligent interest infactory-work. 

The streams of wounded poured down into the casualty clearing stationsday by day, week by week, and I saw the crowded Butchers' Shops of war, where busy surgeons lopped at limbs and plugged men's wounds. 

Yet in those days, as before and afterward, as at the beginning andas at the end, the spirits of British soldiers kept high unless theirbodies were laid low. Between battles they enjoyed their spells of restbehind the lines. In that early summer of '17 there was laughter inArras, lots of fun in spite of high velocities, the music of massedpipers and brass bands, jolly comradeship in billets with paneled wallsupon which perhaps Robespierre's shadow had fallen in the candle-lightbefore the Revolution, when he was the good young man of Arras. 

As a guest of the Gordons, of the 15th Division, I listened to thepipers who marched round the table and stood behind the colonel's chairand mine, and played the martial music of Scotland, until somethingseemed to break in my soul and my ear-drums. I introduced a Frenchfriend to the mess, and as a guest of honor he sat next to the colonel, and the eight pipers played behind his chair. He went pale, deadlywhite, and presently swooned off his chair. .. And the Gordons thought itthe finest tribute to their pipes!

The officers danced reels in stocking feet with challenging cries, Gaelic exhortations, with fine grace and passion, though they weretangled sometimes in the maze. .. Many of them fell in the fields outsideor in the bogs of Flanders. 

On the western side of Arras there were field sports by London men, and Surreys, Buffs, Sussex, Norfolks, Suffolks, and Devons. They playedcricket between their turns in the line, lived in the sunshine of theday, and did not look forward to the morrow. At such times one found notrace of war's agony in their faces or their eyes nor in the quality oftheir laughter. 

My dwelling-place at that time, with other war correspondents, was in anold white chateau between St. -Pol and Hesdin, from which we motored outto the line, Arras way or Vimy way, for those walks in Queer Street. The contrast of our retreat with that Armageddon beyond was profoundand bewildering. Behind the old white house were winding walks throughlittle woods beside the stream which Henry crossed on his way toAgincourt; tapestried in early spring with bluebells and daffodils andall the flowers that Ronsard wove into his verse in the springtime ofFrance. Birds sang their love-songs in the thickets. The tits twitteredfearfully at the laugh of the jay. All that beauty was like a sharp painat one's heart after hearing the close tumult of the guns and trudgingover the blasted fields of war, in the routine of our task, week byweek, month by month. 

"This makes for madness, " said a friend of mine, a musician surprisedto find himself a soldier. "In the morning we see boys with their headsblown off"--that morning beyond the Point du Jour and Thelus we hadpassed a group of headless boys, and another coming up stared at themwith a silly smile and said, "They've copped it all right!" and went onto the same risk; and we had crouched below mounds of earth when shellshad scattered dirt over us and scared us horribly, so that we felt alittle sick in the stomach--"and in the afternoon we walk through thisgarden where the birds are singing. .. There is no sense in it. It's justmidsummer madness!"

But only one of us went really mad and tried to cut his throat, anddied. One of the best, as I knew him at his best. 

IV

The battles of the Third Army beyond Arras petered out and on June 7ththere was the battle of Messines and Wytschaete when the Second Armyrevealed its mastery of organization and detail. It was the beginningof a vastly ambitious scheme to capture the whole line of ridges throughFlanders, of which this was the southern hook, and then to liberate theBelgian coast as far inland as Bruges by a combined sea-and-land attackwith shoregoing tanks, directed by the Fourth Army. This first blow atthe Messines Ridge was completely and wonderfully successful, due tothe explosion of seventeen enormous mines under the German positions, followed by an attack "in depth, " divisions passing through each other, or "leap-frogging, " as it was called, to the final objectives against anenemy demoralized by the earthquake of the explosions. 

For two years there had been fierce underground fighting at Hill 60and elsewhere, when our tunnelers saw the Germans had listened to oneanother's workings, racing to strike through first to their enemies'galleries and touch off their high-explosive charges. Our miners, aidedby the magnificent work of Australian and Canadian tunnelers, had beatenthe enemy into sheer terror of their method of fighting and they hadabandoned it, believing that we had also. But we did not, as they foundto their cost. 

I had seen the working of the tunnelers up by Hill 70 and elsewhere. Ihad gone into the darkness of the tunnels, crouching low, strikingmy steel hat with sharp, spine-jarring knocks against the low beamsoverhead, coming into galleries where one could stand upright and walkat ease in electric light, hearing the vibrant hum of great engines, themurmur of men's voices in dark crypts, seeing numbers of men sleepingon bunks in the gloom of caverns close beneath the German lines, andlistening through a queer little instrument called a microphone, bywhich I heard the scuffle of German feet in German galleries a thousandyards away, the dropping of a pick or shovel, the knocking out of Germanpipes against charcoal stoves. It was by that listening instrument, more perfect than the enemy's, that we had beaten him, and by the grimdetermination of those underground men of ours, whose skin was the colorof the chalk in which they worked, who coughed in the dampness of thecaves, and who packed high explosives at the shaft-heads--hundreds oftons of it--for the moment when a button should be touched far away, andan electric current would pass down a wire, and the enemy and his workswould be blown into dust. 

That moment came at Hill 60 and sixteen other places below theWytschaete and Messines Ridge at three-thirty on the morning of June7th, after a quiet night of war, when a few of our batteries hadfired in a desultory way and the enemy had sent over some flocks ofgas-shells, and before the dawn I heard the cocks crow on Kemmel Hill. I saw the seventeen mines go up, and earth and flame gush out of them asthough the fires of hell had risen. A terrible sight, as the work of menagainst their fellow--creatures. .. It was the signal for seven hundredand fifty of our heavy guns and two thousand of our field--guns to openfire, and behind a moving wall of bursting shells English, Irish, andNew Zealand soldiers moved forward in dense waves. It was almosta "walk-over. " Only here and there groups of Germans served theirmachine-guns to the death. Most of the living were stupefied amid theirdead in the upheaved trenches, slashed woods, and deepest dugouts. I walked to the edge of the mine-craters and stared into their greatgulfs, wondering how many German bodies had been engulfed there. Thefollowing day I walked through Wytschaete Wood to the ruins of theHospice on the ridge. In 1914 some of our cavalry had passed this waywhen the Hospice was a big red-brick building with wings and outhousesand a large community of nuns and children. Through my glasses I hadoften seen its ruins from Kemmel Hill and the Scherpenberg. Now nothingwas left but a pile of broken bricks, not very high. Our losses werecomparatively small, though some brave men had died, including MajorWillie Redmond, whose death in Wytschaete Wood was heard with grief inIreland. 

Ludendorff admits the severity of the blow:

"The moral effect of the explosions was simply staggering. .. The 7th ofJune cost us dear, and, owing to the success of the enemy attack, theprice we paid was very heavy. Here, too, it was many days before thefront was again secure. The British army did not press its advantage;apparently it only intended to improve its position for the launchingof the great Flanders offensive. It thereupon resumed operations betweenthe old Arras battlefield and also between La Bassee and Lens. Theobject of the enemy was to wear us down and distract our attention fromYpres. "

That was true. The Canadians made heavy attacks at Lens, some of which Isaw from ground beyond Notre Dame de Lorette and the Vimy Ridge and theenemy country by Grenay, when those men besieged a long chain of miningvillages which girdled Lens itself, where every house was a machine-gunfort above deep tunnels. I saw them after desperate struggles, coveredin clay, parched with thirst, gassed, wounded, but indomitable. Lens wasthe Troy of the Canadian Corps and the English troops of the First Army, and it was only owing to other battles they were called upon to fight inFlanders that they had to leave it at last uncaptured, for the enemy toescape. 

All this was subsidiary to the great offensive in Flanders, with itsambitious objects. But when the battles of Flanders began the year wasgetting past its middle age, and events on other fronts had upset thestrategical plan of Sir Douglas Haig and our High Command. Thefailure and abandonment of the Nivelle offensive in the Champagne weredisastrous to us. It liberated many German divisions who could be sentup to relieve exhausted divisions in Flanders. Instead of attacking theenemy when he was weakening under assaults elsewhere, we attacked himwhen all was quiet on the French front. The collapse of Russia wasnow happening and our policy ought to have been to save men for thetremendous moment of 1918, when we should need all our strength. So itseems certain now, though it is easy to prophesy after the event. 

I went along the coast as far as Coxyde and Nieuport and saw secretpreparations for the coast offensive. We were building enormous gunemplacements at Malo-les--Bains for long-range naval guns, camouflagedin sand--dunes. Our men were being trained for fighting in the dunes. Our artillery positions were mapped out. 

"Three shots to one, sir, " said Sir Henry Rawlinson to the King, "that'sthe stuff to give them!"

But the Germans struck the first blow up there, not of importance to thestrategical position, but ghastly to two battalions of the 1st Division, cut off on a spit of land at Lombartzyde and almost annihilated under afury of fire. 

At this time the enemy was developing his use of a newpoison-gas--mustard gas--which raised blisters and burned men's bodieswhere the vapor was condensed into a reddish powder and blinded them fora week or more, if not forever, and turned their lungs to water. I sawhundreds of these cases in the 3rd Canadian casualty clearing stationon the coast, and there were thousands all along our front. At OastDunkerque, near Nieuport, I had a whiff of it, and was conscious of aburning sensation about the lips and eyelids, and for a week afterwardvomited at times, and was scared by queer flutterings of the heart whichat night seemed to have but a feeble beat. It was enough to "put thewind up. " Our men dreaded the new danger, so mysterious, so stealthy inits approach. It was one of the new plagues of war. 

V

The battle of Flanders began round Ypres on July 31st, with a greaterintensity of artillery on our side than had ever been seen before inthis war in spite of the Somme and Messines, when on big days of battletwo thousand guns opened fire on a single corps front. The enemy wasstrong also in artillery arranged in great groups, often shifting toenfilade our lines of attack. The natural strength of his positionalong the ridges, which were like a great bony hand outstretched throughFlanders, with streams or "beeks, " as they are called, flowing in thevalleys which ran between the fingers of that clawlike range, werestrengthened by chains of little concrete forts or "pill-boxes, " as oursoldiers called them, so arranged that they could defend one anotherby enfilade machine-gun fire. These were held by garrisons ofmachine--gunners of proved resolution, whose duty was to break up ourwaves of attack until, even if successful in gaining ground, only smallbodies of survivors would be in a position to resist the counter-attackslaunched by German divisions farther back. The strength of thepill--boxes made of concrete two inches thick resisted everything butthe direct hit of heavy shells, and they were not easy targets at longrange. The garrisons within them fought often with the utmost courage, even when surrounded, and again and again this method of defense provedterribly effective against the desperate heroic assaults of Britishinfantry. 

What our men had suffered in earlier battles was surpassed by what theywere now called upon to endure. All the agonies of war which I haveattempted to describe were piled up in those fields of Flanders. Therewas nothing missing in the list of war's abominations. A few days afterthe battle began the rains began, and hardly ceased for four months. Night after night the skies opened and let down steady torrents, whichturned all that country into one great bog of slime. Those little riversor "beeks, " which ran between the knobby fingers of the clawlike rangeof ridges, were blown out of their channels and slopped over into broadswamps. The hurricanes of artillery fire which our gunners pouredupon the enemy positions for twenty miles in depth churned up deepshell-craters which intermingled and made pits which the rains andfloods filled to the brim. The only way of walking was by "duck-boards, "tracks laid down across the bogs under enemy fire, smashed up day byday, laid down again under cover of darkness. Along a duckboard walk menmust march in single file, and if one of our men, heavily laden in hisfighting-kit, stumbled on those greasy boards (as all of them stumbledat every few yards) and fell off, he sank up to his knees, often upto his waist, sometimes up to his neck, in mud and water. If he werewounded when he fell, and darkness was about him, he could only cry toGod or his pals, for he was helpless otherwise. One of our divisions ofLancashire men--the 66th--took eleven hours in making three miles orso out of Ypres across that ground on their way to attack, and then, inspite of their exhaustion, attacked. Yet week after week, month aftermonth, our masses of men, almost every division in the British armyat one time or another, struggled on through that Slough of Despond, capturing ridge after ridge, until the heights at Passchendaele werestormed and won, though even then the Germans clung to Staden andWestroosebeeke when all our efforts came to a dead halt, and thatBelgian coast attack was never launched. 

Sir Douglas Haig thinks that some of the descriptions of that sixmonths' horror were "exaggerated. " As a man who knows something of thevalue of words, and who saw many of those battle scenes in Flanders, andwent out from Ypres many times during those months to the WesthoekRidge and the Pilkem Ridge, to the Frezenburg and Inverness Copse andGlencourse Wood, and beyond to Polygon Wood and Passchendaele, where hisdead lay in the swamps and round the pill-boxes, and where tanks thathad wallowed into the mire were shot into scrap-iron by German gun-fire(thirty were knocked out by direct hits on the first day of battle), andwhere our own guns were being flung up by the harassing fire of heavyshells, I say now that nothing that has been written is more than thepale image of the abomination of those battlefields, and that no pen orbrush has yet achieved the picture of that Armageddon in which so manyof our men perished. 

They were months of ghastly endurance to gunners when batteries sank upto their axles as I saw them often while they fired almost unceasinglyfor days and nights without sleep, and were living targets of shellswhich burst about them. They were months of battle in which our menadvanced through slime into slime, under the slash of machine-gunbullets, shrapnel, and high explosives, wet to the skin, chilled tothe bone, plastered up to the eyes in mud, with a dreadful way back forwalking wounded, and but little chance sometimes for wounded whocould not walk. The losses in many of these battles amounted almost toannihilation to many battalions, and whole divisions lost as much as 50per cent of their strength after a few days in action, before they were"relieved. " Those were dreadful losses. Napoleon said that no body ofmen could lose more than 25 per cent of their fighting strength in anaction without being broken in spirit. Our men lost double that, andmore than double, but kept their courage, though in some cases they losttheir hope. 

The 55th Division of Lancashire men, in their attacks on a line ofpill-boxes called Plum Farm, Schuler Farm, and Square Farm, below theGravenstafel Spur, lost 3, 840 men in casualties out of 6, 049. Thosewere not uncommon losses. They were usual losses. One day's fighting inFlanders (on October 4th) cost the British army ten thousand casualties, and they were considered "light" by the Higher Command in relation tothe objects achieved. 

General Harper of the 51st (Highland) Division told me that in hisopinion the official communiques and the war correspondents' articlesgave only one side of the picture of war and were too glowing in theiroptimism. (I did not tell him that my articles were accused of beingblack in pessimism, pervading gloom. ) "We tell the public, " he said, "that an enemy division has been 'shattered. ' That is true. But so ismine. One of my brigades has lost eighty-seven officers and two thousandmen since the spring. " He protested that there was not enough liaisonbetween the fighting-officers and the Higher Command, and could notblame them for their hatred of "the Staff. "

The story of the two Irish divisions--the 36th Ulster; and 16th(Nationalist)--in their fighting on August 16th is black in tragedy. They were left in the line for sixteen days before the battle and wereshelled and gassed incessantly as they crouched in wet ditches. Everyday groups of men were blown to bits, until the ditches were bloody andthe living lay by the corpses of their comrades. Every day scores ofwounded crawled back through the bogs, if they had the strength tocrawl. Before the attack on August 16th the Ulster Division had lostnearly two thousand men. Then they attacked and lost two thousand more, and over one hundred officers. The 16th Division lost as many men beforethe attack and more officers. The 8th Dublins had been annihilated inholding the line. On the night before the battle hundreds of men weregassed. Then their comrades attacked and lost over two thousand more, and one hundred and sixty--two officers. All the ground below two knollsof earth called Hill 35 and Hill 37, which were defended by Germanpill-boxes called Pond Farm and Gallipoli, Beck House and BorryFarm, became an Irish shambles. In spite of their dreadful lossesthe survivors in the Irish battalion went forward to the assaultwith desperate valor on the morning of August 16th, surrounded thepill-boxes, stormed them through blasts of machine-gun fire, and towardthe end of the day small bodies of these men had gained a footing on theobjectives which they had been asked to capture, but were then too weakto resist German counter-attacks. The 7th and 8th Royal Irish Fusiliershad been almost exterminated in their efforts to dislodge the enemy fromHill 37. They lost seventeen officers out of twenty-one, and 64 per centof their men. One company of four officers and one hundred men, orderedto capture the concrete fort known as Borry Farm, at all cost, lost fourofficers and seventy men. The 9th Dublins lost fifteen officers out ofseventeen, and 66 per cent of their men. 

The two Irish divisions were broken to bits, and their brigadiers calledit murder. They were violent in their denunciation of the Fifth Army forhaving put their men into the attack after those thirteen days of heavyshelling, and after the battle they complained that they were cast asidelike old shoes, no care being taken for the comfort of the men who hadsurvived. No motor-lorries were sent to meet them and bring them down, but they had to tramp back, exhausted and dazed. The remnants of the16th Division, the poor, despairing remnants, were sent, without rest orbaths, straight into the line again, down south. 

I found a general opinion among officers and men, not only of the IrishDivision, under the command of the Fifth Army, that they had been thevictims of atrocious staff-work, tragic in its consequences. From what Isaw of some of the Fifth Army staff-officers I was of the same opinion. Some of these young gentlemen, and some of the elderly officers, were arrogant and supercilious without revealing any symptoms ofintelligence. If they had wisdom it was deeply camouflaged by an airof inefficiency. If they had knowledge they hid it as a secret of theirown. General Gough, commanding the Fifth Army in Flanders, and afterwardnorth and south of St. -Quentin, where the enemy broke through, wasextremely courteous, of most amiable character, with a high sense ofduty. But in Flanders, if not personally responsible for many tragichappenings, he was badly served by some of his subordinates; andbattalion officers and divisional staffs raged against the whole ofthe Fifth Army organization, or lack of organization, with an extremepassion of speech. 

"You must be glad to leave Flanders, " I said to a group of officerstrekking toward the Cambrai salient. 

One of them answered, violently: "God be thanked we are leaving theFifth Army area!"

In an earlier chapter of this book I have already paid a tribute to theSecond Army, and especially to Sir John Harington, its chief of staff. There was a thoroughness of method, a minute attention to detail, a carefor the comfort and spirit of the men throughout the Second Army staffwhich did at least inspire the troops with the belief that whatever theydid in the fighting-lines had been prepared, and would be supported, with every possible help that organization could provide. That beliefwas founded not upon fine words spoken on parade, but by strenuous work, a driving zeal, and the fine intelligence of a chief of staff whosebrain was like a high-power engine. 

I remember a historic little scene in the Second Army headquarters atCassel, in a room where many of the great battles had been planned, when Sir John Harington made the dramatic announcement that Sir HerbertPlumer, and he, as General Plumer's chief of staff, had been ordered toItaly--in the middle of a battle--to report on the situation which hadbecome so grave there. He expressed his regret that he should haveto leave Flanders without completing all his plans, but was glad thatPasschendaele had been captured before his going. 

In front of him was the map of the great range from Wytschaete toStaden, and he laid his hand upon it and smiled and said: "I oftenused to think how much of that range we should get this year. Now itis nearly all ours. " He thanked the war correspondents for all theirarticles, which had been very helpful to the army, and said how glad hehad been to have our co-operation. 

"It was my ambition, " he said, speaking with some emotion, "to makecordial relations between battalion officers and the staff, and to getrid of that criticism (sometimes just) which has been directed againstthe staff. The Second Army has been able to show the fighting soldiersthat the success of a battle depends greatly on efficient staffwork, and has inspired them with confidence in the preparations andorganization behind the lines. "

Yet it seemed to me, in my pessimism, and seems to me still, in mymemory of all that ghastly fighting, that the fine mechanism of theSecond Army applied to those battles in Flanders was utterly misspent, that after the first heavy rains had fallen the offensive ought to havebeen abandoned, and that it was a frightful error of judgment to askmasses of men to attack in conditions where they had not a dog's chanceof victory, except at a cost which made it of Pyrrhic irony. 

Nevertheless, it was wearing the enemy out, as well as our own strengthin man-power. He could less afford to lose his one man than we could ourthree, now that the United States had entered the war. Ludendorffhas described the German agony, and days of battle which he calls"terrific, " inflicting "enormous loss" upon his armies and increasinghis anxiety at the "reduction of our fighting strength. "

"Enormous masses of ammunition, the like of which no mortal mind beforethe war had conceived, were hurled against human beings who lay, ekingout but a bare existence, scattered in shell-holes that were deep inslime. The terror of it surpassed even that of the shell-pitted fieldbefore Verdun. This was not life; it was agony unspeakable. And outof the universe of slime the attacker wallowed forward, slowly butcontinually, and in dense masses. Time and again the enemy, struck bythe hail of our projectiles in the fore field, collapsed, and our lonelymen in the shell-holes breathed again. Then the mass came on. Rifle andmachine-gun were beslimed. The struggle was man to man, and--only toooften--it was the mass that won. 

"What the German soldier accomplished, lived through, and sufferedduring the Flanders battle will stand in his honor for all time as abrazen monument that he set himself with his own hands on enemy soil!

"The enemy's losses, too, were heavy. When, in the spring of 1918, weoccupied the battlefield, it presented a horrible spectacle with itsmany unburied dead. Their number ran into thousands. Two-thirds ofthem were enemy dead; one-third were German soldiers who had met here ahero's death. 

"And yet the truth must be told; individual units no longer surmountedas before the demoralizing influences of the defensive campaign. 

"October 26th and 30th and November 6th and 10th were also days ofpitched battle of the heaviest kind. The enemy stormed like a wild bullagainst the iron wall that kept him at a distance from our U-boat base. He hurled his weight against the Houthulst Wood; he hurled it againstPoelcapelle, Passchendaele, Becelaere, Gheluvelt, and Zandvoorde; atvery many points he dented the line. It seemed as if he would chargedown the wall; but, although a slight tremor passed through itsfoundation, the wall held. The impressions that I continued to receivewere extremely grave. Tactically everything had been done; the forefield was good. Our artillery practice had materially improved. Behindnearly every fighting--division there stood a second, as rear wave. Inthe third line, too, there were still reserves. We knew that the wearand tear of the enemy's forces was high. But we also knew that the enemywas extraordinarily strong and, what was equally important, possessedextraordinary will-power. "

That was the impression of the cold brain directing the machinery of warfrom German headquarters. More human and more tragic is a letter of anunknown German officer which we found among hundreds of others, tellingthe same tale, in the mud of the battlefield:

"If it were not for the men who have been spared me on this fierce dayand are lying around me, and looking timidly at me, I should shed hotand bitter tears over the terrors that have menaced me during thesehours. On the morning of September 18th my dugout containing seventeenmen was shot to pieces over our heads. I am the only one who withstoodthe maddening bombardment of three days and still survives. You cannotimagine the frightful mental torments I have undergone in those fewhours. After crawling out through the bleeding remnants of my comrades, and through the smoke and debris, wandering and running in the midst ofthe raging gun-fire in search of a refuge, I am now awaiting death atany moment. You do not know what Flanders means. Flanders means endlesshuman endurance. Flanders means blood and scraps of human bodies. Flanders means heroic courage and faithfulness even unto death. "

To British and to Germans it meant the same. 

VI

During the four and a half months of that fighting the warcorrespondents were billeted in the old town of Cassel, where, perchedon a hill which looks over a wide stretch of Flanders, through ourglasses we could see the sand-dunes beyond Dunkirk and with the nakedeyes the whole vista of the battle-line round Ypres and in the widecurve all the countryside lying between Aire and Hazebrouck and NotreDame de Lorette. My billet was in a monastery for old priests, on theeastern edge of the town, and at night my window was lighted by distantshell-fire, and I gazed out to a sky of darkness rent by vivid flashes, bursts of red flame, and rockets rising high. The priests used to tapat my door when I came back from the battlefields all muddy, with aslime-plastered face, writing furiously, and an old padre used to plagueme like that, saying:

"What news? It goes well, eh? Not too well, perhaps! Alas! it is aslaughter on both sides. "

"It is all your fault, " I said once, chaffingly, to get rid of him. "Youdo not pray enough. "

He grasped my wrist with his skinny old hand. 

"Monsieur, " he whispered, "after eighty years I nearly lose my faithin God. That is terrible, is it not? Why does not God give us victory?Alas! perhaps we have sinned too much!"

One needed great faith for courage then, and my courage (never much toboast about) ebbed low those days, when I agonized over our losses andsaw the suffering of our men and those foul swamps where the bodies ofour boys lay in pools of slime, vividly colored by the metallic vaporsof high explosives, beside the gashed tree-stumps; and the mangledcorpses of Germans who had died outside their pill-boxes; and when I sawdead horses on the roads out of Ypres, and transport drivers dead besidetheir broken wagons, and officers of ours with the look of doomed men, nerve-shaken, soul-stricken, in captured blockhouses, where I took a nipof whisky with them now and then before they attacked again; and groupsof dazed prisoners coming down the tracks through their own harrowingfire; and always, always, streams of wounded by tens of thousands. 

There was an old mill-house near Vlamertinghe, beyond Goldfish Chateau, which was made into a casualty clearing station, and scores of timeswhen I passed it I saw it crowded with the "walking wounded, " who hadtrudged down from the fighting-line, taking eleven hours, fourteen hourssometimes, to get so far. They were no longer "cheerful" like the gaylads who came lightly wounded out of earlier battles, glad of life, excited by their luck. They were silent, shivering, stricken men; boysin age, but old and weary in the knowledge of war. The slime of thebattlefields had engulfed them. Their clothes were plastered to theirbodies. Their faces and hands were coated with that whitish clay. Theirsteel hats and rifles were caked with it. Their eyes, brooding, werestrangely alive in those corpselike figures of mud who huddledround charcoal stoves or sat motionless on wooden forms, waiting forambulances. Yet they were stark in spirit still. 

"Only the mud beat us, " they said. Man after man said that. 

"We should have gone much farther except for the mud. "

Along the Menin road there were wayside dressing stations for wounded, with surgeons at work, and I saw the same scenes there. They were notbeyond the danger zone. Doctors and orderlies were killed by long-rangeshells. Wounded were wounded again or finished off. Some ambulances wereblown to bits. A colonel who had been standing in talk with a doctor waskilled halfway through a sentence. 

There was never a day in which Ypres was not shelled by long-range highvelocities which came howling overhead as I heard them scores of timesin passing through those ruins with gas-mask at the alert, accordingto orders, and steel hat strapped on, and a deadly sense of nostalgiabecause of what was happening in the fields of horror that lay beyond. Yet to the soldier farther up the Menin road Ypres was sanctuary andGod's heaven. 

The little old town of Cassel on the hill--where once a Duke of Yorkmarched up and then marched down again--was beyond shell-range, thoughthe enemy tried to reach it and dropped twelve-inch shells (which makeholes deep enough to bury a coach and horses) round its base. Thereis an inn there--the Hotel du Sauvage--which belongs now to Englishhistory, and Scottish and Irish and Welsh and Australian and Canadian. It was the last place along the road to Ypres where men who loved lifecould get a dinner sitting with their knees below a table-cloth, with candle-light glinting in glasses, while outside the windows theflickering fires of death told them how short might be their tarryingin the good places of the world. This was a good place where theblinds were pulled down by Madame, who understood. Behind the desk wasMademoiselle Suzanne, "a dainty rogue in porcelain, " with wonderfullybright eyes and just a little greeting of a smile for any young officerwho looked her way trying to get that greeting, because it was ever solong since he had seen a pretty face and might be ever so long again. Sometimes it was a smile met in the mirror against the wall, to whichSuzanne looked to touch her curls and see, like the Lady of Shalott, the pictures of life that passed. A man would tilt his chair to getthat angle of vision. Outside, on these nights of war, it was oftenblusterous, very dark, wet with heavy rain. The door opened, and otherofficers came in with waterproofs sagging round their legs and top-bootsmuddy to the tags, abashed because they made pools of water on polishedboards. 

"Pardon, Madame. "

"Ca ne fait rien, Monsieur. "

There was a klip-klop of horses' hoofs in the yard. I thought ofD'Artagnan and the Musketeers who might have ridden into this very yard, strode into this very room, on their way to Dunkirk or Calais. Madameplayed the piano remarkably well, classical music of all kinds, and anyaccompaniment to any song. Our young officers sang. Some of them touchedthe piano with a loving touch and said, "Ye gods, a piano again!" andplayed old melodies or merry ragtime. Before Passchendaele was taken aCanadian boy brought a fiddle with him, and played last of all, afterother tunes, "The Long, Long Trail, " which his comrades sang. 

"Come and play to us again, " said Madame. 

"If I come back, " said the boy. 

He did not come back along the road through Ypres to Cassel. 

From the balcony one could see the nightbirds fly. On every moonlightnight German raiders were about bombing our camps and villages. Onecould see just below the hill how the bombs crashed into St. -MarieCapelle and many hamlets where British soldiers lay, and where peasantsand children were killed with them. For some strange reason Casselitself was never bombed. 

"We are a nest of spies, " said some of the inhabitants, but others hadfaith in a miraculous statue, and still others in Sir Herbert Plumer. 

Once when a big shell burst very close I looked at Mademoiselle Suzannebehind the desk. She did not show fear by the flicker of an eyelid, though officers in the room were startled. 

"Vous n'avez pas peur, meme de la mort?" ("You are not afraid, even ofdeath?") I asked. 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

"Je m'en fiche de la mort!" ("I don't care a damn for death!")

The Hotel du Sauvage was a pleasant rendezvous, but barred for a time toyoung gentlemen of the air force, who lingered too long there sometimesand were noisy. It was barred to all officers for certain hours ofthe day without special permits from the A. P. M. , who made trouble ingranting them. Three Scottish officers rode down into Cassel. They hadridden down from hell-fire to sit at a table covered with a table-cloth, and drink tea in a room again. They were refused permission, and theirlanguage to me about the A. P. M. Was unprintable. They desired his bloodand bones. They raised their hands to heaven to send down wrath uponall skunks dwelling behind the lines in luxury and denying any kind ofcomfort to fighting-men. They included the P. M. In their rage, and allstaff-officers from Cassel to Boulogne, and away back to Whitehall. 

To cheer up the war correspondents' mess when we assembled at nightafter miserable days, and when in the darkness gusts of wind and rainclouted the window-panes and distant gun-fire rumbled, or bombs werefalling in near villages, telling of peasant girls killed in their bedsand soldiers mangled in wayside burns, we had the company sometimesof an officer (a black-eyed fellow) who told merry little tales ofexecutions and prison happenings at which he assisted in the course ofhis duty. 

I remember one about a young officer sentenced to death for cowardice(there were quite a number of lads like that). He was blindfolded by agas-mask fixed on the wrong way round, and pinioned, and tied to a post. The firing--party lost their nerve and their shots were wild. The boywas only wounded, and screamed in his mask, and the A. P. M. Had to shoothim twice with his revolver before he died. 

That was only one of many little anecdotes told by a gentleman whoseemed to like his job and to enjoy these reminiscences. 

The battles of Flanders ended with the capture of Passchendaele by theCanadians, and that year's fighting on the western front cost us 800, 000casualties, and though we had dealt the enemy heavy blows from which hereeled back, the drain upon our man-power was too great for what was tohappen next year, and our men were too sorely tried. For the first timethe British army lost its spirit of optimism, and there was a sense ofdeadly depression among many officers and men with whom I came in touch. They saw no ending of the war, and nothing except continuous slaughter, such as that in Flanders. 

Our men were not mythical heroes exalted by the gods above thelimitations of nature. They were human beings, with wives and children, or mothers and sisters, whom they desired to see again. They hated thiswar. Death had no allurement for them, except now and then as an escapefrom intolerable life under fire. They would have been superhuman ifthey had not revolted in spirit, though still faithful to discipline, against the foul conditions of warfare in the swamps, where, in spiteof all they had, in that four months or so of fighting, achieved thegreatest effort of human courage and endurance ever done by masses ofmen in obedience to command. 

VII

At the end of those battles happened that surprising, audaciousadventure in the Cambrai salient organized by the Third Army underGeneral Byng, when on November 20, 1917, squadrons of tanks brokethrough the Hindenburg line, and infantry streamed through the breach, captured hundreds of guns, ten thousand prisoners, many villages andridges, and gave a monstrous shock to the German High Command. 

The audacity of the adventure lay in the poverty of manpower with whichit was attempted and supported. The divisions engaged had all beenthrough the grinding mill of Flanders and were tired men. The artillerywas made up largely of those batteries which had been axle--deep inFlanders mud. It was clearly understood by General Byng and Gen. LouisVaughan, his chief of staff, that Sir Douglas Haig could not affordto give them strong reserves to exploit any success they might gainby surprise or to defend the captured ground against certaincounter-attacks. It was to be a surprise assault by tanks and infantry, with the hope that the cavalry corps might find its gap at last andsweep round Cambrai before the enemy could recover and reorganize. Withother correspondents I saw Gen. Louis Vaughan, who expounded the schemebefore it was launched. That charming man, with his professional manner, sweetness of speech, gentleness of voice and gesture, like an Oxforddon analyzing the war correspondence of Xenophon, made no secret of theeconomy with which the operation would have to be made. 

"We must cut our coat according to our cloth, " he said. 

The whole idea was to seize only as much ground as the initial successcould gain, and not to press if resistance became strong. It was agamble, with a chance of luck. The cavalry might do nothing, or scorea big triumph. All depended on the surprise of the tanks. If they werediscovered before the assault the whole adventure would fail at thestart. 

They had been brought up secretly by night, four hundred of them, withsupply-tanks for ammunition and petrol lying hidden in woods by day. Sothe artillery and infantry and cavalry had been concentrated also. Theenemy believed himself secure in his Hindenburg line, which had beenconstructed behind broad hedges of barbed wire with such wide ditchesthat no tank could cross. 

How, then, would tanks cross? Ah, that was a little trick which wouldsurprise the Germans mightily. Each tank would advance through the earlymorning mists with a bridge on its nose. The bridge was really a big"fascine, " or bundle of fagots about a yard and a half in diameter, andcontrolled by a lever and chain from the interior of the tank. Havingplowed through the barbed wire and reached the edge of the Hindenburgtrench, the tank would drop the fascine into the center of the ditch, stretch out its long body, reach the bundle of fagots, find support onit, and use it as a stepping-stone to the other side. Very simple inidea and effect!

So it happened, and the mists favored us, as I saw on the morning of theattack at a little place called Beaumont, near Villers Pluich. The enemywas completely surprised, caught at breakfast in his dugouts, rounded upin batches. The tanks went away through the breach they had made, withthe infantry swarming round them, and captured Havrincourt, Hermies, Ribecourt, Gouzeaucourt, Masnieres, and Marcoing, and a wide stretch ofcountry forming a cup or amphitheater below a series of low ridges southof Bourlon Wood, where the ground rose again. 

It was a spectacular battle, such as we had never seen before, andduring the following days, when our troops worked up to Bourlon Wood andthrough the intervening villages of Anneux, Graincourt, Containg, andFontaine Notre Dame, I saw tanks going into action and cruising aboutlike landships, with cavalry patrols riding over open ground, airplanesflying low over German territory, and masses of infantry beyond alltrench-lines, and streams of liberated civilians trudging through thelines from Marcoing. The enemy was demoralized the first day and madeonly slight resistance. The chief losses of the tanks were due to aGerman major of artillery who served his own guns and knocked out abaker's dozen of these monsters as they crawled over the FlesquieresRidge. I saw them lying there with the blood and bones of their pilotsand crews within their steel walls. It was a Highland soldier whochecked the German major. 

"You're a brave man, " he said, "but you've got to dee, " and ranhim through the stomach with his bayonet. It was this check at theFlesquieres Ridge, followed by the breaking of a bridge at Masnieresunder the weight of a tank and the holding of a trench-line called theRumilly switch by a battalion of Germans who raced to it from Cambraibefore our men could capture it, which thwarted the plans ofthe cavalry. Our cavalry generals were in consultation at theirheadquarters, too far back to take immediate advantage of the situation. They waited for the capture of the Rumilly switch, and held up massesof cavalry whom I saw riding through the village of Ribecourt, withexcitement and exaltation, because they thought that at last theirchance had come. Finally orders were given to cancel all previous plansto advance. Only one squadron, belonging to the Canadian Fort GarryHorse in General Seely's division, failed to receive the order (theircolonel rode after them, but his horse slipped and fell before he caughtthem up), and it was their day of heroic folly. They rode fast and madetheir way through a gap in the wire cut by the troopers, and came underrifle and machine-gun fire, which wounded the captain and several men. 

The command was carried on by a young lieutenant, who rode with hismen until they reached the camouflaged road southeast of the village ofRumilly, where they went through in sections under the fire of the enemyhidden in the banks. Here they came up against a battery of field-guns, one of which fired point-blank at them. They charged the battery, putting the guns out of action and killing some of the gunners. Thosewho were not destroyed surrendered, and the prisoners were left tobe sent back by the supports. The squadron then dealt with the Germaninfantry in the neighborhood. Some of them fled, while some were killedor surrendered. All these operations were done at a gallop under firefrom flanking blockhouses. The squadron then slowed down to a walkand took up a position in a sunken road one kilometer east of Rumilly. Darkness crept down upon them, and gradually they were surrounded byGerman infantry with machine-guns, so that they were in great danger ofcapture or destruction. Only five of their horses remained unhit, andthe lieutenant in command decided that they must endeavor to cut theirway through and get back. The horses were stampeded in the directionof the enemy in order to draw the machine-gun fire, and while theseriderless horses galloped wildly out of one end of the sunken road, theofficer and his surviving troopers escaped from the other end. On theway back they encountered four bodies of the enemy, whom they attackedand routed. On one occasion their escape was due to the cunning ofanother young lieutenant, who spoke German and held conversations withthe enemy in the darkness, deceiving them as to the identity of hisforce until they were able to take the German troops by surprise andhack a way through. This lieutenant was hit in the face by a bullet, and when he arrived back in Masnieres with his men in advance of therear-guard he was only able to make his report before falling in a stateof collapse. 

Other small bodies of cavalry--among them the 8th Dragoons and 5thHussars--had wild, heroic adventures in the Cambrai salient, where theyrode under blasts of machine-gun fire and rounded up prisoners in theruined villages of Noyelles and Fontaine Notre Dame. Some of them wentinto the Folie Wood nearby and met seven German officers strolling aboutthe glades, as though no war was on. They took them prisoners, but hadto release some of them later, as they could not be bothered with them. Later they came across six ammunition--wagons and destroyed them. In theheart of the wood was one of the German divisional headquarters, andone of our cavalry officers dismounted and approached the cottagestealthily, and looked through the windows. Inside was a party of Germanofficers seated at a table, with beer mugs in front of them, apparentlyunconscious of any danger near them. Our officer fired his revolverthrough the windows and then, like a schoolboy who has thrown a stone, ran away as hard as he could and joined his troop. Youthful folly ofgallant hearts!

After the enemy's surprise his resistance stiffened and he held thevillage of Fontaine Notre Dame, and Bourlon Wood, on the hill above, with strong rear-guards. Very quickly, too, he brought new batteriesinto action, and things became unpleasant in fields and villages whereour men, as I saw them on those days, hunted around for souvenirs inGerman dugouts and found field-glasses, automatic pistols, and othergood booty. 

It seemed to me that the plan as outlined by Gen. Louis Vaughan, notto exploit success farther than justified by the initial surprise, wasabandoned for a time. A brigade of Guards was put in to attack FontaineNotre Dame, and suffered heavily from machine-gun fire before taking it. The 62d (Yorkshire) Division lost many good men in Bourlon Villageand Bourlon Wood, into which the enemy poured gas-shells and highexplosives. 

Then on November 30th the Germans, under the direction of General vonMarwitz, came back upon us with a tiger's pounce, in a surprise attackwhich we ought to have anticipated. I happened to be on the way toGouzeaucourt early that morning, and, going through the village of Fins, next to it, I saw men straggling back in some disorder, and gun-teamswedged in a dense traffic moving in what seemed to me the wrongdirection. 

"I don't know what to do, " said a young gunner officer. "My battery hasbeen captured and I can't get into touch with the brigade. "

"What has happened?" I asked. 

He looked at me in surprise. 

"Don't you know? The enemy has broken through. "

"Broken through where?"

The gunner officer pointed down the road. 

"At the present moment he's in Gouzeaucourt. "

I went northward, and saw that places like Hermies and Havrincourt, which had been peaceful spots for a few days, were under heavy fire. Bourlon Wood beyond was a fiery furnace. Hell had broken out again andthings looked bad. There was a general packing up of dumps and fieldhospitals and heavy batteries. In Gouzeaucourt and other places ourdivisional and brigade headquarters were caught napping. Officerswere in their pajamas or in their baths when they heard the snap ofmachine-gun bullets. I saw the Guards go forward to Gouzeaucourt for acounter-attack. They came along munching apples and whistling, as thoughon peace maneuvers. Next day, after they had gained back Gouzeaucourt, Isaw many of them wounded, lying under tarpaulins, all dirty and bloody. 

The Germans had adopted our own way of attack. They had assembled massesof troops secretly, moving them forward by night under the cover ofwoods, so that our air scouts saw no movement by day. Our line wasweakly held along the front--the 55th Division, thinned out by losses, was holding a line of thirteen thousand yards, three times as much asany troops can hold, in safety--and the German storm-troops, after ashort, terrific bombardment, broke through to a distance of five miles. 

Our tired men, who had gained the first victory, fought heroicrear-guard actions back from Masnieres and Marcoing, and back fromBourlon Wood on the northern side of the salient. They made the enemypay a high price in blood for the success of his counter-attack, but welost many thousands of brave fellows, and the joy bells which had rungin London on November 20th became sad and ironical music in the heartsof our disappointed people. 

So ended 1917, our black year; and in the spring of 1918, after all thelosses of that year, our armies on the western front were threatened bythe greatest menace that had ever drawn near to them, and the BritishEmpire was in jeopardy. 

VIII

In the autumn of 1917 the Italian disaster of Caporetto had happened, and Sir Herbert Plumer, with his chief of staff, Sir John Harington, andmany staff-officers of the Second Army, had, as I have told, been sentto Italy with some of our best divisions, so weakening Sir DouglasHaig's command. At that very time, also, after the bloody losses inFlanders, the French government and General Headquarters brought severepressure upon the British War Council to take over a greater length ofline in France, in order to release some of the older classes of theFrench army who had been under arms since 1914. We yielded to thatpressure and Sir Douglas Haig extended his lines north and south ofSt. -Quentin, where the Fifth Army, under General Gough, was intrustedwith the defense. 

I went over all that new ground of ours, out from Noyon to Chaulny andBarisis and the floods of the Oise by La Fere; out from Ham to HolmonForest and Francilly and the Epine de Dullon, and the Fort de Liezby St. -Quentin; and from Peronne to Hargicourt and Jeancourt and LaVerguier. It was a pleasant country, with living trees and green fieldsnot annihilated by shell-fire, though with the naked eye I could seethe scarred walls of St. -Quentin cathedral, and the villages near thefrontlines had been damaged in the usual way. It was dead quiet therefor miles, except for short bursts of harassing fire now and then, andodd shells here and there, and bursts of black shrapnel in the blue skyof mild days. 

"Paradise, after Flanders!" said our men, but I knew that there was agreat movement of troops westward from Russia, and wondered how longthis paradise would last. 

I looked about for trench systems, support lines, and did not see them, and wondered what our defense would be if the enemy attacked here ingreat strength. Our army seemed wonderfully thinned out. There were fewmen to be seen in our outpost line or in reserve. It was all strangelyquiet. Alarmingly quiet. 

Yet, pleasant for the time being. I had a brother commanding a batteryalong the railway line south of St. -Quentin. I went to see him, and wehad a picnic meal on a little hill staring straight toward St. -Quentincathedral. One of his junior officers set the gramophone going. Thecolonel of the artillery brigade came jogging up on his horse and calledout, "Fine morning, and a pretty spot!" The infantry divisions werecheerful. "Like a rest-cure!" they said. They had sports almost withinsight of the German lines. I saw a boxing-match in an Irish battalion, and while two fellows hammered each other I glanced away from them towinding, wavy lines of chalk on the opposite hillsides, and wonderedwhat was happening behind them in that quietude. 

"What do you think about this German offensive?" I asked the general ofa London division (General Gorringe of the 47th) standing on a wagonand watching a tug-of--war. From that place also we could see the Germanpositions. 

"G. H. Q. Has got the wind-up, " he said. "It is all bluff. "

General Hall, temporarily commanding the Irish Division, was of thesame opinion, and took some pains to explain the folly of thinkingthe Germans would attack. Yet day after day, week after week, theIntelligence reports were full of evidence of immense movements oftroops westward, of intensive training of German divisions in backareas, of new hospitals, ammunition-dumps, airplanes, batterypositions. There was overwhelming evidence as to the enemy's intentions. Intelligence officers took me on one side and said: "England ought toknow. The people ought to be prepared. All this is very serious. Weshall be 'up against it. '" G. H. Q. Was convinced. On February 23d the warcorrespondents published articles summarizing the evidence, pointing outthe gravity of the menace, and they were passed by the censorship. ButEngland was not scared. Dances were in full swing in London. Littleladies laughed as usual, light-hearted. Flanders had made no differenceto national optimism, though the hospitals were crowded with blind andmaimed and shell-shocked. 

"I am skeptical of the German offensive" said Mr. Bonar Law. 

Nobody believed the war correspondents. Nobody ever did believe us, though some of us wrote the truth from first to last as far as the factsof war go apart from deeper psychology, and a naked realism of horrorsand losses, and criticism of facts, which did not come within ourliberty of the pen. 

They were strange months for me. I felt that I was in possession, asindeed I was, of a terrible secret which might lead to the ending of theworld--our world, as we knew it--with our liberties and power. For weeksI had been pledged to say no word about it, to write not a word aboutit, and it was like being haunted by a specter all day long. Onelaughed, but the specter echoed one's laughter and said, "Wait!" Themild sunshine of those spring days was pleasant to one's spirit inthe woods above La Fere, and in fields where machine-guns chattered alittle, while overhead our airplanes dodged German "Archies. " But thespecter chilled one's blood at the reminder of vast masses of field-graymen drawing nearer to our lines in overwhelming numbers. I motoredto many parts of the front, and my companion sometimes was a littleFrenchman who had lost a leg in the war--D'Artagnan with a wooden peg, most valiant, most gay. Along the way he recited the poems of Ronsard. At the journey's end one day he sang old French chansons, in an Englishmess, within gunshot of the German lines. He climbed up a tree and gazedat the German positions, and made sketches while he hummed little tunesand said between them, "Ah, les sacres Boches!. . . If only I could fightagain!"

I remember a pleasant dinner in the old town of Noyon, in a littlerestaurant where two pretty girls waited. They had come from Paris withtheir parents to start this business, now that Noyon was safe. (Safe, O Lord!) And everything was very dainty and clean. At dinner that nightthere was a hostile air raid overhead. Bombs crashed. But the girls werebrave. One of them volunteered to go with an officer across the squareto show him the way to the A. P. M. , from where he had to get a pass tostay for dinner. Shrapnel bullets were whipping the flagstones ofthe Grande Place, from anti-aircraft guns. The officer wore his steelhelmet. The girl was going out without any hat above her braided hair. We did not let her go, and the officer had another guide. One night Ibrought my brother to the place from his battery near St. Quentin. Wedined well, slept well. 

"Noyon is a good spot, " he said. "I shall come here again when you giveme a lift. "

A few days later my brother was firing at masses of Germans with opensights, and the British army was in a full-tide retreat, and the juniorofficer who had played his gramophone was dead, with other officersand men of that battery. When I next passed through Noyon shells werefalling into it, and later I saw it in ruins, with the glory of theRomanesque cathedral sadly scarred. I have ofttimes wondered whathappened to the little family in the old hotel. 

So March 21st came, as we knew it would come, even to the very date, andLudendorff played his trump cards and the great game. 

Before that date I had an interview with General Gough, commandingthe Fifth Army. He pulled out his maps, showed his method of forwardredoubts beyond the main battle zone, and in a quiet, amiable way spokesome words which froze my blood. 

"We may have to give ground, " he said, "if the enemy attacks instrength. We may have to fall back to our main battle zone. That willnot matter very much. It is possible that we may have to go fartherback. Our real line of defense is the Somme. It will be nothing like atragedy if we hold that. If we lose the crossings of the Somme it will, of course, be serious. But not a tragedy even then. It will only betragic if we lose Amiens, and we must not do that. "

"The crossings of the Somme. .. Amiens!"

Such a thought had never entered my imagination. General Gough hadsuggested terrible possibilities. 

All but the worst happened. In my despatches, reprinted in book formwith explanatory prefaces, I have told in full detail the meaning andmeasure of the British retreat, when forty-eight of our divisions wereattacked by one hundred and fourteen German divisions and fell backfighting stubborn rear-guard actions which at last brought the enemyto a dead halt outside Amiens and along the River Ancre northward fromAlbert, where afterward in a northern attack the enemy under PrinceRupprecht of Bavaria broke through the Portuguese between Givenchy andFestubert, where our wings held, drove up to Bailleul, which was burnedto the ground, and caused us to abandon all the ridges of Flanders whichhad been gained at such great cost, and fall back to the edge of Ypres. In this book I need not narrate all this history again. 

They were evil days for us. The German offensive was conducted withmasterly skill, according to the new method of "infiltration" whichhad been tried against Italy with great success in the autumn of '17 atCaporetto. 

It consisted in a penetration of our lines by wedges of machine-gunnersconstantly reinforced and working inward so that our men, attackedfrontally after terrific bombardment, found themselves under flankingfire on their right and left and in danger of being cut off. Takingadvantage of a dense fog, for which they had waited according tometeorological forecast, the Germans had easily made their way betweenour forward redoubts on the Fifth Army front, where our garrisons heldout for a long time, completely surrounded, and penetrated our innerbattle zone. Through the gaps they made they came in masses at a greatpace with immense machine--gun strength and light artillery. On theThird Army front where penetrations were made, notably near Bullecourtbetween the 6th and 51st Divisions, the whole of our army machine wasupset for a time like a watch with a broken mainspring and loose wheels. Staffs lost touch with fighting units. Communications were broken down. Orders were given but not received. After enormous losses of men andguns, our heavy artillery was choking the roads of escape, while ourrear-guards fought for time rather than for ground. The crossings of theSomme were lost too easily. In the confusion and tumult of those dayssome of our men, being human, were demoralized and panic-stricken, andgave ground which might have been longer held. But on the whole, and inthe mass, there was no panic, and a most grim valor of men who foughtfor days and nights without sleep; fought when they were almostsurrounded or quite surrounded, and until few of them remained to holdany kind of line. Fortunately the Germans were unable to drag theirheavy guns over the desert they had made a year before in their ownretreat, and at the end of a week their pace slackened and they halted, in exhaustion. 

I went into the swirl of our retreat day after day up by Guiscard andHum; then, as the line moved back, by Peronne and Bapaume, and atlast on a dreadful day by the windmill at Pozieres, our old heroicfighting-ground, where once again after many battles the enemy was inCourcelette and High Wood and Delville Wood, and, as I saw by going tothe right through Albert, driving hard up to Mametz and Montauban. Thatmeant the loss of all the old Somme battlefields, and that struck achill in one's heart. But what I marveled at always was the absence ofpanic, the fatalistic acceptance of the turn of fortune's wheel by manyofficers and men, and the refusal of corps and divisional staffs to giveway to despair in those days of tragedy and crisis. 

The northern attack was in many ways worse to bear and worse to see. Themenace to the coast was frightful when the enemy struck up to Bailleuland captured Kemmel Hill from a French regiment which had come up torelieve some of our exhausted and unsupported men. All through thiscountry between Estaires and Merville, to Steenwerck, Metern, andBailleul, thousands of civilians had been living on the edge of thebattlefields, believing themselves safe behind our lines. Now the linehad slipped and they were caught by German shell-fire and German guns, and after nearly four years of war had to abandon their homes like thefirst fugitives. I saw old women coming down lanes where 5. 9's werebursting and where our gunners were getting into action. I saw youngmothers packing their babies and their bundles into perambulators whileshells came hurtling over the thatched roofs of their cottages. I stoodon the Mont des Chats looking down upon a wide sweep of battle, andsaw many little farmsteads on fire and Bailleul one torch of flame andsmoke. 

There was an old monastery on the Mont des Chats which had been in themidst of a cavalry battle in October of 1914, when Prince Max of Hesse, the Kaiser's cousin, was mortally wounded by a shot from one of ourtroopers. He was carried into the cell of the old prior, who watchedover him in his dying hours when he spoke of his family and friends. Then his body was borne down the hill at night and buried secretly by aparish priest; and when the Kaiser wrote to the Pope, desiring to knowthe whereabouts of his cousin's grave, the priest to whom his messagewas conveyed said, "Tell the Kaiser he shall know when the German armieshave departed from Belgium and when reparation has been made for alltheir evil deeds. " It was the prior who told me that story and whodescribed to me how the British cavalry had forged their way up thehill. He showed me the scars of bullets on the walls and the windowsfrom which the monks looked out upon the battle. 

"All that is a wonderful memory, " said the prior. "Thanks to theEnglish, we are safe and beyond the range of German shells. "

I thought of his words that day I climbed the hill to see the sweep ofbattle beyond. The monastery was no longer beyond the range of Germanshells. An eight--inch shell had just smashed into the prior's parlor. Others had opened gaps in the high roofs and walls. The monks had fledby order of the prior, who stayed behind, like the captain of a sinkingship. His corridors resounded to the tramp of army boots. The Ulstergunners had made their headquarters in the refectory, but did not staythere long. A few days later the monastery was a ruin. 

From many little villages caught by the oncoming tide of war oursoldiers helped the people to escape in lorries or on gun-wagons. Theydid not weep, nor say much, but were wonderfully brave. I remember alittle family in Robecq whom I packed into my car when shells began tofall among the houses. A pretty girl, with a little invalid brother inher arms, and a mother by her side, pointed the way to a cottage in awood some miles away. She was gay and smiling when she said, "Au revoiret merci!" A few days later the cottage and the wood were behind theGerman lines. 

The northern defense, by the 55th Lancashires, 51st Highlanders (whohad been all through the Somme retreat), the 25th Division of Cheshires, Wiltshires and Lancashire Fusiliers, and the 9th Scottish Division, andothers, who fought "with their backs to the wall, " as Sir Douglas Haigdemanded of them, without reliefs, until they were worn thin, was heroicand tragic in its ordeal, until Foch sent up his cavalry (I saw themriding in clouds of dust and heard the panting of their horses), followed by divisions of blue men in hundreds of blue lorries tearingup the roads, and forming a strong blue line behind our thin brown line. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria had twenty-six fresh divisions in reserve, but had to hold them until other plans were developed--the CrownPrince's plan against the French, and the attack on Arras. 

The defense of Arras by the 3d and 56th Divisions--the Iron Division andthe London Division on the left, and by the 15th Division and Guardson the right, saved the center of our line and all our line. We had abreathing--space while heavy blows fell against the French and againstthree British divisions who had been sent to hold "a quiet sector" ontheir right. The Germans drove across the Chemin des Dames, struck rightand left, terrific blows, beat the French back, reached the Marne again, and threatened Paris. 

Foch waited to strike. The genius of Foch was that he waited until thelast minute of safety, taking immense risks in order to be certain ofhis counter-stroke. For a time he had to dissipate his reserves, buthe gathered them together again. As quick as the blue men had come upbehind our lines they were withdrawn again. Three of our divisions wentwith them, the 51st Highlanders and 15th Scottish, and the 48th English. The flower of the French army, the veterans of many battles, was massedbehind the Marne, and at Chateau Thierry the American marines andinfantry were given their first big job to do. What happened all theworld knows. The Crown Prince's army was attacked on both flanks and inthe center, and was sent reeling back to escape complete annihilation. 

IX

Ludendorff's great offensive had failed and had turned to ruin. Some ofthe twenty-six fresh divisions under Rupprecht of Bavaria were put intothe melting-pot to save the Crown Prince. The British army, with itsgaps filled up by 300, 000 new drafts from England, the young brothers ofthe elder brothers who had gone before, was ready to strike again, and on August 8th the Canadians and Australians north and south ofthe Somme, led by many tanks, broke the enemy's line beyond Amiens andslowly but surely rolled it back with enormous losses. 

For the first time in the war the cavalry had their chance of pursuit, and made full use of it, rounding up great batches of prisoners, capturing batteries of heavy and light guns, and fighting in manyactions. 

"August 8th, " writes Ludendorff, "was the black day of the German armyin the history of this war. "

He describes from the German point of view what I and others havedescribed from the British point of view, and the general narrativeis the same--a succession of hammer-blows by the British armies, whichbroke not only the German war-machine, but the German spirit. It was amarvelous feat when the 19th Division and the Welsh waded at dusk acrossthe foul waters of the River Ancre, under the heights of Thiepval, assembled under the guns of the enemy up there, and then, wet to theirskins, and in small numbers compared with the strength of the enemy, stormed the huge ridges from both sides, and hurled the enemy back fromwhat he thought was an impregnable position, and followed him day byday, taking thousands of prisoners and smashing his rear-guard defensesone by one. 

The most decisive battle of the British front in the "come-back, " afterour days of retreat, was when with the gallant help of American troopsof the 27th New York Division our men of the English Midlands, the46th Division, and others, broke the main Hindenburg line along theSt. -Quentin Canal. That canal was sixty feet wide, with steep cliffsrising sheer to a wonderful system of German machine-gun redoubts andtunneled defenses, between the villages of Bellicourt and Bellinglis. It seemed to me an impossible place to assault and capture. If the enemycould not hold that line they could hold nothing. In a dense fogon Sunday morning, September 30th, our men, with the Americans andAustralians in support, went down to the canal-bank, waded across wherethe water was shallow, swam across in life-belts where it was deep, or got across somehow and anyhow, under blasts of machine-gun fire, byrafts and plank bridges. A few hours after the beginning of the battlethey were far out beyond the German side of the canal, with masses ofprisoners in their hands. The Americans on the left of the attack, wherethe canal goes below ground, showed superb and reckless gallantry (theyforgot, however, to "mop up" behind them, so that the enemy came out ofhis tunnels and the Australians had to cut their way through), and thatevening I met their escorts with droves of captured Germans. They hadhelped to break the last defensive system of the enemy opposite theBritish front, and after that our troops fought through open country onthe way to victory. 

I saw many of the scenes which led up to Mons and Le Cateau andafterward to the Rhine. Something of the horror of war passed when theenemy drew back slowly in retreat from the lands he had invaded, and weliberated great cities like Lille and Roubaix and Tourcoing, and scoresof towns and villages where the people had been waiting for us so long, and now wept with joy to see us. The entry into Lille was unforgetable, when old men and women and girls and boys and little children crowdedround us and kissed our hands. So it was in other places. Yet not allthe horror had passed. In Courtrai, in St. -Amand by Valenciennes, inBohain, and other villages, the enemy's shell-fire and poison-gas killedand injured many of the people who had been under the German yoke solong and now thought they were safe. Hospitals were filled with womengasping for breath, with gas-fumes in their lungs, and with dyingchildren. In Valenciennes the cellars were flooded when I walked thereon its day of capture, so that when shells began to fall the peoplecould not go down to shelter. Some of them did not try to go down. At anopen window sat an old veteran of 1870 with his medal on his breast, andwith his daughter and granddaughter on each side of his chair. He calledout, "Merci! Merci!" when English soldiers passed, and when I stopped amoment clasped my hands through the window and could not speak for thetears which fell down his white and withered cheeks. A few dead Germanslay about the streets, and in Maubeuge on the day before the armisticeI saw the last dead German of the war in that part of the line. Helay stretched outside the railway station into which many shells hadcrashed. It was as though he had walked from his own comrades toward ourline before a bullet caught him. 

Ludendorff writes of the broken morale of the German troops, and of howhis men surrendered to single troopers of ours, while whole detachmentsgave themselves up to tanks. "Retiring troops, " he wrote, "greeted oneparticular division (the cavalry) that was going up fresh and gallantlyto the attack, with shouts of 'Blacklegs!' and 'War-prolongers!"' Thatis true. When the Germans left Bohain they shouted out to the Frenchgirls: "The English are coming. Bravo! The war will soon be over!" On aday in September, when British troops broke the Drocourt-Queant line, I saw the Second German Guards coming along in batches, like companies, and after they had been put in barbed-wire inclosures they laughedand clapped at the sight of other crowds of comrades coming down asprisoners. I thought then, "Something has broken in the German spirit. "For the first time the end seemed very near. 

Yet the German rear-guards fought stubbornly in many places, especiallyin the last battles round Cambrai, where, on the north, the Canadiancorps had to fight desperately, and suffered heavy and bitter lossesunder machine-gun fire, while on the south our naval division and otherswere badly cut up. 

General Currie, whom I saw during those days, was anxious anddisheartened. He was losing more men in machine-gun actions roundCambrai than in bigger battles. I watched those actions from BourlonWood, saw the last German railway train steam out of the town, and wentinto the city early on the morning of its capture, when there was aroaring fire in the heart of it and the Canadians were routing out thelast Germans from their hiding-places. 

The British army could not have gone on much farther after November11th, when the armistice brought us to a halt. For three monthsour troops had fought incessantly, storming many villages stronglygarrisoned with machine-gunners, crossing many canals under heavy fire, and losing many comrades all along the way. The pace could not have beenkept up. There is a limit even to the valor of British troops, and for atime we had reached that limit. There were not many divisions who couldhave staggered on to new attacks without rest and relief. But they hadbroken the German armies against them by a succession of hammer-strokesastounding in their rapidity and in their continuity, which I need nothere describe in detail, because in my despatches, now in book form, Ihave narrated that history as I was a witness of it day by day. 

Elsewhere the French and Americans had done their part with steady, driving pressure. The illimitable reserves of Americans, and theirfighting quality, which triumphed over a faulty organization oftransport and supplies, left the German High Command without hope evenfor a final gamble. 

Before them the German troops were in revolt, at last, against thebloody, futile sacrifice of their manhood and people. A blinding lighthad come to them, revealing the criminality of their war lords inthis "Great Swindle" against their race. It was defeat and agony whichenlightened them, as most people--even ourselves--are enlightened onlyby suffering and disillusionment, and never by successes. 

X

After the armistice I went with our troops to the Rhine, and enteredCologne with them. That was the most fantastic adventure of all in fourand a half years of strange and terrible adventures. To me there was nowild exultation in the thought of being in Cologne with our conqueringarmy. The thought of all the losses on the way, and of all the futilityof this strife, smote at one's heart. What fools the Germans had been, what tragic fools! What a mad villainy there had been among rivaldynasties and powers and politicians and peoples to lead to thismassacre! What had any one gained out of it all? Nothing except ruin. Nothing except great death and poverty and remorse and revolt. 

The German people received us humbly. They were eager to show uscourtesy and submission. It was a chance for our young Junkers, for thePrussian in the hearts of young pups of ours, who could play the pettytyrant, shout at German waiters, refuse to pay their bills, bullyshopkeepers, insult unoffending citizens. A few young staff-officersbehaved like that, disgustingly. The officers of fighting battalionsand the men were very different. It was a strange study in psychology towatch them. Here they were among the "Huns. " The men they passed in thestreets and sat with in the restaurants had been in German uniforms afew weeks before, or a few days. They were "the enemy, " the men theyhad tried to kill, the men who had tried to kill them. They had actuallyfought against them in the same places. At the Domhof Hotel I overhearda conversation between a young waiter and three of our cavalry officers. They had been in the same fight in the village of Noyelles, nearCambrai, a tiny place of ruin, where they had crouched under machine-gunfire. The waiter drew a diagram on the table-cloth. "I was just there. "The three cavalry officers laughed. "Extraordinary! We were a fewyards away. " They chatted with the waiter as though he were an oldacquaintance who had played against them in a famous football-match. They did not try to kill him with a table-knife. He did not put poisonin the soup. 

That young waiter had served in a hotel in Manchester, where he hadserved a friend of mine, to whom he now expressed his opinion on thefolly of the war, and the criminality of his war lords, and things ingeneral. Among these last he uttered an epigram which I remember for itsbrutal simplicity. It was when a staff-officer of ours, rather the worsefor wine, had been making a scene with the head waiter, bullying him ina strident voice. 

"Some English gentlemen are swine, " said the young waiter. "But allGerman gentlemen are swine. "

Some of our officers and men billeted in houses outside Cologne oracross the Rhine endeavored to stand on distant terms with the "Huns. "But it was impossible to be discourteous when the old lady of the housebrought them an early cup of coffee before breakfast, warmed their bootsbefore the kitchen fire, said, "God be praised, the war is over. " ForEnglish soldiers, anything like hostility was ridiculous in the presenceof German boys and girls who swarmed round their horses and guns, kissedtheir hands, brought them little pictures and gifts. 

"Kids are kids, " said a sergeant-major. "I don't want to cut theirthroats! Queer, ain't it?"

Many of the "kids" looked half starved. Our men gave them bread andbiscuit and bully beef. In Cologne the people seemed pleased to seeBritish soldiers. There was no sense of humiliation. No agony ofgrief at this foreign occupation. Was it lack of pride, cringing--or aprofound relief that the river of blood had ceased to flow and even asense of protection against the revolutionary mob which had looted theirhouses before our entry? Almost every family had lost one son. Some ofthem two, three, even five sons, in that orgy of slaughter. They hadpaid a dreadful price for pride. Their ambition had been drowned inblood. 

In the restaurants orchestras played gay music. Once I heard themplaying old English melodies, and I sickened a little at that. That wasgoing too far! I looked round the Cafe Bauer--a strange scene afterfour and a half years Hun-hating. English soldiers were chatting withGermans, clinking beer mugs with them. The Germans lifted their hatsto English "Tommies"; our men, Canadian and English, said "Cheerio!" toGerman soldiers in uniforms without shoulder-straps or buttons. Englishpeople still talking of Huns, demanding vengeance, the maintenance ofthe blockade, would have become hysterical if they had come suddenly tothis German cafe before the signing of peace. 

Long before peace was signed at Versailles it had been made on theRhine. Stronger than the hate of war was human nature. Face to face, British soldiers found that every German had two eyes, a nose, and amouth, in spite of being a "Hun. " As ecclesiastics would say when notroused to patriotic fury, they had been made "in the image of God. "There were pleasant-spoken women in the shops and in the farmhouses. Blue-eyed girls with flaxen pigtails courtesied very prettily to Englishofficers. They were clean. Their houses were clean, more spotless eventhan English homes. When soldiers turned on a tap they found water cameout of it. Wonderful! The sanitary arrangements were good. Servants werehard--working and dutiful. There was something, after all, in GermanKultur. At night the children said their prayer to the Christian God. Most of them were Catholics, and very pious. 

"They seem good people, " said English soldiers. 

At night, in the streets of Cologne, were women not so good. Shamelesswomen, though daintily dressed and comely. British soldiers--English, Scottish, and Canadian--grinned back at their laughing eyes, enteredinto converse with them, found they could all speak English, went downside-streets with them to narrow-fronted houses. There were squalidscenes when the A. P. M. Raided these houses and broke up an ententecordiale that was flagrant and scandalous. 

Astonishing climax to the drama of war! No general orders could stopfraternization before peace was signed. Human nature asserted itselfagainst all artificial restrictions and false passion. Friends of minewho had been violent in their hatred of all Germans became thoughtful, and said: "Of course there are exceptions, " and, "The innocent mustnot suffer for the guilty, " and, "We can afford to be a little generousnow. "

But the innocent were made to suffer for the guilty and we were notgenerous. We maintained the blockade, and German children starved, andGerman mothers weakened, and German girls swooned in the tram-cars, and German babies died. Ludendorff did not starve or die. Neither didHindenburg, nor any German war lord, nor any profiteer. Down the streetsof Cologne came people of the rich middle classes, who gorged themselveson buns and cakes for afternoon tea. They were cakes of ersatz flourwith ersatz cream, and not very healthy or nutritious, though veryexpensive. But in the side-streets, among the working--women, there was, as I found, the wolf of hunger standing with open jaws by every doorway. It was not actual starvation, but what the Germans call unternahrung(under-nourishment), producing rickety children, consumptive girls, andmen out of whom vitality had gone They stinted and scraped on miserablesubstitutes, and never had enough to eat. Yet they were the people whofor two years at least had denounced the war, had sent up petitionsfor peace, and had written to their men in the trenches about the GreatSwindle and the Gilded Ones. They were powerless, as some of them toldme, because of the secret police and martial law. What could they doagainst the government, with all their men away at the front? They weretreated like pigs, like dirt. They could only suffer and pray. They hada little hope that in the future, if France and England were not toohard, they might pay back for the guilt of their war lords and see a newGermany arise out of its ruin, freed from militarism and with greaterliberties. So humble people talked to us when I went among them witha friend who spoke good German, better than my elementary knowledge. Ibelieved in their sincerity, which had come through suffering, thoughI believed that newspaper editors, many people in the officialclasses, and the old military caste were still implacable in hatred andunrepentant. 

The German people deserved punishment for their share in the guilt ofwar. They had been punished by frightful losses of life, by a multitudeof cripples, by the ruin of their Empire. When they told me of theirhunger I could not forget the hungry wives and children of France andBelgium, who had been captives in their own land behind German lines, nor our prisoners who had been starved, until many of them died. WhenI walked through German villages and pitied the women who yearnedfor their men, still prisoners in our hands, nearly a year after thearmistice, and long after peace (a cruelty which shamed us, I think), I remembered hundreds of French villages broken into dust by Germangun-fire, burned by incendiary shells, and that vast desert of thebattlefields in France and Belgium which never in our time will regainits life as a place of human habitation. When Germans said, "Ourindustry is ruined, " "Our trade is killed, " I thought of the factoriesin Lille and many towns from which all machinery had been taken or inwhich all machinery had been broken. I thought of the thousand crimes oftheir war, the agony of millions of people upon whose liberties they hadtrampled and upon whose necks they had imposed a brutal yoke. Yet evenwith all those memories of tragic scenes which in this book are butlightly sketched, I hoped that the peace we should impose would not beone of vengeance, by which the innocent would pay for the sins of theguilty, the children for their fathers' lust, the women for theirwar lords, the soldiers who hated war for those who drove them to theshambles; but that this peace should in justice and mercy lead theworking-people of Europe out of the misery in which all were plunged, and by a policy no higher than common sense, but as high as that, establish a new phase of civilization in which military force would bereduced to the limits of safety for European peoples eager to end thefolly of war and get back to work. 

I hoped too much. There was no such peace. 

PART EIGHT. FOR WHAT MEN DIED

I

In this book I have written in a blunt way some episodes of the war asI observed them, and gained first-hand knowledge of them in theirdaily traffic. I have not painted the picture blacker than it was, norselected gruesome morsels and joined them together to make a jig-sawpuzzle for ghoulish delight. Unlike Henri Barbusse, who, in his dreadfulbook Le Feu, gave the unrelieved blackness of this human drama, I havehere and in other books shown the light as well as the shade in whichour men lived, the gaiety as well as the fear they had, the exultationas well as the agony of battle, the spiritual ardor of boys as well asthe brutality of the task that was theirs. I have tried to set down asmany aspects of the war's psychology as I could find in my remembranceof these years, without exaggeration or false emphasis, so that out oftheir confusion, even out of their contradiction, the real truth of theadventure might be seen as it touched the souls of men. 

Yet when one strives to sum up the evidence and reach definiteconclusions about the motives which led men of the warring nationsto kill one another year after year in those fields of slaughter, theideals for which so many millions of men laid down their lives, and theeffect of those years of carnage upon the philosophy of this presentworld of men, there is no clear line of thought or conviction. 

It is difficult at least to forecast the changes that will be producedby this experience in the social structure of civilized peoples, and intheir relations to one another though it is certain, even now, thatout of the passion of the war a new era in the world's history is beingborn. The ideas of vast masses of people have been revolutionized bythe thoughts that were stirred up in them during those years of intensesuffering. No system of government designed by men afraid of the newideas will have power to kill them, though they may throttle them fora time. For good or ill, I know not which, the ideas germinated intrenches and dugouts, in towns under shell--fire or bomb-fire, in heartsstricken by personal tragedy or world-agony, will prevail over the oldorder which dominated the nations of Europe, and the old philosophyof political and social governance will be challenged and perhapsoverthrown. If the new ideas are thwarted by reactionary rulersendeavoring to jerk the world back to its old-fashioned discipline undertheir authority, there will be anarchy reaching to the heights of terrorin more countries than those where anarchy now prevails. If by fear orby wisdom the new ideas are allowed to gain their ground gradually, arevolution will be accomplished without anarchy. But in any case, forgood or ill, a revolution will happen. It has happened in the sense thatalready there is no resemblance between this Europe after-the-war andthat Europe-before-the-war, in the mental attitude of the masses towardthe problems of life. In every country there are individuals, men andwomen, who are going about as though what had happened had made nodifference, and as though, after a period of restlessness, thepeople will "settle down" to the old style of things. They are merelysleep-walkers. There are others who see clearly enough that they cannotgovern or dupe the people with old spell-words, and they are strugglingdesperately to think out new words which may help them to regain theirpower over simple minds. The old gangs are organizing a new system ofdefense, building a new kind of Hindenburg line behind which they aredumping their political ammunition. But their Hindenburg line is notimpregnable. The angry murmur of the mob--highly organized, disciplined, passionate, trained to fight, is already approaching the outer bastions. 

In Russia the mob is in possession, wiping the blood out of their eyesafter the nightmare of anarchy, encompassed by forces of the old regime, and not knowing yet whether its victory is won or how to shape the neworder that must follow chaos. 

In Germany there is only the psychology of stunned people, broken fora time in body and spirit, after stupendous efforts and bloody losseswhich led to ruin and the complete destruction of their old pride, philosophy, and power. The revolution that has happened there is strangeand rather pitiful. It was not caused by the will--power of the people, but by a cessation of will-power. They did not overthrow their rulingdynasty, their tyrants. The tyrants fled, and the people were not angry, nor sorry, nor fierce, nor glad. They were stupefied. Members of the oldorder joined hands with those of the people's parties, out to evolve arepublic with new ideals based upon the people's will and inspired bythe people's passion. The Germans, after the armistice and after thepeace, had no passion, as they had no will. They were in a state ofcoma. The "knock-out blow" had happened to them, and they were incapableof action. They just ceased from action. They had been betrayed to thisruin by their military and political rulers, but they had not vitalityenough to demand vengeance on those men. The extent of their ruin was sogreat that it annihilated anger, political passion, pride, all emotionexcept that of despair. How could they save something out of theremnants of the power that had been theirs? How could they keep alive, feed their women and children, pay their monstrous debts? They had losttheir faith as well as their war. Nothing that they had believed wastrue. They had believed in their invincible armies--and the armies hadbled to death and broken. They had believed in the supreme militarygenius of their war lords, and the war lords, blunderers as well ascriminals, had led them to the abyss and dropped them over. They hadbelieved in the divine mission of the German people as a civilizingforce, and now they were despised by all other peoples as a brutal andbarbarous race, in spite of German music, German folk-songs, German art, German sentiment. They had been abandoned by God, by the protecting handof the altes gutes Deutsches Gottes to whom many had prayed for comfortand help in those years of war, in Protestant churches and Catholicchurches, with deep piety and childlike faith. What sins had they donethat they should be abandoned by God? The invasion of Belgium? That, they argued, was a tragic necessity. Atrocities? Those were (theybelieved) the inventions of their enemies. There had been stern thingsdone, terrible things, but according to the laws of war. Francs-tireurshad been shot. That was war. Hostages had been shot. It was to saveGerman lives from slaughter by civilians. Individual brutalities, yes. There were brutes in all armies. The U-boat war? It was (said theGerman patriot) to break a blockade that was starving millions of Germanchildren to slow death, condemning millions to consumption, rickets, allmanner of disease. Nurse Cavell? She pleaded guilty to a crime that waspunishable, as she knew, by death. She was a brave woman who took herrisk open-eyed, and was judged according to the justice of war, which isvery cruel. Poison-gas? Why not, said German soldiers, when to be gassedwas less terrible than to be blown to bits by high explosives? They hadbeen the first to use that new method of destruction, as the Englishwere the first to use tanks, terrible also in their destructiveness. Germany was guilty of this war, had provoked it against peacefulpeoples? No! A thousand times no. They had been, said the troubled soulof Germany, encompassed with enemies. They had plotted to close her in. Russia was a huge menace. France had entered into alliance with Russia, and was waiting her chance to grab at Alsace-Lorraine. Italy was readyfor betrayal. England hated the power of Germany and was in secretalliance with France and Russia. Germany had struck to save herself. "Itwas a war of self-defense, to save the Fatherland. "

The German people still clung desperately to those ideas after thearmistice, as I found in Cologne and other towns, and as friends ofmine who had visited Berlin told me after peace was signed. The Germansrefused to believe in accusations of atrocity. They knew that some ofthese stories had been faked by hostile propaganda, and, knowingthat, as we know, they thought all were false. They said"Lies-lies-lies!"--and made counter--charges against the Russians andPoles. They could not bring themselves to believe that their sons andbrothers had been more brutal than the laws of war allow, and whatbrutality they had done was imposed upon them by ruthless discipline. But they deplored the war, and the common people, ex-soldiers andcivilians, cursed the rich and governing classes who had made profit outof it, and had continued it when they might have made peace with honor. That was their accusation against their leaders--that and the ruthless, bloody way in which their men had been hurled into the furnace on agambler's chance of victory, while they were duped by faked promises ofvictory. 

When not put upon their defense by accusations against the wholeFatherland, the German people, as far as I could tell by talking with afew of them, and by those letters which fell into our hands, revoltedin spirit against the monstrous futility and idiocy of the war, and wereconvinced in their souls that its origin lay in the greed and prideof the governing classes of all nations, who had used men's bodies ascounters in a devil's game. That view was expressed in the signboardsput above the parapet, "We're all fools: let's all go home"; and in thatletter by the woman who wrote:

"For the poor here it is terrible, and yet the rich, the gilded ones, the bloated aristocrats, gobble up everything in front of our veryeyes. .. All soldiers--friend and foe--ought to throw down their weaponsand go on strike, so that this war, which enslaves the people more thanever, may cease. "

It is that view, terrible in its simplicity, which may cause a morepassionate revolution in Germany when the people awaken from theirstupor. It was that view which led to the Russian Revolution and toBolshevism. It is the suspicion which is creeping into the brains ofBritish working-men and making them threaten to strike against anyadventure of war, like that in Russia, which seems to them (unlessproved otherwise) on behalf of the "gilded ones" and for the enslavementof the peoples. 

Not to face that truth is to deny the passionate convictions of massesof men in Europe. That is one key to the heart of the revolutionarymovement which is surging beneath the surface of our European state. It is a the belief of many brooding minds that almost as great asthe direct guilt of the German war lords was the guilt of the wholepolitical society of Europe, whose secret diplomacy (unrevealed tothe peoples) was based upon hatred and fear and rivalry, in play forimperial power and the world's markets, as common folk play dominoesfor penny points, and risking the lives of common folk in a gamble forenormous stakes of territory, imperial prestige, the personal vanity ofpoliticians, the vast private gain of trusts and profiteers. To keep theliving counters quiet, to make them jump into the pool of their own freewill at the word "Go, " the statesmen, diplomats, trusts, and profiteersdebauch the name of patriotism, raise the watchword of liberty, and playupon the ignorance of the mob easily, skillfully, by inciting them torace hatred, by inflaming the brute-passion in them, and by concoctinga terrible mixture of false idealism and self-interest, so that simpleminds quick to respond to sentiment, as well as those quick to hearthe call of the beast, rally shoulder to shoulder and march to thebattlegrounds under the spell of that potion. Some go with a noblesense of sacrifice, some with blood-lust in their hearts, most with theherd-instinct following the lead, little knowing that they are but thepawns of a game which is being played behind closed doors by the greatgamblers in the courts and Foreign Offices, and committee-rooms, andcounting-houses, of the political casinos in Europe. 

I have heard the expression of this view from soldiers during the warand since the war, at street-corners, in tram-cars, and in conversationswith railway men, mechanics, policemen, and others who were soldiers ayear ago, or stay-at-homes, thinking hard over the meaning of the war. I am certain that millions of men are thinking these things, becauseI found the track of those common thoughts, crude, simple, dangerous, among Canadian soldiers crossing the Atlantic, in Canadian towns, and inthe United States, as I had begun to see the trail of them far back inthe early days of the war when I moved among French soldiers, Belgiansoldiers, and our own men. 

My own belief is not so simple as that. I do not divorce all peoplesfrom their governments as victims of a subtle tyranny devised bystatesmen and diplomats of diabolical cunning, and by financial magnatesready to exploit human life for greater gains. I see the evil which ledto the crime of the war and to the crimes of the peace with deep-spreadroots to the very foundation of human society. The fear of statesmen, upon which all international relations were based, was in the heartsof peoples. France was afraid of Germany and screwed up her militaryservice, her war preparations, to the limit of national endurance, themajority of the people of France accepting the burden as inevitableand right. Because of her fear of Germany France made her alliance withRussian Czardom, her entente cordiale with Imperial England, and theFrench people poured their money into Russian loans as a life insuranceagainst the German menace. French statesmen knew that their diplomacywas supported by the majority of the people by their ignorance as wellas by their knowledge. 

So it was in Germany. The spell-words of the German war lords expressedthe popular sentiment of the German people, which was largely influencedby the fear of Russia in alliance with France, by fear and envy of theBritish Empire and England's sea-power, and by the faith that Germanymust break through that hostile combination at all costs in order tofulfil the high destiny which was marked out for her, as she thought, by the genius and industry of her people. The greed of the "bloatedaristocrats" was only on a bigger scale than the greed of the smallshopkeepers. The desire to capture new markets belonged not only tostatesmen, but to commercial travelers. The German peasant believed asmuch in the might of the German armies as Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The brutality of German generals was not worse than that of theUnteroffizier or the foreman of works. 

In England there was no traditional hatred of Germany, but for someyears distrust and suspicions, which had been vented in the newspapers, with taunts and challenges, stinging the pride of Germans and playinginto the hands of the Junker caste. 

Our war psychology was different from that of our allies because of ourisland position and our faith in seapower which had made us immune fromthe fear of invasion. It took some time to awaken the people to a senseof real peril and of personal menace to their hearths and homes. To thevery end masses of English folk believed that we were fighting for therescue of other peoples--Belgian, French, Serbian, Rumanian--and not forthe continuance of our imperial power. 

The official propaganda, the words and actions of British statesmen, did actually express the conscious and subconscious psychology of themultitude. The call to the old watchwords of national pride and imperialmight thrilled the soul of a people of proud tradition in sea--battlesand land-battles. Appeals for the rescue of "the little nations" struckold chords of chivalry and sentiment--though with a strange lack oflogic and sincerity Irish demand for self-government was unheeded. Basepassions as well as noble instincts were stirred easily. Greedy was theappetite of the mob for atrocity tales. The more revolting they were thequicker they were swallowed. The foul absurdity of the "corpse-factory"was not rejected any more than the tale of the "crucified Canadian"(disproved by our own G. H. Q. ) or the cutting off of children's handsand women's breasts, for which I could find no evidence from the onlyBritish ambulances working in the districts where such horrors werereported. Spy-mania flourished in mean streets, German music was bannedin English drawing-rooms. Preachers and professors denied any quality ofvirtue or genius to German poets, philosophers, scientists, or scholars. A critical weighing of evidence was regarded as pro-Germanism and lackof patriotism. Truth was delivered bound to passion. Hatred at home, inspired largely by feminine hysteria and official propaganda, reachedsuch heights that when fighting-men came back on leave their refusalto say much against their enemy, their straightforward assertions thatFritz was not so black as he was painted, that he fought bravely, diedgamely, and in the prison-camps was well-mannered, decent, industrious, good-natured, were heard with shocked silence by mothers and sisters whocould only excuse this absence of hate on the score of war-weariness. 

II

The people of all countries were deeply involved in the generalblood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the nameof Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the slaughterof boys and the suicide of nations and for a reconciliation ofpeoples upon terms of some more reasonable argument than that of highexplosives. Peace proposals from the Pope, from Germany, from Austria, were rejected with fierce denunciation, most passionate scorn, as "peaceplots" and "peace traps, " not without the terrible logic of the viciouscircle, because, indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation insome of those offers of peace, and the powers hostile to us were simplytrying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own kind ofpeace which should be that of conquest. The gamblers, playing thegame of "poker, " with crowns and armies as their stakes, were upheldgenerally by the peoples, who would not abate one point of pride, onefraction of hate, one claim of vengeance, though all Europe should fallin ruin and the last legions of boys be massacred. There was no callfrom people to people across the frontiers of hostility: "Let us endthis homicidal mania! Let us get back to sanity and save our youngersons. Let us hand over to justice those who will continue the slaughterof our youth!" There was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, nolarge-hearted common sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Likewolves they had their teeth in one another's throats, and would not letgo, though all bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the lastgasp, to be mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime ofit, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and repentance, and by some uplifting of the people's spirit to vault the frontiers ofhatred and the barbed wire which hedged in patriotism. Some of them wereput in prison. Most of them saw the impossibility of counteracting theforces of insanity which had made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding their thoughts and brooding over them. The leaders of the nationscontinued to use mob-passion as their argument and justification, excited it anew when its fires burned low, focused it upon definiteobjectives, and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-soundingwatchwords of liberty, justice, honor, and retribution. Each sideproclaimed Christ as its captain and invoked the blessing and aid of theGod of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks and Francewas full of black and yellow men. The German people did not try to averttheir ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of their war lords nor bydeploring the cruelties they had committed. The Allies did not help themto do so, because of their lust for bloody vengeance and their desirefor the spoils of victory. The peoples shared the blame of their rulersbecause they were not nobler than their rulers. They cannot nowplead ignorance or betrayal by false ideals which duped them, becausecharacter does not depend on knowledge, and it was the character ofEuropean peoples which failed in the crisis of the world's fate, so thatthey followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than thevoice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore. 

III

The character of European peoples failed in common sense and inChristian charity. It did not fail in courage to endure great agonies, to suffer death largely, to be obedient to the old tradition ofpatriotism and to the stoic spirit of old fighting races. 

In courage I do not think there was much difference between the chiefcombatants. The Germans, as a race, were wonderfully brave until theirspirit was broken by the sure knowledge of defeat and by lack of food. Many times through all those years they marched shoulder to shoulder, obedient to discipline, to certain death, as I saw them on the Somme, like martyrs. They marched for their Fatherland, inspired by the spiritof the German race, as it had entered their souls by the memory of oldGerman songs, old heroic ballads, their German home life, their Germanwomen, their love of little old towns on hillsides or in valleys, byall the meaning to them of that word Germany, which is like the name ofEngland to us--who is fool enough to think otherwise?--and fought often, a thousand times, to the death, as I saw their bodies heaped in thefields of the Somme and round their pill-boxes in Flanders and in thelast phase of the war behind the Hindenburg line round their brokenbatteries on the way of Mons and Le Cateau. The German people enduredyears of semi-starvation and a drain of blood greater than any otherfighting people--two million dead--before they lost all vitality, hope, and pride and made their abject surrender. At the beginning they wereout for conquest, inspired by arrogance and pride. Before the end theyfought desperately to defend the Fatherland from the doom which cast itsblack shadow on them as it drew near. They were brave, those Germans, whatever the brutality of individual men and the cold-blooded cruelty oftheir commanders. 

The courage of France is to me like an old heroic song, stirring theheart. It was medieval in its complete adherence to the faith of valorand its spirit of sacrifice for La Patrie. If patriotism were enough asthe gospel of life--Nurse Cavell did not think so--France as a nationwas perfect in that faith. Her people had no doubt as to their duty. Itwas to defend their sacred soil from the enemy which had invaded it. Itwas to hurl the brutes back from the fair fields they had ravagedand despoiled. It was to liberate their brothers and sisters from theoutrageous tyranny of the German yoke in the captured country. It was toseek vengeance for bloody, foul, and abominable deeds. 

In the first days of the war France was struck by heavy blows which senther armies reeling back in retreat, but before the first battle of theMarne, when her peril was greatest, when Paris seemed doomed, thespirit of the French soldiers rose to a supreme act of faith--which wasfulfilled when Foch attacked in the center, when Manoury struck onthe enemy's flank and hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen hurledthemselves, reckless of life, upon the monster which faltered and thenfled behind the shelter of the Aisne. With bloodshot eyes and parchedthroats and swollen tongues, blind with sweat and blood, mad with theheat and fury of attack, the French soldiers fought through that firstbattle of the Marne and saved France from defeat and despair. 

After that, year after year, they flung themselves against the Germandefense and died in heaps, or held their lines, as at Verdun, againstcolossal onslaught, until the dead lay in masses. But the living said, "They shall not pass!" and kept their word. 

The people of France--above all, the women of France--behind the lines, were the equals of the fighting-men in valor. They fought with despair, through many black months, and did not yield. They did the work of theirmen in the fields, and knew that many of them--the sons or brothers orlovers or husbands--would never return for the harvest-time, but did notcry to have them back until the enemy should be thrust out of France. Behind the German line, under German rule, the French people, prisonersin their own land, suffered most in spirit, but were proud and patientin endurance. 

"Why don't your people give in?" asked a German officer of a woman inNesle. "France is bleeding to death. "

"We shall go on for two years, or three years, or four, or five, and inthe end we shall smash you, " said the woman who told me this. 

The German officer stared at her and said, "You people are wonderful!"

Yes, they were wonderful, the French, and their hatred of the Germans, their desire for vengeance, complete and terrible, at all cost of life, even though France should bleed to death and die after victory, is to beunderstood in the heights and depths of its hatred and in the passion ofits love for France and liberty. When I think of France I am tempted tosee no greater thing than such patriotism as that to justify the gospelof hate against such an enemy, to uphold vengeance as a sweet virtue. Yet if I did so I should deny the truth that has been revealed to manymen and women by the agony of the war--that if civilization may continuepatriotism is "not enough, " that international hatred will produce otherwars worse than this, in which civilization will be submerged, and thatvengeance, even for dreadful crimes, cannot be taken of a nation withoutpunishing the innocent more than the guilty, so that out of its crueltyand injustice new fires of hatred are lighted, the demand for vengeancepasses to the other side, and the devil finds another vicious circle inwhich to trap the souls of men and "catch 'em all alive O!"

To deny that would also be a denial of the faith with which millions ofyoung Frenchmen rushed to the colors in the first days of the war. Itwas they who said, "This is a war to end war. " They told me so. It wasthey who said: "German militarism must be killed so that all militarismshall be abolished. This is a war for liberty. " So soldiers of Francespoke to me on a night when Paris was mobilized and the tragedy began. It is a Frenchman--Henri Barbusse--who, in spite of the German invasion, the outrages against his people, the agony of France, has the courageto say that all peoples in Europe were involved in the guilt of that warbecause of their adherence to that old barbaric creed of brute force andthe superstitious servitude of their souls to symbols of national pridebased upon military tradition. He even denounces the salute to the flag, instinctive and sacred in the heart of every Frenchman, as a fetishworship in which the narrow bigotry of national arrogance is raisedabove the rights of the common masses of men. He draws no distinctionbetween a war of defense and a war of aggression, because attack is thebest means of defense, and all peoples who go to war dupe themselvesinto the belief that they do so in defense of their liberties, andrights, and power, and property. Germany attacked France first becauseshe was ready first and sure of her strength. France would have attackedGermany first to get back Alsace-Lorraine, to wipe out 1870, if she alsohad been ready and sure of her strength. The political philosophy onboth sides of the Rhine was the same. It was based on military power andrivalry of secret alliances and imperial ambitions. The large-heartedinternationalism of Jean Jaures, who with all his limitations was agreat Frenchman, patriot, and idealist, had failed among his ownpeople and in Germany, and the assassin's bullet was his reward for theadventure of his soul to lift civilization above the level of the oldjungle law and to save France from the massacre which happened. 

In war France was wonderful, most heroic in sacrifice, most splendidin valor. In her dictated peace, which was ours also, her leaders werebetrayed by the very evil which millions of young Frenchmen had gone outto kill at the sacrifice of their own lives. Militarism was exalted inFrance above the ruins of German militarism. It was a peace of vengeancewhich punished the innocent more than the guilty, the babe at the breastmore than the Junker in his Schloss, the poor working-woman more thanthe war lord, the peasant who had been driven to the shambles more thanSixt von Arnim or Rupprecht of Bavaria, or Ludendorff, or Hindenburg. Itis a peace that can only be maintained by the power of artillery and bythe conscription of every French boy who shall be trained for the next"war of defense" (twenty years hence, thirty years hence), when Germanyis strong again--stronger than France because of her population, stronger then, enormously, than France, in relative numbersof able-bodied men than in August, 1914. So if that philosophycontinue--and I do not think it will--the old fear will bere-established, the old burdens of armament will be piled up anew, thepeople of France will be weighed down as before under a military regimestifling their liberty of thought and action, wasting the best years oftheir boyhood in barracks, seeking protective alliances, buying alliesat great cost, establishing the old spy system, the old diplomacy, theold squalid ways of inter--national politics, based as before on fearand force. Marshal Foch was a fine soldier. Clemenceau was a strongMinister of War. There was no man great enough in France to see beyondthe passing triumph of military victory and by supreme generosity ofsoul to lift their enemy out of the dirt of their despair, so thatthe new German Republic should arise from the ruins of the Empire, remorseful of their deeds in France and Belgium, with all their ragedirected against their ancient tyranny, and with a new-born spirit ofdemocratic liberty reaching across the old frontiers. 

Is that the foolish dream of the sentimentalist? No, more than that; forthe German people, after their agony, were ready to respond to generousdealing, pitiful in their need of it, and there is enough sentiment inGerman hearts--the most sentimental people in Europe--to rise with asurge of emotion to a new gospel of atonement if their old enemies hadoffered a chance of grace. France has not won the war by her terms ofpeace nor safeguarded her frontiers for more than a few uncertainyears. By harking back to the old philosophy of militarism she hasre-established peril amid a people drained of blood and deeply in debt. Her support of reactionary forces in Russia is to establish a governmentwhich will guarantee the interest on French loans and organize a newmilitary regime in alliance with France and England. Meanwhile Francelooks to the United States and British people to protect her fromthe next war, when Germany shall be strong again. She is playing themilitarist role without the strength to sustain it. 

IV

What of England?. .. Looking back at the immense effort of the Britishpeople in the war, our high sum of sacrifice in blood and treasure, and the patient courage of our fighting-men, the world must, and does, indeed, acknowledge that the old stoic virtue of our race was calledout by this supreme challenge, and stood the strain. The traditions of athousand years of history filled with war and travail and adventure, bywhich old fighting races had blended with different strains of blood andtemper--Roman, Celtic, Saxon, Danish, Norman-survived in the fiber ofour modern youth, country-bred or city-bred, in spite of the weakeninginfluences of slumdom, vicious environment, ill-nourishment, clerkship, and sedentary life. The Londoner was a good soldier. The Liverpools andManchesters were hard and tough in attack and defense. The SouthCountry battalions of Devons and Dorsets, Sussex and Somersets, werenot behindhand in ways of death. The Scots had not lost their fire andpassion, but were terrible in their onslaught. The Irish battalions, with recruiting cut off at the base, fought with their old gallantry, until there were few to answer the last roll-call. The Welsh dragonencircled Mametz Wood, devoured the "Cockchafers" on Pilkem Ridge, andwas hard on the trail of the Black Eagle in the last offensive. TheAustralians and Canadians had all the British quality of courage andthe benefit of a harder physique, gained by outdoor life and unweakenedancestry. In the mass, apart from neurotic types here and there amongofficers and men, the stock was true and strong. The spirit of aseafaring race which has the salt in its blood from Land's End toJohn o' Groat's and back again to Wapping had not been destroyed, butanswered the ruffle of Drake's drum and, with simplicity and gravityin royal navy and in merchant marine, swept the highways of the seas, hunted worse monsters than any fabulous creatures of the deep, andshirked no dread adventure in the storms and darkness of a spacioushell. The men who went to Zeebrugge were the true sons of those whofought the Spanish Armada and singed the King o' Spain's beard in Cadizharbor. The victors of the Jutland battle were better men than Nelson's(the scourings of the prisons and the sweepings of the press-gang) andnot less brave in frightful hours. Without the service of the Britishseamen the war would have been lost for France and Italy and Belgium, and all of us. 

The flower of our youth went out to France and Flanders, to Egypt, Palestine, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Saloniki, and it was a fineflower of gallant boyhood, clean, for the most part eager, not brutalexcept by intensive training, simple in minds and hearts, chivalrousin instinct, without hatred, adventurous, laughter-loving, and dutiful. That is God's truth, in spite of vice-rotted, criminal, degenerate, andbrutal fellows in many battalions, as in all crowds of men. 

In millions of words during the years of war I recorded the bravery ofour troops on the western front, their patience, their cheerfulness, suffering, and agony; yet with all those words describing day by daythe incidents of their life in war I did not exaggerate the splendorof their stoic spirit or the measure of their sacrifice. The heroes ofmythology were but paltry figures compared with those who, in the greatwar, went forward to the roaring devils of modern gun-fire, dwelt amidhigh explosives more dreadful than dragons, breathed in the fumes ofpoison-gas more foul than the breath of Medusa, watched and sleptabove mine-craters which upheaved the hell-fire of Pluto, and defiedthunderbolts more certain in death-dealing blows than those of Jove. 

Something there was in the spirit of our men which led them to endurethese things without revolt--ideals higher than the selfish motives oflife. They did not fight for greed or glory, not for conquest, nor forvengeance. Hatred was not the inspiration of the mass of them, for Iam certain that except in hours when men "see red" there was no directhatred of the men in the opposite trenches, but, on the other hand, aqueer sense of fellow--feeling, a humorous sympathy for "old Fritz, "who was in the same bloody mess as themselves. Our generals, it is true, hated the Germans. "I should like one week in Cologne, " one of them toldme, before there seemed ever a chance of getting there, "and I would letmy men loose in the streets and turn a blind eye to anything they likedto do. "

Some of our officers were inspired by a bitter, unrelenting hate. 

"If I had a thousand Germans in a row, " one of them said to me, "I wouldcut all their throats, and enjoy the job. "

But that was not the mentality of the men in the ranks, except thosewho were murderers by nature and pleasure. They gave their cigarettes toprisoners and filled their water-bottles and chatted in a friendly waywith any German who spoke a little English, as I have seen them timeand time again on days of battle, in the fields of battle. There wereexceptions to this treatment, but even the Australians and the Scots, who were most fierce in battle, giving no quarter sometimes, treatedtheir prisoners with humanity when they were bundled back. Hatred wasnot the motive which made our men endure all things. It was rather, asI have said, a refusal in their souls to be beaten in manhood by allthe devils of war, by all its terrors, or by its beastliness, and atthe back of all the thought that the old country was "up against it" andthat they were there to avert the evil. 

Young soldiers of ours, not only of officer rank, but of "other ranks, "as they were called, were inspired at the beginning, and some of them tothe end, with a simple, boyish idealism. They saw no other causes of warthan German brutality. The enemy to them was the monster who had to bedestroyed lest the world and its beauty should perish--and that wastrue so long as the individual German, who loathed the war, obeyed thediscipline of the herd-leaders and did not revolt against the naturallaws which, when the war had once started, bade him die in defense ofhis own Fatherland. Many of those boys of ours made a dedication oftheir lives upon the altar of sacrifice, believing that by this serviceand this sacrifice they would help the victory of civilization overbarbarism, and of Christian morality over the devil's law. They believedthat they were fighting to dethrone militarism, to insure the happinessand liberties of civilized peoples, and were sure of the gratitude oftheir nation should they not have the fate to fall upon the field ofhonor, but go home blind or helpless. 

I have read many letters from boys now dead in which they express thatfaith. 

"Do not grieve for me, " wrote one of them, "for I shall be proud to diefor my country's sake. "

"I am happy, " wrote another (I quote the tenor of his letters), "because, though I hate war, I feel that this is the war to end war. We are the last victims of this way of argument. By smashing the Germanwar-machine we shall prove for all time the criminal folly of militarismand Junkerdom. "

There were young idealists like that, and they were to be envied fortheir faith, which they brought with them from public schools and fromhumble homes where they had read old books and heard old watchwords. Ithink, at the beginning of the war there were many like that. But as itcontinued year after year doubts crept in, dreadful suspicions oftruth more complex than the old simplicity, a sense of revolt againstsacrifice unequally shared and devoted to a purpose which was not thatfor which they had been called to fight. 

They had been told that they were fighting for liberty. But their firstlesson was the utter loss of individual liberty under a discipline whichmade the private soldier no more than a number. They were ordered aboutlike galley--slaves, herded about like cattle, treated individually andin the mass with utter disregard of their comfort and well-being. Often, as I know, they were detrained at rail-heads in the wind and rain and byghastly errors of staff-work kept waiting for their food until they wereweak and famished. In the base camps men of one battalion were draftedinto other battalions, where they lost their old comrades and wereunfamiliar with the speech and habits of a crowd belonging to differentcounties, the Sussex men going to a Manchester regiment, the Yorkshiremen being drafted to a Surrey unit. By R. T. O. 's and A. M. L. O. 's and campcommandments and town majors and staff pups men were bullied and bundledabout, not like human beings, but like dumb beasts, and in a thousandways injustice, petty tyranny, hard work, degrading punishments fortrivial offenses, struck at their souls and made the name of personalliberty a mockery. From their own individuality they argued to broaderissues. Was this war for liberty? Were the masses of men on either sidefighting with free will as free men? Those Germans--were they not underdiscipline, each man of them, forced to fight whether they liked it ornot? Compelled to go forward to sacrifice, with machine-guns behind themto shoot them down if they revolted against their slave-drivers? Whatliberty had they to follow their conscience or their judgment--"Theirsnot to reason why, theirs but to do and die"--like all soldiers in allarmies. Was it not rather that the masses of men engaged in slaughterwere serving the purpose of powers above them, rival powers, greedy forone another's markets, covetous of one another's wealth, and callous ofthe lives of humble men? Surely if the leaders of the warring nationswere put together for even a week in some such place as Hooge, or theHohenzollern redoubt, afflicted by the usual harassing fire, poison-gas, mine explosions, lice, rats, and the stench of rotting corpses, with thecertainty of death or dismemberment at the week-end, they would settlethe business and come to terms before the week was out. I heard thatproposition put forward many times by young officers of ours, and as anargument against their own sacrifice they found it unanswerable. 

V

The condition and psychology of their own country as they read aboutit in the Paris Daily Mail, which was first to come into their billets, filled some of these young men with distress and disgust, strengthenedinto rage when they went home on leave. The deliberate falsificationof news (the truth of which they heard from private channels) madethem discredit the whole presentation of our case and state. They said, "Propaganda!" with a sharp note of scorn. The breezy optimism of publicmen, preachers, and journalists, never downcast by black news, neveragonized by the slaughter in these fields, minimizing horrors and lossand misery, crowing over the enemy, prophesying early victory which didnot come, accepting all the destruction of manhood (while they stayedsafe) as a necessary and inevitable "misfortune, " had a depressingeffect on men who knew they were doomed to die, in the law of averages, if the war went on. "Damn their optimism!" said some of our officers. "It's too easy for those behind the lines. It is only we who have theright of optimism. It's we who have to do the dirty work! They seem tothink we like the job! What are they doing to bring the end nearer?"

The frightful suspicion entered the heads of some of our men (some ofthose I knew) that at home people liked the war and were not anxious toend it, and did not care a jot for the sufferings of the soldiers. Manyof them came back from seven days' leave fuming and sullen. Everybodywas having a good time. Munition-workers were earning wonderful wagesand spending them on gramophones, pianos, furs, and the "pictures. "Everybody was gadding about in a state of joyous exultation. The paintedflapper was making herself sick with the sweets of life after officehours in government employ, where she did little work for a lotof pocket-money. The society girl was dancing bare-legged for "warcharities, " pushing into bazaars for the "poor, dear wounded, " gettingher pictures into the papers as a "notable warworker, " married forthe third time in three years; the middle-class cousin was drivingstaff-officers to Whitehall, young gentlemen of the Air Service toHendon, junior secretaries to their luncheon. Millions of girls were insome kind of fancy dress with buttons and shoulder--straps, breeches andputtees, and they seemed to be making a game of the war and enjoying itthoroughly. Oxford dons were harvesting, and proud of their prowess withthe pitchfork--behold their patriotism!--while the boys were being blownto bits on the Yser Canal. Miners were striking for more wages, factoryhands were downing tools for fewer hours at higher pay, the governmentwas paying any price for any labor--while Tommy Atkins drew hisone-and-twopence and made a little go a long way in a wayside estaminetbefore jogging up the Menin road to have his head blown off. Thegovernment had created a world of parasites and placemen housedin enormous hotels, where they were engaged at large salaries uponmysterious unproductive labors which seemed to have no result infront-line trenches. Government contractors were growing fat on the lifeof war, amassing vast fortunes, juggling with excess profits, batteningupon the flesh and blood of boyhood in the fighting-lines. These oldmen, these fat men, were breathing out fire and fury against the Hun, and vowing by all their gods that they would see their last son diein the last ditch rather than agree to any peace except that ofdestruction. There were "fug committees" (it was Lord Kitchener's word)at the War Office, the Board of Trade, the Foreign Office, the HomeOffice, the Ministry of Munitions, the Ministry of Information, whereofficials on enormous salaries smoked cigars of costly brands anddecided how to spend vast sums of public money on "organization" whichmade no difference to the man stifling his cough below the parapet in awet fog of Flanders, staring across No Man's Land for the beginning of aGerman attack. 

In all classes of people there was an epidemic of dancing, jazzing, card-playing, theater-going. They were keeping their spirits upwonderfully. Too well for men slouching about the streets of London onleave, and wondering at all this gaiety, and thinking back to the thingsthey had seen and forward to the things they would have to do. People athome, it seemed, were not much interested in the life of the trenches;anyhow, they could not understand. The soldier listened to excited talesof air raids. A bomb had fallen in the next street. The windows had beenbroken. Many people had been killed in a house somewhere in Hackney. Itwas frightful. The Germans were devils. They ought to be torn to pieces, every one of them. The soldier on leave saw crowds of people takingshelter in underground railways, working--men among them, sturdy lads, panic-stricken. But for his own wife and children he had an evil senseof satisfaction in these sights. It would do them good. They would knowwhat war meant--just a little. They would not be so easy in their damnedoptimism. An air raid? Lord God, did they know what a German barrage waslike? Did they guess how men walked day after day through harassing fireto the trenches? Did they have any faint idea of life in a sector wheremen stood, slept, ate, worked, under the fire of eight-inch shells, five-point--nines, trench-mortars, rifle-grenades, machine-gun bullets, snipers, to say nothing of poison-gas, long-range fire on the billetsin small farmsteads, and on every moonlight night air raids above woodenhutments so closely crowded into a small space that hardly a bomb couldfall without killing a group of men. 

"Oh, but you have your dugouts!" said a careless little lady. 

The soldier smiled. 

It was no use talking. The people did not want to hear the tragic sideof things. Bairnsfather's "Ole Bill" seemed to them to typify the spiritof the fighting-man. .. "'Alf a mo', Kaiser!". .. 

The British soldier was gay and careless of death--always. Shell-firemeant nothing to him. If he were killed--well, after all, what elsecould he expect? Wasn't that what he was out for? The twice-marriedgirl knew a charming boy in the air force. He had made love to her evenbefore Charlie was "done in. " These dear boys were so greedy for love. She could not refuse them, poor darlings! Of course they had all gotto die for liberty, and that sort of thing. It was very sad. A terriblething--war!. .. Perhaps she had better give up dancing for a week, untilCharlie had been put into the casualty lists. 

"What are we fighting for?" asked officers back from leave, turningover the pages of the Sketch and Tatler, with pictures of race-meetings, strike-meetings, bare--backed beauties at war bazaars, and portraitsof profiteers in the latest honors list. "Are we going to die forthese swine? These parasites and prostitutes? Is this the war for nobleideals, liberty, Christianity, and civilization? To hell with all thisfilth! The world has gone mad and we are the victims of insanity. "

Some of them said that below all that froth there were deep and quietwaters in England. They thought of the anguish of their own wivesand mothers, their noble patience, their uncomplaining courage, theirspiritual faith in the purpose of the war. Perhaps at the heart Englandwas true and clean and pitiful. Perhaps, after, all, many people at homewere suffering more than the fighting-men, in agony of spirit. It wasunwise to let bitterness poison their brains. Anyhow, they had to go on. How long, how long, O Lord?

"How long is it going to last?" asked the London Rangers of theirchaplain. He lied to them and said another three months. Always he hadabsolute knowledge that the war would end three months later. That wascertain. "Courage!" he said. "Courage to the end of the last lap!"

Most of the long-service men were dead and gone long before the lastlap came. It was only the new boys who went as far as victory. He askedpermission of the general to withdraw nineteen of them from the line toinstruct them for Communion. They were among the best soldiers, and notafraid of the ridicule of their fellows because of their religious zeal. The chaplain's main purpose was to save their lives, for a while, andgive them a good time and spiritual comfort. They had their good time. Three weeks later came the German attack on Arras and they were allkilled. Every man of them. 

The chaplain, an Anglican, found it hard to reconcile Christianitywith such a war as this, but he did not camouflage the teachings of theMaster he tried to serve. He preached to his men the gospel of love andforgiveness of enemies. It was reported to the general, who sent forhim. 

"Look here, I can't let you go preaching 'soft stuff' to my men. I can'tallow all that nonsense about love. My job is to teach them to hate. Youmust either cooperate with me or go. "

The chaplain refused to change his faith or his teaching, and thegeneral thought better of his intervention. 

For all chaplains it was difficult. Simple souls were bewildered by theconflict between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of war. Manyof them--officers as well as men--were blasphemous in their scorn of"parson stuff, " some of them frightfully ironical. 

A friend of mine watched two chaplains passing by. One of them was atall man with a crown and star on his shoulder-strap. 

"I wonder, " said my friend, with false simplicity, "whether Jesus Christwould have been a lieutenant--colonel?"

On the other hand, many men found help in religion, and sought itscomfort with a spiritual craving. They did not argue about Christianethics and modern warfare. Close to death in the midst of tragedy, conscious in a strange way of their own spiritual being and of aspirituality present among masses of men above the muck of war, thestench of corruption, and fear of bodily extinction, they groped outtoward God. They searched for some divine wisdom greater than the follyof the world, for a divine aid which would help them to greater courage. The spirit of God seemed to come to them across No Man's Land with pityand comradeship. Catholic soldiers had a simpler, stronger faith thanmen of Protestant denominations, whose faith depended more on ethicalarguments and intellectual reasonings. Catholic chaplains had an easiertask. Leaving aside all argument, they heard the confessions of thesoldiers, gave them absolution for their sins, said mass for them inwayside barns, administered the sacraments, held the cross to their lipswhen they fell mortally wounded, anointed them when the surgeon's knifewas at work, called the names of Jesus and Mary into dying ears. Therewas no need of argument here. The old faith which has survived manywars, many plagues, and the old wickedness of men was still full ofconsolation to those who accepted it as little children, and by theirown agony hoped for favor from the Man of Sorrows who was hanged upon across, and found a mother-love in the vision of Mary, which came to themwhen they were in fear and pain and the struggle of death. The padrehad a definite job to do in the trenches and for that reason was allowedmore liberty in the line than other chaplains. Battalion officers, surgeons, and nurses were patient with mysterious rites which they didnot understand, but which gave comfort, as they saw, to wounded men; andthe heroism with which many of those priests worked under fire, carelessof their own lives, exalted by spiritual fervor, yet for the most parthuman and humble and large-hearted and tolerant, aroused a generaladmiration throughout the army. Many of the Protestant clergy wereequally devoted, but they were handicapped by having to rely more uponproviding physical comforts for the men than upon spiritual acts, suchas anointing and absolution, which were accepted without question byCatholic soldiers. 

Yet the Catholic Church, certain of its faith, and all other churchesclaiming that they teach the gospel of Christ, have been challenged toexplain their attitude during the war and the relation of their teachingto the world-tragedy, the Great Crime, which has happened. It will notbe easy for them to do so. They will have to explain how it is thatGerman bishops, priests, pastors, and flocks, undoubtedly sincerein their professions of faith, deeply pious, as our soldiers saw inCologne, and fervent in their devotion to the sacraments on their sideof the fighting-line, as the Irish Catholics on our side, were ableto reconcile this piety with their war of aggression. The faith of theAustrian Catholics must be explained in relation to their crimes, ifthey were criminal, as we say they were, in leading the way to thiswar by their ultimatum to Serbia. If Christianity has no restraininginfluence upon the brutal instincts of those who profess and follow itsfaith, then surely it is time the world abandoned so ineffective acreed and turned to other laws likely to have more influence on humanrelationships. That, brutally, is the argument of the thinking worldagainst the clergy of all nations who all claimed to be acting accordingto the justice of God and the spirit of Christ. It is a powerfulargument, for the simple mind, rejecting casuistry, cuts straight to theappalling contrast between Christian profession and Christian practice, and says: "Here, in this war, there was no conflict between one faithand another, but a murderous death-struggle between many nations holdingthe same faith, preaching the same gospel, and claiming the same God astheir protector. Let us seek some better truth than that hypocrisy! Letus, if need be, in honesty, get back to the savage worship of nationalgods, the Ju-ju of the tribe. "

My own belief is that the war was no proof against the Christian faith, but rather is a revelation that we are as desperately in need of thespirit of Christ as at any time in the history of mankind. But Ithink the clergy of all nations, apart from a heroic and saintly few, subordinated their faith, which is a gospel of charity, to nationallimitations. They were patriots before they were priests, and theirpatriotism was sometimes as limited, as narrow, as fierce, and asbloodthirsty as that of the people who looked to them for truth andlight. They were often fiercer, narrower, and more desirous of vengeancethan the soldiers who fought, because it is now a known truth that thesoldiers, German and Austrian, French and Italian and British, were sickof the unending slaughter long before the ending of the war, and wouldhave made a peace more fair than that which now prevails if it hadbeen put to the common vote in the trenches; whereas the Archbishop ofCanterbury, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the clergy who spoke frommany pulpits in many nations, under the Cross of Christ, still stoked upthe fires of hate and urged the armies to go on fighting "in thecause of justice, " "for the defense of the Fatherland, " "for Christianrighteousness, " to the bitter end. Those words are painful to write, but as I am writing this book for truth's sake, at all cost, I let themstand. .. . 

VI

The entire aspect of the war was changed by the Russian Revolution, followed by the collapse of the Russian armies and the Peace ofBrest-Litovsk, when for the first time the world heard the strange word"Bolshevism, " and knew not what it meant. 

The Russian armies had fought bravely in the first years of the war, with an Oriental disregard of death. Under generals in German pay, betrayed by a widespread net of anarchy and corruption so villainousthat arms and armaments sent out from England had to be bribed on theirway from one official to another, and never reached the front, sofoul in callousness of human life that soldiers were put into thefighting-line without rifle or ammunition, these Russian peasantsflung themselves not once, but many times, against the finest troops ofGermany, with no more than naked bayonets against powerful artilleryand the scythe of machine-gun fire, and died like sheep in theslaughter-houses of Chicago. Is it a wonder that at the last theyrevolted against this immolation, turned round upon their tyrants, andsaid: "You are the enemy. It is you that we will destroy"?

By this new revelation they forgot their hatred of Germans. They said:"You are our brothers; we have no hatred against you. We do not wantto kill you. Why should you kill us? We are all of us the slaves ofbloodthirsty castes, who use our flesh for their ambitions. Do not shootus, brothers, but join hands against the common tyranny which enslavesour peoples. " They went forward with outstretched hands, and were shot, down like rabbits by some Germans, and by others were not shot, becauseGerman soldiers gaped, wide-eyed, at this new gospel, as it seemed, andsaid: "They speak words of truth. Why should we kill one another?"

The German war lords ordered a forward movement, threatened their ownmen with death if they fraternized with Russians, and dictated theirterms of peace on the old lines of military conquest. But as Ludendorffhas confessed, and as we now know from other evidence, many Germansoldiers were "infected" with Bolshevism and lost their fighting spirit. 

Russia was already in anarchy. Constitutional government had beenreplaced by the soviets and by committees of soldiers and workmen. Kerensky had fled. Lenin and Trotzky were the Marat and Danton ofthe Revolution, and decreed the Reign of Terror. Tales of appallingatrocity, some true, some false (no one can tell how true or how false), came through to France and England. It was certain that the whole fabricof society in Russia had dissolved in the wildest anarchy the world hasseen in modern times, and that the Bolshevik gospel of "brotherhood"with humanity was, at least, rudely "interrupted" by wholesale murderwithin its own boundaries. 

One other thing was certain. Having been relieved of the Russian menace, Germany was free to withdraw her armies on that front and use all herstriking force in the west. It should have cautioned our generals tosave their men for the greatest menace that had confronted them. Butwithout caution they fought the battles of 1917, in Flanders, as I havetold. 

In 1917 and in the first half of 1918 there seemed no ending to the warby military means. Even many of our generals who had been so breezyin their optimism believed now that the end must come by diplomaticmeans--a "peace by understanding. " I had private talks with men in highcommand, who acknowledged that the way must be found, and the Britishmind prepared for negotiations, because there must come a limit to thedrain of blood on each side. It was to one man in the world that manymen in all armies looked for a way out of this frightful impasse. 

President Wilson had raised new hope among many men who otherwise werehopeless. He not only spoke high words, but defined the meanings ofthem. His definition of liberty seemed sound and true, promising theself-determination of peoples. His offer to the German people to dealgenerously with them if they overthrew their tyranny raised no quarrelamong British soldiers. His hope of a new diplomacy, based upon "opencovenants openly arrived at, " seemed to cut at the root of the old evilin Europe by which the fate of peoples had been in the hands of the few. His Fourteen Points set out clearly and squarely a just basis of peace. His advocacy of a League of Nations held out a vision of a new worldby which the great and small democracies should be united by a commonpledge to preserve peace and submit their differences to a supreme courtof arbitration. Here at last was a leader of the world, with a clearcall to the nobility in men rather than to their base passions, a gospelwhich would raise civilization from the depths into which it had fallen, and a practical remedy for that suicidal mania which was exhausting thecombatant nations. 

I think there were many millions of men on each side of thefighting-line who thanked God because President Wilson had come witha wisdom greater than the folly which was ours to lead the way to anhonorable peace and a new order of nations. I was one of them. .. Monthspassed, and there was continual fighting, continued slaughter, and nosign that ideas would prevail over force. The Germans launched theirgreat offensive, broke through the British lines, and afterward throughthe French lines, and there were held and checked long enough for ourreserves to be flung across the Channel--300, 000 boys from England andScotland, who had been held in hand as the last counters for the pool. The American army came in tidal waves across the Atlantic, flooded ourback areas, reached the edge of the battlefields, were a new guaranty ofstrength. Their divisions passed mostly to the French front. With them, and with his own men, magnificent in courage still, and some of ours, Foch had his army of reserve, and struck. 

So the war ended, after all, by military force, and by military victorygreater than had seemed imaginable or possible six months before. 

In the peace terms that followed there was but little trace of thosesplendid ideas which had been proclaimed by President Wilson. On onepoint after another he weakened, and was beaten by the old militarismwhich sat enthroned in the council-chamber, with its foot on the neckof the enemy. The "self-determination of peoples" was a hollow phrasesignifying nothing. Open covenants openly arrived at were mocked by theclosed doors of the Conference. When at last the terms were publishedtheir merciless severity, their disregard of racial boundaries, theircreation of hatreds and vendettas which would lead, as sure as the sunshould rise, to new warfare, staggered humanity, not only in Germany andAustria, but in every country of the world, where at least minoritiesof people had hoped for some nobler vision of the world's needs, andfor some healing remedy for the evils which had massacred its youth. TheLeague of Nations, which had seemed to promise so well, was hedged roundby limitations which made it look bleak and barren. Still it was peace, and the rivers of blood had ceased to flow, and the men were coming homeagain. .. Home again!

VII

The men came home in a queer mood, startling to those who had notwatched them "out there, " and to those who welcomed peace with flags. Even before their homecoming, which was delayed week after week, monthafter month, unless they were lucky young miners out for the victorypush and back again quickly, strange things began to happen in Franceand Flanders, Egypt and Palestine. Men who had been long patientbecame suddenly impatient. Men who had obeyed all discipline broke intodisobedience bordering on mutiny. They elected spokesmen to representtheir grievances, like trade-unionists. They "answered back" to theirofficers in such large bodies, with such threatening anger, that itwas impossible to give them "Field Punishment Number One, " or any othernumber, especially as their battalion officers sympathized mainly withtheir point of view. They demanded demobilization according to theirterms of service, which was for "the duration of the war. " Theyprotested against the gross inequalities of selection by which men ofshort service were sent home before those who had been out in 1914, 1915, 1916. They demanded justness, fair play, and denounced red tapeand official lies. "We want to go home!" was their shout on parade. Aserious business, subversive of discipline. 

Similar explosions were happening in England. Bodies of men broke campat Folkestone and other camps, demonstrated before town halls, demandedto speak with mayors, generals, any old fellows who were in authority, and refused to embark for France until they had definite pledges thatthey would receive demobilization papers without delay. Whitehall, thesacred portals of the War Office, the holy ground of the Horse Guards'Parade, were invaded by bodies of men who had commandeered ambulancesand lorries and had made long journeys from their depots. They, too, demanded demobilization. They refused to be drafted out for serviceto India, Egypt, Archangel, or anywhere. They had "done their bit, "according to their contract. It was for the War Office to fulfil itspledges. "Justice" was the word on their lips, and it was a word whichput the wind up (as soldiers say) any staff-officers and officials whohad not studied the laws of justice as they concern private soldiers, and who had dealt with them after the armistice and after the peace asthey had dealt with them before--as numbers, counters to be shiftedhere and there according to the needs of the High Command. What wasthis strange word "justice" on soldiers' lips?. .. Red tape squirmedand writhed about the business of demobilization. Orders were made, communicated to the men, canceled even at the railway gates. Promiseswere made and broken. Conscripts were drafted off to India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Archangel, against their will and contrary to pledge. Menon far fronts, years absent from their wives and homes, were left tostay there, fever-stricken, yearning for home, despairing. And while theold war was not yet cold in its grave we prepared for a new war againstBolshevik Russia, arranging for the spending of more millions, thesacrifice of more boys of ours, not openly, with the consent of thepeople, but on the sly, with a fine art of camouflage. 

The purpose of the new war seemed to many men who had fought for"liberty" an outrage against the "self--determination of peoples" whichhad been the fundamental promise of the League of Nations, and a blatanthypocrisy on the part of a nation which denied self--government toIreland. The ostensible object of our intervention in Russia was toliberate the Russian masses from "the bloody tyranny of the Bolsheviks, "but this ardor for the liberty of Russia had not been manifest duringthe reign of Czardom and grand dukes when there were massacres of mobsin Moscow, bloody Sundays in St. Petersburg, pogroms in Riga, floggingsof men and girls in many prisons, and when free speech, liberal ideas, and democratic uprisings had been smashed by Cossack knout and by thetorture of Siberian exile. 

Anyhow, many people believed that it was none of our business tosuppress the Russian Revolution or to punish the leaders of it, and itwas suspected by British working-men that the real motive behind ouraction was not a noble enthusiasm for liberty, but an endeavor toestablish a reactionary government in Russia in order to crush aphilosophy of life more dangerous to the old order in Europe than highexplosives, and to get back the gold that had been poured into Russia byEngland and France. By a strange paradox of history, French journalists, forgetting their own Revolution, the cruelties of Robespierre andMarat, the September Massacres, the torture of Marie Antoinette in theTuileries, the guillotining of many fair women of France, and after1870 the terrors of the Commune, were most horrified by the anarchy inRussia, and most fierce in denunciation of the bloody struggle by whicha people made mad by long oppression and infernal tyrannies strove togain the liberties of life. 

Thousands of British soldiers newly come from war in France weresullenly determined that they would not be dragged off to the newadventure. They were not alone. As Lord Rothermere pointed out, a Frenchregiment mutinied on hearing a mere unfounded report that it was beingsent to the Black Sea. The United States and Japan were withdrawing. Only a few of our men, disillusioned by the ways of peace, missing theold comradeship of the ranks, restless, purposeless, not happy at home, seeing no prospect of good employment, said: "Hell!. .. Why not the armyagain, and Archangel, or any old where?" and volunteered for Mr. WinstonChurchill's little war. 

After the trouble of demobilization came peace pageants and celebrationsand flag-wavings. But all was not right with the spirit of the men whocame back. Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again, looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who hadgone to business in the peaceful days before the August of '14. But theyhad not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. Theywere subject to queer moods, queer tempers, fits of profound depressionalternating with a restless desire for pleasure. Many of them wereeasily moved to passion when they lost control of themselves. Many werebitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening. For some time, while they drew their unemployment pensions, they did not make anyeffort to get work for the future. They said: "That can wait. I've donemy bit. The country can keep me for a while. I helped to save it. .. Let's go to the 'movies. '" They were listless when not excited by some"show. " Something seemed to have snapped in them; their will-power. Aquiet day at home did not appeal to them. 

"Are you tired of me?" said the young wife, wistfully. "Aren't you gladto be home?"

"It's a dull sort of life, " said some of them. 

The boys, unmarried, hung about street-corners, searched for their pals, formed clubs where they smoked incessantly, and talked in an aimlessway. 

Then began the search for work. Boys without training looked for jobswith wages high enough to give them a margin for amusement, after thecost of living decently had been reckoned on the scale of high prices, mounting higher and higher. Not so easy as they had expected. The girlswere clinging to their jobs, would not let go of the pocket-moneywhich they had spent on frocks. Employers favored girl labor, found itefficient and, on the whole, cheap. Young soldiers who had been veryskilled with machine-guns, trench-mortars, hand-grenades, found thatthey were classed with the ranks of unskilled labor in civil life. Thatwas not good enough. They had fought for their country. They had servedEngland. Now they wanted good jobs with short hours and good wages. Theymeant to get them. And meanwhile prices were rising in the shops. Suitsof clothes, boots, food, anything, were at double and treble the priceof pre-war days. The profiteers were rampant. They were out to bleed themen who had been fighting. They were defrauding the public with sheer, undisguised robbery, and the government did nothing to check them. England, they thought, was rotten all through. 

Who cared for the men who had risked their lives and bore on theirbodies the scars of war? The pensions doled out to blinded soldierswould not keep them alive. The consumptives, the gassed, the paralyzed, were forgotten in institutions where they lay hidden from the publiceye. Before the war had been over six months "our heroes, " "our braveboys in the trenches" were without preference in the struggle forexistence. 

Employers of labor gave them no special consideration. In many officesthey were told bluntly (as I know) that they had "wasted" three or fouryears in the army and could not be of the same value as boys just outof school. The officer class was hardest hit in that way. They had gonestraight from the public schools and universities to the army. They hadbeen lieutenants, captains, and majors in the air force, or infantrybattalions, or tanks, or trench-mortars, and they had drawn good pay, which was their pocket-money. Now they were at a loose end, hating theidea of office-work, but ready to knuckle down to any kind of decent jobwith some prospect ahead. What kind of job? What knowledge had they ofuse in civil life? None. They scanned advertisements, answered likelyinvitations, were turned down by elderly men who said: "I've had twohundred applications. And none of you young gentlemen from the army arefit to be my office-boy. " They were the same elderly men who had said:"We'll fight to the last ditch. If I had six sons I would sacrifice themall in the cause of liberty and justice. "

Elderly officers who had lost their businesses for their country's sake, who with a noble devotion had given up everything to "do their bit, "paced the streets searching for work, and were shown out of every officewhere they applied for a post. I know one officer of good family anddistinguished service who hawked round a subscription--book to privatehouses. It took him more courage than he had needed under shell-fireto ring the bell and ask to see "the lady of the house. " He thanked Godevery time the maid handed back his card and said, "Not at home. " On thefirst week's work he was four pounds out of pocket. .. Here and therean elderly officer blew out his brains. Another sucked a rubber tubefastened to the gas-jet. .. It would have been better if they had fallenon the field of honor. 

Where was the nation's gratitude for the men who had fought and died, orfought and lived? Was it for this reward in peace that nearly a millionof our men gave up their lives? That question is not my question. It isthe question that was asked by millions of men in England in the monthsthat followed the armistice, and it was answered in their own brains bya bitterness and indignation out of which may be lit the fires of therevolutionary spirit. 

At street-corners, in tramway cars, in tea-shops where young men talkedat the table next to mine I listened to conversations not meant for myears, which made me hear in imagination and afar off (yet not very far, perhaps) the dreadful rumble of revolution, the violence of mobs led byfanatics. It was the talk, mostly, of demobilized soldiers. They askedone another, "What did we fight for?" and then other questions such as, "Wasn't this a war for liberty?" or, "We fought for the land, didn't we?Then why shouldn't we share the land?" Or, "Why should we be bled whiteby profiteers?"

They mentioned the government, and then laughed in a scornful way. 

"The government, " said one man, "is a conspiracy against the people. Allits power is used to protect those who grow fat on big jobs, bigtrusts, big contracts. It used us to smash the German Empire in order tostrengthen and enlarge the British Empire for the sake of those who grabthe oil-wells, the gold-fields, the minerals, and the markets of theworld. "

VIII

Out of such talk revolution is born, and revolution will not be avertedby pretending that such words are not being spoken and that suchthoughts are not seething among our working-classes. It will only beaverted by cutting at the root of public suspicion, by cleansing ourpolitical state of its corruption and folly, and by a clear, strongcall of noble-minded men to a new way of life in which a great peoplebelieving in the honor and honesty of its leadership and in fairreward for good labor shall face a period of poverty with courage, andco-operate unselfishly for the good of the commonwealth, inspired by asense of fellowship with the workers of other nations. We have a longway to go and many storms to weather before we reach that state, if, byany grace that is in us, and above us, we reach it. 

For there are disease and insanity in our present state, due to thetravail of the war and the education of the war. The daily newspapersfor many months have been filled with the record of dreadful crimes, of violence and passion. Most of them have been done by soldiers orex-soldiers. The attack on the police station at Epsom, the destructionof the town hall at Luton, revealed a brutality of passion, a murderousinstinct, which have been manifested again and again in other riots andstreet rows and solitary crimes. Those last are the worst because theyare not inspired by a sense of injustice, however false, or any mobpassion, but by homicidal mania and secret lust. The many murders ofyoung women, the outrages upon little girls, the violent robberiesthat have happened since the demobilizing of the armies have appalleddecent--minded people. They cannot understand the cause of this epidemicafter a period when there was less crime than usual. 

The cause is easy to understand. It is caused by the discipline andtraining of modern warfare. Our armies, as all armies, established anintensive culture of brutality. They were schools of slaughter. Itwas the duty of officers like Col. Ronald Campbell--"O. C. Bayonets" (adelightful man)--to inspire blood-lust in the brains of gentle boyswho instinctively disliked butcher's work. By an ingenious systemof psychology he played upon their nature, calling out the primitivebarbarism which has been overlaid by civilized restraints, liberatingthe brute which has been long chained up by law and the social code ofgentle life, but lurks always in the secret lairs of the human heart. It is difficult when the brute has been unchained, for the purpose ofkilling Germans, to get it into the collar again with a cry of, "Down, dog, down!" Generals, as I have told, were against the "soft stuff"preached by parsons, who were not quite militarized, though armychaplains. They demanded the gospel of hate, not that of love. Buthate, when it dominates the psychology of men, is not restricted to oneobjective, such as a body of men behind barbed wire. It is a spreadingpoison. It envenoms the whole mind. Like jealousy. 

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on. 

Our men, living in holes in the earth like ape-men, were taught theancient code of the jungle law, to track down human beasts in No Man'sLand, to jump upon their bodies in the trenches, to kill quickly, silently, in a raid, to drop a hand-grenade down a dugout crowded withmen, blowing their bodies to bits, to lie patiently for hours in ashell-hole for a sniping shot at any head which showed, to bludgeontheir enemy to death or spit him on a bit of steel, to get at his throatif need be with nails and teeth. The code of the ape-man is bad for sometemperaments. It is apt to become a habit of mind. It may surge up againwhen there are no Germans present, but some old woman behind an opentill, or some policeman with a bull's-eye lantern and a truncheon, or ina street riot where fellow-citizens are for the time being "the enemy. "

Death, their own or other people's, does not mean very much to some who, in the trenches, sat within a few yards of stinking corpses, knowingthat the next shell might make such of them. Life was cheap in war. Isit not cheap in peace?. .. 

The discipline of military life is mainly an imposeddiscipline--mechanical, and enforced in the last resort not by reason, but by field punishment or by a firing platoon. Whereas many men weremade brisk and alert by discipline and saw the need of it for thegeneral good, others were always in secret rebellion against itsrestraints of the individual will, and as soon as they were liberatedbroke away from it as slaves from their chains, and did not substituteself-discipline for that which had weighed heavy on them. With all itsdiscipline, army life was full of lounging, hanging about, waste oftime, waiting for things to happen. It was an irresponsible life forthe rank and file. Food was brought to them, clothes were given to them, entertainments were provided behind the line, sports organized, theirday ordered by high powers. There was no need to think for themselves, to act for themselves. They moved in herds dependent on their leaders. That, too, was a bad training for the individualism of civil life. Ittended to destroy personal initiative and willpower. Another evil of theabnormal life of war sowed the seeds of insanity in the brains of mennot strong enough to resist it. Sexually they were starved. For monthsthey lived out of the sight and presence of women. But they came backinto villages or towns where they were tempted by any poor slut whowinked at them and infected them with illness. Men went to hospital withvenereal disease in appalling numbers. Boys were ruined and poisoned forlife. Future generations will pay the price of war not only in povertyand by the loss of the unborn children of the boys who died, but by anenfeebled stock and the heritage of insanity. 

The Prime Minister said one day, "The world is suffering fromshell-shock. " That was true. But it suffered also from the symptoms ofall that illness which comes from syphilis, whose breeding-ground iswar. 

The majority of our men were clean-living and clean--hearted fellowswho struggled to come unscathed in soul from most of the horrors of war. They resisted the education of brutality and were not envenomed by thegospel of hate. Out of the dark depths of their experience they lookedup to the light, and had visions of some better law of life than thatwhich led to the world-tragedy. It would be a foul libel on many of themto besmirch their honor by a general accusation of lowered moralityand brutal tendencies. Something in the spirit of our race and in thequality of our home life kept great numbers of them sound, chivalrous, generous-hearted, in spite of the frightful influences of degradationbearing down upon them out of the conditions of modern warfare. But theweak men, the vicious, the murderous, the primitive, were overwhelmedby these influences, and all that was base in them was intensified, andtheir passions were unleashed, with what result we have seen, and shallsee, to our sorrow and the nation's peril. 

The nation was in great peril after this war, and that peril will notpass in our lifetime except by heroic remedies. We won victory in thefield and at the cost of our own ruin. We smashed Germany and Austriaand Turkey, but the structure of our own wealth and industry wasshattered, and the very foundations of our power were shaken and sapped. Nine months after the armistice Great Britain was spending at the rateof £2, 000, 000 a day in excess of her revenue. She was burdened witha national debt which had risen from 645 millions in 1914 to 7, 800millions in 1919. The pre-war expenditure of £200, 000, 000 per annum onthe navy, army, and civil service pensions and interest on national debthad risen to 750 millions. 

Our exports were dwindling down, owing to decreased output, so thatforeign exchanges were rising against us and the American dollar wasincreasing in value as our proud old sovereign was losing its ancientstandard. So that for all imports from the United States we were payinghigher prices, which rose every time the rate of exchange droppedagainst us. The slaughter of 900, 000 men of ours, the disablement ofmany more than that, had depleted our ranks of labor, and there was aparalysis of all our industry, owing to the dislocation of its machineryfor purposes of war, the soaring cost of raw material, the cripplingeffect of high taxation, the rise in wages to meet high prices, and thelethargy of the workers. Ruin, immense, engulfing, annihilating to ourstrength as a nation and as an empire, stares us brutally in the eyesat the time I write this book, and I find no consolation in the thoughtthat other nations in Europe, including the German people, are in thesame desperate plight, or worse. 

IX

The nation, so far, has not found a remedy for the evil that hasovertaken us. Rather in a kind of madness that is not without a strangesplendor, like a ship that goes down with drums beating and bannersflying, we are racing toward the rocks. At this time, when we aresorely stricken and in dire poverty and debt, we have extended theresponsibilities of empire and of world--power as though we hadillimitable wealth. Our sphere of influence includes Persia, Thibet, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt--a vast part of the Mohammedan world. Yet ifany part of our possessions were to break into revolt or raise a "holywar" against us, we should be hard pressed for men to uphold our powerand prestige, and our treasury would be called upon in vain for gold. After the war which was to crush militarism the air force alone proposedan annual expenditure of more than twice as much money as the whole costof the army before the war. While the armaments of the German people, whom we defeated in the war against militarism, are restricted to a fewwarships and a navy of 100, 000 men at a cost reckoned as £10, 000, 000a year, we are threatened with a naval and military program costing£300, 000, 000 a year. Was it for this our men fought? Was it to establisha new imperialism upheld by the power of guns that 900, 000 boys of oursdied in the war of liberation? I know it was otherwise. There are peopleat the street-corners who know; and in the tram-cars and factoriesand little houses in mean streets where there are empty chairs and theportraits of dead boys. 

It will go hard with the government of England if it plays a grandiosedrama before hostile spectators who refuse to take part in it. It willgo hard with the nation, for it will be engulfed in anarchy. 

At the present time, in this August of 1919, when I write these words, five years after another August, this England of ours, this Englandwhich I love because its history is in my soul and its blood is in mybody, and I have seen the glory of its spirit, is sick, nigh unto death. Only great physicians may heal it, and its old vitality strugglingagainst disease, and its old sanity against insanity. Our Empire isgreater now in spaciousness than ever before, but our strength to holdit has ebbed low because of much death, and a strain too long endured, and strangling debts. The workman is tired and has slackened in hiswork. In his scheme of life he desires more luxury than ourpoverty affords. He wants higher wages, shorter hours, and lessoutput--reasonable desires in our state before the war, unreasonable nowbecause the cost of the war has put them beyond human possibility. Hewants low prices with high wages and less work. It is false arithmeticand its falsity will be proved by a tremendous crash. 

Some crash must come, tragic and shocking to our social structure. Isee no escape from that, and only the hope that in that crisis the veryshock of it will restore the mental balance of the nation and thatall classes will combine under leaders of unselfish purpose, and finevision, eager for evolution and not revolution, for peace and not forblood, for Christian charity and not for hatred, for civilization andnot for anarchy, to reshape the conditions of our social life and giveus a new working order, with more equality of labor and reward, duty andsacrifice, liberty and discipline of the soul, combining the virtueof patriotism with a generous spirit to other peoples across the oldfrontiers of hate. That is the hope but not the certainty. 

It is only by that hope that one may look back upon the war withanything but despair. All the lives of those boys whom I saw go marchingup the roads of France and Flanders to the fields of death, so splendid, so lovely in their youth, will have been laid down in vain if by theirsacrifice the world is not uplifted to some plane a little higherthan the barbarity which was let loose in Europe. They will have beenbetrayed if the agony they suffered is forgotten and "the war to endwar" leads to preparations for new, more monstrous conflict. 

Or is war the law of human life? Is there something more powerful thankaisers and castes which drives masses of men against other masses indeath-struggles which they do not understand? Are we really poor beastsin the jungle, striving by tooth and claw, high velocity and poison-gas, for the survival of the fittest in an endless conflict? If that is so, then God mocks at us. Or, rather, if that is so, there is no God such aswe men may love, with love for men. 

The world will not accept that message of despair; and millions of mento-day who went through the agony of the war are inspired by the humblebelief that humanity may be cured of its cruelty and stupidity, and thata brotherhood of peoples more powerful than a League of Nations may befounded in the world after its present sickness and out of the conflictof its anarchy. 

That is the new vision which leads men on, and if we can make one stepthat way it will be better than that backward fall which civilizationtook when Germany played the devil and led us all into the jungle. Thedevil in Germany had to be killed. There was no other way, except byhelping the Germans to kill it before it mastered them. Now let usexorcise our own devils and get back to kindness toward all men of goodwill. That also is the only way to heal the heart of the world andour own state. Let us seek the beauty of life and God's truth somehow, remembering the boys who died too soon, and all the falsity and hatredof these past five years. By blood and passion there will be no healing. We have seen too much blood. We want to wipe it out of our eyes andsouls. Let us have Peace.