My Year Of The War

Including An Account Of ExperiencesWith The Troops In France, And TheRecord Of A Visit To The GrandFleet, Which Is Here GivenFor The First Time InIts Complete Form

By Frederick Palmer(Accredited American Correspondent at the British Front)

Contents

To The ReaderI. "Le Brave Belge!"II. Mons And ParisIII. Paris WaitsIV. On The Heels Of Von KluckV. And Calais WaitsVI. In GermanyVII. How The Kaiser LeadsVIII. In Belgium Under The GermansIX. Christmas In BelgiumX. The Future Of BelgiumXI. Winter In LorraineXII. Smiles Among RuinsXIII. A Road Of War I KnowXIV. Trenches In WinterXV. In Neuve ChapelleXVI. Nearer The GermansXVII. With The GunsXVIII. Archibald The ArcherXIX. Trenches In SummerXX. A School In BombingXXI. My Best Day At The FrontXXII. More Best DayXXIII. Winning And LosingXXIV. The Maple Leaf FolkXXV. Many PicturesXXVI. Finding The Grand FleetXXVII. On A DestroyerXXVIII. Ships That Have FoughtXXIX. On The InflexibleXXX. On The Fleet FlagshipXXXI. Simply Hard WorkXXII. Hunting The SubmarineXXXIII. The Fleet Puts To SeaXXIV. British Problems

To the Reader

In 'The Last Shot', which appeared only a few months before theGreat War began, drawing from my experience in many wars, Iattempted to describe the character of a conflict between two greatEuropean land-powers, such as France and Germany. 

"You were wrong in some ways, " a friend writes to me, "but in otherways it is almost as if you had written a play and they were followingyour script and stage business. "

Wrong as to the duration of the struggle and its bitterness and theatrocious disregard of treaties and the laws of war by one side; rightabout the part which artillery would play; right in suggesting thestalemate of intrenchments when vast masses of troops occupied thelength of a frontier. Had the Germans not gone through Belgium andattacked on the shorter line of the Franco-German boundary, theparallel of fact with that of prediction would have been morecomplete. As for the ideal of 'The Last Shot', we must await theoutcome to see how far it shall be fulfilled by a lasting peace. 

Then my friend asks, "How does it make you feel?" Not as a prophet;only as an eager observer, who finds that imagination pales besidereality. If sometimes an incident seemed a page out of my novel, Iwas reminded how much better I might have done that page from life;and from life I am writing now. 

I have seen too much of the war and yet not enough to assume thepose of a military expert; which is easy when seated in a chair athome before maps and news dispatches, but becomes fantastic afterone has lived at the front. One waits on more information before heforms conclusions about campaigns. He is certain only that the Marnewas a decisive battle for civilization; that if England had not gone intothe war the Germanic Powers would have won in three months. 

No words can exaggerate the heroism and sacrifice of the French orthe importance of the part which the British have played, which weshall not realize till the war is over. In England no newspapers weresuppressed; casualty lists were published; she gave publicity todissensions and mistakes which others concealed, in keeping withher ancient birthright of free institutions which work out conclusionsthrough discussion rather than take them ready-made from any ruleror leader. 

Whatever value this book has is the reflection of personalobservation and the thoughts which have occurred to me when Ihave walked around my experiences and measured them and foundwhat was worth while and what was not. Such as they are, they arereal. 

Most vital of all in sheer expression of military power was the visit tothe British Grand Fleet; most humanly appealing, the time spent inBelgium under German rule; most dramatic, the French victory on theMarne; most precious, my long stay at the British front. 

A traveller's view I had of Germany in the early period of the war; but Iwas never with the German army, which made Americans particularlywelcome for obvious reasons. Between right and wrong one cannotbe a neutral. In foregoing the diversion of shaking hands and passingthe time of day on the Germanic fronts, I escaped any bargain withmy conscience by accepting the hospitality of those warring for acause and in a manner obnoxious to me. I was among friends, livingthe life of one army and seeing war in all its aspects from day to day, instead of having tourist glimpses. 

Chapters which deal with the British army in France and with theBritish fleet have been submitted to the censor. Though the censormay delete military secrets, he may not prompt opinions. Whatevernotes of praise and of affection which you may read between thelines or in them spring from the mind and heart. Undemonstratively, cheerily as they would go for a walk, with something of old-fashionedchivalry, the British went to death. 

Their national weaknesses and strength, revealed under externaldifferences by association, are more akin to ours than we shall realizeuntil we face our own inevitable crisis. Though one's ancestors hadbeen in America for nearly three centuries, he was continually findinghow much of custom, of law, of habit, and of instinct he had incommon with them; and how Americans who were not of British bloodalso shared these as an applied inheritance that has been the mostformative element in the American crucible. 

My grateful acknowledgments are due to the American pressassociations who considered me worthy to be the accreditedAmerican correspondent at the British front, and to Collier's andEverybody's; and may an author who has not had the opportunity toread proofs request the reader's indulgence. 

FREDERICK PALMER. British Headquarters, France. 

My Year Of The War

I"Le Brave Belge!"

The rush from Monterey, in Mexico, when a telegram said thatgeneral European war was inevitable; the run and jump on board theLusitania at New York the night that war was declared by Englandagainst Germany; the Atlantic passage on the liner of ineffaceablememory, a suspense broken by fragments of war news by wireless;the arrival in England before the war was a week old; the journey toBelgium in the hope of reaching the scene of action!--as I write, allseem to have the perspective of history, so final are the processes ofwar, so swift their execution, and so eager is everyone for each day'sdevelopments. As one grows older the years seem shorter; but thefirst year of the Great War is the longest year most of us have everknown. 

Le brave Belge! One must be honest about him. The man who letshis heart run away with his judgment does his mind an injustice. Afellow-countryman who was in London and fresh from home in theeighth month of the war, asked me for my views of the relativeefficiency of the different armies engaged. 

"Do you mean that I am to speak without regard to personalsympathies?" I asked. 

"Certainly, " he replied. 

When he had my opinion he exclaimed:

"You have mentioned them all except the Belgian army. I thought itwas the best of all. "

"Is that what they think at home?" I asked. 

"Yes, of course. "

"The Atlantic is broad, " I suggested. 

This man of affairs, an exponent of the efficiency of business, was asentimentalist when it came to war, as Anglo-Saxons usually are. Theside which they favour--that is the efficient side. When I ventured tosuggest that the Belgian army, in a professional sense, was hardly tobe considered as an army, it was clear that he had ceased toassociate my experience with any real knowledge. 

In business he was one who saw his rivals, their abilities, theorganization of their concerns, and their resources of competition witha clear eye. He could say of his best personal friend: "I like him, buthe has a poor head for affairs. " Yet he was the type who, if he hadbeen a trained soldier, would have been a business man of war whowould have wanted a sharp, ready sword in a well-trained hand andto leave nothing to chance in a battle for the right. In Germany, wheresome of the best brains of the country are given to making war abusiness, he might have been a soldier who would rise to a positionon the staff. In America he was the employer of three thousand men--a general of civil life. 

"But look how the Belgians have fought!" he exclaimed. "Theystopped the whole German army for two weeks!"

The best army was best because it had his sympathy. His view wasthe popular view in America: the view of the heart. America saw thepigmy fighting the giant rather than let him pass over Belgian soil. On that day when a gallant young king cried, "To arms!" all hispeople became gallant to the imagination. 

When I think of Belgium's part in the war I always think of the littleBelgian dog, the schipperke who lives on the canal boats. He is ahome-staying dog, loyal, affectionate, domestic, who never goes outon the tow-path to pick quarrels with other dogs; but let anything ontwo or four feet try to go on board when his master is away and he willfight with every ounce of strength in him. The King had theschipperke spirit. All the Belgians who had the schipperke spirittried to sink their teeth in the calves of the invader. 

One's heart was with the Belgians on that eighteenth day of August, 1914, when one set out toward the front in a motor-car from aBrussels rejoicing over bulletins of victory, its streets walled withbunting; but there was something brewing in one's mind which was astreason to one's desires. Let Brussels enjoy its flags and its captureof German cavalry patrols while it might!

On the hills back of Louvain we came upon some Belgian troops intheir long, cumbersome coats, dark silhouettes against the field, digging shallow trenches in an uncertain sort of way. Whether it wasdue to the troops or to Belgian staff officers hurrying by in their cars, Ihad the impression of the will and not the way and a parallel of rawmilitia in uniforms taken from grandfather's trunk facing the trainedantagonists of an Austerlitz, or a Waterloo, or a Gettysburg. 

Le brave Beige! The question on that day was not, Are you brave?but, Do you know how to fight? Also, Would the French and theBritish arrive in time to help you? Of a thousand rumours about thepositions of the French and the British armies, one was as good asanother. All the observer knew was that he was an atom in a motor-car and all he saw for the defence of Belgium was a regiment ofBelgians digging trenches. He need not have been in Belgium beforeto realize that here was an unwarlike people, living by intensive thriftand caution--a most domesticated civilization in the most thickly-populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of grass andevery kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way atsmall cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened tothe withering blast of war. 

Out of the Hôtel de Ville at Louvain, as our car halted by the cathedraldoor, came an elderly French officer, walking with a light, quick step, his cloak thrown back over his shoulders, and hurriedly entered a car;and after him came a tall British officer, walking more slowly, imperturbably, as a man who meant to let nothing disturb him or beathim--both characteristic types of race. This was the break-up of thelast military conference held at Louvain, which had now ceased to beBelgian Headquarters. 

How little you knew and how much they knew! The sight of them washelpful. One was the representative of a force of millions ofFrenchman; of the army. I had always believed in the French army, and have more reason now than ever to believe in it. There was nodoubt that if a French corps and a German corps were set the task ofmarching a hundred miles to a strategic position, the French wouldarrive first and win the day in a pitched battle. But no one knew thisbetter than that German Staff whose superiority, as von Moltke said, would always ensure victory. Was the French army ready? Could itbring the fullness of its strength into the first and perhaps the decidingshock of arms? Where was the French army?

The other officer who came out of the Hôtel de Ville was therepresentative of a little army--a handful of regulars--hard as nails andready to the last button. Where was the British army? The restaurantkeeper where we had luncheon at Louvain--he knew. He whisperedhis military secret to me. The British army was toward Antwerp, waiting to crush the Germans in the flank should they advance onBrussels. We were "drawing them on!" Most cheerful, most confident, mine host! When I went back to Louvain under German rule hisrestaurant was in ruins. 

We were on our way to as near the front as we would go, with a passwhich was written for us by a Belgian reservist in Brussels betweensips of beer brought him by a boy scout. It was a unique, a mostaccommodating pass; the only one I have received from the Allies'side which would have taken me into the German lines. 

The front which we saw was in the square of the little town of Haelen, where some dogs of a dog machine-gun battery lay panting in theirtraces. A Belgian officer in command there I recollect for hispassionate repetition of, "Assassins! The barbarians!" which seemedto choke out any other words whenever he spoke of the Germans. His was a fresh, livid hate, born of recent fighting. We could go wherewe pleased, he said; and the Germans were "out there, " not far away. Very tired he was, except for the flash of hate in his eyes; as tired asthe dogs of the machine-gun battery. 

We went outside to see the scene of "the battle, " as it was called inthe dispatches; a field in the first flush of the war, where the headlesslances of Belgian and German cavalrymen were still scattered about. The peasants had broken off the lance-heads for the steel, which wassomething to pay for the grain smouldering in the barn which hadbeen shelled and burned. 

A battle! It was a battle because the reporters could get someaccount of it, and the fighting in Alsace was hidden under the cloud ofsecrecy. A superficial survey was enough to show that it had beenonly a reconnaissance by the Germans with some infantry and gunsas well as cavalry. Their defeat had been an incident to the thrust of atiny feeling finger of the German octopus for information. Thescouting of the German cavalry patrols here and there had the sameobject. Waiting behind hedges or sweeping around in the rear of apatrol with their own cavalry when the word came by telephone, theBelgians bagged many a German, man and horse, dead and alive. Brussels and London and New York, too, thrilled over these exploitssupplied to eager readers. It was the Uhlan week of the war; for everyGerman cavalryman was a Uhlan, according to popular conception. These Uhlans seemed to have more temerity than sense from theaccounts that you read. But if one out of a dozen of these mountedyouths, with horses fresh and a trooper's zest in the first flush of war, returned to say that he had ridden to such and such points withoutfinding any signs of British or French forces, he had paid for the lossof the others. The Germans had plenty of cavalry. They used it as theeyes of the army, in co-operation with the aerial eyes of the planes. 

A peasant woman came out of the house beside the battlefield withher children around her; a flat-chested, thin woman, prematurely oldwith toil. "Les Anglais!" she cried at sight of us. Seeing that we hadsome lances in the car, she rushed into her house and brought outhalf a dozen more. If the English wanted lances they should havethem. She knew only a few words of French, not enough to expressthe question which she made understood by gestures. Her eyes wereburning with appeal to us and flashing with hate as she shook her fisttoward the Germans. 

When were the English coming? All her trust was in the English, theinvincible English, to save her country. Probably the averageEuropean would have passed her by as an excited peasant woman. But pitiful she was to me, more pitiful than the raging officer and hisdog battery, or the infantry awkwardly intrenching back of Louvain, orflag-bedecked Brussels believing in victory: one of the Belgians withthe true schipperke spirit. She was shaking her fist at a dam whichwas about to burst in a flood. 

It was strange to an American, who comes from a land whereeveryone learns a single language, English, that she and herancestors, through centuries of living neighbour in a thickly-populatedcountry to people who speak French and to French civilization, should never have learned to express themselves in any but theirown tongue--singular, almost incredible, tenacity in the age of populareducation! She would save the lance-heads and garner every grainof wheat; she economized in all but racial animosity. This racialstubbornness of Europe--perhaps it keeps Europe powerful in jealouscompetition of race with race. 

The thought that went home was that she did not want the Germansto come; no Belgian wanted them; and this was the fact decisive inthe scales of justice. She said, as the officer had said, that theGermans were "out there. " Across the fields one saw nothing on thatstill August day; no sign of war unless a Taube overhead, the firstenemy aeroplane I had seen in war. For the last two days theGerman patrols had ceased to come. Liege, we knew, had fallen. Looking at the map, we prayed that Namur would hold. 

"Out there" beyond the quiet fields, that mighty force which was toswing through Belgium in flank was massed and ready to move whenthe German Staff opened the throttle. A mile or so away a patrol ofBelgian cyclists stopped us as we turned toward Brussels. They weredust-covered and weary; the voice of their captain was faint withfatigue. For over two weeks he had been on the hunt of Uhlanpatrols. Another schipperke he, who could not only hate but fightas best he knew how. 

"We had an alarm, " he said. "Have you heard anything?"

When we told him no, he pedalled on more slowly, and oh, howwearily! to the front. Rather pitiful that, too, when you thought of whatwas "out there. "

One had learned enough to know, without the confidential informationthat he received, that the Germans could take Brussels if they chose. But the people of Brussels still thronged the streets under theblankets of bunting. If bunting could save Brussels, it was in nodanger. 

There was a mockery about my dinner that night. The waiter who laidthe white cloth on a marble table was unctuously suggestive as tomenu. Luscious grapes and crisp salad, which Belgian gardenersgrow with meticulous care, I remember of it. You might linger overyour coffee, knowing the truth, and look out at the people who did notknow it. When they were not buying more buttons with the alliedcolours, or more flags, or dropping nickel pieces in Red Cross boxes, they were thronging to the kiosks for the latest edition of the eveningpapers, which told them nothing. 

A man had to make up his mind. Clearly, he had only to keep in hisroom in his hotel in order to have a great experience. He might seethe German troops enter Belgium. His American passport wouldprotect him as a neutral. He could depend upon the legation to gethim out of trouble. 

"Stick to the army you are with!" an eminent American had told me. 

"Yes, but I prefer to choose my army, " I had replied. 

The army I chose was not about to enter Brussels. It was that of"mine own people" on the side of the schipperke dog machine-gunbattery which I had seen in the streets of Haelen, and the peasantwoman who shook her fist at the invader, and all who had theschipperke spirit. 

My empty appointment as the representative of the American Presswith the British army was, at least, taken seriously by the policemanat the War Office in London when I returned from trips to Paris. Theday came when it was good for British trenches and gun-positions;when it was worth all the waiting, because it was the army of my raceand tongue. 

IIMons And Paris

Back from Belgium to England; then across the Channel again toBoulogne, where I saw the last of the French garrison march away, their red trousers a throbbing target along the road. From Boulognethe British had advanced into Belgium. Now their base was moved onto Havre. Boulogne, which two weeks before had been cheeringthe advent of "Tommee Atkeens" singing "Why should we bedownhearted?" was ominously lifeless. It was a town without soldiers;a town of brick and mortar and pavements whose very defencelessnesswas its best security should the Germans come. 

The only British there were a few stray wounded officers and menwho had found their way back from Mons. They had no idea wherethe British army was. All they realized were sleepless nights, theshock of combat, overpowering artillery fire, and resisting theonslaught of outnumbering masses. 

An officer of Lancers, who had ridden through the German cavalrywith his squadron, dwelt on the glory of that moment. What did hiswound matter? It had come with the burst of a shell in a village streetwhich killed his horse after the charge. He had hobbled away, reached a railroad train, and got on board. That was all he knew. 

A Scotch private had been lying with his battalion in a trench when aGerman aeroplane was sighted. It had hardly passed by whenshowers of shrapnel descended, and the Germans, in that grey-green so hard to see, were coming on as thick as locusts. Then theorders came to fall back, and he was hit as his battalion madeanother stand. He had crawled a mile across the fields in the nightwith a bullet in his arm. A medical corps officer told him to find anytransportation he could; and he, too, was able to get aboard a train. That was all he knew. 

These wounded had been tossed aside into eddies by the maelstromof action. They were interesting because they were the first Britishwounded that I had seen; because the war was young. 

Back to London again to catch the steamer with an article. One wasto take a season ticket to the war from London as home. It was abase whence one sallied forth to get peeps through the curtain ofmilitary secrecy at the mighty spectacle. You soaked in England atintervals and the war at intervals. Whenever you stepped on the pierat Folkestone it was with a breath of relief, born of a sense of freedomlong associated with fields and hedges on the other side of the chalkcliffs which seemed to make the sequestering barrier of the seacomplete. 

Those days of late August and early September, 10. 14, were grippingdays to the memory. Eager armies were pressing forward to acataclysm no longer of dread imagination but of reality. That ever-deepening and spreading stain from Switzerland to the North Seawas as yet only a splash of fresh blood. You still wondered if youmight not wake up in the morning and find the war a nightmare. Pictures that grow clearer with time, which the personal memorychooses for its own, dissociate themselves from a background ofdetail. 

They were very quiet, this pair that sat at the next table in the dining-room of a London hotel. I never spoke to them, but only stole discreetglances, as we all will in irresistible temptation at any newly-weddedcouple. Neither was of the worldly type. One knew that to this younggirl London was strange; one knew the type of country home whichhad given her that simple charm which cities cannot breed; oneknew, too, that this young officer, her husband, waited for word to goto the front. 

Unconsciously she would play with her wedding-ring. She stole covertglances at it and at him, of the kind that bring a catch in the throat, when he was not looking at her--which he was most of the time, forreasons which were good and sufficient to others besides himself. Apprehended in "wool-gathering, " she mustered a smile which wasso exclusively for him that the neighbour felt that he ought to beforgiven his peeps from the tail of his eye at it because it was soprecious. 

They attempted little flights of talk about everything except the war. He was most solicitous that she should have something which sheliked to eat, whilst she was equally solicitous about him. Wasn't hegoing "out there?" And out there he would have to live on army fare. Itwas all appealing to the old traveller. And then the next morning--shewas alone, after she had given him that precious smile in parting. Theincident was one of the thousands before the war had become aninstitution, death a matter of routine, and it was a commonplace foryoung wives to see young husbands away to the front with a smile. 

One such incident does for all, whether the war be young or old. There is nothing else to tell, even when you know wife and husband. Iwas rather glad that I did not know this pair. If I had known them Ishould be looking at the casualty list for his name and I might notenjoy my faith that he will return alive. These two seemed to me thebest of England. I used to think of them when gossip sought the latestturn of intrigue under the mantle of censorship, when Parliamentpoured out its oral floods and the newspapers their volumes of words. The man went off to fight; the woman returned to her country home. Itwas the hour of war, not of talk. 

On that Sunday in London when the truth about Mons appeared starkto all England, another young man happened to buy a special editionat a street corner at the same time as myself. By all criteria, the worldand his tailor had treated him well and he deserved well of the world. We spoke together about the news. Already the new democracywhich the war has developed was in evidence. Everybody hadcommon thoughts and a common thing at stake, with valuesreckoned in lives, and this makes for equality. 

"It's clear that we have had a bad knock. Why deny it?" he said. Thenhe added quietly, after a pause: "This is a personal call for me. I'mgoing to enlist. "

England's answer to that "bad knock" was out of her experience. Shehad never won at first, but she had always won in the end; she hadwon the last battle. The next day's news was worse and the nextday's still worse. The Germans seemed to be approaching Paris byforced marches. Paris might fall--no matter! Though the French armywere shattered, one heard Englishmen say that the British wouldcreate an army to wrest victory from defeat. The spirit of this was fine, but one realized the enormity of the task; should the mighty Germanmachine crush the French machine, the Allies had lost. To say sothen was heresy, when the world was inclined to think poorly of theFrench army and saw Russian numbers as irresistible. 

The personal call was to Paris before the fate of Paris was to bedecided. My first crossing of the Channel had been to Ostend; thesecond, farther south to Boulogne; the third was still farther south, toDieppe. Where next? To Havre! Events were moving with the speedwhich had been foreseen with myriads of soldiers ready to be throwninto battle by the quick march of the railroad trains. 

Every event was hidden under the "fog of war, " then a currentexpression--meagre official bulletins which read like hope in their brieflines, while the imagination might read as it chose between the lines. The marvel was that any but troop trains should run. All night in thatthird-class coach from Dieppe to Paris! Tired and preoccupiedpassengers; everyone's heart heavy; everyone's soul wrenched;everyone prepared for the worst! You cared for no other man's views;the one thing you wanted was no bad news. France had known thatwhen the war came it would be to the death. From the first noFrenchman could have had any illusions. England had not realizedyet that her fate was with the soldiers of France, or France that herfate and all the world's was with the British fleet. 

An Italian in our compartment would talk, however, and he wouldkeep the topic down to red trousers, and to the red trousers of aFrench Territorial opposite, with an index finger when his gesticulatoryknowledge of the French language, which was excellent, came to therescue of his verbal knowledge, which was poor. The Frenchmanagreed that red trousers were a mistake, but pointed to the bluecovering which he had for his cap--which made it all right. The Italianinsisted on keeping to the trousers. He talked red trousers till theFrenchman got out at his station, and then turned to me to confirmhis views on this fatal strategic and tactical error of the French. Afterall, he was more pertinent than most of the military experts trying towrite on the basis of the military bulletins. It was droll to listen tothis sartorial discourse, when at least two hundred thousand menlay dead and wounded from that day's fight on the soil of France. Red trousers were responsible for the death of a lot of those men. 

Dawn, early September dawn, on dew-moist fields, where the harvestlay unfinished as the workers, hastening to the call of war, had left thework. Across Paris, which seemed as silent as the fields, to an hotelwith empty rooms! Five hundred empty rooms, with a clock tickingbusily in every room! War or no war, that old man who wound theclocks was making his rounds softly through the halls from door todoor. He was a good soldier, who had heeded Joffre's request thateveryone should go on with his day's work. 

"They're done!" said an American in the foyer. "The French cannotstand up against the Germans--anybody could see that! It's too bad, but the French are licked. The Germans will be here to-morrow or thenext day. "

I could not and would not believe it. Such a disaster was against allone's belief in the French army and in the real character of theFrench people. It meant that autocracy was making sport ofdemocracy; it meant disaster to all one's precepts; a personaldisaster. 

"Look at that interior line which the French now hold. Think of thepower of the defensive with modern arms. No! The French have nothad their battle yet!" I said. 

And the British Expeditionary Force was still intact; still an army, withlots of fight left in it. 

IllParis Waits

It was then that people were speaking of Paris as a dead city--a Pariswithout theatres, without young men, without omnibuses, with theshutters of its shops down and its cafés and restaurants in gloomyemptiness. 

The Paris the host of the idler and the traveller; the Paris of theboulevards and the night life provided for the tourist; the Paris thatsparkled and smiled in entertainment; the Paris exploited tothe average American through Sunday supplements and thereminiscences of smoking-rooms of transatlantic liners, was dead. Those who knew no other Paris and conjectured no other Parisdeparted as from the tomb of the pleasures which had been thepassing extravaganza of relief, from dull lives elsewhere. TheParisienne of that Paris spent a thousand francs to get her pet dogsafely away to Marseilles. Politicians of a craven type, who are thecurse of all democracies, had gone to keep her company, leavingParis cleaner than ever she was after the streets had had theirmorning bath on a spring day when the horse chestnuts were inbloom and madame was arranging her early editions on the table ofher kiosk--a spiritually clean Paris. 

Monsieur, would you have America judged by the White Way? Whathas the White Way to do with the New York of Seventy-SecondStreet or Harlem? It serves the same purpose as the boulevards offurnishing scandalous little paragraphs for foreign newspapers. Foreigners visit it and think that they understand how Americans livein Stockbridge, Mass. , or Springfield Illinois, Empty its hotels andnobody but sightseers and people interested in the White Way wouldknow the difference. 

The other Paris, making ready to stand siege, with the Governmentgone to Bordeaux with all the gold of the Bank of France, with theenemy's guns audible in the suburbs and old men cutting down treesand tearing up paving-stones to barricade the streets--never had thatParis been more alive. It was after the death of the old and the birth ofthe new Paris that an elderly man, seeing a group of women at tea inone of the few fashionable refreshment places which were open, stopped and said:

"Can you find nothing better than that to do, ladies, in a time likethis?"

And the Latin temperament gave the world a surprise. Those whojudged France by her playful Paris thought that if a Frenchmangesticulated so emotionally in the course of everyday existence, hewould get overwhelmingly excited in a great emergency. Oneevening, after the repulse of the Germans on the Marne, I saw twoFrench reserves dining in a famous restaurant where, at this time ofthe year, four out of five diners ordinarily would be foreignerssurveying one another in a study of Parisian life. They were big, rosy-cheeked men, country born and bred, belonging to the new France ofsports, of action, of temperate habits, and they were joking aboutdining there just as two sturdy Westerners might about dining in adeserted Broadway. The foreigners and demimondaines werenoticeably absent; a pair of Frenchmen were in the place of theabsentees; and after their dinner they smoked their black brier-rootpipes in that fashionable restaurant. 

Among the picture post-cards then on sale was one of Marianne, whois France, bound for the front in an aeroplane with a crowing Frenchcock sitting on the brace above her. Marianne looked as happy as ifshe were going to the races; the cock as triumphant as if he had aspur through the German eagle's throat. However, there was littlesale for picture post-cards or other trifles, while Paris waited for thesiege. They did not help to win victories. News and not jeux d'esprit, victory and not wit, was wanted. 

For Marianne went to war with her liberty cap drawn tight over herbrow, a beat in her temples, and her heart in her throat; and the cockhad his head down and pointed at the enemy. She was relieved in away, as all Europe was, that the thing had come; at last an end of thestraining of competitive taxation and preparation; at last the test. Shehad no Channel, as England had, between her and the foe. Defeatmeant the heel of the enemy on her soil, German sentries in herstreets, submission. Long and hard she had trained; while the outsideworld, thinking of the Paris of the boulevards, thought that she couldnot resist the Kaiser's legions. She was effeminate, effete. She wasall right to run cafés and make artificial flowers, but she lacked beef. All the prestige was with her enemy. In '70 all the prestige had beenwith her. For there is no prestige like military prestige. It is all withthose who won the last war. 

"But if we must succumb, let it be now, " said the French. 

On, on--the German corps were coming like some machine-controlled avalanche of armed men. Every report brought them a littlenearer Paris. Ah, monsieur, they had numbers, those Germans!Every German mother has many sons; a French mother only one ortwo. 

How could one believe those official communiqués which kept sayingthat the position of the French armies was favourable and thenadmitted that von Kluck had advanced another twenty miles? Theheart of Paris stopped beating. Paris held its breath. Perhaps thereason there was no panic was that Parisians had been prepared forthe worst. 

What silence! The old men and the women in the streets moved asunder a spell, which was the sense of their own helplessness. But fewpeople were abroad, and those going on errands apparently. Theabsence of traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchralappearance to superficial observation. At the windows of flats, insidethe little shops, and on by-streets, you saw waiting faces, everyonewith the weight of national grief become personal. Was Paris alive?Yes, if Paris is human and not bricks and stone. Every Parisian wasliving a century in a week. So, too, was one who loved France. In theprospect of its loss he realized the value of all that France stands for, her genius, her democracy, her spirit. 

One recalled how German officers had said that the next war wouldbe the end of France. An indemnity which would crush out her powerof recovery would be imposed on her. Her northern ports would betaken. France, the most homogeneous of nations, would be dividedinto separate nationalities--even this the Germans had planned. Those who read their Shakespeare in the language they learned inchildhood had no doubt of England's coming out of the war secure;but if we thought which foreign civilization brought us the most in ourlives, it was that of France. 

What would the world be without French civilization? To think ofFrance dead was to think of cells in your own brain that had gonelifeless; of something irreparable extinguished to every man to whomcivilization means more than material power of destruction. Thesense of what might be lost was revealed to you at every turn inscenes once merely characteristic of a whole, each with an appeal ofits own now; in the types of people who, by their conduct in this hourof trial, showed that Spartan hearts might beat in Paris-the Spartanhearts of the mass of everyday, workaday Parisians. 

Those waiting at home calmly with their thoughts, in a France ofapprehension, knew that their fate was out of their hands in the handsof their youth. The tide of battle wavering from Meaux to Verdunmight engulf them; it might recede; but Paris would resist to the last. That was something. She would resist in a manner worthy of Paris;and one could live on very little food. Their fathers had. Every daythat Paris held out would be a day lost to the Germans and a daygained for Joffre and Sir John French to bring up reserves. 

The street lamps should not reveal to Zeppelins or Taubes thelocation of precious monuments. You might walk the length of theChamps Elysées without meeting a vehicle or more than two or threepedestrians. The avenue was all your own; you might appreciate it asan avenue for itself; and every building and even the skyline of thestreets you might appreciate, free of any association except thethought of the results of man's planning and building. Silent, desertedParis by moonlight, without street lamps--few had ever seen that. Millionaire tourists with retinues of servants following them in motor-cars may never know this effect; nor the Parisienne who paid athousand francs to send her pet dog to Marseilles. 

The moonlight threw the Arc de Triomphe in exaggerated spectralrelief, sprinkled the leaves of the long rows of trees, glistened on theupsweep of the broad pavements, gleamed on the Seine. Paris wasmajestic, as scornful of Prussian eagles as the Parthenon of Romaneagles. A column of soldiery marching in triumph under the Arc mightpossess as a policeman possesses; but not by arms could they gainthe quality that made Paris, any more than the Roman legionarybecame a Greek scholar by doing sentry go in front of the Parthenon. Every Parisian felt anew how dear Paris was to him; how worthy ofsome great sacrifice!

If New York were in danger of falling to an enemy, the splendid lengthof Fifth Avenue and the majesty of the skyscrapers of lowerBroadway and the bay and the rivers would become vivid to you in away they never had before; or Washington, or San Francisco, orBoston--or your own town. The thing that is a commonplace, whenyou are about to lose it takes on a cherished value. 

To-morrow the German guns might be thundering in front of thefortifications. The communiqués from Joffre became less frequentand more laconic. Their wording was like some trembling, fatefulneedle of a barometer, pausing, reacting a little, but going down, down, down, indicator of the heart-pressure of Paris, shrivelling theflesh, tightening the nerves. Already Paris was in a state of siege, inone sense. Her exits were guarded against all who were not inuniform and going to fight; to all who had no purpose except to seewhat was passing where two hundred miles resounded with strife. Itwas enough to see Paris itself awaiting the siege; fighting one was yetto see to repletion. 

The situation must be very bad or the Government would not havegone to Bordeaux. Alors, one must trust the army and the army musttrust Joffre. There is no trust like that of a democracy when it gives itsheart to a cause; the trust of the mass in the strength of the masswhich sweeps away the middlemen of intrigue. 

And silence, only silence in Paris; the silence of the old men and thewomen, and of children who had ceased to play and could notunderstand. No one might see what was going on unless he carried arifle. No one might see even the wounded. Paris was spared this, isolated in the midst of war. The wounded were sent out of reach ofthe Germans in case they should come. 

Then the indicator stopped falling. It throbbed upward. Thecommuniqués became more definite; they told of positions regained, and borne in the ether by the wireless of telepathy was somethingwhich confirmed the communiqués. At first Paris was uneasy with thenews, so set had history been on repeating itself, so remorselesslycertain had seemed the German advance. But it was true, true--theGermans were going, with the French in pursuit, now twenty, nowthirty, now forty, now fifty, sixty, seventy miles away from Paris. Yes, monsieur, seventy!

With the needle rising, did Paris gather in crowds and surge throughthe streets, singing and shouting itself hoarse, as it ought to havedone according to the popular international idea? No, monsieur, Pariswill not riot in joy in the presence of the dead on the battlefields andwhile German troops are still within the boundaries of France. Paris, which had been with heart standing still and breathing hard, began tobreathe regularly again and the glow of life to run through her veins. In the markets, whither madame brought succulent melons, pears, and grapes with commonplace vegetables, the talk of bargaininghousewives with their baskets had something of its old vivacity andmadame stiffened prices a little, for there will be heavy taxes to payfor the war. Children, so susceptible to surroundings, broke out of thequiet alleys and doorways in play again. 

A Sunday of relief, with a radiant September sun shining, followed aSunday of depression. The old taxicabs and the horse vehicles withtheir venerable steeds and drivers too old for service at the front, exhumed from the catacomb of the hours of doubt, ran up and downthe Champs Elysées with airing parties. At Notre Dame the religiousrejoicing was expressed. A great service of prayer was held by thepriests who were not away fighting for France, as three thousand are, while joyful prayers of thanks shone on the faces of that democraticpeople who have not hesitated to discipline the church as they havedisciplined their rulers. Groups gathered in the cafés or saunteredslowly, talking less than usual, gesticulating little, rolling over thegood news in their minds as something beyond the power ofexpression. How banal to say, "C'est chic, ça!" or "C'est épatant!"Language is for little things. 

That pile of posters at the American Embassy had already becomehistorical souvenirs which won a smile. The name of every Americanresident in Paris and his address had been filled in the blank space. He had only to put up the warning over his door that the premiseswere under the Embassy's protection. Ambassador Herrick, suave, decisive, resourceful, possessed the gift of acting in a greatemergency with the same ease and simplicity as in a small one, which is a gift sometimes found wanting when a crisis breaks uponthe routine of official life. 

He had the courage to act and the ability to secure a favour for anAmerican when it was reasonable; and the courage to say "No" if itwere unreasonable or impracticable. No one of the throngs who hadbusiness with him was kept long at the door in uncertainty. In itsorganization for facilitating the home-going of the thousands ofAmericans in Paris and the Americans coming to Paris from otherparts of Europe, the American Embassy in Paris seemed as wellmobilized for its part in the war as the German army. 

In spite of '70, France still lived. You noted the faces of the women infresh black for their dead at the front, a little drawn but proud andvictorious. The son or brother or husband had died for the country. When a fast motor-car bearing officers had a German helmet or twodisplayed, the people stopped to look. A captured German in theflesh on a front seat beside a soldier-chauffeur brought the knots to astandstill. "Voilà C'est un Allemand!" ran the exclamation. But Parissoon became used to these stray German prisoners, left-overs fromthe German retreat coming in from the fields to surrender. Thebatches went through by train without stopping for Paris, southward tothe camps where they were to be interned; and the trains of woundedto winter resorts, whose hotels became hospitals, the verandasoccupied by convalescents instead of gossiping tourists. It is très à lamode to be wounded, monsieur--très à la mode all over Europe. 

And, monsieur, all those barricades put up for nothing! They will notneed the cattle gathered on Long-champs race-track and in the parksat Versailles for a siege. The people who laid in stocks of tinnedgoods till the groceries of Paris were empty of everything in tins--theywill either have to live on canned food or confess that they were pigs, hein? Those volunteers, whether young men who had been excusedbecause they were only sons or for weak hearts which now let thempast the surgeons, whether big, hulking farmers, or labourers, orstooped clerks, drilling in awkward squads in the suburbs till they aredizzy, they will not have to defend Paris; but, perhaps, help to regainAlsace and Lorraine. 

Then there were stories going the rounds; stories of French courageand élan which were cheering to the ears of those who had to remainat home. Did you hear about the big French peasant soldier whocaptured a Prussian eagle in Alsace? They had him come to Paris togive him the Legion of Honour and the great men made a ceremonyof it, gathering around him at the Ministry of War. The simple fellowlooked from one to another of the group, surprised at all this attention. It did not occur to him that he had done anything remarkable. He hadseen a Prussian with a standard and taken the standard away fromthe Prussian. 

"If you like this so well, " said that droll one, "I'll try to get another!"

IVOn The Heels Of Von Kluck

Though the Germans were going, the siege by the cordon of Frenchguards around Paris had not been raised. To them every civilian wasa possible spy. So they let no civilians by. Must one remain for ever inParis, screened from any view of the great drama? Was there no wayof securing a blue card which would open the road to war for an atomof humanity who wanted to see Frenchmen in action and not to pryinto generals' plans?

Happily, an army winning is more hospitable than an army losing; andbonds of friendship which stretch around the world could be linkedwith authority which has only to say the word, in order that one mighthave a day's glimpse of the fields where von Kluck's Germans wereshowing their heels to the French. 

Ours, I think, was the pioneer of the sight-seeing parties whichafterwards became the accepted form of war correspondence withthe French. None could have been under more delightful auspices incompanionship or in the event. Victory was in the hearts of our hosts, who included M. Paul Doumer, formerly President of the Chamber ofDeputies and Governor of French Indo-China and now a senator, andGeneral Febrier, of the French Medical Service, who was to have hadcharge of the sanitation of Paris in case of a siege. 

M. Doumer was acting as Chef de Cabinet to General Gallieni, thecommandant of Paris, and he and General Febrier and two otherofficers of Gallieni's staff, who would have been up to their eyes inwork if there had been a siege, wanted to see something of that armywhose valour had given them a holiday. Why should not Roberts andmyself come along? which is the pleasant way the French have ofputting an invitation. 

Oh, the magic of a military pass and the companionship of an officerin uniform! It separates you from the crowd of millions on the otherside of the blank wall of military secrecy and takes you into the areaof the millions in uniform; it wins a nod of consent on a road from thatmiddle-aged reservist whose bayonet has the police power of millionsof bayonets in support of its authority. 

At last one was to see; the measure of his impressions was to be hisown eyes and not written reports. Other passes I have had since, which gave me the run of trenches and shell-fire areas; but this passopened the first door to the war. That day we ran by Meaux andChâteau Thierry to Soissons and back by Senlis to Paris. We saw afinger's breadth of battle area; a pin-point of army front. Only a ridealong a broad, fine road out of Paris, at first; a road which our carshad all to themselves. Then at Claye we came to the high-water markof the German invasion in this region. Thus close to Paris in thatdirection and no closer had the Germans come. 

There was the field where their skirmishers had turned back. Fartheron, the branches of the avenue of trees which shaded the road hadbeen slashed as if by a whirlwind of knives, where the Frenchsoixante-quinze field-guns had found a target. Under that suddenbath of projectiles, with the French infantry pressing forward on theirfront, the German gunners could not wait to take away the cord offive-inch shells which they had piled to blaze their way to Paris. Oneguessed their haste and their irritation. They were within range of thefortifications; within two hours' march of the suburbs; of the Mecca offorty years' preparation. After all that march from Belgium, with nobreak in the programme of success, the thunders broke and lightningflashed out of the sky as Manoury's army rushed upon von Kluck'sflank. 

"It was not the way that they wanted us to get the shells, " said aFrench peasant who was taking one of the shell-baskets for asouvenir. It would make an excellent umbrella stand. 

For the French it had been the turn of the tide; for that little Britisharmy which had fought its way back from Mons it was the sweetdream, which had kept men up on the retreat, come true. WearyGermans, after a fearful two weeks of effort, became the driven. Weary British and French turned drivers. A hypodermic of victoryrenewed their energy. Paris was at their back and the German backsin front. They were no longer leaving their dead and wounded behindto the foe; they were sweeping past the dead and wounded of thefoe. 

But their happiness, that of a winning action, exalted and passionate, had not the depths of that of the refugees who had fled before theGerman hosts and were returning to their homes in the wake of theirvictorious army. We passed farmers with children perched on top ofcarts laden with household goods and drawn by broad-backed farm-horses, with usually another horse or a milch cow tied behind. Thereal power of France, these peasants holding fast to the acres theyown, with the fire of the French nature under their thriftyconservatism. Others on foot were villagers who had lacked horsesor carts to transport their belongings. In the packs on their backswere a few precious things which they had borne away and were nowbearing back. 

Soon they would know what the Germans had done to the homes. What the Germans had done to one piano was evident. It stood in theyard of a house where grass and flowers had been trodden by horsesand men. In the sport of victory the piano had been dragged out ofthe little drawing-room, while Fritz and Hans played and sang in theintoxication of a Paris gained, a France in submission. They did notknow what Joffre had in pickle for them. It had all gone according toprogramme up to that moment. Nothing can stop us Germans!Champagne instead of beer! Set the glass on top of the piano andsing! Haven't we waited forty years for this day?

Captured diaries of German officers, which reflect the seventhheaven of elation suddenly turned into grim depression, taken inconnection with what one saw on the battlefield, reconstruct thescene around that piano. The cup to the lips; then dashed away. Howthose orders to retreat must have hurt!

The state of the refugees' homes all depended upon the chances ofwar. War's lightning might have hit your roof-tree and it might not. Itplays no favourites between the honest and the dishonest; the thriftyand the shiftless. We passed villages which exhibited no signs ofdestruction or of looting. German troops had marched through in theadvance and in the retreat without being billeted. A hurrying army withanother on its heels has no time for looting. Other villages had beenpoints of topical importance; they had been in the midst of a fight. General Mauvaise Chance had it in for them. Shells had wreckedsome houses; others were burned. Where a German non-commissionedofficer came to the door of a French family and said that room mustbe made for German soldiers in that house and if anyone dared tointerfere with them he would be shot, there the exhausted humannature of a people trained to think that "Krieg ist Krieg" and that thespoils of war are to the victor had its way. 

It takes generations to lift a man up a single degree; but so swift is theeffect of war, when men live a year in a day, that he is demonized in amonth. Before the occupants had to go, often windows were broken, crockery smashed, closets and drawers rifled. The soldiery whichcould not have its Paris "took it out" of the property of their hosts. Looting, destruction, one can forgive in the orgy of war which isorganized destruction; one can even understand rapine and atrocitieswhen armies, which include latent vile and criminal elements, arearoused to the kind of insane passion which war kindles in humanbeings. But some indecencies one could not understand in civilizedmen. All with a military purpose, it is said; for in the nice calculationsof a staff system which grinds so very fine, nothing must be excludedthat will embarrass the enemy. A certain foully disgusting practicewas too common not to have had the approval of at least someofficers, whose conduct in several châteaux includes them asaccomplices. Not all officers, not all soldiers. That there should be afew is enough to sicken you of belonging to the human species. Nothing worse in Central America; nothing worse where civilizeddegeneracy disgraces savagery. 

But do not think that destruction for destruction's sake was done in allhouses where German soldiers were billeted. If the good principlewas not sufficiently impressed, Belgium must have impressed it; alooting army is a disorderly army. The soldier has burden enough tocarry in heavy marching order without souvenirs. That collector of thestoppers of carafes who had thirty on his person when taken prisonerwas bound to be a laggard in the retreat. 

To their surprise and relief, returning farmers found their big, conicalhaystacks untouched, though nothing could be more tempting to thewantonness of an army on enemy soil. Strike a match and up goesthe harvest! Perhaps the Germans as they advanced had in mind tosave the forage for their own horses, and either they were running toofast to stop or the staff overlooked the detail on the retreat. 

It was amazing how few signs of battle there were in the open. Occasionally one saw the hastily-made shelter-trenches of a skirmishline; and again, the emplacements for batteries--hurried field-emplacements, so puny beside those of trench warfare. It had beenopen fighting; the tide of an army sweeping forward and then, pursued, sweeping back. One side was trying to get away; the otherto overtake. Here, a rearguard made a determined action whichwould have had the character of a battle in other days; there, arearguard was pinched as the French or the British got around it. 

Swift marching and quick manœuvres of the type which gave warsome of its old sport and zest; the advance all the while gatheringforce like the neap tide! Crowds of men hurrying across a harvestedwheatfield or a pasture after all leave few marks of passage. A day'srain will wash away bloodstains and liven trampled vegetation. Naturehastens with a kind of contempt of man to repair the damage done byhis murderous wrath. 

The cyclone past, the people turned out to put things in order. Peasants too old to fight, who had paid the taxes which paid for therifles and guns and shell-fire, were moving across the fields withspades, burying the bodies of the young men and the horses thatwere war's victims. Long trenches full of dead told where the eddy ofbattle had been fierce and the casualties numerous; scatteredmounds of fresh earth where they were light; and, sometimes, whenthe burying was unfinished--well, one draws the curtain over sceneslike that in the woods at Betz, where Frenchmen died knowing thatParis was saved and Germans died knowing that they had failed totake Paris. 

Whenever we halted our statesman, M. Doumer, was active. Did wehave difficulties over a culvert which had been hastily mended, hewas out of the car and in command. Always he was meeting someman whom he knew and shaking hands like a senator at home. Atone place a private soldier, a man of education by his speech, camerunning across the street at sight of him. 

"Son of an old friend of mine, from my town, " said our statesman. Being a French private meant being any kind of a Frenchman. Allinequalities are levelled in the ranks of a great conscript army. 

Be it through towns unharmed or towns that had been looted andshelled, the people had the smile of victory, the look of victory in theireyes. Children and old men and women, the stay-at-homes, waved toour car in holiday spirit. The laugh of a sturdy young woman whothrew some flowers into the tonneau as we passed, in her tribute tothe uniform of the army that had saved France, had the spirit ofvictorious France--France after forty years' waiting throwing back afoe that had two soldiers to every one of hers. All the land, rich fieldsand neat gardens and green stretches of woods in the fair, rollinglandscape, basked in victory. Dead the spirit of anyone who couldnot, for the time being, catch the infection of it and feel himself aFrenchman. Far from the Paris of gay show for the tourist oneseemed; in the midst of the France of the farms and the villageswhich had saved Paris and France. 

The car sped on over the hard road. Staff officers in other cars whomwe passed alone suggested that there was war somewhere ahead. Were we never going to reach the battle-line, the magnet of ourspeed when a French army chauffeur made all speed laws obsolete?

Shooting out of a grove, a valley made a channel for sound thatbrought to our ears the thunder of guns, with firing so rapid that it waslike the roll of some cyclopean snare-drum beaten with sticks the sizeof ship-masts. From the crest of the next hill we had a glimpse of anopen sweep of park-like country toward wooded hills. As far as wecould see against the background of the foliage which threw it intorelief was a continuous cloud of smoke from bursting shells, renewedwith fresh, soft, blue puffs as fast as it was dissipated. 

This, then, was a battle. No soldiers, no guns, in sight; only againstmasses of autumn green a diaphanous, man-made nimbus whichwas raining steel hail. Ten miles of this, one would say; and under itlines of men in blue coats and red trousers and green uniformshugging the earth, as unseen as a battalion of ants at work in the tallgrass. Even if a charge swept across a field one would have beenable to detect nothing except moving pin-points on a carpet. 

There was hard fighting; a lot of French and German were beingkilled in the direction of Compiègne and Noyon to-day. Another dipinto another valley and the thir-r-r of a rapid-firer and the muffledfiring of a line of infantry were audible. Yes, we were getting upwith the army, with one tiny section of it operating along the road onwhich we were. Multiply this by a thousand and you have the whole. 

Ahead was the army's larder on wheels; a procession of big motortransport trucks keeping their intervals of distance with the precisionof a battleship fleet at sea. We should have known that they belongedto the army by the deafness of the drivers to appeals to let us pass. All army transports are like that. What the deuced right has anybodyto pass? They are the transport, and only fighting men belong in frontof them. Our car in trying to go by to one side got stuck in a rut thatan American car, built for bad roads, would have made nothing of;which proves again how closely European armies are tied to their finehighways. We got out, and here again was our statesman putting hisshoulder to the wheel. That is the way of the French in war. Everybody tries to help. By this time the transport chauffeursremembered that they also were Frenchmen; and as Frenchmen arepolite even in time of war, they let us by. 

A motor-cyclist approached with his hand up. 

"Stop here!" he called. 

Those transport chauffeurs who were deaf to ex-premiers heardinstantly and obeyed. In front of them was a line of single horse-drawn carts, with an extra horse in the rear. They could take pathsthat the motor trucks could not. Archaic they seemed, yet friendly, asa relic of how armies were fed in other days. For the first time I wasrealizing what the motor truck means to war. It brings the armyimpedimenta close up to the army's rear; it means a reduction of roadspace occupied by transport by three-quarters; ease in keeping pacewith food with the advance, speed in falling back in case of retreat. 

All that day I did not see a single piece of French army transportbroken down. And this army had been fighting for weeks; it had beenan army on the road. The valuable part of our experience was exactlyin this: a glimpse of an army in action after it had been through all thevicissitudes that an army may have in marching and counter-marching and attack. Order one expected afterwards, behind thesiege line of trenches, when there had been time to establish aroutine; organization and smooth organization you had here at theclimax of a month's strain. It told the story of the character of theFrench army and the reasons for its success other than its courage. The brains were not all with the German Staff. 

That winding road, with a new picture at every turn, now revealed thetown of Soissons in the valley of the River Aisne. Soissons was ours, we knew, since yesterday. How much farther had we gone? Was ouradvance still continuing? For then, winter trench-fighting wasunforeseen and the sightseers thought of the French army asfollowing up success with success. Paris, rising from gloom tooptimism, hoped to see the Germans speedily put out of France. Theappetite for victory grew, after a week's bulletins which moved theflags forward on the map every day. 

Another turn and Soissons was hidden from view by a woodland. Here we came upon what looked like a leisurely family party ofreserves. The French army, a small section of French army, along aroad! And thus, if one would see the whole it must be in bits along theroads, when not on the firing-line. They were sprawling in the fields inthe genial afternoon sun, looking as if they had no concern except torest. Uniforms dusty and faces tanned and bearded told their story ofthe last month. 

The duty of a portion of a force is always to wait on what is beingdone by the others at the front. These were waiting near a fork whichcould take them to the right or the left, as the situation demanded. Atthe rear, their supply of small arms ammunition; in front, caissons ofshells for a battery speaking from the woods near by; a troop ofcavalry drawn up, the men dismounted, ready; and ahead of themmore reserves ready; everything ready. 

This was where the general wanted the body of men and equipmentto be, and here they were. There were no dragging ends in the rear, so far as I could see; nobody complaining that food or ammunitionwas not up; no aide looking for somebody who could not be found; noexcited staff officer rushing about shouting for somebody to looksharp for somebody had made a mistake. The thing was unwarlike; itwas like a particularly well-thought-out route march. Yet at the wordthat company of cavalry might be in the thick of it, at the point wherethey were wanted; the infantry rushing to the support of the firing-line;the motor transport facing around for withdrawal, if need be. It wasonly a little way, indeed, into the zone of death from the rear of thatcompact column. Thousands of such compact bodies on manyroads, each seemingly a force by itself and each a part of the whole, which could be a dependable whole only when every part was ready, alert, and where it belonged! Nothing can be left to chance in a battle-line three hundred miles long. The general must know what todepend on, mile by mile, in his plans. Millions of human units aregrouped in increasingly larger units, harmonized according to setforms. The most complex of all machines is that of a vast army, whichyet must be kept most simple. No unit acts without regard to theothers; every one must know how to do its part. The parts of themachine are standardized. One is like the other in training, uniform, and every detail, so that one can replace another. Oldest of all tradesthis of war; old experts the French. What one saw was likemanœuvres. It must be like manoeuvres or the army would not holdtogether. Manœuvres are to teach armies coherence; war tries outthat coherence, which you may not have if someone does not knowjust what to do; if he is uncertain in his rôle. Haste leads to confusion;haste is only for supreme moments. In order to know how to hastenwhen the hurry call comes, the mighty organism must move in itsroutine with the smoothness of a well-rehearsed play. 

Joffre and the others who directed the machine must know more thanthe mechanics of staff-control. They must know the character of theman-material in the machine. It was their duty as real Frenchmen tounderstand Frenchmen, their verve, their restlessness for theoffensive, their individualism, their democratic intelligence, the valueof their elation, the drawback of their tendency to depression and tothink for themselves. Indeed, the leader must counteract the faults ofhis people and make the most of their virtues. 

Thus, we had a French army's historical part reversed: a French armyfalling back and concentrating on the Marne to receive the enemyblow. Equally alive to German racial traits, the German Staff hadorganized in their mass offensive the élan which means fastmarching and hard blows. So, we found the supposedly excitableFrench digging in to receive the onslaught of the supposedlyphlegmatic German. When the time came for the charge--ah, you canalways depend on a Frenchman to charge!

Those reserves were pawns on a chessboard. They appeared like it;one thought that they realized it. Their individual intelligenceand democracy had reasoned out the value of obedience andhomogeneity, rather than accepted it as the dictum of any war lord. Difficult to think that 'each one had left a vacancy at a family board;difficult to think that all were not automatons in a process of endlessroutine of war; but not difficult to learn that they were Frenchmenonce we had thrown our bombs in the midst of the group. 

Of old, one knew the wants of soldiers. One needed no hint of whatwas welcome at the front. Never at any front were there enoughnewspapers or tobacco. Men smoke twice as much as usual in thestrain of waiting for action; men who do not use tobacco at all get thehabit. Ask the G. A. R. Men who fought in our great war if this is nottrue. Then, too, when your country is at war, when back at homehands stretch out for every fresh edition and you at the front knowonly what happens in your alley, think what a newspaper from Parismeans out on the battle-line seventy miles from Paris! So I hadbrought a bundle of newspapers and many packets of cigarettes. 

Monsieur, the sensation is beyond even the French language toexpress--the sensation of sitting down by the roadside with thismorning's edition and the first cigarette for twenty-four hours. 

"C'est épatant! C'est chic, ça! C'est magnifique! Alors, nom de Dieu!Tiens! Hélas! Voilà! Merci, mille remerciments!"--it was an army ofFrenchmen with ready words, quick, telling gestures, pouring out theirvolume of thanks as the car sped by and we tossed out ournewspapers at intervals, so that all should have a look. 

An Echo de Paris that fell into the road was the centre of a flag-rush, which included an officer. Most un-military--an officer scrambling atthe same time as his men! In the name of the Kaiser, what discipline!

Then the car stopped long enough for me to see a private give thepaper to his officer, who was plainly sensible of a loss of dignity, witha courtesy which said, "A thousand pardons, mon capitaine!" and thecapitaine began reading the newspaper aloud to his men. Scores ofhuman touches which were French, republican, democratic!

With half our cigarettes gone, we fell in with some brown-skinned, native African troops, the Mohammedan Turcos. Their white teethgleaming, their black eyes devilishly eager, they began climbing on tothe car. We gave them all the cigarettes in sight; but fortunately ourreserve supply was not visible, and an officer's sharp commandsaved us from being invested by storm. 

As we came into Soissons we left the reserves behind. They werekept back out of range of the German shells, making the town a deadspace between them and the firing-line, which was beyond. When theGermans retreated through the streets the French had taken care, asit was their town, to keep their fire away from the cathedral and themain square to the outskirts and along the river. Not so the Germanguns when the French infantry passed through. Soissons was not aGerman town. 

We alighted from the car in a deserted street, with all the shutters ofshops that had not been torn down by shell-fire closed. Soissons wasas silent as the grave, within easy range of many enemy guns. Warseemed only for the time being in this valley bottom shut in from theroar of artillery a few miles away, except for a French battery whichwas firing methodically and slowly, its shells whizzing toward the ridgeback of the town. 

The next thing that one wanted most was to go into that battery andsee the soixante-quinze and their skilful gunners. Our statesman saidthat he would try to locate it. We thought that it was in the direction ofthe river, that famous Aisne which has since given its name to thelongest siege-line in history; a small, winding stream in the bottom ofan irregular valley. Both bridges across it had been cut by theGermans. If that battery were on the other side under cover of anyone of a score of blots of foliage we could not reach it. Another shot--and we were not sure that the battery was not on the opposite side ofthe town; a crack out of the landscape: this was modern artillery fire toone who faced it. Apparently the guns of the battery were scattered, according to the accepted practice, and from the central firing-stationword to fire was being passed first to one gun and then to another. 

Beside the buttress of one bridge lay two still figures of AlgerianZouaves. These were fresh dead, fallen in the taking of the town. Only two men! There were dead by thousands which one might seein other places. These two had leaped out from cover to dash forwardand bullets were waiting for them. They had rolled over on theirbacks, their rigid hands still in the position of grasping their riflesafter the manner of crouching skirmishers. 

Our statesman said that we had better give up trying to locate thebattery; and one of the officers called a halt to trying to go up to thefiring-line on the part of a personally-conducted party, after westopped a private hurrying back from the front on some errand. Withhis alertness, the easy swing of his walk, his light step, and hisfreedom of spirit and appearance, he typified the thing which theFrench call élan. Whenever one asked a question of a French privateyou could depend upon a direct answer. He knew or he did not know. This definiteness, the result of military training as well as of Galliclucidity of thought, is not the least of the human factors in making anefficient army, where every man and every unit must definitely knowhis part. This young man, you realized, had tasted the "salt of life, " asLord Kitchener calls it. He had heard the close sing of bullets; he hadknown the intoxication of a charge. 

"Does everything go well?" M. Doumer asked. "It is not going at all, now. It is sticking, " was the answer. "Some Germans were busy upthere in the stone quarries while the others were falling back. Theyhave a covered trench and rapid-fire-gun positions to sweep a zoneof fire which they have cleared. "

Famous stone quarries of Soissons, providing ready-made dug-outsas shelter from shells!

There is a story of how before Marengo Napoleon heard a privatesaying: "Now this is what the general ought to do!" It was Napoleon'sown plan revealed. "You keep still!" he said. "This army has too manygenerals. "

"They mean to make a stand, " the private went on. "It's an ideal placefor it. There is no use of an attack in front. We'd be mowed down bymachine-guns. " The br-r-r of a dozen shots from a German machine-gun gave point to his conclusion. "Our infantry is hugging what wehave and intrenching. You'd better not go up. One has to know theway, or he'll walk right into a sharpshooter's bullet"--instructions thatwould have been applicable a year later when one was about to visita British trench in almost the same location. 

The siege-warfare of the Aisne line had already begun. It was singularto get the first news of it from a private in Soissons and then to returnto Paris and London, on the other side of the curtain of secrecy, where the public thought that the Allied advance would continue. 

"Allons!" said our statesman, and we went to the town square, whereGerman guns had carpeted the ground with branches of shade treesand torn off the fronts of houses, revealing sections of looted interiorwhich had been further messed by shell-bursts. Some women andchildren and a crippled man came out of doors at sight of us. M. Doumer introduced himself and shook hands all around. They wereglad to meet him in much the same way as if he had been on anelection campaign. 

"A German shell struck there across the square only half an hourago, " said one of the women. 

"What do you do when there is shelling?" asked M. Doumer. 

"If it is bad we go into the cellar, " was the answer; an answer whichimplied that peculiar fearlessness of women, who get accustomed tofire easier than men. These were the fatalists of the town, who wouldnot turn refugee; helpless to fight, but grimly staying with their homesand accepting what came with an incomprehensible stoicism, whichpossibly had its origin in a race-feeling so proud and bitter that theywould not admit that they could be afraid of anything German, even ashell. 

"And how did the Germans act?"

"They made themselves at home in our houses and slept in our beds, while we slept in the kitchen, " she answered. "They said that if wekept indoors and gave them what they wanted we should not beharmed. But if anyone fired a shot at their troops or any arms werefound in our houses, they would burn the town. When they weregoing back in a great hurry--how they scattered from our shells! Wewent out in the square to see our shells, monsieur!"

What mattered the ruins of her home? "Our" shells had returnedvengeance. 

Arrows with directions in German, "This way to the river, " "This way toVillers-Cotteret, " were chalked on the standing walls; and on door-casings the names of the detachments of the Prussian Guard billetedthere, all in systematic Teutonic fashion. 

"Prince Albrecht Joachim, one of the Kaiser's sons, was here and Italked with him, " said the Mayor, who thought we would enjoy amorsel from court circles in exchange for a copy of the Echo de Paris, which contained the news that Prince Albrecht had been woundedlater. The Mayor looked tired, this local man of the people, who had toplay the shepherd of a stricken flock. Afterwards, they said that hedeserted his charge and a lady, Mme. Mâcherez, took his place. All Iknow is that he was present that day; or, at least, a man who wasintroduced to me as mayor; and he was French enough to make abon mot by saying that he feared there was some fault in hishospitality because he had been unable to keep his guest. 

"May I have this confiture?" asked a battle-stained French orderly, coming up to him. "I found it in that ruined house there--all theGermans had left. I haven't had a confiture for a long time, and, monsieur, you cannot imagine what a hunger I have for confitures. "

All the while the French battery kept on firing slowly, then againrapidly, their cracks trilling off like the drum of knuckles on atable-top. Another effort to locate one of the guns before we startedback to Paris failed. Speeding on, we had again a glimpse of thelandscape toward Noyon, sprinkled with shell-bursts. The reserveswere around their camp-fires making savoury stews for the eveningmeal. They would sleep where night found them on the sward underthe stars, as in wars of old. That scene remains indelible as one ofmany while the army was yet mobile, before the contest becameone of the mole and the beaver. 

Though one had already seen many German prisoners in groups andconvoys, the sight of two on the road fixed the attention because ofthe surroundings and the contrast suggested between French andGerman natures. Both were young, in the very prime of life, and bothPrussian. One was dark-complexioned, with a scrubbly beard whichwas the product of the war. He marched with such rigidity that Ishould not have been surprised to see him break into a goose-step. The other was of that mild, blue-eyed, tow-haired type from the Balticprovinces, with the thin, white skin which does not tan but burns. Hewas frailer than the other and he was tired! He would lag and thenstiffen back his shoulders and draw in his chin and force a trifle moreenergy into his steps. 

A typical, lively French soldier was escorting the pair. He looked prettytired, too, but he was getting over the ground in the natural, easy wayin which man is meant to walk. The aboriginal races, who have agenius for long distances on foot, do not march in the Germanfashion, which looks impressive, but lacks endurance. By the samelogic, the cowboy pony's gait is better for thirty miles day in and dayout than the gait of the high-stepping carriage horse. 

You could realize the contempt which those two martial Germans hadfor their captor. Four or five peasant women refugees by the roadsideloosened their tongues in piercing feminine satire and upbraiding. 

"You are going to Paris, after all! This is what you get for invading ourcountry; and you'll get more of it!"

The little French soldier held up his hand to the women and shook hishead. He was a chivalrous fellow, with imagination enough toappreciate the feelings of an enemy who has fought hard and lost. Such as he would fight fair and hold this war of the civilizations up tosomething like the standards of civilization. 

The very tired German stiffened up again, as his drill sergeant hadtaught him, and both stared straight ahead, proud and contemptuous, as their Kaiser would wish them to do. I should recognize the faces ofthose two Germans and of that little French guard if I saw them tenyears hence. In ten years, what will be the Germans' attitude towardthis war and their military lords?

It is not often that one has a senator for a guide; and I never knew amore efficient one than our statesman. His own curiosity was the bestpossible aid in satisfying our own. Having seen the compactness andsimplicity of an army column at the front, we were to find that thesame thing applied to high command. A sentry and a small flag at thedoorway of a village hotel: this was the headquarters of the SixthArmy, which General Manoury had formed in haste and flung at vonKluck with a spirit which crowned his white hairs with the audacity ofyouth. He was absent, but we might see something of the centraldirection of one hundred and fifty thousand men in the course of oneof the most brilliant manœuvres of the war, before staffs had settleddown to office existence in permanent quarters. That is, we might seethe little there was to see: a soldier telegrapher in one bedroom, asoldier typewritist in another, officers at work in others. One realizedthat they could pack up everything and move in the time it takes totoss enough clothes into a bag to spend a night away from home. Apparently, when the French fought they left red tape behind with thebureaucracy. 

From his seat before a series of maps on a sitting-room table anofficer of about thirty-five rose to receive us. It struck me that heexemplified self-possessed intelligence and definite knowledge; thathe had coolness and steadiness plus that acuteness of perceptionand clarity of statement which are the gift of the French. You felt surethat no orders which left his hand wasted any words or lackedexplicitness. The Staff is the brains of the army, and he had brains. 

"All goes well!" he said, as if there were no more to say. All goes well!He would say it when things looked black or when they looked bright, and in a way that would make others believe it. 

Outside the hotel were no cavalry escorts or commanders, nohurrying orderlies, none of the legendary activity that is associatedwith an army headquarters. A motor-car drove up, an officer got out;another officer descended the stairs to enter a waiting car. The wirescarry word faster than the cars. Each subordinate commander was inhis place along that line where we had seen the puffs of smokeagainst the landscape, ready to answer a question or obey an order. That simplicity, like art itself, which seems so easy is the most difficultaccomplishment of all in war. 

After dark, in a drizzling rain, we came to what seemed to be a town, for our motor-car lamps spread their radiant streams over wetpavements. But these were the only lights. Tongues of loose brickshad been shot across the cobblestones and dimly the jagged skylineof broken walls of buildings on either side could be discerned. It wasSenlis, the first town I had seen which could be classified as a town inruins. Afterwards, one became a sort of specialist in ruins, comparingthe latest with previous examples of destruction. 

Approaching footsteps broke the silence. A small, very small, Frenchsoldier--he was not more than five feet two--appeared, and wefollowed him to an ambulance that had broken down for want ofpetrol. It belonged to the Société de Femmes de France. The littlesoldier had put on a uniform as a volunteer for the only service hisstature would permit. In those days many volunteer organizationswere busy seeking to "help. " There was a kind of competition amongthem for wounded. This ambulance had got one and was taking himto Paris, off the regular route of the wounded who were being sentsouth. The boot-soles of a prostrate figure showed out of the darkrecess of the interior. This French officer, a major, had been hit in theshoulder. He tried to control the catch in his voice which belied hisassertion that he was suffering little pain. The drizzling rain was chilly. It was a long way to Paris yet. 

"We will make inquiries, " said our kindly general. 

A man who came out of the gloom said that there was a hospital keptby some Sisters of Charity in Senlis which had escaped destruction. The question was put into the recesses of the ambulance:

"Would you prefer to spend the night here and go on in the morning?"

"Yes, monsieur, I--should--like--that--better!" The tone left no doubt ofthe relief that the journey in a car with poor springs was not to becontinued after hours of waiting, marooned in the street of a ruinedtown. 

Whilst the ambulance passed inside the hospital gate, I spoke with anelderly woman who came to a near-by door. Cool and definite shewas as a French soldier, bringing home the character of the womenof France which this war has made so well known to the world. 

"Were you here during the fighting?"

"Yes, monsieur, and during the shelling and the burning. The shellingwas not enough. The Germans said that someone fired on theirsoldiers--a boy, I believe--so they set fire to the houses. One couldonly look and hate and pray as their soldiers passed through, lookingso unconquerable, making all seem so terrible for France. Was it tobe '70 over again? One's heart was of stone, monsieur. Tiens! Theycame back faster than they went. A mitrailleuse was down there atthe end of the street, our mitrailleuse! The bullets went cracking by. They crack, the bullets; they do not whistle like the stories say. Thenthe street was empty of Germans who could run. The dead theycould not run, nor the wounded. Then the French came up the street, running too--running after the Germans. It was good, monsieur, good, good! My heart was not of stone then, monsieur. It could not beat fastenough for happiness. It was the heart of a girl. I remember it all veryclearly. I always shall, monsieur. "

"Allons!" said our statesman. "The officer is well cared for. "

The world seemed normal again as we passed through other townsunharmed and swept by the dark countryside, till a red light rose inour path and a sharp "Qui vive?" came out of the night as we sloweddown. This was not the only sentry call from a French Territorial infront of a barricade. 

At a second halt we found a chain as well as a barricade across theroad. For a moment it seemed that even the suave parliamentarismof our statesman and the authority of our general and our passescould not convince one grizzled reservist, doing his duty for France atthe rear whilst the young men were at the front, that we had any rightto be going into Paris at that hour of the night. The password, whichwas "Paris, " helped, and we felt it a most appropriate password as wecame to the broad streets of the city that was safe. 

There is a popular idea that Napoleon was a super-genius who wonhis battles single-handed. It is wrong. He had a lot of Frenchmenalong to help. Much the same kind of Frenchmen live to-day. Not untilthey fought again would the world believe this. It seems that theexcitable Gaul, whom some people thought would become demoralizedin face of German organization, merely talks with his hands. In agreat crisis he is cool, as he always was. I like the French for theirdemocracy and humanity. I like them, too, for leaving their warto France and Marianne; for not dragging in God as do the Germans. For it is just possible that God is not in the fight. We don't knowthat He even approved of the war. 

VAnd Calais Waits

To the traveller, Calais had been the symbol of the shortest routefrom London to Paris, the shortest spell of torment in crossing theBritish Channel. It was a point where one felt infinite relief or sadphysical anticipations. In the last days of November Calais becamethe symbol of a struggle for world-power. The British and the Frenchwere fighting to hold Calais; the Germans to get it. In Calais, Germany would have her foot on the Atlantic coast. She could lookacross only twenty-two miles of water to the chalk cliffs of Dover. Shewould be as near her rival as twice the length of Manhattan Island;within the range of a modern gun; within an hour by steamer andtwenty minutes by aeroplane. 

The long battle-front from Switzerland to the North Sea had beenestablished. There was no getting around the Allied flank; there hadceased to be a flank. To win Calais, Germany must crush through bymain force, without any manœuvre. From the cafés where the Britishjournalists gathered England received its news, which they gleanedfrom refugees and stragglers and passing officers. They wrotesomething every day, for England must have something about thatdizzy, head-on wrestle in the mud, that writhing line of changingpositions of new trenches rising behind the old destroyed by Germanartillery. The British were fighting with their last reserves on the Ypres-Armentiéres line. The French divisions to the north were suffering noless heavily, and beyond them the Belgians were trying to hold thelast strip of their land which remained under Belgian sovereignty. Cordons of guards which kept back the observer from the strugglecould not keep back the truth. Something ominous was in the air. 

It was worth while being in that old town as it waited on the issue inthe late October rains. Its fishermen crept out in the mornings fromthe shelter of its quays, where refugees gathered in crowds hoping toget away by steamer. Like lost souls, carrying all the possessionsthey could on their backs, these refugees. There was numbness intheir movements and their faces were blank--the paralysis of brainfrom sudden disaster. The children did not cry, but mechanicallymunched the dry bread given them by their parents. 

The newspaper men said that "refugee stuff" was already stale;eviction and misery were stale. Was Calais to be saved? That wasthe only question. If the Germans came, one thought that madame atthe hotel would still be at her desk, unruffled, businesslike, and shewould still serve an excellent salad for déjeuner; the fishermen wouldstill go to sea for their daily catch. 

What was going to happen? What might not happen? It was humanhelplessness to the last degree for all behind the wrestlers. Fate wasin the battle-line. There could be no resisting that fate. If the Germanscame, they came. Belgian staff officers with their high-crowned, gilt-braided caps went flying by in their cars. There always seemed agreat many Belgian staff officers back of the Belgian army in therestaurants and cafés. Habit is strong, even in war. They did not oftenmiss their déjeuners. On the Dixmude line all that remained of theactive Belgian army was in a death struggle in the rain and mud. Tothese "schipperkes" honour without stint, as to their gallant king. 

Slightly-wounded Belgians and Belgian stragglers roamed the streetsof Calais. Some had a few belongings wrapped up in handkerchiefs. Others had only the clothes they wore. Yet they were cheerful; thiswas the amazing thing. They moved about, laughing and chatting ingroups. Perhaps this was the best way. Possibly relief at being out ofthe hell at the front was the only emotion they could feel. But theircheerfulness was none the less a dash of sunlight for Calais. 

The French were grim. They were still polite; they went on with theirwork. No unwounded French soldiers were to be seen, except the oldTerritorials guarding the railroad and the highways. The militaryorganization of France, which knew what war meant and hadexpected war, had drawn every man to his place and held him therewith the inexorable hand of military and racial discipline. Calais hadnever considered caring for wounded, and the wounded poured in. Isaw a motor-car with a wounded man stop at a crowded corner, inthe midst of refugees and soldiers; a doctor was leaning over him, and he died whilst the car waited. 

But the journalists were saying that stories of wounded men werelikewise stale. So they were, for Europe was red with wounded. Trainafter train brought in its load from the front, and Calais tried to carefor them. At least, it had buildings which would give shelter fromthe rain. On the floor of a railway freight shed the wounded lay inlong rows, with just enough space between them to make an alley. Those in the row against one of the walls were German prisoners. Their green uniforms melted into the stone of the wall and did notshow the mud stains. Two slightly wounded had their heads togetherwhispering. They were helplessly tired, though not as tired as mostof the others, those two stalwart young men; but they seemed to berelieved, almost happy. It did not matter what happened to them, now, so long as they could rest. 

Next to them a German was dying, and others badly hit were glassy-eyed in their fatigue and exhaustion. This was the word, exhaustion, for all the wounded. 

They had not the strength for passion or emotion. The fuel for thosefires was in ashes. All they wanted in this world was to lie quiet; andsome fell asleep not knowing or caring probably whether they were inGermany or in France. In the other rows, in contrast with thischameleon, baffling green, were the red trousers of the French andthe dark blue of the Belgian uniforms, sharing the democracy ofexhaustion with their foe. 

A misty rain was falling. In a bright spot of light through a window oneby one the wounded were being lifted up on to a seat, if they were nottoo badly hit, and on to an operating-table if their condition wereserious. A doctor and a sturdy Frenchwoman of about thirty, inspotless white, were in charge. Another woman undid the first-aidbandage and still another applied a spray. No time was lost; therewere too many wounded to care for. The thing must be done asrapidly as possible before another train-load came in. If theseattendants were tired, they did not know it any more than thewounded had realized their fatigue in the passion of battle. Theimprovized arrangement to meet an emergency had an appeal whichmore elaborate arrangements of organization which I had seenlacked. It made war a little more red; humanity a little more humanand kind and helpless under the scourge which it had brought onitself. 

Though Calais was not prepared for wounded, when they came thewomen of energy and courage turned to the work without jealousy, without regard to red tape, without fastidiousness. I have in mind halfa dozen other women about the streets that day in uniforms of shortskirts and helmets, who belonged to a volunteer organization whichhad taken some care as to its regimentals. They were types notcharacteristic of the whole, of whom one practical English doctor said:"We don't mind as long as they do not get in the way. " Their criticismsof Calais and the arrangements were outspoken; nothing wasadequate; conditions were filthy; it was shameful. They were going towrite to the English newspapers about it and appeal for money. Whenthey had organized a proper hospital, one should see how the thingought to be done. Meantime, these volunteer Frenchwomen weredoing the best they knew how and doing it now. 

A fine-looking young Frenchman who had a shell-wound in the thighwas being lifted on to the table. He shuddered with pain, as heclenched his teeth; yet when the dressing was finished he was able tobreathe his thanks. On the seat was a Congo negro who had beenwith one of the Belgian regiments, coal black and thick-lipped, withbloodshot eyes; an unsensitized human organism, his face asexpressionless as his bare back with holes made by shell-fragments. A young Frenchwoman--she could not have been more than nineteen--with a face of singular refinement, sprayed his wounds with thedefiniteness of one trained to such work, though two days before ithad probably never occurred to her as being within the possibilitiesof her existence. Her coolness and the coolness of the other womenin their silent activity had a charm that added to one's devout respect. 

The French wounded, too, were silent, as if in the presence of a crisiswhich overwhelmed personal thoughts. Help was needed at the front;they knew it. On sixty trains in one day sixty thousand French passedthrough Calais. With a pass from the French commandant at Calais, Igot on board one of these trains down at the railroad yards at dawn. This lot were Turcos, under the command of a white-haired veteran ofAfrican campaigns. An utter change of atmosphere from the freightshed! Perhaps it is only the wounded who have time to think. Mycompanions in the officers' car were as cheery as the brown devilswhom they led. They had come from the trenches on the Marne, andtheir commissariat was a boiled ham, some bread and red wine. Enough! It was war time, as they said. 

"We were in the Paris railroad yards. That is all we saw of Paris--andin the night. Hard luck!"

They had left the Marne the previous day. By night they could be inthe fight. It did not take long to send reinforcements when the linewas closed to all except military traffic and one train followed close onthe heels of another. 

They did not know where they were going; one never knew. Probablythey would get orders at Dunkirk. Father Joffre, when there was a callfor reinforcements, never was in a panicky hurry. He seemed tounderstand that the general who made the call could hold out a littlelonger; but the reinforcements were always up on time. A long headhad Father Joffre. 

Now I am going to say that life was going on as usual at Dunkirk; thatis the obvious thing to say. The nearer the enemy, the morecharacteristic that trite observation of those who have followed theroads of war in Europe. At Dunkirk you might have a good mealwithin sound of the thunder of the guns of the British monitors whichwere helping the Belgians to hold their line. At Dunkirk most excellentpâtisserie was for sale in a confectionery shop. Why shouldn'ttartmakers go on making tarts and selling them? The British navalreserve officers used to take tea in this shop. Little crowds of citizenswho had nothing to do, which is the most miserable of vocations insuch a crisis, gathered to look at armoured motor-cars which hadcome in from the front with bullet dents, which gave them theatmosphere of battle. 

Beyond Dunkirk, one might see wounded Belgians, fresh from thefield of battle, staggering in, crawling in, hobbling in from the havoc ofshell-fire, their first-aid bandages saturated with mud, their ungainlyand impracticable uniforms oozing mud, ghosts of men-these"schipperkes" of the nation that was unprepared for war who haddone their part, when the only military thought was for more men, unwounded men, British, French, Belgian, to stem the German tide. Yet many of these Belgians, even these, were cheerful. They couldstill smile and say, "Bonne chance!"

Indeed, there seemed no limit to the cheerfulness of Belgians. At ahospital in Calais I met a Belgian professor with his head a white ballof bandages, showing a hole for one eye and a slit for the mouth. Hehad been one of the cyclist force which took account of manyGerman cavalry scouts in the first two weeks of the war. A staffmotor-car had run over him on the road. 

"I think the driver of the car was careless, " he said mildly, as if hewere giving a gentle reproof to a student. 

By contrast, he had reason to be thankful for his lot. Looked after by abrave man attendant in another room were the wounded who weretoo horrible to see; who must die. Then, in another, you had a pictureof a smiling British regular, with a British nurse and an Englishwomanof Calais to look after him. They read to him, they talked to him, theyvied with each other in rearranging his pillows or bedclothes. He wasa hero of a story; but it rather puzzled him why he should be. Whywere a lot of people paying so much attention to him for doing hisduty?

In the cavalry, he had been separated from his regiment on theretreat from Mons. Wandering about the country, he came up with aregiment of cuirassiers and asked if he might not fight with them. Anumber of the cuirassiers spoke English. They took him into theranks. The regiment went far over on the Marne, through towns withFrench names which he could not pronounce, this man in khaki withthe French troopers. He was marked. C'est un Anglais! Peoplecheered him and threw flowers to him in regions which had neverseen one of the soldiers of the Ally before. 

Yes, officers and gentlemen invited him to dine, like he was agentleman, he said, and not a Tommy, and the French Governmenthad given him a decoration called the Legion of Honour or somethinglike that. This was all very fine; but the best thing was that his owncolonel, when he returned, had him up before his company and madea speech to him for fighting with the French when he could not findhis own regiment. He was supremely happy, this Tommy. In waitingCalais one might witness about all the emotions and contrasts of war--and many which one does not find at the front. 

VIIn Germany

Never had the war seemed a more monstrous satire than on that firstday in Germany as the train took me to Berlin. It was the other side ofthe wall of gun and rifle-fire where another set of human beings weregiving life in order to take life. The Lord had fashioned them in thesame pattern on both sides of the wall. Their children were born in thesame way; they bled from wounds in the same way--but why go on inthis vicious circle of thought?

My impressions of Germany were brief, and the clearer perhaps forbeing brief, and drawn on the fresh background of Paris and Calaiswaiting to know their fate; of England staring across the Channel, in asuspense which her stoicism would not confess, to learn the result ofthe battle for the Channel ports; of England and France straining withall their strength to hold, while the Germans exerted all theirs to gain, a goal; of Holland, stolid mistress of her neutrality, fearing for it andprofiting by it while she took in the Belgian foundlings dropped on hersteps--Holland, that little land at peace, with the storms lashingaround her. 

The stiff and soldierly-appearing reserve officer with bristlingKaiserian moustache, so professedly alert and efficient, who lookedat the mottled back of my passport and frowned at the recent visa, "Ala Place de Calais, bon pour aller à Dunkerque, P. O. Le Chef d'Etat-Major, " but let me by without questions or fuss, aroused visions of afrontier stone wall studded with bayonets. 

For something about him expressed a certain character of downrightmilitancy lacking in either an English or a French guard. I couldimagine his contempt for both and particularly for a "sloppy, undisciplined" American guard, as he would have called one of ours. Personal feelings did not enter into his thoughts. He had none; onlynational feelings, this outpost of the national organism. The mood ofthe moment was friendliness to Americans. Germany wished tocreate the impression on the outside world through the agency of theneutral press that she was in | danger of starving, whilst she amassedmunitions for her summer campaign and the Allies were lulled intoconfidence of siege by famine rather than by arms. A double, a treblepurpose the starving campaign served; for it also ensured economyof foodstuffs, whilst nothing so puts the steel into a soldier's heart asthe thought that the enemy is trying to beat him through taking thebread out of his mouth and the mouths of the women and childrendependent upon him. 

Tears and laughter and moods and passions organized! Seventymillions in the union of determined earnestness of a life-and-deathissue! Germany had studied more than how to make war with anarmy. She had studied how the people at home should help an armyto make war. 

"With our immense army, which consists of all the able-bodied youthof the people, " as a German officer said, "when we go to war thepeople must be passionate for war. Their impulse must be theimpulse of the army. Their spirit will drive the army on. They must bedrilled, too, in their part. No item in national organization is too smallto have its effect. "

Compared to the, French, who had turned grim and gave their prayersas individuals to hearten their soldiers, the Germans were asresponsive as a stringed instrument to the master musician's touch. Awhisper in Berlin was enough to set a new wave of passion in motion, which spread to the trenches east and west. 

Something like the team-work of the "rah-rah" of college athletics wasapplied to the nation. The soft pedal on this emotion, the loud on that, or a new cry inaugurated which all took up, not with the noisy, paidinsincerity of a claque, but with the vibrant force of a trained orchestrawith the brasses predominant. 

There seemed less of the spontaneity of an individualistic people thanof the exaltation of a religious revival. If the army were a machine ofmaterial force, then the people were a machine of psychical force. Though the thing might leave the observer cold, as a religious revivalleaves the sceptic, yet he must admire. I was told that I shouldsuccumb to the contagion as others had; but it was not the optimismwhich was dinned into my ears that affected me as much assidelights. 

When I took a walk away from a railway station where I had to makea train connection, I saw a German reservist of forty-five who washelping with one hand to thresh the wheat from his farm, on a grey, lowering winter day. The other hand was in a bandage. He had beenallowed to go home until he was well enough to fight again. The samesort of scene I had witnessed in France; the wounded man trying tomake up to his family the loss of his labour during his absence at thefront. 

Only, that man in France was on the defensive; he was righting tohold what he had and on his own soil. The German had been fightingon the enemy's soil to gain more land. He, too, thought of it as thedefensive. All Germany insisted that it was on the defensive. But itwas the defensive of a people who think only in the offensive. Thatwas it--that was the vital impression of Germany revealed in everyconversation and every act. 

The Englishman leans back on his oars; the German leans forward. The Englishman's phrase is "Stick it, " which means to hold what youhave; the German's phrase is "Onward. " It was national youth againstnational middle-age. A vessel with pressure of increase from withinwas about to expand or burst. A vessel which is large andcomfortable for its contents was resisting pressure from without. TheFrench were saying, What if we should lose? And the Germans weresaying, What if we should not win all that we are entitled to? Germanyhad been thinking of a mightier to-morrow and England of a to-morrow as good as to-day. Germany looked forward to a fortune tobe won at thirty; England considered the safeguarding of her fortuneat fifty. 

It is not professions that count so much as the thing that works outfrom the nature of a situation and the contemporaneous bent of apeople. The Englishman thought of his defence as keeping what healready had; the German was defending what he considered that hewas entitled to. If he could make more of Calais than the French, thenCalais ought to be his. A nation, with the "closed in" culture of theFrench on one side and the enormous, unwieldy mass of Russia onthe other, convinced of its superiority and its ability to beat either foe, thought that it was the friend of peace because it had withheld theblow. When the striking time came, it struck hard and forced thebattle on enemy soil, which proved, to its logic, that it was onlyreceiving payment of a debt owed it by destiny. 

Bred to win, confident that the German system was the right systemof life, it could imagine the German Michael as the missionary of thesystem, converting the Philistine with machine-guns. Confidence, theconfidence which must get new vessels for the energy that hasoverflowed, the confidence of all classes in the realization of the long-promised day of the "place in the sun" for the immense populationdrilled in the system, was the keynote. They knew that they could lickthe other fellow and went at him from the start as if they expected tolick him, with a diligence which made the most of their training andpreparation. 

When I asked for a room with a bath in a leading Berlin hotel, theclerk at the desk said, "I will see, sir. " He ran his eye up and down thelist methodically before he added: "Yes, we have a good room on thesecond floor. " Afterwards, I learned that all except the first andsecond floors of the hotel were closed. The small dining-room onlywas open, and every effort was made to make the small dining-roomappear normal. 

He was an efficient clerk; the buttons who opened the room door, agoose-stepping, alert sprout of German militarism, exhibiting apunctiliousness of attention which produced a further effect ofnormality. Those Germans who were not doing their part at the frontwere doing it at home by bluffing the other Germans and themselvesinto confidence. The clerk believed that some day he would havemore guests than ever and a bigger hotel. All who suffered from thewar could afford to wait. Germany was winning; the programme wasbeing carried out. The Kaiser said so. In proof of it, multitudes ofRussian soldiers were tilling the soil in place of Germans, who were atthe front taking more Russian soldiers. 

Everybody that one met kept telling him that everything was perfectlynormal. No intending purchaser of real estate in a boom town wasever treated to more optimistic propaganda. Perfectly normal--whenone found only three customers in a large department store! Perfectlynormal--when the big steamship offices presented in their windowsbare blue seas which had once been charted with the going andcoming of German ships! Perfectly normal--when the spool of thekilled and wounded rolled out by yards like that of a ticker on a busyday on the Stock Exchange! Perfectly normal--when women tried tosmile in the streets with eyes which had plainly been weeping athome!

Are you for us or against us? The question was put straight to thestranger. Let him say that he was a neutral and they took it forgranted that he was a pro-Ally. He must be pro-something. 

As I returned to the railway station after my walk, a soldier took me incharge and marched me to the office of the military commandant. "Are you an Englishman?" was his first question. The guttural, militaryemphasis which he put on "Englishman" was most significant. Whichbrings us to another factor in the psychology of war: hate. 

"If men are to fight well, " said a German officer, "it is necessary thatthey hate. They must be exalted by a great passion when they chargeinto machine-guns. "

Hate was officially distilled and then instilled--hate against England, almost exclusively. The public rose to that. If England had not comein, the German military plan would have succeeded: first, the crushingof France; then, the crushing of Russia. The despised Belgian, thatsmall boy who had tripped the giant and then hugged the giant'sknees, delaying him on the road to Paris, was having a rest. For hehad been hated very hard for a while with the hate of contempt--thatmiserable pigmy who had interfered with the plans of the machine. 

The French were almost popular. The Kaiser had spoken of them as"brave foes. " What quarrel could France and Germany have? Francehad been the dupe of England. Cartoons of the hairy, barbarousRussian and the futile little Frenchman in his long coat, borne onGerman bayonets or pecking at the boots of a giant Michael, were notin fashion. For Germany was then trying to arrange a separate peacewith both France and Russia. She was ready to yield at least part ofAlsace-Lorraine to France. When the negotiations fell through, cartoonists were again free to make sport of the aenemic Gaul andthe untutored Slav. It was not alone in Germany that a responsivePress played the weather vane to Government wishes; but inGermany the machinery ran smoothest. 

For the first time I knew what it was to have a human being whom Ihad never seen before hate me. At sight of me a woman who hadbeen a good Samaritan, with human kindness and charity in hereyes, turned a malignant devil. Stalwart as Minerva she was, a fair-haired German type of about thirty-five, square-shouldered androbustly attractive in her Red Cross uniform. Being hungry at thestation at Hanover, I rushed out of the train to get something to eat, and saw some Frankfurter sandwiches on a table in front of me as Ialighted. 

My hand went out for one, when I was conscious of a movement andan exclamation which was hostile, and looked up to see Minerva, asher hand shot out to arrest the movement of mine, with a blaze ofhate, hard, merciless hate, in her eyes, while her lips framed theword, "Englisher!" If looks were daggers I should have been piercedthrough the heart. Perhaps an English overcoat accounted for hererror. Certainly, I promptly recognized mine when I saw that this wasa Red Cross buffet. An Englishman had dared to try to buy asandwich meant for German soldiers! She might at least glory in thefact that her majestic glare had made me most uncomfortable as Imurmured an apology which she received with a stony frown. 

A moment later a soldier approached the buffet. She leaned over, smiling, as gentle as she had been fierce and malignant a momentbefore, making a picture, as she put some mustard on a sandwich forhim, which recalled that of the Frenchwoman among the wounded inthe freight shed at Calais--a simile which would anger them both. 

The Frenchwoman, too, had a Red Cross uniform; she, too, expressed the mercy and gentle ministration which we like toassociate with woman. But there was the difference of the old cultureand the new; of the race which was fighting to have and the racewhich was fighting to hold. The tactics which we call the offensive wasin the German woman's, as in every German's, nature. It had been inthe Frenchwoman's in Napoleon's time. Many racial hates the warhas developed; but that of the German is a seventeen-inch-howitzer, asphyxiating-gas hate. 

If hates help to win, why not hate as hard as you can? Don't you go towar to win? There is no use talking of sporting rules and saying thatthis and that is "not done" in humane circles--win! The Germansmeant to win. Always I thought of them as having the spirit of theMiddle Ages in their hearts, organized for victory by every modernmethod. Three strata of civilization were really fighting, perhaps: TheFrench, with its inherent individual patriotism which makes aFrenchman always a Frenchman, its philosophy which preventsincrease of numbers, its thrift and its tenacity; the German, with itsnewborn patriotism, its discovery of what it thinks is the goldensystem, its fecundity, its aggressiveness, its industry, its ambition;and the Russian, patient and unbeatable, vague, glamorous, immense. 

The American is an outsider to them all; some strange melting-potproduct of many races which is trying to forget the prejudices andhates of the old world and perhaps not succeeding very well, but notyet convinced that the best means of producing patriotic unity is war. After this and other experiences, after being given a compartment allto myself by men who glanced at me with eyes of hate and passedon to another compartment which was already crowded or stood upin the aisle of the car, I made a point of buying an American flag formy buttonhole. 

This helped; but still there was my name, which belonged to anancestor who had gone from England to Connecticut nearly threehundred years ago. Palmer did not belong to the Germanic tribe. Hemust be pro the other side. He could not be a neutral and belong tothe human kind with such a name. Only Swenson, or Gansevoort, orAh Fong could really be a neutral; and even they were expected to beon your side secretly. If they weren't they must be on the other. Areyou for us? or, Are you against us? I grew weary of the question inGermany. If I had been for them I should have "dug in" and not toldthem. In France and England they asked you objectively the state ofsentiment in America. But, possibly, the direct, forcible way is thebetter for war purposes when you mean to win; for the Germans havemade a study of war. They are experts in war. 

However, the rosy-cheeked German boy, in his green uniform whichcould not be washed clean of all the stains of campaigning, whom Imet in the palace grounds at Charlottenberg, did not put this tiresomequestion to me. He was the only person I saw in the grounds, whosequiet I had sought for an hour's respite from war. One could beshown through the palace by the lonely old caretaker, who missedthe American tourist, without hearing a guide's monotone explainingwho the gentleman in the frame was and what he did and whopainted his picture. This boy could have more influence in making mesee the German view-point than the propagandist men in theGovernment offices and the belligerent German-Americans in hotellobbies--those German-Americans who were so frequently in troublein other days for disobeying the verbotens and then asking our StateDepartment to get them out of it, now pluming themselves overvictories won by another type of German. 

About twenty-one years old this boy, round-faced and blue-eyed, whosaw in Queen Louisa the most beautiful heroine of all history. Thehole in his blouse which the bullet had made was nicely sewed upand his wound had healed. He was fighting in France when he washit; the name of the place he did not know. Karl, his chum, had beenkilled. The doctor had given him the bullet, which he exhibited proudlyas if it were different from other bullets, as it was to him. In a few dayshe must return to the front. Perhaps the war would be over soon; hehoped so. 

The French were brave; but they hated the Germans and thoughtthat they must make war on the Germans, and they were a cruelpeople, guilty of many atrocities. So the Fatherland had fought toconquer the enemies who planned her destruction. A peculiar, childlike naïveté accompanied his intelligence, trained to run in certaingrooves, which is the product of the German type of populareducation; that trust in his superiors which comes from a diligent andefficient paternalism. He knew nothing of the atrocities whichGermans were said to have committed in Belgium. The British andthe French had set Belgium against Germany and Germany had tostrike Belgium for playing false to her treaties. But he did think thatthe French were brave; only misled by their Government. And theKaiser? His eyes lighted in a way that suggested that the Kaiser wasalmost a god to him. He had heard of the things that the British saidagainst the Kaiser and they made him want to fight for his Kaiser. Hewas only one German--but the one was millions. 

In actual learning which comes from schoolbooks, I think that he wasbetter informed than the average Frenchman of his class; but Ishould say that he had thought less; that his mind was more of a hot-house product of a skilful nurseryman's hand, who knew the value oftraining and feeding and pruning the plant if you were to make it yieldwell. A kindly, willing, likable boy, peculiarly simple and unspoiled, itseemed a pity that all his life he should have to bear the brand of theLusitania on his brow; that event which history cannot yet put in itstrue perspective. Other races will think of the Lusitania when theymeet a German long after the Belgian atrocities are forgotten. It willendure to plague a people like the exile of the Acadians, theguillotining of innocents in the French Revolution, and the burning ofthe Salem witches. But he had nothing to do with it. A Germanadmiral gave an order as a matter of policy to make an impressionthat his submarine campaign was succeeding and to interfere withthe transport of munitions, and the Kaiser told this boy that it wasright. One liked the boy, his loyalty and his courage; liked him as ahuman being. But one wished that he might think more. Perhaps hewill one of these days, if he survives the war. 

VIIHow The Kaiser Leads

Only a week before I had seen wounded Germans in the freight shedat Calais; and all the prisoners that I had seen elsewhere, whether inones or twos, brought in fresh from the front or in columns underescort, had been Germans. The sharpest contrast of all in war whichthe neutral may observe is seeing the men of one army which, fromthe other side, he had watched march into battle--armed, confident, disciplined parts of an organization, ready to sweep all before them ina charge--become so many sheep, disarmed, disorganized, roundedup like vagrants in a bread-line and surrounded by a fold of barbedwire and sentries. 

Such was the lot of the nine thousand British, French, and Russianswhom I saw at Döberitz, near Berlin. This was a show camp, I wastold, but it suffices. Conditions at other camps might be worse;doubtless were. England treated its prisoners best, unless myinformation from unprejudiced observers be wrong. But Germany hadenormous numbers of prisoners. A nation in her frame of mindthought only of the care of the men who could fight for her, not ofthose who had fought against her. 

Then, the German nature is one thing and the British another. Crossing the Atlantic on the Lusitania we had a German reserveofficer who was already on board when the evening editions arrivedat the pier with news that England had declared war on Germany. Naturally he must become a prisoner upon his arrival at Liverpool. Hewas a steadfast German. When a wireless report of the Germanrepulse at Liege came, he would not believe it. Germany had thesystem and Germany would win. But when he said, "I should ratherbe a German on board a British ship than a Briton on board aGerman ship, under the circumstances, " his remark was significant inmore ways than one. 

His English fellow-passengers on that splendid liner which a Germansubmarine was to send to the bottom showed him no discourtesy. They passed the time of day with him and seemed to want to makehis awkward situation easy. Yet it was apparent that he regarded theirkindliness as racial weakness. Krieg ist Krieg. When Germany madewar she made war. 

So allowances are in order. One prison camp was like another in thissense, that it deprived a man of his liberty. It put him in jail. TheBritish regular, who is a soldier by profession, was, in a way, in aseparate class. But the others were men of civil industries andsettled homes. Except during their term in the army, they went tothe shop or the office every day, or tilled their farms. They werefree; they had their work to occupy their minds during the day andfreedom of movement when they came home in the evening. Theymight read the news by their firesides; they were normal humanbeings in civilized surroundings. 

Here, they were pacing animals in a cage, commanded by two field-guns, who might walk up and down and play games and go throughthe daily drill under their own non-commissioned officers. It was themental stagnation of the thing that was appalling. Think of such a lotfor a man used to action in civil life--and they call war action! Think ofa writer, a business man, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, reduced tothis fenced-in existence, when he had been the kind who gotimpatient if he had to wait for a train that was late! Shut yourself up inyour own backyard with a man with a rifle watching you for twenty-four hours and see whether, if you have the brain of a mouse, prison-camp life can be made comfortable, no matter how many greasypacks of cards you have. And lousy, besides! At times one had tolaugh over what Mark Twain called "the damfool human race. "

Inside a cookhouse at one end of the enclosure was a row of soup-boilers. Outside was a series of railings, forming stalls for theprisoners when they lined up for meals. In the morning, someoatmeal and coffee; at noon, some cabbage soup boiled withdesiccated meat and some bread; at night, more coffee and bread. How one thrived on this fare depended much upon how he likedcabbage soup. The Russians liked it. They were used to it. 

"We never keep the waiter late by tarrying over our liqueurs, " said aFrenchman. 

Our reservist guide had run away to America in youth, where he hadworked at anything he could find to do; but he had returned to Berlin, where he had a "good little business" before the war. He was stoutand cheery, and he referred to the prisoners as "boys. " The Frenchand Russians were good boys; but the English were bad boys, whohad no discipline. He said that all received the same food as Germansoldiers. It seemed almost ridiculous chivalry that men who hadfought against you and were living inactive lives should be as well fedas the men who were fighting for you. The rations that I saw given toGerman soldiers were better. But that was what the guide said. 

"This is our little sitting-room for the English non-commissionedofficers, " he explained, as he opened the door of a shanty which hada pane of glass for a window. Some men sitting around a small stovearose. One, a big sergeant-major, towered over the others; he hadthe colours of the South African campaign on the breast of his wornkhaki blouse and stood very straight as if on parade. By the windowwas a Scot in kilts, who was equally tall. He looked around over hisshoulder and then turned his face away with the pride of a man whodoes not care to be regarded as a show. 

His uniform was as neat as if he were at inspection; and the way heheld his head, the haughtiness of his profile against the stream oflight, recalled the unconquerable spirit of the Prussian prisoner whomI had seen on the road during the fighting along the Aisne. Only aregular, but he was upholding the dignity of Britain in that prison campbetter than many a member of Parliament on the floor of the House ofCommons. I asked our guide about him. 

"A good boy that! All his boys obey him and he obeys all theregulations. But he acts as if we Germans were his prisoners. "

The British might not be good boys, but they would be clean. Theywere diligent in the chase in their underclothes; their tents were freefrom odour; and there was something resolute about a Tommy whowas bare to the waist in that freezing wind, making an effort at a bath. I heard tales of Mr. Atkins' characteristic thoughtlessness. While theFrench took good care of their clothes and kept their tents neat, hewas likely to sell his coat or his blanket if he got a chance in order tobuy something that he liked to eat. One Tommy who sat on his strawtick inside the tent was knitting. When I asked him where he hadlearned to knit, he replied: "India!" and gave me a look as much as tosay, "Now pass on to the next cage. "

The British looked the most pallid of all, I thought. They were not usedto cabbage soup. Their stomachs did not take hold of it, as one said;and they loathed the black bread. No white bread and no jam! Onlywhen you have seen Mr. Atkins with a pot of jam and a loaf of whitebread and some bacon frizzling near by can you realize the hardshipwhich cabbage soup meant to that British regular who gets lavishrations of the kind he hkes along with his shilling a day forprofessional soldiering. 

"You see, the boys go about as they please, " said our guide. "Theydon't have a bad time. Three meals a day and nothing to do. "

Members of a laughing circle which included some British were takingturns at a kind of Russian blind man's buff, which seemed to meabout in keeping with the mental capacity of a prison camp. "NoFrench!" I remarked. 

"The French keep to themselves, but they are good boys, " he replied. "Maybe it is because we have only a few of them here. "

Every time one sounded the subject he was struck by the attitude ofthe Germans toward the French, not alone explained by the policy ofthe hour which hoped for a separate peace with France. Perhaps itwas best traceable to the Frenchman's sense of amour propre, hisphilosophy, his politeness, or an indefinable quality in the grain of theman. 

The Germans affected to look down on the French; yet there wassomething about the Frenchmen which the Germans had to respect--something not won by war. I heard admiration for them at the sametime as contempt for their red trousers and their unprepared-ness. While we are in this avenue, German officers had respect for thedignity of British officers, the leisurely, easy quality of superioritywhich they preserved in any circumstances. The qualities of arace come out in adversity no less than in prosperity. Thus, their captors regarded the Russians as big, good-natured children. 

"Yes, they play games and we give the English an English newspaperto read twice a week, " said our affable guide, unconscious, I think, ofany irony in the remark. For the paper was the Continental News, published in "the American language" for American visitors. Youmake take it for granted that it did not exaggerate any success of theAllies. 

"We have a prince and the son of a rich man among the Russianprisoners--yes, quite in the Four Hundred, " the guide went on. "Theywere such good boys we put them to work in the cookhouse. Starboarders, eh? They like it. They get more to eat. "

These two men were called out for exhibition. Youngsters of the firstline they were and even in their privates' uniform they bore theunmistakable signs of belonging to the Russian upper class. Eachsaluted and made his bow, as if he had come on to do a turn beforethe footlights. It was not the first time they had been paraded beforevisitors. In the prince's eye I noted a twinkle, which as much as said:"Well, why not? We don't mind. "

When we were taken through the cookhouse I asked about a littleFrenchman who was sitting with his nose in a soup bowl He seemedtoo near-sighted ever to get into any army. His face was distinctly thatof a man of culture; one would have guessed that he was an artist. 

"Shrapnel injury, " explained the guide. "He will never be able to seemuch again. We let him come in here to eat. "

I wanted to talk with him, but these exhibits are supposed to be all inpantomime; a question and you are urged along to the next exhibit. He was young and all his life he was to be like that--like some poor, blind kitten!

The last among a number of Russians returning to the enclosure fromsome fatigue duty was given a blow in the seat of his baggy trouserswith a stick which one of the guards carried. The Russian quickenedhis steps and seemed to think nothing of the incident. But to me itwas the worst thing that I saw at Döberitz, this act of physical violenceagainst a man by one who has power over him. The personalequation was inevitable to the observer. Struck in that way, could onefail to strike back? Would not he strike in red anger, without stoppingto think of consequences? There is something bred into the Anglo-Saxon which resents a physical blow. We court-martial an officer forlaying hands on a private, though that private may get ten years inprison on his trial. Yet the Russian thought nothing of it, or the guard, either. An officer in the German or the Russian army may strike aman. 

"Would the guard hit a Frenchman in that way?" I asked. Our guidesaid not; the French were good boys. Or an Englishman? He hadnot seen it done. The Englishman would swear and curse, he wassure, and might fight, they were such undisciplined boys. But theRussians--"they are like kids. It was only a slap. Didn't hurt him any. "

New barracks for the prisoners were being built which would becomfortable, if crowded, even in winter. The worst thing, I repeat, wasthe deadly monotony of the confinement for a period which would endonly when the war ended. Any labour should be welcome to ahealthy-minded man. It was a mercy that the Germans set prisonersto grading roads, to hoeing and harvesting, retrieving thus a little ofthe wastage of war. Or was it only the bland insistence that conditionswere luxurious that one objected to?--not that they were really bad. The Germans had a horde of prisoners to care for; vast armies tomaintain; and a new volunteer force of a million or more--two millionswas the official report--to train. 

While we were at the prison camp we heard at intervals the rap-rap ofa machine-gun at the practice range near by, drilling to take moreprisoners, and on the way back to Berlin we passed companies ofvolunteers returning from drill with that sturdy march characteristic ofGerman infantry. 

In Berlin I was told again that everything was perfectly normal. Trainswere running as usual to Hamburg, if one cared to go there. "Asusual" in war time was the ratio of one to five in peace time. 

At Hamburg, in sight of steamers with cold boilers and the forests ofmasts of idle ships, one saw what sea power meant. That city ofeager shippers and traders, that doorstep of Germany, was as deadas Ypres, without a building being wrecked by shells. Hamburgerstried to make the best of it; they assumed an air of optimism; they stillhad faith that richer cargoes than ever might come over the sea, while a ghost, that of bankruptcy, walked the streets, looking at office-windows and the portholes of ships. 

For one had only to scratch the cuticle of that optimism to find that thecorpuscles did not run red. They were blue. Hamburg's citizens hadto exhibit the fortitude of those of Rheims under another kind ofbombardment: that of the silent guns of British Dreadnoughts far outof range. They were good Germans; they meant to play the game;but that once prosperous business man of past middle age, too old toserve, who had little to do but think, found it hard to keep step withthe propagandist attitude of Berlin. 

A free city, a commercial city, a city unto itself, Hamburg had been inother days a cosmopolitan trader with the rest of the world. It hadeven been called an English city, owing to the number of Englishbusiness men there as agents of the immense commerce betweenEngland and Germany. Everyone who was a clerk or an employerspoke English; and through all the irritation between the two countrieswhich led up to the war, English and German business men kept onthe good terms which commerce requires and met at luncheons anddinners and in their clubs. Englishmen were married to Germanwomen and Germans to Englishwomen, while both prayed that theirgovernments would keep the peace. 

Now the English husband of the German woman, though he hadspent most of his life in Hamburg, though perhaps he had been bornin Germany, had been interned and, however large his bank account, was taking his place with his pannikin in the stalls in front of somecookhouse for his ration of cabbage soup. Germans were kind toEnglish friends personally; but when it came to the national feeling ofGermany against England, nowhere was it so bitter as in Hamburg. Here the hate was born of more than national sentiment; it was of thepocket; of seeing fortunes that had been laboriously built dwindling, once thriving businesses in suspended animation. There was nomoratorium in name; there was worse than one in fact. A patrioticfreemasonry in misfortune took its place. No business man couldpress another for the payment of debts lest he be pressed in turn. What would happen when the war was over? How long would it last?

It was not quite as cruel to give one's opinion as two years to theinquirers in Hamburg as to the director of the great Rudolph VirchowHospital in Berlin. Here, again, the system; the submergence of theindividual in the organization. The wounded men seemed parts of amachine; the human touch which may lead to disorganization wasless in evidence than with us, where the thought is: This is anindividual human being, with his own peculiarities of temperament, hisown theories of life, his own ego; not just a quantity of brain, tissue, blood and bone which is required for the organism called man. Ahuman mechanism wounded at the German front needed repairs andrepairs were made to that mechanism. The niceties might be lackingbut the repair factory ran steadily and efficiently at full blast. Germanyhad to care for her wounded by the millions and by the millions shecared for them. "Two years!"

I was sorry that I had said this to the director, for its effect on him waslike a blow in the chest. The vision of more and more woundedseemed to rise before the eyes of this man, weary with the strain ofdoing the work which he knew so well how to do as a cog in thesystem. But for only a moment. He stiffened; he became thedrillmaster again; and the tragic look in his eyes was succeeded byone of that strange exaltation I had seen in the eyes of so manyGermans, which appeared to carry their mind away from you andtheir surroundings to the battlefield where they were fighting for their"place in the sun. " "Two years, then. We shall see it through!" He hada son who had been living in a French family near Lille studyingFrench and he had heard nothing of him since the war began. Theywere good people, this French family; his son liked them. They wouldbe kind to him; but what might not the French Government do to him, a German! He had heard terrible stories--the kind of stories thathardened the fighting spirit of German soldiers--about the treatmentGerman civilians had received in France. He could think of oneFrench family which he knew as being kind, but not of the wholeFrench people as a family. As soon as the national and racial elementwere considered the enemy became a beast. 

To him, at least, Berlin was not normal; nor was it to that keeper of asmall shop off Unter den Linden which sold prints and etchings andcartoons. What a boon my order of cartoons was! He forgot hispsychology code and turned human and confidential. The war hadbeen hard on him; there was no business at all, not even in cartoons. 

The Opera alone seemed something like normal to one who trustedhis eyes rather than his ears for information. There was almost a fullhouse for the "Rosenkavalier"; for music is a solace in time oftrouble, as other capitals than Berlin revealed. Officers with close-cropped heads, wearing Iron Crosses, some with arms in slings, promenaded in the refreshment room of the Berlin Opera Housebetween the acts. This in the hour of victory should mean a picture ofgaiety. But there was a telling hush about the scene. Possibly musichad brought out the truth in men's hearts that war, this kind of war, was not gay or romantic, only murderous and destructive. One hadnoticed already that the Prussian officer, so conscious of his caste, who had worked so indefatigably to make an efficient army, hadbecome chastened. He had found that common men, butchers andbakers and candlestick makers, could be as brave for their Kaiser ashe. And more of these officers had the Iron Cross than not. 

The prevalence of Iron Crosses appealed to the risibilities of thesuperficial observer. But in this, too, there was system. An officer whohad been in several battles without winning one must feel a trifledeclassed and that it was time for him to make amends to his pride. Ifmany Crosses were given to privates, then the average soldier wouldnot think the Cross a prize for the few who had luck, but somethingthat he, too, might win by courage and prompt obedience to orders. 

The masterful calculation, the splendid pretence and magnificentoffence could not hide the suspense and suffering. Nowhere wereyou able to forget the war or to escape the all-pervading influence ofthe Kaiser. The empty royal box at the Opera, His Opera, called himto mind. What would happen before he reappeared there for a galaperformance? When again, in the shuffle of European politics, wouldthe audience see the Tsar of Russia or the King of England by theKaiser's side?

It was his Berlin, the heart of his Berlin, that was before you when youleft the Opera--the new Berlin, which he had fathered in its boomgrowth, taking few pages of a guidebook compared to Paris. In frontof his palace Russian field-guns taken by von Hindenburg atTannenberg were exhibited as the spoils of his war; while not faraway the never-to-be-forgotten grandfather in bronze rode home intriumph from Paris. 

One wondered what all the people in the ocean of Berlin flats werethinking as one walked past the statue of Frederick the Great, with hissharp nose pointing the way for future conquerors, and on alongUnter den Linden, with its broad pavements gleaming in acharacteristic misty winter night, through the Brandenburg Gate of hisBrandenburg dynasty, or to the statue of the blood-and-ironBismarck, with his strong jaw and pugnacious nose--the statesmanmilitant in uniform with a helmet over his bushy brow--who had madethe German Empire, that young empire which had not yet knowndefeat because of the system which makes ready and chooses thehour for its blow. 

Not far away one had glimpses of the white statues of My Ancestorsof the Sieges Allée, or avenue of victory--the present Kaiser's ownidea--with the great men of the time on their right and left hands. People whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit theirstatecraft had smiled at this monotonous and grandiose row of thedead bones of distinguished and mediocre royalty immortalized inmarble to the exact number of thirty-two. But they were My Ancestors, O Germans, who made you what you are! Right dress and keep thatline of royalty in mind! It is your royal line, older than the trees in thegarden, firm as the rocks, Germany itself. The last is not the least inmight nor the least advertised in the age of publicity. He is to makethe next step in advance for Germany and bring more tribute home, ifall Germans will be loyal to him. 

One paused to look at the photograph of the Kaiser in a shopwindow; a big photograph of that man whose photograph iseverywhere in Germany. It is a stern face, this face, as the leaderwishes his people to see him, with its erectile moustache, the lips firmset, the eyes challenging and the chin held so as to make it symbolicof strength: a face that strives to say in that pose: "Onward! I lead!"Germans have seen it every day for a quarter of a century. Theyhave lived with it and the character of it has grown into their natures. 

In the same window was a smaller photograph of the Crown Prince, with his cap rakishly on the side of his head, as if to give himself adistinctive characteristic in the German eye; but his is the face of aman who is not mature for his years, and a trifle dissipated. For awhile after the war began he, as leader of the war party, knew the joyof being more popular than the Kaiser. But the tide turned soon infavour of a father who appeared to be drawn reluctantly into theordeal of death and wounds for his people in "defence of theFatherland" and against a son who had clamoured for the horrorwhich his people had begun to realize, particularly as his promisedentry into Paris had failed. There can be no question which of the twohas the wise head. 

The Crown Prince had passed into the background. He wasmarooned with ennui in the face of French trenches in the West, whilst all the glory was being won in the East. Indeed, father had putson in his place. One day, the gossips said, son might have to askfather, in the name of the Hohenzollerns, to help him recover hispopularity. His photograph had been taken down from shop windowsand in its place, on the right hand of the Kaiser in the Sieges Allée ofcontemporary fame, was the bull-dog face of von Hindenburg, victorof Tannenberg. The Kaiser shared von Hindenburg's glory; he hasshared the glory of all victorious generals; such is his histrionic gift inthe age of the spotlight. 

Make no mistake--his people, deluded or not, love him not onlybecause he is Kaiser, but also for himself. He is a clever man, whobegan his career with the enormous capital of being emperor andmade the most of his position to amaze the world with a moreversatile and also a more inscrutable personality than most peoplerealize. Poseur, perhaps, but an emperor these days may need to bea poseur in order to wear the ermine of Divine Right convincingly tomost of his subjects. 

His pose is always that of the anointed King of My People. He hasnever given down on that point, however much he has applied StateSocialism to appease the Socialistic agitation. He has personifiedGermany and German ambition with an adroit egoism and thesentiment of his inheritance. Those critics who see the machinery ofthe throne may say that he has the mind of a journalist, quick ofperception, ready of assimilation, knowing many things in theiressentials, but no one thing thoroughly. But this is the kind of mindthat a ruler requires, plus the craft of the politician. 

Is he a good man? Is he a great man? Banal questions! He is theKaiser on the background of the Sieges Allée, who has first promotedhimself, then the Hohenzollerns, and then the interests of Germany, with all the zest of the foremost shareholder and chairman of thecorporation. No German in the German hothouse of industry hasworked harder than he. He has kept himself up to the mark and triedto keep his people up to the mark. It may be the wrong kind of amark. Indeed, without threshing the old straw of argument, most ofthe people of the civilized world are convinced that it is. 

That young private I met in the grounds at Charlottenberg, thatwounded man helping with the harvest, that tired hospital director, thesmall trader in Hamburg, the sturdy Red Cross woman in the stationat Hanover, the peasants and the workers throughout Germany, keptunimaginatively at their tasks, do not see the machinery of the throne, only the man in the photograph who supplies them with a nationalimagination. His indefatigable goings and comings and his poses filltheir minds with a personality which typifies the national spirit. Willthis change after the war? But that, too, is not a subject for speculationhere. 

Through the war his pose has met the needs of the hour. An emperorbowed down with the weight of his people's sacrifice, a grey, determined emperor hastening to honour the victors, covering updefeats, urging his legions on, himself at the front, never seen by thegeneral public in the rear; a mysterious figure, not saying much andthat foolish to the Allies but appealing to the Germans, ratherappearing to submerge his own personality in the united patriotism ofthe struggle--such is the picture which the throne machinery hasimpressed on the German mind. The histrionic gift may be at its bestin creating a saga. 

Always the offensive! Germany would keep on striking as long as shehad strength for a blow, whilst making the pretence that she had thestrength for still heavier blows. One wonders, should she gain peaceby her blows, if the Allies would awaken after the treaty was signed tofind how near exhaustion she had been, or that she was so self-contained in her production of war material that she had onlyborrowed from Hans to pay Fritz, who were both Germans. Russiadid not know how' nearly she had Japan beaten until afterPortsmouth. Japan's method was the German method; she learned itfrom Germany. 

At the end of my journey I was hearing the same din of systematicoptimism in my ears as in the beginning. 

"Warsaw, then Paris, then our Zeppelins will finish London, " said therestaurant keeper on the German side of the Dutch frontier; "and oursubmarines will settle the British navy before the summer is over. No, the war will not last a year. "

"And is America next on the programme?" I asked. 

"No. America is too strong; too far away. "

I was guilty of a faint suspicion that he was a diplomatist. 

VIIIIn Belgium Under The Germans

No week at the front, where war is made, left the mind so full as thisweek beyond the sound of the guns with war's results. It taught themeaning of the simple words life and death, hunger and food, loveand hate. One was in a house with sealed doors where a family ofseven millions sat in silence and idleness, thinking of nothing but warand feeling nothing but war. He had war cold as the fragments of anexploded shell beside a dead man on a frozen road; war analysedand docketed for exhibition, without its noise, its distraction, and itshot passion. 

In Ostend I had seen the Belgian refugees in flight, and I had seenthem pouring into London stations, bedraggled outcasts of everyclass, with the staring uncertainty of the helpless human flock flyingfrom the storm. England, who considered that they had suffered forher sake, opened her purse and her heart to them; she opened herhomes, both modest suburban homes and big country houses whichare particular about their guests in time of peace. No British familywithout a Belgian was doing its duty. Bishop's wife and publican's wifetook whatever Belgian was sent to her. The refugee packet arrivedwithout the nature of contents on the address tag. All Belgians hadbecome heroic and noble by grace of the defenders of Liege. 

Perhaps the bishop's wife received a young woman who smokedcigarettes, and asked her hostess for rouge, and the publican's wifereceived a countess. Mrs. Smith, of Clapham, who had brought upher children in the strictest propriety, welcomed as play-mates for herdears, whom she had kept away from the contaminating associationsof the alleys, Belgian children from the toughest quarters of Antwerp, who had a precocity that led to baffling confusion in Mrs. Smith's mindbetween parental responsibility and patriotic duty. Smart society gavethe run of its houses sometimes to gentry who were used to gettingthe run of that kind of houses by lifting a window with a jemmy on adark night. It was a refugee lottery. When two hosts met one said:"My Belgian is charming!" and the other said: "Mine isn't. Just listen--"

But the English are game; they are loyal; they bear their burden ofhospitality bravely. 

The strange things that happened were not the more agreeablebecause of the attitude of some refugees who, when they weregetting better fare than they ever had at home, thought that, as theyhad given their "all" for England, they should be getting still better, notto mention wine on the table in temperance families; whilst there wasa disinclination towards self-support by means of work on the part ofcertain heroes by proxy which promised a Belgian occupation ofEngland that would last as long as the German occupation ofBelgium. England was learning that there are Belgians and Belgians. She had received not a few of the "and Belgians. "

It was only natural. When the German cruisers bombardedScarborough and the Hartlepools, the first to the station were not thefinest and sturdiest. Those with good bank accounts and adisinclination to take any bodily or gastronomic risks, the young idlerwho stands on the street corner ogling girls and the girls who arealways in the street to be ogled, the flighty-minded, the irresponsible, the tramp, the selfish, and the cowardly, are bound to be in the van offlight from any sudden disaster and to make the most of the generoussympathy of those who succour them. 

The courageous, the responsible, those with homes and property atstake, those with an inborn sense of real patriotism which meansloyalty to locality and to their neighbours, are more inclined to remainwith their homes and their property. Besides, a refugee hardlyappears at his best. He is in a strange country, forlorn, homesick, ahostage of fate and personal misfortune. The Belgian nation hadtaken the Allies' side and now individual Belgians expected help fromthe Allies. 

England did not get the worst of the refugees. They could travel nofarther than Holland, where the Dutch Government appropriatedmoney to care for them at the same time that it was under theexpense of keeping its army mobilized. Looking at the refugees in thecamp at Bergen-op-Zoom, an observer might share some of thecontempt of the Germans for the Belgians. Crowded in temporaryhuts in the chill, misty weather of a Dutch winter, they seemed listless, marooned human wreckage. They would not dig ditches to drain theircamp; they were given to pilfering from one another the clothes whichthe world's charity supplied. The heart was out of them. They werenumbed by disaster. 

"Are all these men and women who are living together married?" Iasked the Dutch officer in charge. 

"It is not for us to inquire, " he replied. "Most of them say that theyhave lost their marriage certificates. "

They were from the slums of that polyglot seaport town Antwerp, which Belgians say is anything but real Belgium. To judge Belgium bythem is like judging an American town by the worst of its back streets, where saloons and pawnshops are numerous and red lights twinklefrom dark doorways. 

Around a table in a Rotterdam hotel one met some generals whowere organizing a different kind of campaign from that which broughtglory to the generals who conquered Belgium. It was odd that Dr. Rose--that Dr. Rose who had discovered and fought the hook wormamong the mountaineers of the Southern States--should besuccouring Belgium, and yet only natural. Where else should he andHenry James, Jr. , of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Mr. Bicknell, ofthe American Red Cross, be, if not here directing the use of anendowment fund set aside for just such purposes?

They had been all over Belgium and up into the NorthernDepartments of France occupied by the Germans, investigatingconditions. For they were practical men, trained for solving theproblem of charity with wisdom, who wanted to know that their moneywas well spent. They had nothing for the refugees in London, but theyfound that the people who had stayed at home in Belgium wereworthy of help. The fund was allowing five hundred thousand dollars amonth for the American Commission for Relief in Belgium, which wasthe amount that the Germans had spent in a single day in thedestruction of the town of Ypres with shells. Later they were to go toPoland; then to Serbia. 

With them was Herbert C. Hoover, a celebrated mining engineer, thehead of the Commission. When American tourists were strandedover Europe at the outset of the war, with letters of credit which couldnot be cashed, their route homeward must lie through London. Theymust have steamer passage. Hoover took charge. When this workwas done and Belgium must be helped, he took charge of a task thatcould be done only by a neutral. For the adjutants and field officers ofhis force he turned to American business men in London, to Rhodesscholars at Oxford, and to other volunteers hastening from America. 

When "Harvard, 1914, " who had lent a hand in the Americanrefugees' trials, appeared in Hoover's office to volunteer for the newcampaign, Hoover said: "You are going to Rotterdam to-night. " "So Iam!" said Harvard, 1914, and started accordingly. Action and not redtape must prevail in such an organization. 

The Belgians whom I wished to see were those behind the line ofguards on the Belgo-Dutch frontier; those who had remained at homeunder the Germans to face humiliation and hunger. This was possibleif you had the right sort of influence and your passport the right sort ofvisés to accompany a Bescheinigung, according to the form of "31Oktober, 1914, Sect. 616, Nr. 1083, " signed by the German consul atRotterdam, which put me in the same motor-car with Harvard, 1914, that stopped one blustery, snowy day of late December before agate, with Belgium on one side and Holland on the other side of it, onthe Rosendaal-Antwerp road. "Once more!" said Harvard, 1914, whohad made this journey many times as a dispatch rider. 

One of the conquerors, the sentry representing the majesty ofGerman authority in Belgium, examined the pass. The conqueror wasa good deal larger around the middle than when he was young, butnot so large as when he went to war. He had a scarf tied over hisears under a cracked old patent-leather helmet, which the SaxonLandsturm must have taken from their garrets when the Kaiser sentthe old fellows to keep the Belgians in order so that the young mencould be spared to get rheumatism in the trenches if they escapeddeath. 

You could see that the conqueror missed his wife's cooking andSunday afternoon in the beer garden with his family. However muchhe loved the Kaiser, it did not make him love home any the less. Hisnod admitted us into German-ruled Belgium. He looked so lonely thatas our car started I sent him a smile. Surprise broke on his face. Somebody not a German in uniform had actually smiled at him inBelgium!

My last glimpse of him was of a grin spreading under the scarf towardhis ears. 

Belgium was webbed with these old Landsturm guards. If yourPassierschein was not right, you might survive the first set of sentriesand even the second, but the third, and if not the third somesucceeding one of the dozens on the way to Brussels, would hale youbefore a Kommandatur. Then you were in trouble. In travelling aboutEurope I became so used to passes that when I returned to NewYork I could not have thought of going to Hoboken without theGerman consul's visa or of dining at a French restaurant without theFrench consul's. 

"And again!" said Harvard, 1914, as we came to another sentry. There was good reason why Harvard had his pass in a leather-boundcase under a celluloid face. Otherwise, it would soon have been wornout in showing. He had been warned by the Commission not to talkand he did not talk. He was neutrality personified. All he did was toshow his pass. He could be silent in three languages. The only time Igot anything like partisanship out of him and two sentences insuccession was when I mentioned the Harvard-Yale football game. "My! Wasn't that a smear! In their new stadium, too! Oh, my! Wish Ihad been there!"

When the car broke a spring half-way to Antwerp, he remarked, "Naturally!" or, rather, a more expressive monosyllable which did notsound neutral. 

While he and the Belgian chauffeur, with the help of a Belgian farmeras spectator, were patching up the broken spring, I had a look at thefarm. The winter crops were in; the cabbages and Brussels sprouts inthe garden were untouched. It happened that the scorching finger ofwar's destruction had not been laid on this little property. In the yardthe wife was doing the week's washing, her hands in hot water andher arms exposed to weather so cold that I felt none too warm in aheavy overcoat. At first sight she gave me a frown, which instantlydissipated into a smile when she saw that I was not German. 

If not German, I must be a friend. Yet if I were I would not dare talk--not with German sentries all about. She lifted her hand from the sudsand swung it out to the west toward England and France with aneager, craving fire in her eyes, and then she swept it across in front ofher as if she were sweeping a spider off a table. When it stopped atarm's length there was the triumph of hate in her eyes. I thought ofthe lid of a cauldron raised to let out a burst of steam as she asked"When?" When? When would the Allies come and turn the Germansout?

She was a kind, hardworking woman, who would help any stranger introuble the best she knew how. Probably that Saxon whose smile hadspread under his scarf had much the same kind of wife. Yet I knewthat if the Allies' guns were heard driving the Germans past herhouse and her husband had a rifle, he would put a shot in thatSaxon's back, or she would pour boiling water on his head if shecould. Then, if the Germans had time, they would burn the farmhouseand kill the husband who had shot one of their comrades. 

I recollect a youth who had been in a railroad accident saying: "Thatwas the first time I had ever seen death; the first time I realized whatdeath was. " Exactly. You don't know death till you have seen it; youdon't know invasion till you have felt it. However wise, however ablethe conquerors, life under them is a living death. True, the farmer'sproperty was untouched, but his liberty was gone. If you, a well-behaved citizen, have ever been arrested and marched through thestreets of your home town by a policeman, how did you like it? Givethe policeman a rifle and a fixed bayonet and a full cartridge-box andtransform him into a foreigner and the experience would not be anymore pleasant. 

That farmer could not go to the next town without the permission ofthe sentries. He could not even mail a letter to his son who was in thetrenches with the Allies. The Germans had taken his horse; theirs thepower to take anything he had--the power of the bayonet. If hewanted to send his produce to a foreign market, if he wanted to buyfood in a foreign market, the British naval blockade closed the sea tohim. He was sitting on a chair of steel spikes, hands tied and mouthgagged, whilst his mind seethed, solacing its hate with hope throughthe long winter months. If you lived in Kansas and could not get yourwheat to Chicago, or any groceries or newspapers from the nearesttown, or learn whether your son in Wyoming were alive or dead, orwhether the man who owned your mortgage in New York hadforeclosed it or not--well, that is enough without the German sentry. 

Only, instead of newspapers or word about the mortgage, the thingyou needed past that blockade was bread to keep you from starving. America opened a window and slipped a loaf into the empty larder. Those Belgian soldiers whom I had seen at Dixmude, wounded, exhausted, mud-caked, shivering, were happy beside the people athome. They were in the fight. It is not the destruction of towns andhouses that impresses you most, but the misery expressed by thatpeasant woman over her washtub. 

A writer can make a lot of the burst of a single shell; a photographershowing the ruins of a block of buildings or a church makes it appearthat all blocks and all churches are in ruins. Running through Antwerpin a car, one saw few signs of destruction from the bombardment. You will see them if you are specially conducted. Shops were open, people were moving about in the streets, which were well lighted. Noneed of darkness for fear of bombs dropping here! German barrackshad safe shelter from aerial raids in a city whose people were theallies of England and France. But at intervals marched the Germanpatrols. 

When our car stopped before a restaurant a knot gathered around it. Their faces were like all the other faces I saw in Belgium--unlessGerman--with that restrained, drawn look of passive resistance, persistent even when they smiled. When? When were the Alliescoming? Their eyes asked the question which their tongues darednot. Inside the restaurant a score of German officers served byBelgian waiters were dining. Who were our little party? What were wedoing there and speaking English--English, the hateful language ofthe hated enemy? Oh, yes! We were Americans connected with therelief work. But between the officers' stares at the sound of Englishand the appealing inquiry of the faces in the street lay an abyss ofwar's fierce suspicion and national policies and racial enmity, whichAmerica had to bridge. 

Before we could help Belgium, England, blockading Germany to keepher from getting foodstuffs, had to consent. She would consent only ifnone of the food reached German mouths. Germany had to agreenot to requisition any of the food. Someone not German and notBritish must see to its distribution. Those rigid German militaryauthorities, holding fast to their military secrets, must consent toscores of foreigners moving about Belgium and sending messagesacross that Belgo-Dutch frontier which had been closed to all exceptofficial German messages. This called for men whom both theGerman and the British duellists would trust to succour the humanbeings crouched and helpless under the circling flashes of their steel. 

Fortunately, our Minister to Belgium was Brand Whitlock. He is noTalleyrand or Metternich. If he were, the Belgians might not havebeen fed, because he might have been suspected of being too muchof a diplomatist. When an Englishman, or a German, or a Hottentot, or any other kind of a human being gets to know Whitlock, herecognizes that here is an honest man with a big heart. When leadingBelgians came to him and said that winter would find Belgium withoutbread, he turned from the land that has the least food to that whichhas the most--his own land. 

For Belgium is a great shop in the midst of a garden. Her towns areso close together that they seem only suburbs of Brussels andAntwerp. She has the densest population in Europe. She producesonly enough food to last her for two months of the year. The food forthe other ten months she buys with the products of her factories. In1914-15 Belgium could not send out her products; so we were to helpfeed her without pay, and England and France were to give money tobuy what food we did not give. 

But with the British navy generously allowing food to pass theblockade, the problem was far from solved. Ships laden with suppliessteaming to Rotterdam--this was a matter of easy organization. Howget the bread to the hungry mouths when the Germans were usingBelgian railroads for military purposes? Germany was not inclined toallow a carload of wheat to keep a carload of soldiers from reachingthe front, or to let food for Belgians keep the men in the trenches fromgetting theirs regularly. Horse and cart transport would becumbersome, and the Germans would not permit Belgian teamstersto move about with such freedom. As likely as not they might bespies. 

Anybody who can walk or ride may be a spy. Therefore, the way tostop spying is not to let anyone walk or ride. Besides, Germany hadrequisitioned most of the horses that could do more than draw anempty phaeton on a level. But she had not drawn the water out of thecanals; though the Belgians, always whispering jokes at the expenseof the conquerors, said that the canals might have been emptied iftheir contents had been beer. There were plenty of idle boats inHolland, whose canals connect with the web of canals in Belgium. You had only to seal the cargoes against requisition, the seal to bebroken only by a representative of the Relief Commission, and startthem to their destination. 

And how make sure that those who had money should pay for theirbread, while all who had not should be reached? The solution wassimple compared to the distribution of relief after the San Franciscoearthquake and fire, for example, in our own land, where a sparserpopulation makes social organization comparatively loose. 

The people to be relieved were in their homes. Belgium is so old acountry, her population so dense, she is so much like one bigworkshop, that the Government must keep a complete set of books. Every Belgian is registered and docketed. You know just how hemakes his living and where he lives. Upon marriage a Belgian gets alittle book, giving his name and his wife's, their ages, theiroccupations, and address. As children are born their names areadded. A Belgian holds as fast to this book as a woman to a piece ofjewellery that is an heirloom. 

With few exceptions, Belgian local officials had not fled the country. They realized that this was a time when they were particularly neededon the job to protect the people from German exactions and fromtheir own rashness. There were also any number of volunteers. Thething was to get the food to them and let them organize localdistribution. 

The small force of Americans required to oversee the transit mustwatch that the Germans did not take any of the food and retain bothBritish and German confidence in the absolute good faith of theirintentions. The volunteers were paid their expenses; the rest of theirreward was experience, and it was "soom expeerience, " as a Belgiansaid who was learning a little American slang. They talked aboutcanal-boat cargoes as if they had been from Buffalo to Albany on theErie Canal for years; they spoke of "my province" and comparedbread-lines and the efficiency of local officials. And the Germans tooknone of the food; orders from Berlin were obeyed. Berlin knew thatany requisitioning of relief supplies meant that the Relief Commissionwould cease work and announce to the world the reason. 

However many times Americans were arrested they must be patient. That exception who said, when he was put in a cell overnightbecause he entered the military zone by mistake, that he would nothave been treated that way in England, needed a little more coachingin preserving his mask of neutrality. For I must say that nine out of tenof these young men, leaning over backward to be neutral, were pro-Ally, including some with German names. But publicly you couldhardly get an admission out of them that there was any war. As forHarvard, 1914, hang a passport carrier around the Sphinx's neck andyou have him done in stone. 

Fancy any Belgian trying to get him to carry a contraband letter or aGerman commander trying to work him for a few sacks of flour! WhenI asked him what career he had chosen he said, "Business!" withoutany waste of words. I think that he will succeed in a way to surprisehis family. It is he and all those young Americans of whom he is atype, as distinctive of America in manner, looks, and thought as aFrenchman is of France or a German of Germany, who carried thetorch of Peace's kindly work into war-ridden Belgium. They made youwant to tickle the eagle on the throat so he would let out a gentle, well-modulated scream; of course, strictly in keeping with neutrality. 

Red lanterns took the place of red flags swung by Landsturm sentrieson the run to Brussels as darkness fell. There was no relaxation ofwatchfulness at night. 

All the twenty-four hours the systematic conquerors held the net tight. Once when my companion repeated his "Again!" and held out thepass in the lantern's rays, I broke into a laugh, which excited hiscuriosity, for you soon get out of the habit of laughing in Belgium. 

"It has just occurred to me that my guidebook states that passportsare not required in Belgium!" I explained. 

The editor of that guidebook will have a busy time before he issuesthe next edition. For example, he will have a lot of new informationabout Malines, whose ruins were revealed by the motor-lamps inshadowy broken walls on either side of the main street. Other placeswhere less damage had been done were equally silent. In the smallertowns and villages the population must keep indoors at night; foregress and ingress are more difficult to control there than in largecities, where guards at every corner suffice--watching, watching, these disciplined pawns of remorselessly efficient militarism; watchingevery human being in Belgium. 

"The last time I saw that statue of Liege, " I remarked, peering into thedarkness as we rode into the city, "the Legion of Honour conferred byFrance on Liege for its brave defence was hung on its breast. Isuppose it is gone now. "

"I guess yes, " said Harvard, 1914. 

We went to the hotel at Brussels which I had left the day before thecity's fall. English railway signs on the walls of the corridor had notbeen disturbed. More ancient relic still seemed a bulletin board withits announcement of seven passages a day to England, traversingthe Channel in "fifty-five minutes via Calais" and "three hours viaOstend, " with the space blank where the state of the weather for thedespair or the delight of intending voyagers had been chalked up inhappier days. The same men were in attendance at the office asbefore; but they seemed older and their politeness that of cheerlessautomatons. For five months they had been serving German officersas guests with hate in their hearts and, in turn, trying to protect theirproperty. 

A story is told of how that hotel had filled with officers after thearrival of the Germanic flood and how one day, when it was learnedthat the proprietor was a Frenchman, guards were suddenly placedat the doors and the hall was filled with luggage as every officer, acting with characteristic official solidarity, vacated his room andbestowed his presence elsewhere. Then the proprietor was informedthat his guests would return if he would agree to employ Germanhelp and buy his supplies from Germany. He refused, for practicalas well as for sentimental reasons. If he had consented, think whatthe Belgians would have done to him after the Germans were gone!However, officers were gradually returning, for this was the besthotel in town, and even conquerors are human and German conquerorshave particularly human stomachs. 

IXChristmas In Belgium

Christmas in Belgium with the bayonet and the wolf at the door taughtme to value Christmas at home for more than its gifts and the cheerof the fireside. It taught me what it meant to belong to a free peopleand how precious is that old English saying that a man's house is hiscastle, which was the inception of so much in our lives which weaccept as a commonplace. If such a commonplace can be madesecure only by fighting, then it is best to fight. At any time a foreignsoldier might enter the house of a Belgian and take him away for trialbefore a military court. 

Breakfast in the same restaurant as before the city's fall! Again thebig grapes which are a luxury of the rich man's table or anextravagance for a sick friend with us! The hothouses still grew them. What else was there for he hothouses to do, though the export oftheir products was impossible? A shortage of the long, white-leafedchicory that we call endive in New York restaurants? There were pilesof it in the Brussels market and on the hucksters' carts; nothing socheap!

One might have excellent steaks and roasts and delicious veal; forthe heifers were being butchered as the Germans had taken allfodder. But the bread was the Commission's brown, which everyonehad to eat. Belgium, growing quality on scanty acres with intensivefarming, had food luxuries but not the staff of life. 

I looked out of the windows on to the square which four monthsbefore I had seen crowded with people bedecked with the Allies'colours and eagerly buying the latest editions containing thecommuniqués of hollow optimism. No flag in sight now except aGerman flag flying over the station! But small revenges may beenjoyed. A German soldier tried to jump on the tail of a cart driven bya Belgian, but the Belgian whipped up his horse and the German felloff on to the pavement, whilst the cart sped around a corner. 

Out of the station came a score of German soldiers returning from thetrenches, on their way to barracks to regain strength in order that theycould bear the ordeal of standing in icy water again. They were notthe kind exhibited on Press tours to illustrate the "vigour of ourindomitable army. " Eyelids drooped over hollow eye-sockets; sore, numbed feet moved like feet which are asleep in their vain effort tokeep step. Sensitiveness to surroundings, almost to existence, seemed to have been lost. 

One was a corporal, young, tall, and full-bearded. He might havebeen handsome if he had not been so haggard. He gave the lead tothe others; he seemed to know where they were going, and theyshuffled on after him in dogged painfulness. Four months ago thatcorporal, with the spring of the energy of youth when the war wasyoung, was perhaps in that green column that went through thestreets of Brussels in the thunderous beat of their regular tread ontheir way to Paris. The group was an object lesson in how much thevictor must suffer in war in order to make his victim surfer. 

Some officers were at breakfast, too. Mostly they were reservists;mostly bespectacled, with middle age swelling their girth andhollowing their chests, but sturdy enough to apply the regulationsmade for conduct of the conquered. Whilst stronger men were undershell-fire at the front, they were under the fire of Belgian hate asrelentless as their own hate of England. You saw them always in thegood restaurants, but never in the company of Belgians, theseostracized rulers. In four months they had made no friends; at least, no friends who would appear with them in public. A few thousandguards in Belgium in the companionship of conquest and sevenmillion Belgians in the companionship of a common helplessness!Bayonets may make a man silent, but they cannot stop his thinking. 

At the breakfast table on that Christmas morning in London, Paris, orBerlin the patriot could find the kind of news that he liked. His racialand rational predilections and animosities were solaced. If therewere good news it was "played up"; if there were bad news, it was notpublished or it was explained. L'Echo Belge and L'IndépendanceBelge and all the Brussels papers were either out of business orbeing issued as single sheets in Holland and England. 

The Belgian, keenest of all the peoples at war for news, having lessoccupation to keep his mind off the war, must read the newspapersestablished under German auspices, which fed him with the pabulumthat German chefs provided, reflective of the stumbling degeneracyof England, French weariness of the war, Russian clumsiness, andthe invincibility of Germany. If an Englishman had to read German, ora German English, newspapers every morning he might haveunderstood how the Belgian felt. 

Those who had sons or fathers or husbands in the Belgian armycould not send or receive letters, let alone presents. Familiesscattered in different parts of Belgium could not hold reunions. But atmass I saw a Belgian standard in the centre of the church. That flagwas proscribed, but the priests knew it was safe in that sacred placeand the worshippers might feast their eyes on it as they said theiravis. 

A Bavarian soldier came in softly and stood a little apart from theworshippers, many in mourning, at the rear; a man who was of thesame faith as the Belgians and who crossed himself with the others inthe house of brotherly love. He would go outside to obey orders; andthe others to nurse their hate of him and his race. This private in hisfaded green, bowing his head before that flag in the shadows of thenave, was war-sick, as most soldiers were; and the Belgians wereheartsick. They had the one solace in common. But if you hadsuggested to him to give up Belgium, his answer would have beenthat of the other Germans: "Not after all we have suffered to take it!"Christians have a peculiar way of applying Christianity. Yet, if it werenot for Christianity and that infernal thing called the world's opinion, which did not exist in the days of Caesar and the Belgse, the Belgiansmight have been worse off than they were. More of them might havebeen dead. When they were saying, "Give us this day our dailybread" they were thinking, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, "if ever their turn came. 

A satirist might have repeated the apochryphal naïveté of MarieAntoinette, who asked why the people wanted bread when they couldbuy such nice cakes for a sou! For all the pâtisserie shops wereopen. Brussels is famous for its French pastry. With a store ofpreserves, why shouldn't the bakeshops go on making tarts withheavy crusts of the brown flour, when war had not robbed the bakersof their art? It gave work to them; it helped the shops to keep openand make a show of normality. But I noticed that they were doing littlebusiness. Stocks were small and bravely displayed. Only the richcould afford such luxuries, which in ordinary times were what ice-cream cones are to us. Even the jewellery shops were open, withdiamond rings flashing in the windows. 

"You must pay rent; you don't want to discharge your employees, "said a jeweller. "There is no place to go except your shop. If youclosed it would look as if you were afraid of the Germans. It wouldmake you blue and the people in the street blue. One tries to gothrough the motions of normal existence, anyway. But, of course, youdon't sell anything. This week I have repaired a locket which carriedthe portrait of a soldier at the front and I've put a mainspring in awatch. I'll warrant that is more than some of my competitors havedone. "

Swing around the circle in Brussels of a winter's morning and look atthe only crowds that the Germans allow to gather, and any doubt thatBelgium would have gone hungry if she had not received provisionsfrom the outside was dispelled. Whenever I think of a bread-lineagain I shall see the faces of a Belgian bread-line. They blot out thememory of those at home, where men are free to go and come;where war has not robbed the thrifty of food. 

It was fitting that the great central soup kitchen should be establishedin the central express office of the city. For in Belgium these daysthere is no express business except in German troops to the frontand wounded to the rear. The dispatch of parcels is stopped, no lessthan the other channels of trade, in a country where trade was so rife, a country that lived by trade. On the stone floor, where oncepackages were arranged for forwarding to the towns whose names areon the walls, were many great cauldrons in clusters of three, to economizespace and fuel. 

"We don't lack cooks, " said a chef-who had been in a leading hotel. "So many of us are out of work. Our society of hotel and restaurantkeepers took charge. We know the practical side of the business. Isuppose you have the same kind of a society in New York and wouldturn to it for help if the Germans occupied New York?"

He gave me a printed report in which I read, for example, that "M. Arndt, professor of the École Normale, had been good enough totake charge of accounts, " and "M. Catteau had been speciallyappointed to look after the distribution of bread. " Most appetizing thatsoup prepared under direction of the best chefs in the city! The meatand green vegetables in it were Belgian and the peas American. Steaming hot in big cans it was sent to the communal centres, wherelines of people with pots, pitchers, and pails waited to receive theirdaily allowance. A democracy was in that bread-line such as I havenever seen anywhere except at San Francisco after the earthquake. Each person had a blue or a yellow ticket, with numbers to bepunched, like a commuter. The blue tickets were for those who hadproved to the communal authorities that they could not pay; theyellow for those who paid five centimes for each person served. Aflutter of blue and yellow tickets all over Belgium, and in return life IWith each serving of soup went a loaf of the American brown bread. The faces in the line were not those of people starving--they hadbeen saved from starvation. There was none of the emaciation whichpictures of famine in the Orient have made familiar; but they werepinched faces, bloodless faces, the faces of people on short rations. 

To the Belgian bread is not only the staff of life; it is the legs. At homewe think of bread as something that goes with the rest of the meal; tothe poorer classes of Belgians the rest of the meal is something thatgoes with bread. To you and me food has meant the payment ofmoney to the baker and the butcher and the grocer, or the hotel-keeper. You get your money by work or from investments. What ifthere were no bread to be had for work or money? Sitting on amountain of gold in the desert of Sahara would not quench thirst. Three hundred grammes, a minimum calculation--about half what theBritish soldier gets--was the ration. That small boy sent by his mothergot five loaves; his ticket called for an allowance for a family of five. An old woman got one loaf, for she was alone in the world. 

Each one as he hurried by had a personal story of what war hadmeant to him. They answered your questions frankly, gladly, with theBelgian cheerfulness which was amazing considering the circumstances. A tall, distinguished-looking man was an artist. 

"No work for artists these days, " he said. 

No work in a community of workers where every link of the chain ofeconomic life had been broken. No work for the next man, achauffeur, or the next, a brass worker; the next, a teamster; the next, a bank clerk; the next, a doorkeeper of a Government office; whilstthe wives of those who still had work were buying in the only marketthey had. But the husbands of some were not at home. Each answerabout the absent one had an appeal that nothing can picture betterthan the simple words or the looks that accompanied the words. 

"The last I heard of my husband he was fighting at Dixmude--twomonths ago. "

"Mine is wounded, somewhere in France. "

"Mine was with the army, too. I don't know whether he is alive ordead. I have not heard since Brussels was taken. He cannot get myletters and I cannot get his. "

"Mine was killed at Liege, but we have a son. "

So you out in Nebraska who gave a handful of wheat might know thatsaid handful of wheat reached its destination in an empty stomach. Ifyou sent a suit of clothes, or a cap, or a pair of socks, come along tothe skating-rink, where ice-polo was played and matches andcarnivals were held in better days, and look on at the boxes, packedtight with gifts of every manner of thing that men and women andchildren wear except silk hats, which are being opened and sortedand distributed into hastily-constructed cribs and compartments. 

A Belgian woman whose father was one of Belgium's leadinglawyers--her husband was at the front-was the busy head of thisorganization, because, as she said, the busier she was the more it"keeps my mind off------" and she did not finish the sentence. Howmany times I heard that "keeps my mind off------" a sentence that wasthe more telling for not being finished. She and some other womenbegan sewing and patching and collecting garments; "but ourbusiness grew so fast"--the business of relief is the one kind inBelgium that does grow these days--"that now we have hundreds ofhelpers. I begin to feel that I am what you would call in America acaptainess of industry. "

Some of the good mothers in America were a little too thoughtful intheir kindness. An odour in a box that had evidently travelled acrossthe Atlantic close to the ship's boilers was traced to the pocket of aboy's suit, which contained the hardly-distinguishable remains of aham sandwich, meant to be ready to hand for the hungry Belgian boywho got that suit. Broken pots of jam were quite frequent. But nomatter. Soap and water and Belgian industry saved the suit, if not thesandwich. Sweaters and underclothes and overcoats almost new, and shiny old morning coats and trousers with holes in seat andknees might represent equal sacrifice on the part of some Americanthree thousand miles away, and all were welcome. Needlewomenwere given work cutting up the worn-outs of grown-ups and makingthem over into astonishingly good suits or dresses for youngsters. 

"We've really turned the rink into a kind of department store, " said thelady. "Come into our boot department. We had some leather left inBelgium that the Germans did not requisition, so we bought it and thatgave more Belgians work in the shoe factories. Work, you see, iswhat we want to keep our minds off------"

Blue and yellow tickets here, too! Boots for children and thick-setworking-women and watery-eyed old men!

And each was required to leave behind the pair he was wearing. 

"Sometimes we can patch up the cast-offs, which means work for thecobblers, " said the captainess of industry. "And who are our clerks?Why, the people who put on the skates for the patrons of the rink, ofcourse!"

One could write volumes on this systematic relief work, thebusinesslike industry of succouring Belgium by the businesslikeBelgians, with American help. Certainly one cannot leave out thoseold men stragglers from Louvain and Bruges and Ghent--venerablechildren with no offspring to give them paternal care--who took theirturn in getting bread, which they soaked thoroughly in their soup forreasons that would be no military secret, not even in the military zone. On Christmas Day an American, himself a smoker, thinking whatclass of children he could make happiest on a limited purse, remembered the ring around the stove and bought a basket of cheapbrier pipes and tobacco. By Christmas night some toothless gumswere sore, but a beatific smile of satiation played in white beards. 

Nor can one leave out the very young babies at home, who get theirmilk if grown people do not, and the older babies beyond milk but notyet old enough for bread and meat, whose mothers return from thebread-line to bring their children to another line, where they gotportions of a syrupy mixture which those who know say is the rightprovender. On such occasions men are quite helpless. They can onlylook on with a frog in the throat at pale, improperly nourished motherswith bundles of potential manhood and womanhood in their arms. Forthis was woman's work for woman. Belgian women of every classjoined in it: the competent wife of a workman, or the wife of amillionaire who had to walk like everybody else now that her motor-car was requisitioned by the army. 

Pop-eyed children, ruddy-cheeked, aggressive children, pinched-faced children, kept warm by sweaters that some American orEnglish children spared, happy in that they did not know what theirelders knew! Not the danger of physical starvation so much as theactual presence of mental starvation was the thing that got on yournerves in a land where the sun is seldom seen in winter and rainydays are the rule. It was bad enough in the "zone of occupation, " socalled, a line running from Antwerp past Brussels to Mons. One couldguess what it was like in the military zone to the westward, where onlyan occasional American relief representative might go. 

This is not saying that the Germans were stricter than necessary, ifwe excuse the exasperation of their militarism, in order to preventinformation from passing out, when a multitude of Belgians wouldhave risked their lives gladly to help the Allies. One spy bringingaccurate information might cost the German army thousands ofcasualties; perhaps decide the fate of a campaign. They saw theBelgians as enemies. They were fighting to take the lives of theirenemies and save their own lives, which made it tough for them andthe French and the British--tough all round, but very particularly toughfor the Belgians. 

It was good for a vagrant American to dine at the American Legation, where Mr. And Mrs. Whitlock were far, very far, from the days inToledo, Ohio, where he was mayor. Some said that the place of theMinister to Belgium was at Havre, where the Belgian Governmenthad its offices; but neither Whitlock nor the Belgian people thoughtso, nor the German Government, since they had realized his prestigewith the Belgians and how they would listen to him in any crisis whentheir passions might break the bonds of wisdom. Hugh Gibson, beingthe omnipresent Secretary of Legation in four languages, naturallywas also present. We recalled dining together in Honduras, when hewas in the thick of vexations. 

Trouble accommodatingly waits for him wherever he goes, becausehe has a gift for taking care of trouble, in the ascendancy of acheerful spirit and much knowledge of international law. His presentfor the Minister, who daily received stacks of letters from all sourcesasking the impossible, as well as from Americans who wanted to besure that the food they gave was not being purloined by theGermans, was a rubber stamp, "Blame-it-all-there's-a-state-of-war-in-Belgium!" which he suggested might save typewriting--a recommendationwhich the Minister refused to accept, not to Gibson's surprise. 

On that Christmas afternoon and evening, the people promenadedthe streets as usual. You might have thought it a characteristicChristmas afternoon or evening except for the Landsturm patrols. Butthere was an absence of the old gaiety, and they were moving as iffrom habit and moving was all there was to do. 

They had heard the sound of the guns at Dixmude the night before. Didn't the sound seem a little nearer? No. The wind from thatdirection was stronger. When? When would the Allies come?

XThe Future Of Belgium

In former days the traveller hardly thought of Belgium as possessingpatriotic homogeneity. It was a land of two languages, French andFlemish. He was puzzled to meet people who looked like well-to-domechanics, artisans, or peasants and find that they could not answera simple question in French. This explained why a people so close toFrance, though they made Brussels a little Paris, would not join theFrench family and enter into the spirit and body of that greatcivilization on their borders, whose language was that of their ownliterature. Belgium seemed to have no character. Its nationality wasthe artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself, which would be neither French, nor German, nor definitely Belgian. 

In later times Belgium had prospered enormously. It had developedthe resources of the Congo in a way that had aroused a storm ofcriticism. Old King Leopold made the most of his neutral position togain advantages which no one of the great Powers might enjoybecause of jealousies. The International Sleeping Car Company wasBelgian and Belgian capitalists secured concessions here and there, wherever the small tradesman might slip into openings suitable to hissize. Leopold was not above crumbs; he made them profitable; heliked to make money; and Belgians liked to make money. 

Her defence guaranteed by neutrality, Belgium need have no thoughtexcept of thrift. Her ideals were those of prosperity. No ambition ofnational expansion stirred her imagination as Germany's was stirred;there was no fire in her soul as in that of France in apprehension ofthe day when she would have to fight for her life against Germany; nonational cause to harden the sinews of patriotism. The immensity ofher urban population contributed its effect in depriving her of thesterner stuff of which warriors are made. Success meant morecomforts and luxuries. In towns like Brussels and Antwerp thisdoubtless had its effect on the moralities, which were hardly of theNew England Puritan standard. She had a small standing army; amilitia system in the process of reform against the conviction of themajority, unlike that of the Swiss mountaineers, that Belgium wouldnever have any need for soldiers. 

If militarism means conscription as it exists in France and Germany, then militarism has improved the physique of races in an age whenpeople are leaving the land for the factory. The prospect of battle'stest unquestionably develops in a people certain sturdy qualitieswhich can and ought to be developed in some other way than withthe prospect of spending money for shells to kill people. 

With the world making every Belgian man a hero and the unknowingconvinced that a citizen soldiery at Liege--defended by the Belgianstanding army--had rushed from their homes with rifles and beatenGerman infantry, it is right to repeat that the schipperke spirit was notuniversal, that at no time had Belgium more than a hundred thousandmen under arms, and that on the Dixmude line she maintained nevermore than eighty thousand men out of a population of seven millions, which should yield from seven hundred thousand to a million; whilethey lost a good deal of sympathy both in England and in France, from all I heard, through the number of able-bodied refugees whowere disinclined to serve. It was a mistaken idealism that swept overthe world, early in the war, characterizing a whole nation with thegallantry of its young king and his little army. 

The spirit of the Boers or of the Minute Men at Lexington was not inthe Belgian people. It could not be from their very situation andmethod of life. They did not believe in war; they did not expect topractise war; but war came to them out of the still blue heavens as itcame to the prosperous Incas of Peru. 

Where one was wrong was in the expectation that her bankers andcapitalists--an aristocracy of money not given to the simple life--andher manufacturers, artisans, and traders, if not her peasants, wouldsoon make truce with Caesar for individual profit. Therein, Belgiumshowed that she was not lacking in the moral spirit which, with theschipperke's, became a fighting spirit. It seemed as if the metal ofmany Belgians, struck to a white heat in the furnace of war, hadcooled under German occupation to the tempered steel of a newnationalism. 

When you travelled over Belgium after it was pacified, the logic ofGerman methods became clear. What was haphazard in their reignof terror was due to the inevitable excesses of a soldiery taking thecalculated redress ordered by superiors as licence in the first redpassion of war to a war-mad nation, which was sullen becauseBelgians had not given up the keys of the gate to France. 

The extent of the ruins in Belgium east of the Yser has beenexaggerated. They were the first ruins, most photographed, mostadvertised; bad enough, inexcusable enough, and warrantedlycausing a spell of horror throughout the civilized world. We haveheard all about them, mind, while hearing nothing about those inLorraine, where the Bavarians exceeded Prussian ruthlessness inreprisals. I mean, that to have read the newspapers in earlySeptember, 1914, one would have thought that half the towns ofBelgium were debris while the truth is that only a small percentageare--those in the path of the German army's advance. Two-thirds ofLouvain itself is unharmed; though the fact alone of its venerablelibrary being in ashes is sufficient outrage, if not another building hadbeen harmed. 

The German army planned destruction with all the regularity that itbilleted troops, or requisitioned supplies, or laid war indemnities. It didnot destroy by shells exclusively. It deliberately burned homes. Nomatter whether the owners were innocent or not, the homes wereburned as an example. The principle applied was that of punishinghalf a dozen or all the boys in the class in the hope of getting the realculprit. 

Cold ruins mark blocks where sniping was thought to have occurred. The Germans insist that theirs was the merciful way. Krieg ist Krieg. When a hundred citizens of Louvain were gathered and shotbecause they were the first citizens of Louvain to hand, the purposewas the security of the mass at the expense of the individual, according to the war-is-war machine reasoning. No doubt there wasfiring on German troops by civilians. What did the Germans expectafter the way that they had invaded Belgium? If they had botheredwith trials and investigations, the conquerors say, sniping would havekept up. They may have taken innocent lives and burned the homesof the innocent, they admit, but their defence is that thereby theysaved many thousands of their soldiers and of Belgians, andprevented the feud between the rulers and the ruled from becomingmore embittered. 

Sniping over, the next step in policy was to keep the population quietwith a minimum of soldiery, which would permit a maximum at thefront. In a thickly-settled country, so easily policed, in a land with thepopulation inured to peace, the wisdom of keeping quiet was soonevident to the people. What if Boers had been in the Belgians' place?Would they have attempted guerrilla warfare? Would you or I want tobring destruction on neighbours in a land without any rural fastnessesas a rendezvous for operations? One could tell only if a section of ourcountry were invaded. 

A burned block cost less than a dead German soldier. The systemwas efficacious. It was mercilessness mixed with craft. WhenPrussian brusqueness was found to be unnecessarily irritating to thepopulation, causing rash Belgians to turn desperate, the elders of theSaxon and Bavarian coreligionists were called in. They were amiablefathers of families, who would obey orders without taking the law intotheir own hands. The occupation was strictly military. It concerneditself with the business of national suffocation. All the functions ofgovernment were in German hands. But Belgian policemen guidedthe street traffic, arrested culprits for ordinary misdemeanours, andtook them before Belgian judges. This concession, which also meanta saving in soldiers, only aggravated to the Belgian the regulationsdirected against his personal freedom. 

"Eat, drink, and live as usual. Go to your own police courts formisdemeanours, " was the German edict in a word; "but rememberthat ours is the military power, and no act that aids the enemy, thathelps the cause of Belgium in this war, is permitted. Observe thatparticular affiche about a spy, please. He was shot. "

At every opportunity Belgians were told that the British and theFrench could never come to their rescue. The Allies were beaten. Itwas the British who got Belgium into trouble; the British who wereresponsible for the idleness, the penury, the hunger and the sufferingin Belgium. The British had used Belgium as a cat's-paw; then theyhad deserted her. But Belgians remained mostly unconvinced. Theywere making war with mind and spirit, if not with arms. 

"We know how to suffer in Belgium, " said a Belgian jurist. "Our abilityto suffer and to hold fast to our hearths has kept us going through thecenturies. Flemish and French, we have stubbornness in common. Now a ruffian has come into our house and taken us by the throat. Hecan choke us to death, or he can slowly starve us to death, but hecannot make us yield. No, we shall never forgive!"

"You too hate, then?" I asked. 

"Of course I hate. For the first time in my life I know what it is to hate;and so do my countrymen. I begin to enjoy my hate. It is one of theprivileges of our present existence. We cannot stand on chairs andtables as they do in Berlin cafés and sing our hate, but no one canstop our hating in secret. "

Beside the latest verboten and regulation of Belgian conduct on thecity walls were posted German official news bulletins. The Belgiansstopped to read; they paused to re-read. And these were the rareoccasions when they smiled, and they liked to have a German sentrysee that smile. 

"Pour les enfants!" they whispered, as if talking to one another abouta crèche. Little ones, be good! Here is a new fairy tale!

When a German wanted to buy something he got frigid politenessand attention--very frigid, telling politeness--from the clerk, which said:

"Beast! Invader! I do not ask you to buy, but as you ask, I sell; and asI sell I hate! I hate! ! I hate! ! !"

An officer entering a shop and seeing a picture of King Albert on thewall, said:

"The orders are to take that down!"

"But don't you love your Kaiser?" asked the woman who kept theshop. 

"Certainly!"

"And I love my King!" was the answer. "I like to look at his picture justas much as you like to look at your Kaiser's. "

"I had not thought of it in that way!" said the officer. 

Indeed, it is very hard for any conqueror to think of it in that way. Sothe picture remained on the wall. 

How many soldiers would it take to enforce the regulation that noBelgian was to wear the Belgian colours? Imagine thousands andthousands of Landsturm men moving about and plucking KingAlbert's face or the black, yellow and red from Belgian buttonholes!No sooner would a buttonhole be cleared in front than the emblemwould appear in a buttonhole in the rear. The Landsturm would facecounter, flank, frontal, and rear attacks in a most amusing militarymanoeuvre, which would put those middle-aged conquerors fearfullyout of breath and be rare sport for the Belgians. You could not arrestthe whole population and lead them off to jail; and if you bayoneted afew--which really those phlegmatic, comfortable old Landsturmswould not have the heart to do for such a little thing--why, it would getinto the American Press, and the Berlin Foreign Office would say:

"There you are, you soldiers, breaking all the crockery again!"

In the smaller towns, where the Germans were billeted in Belgianhouses, of course the hosts had to serve their unwelcome guests. 

"Yet we managed to let them know what was in our hearts, " said onewoman. "Some tried to be friendly. They said they had wives andchildren at home; and we said: 'How glad your wives and childrenwould be to see you! Why don't you go home?'"

When a report reached the commander in Ghent that an old man hadconcealed arms, a sergeant with a guard was sent to search thehouse. 

"Yes, my son has a rifle. "

"Where is it?"

"In his hands on the Yser, if he is not dead, monsieur. You arewelcome to search, monsieur. "

Belgium was developing a new humour, a humour at the expense ofthe Germans. In their homes they mimicked their rulers as freely asthey pleased. To carry mimickry into the streets meant arrest for theelders, but not always for the children. You have heard the story, which is true, of how some gamins put carrots in old bowler hats torepresent the spikes of German helmets, and at their leader'scommand of "On to Paris!" did a goose-step backwards. There isanother which you may not have heard of a small boy who put ongrandfather's spectacles, a pillow under his coat, and a card on hiscap, 'Officer of the Landsturm. ' The conquerors had enough sensenot to interfere with the battalion which was taking Paris; but thepseudo-Landsturm officer was chased into a doorway and got a cuffafter his placard was taken away from him. 

When a united public opinion faces bayonets it is not altogetherhelpless to reply. By the atmospheric force of mass it enjoys aconquest of its own. If a German officer or soldier entered a streetcar, women drew aside in a way to indicate that they did not wanttheir garments contaminated. People walked by the sentries in thestreets giving them room as you would give a mangy dog room, yetas if they did not see the sentries; as if no sentries existed. 

The Germans said that they wanted to be friendly. They evenexpressed surprise that the Belgians would not return their advances. They sent out invitations to social functions in Brussels, but no onecame--not even to a ball given by the soldiers to the daughters of thepoor. Belgium stared its inhospitality, its contempt, its cynicaldrolleries at the invader. 

I kept thinking of a story I heard in Alaska of a man who had shownhimself yellow by cheating his partner out of a mine. He appearedone day hungry at a cabin occupied by half a dozen men who knewhim. They gave him food and a bunk that night; they gave himbreakfast; they even carried his blanket-roll out to his sled andharnessed his dogs as a hint, and saw him go without one manhaving spoken to him. No matter if that man believed he had done nowrong, he would have needed a rhinoceros hide not to have felt thissilence. Such treatment the Belgians have given to the Germans, except that they furnished the shelter and harnessed the team underduress, as they so specifically indicate by every act. No wonder, then, that the old Landsturm guards, used at home to saying "Wie gehts?"and getting a cheery answer from the people they passed in thestreets, were lonely. 

Not only stubborn, but shrewd, these Belgians. Both qualities werebrought out in the officials who had to deal with the Germans, particularly in the small towns and where destruction had been worst. Take, for example, M. Nerincx, of Louvain, who has energy enough tocarry him buoyantly through an American political campaign, speaking from morning to midnight. He had been in America. Iinsisted that he ought to give up his professorship, get naturalized, and run for office in America. I know that he would soon be mayor ofa town, or in Congress. 

When the war began he was professor of international law at theancient university whose walls alone stand, surrounding the ashes ofits priceless volumes, across from the ruined cathedral. With theburgomaster a refugee from the horrors of that orgy, he turned manof action on behalf of the demoralized people of the town with athousand homes in ruins. Very lucky the client in its lawyer. He is thekind of man who makes the best of the situation; picks up thefragments of the pitcher, cements them together with the first materialat hand, and goes for more milk. It was he who got a Germancommander to sign an agreement not to "kill, burn, or plunder" anymore, and the signs were still up on some houses saying that "Thishouse is not to be burned except by official order. "

There in the Hôtel de Ville, which is quite unharmed, he had his office, within reach of the German commander. He yielded to Caesar andprotected his own people day in and day out, diplomatic, watchful, Belgian. And he was cheerful. What other people could have retainedany vestige of cheer! Sometimes one wondered if it were not partlydue to an absence of keen nerve-sensibilities, or to some other of thetraits which are a product of the Belgian hothouse and Belgianinheritance. 

I might tell you about M. Nerincx's currency system; how he issuedpaper promises to pay when he gave employment to the idle inrepairing those houses which permitted of being repaired, andcleaned the streets of debris, till ruined Louvain looked as shipshapeas ruined Pompeii; and how he got a little real money from Brusselsto stop depreciation when the storekeepers came to him and saidthat they had stacks of his notes which no mercantile concern wouldcash. 

M. Nerincx was practising in the life about all that he ever learned andtaught at the university, "which we shall rebuild!" he declared, withcheery confidence. "You will help us in America, " he said. "I'm goingto America to lecture one of these days about Louvain!"

"You have the most famous ruins, unless it is Rheims, " I assured him. "You will get flocks of tourists"--particularly if he fenced in the ruinsof the library and burned leaves of ancient books were on sale. 

"Then you will not only have fed, but have helped to rebuild Belgium, "he added. 

A shadow of apprehension overhung his anticipation of the day ofBelgium's delivery. Many a Belgian had arms hidden from the alerteye of German espionage, and his bitterness was solaced by thethought; "I'll have a shot at the Germans when they go!" The lot of thelast German soldier to leave a town, unless the garrison slips awayovernight, would hardly make him a good life-insurance risk. 

My last look at a Belgian bread-line was at Liege, that town whichhad had a blaze of fame in August, 1914, and was now almostforgotten. An industrial town, its mines and works were idle. TheGermans had removed the machinery for rifle-making, which hasbecome the most valuable kind of machinery in the world next to thatfor making guns and shells. If skilled Belgians here or elsewhere werecalled upon to serve the Germans at their craft, they suddenlybecame butter-fingered. So that bread-line at Liege was long, itsqueue stretching the breadth of the cathedral square. 

As most of the regular German officers in Belgium were cavalrymen--there was nothing for cavalry to do on the Aisne line of trenches--itwas quite in keeping that the aide to the commandant of Liege, wholooked after my pass to leave the country, should be a young officerof Hussars. He spoke English well; he was amiable and intelligent. While I waited for the commandant to sign the pass the aide chattedof his adventures on the pursuit of the British to the Marne. TheBritish fought like devils, he said. It was a question if their new armywould be so good. He showed me a photograph of himself in a BritishTommy's overcoat. 

"When we took some prisoners I was interested in their overcoats, "he explained. "I asked one of the Tommies to let me try on his. It fittedme perfectly, so I kept it as a souvenir and had this photograph madeto show my friends. "

Perhaps a shade of surprise passed over my face. 

"You don't understand, " he said. "That Tommy had to give me hiscoat! He was a prisoner. "

On my way out from Liege I was to see Visé--the town of thegateway--the first town of the war to suffer from frightfulness. I hadthought of it as entirely destroyed. A part of it had survived. 

A delightful old Bavarian Landsturmman searched me for contrabandletters when our cart stopped on the Belgian side of a barricade atMaastricht, with Dutch soldiers on the other side. His examinationwas a little perfunctory, almost apologetic, and he did want to befriendly. You guessed that he was thinking he would like to go aroundthe corner and have "ein Glas Bier" rather than search me. What ahearty "Auf wiedersehen!" he gave me when he saw that I wasinclined to be friendly, too!

I was glad to be across that frontier, with a last stamp on myPassierschein; glad to be out of the land of those ghostly Belgianmillions in their living death; glad not to have to answer again theirravenously whispered "When?" When would the Allies come?

The next time that I was in Belgium it was in the British lines of theYpres salient, two months later. When should I be next in Brussels?With a victorious British army, I hoped. A long wait it was to be for aconquered people, listening each day and trying to think that thesound of gun-fire was nearer. 

The stubborn, passive resistance and self-sacrifice that I havepictured was that of a moral leadership of a majority shaming theminority; of an ostracism of all who had relations with the enemy. Ofcourse, it was not the spirit of the whole. The American Commission, as charity usually must, had to overcome obstacles set in its path bythose whom it would aid. Belgian politicians, in keeping with theweakness of their craft, could no more forego playing politics in timeof distress than some that we had in San Francisco and some wehave heard of only across the British Channel from Belgium. 

Zealous leaders exaggerated the famine of their districts in order toget larger supplies; communities in great need without spokesmenmust be reached; powerful towns found excuses for not forwardingfood to small villages which were without influence. Natural greed gotthe better of men used to turning a penny any way they could. Rascally bakers who sifted the brown flour to get the white to sell topâtisserie shops and the well-to-do while the bread-line got the bran, required shrewd handling, and it was found that the best punishmentwas to let the public know the pariah part they had played. In fact thatsoon put a stop to the practice. It meant that the baker's businesswas ruined and he had lost his friends. 

A certain percentage of Belgians, as would happen in any country, saw the invasion only as a visitation of disaster, like an earthquake. Aflat country of gardens limits one's horizon. They fell into line with thesentiment of the mass. But as time wore on into the summer andautumn of the second year, some of them began to think, What wasthe use? German propaganda was active. All that the Allies hadcared for Belgium was to use her to check the German tide to Parisand the Channel ports! Perfidious England had betrayed Belgium!German business and banking influences, which had been considerablein Belgium before the war, and the numerous German residentswho had returned, formed a busy circle of appeal to Belgian businessmen, who were told that the British navy stood between them and areturn to prosperity. Germany was only too willing that they shouldresume their trade with the rest of the world. 

Why should not Belgium come into the German customs union? Whyshould not Belgium make the best of her unfortunate situation, asbecame a practical and thrifty people? But be it a customs union orannexation that Germany plans, the steel had entered the hearts ofall Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert and his"schipperkes" were still fighting the Germans at Dixmude. A Britisharmy appearing before Brussels would end casuistry; and pessimismwould pass, and the German residents, too, with the huzzas of allBelgium as the gallant king once more ascended the steps of hispalace. 

Worthy of England at her best was her consent to allow theCommission's food to pass, which she accompanied by generousgiving. She might seem slow in making ready her army--though I donot think that she was--but give she could and give she did. It was agrave question if her consent was in keeping with the military policywhich believes that any concession to sentiment in the grim businessof war is unwise. Certainly, the Krieg ist Krieg of Germany would nothave permitted it. 

There is the very point of the war that ought to make any neutral takesides. If the Belgians had not received bread from the outside world, then Germany would either have had to spare enough to keep themfrom starving or faced the desperation of a people who would fight forfood with such weapons as they had. This must have brought aholocaust of reprisals that would have made the orgy of Louvaincomparatively insignificant. However much the Germans hamperedthe Commission with red tape and worse than red tape through theactivities of German residents in Belgium, Germany did not want theCommission to withdraw. It was helping her to economize her foodsupplies. And England answered a human appeal at the cost of hard-and-fast military policy. She was still true to the ideals which have settheir stamp on half the world. 

XIWinter In Lorraine

Only a winding black streak, that four hundred and fifty miles oftrenches on a flat map. It is difficult to visualize the whole as you seeit in your morning paper, or to realize the labour it represents in itscourse through the mire and over mountain slopes, through villagesand thick forests and across open fields. 

Every mile of it was located by the struggle of guns and rifles andmen coming to a stalemate of effort, when both dug into the earthand neither could budge the other. It is a line of countless battles andbroken hopes; of charges as brave as men ever made; a symbol ofskill and dogged patience and eternal vigilance of striving foe againststriving foe. 

From the first, the sector from Rheims to Flanders was most familiarto the public. The world still thinks of the battle of the Marne as anaffair at the door of Paris, though the heaviest fighting was from Vitry-le-François eastward and the fate of Paris was no less decided on thefields of Lorraine than on the fields of Champagne. The storming ofRheims Cathedral became the theme of thousands of words of printto one word for the defence of the Plateau d'Amance or the strugglearound Lunéville. Our knowledge of the war is from glimpses throughthe curtain of military secrecy which was drawn tight over Lorraineand the Vosges, shrouded in mountain mists. This is about Lorrainein winter, when the war was six months old. 

But first, on our way, a word about Paris, which I had not seen sinceSeptember. At the outset of the war, Parisians who had not gone tothe front were in a trance of suspense; they were magnetized by thetragic possibilities of the hour. The fear of disaster was in their hearts, though they might deny it to themselves. They could think of nothingbut France. Now they realized that the best way to help France wasby going on with their work at home. Paris was trying to be normal, but no Parisian was making the bluff that Paris was normal. TheGallic lucidity of mind prevented such self-deception. 

Is it normal to have your sons, brothers, and husbands up to theirknees in icy water in the trenches, in danger of death every minute?This attitude seems human; it seems logical. One liked the French forit. One liked them for boasting so little. In their effort at normalitythey had accomplished more than they realized; for one-sixth ofthe wealth of France was in German hands. A line of steel madethe rest safe for those not at the front to pursue the routine of peace. 

When I had been in Paris in September there was no certainty aboutrailroad connections anywhere. You went to the station and took yourchances, governed by the movement of troops, not to mention otherconditions. This time I took the regular noon express to Nancy, as Imight have done to Marseilles, or Rome, or Madrid, had I chosen. The sprinkling of quiet army officers on the train were in the newuniform of peculiar steely grey, in place of the target blue and red. Butfor them and the number of women in mourning and one othercircumstance, the train might have been bound for Berlin, with Nancyonly a stop on the way. 

The other circumstance was the presence of a soldier in the vestibulewho said: "Votre laisser-passer, monsieur, s'il vous platt!" If you had alaisser-passer, he was most polite; but if you lacked one, he wouldalso have been most polite and so would the guard that took you incharge at the next station. In other words, monsieur, you must havesomething besides a railroad ticket if you are on a train that runs pastthe fortress of Toul and your destination is Nancy. You must have amilitary pass, which was never given to foreigners if they weretravelling alone in the zone of military operations. The pulse of theFrenchman beats high, his imagination bounds, when he lookseastward. To the east are the lost provinces and the frontier drawn bythe war of '70 between French Lorraine and German Lorraine. Thisgave our journey interest. 

Nancy, capital of French Lorraine, is so near Metz, the great Germanfortress town of German Lorraine, that excursion trains used to run toNancy in the opera season. "They are not running this winter, " saythe wits of Nancy. "For one reason, we have no opera--and there areother reasons. "

An aeroplane from the German lines has only to toss a bomb in thecourse of an average reconnaissance on Nancy if it chooses; forZeppelins are within easy reach of Nancy. But here was Nancy asbrilliantly lighted at nine in the evening as any city of its size at home. Our train, too, had run with the windows unshaded. After thedarkness of London, and after English trains with every window-shade closely drawn, this was a surprise. 

It was a threat, an anticipation, that darkened London, while Nancyknew fulfilment. Bombardment and bomb-dropping were nothing newto Nancy. The spice of danger gives a fillip to business to the townwhose population heard the din of the most thunderously spectacularaction of the war echoing among the surrounding hills. Nancy saw theenemy beaten back. Now she was so close to the front that she feltthe throb of the army's life. 

"Don't you ever worry about aerial raids?" I asked madame behindthe counter at the hotel. 

"Do the men in the trenches worry about them?" she answered. "Wehave a much easier time than they. Why shouldn't we share some oftheir dangers? And when a Zeppelin appears and our guns beginfiring, we all feel like soldiers under fire. "

"Are all the population here as usual?"

"Certainly, monsieur!" she said. "The Germans can never takeNancy. The French are going to take Metz!"

The meal which that hotel restaurant served was as good as in peacetimes. Who deserves a good meal if not the officer who comes infrom the front? And madame sees that he gets it. She is as proud ofher poulet en casserole as any commander of a soixante-quinzebattery of its practice. There was steam heat, too, in the hotel, whichgave an American a homelike feeling. 

In a score of places in the Eastern States you see landscapes withhigh hills like the spurs of the Vosges around Nancy sprinkled withsnow and under a blue mist. And the air was dry; it had the life of ourair. Old Civil War men who had been in the Tennessee Mountains orthe Shenandoah Valley would feel perfectly at home in suchsurroundings; only the foreground of farm land which merges into thecrests covered with trees in the distance is more finished. The peoplewere tilling it hundreds of years before we began tilling ours. They tillwell; they make Lorraine a rich province of France. 

With guns pounding in the distance, boys in their capes were skippingand frolicking on their way to school; housewives were going tomarket, and the streets were spotlessly clean. All the men of Nancynot in the army pursued their regular routine while the army wentabout its business of throwing shells at the Germans. On the deadwalls of the buildings were M. Deschanel's speech in the Chamber ofDeputies, breathing endurance till victory, and the call for the class ofrecruits of 1915, which you will find on the walls of the towns of allFrance beside that of the order of mobilization in August, nowweather-stained. Nancy seemed, if anything, more French than anyinterior French town. Though near the border, there is no touch ofGerman influence. When you walked through the old PlaceStanislaus, so expressive of the architectural taste bred for centuriesin the French, you understand the glow in the hearts of this veryFrench population which made them unconscious of danger whiletheir flag was flying over this very French city. 

No two Christian peoples we know are quite so different as theFrench and the Germans. To each every national thought and habitincarnates a patriotism which is in defiance of that on the other side ofthe frontier. Over in America you may see the good in both sides, butno Frenchman and no German can on the Lorraine frontier. If heshould, he would no longer be a Frenchman or a German in time ofwar. 

At our service in front of the hotel were waiting two mortals in goatskincoats, with scarfs around their ears and French military caps on top ofthe scarfs. They were official army chauffeurs. If you have riddenthrough the Alleghenies in winter in an open car, why explain thatseeing the Vosges front in a motor-car may be a joy ride to anEskimo, but not to your humble servant? But the roads were perfect;as good wherever we went in this mountain country as from NewYork to Poughkeepsie. I need not tell you this if you have been inFrance; but you will be interested to know that Lorraine keeps herroads in perfect repair even in war time. 

Crossing the swollen Moselle on a military bridge, twisting in and outof valleys and speeding through villages, one saw who were guardingthe army's secrets, but little of the army itself and few signs oftransportation on a bleak, snowy day. At the outskirts of every village, at every bridge, and at intervals along the road, Territorial sentriesstopped the car. Having an officer along was not sufficient to let youwhizz by important posts. He must show his pass. Every sentry was areminder of the hopelessness of being a correspondent these dayswithout official sanction. 

The sentries were men in the thirties. In Belgium, their Germancounterpart, the Landsturm, were the monitors of a journey that Imade. No troops are more military than the first line Germans; but inthe snap and spirit of his salute the French Territorial has an élan, amartial fervour, which the phlegmatic German in the thirties lacks. 

Occasionally we passed scattered soldiers in the village streets, or adoor opened to show a soldier figure in the doorway. The reason thatwe were not seeing anything of the army was the same that keepsthe men and boys who are on the steps of the country grocery insummer at home around the stove in winter. All these villages werefull of reservists who were indoors. They could be formed in the streetready for the march to any part of the line where a concentratedattack was made almost as soon after the alarm as a fire enginestarts to a fire. Now, imagine your view of a cricket match limited tothe bowler: and that is all you see in the low country of Flanders. Youhave no grasp of what all the noise and struggle means, for youcannot see over the shoulders of the crowd. But in Lorraine you haveonly to ascend a hill and the moves in the chess game of war areclear. 

A panorama unfolds as our car takes a rising grade to the village ofSte. Geneviève. We alight and walk along a bridge, where the sentryof a lookout is on watch. He seems quite alone, but at our approach adozen of his comrades come out of their "home" dug in the hillside. Wherever you go about the frozen country of Lorraine it is a case offlushing soldiers from their shelters. A small, semicircular table is setup before the lookout, like his compass before a mariner. Here runblue pencil lines of direction pointing to Pont-à-Mousson, to Château-Salins, and other towns. Before us to the east rose the tree-cladcrests of the famous Grand Couronné of Nancy, and faintly in thedistance we could see Metz. 

"Those guns that I hear, are they firing across the frontier?" I asked. For some French batteries command one of the outer forts of Metz. 

"No, they are near Pont-à-Mousson. "

To the north the little town of Pont-à-Mousson lay in the lap of theriver bottom, and across the valley, to the west, the famous Bois lePrêtre. More guns were speaking from the forest depths, whichshowed great scars where the trees had been cut to give fields of fire. This was well to the rear of our position, marking the boundaries ofthe wedge that the Germans drove into the French lines, with its pointat St. Mihiel, in trying to isolate the forts of Verdun and Toul. Doubtless you have noticed that wedge on the snake maps and havewondered about it, as I have. It looks so narrow that the French oughtto be able to shoot across it from both sides. If so, why don't theGermans widen it?

Well, for one thing, a quarter of an inch on a map is a good manymiles of ground. The Germans cannot spread their wedge becausethey would have to climb the walls of an alley. That was a fact asclear to the eye as the valley of the Hudson from West Point. TheGermans occupy an alley within an alley, as it were. They have theirown natural defences for the edges of their wedge; or, where they donot, they lie cheek by jowl with the French in such thick woods as theBois le Prêtre. 

At our feet, looking toward Metz, an apron of cultivated land sweptdown for a mile or more to a forest edge. This was cut by lines oftrenches, whose barbed-wire protection pricked a blanket of snow. 

"Our front is in those woods, " explained the colonel who was incommand of the point. 

"A major when the war began and an officer of reserves, " moncapitaine, who had brought us out from Paris, explained about thecolonel. We were soon used to hearing that a colonel had been amajor or a major a captain before the Kaiser had tried to get Nancy. There was quick death and speedy promotion at the great battle ofLorraine, as there was at Gettysburg and Antietam. 

"They charged out of the woods, and we had a battalion of reserves--here are some of them--mes poilus!"

He turned affectionately to the bearded fellows in scarfs who hadcome out of the shelter. They smiled back. Now, as we all chattedtogether, officer-and-man distinction disappeared. We were in afamily party. 

It was all very simple to mes poilus, that first fight. They had been toldto hold. If Ste. Geneviève were lost, the Amance plateau was indanger, and the loss of the Amance plateau meant the fall of Nancy. Some military martinets say that the soldiers of France think toomuch. In this case thinking may have taught them responsibility. Sothey held; they lay tight, these reserves, and kept on firing as theGermans swarmed out of the woods. 

"And the Germans stopped there, monsieur. They hadn't very far togo, had they? But the last fifty yards, monsieur, are the hardesttravelling when you are trying to take a trench. "

They knew, these poilus, these veterans. Every soldier who serves inLorraine knows. They themselves have tried to rush out of the edgeof a woods across an open space against intrenched Germans andfound the shoe on the other foot. 

Now the fields in the foreground down to the woods' edge were bareof any living thing. You had to take mon capitaine's word for it thatthere were any soldiers in front of us. 

"The Boches are a good distance away at this point, " he said. "Theyare in the next woods. "

A broad stretch of snow lay between the two clumps of woods. It wasnot worth while for either side to try to get possession of theintervening space. At the first movement by either French orGermans the woods opposite would hum with rifle fire and echo withcannonading. So, like rival parties of Arctic explorers waiting out theArctic winter, they watched each other. But if one force or the othernapped and the other caught him at it, then winter would not stay abrigade commander's ambition. Three days later in this region theFrench, by a quick movement, got a good bag of prisoners to make awelcome item for the daily French official bulletin. 

"We wait and the Germans wait on spring for any big movement, "said the colonel. "Men can't lie out all night in the advance in weatherlike this. In that direction------" He indicated a part of the line wherethe two armies were facing each other across the old frontier. Backand forth they had fought, only to arrive where they had begun. 

There was something else which the colonel wished us to see beforewe left the hill of Ste. Geneviève. It appealed to his Gallic sentiment, this quadrilateral of stone on the highest point where legend tells that"Jovin, a Christian and very faithful, vanquished the Germanbarbarians 366 A. D. "

"We have to do as well in our day as Jovin in his, " remarked thecolonel. 

The church of Ste. Geneviève was badly smashed by shell. So wasthe church in the village on the Plateau d'Amance, as are mostchurches in this district of Lorraine. Framed through a great gap inthe wall of the church of Amance was an immense Christ on thecross without a single abrasion, and a pile of debris at its feet. Afterseeing as many ruined churches as I have, one becomes almostsuperstitious at how often the figures of Christ escape. But I havealso seen effigies of Christ blown to bits. 

Anyone who, from an eminence, has seen one battle foughtvisualizes another readily when the positions lie at his feet. Lookingout on the field of Gettysburg from Round Top, I can always get thesame thrill that I had when, seated in a gallery above the Russian andthe Japanese armies, I saw the battle of Liao-yang. In sight of thatPlateau d'Amance, which rises like a great knuckle above thesurrounding country, a battle covering twenty times the extent ofGettysburg raged, and one could have looked over a battle-line as faras the eye may see from a steamer's mast. 

An icy gale swept across the white crest of the plateau on thisJanuary day, but it was nothing to the gale of shells that descendedon it in late August and early September. Forty thousand shells, it isestimated, fell there. One kicked up fragments of steel on the field likepeanut-shells after a circus has gone. Here were the emplacementsof a battery of French soixante-quinze within a circle of holes torn byits adversaries' replies to its fire; a little farther along, concealed byshrubbery, the position of another battery which the enemy had notlocated. 

So that was it! The struggle on the immense landscape, where atleast a quarter of a million men were killed and wounded, became assimple as some Brobdingnagian football match. Before the warbegan the French would not move a man within five miles of thefrontier lest it be provocative; but once the issue was joined theysprang for Alsace and Lorraine, their imagination magnetized by thethought of the recovery of the lost provinces. Their Alpine chasseurs, mountain men of the Alpine and the Pyrenees districts, wereconcentrated for the purpose. 

I recalled a remark I had heard: "What a pitiful little offensive thatwas!" It was made by one of those armchair "military experts" wholook at a map and jump at a conclusion. They appear very wise intheir wordiness when real military experts are silent for want ofknowledge. Pitiful, was it? Ask the Germans who faced it what theythink. Pitiful, that sweep over those mountain walls and through thepasses? Pitiful, perhaps, because it failed, though not until it hadtaken Château-Salins in the north and Mulhouse in the south. Ask theGermans if they think that it was pitiful! The Confederates also failedat Antietam and at Gettysburg, but the Union army never thought oftheir efforts as pitiful. 

The French fell back because all the weight of the German army wasthrown against France, while the Austrians were left to look after theslowly mobilizing Russians. Two million five hundred thousand menon their first line the Germans had, as we know now, against theFrench twelve hundred thousand and Sir John French's army fightingone against four. To make sure of saving Paris as the Germansswung their mighty flanking column through Belgium, Joffre had todraw in his lines. The Germans came over the hills as splendidly asthe French had gone. They struck in all directions toward Paris. InLorraine was their left flank, the Bavarians, meant to play the samepart to the east that von Kluck played to the west. We heard only ofvon Kluck; nothing of this terrific struggle in Lorraine. 

From the Plateau d'Amance you may see how far the Germans cameand what was their object. Between the fortresses of Epinal and ofToul lies the Trouée de Mirecourt--the Gap of Mirecourt. It is said thatthe French had purposely left it open when they were thinking offighting the Germans on their own frontier and not on that of Belgium. They wanted the Germans to make their trial here--and wisely, forwith all the desperate and courageous efforts of the Bavarian andSaxon armies they never got near the gap. 

If they had forced it, however, with von Kluck swinging on the otherflank, they might have got around the French army. Such was thedream of German strategy, whose realization was so boldly andskilfully undertaken. The Germans counted on their immense force ofartillery, built for this war in the last two years and out-ranging theFrench, to demoralize the French infantry. But the French infantrycalled the big shells marmites (saucepans), and made a joke of themand the death they spread as they tore up the fields in clouds ofearth. 

Ah, it took more than artillery to beat back the best troops of France ina country like this--a country of rolling hills and fenceless fields cut bymany streams and set among thick woods, where infantry on a bankor at a forest's edge with rifles and rapid-firers and guns kept theirbarrels cool until the charge developed in the open. Some of theseforests are only a few acres in extent; others are hundreds of acres. In the dark depths of one a frozen lake was seen glistening from ourviewpoint on the Plateau d'Amance. 

"Indescribable that scene which we witnessed from here, " said anofficer who had been on the plateau throughout the fighting. "All thesplendid majesty of war was set on a stage before you. It wasintoxication. We could see the lines of troops in their retreat andadvance, batteries and charges shrouded in shrapnel smoke. Whathosts of guns the Germans had! They seemed to be sowing thewhole face of the earth with shells. The roar of the thing was like thatof chaos itself. It was the exhilaration of the spectacle that kept usfrom dropping from fatigue. Two weeks of this business! Two weekswith every unit of artillery and infantry always ready, if not actuallyengaged!"

The general in command was directing not one but many battles, each with a general of its own; manoeuvring troops across streamsand open places, seeking the cover of forests, with the aeroplanesunable to learn how many of the enemy were hidden in the forests onhis front, while he tried to keep his men out of angles and make hismovements correspond with those of the divisions on his right andleft. Skill this required; skill equivalent to German skill; the skillwhich you cannot command in a month after calling for a millionvolunteers, but which grows through years of organization. 

Shall I call the general in chief command General X? This isaccording to the custom of anonymity. A great modern army like theFrench is a machine; any man, high or low, only a unit of themachine. In this case the real name of X is Castelnau. If it lacks thefame which seems its due, that may be because he was too busy totake the Press into his confidence. Fame is not the business ofFrench generals nowadays. It is war. What counted for France wasthat he never let the Germans get near the gap at Mirecourt. 

Having failed to reach the gap, the Germans, with that stubbornnessof the offensive which characterizes them, tried to take Nancy. Theygot a battery of heavy guns within range of the city. From a high hill itis said that the Kaiser watched the bombardment. But here is a story. As the German infantry advanced toward their new objective theypassed a French artillery officer in a tree. He was able to locate thatheavy battery and able to signal its position back to his own side. TheFrench concentrated sufficient fire to silence it after it had thrown fortyshells into Nancy. The same report tells how the Kaiser folded hiscloak around him and walked in silence from his eminence, where thesun blazed on his helmet. It was not the Germans' fault that theyfailed to take Nancy. It was due to the French. 

Some time a tablet will be put up to denote the high-water mark of theGerman invasion of Lorraine. It will be between the edge of the forestof Champenoux and the heights. When the Germans charged fromthe cover of the forest to get possession of the road to Nancy, theFrench artillery and machine-guns which had held their fire turnedloose. The rest of the story is how the French infantry, impatient atbeing held back, swept down in a counter-attack, and the Germanshad to give up their campaign in Lorraine as they gave up theircampaign against Paris in the early part of September. Saddest of alllost opportunities to the correspondent in this war is this fighting inLorraine. One had only to climb a hill in order to see everything!

In half an hour, as the officer outlined the positions, we had livedthrough the two weeks' fighting; and, thanks to the fairness of hisstory--that of a professional soldier without illusions--we felt that wehad been hearing history while it was very fresh. 

"They are very brave and skilful, the Germans, " he said. "We stillhave a battery of heavy guns on the plateau. Let us go and see it. "

We went, picking our way among the snow-covered shell-pits. At onepoint we crossed a communication trench, where soldiers could goand come to the guns and the infantry positions without beingexposed to shell-fire. I noticed that it carried a telephone wire. 

"Yes, " said the officer; "we had no ditch during the fight with theGermans, and we were short of telephone wire for a while; so we hadto carry messages back and forth as in the old days. It was a prettywarm kind of messenger service when the German marmites werefalling their thickest. "

At length he stopped before a small mound of earth not in any waydistinctive at a short distance on the uneven surface of the plateau. Idid not even notice that there were three other such mounds. Hepointed to a hole in the ground. I had been used to going through amanhole in a battleship turret, but not through one into a field-gunposition before aeroplanes played a part in war. 

"Entrez, monsieur!"

And I stepped down to face the breech of a gun whose muzzlepointed out of another hole in the timbered roof covered with earth. 

"It's very cosy!" I remarked. 

"Oh, this is the shop! The living room is below--here!"

I descended a ladder into a cellar ten feet below the gun level, wheresome of the gunners were lying on a thick carpet of perfectly drystraw. 

"You are not doing much firing these days?" I suggested. 

"Oh, we gave the Boches a couple this morning so they shouldn't getcocky thinking they were safe It's necessary to keep your hand ineven in the winter. "

"Don't you get lonesome?"

"No, we shift on and off. We're not here all the while. It is quite warmin our salon, monsieur, and we have good comrades. It is war. It is forFrance. What would you?"

Four other gun-positions and four other cellars like this! Thousands ofgun-positions and thousands of cellars! Man invents new powers ofdestruction and man finds a way of escaping them. 

As we left the battery we started forward, and suddenly out of thedusk came a sharp call. A young corporal confronted us. Who werewe and what business had we prowling about on that hill? If there hadbeen no officer along and I had not had a laisser-passer on myperson, the American Ambassador to France would probably havehad to get another countryman out of trouble. 

The incident shows how thoroughly the army is policed and howsurely. Editors who wonder why their correspondents are not in thefront line catching bullets, please take notice. 

It was dark when we returned to the little village on the plateau wherewe had left the car. The place seemed uninhabited with all the blindsclosed. But through one uncovered window I saw a room full ofchatting soldiers. We went to pay our respects to the colonel incommand, and found him and his staff around a table covered withoilcloth in the main living-room of a villager's house. He spoke of hismen, of their loyalty and cheerfulness, as the other commanders had, as if this were his only boast. These French officers have little "side";none of that toe-the-mark, strutting militarism which the Germansthink necessary to efficiency. They live very simply on campaign, though if they do get to town for a few hours they enjoy a good meal. If they did not, madame at the restaurant would feel that she was notdoing her duty to France. 

XIISmiles Among Ruins

Scorched piles of brick and mortar where a home has been ought tomake about the same impression anywhere. When you have gonefrom Belgium to French Lorraine, however, you will know quite thecontrary. In Belgium I suffered all the depression which a nightmareof war's misery can bring; in French Lorraine I found myself sharingsomething of the elation of a man who looks at a bruised knuckle withthe consciousness that it broke a burglar's jaw. 

A Belgian repairing the wreck of his house was a grim, heartbreakingpicture; a Frenchman of Lorraine repairing the wreck of his house hadthe light of hard-won victory, of confidence, of sacrifice made to agreat purpose, of freedom secure for future generations, in his eyes. The difference was this: The Germans were still in Belgium; they wereout of French Lorraine for good. 

"What matters a shell-hole through my walls and my torn roof!" said aLorraine farmer. "Work will make my house whole. But nothing couldever have made my heart and soul whole while the Germansremained. I saw them go, monsieur; they left us ruins, but France isours!"

I had thought it a pretty good thing to see something of the EasternFrench front; but a better thing was the happiness I found there. 

Mon capitaine had come out from the Ministry of War in Paris; butwhen we set out from Nancy southward, we had a different localguide, a major belonging to the command in charge of the regionwhich we were to visit. He was another example which upsets certainpopular notions of Frenchmen as gesticulating, excitable little men. Some six feet two in height, he had an eye that looked straight intoyours, a very square chin, and a fine forehead. You had only to lookat him and size him up on points to conclude that he was all there;that he knew his work. 

"Well, we've got good weather for it to-day, monsieur, " said a voiceout of a goatskin coat, and I found we had the same chauffeur asbefore. 

The sun was shining--a warm winter sun like that of a February thawin our Northern States--glistening on the snowy fields and slopesamong the forests and tree-clad hills of the mountainous country. Faces ambushed in whiskers thought it was a good day for trimmingbeards and washing clothes. The sentries along the roads had theirscarfs around their necks instead of over their ears. A French soldiermakes ear muffs, chest protector, nightcap, and a blanket out of thescarf which wife or sister knits for him. If any woman who reads thisknits one to send to France she may be sure that the fellow whoreceived it will get every stitch's worth out of it. 

To-day, then, it was war without mittens. You did not have to soundthe bugle to get soldiers out of their burrows or their houses. Our firststop was at our own request, in a village where groups of soldierswere taking a sun bath. More came out of the doors as we alighted. They were all in the late twenties or early thirties, men of a reserveregiment. Some had been clerks, some labourers, some farmers, some employers, when the war began. Then they were piou-pious, inFrench slang; then all France prayed godspeed to its beloved piou-pious. Then you knew the clerk by his pallor; the labourer by his hardhands; the employer by his manner of command. Now they werepoilus--bearded, hard-eyed veterans; you could not tell the clerk fromthe labourer or the employer from the peasant. 

Anyone who saw the tenderfoot pilgrimage to the Alaskan goldfield in'97-8 and the same crowd six months later will understand what hadhappened to these men. The puny had put on muscle; the citydweller had blown his lungs; the fat man had lost some adipose;social differences of habit had disappeared. The gentleman used tohis bath and linen sheets and the hard-living farmer or labourer--bothhad had to eat the same kind of food, do the same work, run thesame risks in battle, and sleep side by side in the houses where theywere lodged and in the dug-outs of the trenches when it was their turnto occupy them through the winter. Any "snob" had his edgestrimmed by the banter of his comrades. Their beards accentuated thelikeness of type. A cheery lot of faces and intelligent, these, whichgreeted us with curious interest. 

"Perhaps President Wilson will make peace, " one said. 

"When?"

A shrug of the shoulder, a gesture to the East, and the answer was:

"When we have Alsace-Lorraine back. "

Under a shed their déjeuner was cooking. This meal at noon is themeal of the day to the average Frenchman who has only bread andcoffee in the morning. They say that he objects to fighting at luncheontime. That is the hour when he wants to sit down and forget his workand laugh and talk and enjoy his eating. The Germans found this outand tried to take his trenches at the noon hour. Interference with hisgastronomic habits made him so angry that he dropped the knife andfork for the bayonet and took back any lost ground in a ferociouscounter-attack. He would teach those "Boches" to leave him to eathis déjeuner in peace. 

That appetizing stew in the kettles in the shed once more proved thatFrenchmen know how to cook. I didn't blame them for objecting tobeing shot at by the Germans when they were about to eat it. Theaverage French soldier is better fed than at home; he gets moremeat, for a hungry soldier is usually a poor soldier. It is a very simpleproblem with France's fine roads to feed that long line when it isstationary. It is like feeding a city stretched out over a distance of fourhundred and fifty miles; a stated number of ounces each day for eachman and a known number of men to feed. From the railway headtrucks and motor-buses take the supplies up to the distributing points. At one place I saw ten Paris motor-buses, their signs painted over ina steel-grey to hide them from aeroplanes, and not one of them hadbroken down through the war. The French take good care of theirequipment and their clothes; they waste no food. As a people is so istheir army, and the French are thrifty by nature. 

Father Joffre, as the soldiers call him, is running the next largestboarding establishment in Europe after the Kaiser and the Tsar. Andhe has a happy family. It seemed to me that life ought to have beenutterly dull for this characteristic group of poilus, living crowdedtogether all winter in a remote village. Civilians sequestered in thisfashion away from home are inclined to get grouchy on one another. 

One of the officers in speaking of this said that early in the autumnthe reserves were pretty homesick. They wanted to get back to theirwives and children. Nostalgia, next to hunger, is the worst thing for asoldier. Commanders were worried. But as winter wore on the spiritchanged. The soldiers began to feel the spell of their democraticcomradeship. The fact that they had fought together and survivedtogether played its part; and individualism was sunk in the onethought that they were there for France. The fellowship of a causetaught them patience, brought them cheer. Another thing was theincreasing sense of team play, of confidence in victory, which holds aball team, a business enterprise, or an army together. Every day theorganization of the army was improving; every day that indescribableand subtle element of satisfaction that the Germans were securelyheld was growing. 

Every Frenchman saves something of his income; madame sees to itthat he does. He knows that if he dies he will not leave wife andchildren penniless. His son, not yet old enough to fight, will come onto take his place. Men at home of twenty-two or three years andunmarried, men of twenty-eight or thirty years and not long married, and men of forty with some money put by, will, in turn, understandhow their own class feels. 

In ten minutes you had entered into the hearts of this single companyin a way that made you feel that you had got into the heart of thewhole French army. When you asked them if they would like to gohome they didn't say "No!" all in a chorus, as if that were what thecolonel had told them to say. They obey the colonel, but theirthoughts are their own. Otherwise, these ruddy, healthy men, representing the people of France and not the cafés of Paris, wouldnot keep France a republic. 

Yes, they did want to go home. They did want to go home. Theywanted their wives and babies; they wanted to sit down to morningcoffee at their own tables. Lumps rose in their throats at thesuggestion. But they were not going until the German peril was overfor ever. Why stop now, only to have another terrible war in thirty orforty years? A peace that would endure must be won. They hadthought that out for themselves. They would not stick to theirdetermination if they had not. This is the way of democracies. Thus, everyone was conscious that he was fighting not merely to win, butfor future generations. 

"It happened that this great struggle which we had long feared camein our day, and to us is the duty, " said one. You caught the spirit ofcomradeship passing the time with jests at one another's expense. One of the men who was not a full thirty-third-degree poilu hadcompromised with the razor on a moustache as blazing red as hisshock of hair. 

"I think that the colonel gave him the tip that he would light the way forZeppelins!" said a comrade. 

"Envy! Sheer envy!" was the retort. "Look at him!" and he pointed atsome scraggly bunches on chin and cheeks which resembled ayoung grass plat that had come up badly. 

"I don't believe in air-tight beards, " was the response. When Iproduced a camera, the effect was the same as it always is withsoldiers at the front. They all wanted to be in the photograph, on thechance that the folks at home might see how the absent son or fatherlooked. Would I send them one? And the address was like this:"Monsieur Benevent, Corporal of Infantry 18th Company, 5thBattalion, 299th Regiment of Infantry, Postal Sector No. 121. " bywhich you will know the rural free delivery methods along the Frenchfront. This address is the one rift in the blank wall of anonymity whichhides the individuality of the millions under Joffre. Only the armyknows the sector and the numbers of the regiment in that sector. Bythe same kind of a card-index system Joffre might lay his hand onany one of his millions, each a human being with all a human being'sindividual emotions, who, to be a good soldier, must be only one ofthe vast multitude of obedient chessmen. 

"We are ready to go after them when Father Joffre says the word, " allagreed. Joffre has proved himself to the democracy, which meansthe enthusiastic loyalty of a democracy's intelligence. 

"If there are any homesick ones we should find them among the lothere, " said mon capitaine. 

These were the men who had not been long married. They were notyet past the honeymoon period; they had young children at home;perhaps they had become fathers since they went to war. Theyounger men of the first line had the irresponsibility and the ardour ofyouth which makes comradeship easy. 

But the older men, the Territorials as they are called, in the latethirties and early forties, have settled down in life. Their families areestablished; their careers settled; some of them, perhaps, may enjoya vacation from the wife; for you know madame, in France, with allher thrift, can be a little bossy, which is not saying that this is not aproper tonic for her lord. So the old boys seem the most content inthe fellowship of winter quarters. What they cannot stand arerepeated, long, hard marches; their legs give out under the load ofrifle and pack. But their hearts are in the war, and right there is onevery practical reason why they will fight well--and they have foughtbetter as they hardened with time and the old French spirit revived intheir blood. "Allons, messieurs!" said the tall major, who wanted us tosee battlefields. It required no escort to tell us where the battlefieldwas. We knew it when we came to it, as you know the point reachedby high tide on the sands--this field where many Gettysburgs werefought in one through that terrible fortnight in late August and earlySeptember, when the future of France and the whole world hung inthe balance--as the Germans sought to reach Paris and win adecisive victory over the French army. Where destruction endedthere the German invasion reached its limit. 

Forests and streams and ditches and railway culverts played theirpart in tactical surprises, as they did at Gettysburg; and cemeterywalls, too. In all my battlefield visits in Europe I have not seen a singlecemetery wall that was not loopholed. But the fences, whichthroughout the Civil War offered impediment to charges and screento the troops which could reach them first, were missing. The fieldslay in bold stretches, because it is the business of young boys andgirls in Lorraine to watch the cows and keep them out of the corn. 

We stopped at a cross-roads where charges met and wrestled backand forth in and out of the ditches. Fragments of shells appeared assteps scuffed away the thin coating of snow. I picked up an oldFrench cap, with a slash in the top that told how its owner came to hisend, and near by a German helmet. For there are souvenirs in plentylying in the young wheat which was sown after the battle was over. Millions of little nickel bullets are ploughed in with the blood of thosewho died to take the Kaiser to Paris and those who died to keep himout in this fighting across the fields and through the forests, in a tug-of-war of give-and-take, of men exhausted after nights and daysunder fire, men with bloodshot eyes sunk deep in the sockets, dust-laden, blood-spattered, with forty years of latent human powderbreaking forth into hell when the war was only a month old andpassion was at a white heat. 

Hasty shelter-trenches gridiron the land; such trenches as breathlessmen, dropping after a charge, threw up hurriedly with the spades thatthey carry on their backs to give them a little cover. And there is thetrench that stopped the Germans--the trench which they charged butcould not take. It lies among shell-holes so thick that you can stepfrom one to another. In places its crest is torn away, which meansthat half a dozen men were killed in a group. But reserves filled theirplaces. They kept pouring out their stream of lead which Germancourage could not endure. Thus far and no farther the invasion camein that wheat-field which will be ever memorable. 

We went up a hill once crowned by one of those clusters of farm-buildings of stone and mortar, where house and stables andgranaries are close together. All around were bare fields. Those farm-buildings stood up like a mountain peak. The French had the hill andlost it and recovered it. Whichever side had it, the other was bound tobathe it in shells because it commanded the country around. Thevalue of property meant nothing. All that counted was militaryadvantage. Because churches are often on hill-tops, because theyare bound to be used for lookouts, is why they get torn to pieces. When two men are fighting for life they don't bother about upsetting atable with a vase, or notice any "Keep off the grass" signs; no, noteven if the family Bible be underfoot. 

None of the roof, none of the superstructure of these farm-buildingswas left; only the lower walls, which were eighteen inches thick and inplaces penetrated by the shells. For when a Frenchman builds afarmhouse he builds it to last a few hundred years. The farm windmillwas as twisted as a birdcage that has been rolled under a trolley car, but a large hayrake was unharmed. Such is the luck of war. I madeup my mind that if I ever got under shell-fire I would make for thehayrake and avoid the windmill. 

Our tall major pointed out all the fluctuating positions during the battle. It was like hearing a chess match explained from memory by anexpert. Words to him were something precious. He made each onecount as he would the shots from his cannon. His narrative had thelucidity of a terse judge reviewing evidence. The battlefield wasetched on his mind in every important phase of its action. 

Not once did he speak in abuse of the enemy. The staff officer whodirects steel ringing on steel is too busy thrusting and keeping guardto indulge in diatribes. To him the enemy is a powerful impersonaldevil, who must be beaten. When I asked about the conduct of theGermans in the towns they occupied, his lip tightened and his eyesgrew hard. 

"I'm afraid it was pretty bad!" he said; as if he felt, besides the wrongto his own people, the shame that men who had fought so bravelyshould act so ill. I think his attitude toward war was this: "We will diefor France, but calling the Germans names will not help us to win. Itonly takes breath. "

"Allons, messieurs!"

As our car ran up a gentle hill we noticed two soldiers driving a load ofmanure. This seemed a pretty prosaic, even humiliating, business, ina poetic sense, for the brave poilus, veterans of Lorraine's greatbattle. But Father Joffre is a true Frenchman of his time. Why shouldnot the soldiers help the farmers whose sons are away at the frontand perhaps helping farmers back of some Other point of the line?

Over the crest of the hill we came on long lines of soldiers bearingtimbers and fascines for trench-building, which explained why someof the villages were empty. A fascine is something usually made ofwoven branches which will hold dirt in position. The woven wickercases for shells which the German artillery uses and leaves behindwhen it has to quit the field in a hurry, make excellent fascines, and anumber that I saw were of this ready-made kind. After carrying shellfor killing Frenchmen they were to protect the lives of Frenchmen. Near by other soldiers were turning up a strip of fresh earth againstthe snow, which looked like a rip in the frosting of a chocolate cake. 

"How do you like this kind of war?" we asked. It is the kind thatirrigationists and subway excavators make. 

"We've grown to be very fond of it, " was the answer. "It is a cultivatedtaste, which becomes a passion with experience. After you havebeen shot at in the open you want all the earth you can get betweenyou and the bullets. "

Now we alighted from the motor-car and went forward on foot. Wepassed some eight lines of trenches before we came to the onewhere we were to stop. A practised military eye had gone over all thatground; a practised military hand had laid out each trench. After thework was done the civilian's eye could grasp the principle. If onetrench were taken, the men knew exactly how to fall back on the next, which commanded the ground they had left. The trenches were notcontinuous. There were open spaces left purposely. All that front wasliterally locked, and double and triple locked, with trenches. Breakthrough one barred door and there is another and anotherconfronting you. Considering the millions of burrowing and diggingand watching soldiers, it occurred to one that if a marmite (saucepan)came along and buried our little party, our loss would not be as muchnoticed as if a piece of coping from a high building had fallen andextinguished us on Broadway, which would be a relatively novel wayof dying. Being killed in war had long ceased to be a novelty on thecontinent of Europe. 

We seemed in a dead world, except for the leisurely, hoarse, muffledreports of a French gun in the woods on either side of the open spacewhere we stood. Through our glasses we could see quite clearly theline of the German front trench, which was in the outskirts of a villageon higher ground than the French. Not a human being was visible. Both sides were watching for any move of the other, meanwhile lyingtight under cover. By day they were marooned. All supplies and allreliefs of men who are to take their turn in front go out by night. 

There were no men in the trench where we stood; those who wouldman it in case of danger were in the adjoining woods, where they hadonly to cut down saplings and make shelters to be as comfortable asin a winter resort camp in the Adirondacks. Any minute they mightreceive a call--which meant death for many. But they were used tothat, and their card games went on none the less merrily. 

"No farther?" we asked our major. 

"No farther!" he said. "This is risk enough for you. It looks verypeaceful, but the enemy could toss in some marmites if it pleasedhim. " Perhaps he was exaggerating the risk for the sake of a realisticeffect on the sightseers. No matter! In time one was to have risksenough in trenches. It was on such an occasion as this, on anotherpart of the French line, that two correspondents slipped away fromthe officers conducting them, though their word of honour was givennot to do so--which adds another reason for military suspicion of thePress. The officers rang up the nearest telephone which connectedwith the front trenches, the batteries, and regimental and brigadeheadquarters, to apprehend two men of such-and-such description. They were taken as easily as a one-eyed, one-eared man, with awooden leg and red hair would be in trying to get out of policeheadquarters when the doormen had his Bertillon photograph andmeasurements to go by. 

That battery hidden from aerial observation in the thick forest kept upits slow firing at intervals. It was "bothering" one of the Germantrenches. Fiendish the consistent regularity with which it kept on, andso easy for the gunners. They had only to slip in a shell, swing abreech-lock home, and pull a lanyard. The German guns did notrespond because they could not locate the French battery. They mayhave known that it was somewhere in the forest, but firing at two orthree hundred acres of wood on the chance of reaching some gunsheavily protected by earth and timbering was about like tossing a peafrom the top of the Washington Monument on the chance of hitting afour-leafed clover on the lawn below. 

Our little group remained, not standing in the trench but back of it, infull relief for some time; for the German gunners refused to play forrealism by sending us a marmite. Probably they had seen us throughthe telescope at the start and concluded we weren't worth a shot. Inthe first months of the war such a target would have received a burstof shells, for the fun of seeing us scatter, if nothing else. Thenammunition was plentiful and the sport of shooting had not lost itszest; but in these winter days orders were not to waste ammunition. 

The factories must manufacture a supply ahead for the summercampaign. There must be fifteen dollars' worth of target in sight, say, for the smallest shell costs that; and the shorter you are of shells themore valuable the target must be. Besides, firing a cannon hadbecome as commonplace a function to both French and Germangunners as getting up to put another stick of wood in the stove orgoing to open the door to take a letter from the postman. 

We had glimpses of other trenches; but this is not the place in thisbook to write of trenches. We shall see trenches till we are weary ofthem later. We are going direct to Gerbéviller which was--emphasison the past tense--a typical little Lorraine town of fifteen hundredinhabitants. Look where you would now, as we drove along the road, and you saw churches without steeples, houses with roofs standingon sections of walls, houses smashed into bits. 

"I saw no such widespread destruction as this in Belgium!" Iexclaimed. 

"There was no such fighting in Belgium, " was the answer. 

Of course not, except in the south-western corner, where the armiesstill face each other. 

"Not all the damage was done by the Germans, " the major explained. "Naturally, when they were pouring in death from the cover of ahouse, our guns let drive at that house, " he went on. "The owners ofthe houses that were hit by our shells are rather proud--proud of ourmarksmanship, proud that we gave the unwelcome guest a hot pill toswallow. "

For ten days the Bavarians had Gerbéviller. They tore it to piecesbefore they got it, then burned the remains because they said thepopulation sniped at them. All the orgy of Louvain was repeated here, unchronicled to our people at home. The church looks like a Swisscheese from shell-holes. Its steeple was bound to be an observationpost, reasoned the Germans; so they poured shells into it. But thebrewery had a tall chimney which was an even better lookout, and thebrewery is the one building unharmed in the town. The Bavariansknew that they would need that for their commissariat. For a Bavarianwill not fight without his beer. The land was littered with barrels afterthey had gone. I saw some in trenches occupied by Bavarianreserves not far back of where their firing-line had been. 

"However, the fact that the brewery is intact and the church in ruinsdoes not prove that a brewery is better than a church. It only proveswhich is the Lord's side in this war, " said Sister Julie. But I get aheadof my story. 

In the middle of the main street were half a dozen smoke-blackenedhouses which remained standing, an oasis in the sea of destruction, with doors and windows intact facing gaps where doors and windowshad been. We entered with a sense of awe of the chance which hadspared these buildings. 

"Sister Julie!" the major called. 

A short, sturdy nun of about sixty years answered cheerily andappeared in the dark hall. She led us into the sitting-room, where shespryly placed chairs for our little party. She was smiling; her eyeswere sparkling with a hospitable and kindly interest in us, while I felt, on my part, that thrill of curiosity that one always has when he meetssome celebrated person for the first time--curiosity no less keen thanif I were to meet Barbara Frietchie. 

Through all that battle of ten days, with the cannon never silent day ornight, with shells screaming overhead and crashing into houses;through ten days of thunder and lightning and earthquake, she andher four sister associates remained in Gerbéviller. When the townwas fired they moved from one building to another. They nursed bothwounded French and Germans; also wounded townspeople whocould not flee with the others. 

"You were not frightened? You did not think of going away?" she wasasked. 

"Frightened?" she answered. "I had not time to think of that. Goaway? How could I when the Lord's work had come to me?"

President Poincaré went in person to give her the Legion of Honour, the first given to a woman in this war; so rarely given to a woman, andhere bestowed with the love of a nation. Sister Marie was in thekitchen at the time, cooking the meal for the sick for whom the sistersare still caring. So Sister Julie took the President of France into thekitchen to meet Sister Marie, quite as she would take you or me. Ahuman being is simply a human being to Sister Julie, to be treatedcourteously; and great men may not cause a meal for the sick toburn. After the complexity of French politics, President Poincaré wasanything but unfavourably impressed by the incident. 

"He was such a little man, I could not believe at first that he could bePresident, " she said. "I thought that the President of France would bea big man. But he was very agreeable and, I am sure, very wise. Then there were other men with him, a Monsieur de-de-Deschanel, who was president of something or other in Paris, and Monsieur du-du--yes, that was it, Du Bag. He also is president of something inParis. They were very agreeable, too. "

"And your Legion of Honour?"

"Oh, my medal that M. Le Président gave me! I keep that in a drawer. I do not wear it every day when I am in my working-clothes. "

"Have you ever been to Paris?"

"No, monsieur. "

"They will make a great ado over you when you go. "

"I must stay in Gerbéviller. If I stayed during the fighting and when theGermans were here, why should I leave now? Gerbéviller is myhome. There is much to do here and there will be more to do whenthe people who were driven away return. "

These nuns saw their townspeople stood up against a wall and shot;they saw their townspeople killed by shells. The cornucopia of war'shorrors was emptied at their door. And women of a provincial town, who had led peaceful, cloistered lives, they did not blench or falter inthe presence of ghastliness which only men are supposed to havethe stoicism to witness. 

What feature of the nightmare had held most vividly in Sister Julie'smind? It is hard to say; but the one which she dwelt on was about theboy and the cow. The invaders, when they came in, ordered that noinhabitant leave his house, on pain of death. A boy of ten took hiscow to pasture in the morning as usual. He did not see anythingwrong in that. The cow ought to go to pasture. And he was shot, forhe broke a military regulation. He might have been a spy using thecow as a blind. War does not bother to discriminate. It kills. 

Sister Julie can enjoy a joke, particularly on the Germans, and hercheerful smile and genuine laugh are a lesson to all people who drawlong faces in time of trouble and weep over spilt milk. A buoyanttemperament and unshaken faith carried her through her ordeal. Though her hair is white, youth's optimism and confidence in thefuture and the joy of victory for France overshadowed the present. The town and church would be rebuilt; children would play in thestreets again; there was a lot of the Lord's work to do yet. 

In every word and thought she is French--French in her liveliness ofspirit and quickness of comprehension; wholly French there on theborderland of Germany. If we only went to the outskirts of the town, she reminded us, we could see how the soldiers of her belovedFrance fought and why she was happy to have remained inGerbéviller to welcome them back. 

In sight of that intact brewery and that wreck of a church is a gentleslope of open field, cut by a road. Along the crest were many moundsas thick as the graves of a cemetery, and by the side of the road wasa temporary monument above a big mound, surrounded by a sandedwalk and a fence. The dead had been thickest at this point, and herethey had been laid in a vast grave. The surviving comrades hadmade that monument; and, in memory of what the dead had foughtfor, the living said that they were not yet ready to quit fighting. 

Standing on this crest, you were a thousand yards away from theedge of a woods. German aeroplanes had seen the French massingfor a charge under the cover of that crest; but French aeroplanescould not see what was in the woods. Rifles and machine-gunspoured a spray of lead across the crest when the French appeared. But the French, who were righting for Sister Julie's town, would notstop their rush at first. They kept on, as Pickett's men did when theFederal guns riddled their ranks with grapeshot. This accounts formany of the mounds being well beyond the crest. The Germansmade a mistake in firing too soon. They would have made a heavierkilling if they had allowed the charge to go farther. After the French fellback, for two days and nights their wounded lay out on that fieldwithout water or food, between the two forces, and if their comradesapproached to give succour the machine-guns blazed more death, because the Germans did not want to let the French dig a trench onthe crest. After two days the French forced the Germans out of thewoods by hitting them from another point. 

We went over the field of another charge half a mile away. There aFrench regiment put a stream with a single bridge at their back--whichrequires some nerve--and charged a German trench on risingground. They took it. Then they tried to take the woods beyond. Before they were checked twenty-two officers out of a total of thirtyfell. But they did not give up the ground they had won. They burrowedinto the earth in a trench of their own, and when help came they putthe Germans out of the woods. 

The men of this regiment were not first line, but the older fellows--menof the type we stopped to chat with in the village--hastening to thefront when the war began. Their officers were mostly reserves, too, who left civil occupations at the call to arms. One of the eightsurvivors of the thirty was with us, a stocky little man, hardly lookingthe hero or the soldier. I expressed my admiration, and he answeredquietly: "It was for France!" How often I have heard that as a reasonfor courage or sacrifice! The enemies of France have learned torespect it, though they had a poor opinion of the French army beforethe war began. 

"That railroad bridge yonder the Germans left intact when theyoccupied it because they were certain that they would need it tosupply their troops when they took the Gap of Mirecourt andsurrounded the French army, " I was told. "However, they had to go insuch a hurry that they failed to mine it. They must have fired fivehundred shells afterwards to destroy it, in vain. "

It was dusk when we entered the city of Lunéville for the second time. Whole blocks lay in ruins; others only showed where shells hadcrashed into walls. It is hard to estimate just how much damage shell-fire has done to a town, for you see the effects only where they havestruck on the street sides and not when they strike in the centre of theblock. But Lunéville has certainly suffered as much as Louvain, onlywe did not hear about it. Grim, sad Louvain, with its German sentriesamong the ruins! Happy, triumphant Lunéville, with its poilus insteadof German sentries!

"We are going to meet the mayor, " said the major. 

First we went to his office. But that was a mistake. We were invited tohis house, which was a fine, old, eighteenth-century building. If youcould transport it to New York some arms-and-ammunition millionairewould give half a million dollars for it. The hallway was smoke-blackened and a burnt spot showed where the enemy had tried to setit on fire before evacuating the town. Ascending a handsome oldstaircase, we were in rooms with gilded mirrors and carved mantels, where we were introduced to His Honour, a lively man of some fortyyears. 

"I have been in Amérique two months. So much English do I speak. No more!" said the mayor merrily, and introduced us in turn to hiswife, who spoke not even "so much" English, but French as fast andas piquantly as none but a Frenchwoman can. Her only son, who wasseventeen, was going up with the 1916 class of recruits very soon. He was a sturdy youngster; a type of Young France who will makethe France of the future. 

"You hate to see him go?" I asked. 

"It is for France!" she answered. 

We had cakes and tea and a merrier--at least, a more heartfelt--partythan at any mayor's reception in time of peace. Everybody talked. Forthe French do know how to talk, when they have not turned grim, silent soldiers. I heard story on story of the German occupation; andhow the mayor was put in jail and held as a hostage; and what aGerman general said to him when he was brought in as a prisoner tobe interrogated in his own house, which the general occupied asheadquarters. 

Among the guests was the wife of a French general in her Red Crosscap. She might see her husband once a week by meeting him on theroad between the city and the front. He could not afford to be anyfarther from his post, lest the Germans spring a surprise. The extentof the information which he gave her was that all went well for France. Father Joffre plays no favourites in his discipline. 

Happy, happy Lorraine in the midst of its ruins! Happy because heradored tricolour floats over those ruins. 

XIIIA Road Of War I Know

Other armies go to war across the land, but the British go across thesea. They take the Channel ferry in order to reach the front. Theirs isthe home road of war to me; the road of my affections, where menspeak my mother tongue. It begins on the platform at Victoria Station, with the khaki of officers and men, returning from leave, relieved bythe warmer colours of women who have come to say good-bye tothose they love. In five hours from the time of starting one may beacross that ribbon of salt water, which means much in isolation andlittle in distance, and in the trenches. 

That veteran regular--let us separate him from the crowd--is a type Ihave often seen, a type that has become as familiar as one'sneighbours in one's own town. We will call him the tenth man. That is, of every ten men who went to the front a year ago in his battalion, nine are gone. All of the hardships and all of the terrors of war he haswitnessed: men dropped neatly by a bullet; men mangled by shells. 

His khaki is spotless, thanks to his wife, who has dressed in her bestfor the occasion. Terrible as war itself, but new, that hat of hers, whichprobably represented a good deal of looking into windows andpricing; and her gown of the cheapest material, drooping from herround shoulders, is the product of the poor dress-making skill ofhands which show only too well who does all the housework at home. The children, a boy of four and a girl of seven, are in their best, too, with faces scrubbed till they shine. 

You will see like scenes in stations at home when the father hasfound work in a distant city and is going on ahead to get establishedbefore the family follow him. Such incidents are common in civil life;they became common at Victoria Station. What is common has nosignificance, editors say. 

When the time came to go through the gate, the veteran picked theboy up in his arms and pressed him very close and the little girllooked on wonderingly, while the mother was not going to make it anyharder for the father by tears. "Good-bye, Tom!" she said. So hisname was Tom, this tenth man. 

I spoke with him. His battalion was full with recruits. It had been keptfull. But, considering the law of chance, what about the surviving oneout of an original ten?

"Yes, I've had my luck with me, " he said. "Probably my turn will come. Maybe I'll never see the wife and kids again. "

The morning roar of London had begun. That station was a smallspot in the city. There were not enough officers and men taking thetrain to make up a day's casualty list; for ours was only a small partyreturning from leave. The transports, unseen, carried the multitudes. Wherever one had gone in England he had seen soldiers andwherever he went in France he was to see still more soldiers. England had become an armed camp; and England plodded on, "muddled" on, preparing, ever preparing, to forge in time of war thethunderbolt for war which was undreamed of in time of peace whenother nations were forging their thunderbolts. 

Still the recruiting posters called for more soldiers and the casualtylists appeared day after day with the regularity of wantadvertisements. Imagine eight million men under arms in the UnitedStates and you have the equivalent to what England did by thevolunteer system. The more there were the more pessimistic becamethe British Press. Pessimism brought in recruits. Bad news madeEngland take another deep breath of energizing determination. It wasthe last battle which was decisive. She had always won that. Shewould win it again. 

They talk of war aboard the Pullman, after officers have waved theirhands out of the windows to their wives, quite as if they were going toScotland for a weekend instead of back to the firing-line. Britishphlegm this is called. No, British habit, I should say, the race-bred, individualistic quality of never parading emotions in public; the instinctof keeping things which are one's own to one's self. Personally, I likethis way. In one form or another, as the hedges fly by the trainwindows, the subject is always war. War creeps into golf, or shooting, or investments, or politics. Only one suggestion quite frees the mindfrom the omnipresent theme: Will the Channel be smooth? TheGermans have nothing to do with that. It is purely a matter of weather. Bad sailors are more worried about the crossing than about the shell-fire they are going to face. 

With bad sailors or good sailors, the significant thing which hadbecome a commonplace was that the Channel was a safely-guardedBritish sea lane. In all my crossings I was never delayed. For Englandhad one thunderbolt ready forged when the war began. The onlysubmarines, or destroyers, or dirigibles that one saw were hers. Antennae these of the great fleet waiting with the threat of storedlightning ready to be flashed from gun-mouths; a threat as efficaciousas action, in nowise mysterious or subtle, but definite as steel andpowder, speaking the will of a people in their chosen field of power, felt over all the seas of the world, coast of Maine and the Carolinas noless than Labrador. Thousands of transports had come and gone, carrying hundreds of thousands of soldiers and food for men andguns to India; and on the high road to India, to Australia, to SanFrancisco, shipping went its way undisturbed by anything that divesor flies. 

The same white hospital ships lying in that French harbour; the sameline of grey, dusty-looking ambulances parked on the quay!Everybody in the one-time sleepy, week-end tourist resort seems tobe in uniform; to have something to do with war. All surroundingsbecome those of war long before you reach the front. That knot ofcivilians, waiting their turn for another examination of the same kindas that on the other side of the Channel, have shown good reasonsfor going to Paris to the French Consul in London, or they might notproceed even this far on the road of war. They seem outcasts--ahumble lot in the variegated costumes of the civil world--outcastsfrom the disciplined world in its pattern garb of khaki. Their excuse fornot being in the game is that they are too old or that they are women. For now the war has sucked into its vortex the great majority of thosewho are strong enough to fight or work. 

A traveller might be a spy; hence, all this red tape for the many tocatch the one. Even red tape seems now to have become normal. War is normal. It would seem strange to cross the Channel in time ofpeace; the harbour would not look like itself with civilians not havingto show passports, and without the white hospital ships, and thewhite-bearded landing-officer at the foot of the gangway, and theboard held up with lists of names of officers who have telegramswaiting for them. 

For the civilians a yellow card of disembarkation and for the military awhite card. The officers and soldiers walk off at once and the queueof civilians waits. One civilian with a white card, who belongs to noregiment, who is not even a chaplain or a nurse, puzzles the landing-officer for a moment. But there is something to go with it--acorrespondent's licence and a letter from a general who looks aftersuch things. They show that you "belong"; and if you don't belong onthe road of war you will not get far. As well try to walk past thedoorman and take a seat in the United States Senate chamber duringa session. 

Most precious that magical piece of paper. I happen to be the onlyAmerican with one, unless he is in the fighting line--which is one sureway to get to the front. The price of all the opera boxes at theMetropolitan will not buy it; and it is the passport to the welcomingsmile from an army chauffeur, whom I almost regard as my own. Butits real value appears at the outskirts of the city. There the dead lineis drawn; there the sheep are finally separated from the goats by aFrench sentry guarding the winding passageway between somecarts, which have been in the same place in the road for months. 

The car spins over the broad, hard French road, in a land where formany miles you see no signs of war, until it turns into the grounds of asmall château opposite a village church. The proprietor of a drygoodsstore in a neighbouring city spends his summers here; but thissummer he is in town, because the Press wanted a place to live andhe was good enough to rent us his country place. So this is home, where the five British and one American correspondents live andmess. The expense of our cars costs us treble all the rest of ourexpenses. They take us where we want to go. We go where weplease, but we may not write what we please. We see something likea thousand times more than we can tell. The conditions are such asto make a news reporter throw up his hands and faint. But if he hadhis unbridled way, one day he might feel the responsibility for the lossof hundreds of British soldiers' lives. 

"It may be all right for war correspondents, but it is a devil of a poorplace for a newspaper man, " as one editor said. Yet it is the onlyplace where you can really know anything about the war. 

We become part of the machinery of the great organization thatencloses us in its regular processes. No one in his heart envies thepress officer who holds the blue pencil over us. He has to "take it bothgoing and coming. " He labours on our behalf and sometimes welabour with him. The staff are willing enough to let us watch the armyat work, but they do not care whether or not we write about their war;he wants us both to see it and to write about it. He tells us some bigpiece of news, and then says: "That is for yourselves; you may notwrite it. "

People do not want to read about the correspondents, of course. They want to read what the correspondents have to tell about thewar; but the conditions of our work are interesting because we are thelink between the army and the reading public. All that it learns fromactual observation of what the army is doing comes through us. 

We may not give the names of regiments and brigades until weeksafter a fight, because that will tell the enemy what troops areengaged; we may not give the names of officers, for that is glorifyingone when possibly another did his duty equally well. It is theanonymity of the struggle that makes it all seem distant and unreal--tillthe telegram comes from the War Office to say that the one amongthe millions who is dear to you is dead or wounded. Otherwise, it is atorment of unidentified elements behind a curtain, which is parted foran announcement of gain or loss, or to give out a list of the fallen. 

The world wants to read that Peter Smith led the King's OwnParticular Fusiliers in a charge. It may not know Peter Smith, but hisname and that of his regiment make the information seem definite. The statement that a well-known millionaire yesterday gave a milliondollars to charity, or that a man in a checked suit swam from theBattery to Coney Island, is not convincing; nor is the fact that oneprivate unnamed held back the Germans with bombs in the traverseof a trench for hours until help came. We at the front, however, doknow the names; we meet the officers and men. Ours is the intimacywhich we may not interpret except in general terms. 

Every article, every dispatch, every letter, passes through thecensor's hand. But we are never told what to write. The liberty of thePress is too old an institution in England for that. Always we maylearn why an excision is made. The purpose is to keep informationfrom the enemy. It is not like fighting Boers or Filipinos, this war ofwalls of men who can turn the smallest bit of information toadvantage. 

Intelligence officers speak of their work as piecing together the partsof a jig-saw puzzle. What seems a most innocent fact by itself mayfurnish the bit which gives the figure in the picture its face. It does notfollow because you are an officer that you know what may and whatmay not be of service to the enemy. 

A former British officer who had become a well-known military critic, inan account of a visit to the front mentioned having seen a battle froma certain church tower. Publication of the account was followed by atornado of shell-fire that killed and wounded many British soldiers. Only a staff specialist, trained in intelligence work and in constanttouch with the intelligence department, can be a safe censor. At thesame time, he is the best friend of the correspondent. He knows whatis harmless and what may not be allowed. He wants the Press tohave as much as possible. For the more the public knows about itssoldiers, the better the morale of the people, which reflects itself in themorale of the army. 

The published casualty lists giving the names of officers and men andtheir battalions is a means of causing casualties. From a prisonertaken the enemy learns what battalions were present at a given fight;he adds up the numbers reported killed and wounded and ascertainswhat the fight cost the enemy and, in turn, the effect of the fire fromhis side. But the British public demanded to see the casualty lists andthe British Press were allowed to gratify the desire. They appeared inthe newspapers, of course, days after the nearest relative of the deador wounded man had received official notification from the War Office. 

Officers' letters from the front, so freely published earlier in thewar, amazed experienced correspondents by their unconsciousindiscretions. The line officer who had been in a fight told all that hesaw. Twenty officers doing the same along a stretch of front and thejig-saw experts, plus what information they had from spies, were inclover. Editors said: "But these men are officers. They ought to knowwhen they are imparting military secrets. "

Alas, they do not know! It is not to be expected that they should. Theirbusiness is to fight; the business of other experts is to safeguardinformation. For a long time the British army kept correspondentsfrom the front on the principle that the business of a correspondentmust be to tell what ought not to be told. Yet they were to learn thatthe accredited correspondent, an expert at his profession, working inharmony with the experts of the staff, let no military secrets pass. 

At our mess we get the Berlin dailies promptly. Soon after theGermans are reading the war correspondence from their own frontwe are reading it, and laughing at jokes in their comic papers and atcartoons which exhibit John Bull as a stricken old ogre and Britanniawho Rules the Waves with the corners of her mouth drawn down tothe bottom of her chin, as she sees the havoc that von Tirpitz ismaking with submarines which do not stop us from receiving ourGerman jokes regularly across the Channel. 

Doubtless the German messes get their Punch and the Londonillustrated weeklies regularly. In the time that it took the English dailywith the account of the action seen from the church tower to reachBerlin and the news to be wired to the front, the German guns madeuse of the information. Neutral little Holland is the telltale of bothsides; the ally and the enemy of all intelligence corps. Scores ofexperts in jig-saw puzzles on both sides seize every scrap ofinformation and piece them together. Each time that one gets a bitfrom a newspaper he is for a sharper Press censorship on his sideand a more liberal one on the other. 

We six correspondents have our insignia, as must everyone who isfree to move along the lines. By a glance you may tell everybody'sbranch and rank in that complicated and disciplined world, where noman acts for himself, but always on someone else's orders. 

"Don't you know who they are? They are the correspondents, " I hearda soldier say. "D. Chron. , that's the Daily Chronicle; M. Post, that's theMorning Post; D. Mail, that's the Daily Mail. There's one with U. S. A. What paper is that?"

"It ain't a paper, " said another. "It's the States--he's a Yank!"

The War Office put it on the American cousin's arm, and wherever itgoes it seems welcome. It may puzzle the gunners when theAmerican says, "That was a peach of a shot, right across the pan!" orthe infantry when he says, "It cuts no ice!" and there is no ice visiblein Flanders; he speaks about typhoid to the medical corps which callsit enteric; and "fly-swatting" is a new word to the sanitarians, who arenone the less busily engaged in that noble art. Lessons for the Britishin the "American language" while you wait! In return, the American islearning what a "stout-hearted thruster" and other phrases mean inthe Simon-pure English. 

The correspondents are the spoiled spectators of the army's work;the itinerants of the road of war. Nobody sees so much as we, because we have nothing to do but to see. An officer looking at thetowers of Ypres Cathedral a mile away from the trench where he was, said: "No, I've never been in Ypres. Our regiment has not beenstationed in that part of the line. "

We have sampled all the trenches; we have studied the ruins ofYpres with an archaeologist's eye; we know the names of theestaminets of the villages, from "The Good Farmer" to "TheHarvester's Rest" and "The Good Cousin, " not to mention "TheOmnibus Stop" on the Cassel Hill. Madame who keeps the hotel inthe G. H. Q. Town knows me so well that we wave hands to each otheras I pass the door; and the clerks in a certain shop have learned thatthe American likes his fruit raw, instead of stewed in the Englishfashion, and plenty of it, especially if it comes from the South out ofseason, as it does from Florida or California to pampered humanbeings at home, who, if they could see as much of this war as I haveseen, would appreciate what a fortunate lot they are to have not aribbon of saltwater but a broad sea full of it, and the British navy, too, between them and the thing on the other side of the zone of death. 

G. H. Q. Means General Headquarters and B. E. F. , which shows theway for your letters from England, means British Expeditionary Force. The high leading, the brains of the army, are theoretically at G. H. Q. That word theoretically is used advisedly in view of opinion at otherpoints. An officer sent from G. H. Q. To command a brigade had notbeen long out before he began to talk about those confounded one-thing-and-another fellows at G. H. Q. When he was at G. H. Q. He usedto talk about those confounded one-thing-and-another fellows whocommanded corps, divisions, and brigades at the front. Thephilosophers of G. H. Q. Smiled and the philosophers of the armysmiled--it was the old story of the staff and the line; of the main officeand the branches. But the line did the most smiling to see the newbrigadier getting a taste of his own medicine. 

G. H. Q. Directs the whole; here every department of all that vastconcern which supplies the hundreds of thousands of men andprepares for the other hundreds of thousands is focussed. Thesymbol of its authority is a red band round the cap, which means thatyou are a staff officer. No war at G. H. Q. , only the driving force of war. It seems as far removed from the front as the New York office of astring of manufacturing plants. 

If one follows a red-banded cap into a door he sees other officers andclerks and typewriters, and a sign which says that a department chiefhas his desk in the drawing-room of a private house--where he hashad it for months. Go to one mess and you will hear talk aboutgarbage pails and how to kill flies; to another, about hospitals andclearing stations for the wounded; to another, about barbed wire, sandbags, spades, timber, and galvanized iron--the engineers; toanother, about guns, shells, rifles, bullets, mortars, bombs, bayonets, and high explosives--the ordnance; to another, about jam, bread, bacon, uniforms, iron rations, socks, underclothes, tinned goods, fresh beef, and motor-trucks--the Army Service Corps; to another, about attacks, counter-attacks, and salients, and about what theothers are doing and will have to do--the operations. 

The Chief of Staff drives the eight-horse team. He works sixteenhours a day. So do most of the others. This is how you prove to theline that you have a right to be at G. H. Q. When you get to knowG. H. Q. It seems like any other business institution. Many are therewho do not want to be there; but they have been found out. They arespecialists, who know how to do one thing particularly well and arekept doing it. No use of growling that you would like a "fighting job. "

G. H. Q. Is the main station on the road of war, which hears the soundof the guns faintly. Beyond is the region of all the activities that itcommands, up to the trenches, where all roads end and all effortsconsummate. One has seen dreary flat lands of mud and leaflesstrees become fair with the spring, the growing harvest reaped, andthe leaves begin to fall. Always the factory of war was in the sameplace; the soldiers billeted in the same towns; the puffs of shrapnelsmoke over the same belt of landscape; the ruins of the samevillages being pounded by high explosives. Always the sound ofguns; always the wastage of life, as passing ambulances, the curtainsdrawn, speed by, their part swiftly and covertly done. The enormity ofthe thing holds the imagination; its sure and orderly processes of anorganized civilization working at destruction win the admiration. Thereis a thrill in the courage and sacrifice and the drilled readiness ofresponse to orders. 

The spectator is under varying spells. To-day he seems in a fantasticworld, whose horror makes it impossible of realization. To-morrow, ashis car takes him along a pleasant by-road among wheat-fields wherepeasants are working and no soldier is in sight, it is a world of peaceand one thinks that he has mistaken the roar of a train for the distantroar of gun-fire. Again, it seems the most real of worlds, an exclusiveman's world, where nothing counts but organized material force, andall those cleanly, well-behaved men in khaki are a part of thepermanent population. 

One sees the war as a colossal dynamo, where force is perpetual likethe energy of the sun. The war is going on for ever. The reaper cutsthe harvest, but another harvest comes. War feeds on itself, renewsitself. Live men replace the dead. There seems no end to supplies ofmen. The pounding of the guns, like the roar of Niagara, becomeseternal. Nothing can stop it. 

XIVTrenches In Winter

The difference between trench warfare in winter and in summer isthat between sleeping on the lawn in March and in July. It was in themud and winds of March that I first saw the British front. The windswere much like the seasonal winds at home; but the Flanders mud islike no other mud, in the judgment of the British soldier. It is mixedwith glue. When I returned to the front in June for a longer stay, themud had become clouds of dust that trailed behind the motor-car. 

In March my eagerness to see a trench was that of one from theWestern prairies to get his first glimpse of the ocean. Once I might gointo a trench as often as I pleased I became "fed up" with trenches, as the British say. They did not mean much more than an alley or arailway cutting. One came to think of the average peaceful trench asa ditch where some men were eating marmalade and bully beef andlooking across a field at some more men who were eating sausageand "K. K. " bread, each party taking care that the other did not seehim. 

Writers have served us trenches in every possible literary style thatcensorship will permit. Whoever "tours" them is convinced that noneof the descriptions published heretofore has been adequate andwrites one of his own which will be final. All agree that it is not likewhat they thought it was. But, despite all the descriptions, the publicstill fails to visualize a trench. You do not see a trench with your eyesso much as with your mind and imagination. That long line where allthe powers of destruction within man's command are in deadlock hasbecome a symbol for something which cannot be expressed bywords. No one has yet really described a shell-burst, or a flash oflightning, or Niagara Falls; and no one will ever describe a trench. Hecannot put anyone else there. He can only be there himself. 

The first time that I looked over a British parapet was in the edge of awood. Board walks ran across the spongy earth here and there; thedoors of little shanties with earth roofs opened on to those streets, which were called Piccadilly and the Strand. I was reminded of apleasant prospector's camp in Alaska. Only, everybody was inuniform and occasionally something whished through the branches ofthe trees. One looked up to see what it was and where it was going, this stray bullet, without being any wiser. 

We passed along one of the walks until we came to a wall ofsandbags--simply white bags about three-quarters of the size of anordinary pillowslip, filled with earth and laid one on top of another likebags of grain. You stood beside a man who had a rifle laid across thetop of the pile. Of course, you did not wear a white hat or wave ahandkerchief. One does not do that when he plays hide-and-seek. 

Or, if you preferred, you might look into a chip of glass, with yourhead wholly screened by the wall of sandbags, which got a reflectionfrom another chip of glass above the parapet. This is the trenchperiscope; the principle of all of them is the same. They have no morevariety than the fashion in knives, forks and spoons on the dinnertable. 

One hundred and fifty yards away across a dead field was anotherwall of sandbags. The distance is important. It is always stated in alldescriptions. One hundred and fifty yards is not much. Only when youget within forty or fifty yards have you something to brag about. Yetthree hundred yards may be more dangerous than fifteen, if anartillery "hate" is on. 

Look for an hour, and all you see is the wall of sandbags. Not even arabbit runs across that dead space. The situation gets its power ofsuggestion from the fact that there are Germans behind the otherwall--real, live Germans. They are trying to kill the British on our sideand we are trying to kill them; and they are as coyly unaccommodatingabout putting up their heads as we are. The emotion of the situationis in the fact that a sharpshooter might send a shot at your cap; hemight smash a periscope; a shell might come. A rifle cracks--that isall. Nearly everyone has heard the sound, which is no different at thefront than elsewhere. And the sound is the only information you get. It is not so interesting as shooting at a deer, for you can tell whetheryou hit him or not. The man who fires from a trench is not even certainwhether he saw a German or not. He shot at some shadow or objectalong the crest which might have been a German head. 

Thus, one must take the word of those present that there is any morelife behind than in front of the sandbags. However, if you are scepticalyou may have conviction by starting to crawl over the top of theBritish parapet. After dark the soldiers will slip over and bring backyour body. It is this something you do not see, this somethingvisualized by the imagination, which convinces you that you ought tobe considerate enough of posterity to write the real description of atrench. Look for an hour at that wall of sandbags and yourimagination sees more and more, while your eye sees onlysandbags. What does this war mean to you? There it is: only you candescribe what this war means to you. 

Many a soldier who has spent months in trenches has not seen aGerman. I boast that I have seen real Germans through my glasses. They were walking along a road back of their trenches. It was mostfascinating. All the Germans I had ever seen in Germany were nothalf so interesting. I strained my eyes watching those wonderfulbeings as I might strain them at the first visiting party from Mars toearth. There must have been at least ten out of the Kaiser's millions. 

In summer that wood had become a sylvan bower, or a pastoralparadise, or a leafy nook, as you please. The sun played through thebranches in a patchwork; flowers bloomed on the dirt roofs of theshanties, and a swallow had a nest--famous swallow!--on one of theparapets. True, it was not on the front parapet; it was on the reserve. The swallow knew what he was about. He was taking a reasonableamount of risk and playing reasonably secure to get a front seat, according to the ethics of the war correspondent. The two walls ofsandbags were in the same place that they had been six monthspreviously. A little patching had been done after some shells had hitthe mark, though not many had come. 

For this was a quiet corner. Neither side was interested in stirring upthe hornets' nest. If a member of Parliament wished to see whattrench life was like he was brought here, because it was one of thesafest places for a few minutes' look at the sandbags which Mr. Atkins stared at week in and week out. Some Conservatives, however, in the case of Radical members, would have chosen adifferent kind of trench to show; for example, that one which wassuggested to me by the staff officer with the twinkle in his eye on mybest day at the front. 

In want of an army pass to the front in order to write your owndescription, then, put up a wall of sandbags in a vacant lot andanother one hundred and fifty yards away and fire a rifle occasionallyfrom your wall at the head of a man on the opposite side, who willshoot at yours--and there you are. If you prefer the realistic to theromantic school and wish to appreciate the nature of trench life inwinter, find a piece of wet, flat country, dig a ditch seven or eight feetdeep, stand in icy water looking across at another ditch, and sleep ina cellar that you have dug in the wall, and you are nearunderstanding what Mr. Atkins has been doing for his country. Theditch should be cut zigzag in and out, like the lines dividing thesquares of a checker-board; that makes more work and localizes theburst of shells. 

Of course, the moist walls will be continually falling in and requiremending in a drenching, freezing rain of the kind that the Lord visitson all who wage war underground in Flanders. Incidentally, you mustlook after the pumps, lest the water rise to your neck. For all the whileyou are fighting Flanders mud as well as the Germans. 

To carry realism to the limit of the Grand Guignol school, then, arrange some bags of bullets with dynamite charges on a wire, whichwill do for shrapnel; plant some dynamite in the parapet, which will dofor high explosive shells that burst on contact; sink heavier charges ofdynamite under your feet, which will do for mines, and set them off, while you engage someone to toss grenades and bombs at you. 

Though scores of officers' letters had given their account of trench lifewith the vividness of personal experience, I must mention my firsttrench in Flanders in winter when, with other correspondents, I sawthe real thing under the guidance of the commanding officer of thatparticular section, a slight, wiry man who wore the ribbon of theVictoria Cross won in another war for helping to "save the guns. " Hemade seeing trenches in the mud seem a pleasure trip. He was thekind who would walk up to his ball as if he knew how to play golf, send out a clean, fair, long drive, and then use his iron as if he knewhow to use an iron, without talking about his game on the way aroundor when he returned to the club-house. Men could go into dangerbehind him without realizing that they were in danger; they couldshare hardship without realizing that there were any hardships. Suchas he put faith and backbone into a soldier by their very manner; andif their professional training equal their talents, when war comes theywin victories. 

We had rubber boots, electric torches, and wore British warms, thoseshort, thick coats which collect a modicum of mud for you to carrybesides what you are carrying on your boots. We walked along ahard road in the dark toward an aurora borealis of German flares, which popped into the sky like Roman candles and burst in circles oflight. They seemed to be saying: "Come on! Try to crawl up on usand play us a trick and our eyes will find you and our marksmen willstop you. Come on! We make the night into day, and watching neverceases from our parapet. "

Occasional rifle-shots and a machine-gun's ter-rut were audible fromthe direction of the jumping red glare, which stretched right and left asfar as the eye could see. We broke off the road into a morass of mud, as one might cross fields when he had lost his way, and plunged ontill the commanding officer said, "We go in here!" and we descendedinto a black chasm in the earth. The wonder was that any ditch couldbe cut in soil which the rains had turned into syrup. Mud oozed fromthe sandbags, through the wire netting, and between the woodensupports which held the walls in place. It was just as bad over in theGerman trenches. General Mud laid siege to both armies. The field ofbattle where he gathered his gay knights was a slough. His tug of warwas strife against landslides, rheumatism, pneumonia, and frozenfeet. 

The soldier tries to kill his adversary; he tries to prevent his adversaryfrom killing him. He is as busy in safeguarding as in taking life. Whilehe breathes, thinks, fights mud, he blesses as well as curses mud. Mother Earth is still unconquerable. In her bosom man still findssecurity; such security that "dug in" he can defy at a hundred yards'distance rifles that carry death three thousand yards. She it is thathas made the deadlock in the trenches and plastered their occupantswith her miry hands. 

The C. O. Lifted a curtain of bagging as you might lift a hanging overan alcove bookcase, and a young officer, rising from his blankets inhis house in the trench wall to a stooping posture, said that all wasquiet. His uniform seemed fleckless. Was it possible that he woresome kind of cloth which shed mud spatters? He was another of thetype of Captain Q------, my host at Neuve Chapelle; a type formed onthe type of seniors such as his C. O. Unanalysable this quality, butthere is something distinguished about it and delightfully appealing. Aman who can be the same in a trench in Flanders in mid-winter as ina drawing-room has my admiration. They never lose their manner, these English officers. They carry it into the charge and back in theambulance with them to England, where they wish nothing so muchas that their friends will "cut out the hero stuff, " as our own officerssay. 

In other dank cellars soldiers who were off guard were lying or sitting. The radiance of the flares lighted the profiles of those on guard, whose faces were half-hidden by coat-collars or ear-flaps--imperturbable, silent, marooned and marooning, watchful andfearless. The thing had to be done and they were doing it; and theywere going to keep on doing it. 

There was nothing dry in that trench, unless it was the bowl of aman's pipe. There were not even any braziers. In your nostrils wasthe odour of the soil of Flanders cultivated by many generationsthrough many wars. As night wore on the sky was brightened by cold, winter stars and their soft light became noticeable between thedisagreeable flashes of the flares. 

We walked on and on. It was like walking in a winding ditch; that wasall. The same kind of walls at every turn; the same kind of dim figuresin saturated, heavy army overcoats. Slipping off the board walk intothe ooze, one was thrown against the mud wall as his foot sank. Thenhe held fast to his boot-straps lest the boot remain in the mud whilehis foot came out. Only the CO. Never slipped. He knew how to tourtrenches. Beside him the others were as clumsy as if they were tryingto walk a tight-rope. 

"Good-night!" he said to each group of men as he passed, with thecheer of one who brings a confident spirit to vigils in the mud and withthat note of affection of the commander who has learned to love hismen by the token of ordeals when he saw them hold fast againstodds. 

"Good-night, sir!" they answered; and in their tone was somethingwhich you liked to hear--a finer tribute to the CO. Than medals whichkings can bestow. It was affection and trust. They were ready tofollow him, for they knew that he knew how to lead. I was notsurprised when I heard of his promotion, later. I shall not be surprisedwhen I hear of it again. For he had brain and heart and the gift ofcommand. 

"Shall we go on or shall we go back?" he asked when we had goneabout a mile. "Have you had enough?"

We had, without a dissenting voice. A ditch in the mud, that was all, no matter how much farther we went. So we passed out of the trenchinto a soapy, slippery mud which had been ploughed ground in theautumn, now become lathery with the beat of men's steps. Our partybecame separated when some foundered and tried to hoistthemselves with both boot-straps at once. The CO. Called out in orderto locate us in the darkness, and the voice of an officer in thetrenches cut in, "Keep still! The Germans are only a hundred yardsaway!"

"Sorry!" whispered the CO. "I ought to have known better. "

Then one of the German searchlights that had been swinging itsstream of light across the paths of the flares lay its fierce, comet eyeon us, glistening on the froth-streaked mud and showing each mud-splashed figure in heavy coat in weird silhouette. 

"Standstill!"

That is the order whenever the searchlights come spying in yourdirection. So we stood still in the mud, looking at one another andwondering. It was the one tense second of the night, which lifted ourthoughts out of the mud with the elation of risk. That searchlight wasthe eye of death looking for a target. With the first crack of a bullet weshould have known that we were discovered and that it was no longergood tactics to stand still. We should have dropped on all fours intothe porridge. The searchlight swept on. Perhaps Hans at themachine-gun was nodding or perhaps he did not think us worth while. Either supposition was equally agreeable to us. 

We kept moving our mud-poulticed feet forward, with the flares at ourbacks, till we came to a road where we saw dimly a silent company ofsoldiers drawn up and behind them the supplies for the trench. Through the mud and under cover of darkness every bit of barbedwire, every board, every ounce of food, must go up to the moles inthe ditch. The searchlights and the flares and the machine-gunswaited for the relief. They must be fooled. But in this operation mostof the casualties in the average trenches, both British and German, occurred. Without a chance to strike back, the soldier was shot at byan assassin in the night. 

When the men who had been serving their turn of duty in thetrenches came out, a magnet drew their weary steps--cleanliness. They thought of nothing except soap and water. For a week theyneed not fight mud or Germans or parasites, which, like General Mud, waged war against both British and Germans. Standing on the slatsof the concrete floor of a factory, they peeled off the filthy, saturatedouter skin of clothing with its hideous, crawling inhabitants and, naked, leapt into great steaming vats, where they scrubbed andgurgled and gurgled and scrubbed. When they sprang out to applythe towels, they were men with the feel of new bodies in anotherworld. 

Waiting for them were clean clothes, which had been boiled anddisinfected; and waiting, too, was the shelter of their billets in thehouses of French towns and villages, and rest and food and food andrest, and newspapers and tobacco and gossip--but chiefly rest andthe joy of lethargy as tissue was rebuilt after the first long sleep, oftentwelve hours at a stretch. They knew all the sensations of physicalman, man battling with nature, in contrasts of exhaustion and dangerand recuperation and security, as the pendulum swung slowly backfrom fatigue to the glow of strength. 

Those who came out of the trenches quite "done up, " Colonel Bate, Irish and genial, fatherly and not lean, claimed for his own. After thewashing they lay on cots under a glass roof, and they might playdominoes and read the papers when they were well enough to sit up. They had the food which Colonel Bate knew was good for them, justas he knew what was deadly for the inhabitants whom they broughtinto that isolated room which every man must pass through before hewas admitted to the full radiance of the colonel's curative smile. Whenthey were able to return to the trenches, each was written down asone unit more in the colonel's weekly statistical reports. In summer heentertained al fresco in an open-air camp. 

XVIn Neuve Chapelle

Typical of many others, this quiet village in a flat country of richfarming land, with a church, a school, a post-office, and stores wherethe farmer could buy a pound of sugar or a spool of thread, employ anotary, or get a pair of shoes cobbled or a horse shod, without havingto go to the neighbouring town of Bethune, Neuve Chapelle becamefamous only after it had ceased to exist--unless a village remains avillage after it has been reduced to its original elements by shell-fire. 

It was the scene of one of those actions in the long siege line whichhave the dignity of a battle; the losses on either side, about sixteenthousand, were two-thirds of those at Waterloo or Gettysburg. Herethe British after the long winter's stalemate in the mud, where theystuck when the exhausted Germans could press no farther, took theoffensive, with the sap of spring rising in their veins. 

The guns blazed the way and the infantry charged in the path of theguns' destruction; and they kept on while the shield of shell-fire held. When it left an opening for the German machine-guns through itscurtain and the German guns visited on the British what their gunshad been visiting on the Germans, the British stopped. A lesson waslearned; a principle established. A gain was made, if no goal werereached. 

The human stone wall had moved. It had broken some barriers andcome to rest before others, again to become a stone wall. But it knewthat the thing could be done with guns and shells enough--and onlywith enough. This means a good deal when you have been underdog for a long time. Months were to pass waiting for enough shellsand guns, with many little actions and their steady drain of life, whileeveryone looked back to Neuve Chapelle as a landmark. It wassomething definite for a man to say that he had been wounded atNeuve Chapelle and quite indefinite to say that he had beenwounded in the course of the day's work in the trenches. 

No one might see the battle in that sea of mud. He might as well havelooked at the smoke of Vesuvius with an idea of learning what wasgoing on inside of the crater. I make no further attempt at describingit. My view came after the battle was over and the cauldron was stillsteaming. 

Though in March, 1914, one would hardly have given NeuveChapelle, intact and peaceful, a passing glance from a motor-car, inMarch, 1915, Neuve Chapelle in ruins was the one town in Europewhich I most wanted to see. Correspondents had not thenestablished themselves. The staff officer whom I asked if I mightspend a night in the new British line was a cautious man. He bade mesign a paper freeing the British army from any responsibility. Judgingby the general attitude of the Staff, one could hardly take the requestseriously. One correspondent less ought to please any Staff; but hesaid that he had an affection for the regulars and knew that therewere always plenty of recruits to take their places without resorting toconscription. The real responsibility was with the Germans. Hesuggested that I might go out to the German trenches and see if Icould obtain a paper from them. He thought if I were quick about it Imight get at least a yard in front of the British parapet in daylight. Hissense of humour I had recognized when we had met in Bulgaria. 

Any traveller is bound to meet men whom he has met before in thetravelled British army. At the brigade headquarters town, which, asone of the officers said, proved that bricks and mortar can float inmud, the face of the brigadier seemed familiar to me. I found that Ihad met him in Shanghai in the Boxer campaign, when he had comeacross a riotous China from India on one of those journeys in remoteAsia which British officers are fond of making. He was "all there, "whether dealing with a mob of Orientals or with Germans in thetrenches. I made myself at home in the parlour of the private houseoccupied by himself and staff, while he went on with his work. No flagoutside the house; no sign that it was headquarters. Motor-carsstopped only long enough for an officer to enter or alight. Brigadeheadquarters is precisely the target that German aeroplanes or spieslike to locate for their guns. 

"Are you ready? Have you your rubber boots?" the brigadier asked afew minutes later, as he put his head in at the parlour door. It wouldnot do to approach the trenches until after dark. Of course, I hadrubber boots. One might as well try to go to sea without a boat as totrenches without rubber boots in winter. "I'll take my constitutional, " headded; "the trouble with this kind of war is that you get no exercise. "

He was a small man, but how he could walk! I began to understandwhy the Boxers could not catch him. He turned back after we hadgone a mile or more and one of his staff went on with me to a pointwhere, just at dusk, I was turned over to another pilot, an aide frombattalion headquarters, and we set out across sodden fields that hadyielded beetroot in the last harvest, taking care not to step in shell-holes. Dusk settled into darkness. No human being was in sightexcept ourselves. 

"There's the first line of German trenches before the attack, " said mycompanion. "Our guns got fairly on them. " Dimly I saw what seemedlike a huge, long, irregular furrow of earth which had been torn almostout of the shape of a trench by British shells. "There was no living in itwhen the guns began all together. The only thing to do was to getout. "

Around us was utter silence, where the hell of thunders anddestruction by the artillery had raged during the battle. Then a spentor ricochet bullet swept overhead, with the whistle of complaint ofspent bullets at having travelled far without hitting any object. It hadgone high over the British trenches; it had carried the full range, andthe chance of its hitting anyone was ridiculously small. But the neareryou get to the trenches, the more likely these strays are to find avictim. "Hit by a stray bullet!" is a very common saying at the front. 

At last we felt the solidity of a paved road under our feet, andfollowing this we came to a peasant's cottage. Inside, two soldierswere sitting beside telephone and telegraph instruments, behind awindow stuffed with sandbags. On our way across the fields we hadstepped on wires laid on the ground; we had stooped to avoid wiresstretched on poles--the wires that form the web of the army'sintelligence. 

Of course, no two units of communication are dependent on one wire. There is always a duplicate. If one is broken it is immediatelyrepaired. The factories spin out wire to talk over and barbed wire forentanglements in front of trenches and weave millions of bags to befilled with sand for breastworks to protect men from bullets. If Sir JohnFrench wished, he could talk with Lord Kitchener in London and thisbattalion headquarters at Neuve Chapelle within the same space oftime that a railroad president may speak over the Long Distance fromChicago to New York and order dinner out in the suburbs. 

These two men at the table, their faces tanned by exposure, men inthe thirties, had the British regular of long service stamped all overthem. War was an old story to them; and an old story, too, layingsignal wires under fire. 

"We're very comfortable, " said one. "No danger from stray bullets orfrom shrapnel; but if one of the Jack Johnsons come in, why, there'sno more cottage and no more argument between you and me. We'redead and maybe buried, or maybe scattered over the landscape, along with the broken pieces of the roof. "

A soldier was on guard with bayonet fixed inside that little room, whichhad passageway to the cellar past the table, among straw beds. Thisseemed rather peculiar. The reason lay on one of the beds in aprivate's khaki. He had come into the battalion's trenches from ourfront and said that he belonged to the D------regiment and had beenout on patrol and lost his way. 

It was two miles to that regiment and two miles is a long distance tostray between two lines of trenches so close together, when at anypoint in your own line you will find friends. It was possible that thisfellow's real name was Hans Schmidt, who had learned cockneyEnglish in childhood in London, and in a dead British private's uniformhad come into the British trenches to get information to which he wasanything but welcome. 

He was to be sent under guard to the D------regimentfor identification; and if he were found to be a Hans and not aTommy--well, though he had tried a very stupid dodge he must haveknown what to expect when he was found out, if his officers hadproperly trained him in German rules of war. 

I had a glimpse of him in the candlelight before stooping to feel myway down three or four narrow steps to the cellar, where the farmerordinarily kept potatoes and vegetables. There were straw bedsaround the walls here, too. The major commanding the battalion rosefrom his seat at a table on which were some cutlery, a jam pot, tobacco, pipes, a newspaper or two, and army telegraph forms andmaps. 

If the hosts of mansions could only make their hospitality as simple asthe major's, there would be less affectation in the world. Heintroduced me to an officer sitting on the other side of the table and toone lying in his blankets against the wall, who lifted his head andblinked and said that he was very glad to see me. 

It is a small world, for China cropped up here, as it had at brigadeheadquarters. The major had been in garrison at Peking when thewar began. If my shipmate on a long battleship cruise, Lt. -Col. DionWilliams, U. S. M. C, reads this out in Peking let it tell him that the majoris just as urbane in the cellar of a second-rate farmhouse on theoutskirts of Neuve Chapelle as he would be in a corner of the PekingClub. 

"How is it? Painful now?" asked the major of Captain P-----, on theother side of the table. 

"Oh, no! It's quite all right, " said the captain. 

"Using the sling?"

"Part of the time. Hardly need it, though. "

Captain P-----was one of those men whose eyes are always smiling;who seems, wherever he is, to be glad that he is not in a worse place;who goes right on smiling at the mud in the trenches and bullets andshells and death. They are not emotional, the British, perhaps, butthey are given to cheeriness, if not to laughter, and they have a wayof smiling at times when smiles are much needed. The smile is moreoften found at the front than back at headquarters; or perhaps it ismore noticeable there. 

"You see, he got a bullet through the arm yesterday, " the majorexplained. "He was reported wounded, but remained on duty in thetrench. " I saw that the captain would rather not have publicity given tosuch an ordinary incident. He did not see why people should talkabout his arm. "You are to go with him into the trench for the night, "the major added; and I thought myself very lucky in my companion. 

"Aren't you going to have dinner with us?" the major asked him. 

"Why, I had something to eat not very long ago, " said Captain P-----. One was not sure whether he had or not. 

"There's plenty, " said the major. 

"In that event, I don't see why I shouldn't eat when I have a chance, "the captain returned; which I found was a characteristic trench habit, particularly in winter when exposure to the raw, cold air calls for plentyof body-furnace heat. 

We had a ration soup and ration ham and ration prunes and cheese;what Tommy Atkins gets. When we were outside the house andstarting for the trench this captain, with his wounded arm, wanted tocarry my knapsack. He seemed to think that refusal was breaking theHague conventions. 

Where we turned off the road, broken finger-points of brick walls inthe faint moonlight indicated the site of Neuve Chapelle; otherfragments of walls in front of us were the remains of a house; andthat broken tree-trunk showed what a big shell can do. The trunk, agood eighteen inches in diameter, had not only been cut in two byone of the monsters of the new British artillery, but had been carriedon for ten feet and left lying solidly in the bed of splinters of the topof the stump. All this had been in the field of that battle of a day, which was as fierce as the fiercest day at Gettysburg, and foughtwithin about the same space. Every tree, every square rod of ground, had been paid for by shells, bullets, and human life. 

But now we were near the trenches; or, rather, the breastworks. Weare always speaking of the trenches, while not all parts of the line areheld by trenches. A trench is dug in the ground; a breastwork israised from the level of the ground. At some points a trench becomespractically a breastwork, as its wall is raised to get free of the mudand water. 

We came into the open and heard the sound of voices and saw aspotty white wall; for some of the sandbags of the new Britishbreastworks still retained their original colour. On the reverse side ofthis wall lines were leaning in readiness, their fixed bayonets faintlygleaming in the moonlight. I felt of the edge of one and it was sharp, quite prepared for business. In the surroundings of damp earth andmud-bespattered men, this rifle seemed the cleanest thing of all, meticulously clean, that ready weapon whose well-aimed and tellingfire, in obedient and cool hands, was the object of all the drill of thenew infantry in England; of all the drill of all infantry. Where picketswatched in the open in the old days before armies met in pitchedbattle, an occasional soldier now stands with rifle laid on the parapet, watching. 

Across a reach of field faintly were made out the white spots ofanother wall of breastworks, the German, at the edge of a stretch ofwoods, the Bois du Bies. The British reached these woods in theiradvance; but, their aeroplanes being unable to spot the fall of shellsin the mist, they had to fall back for want of artillery support. Alongthis line where we stood outside the village they stopped; and to stopis to set the spades going to begin the defences which, later, hadrisen to a man's height, and with rifles and machine-guns had riddledthe German counter-attack. 

And the Germans had to go back to the edge of the woods, wherethey, too, began digging and building their new line. So the enemieswere fixed again behind their walls of earth, facing each other acrossthe open, where it was death for any man to expose himself by day. 

"Will you have a shot, sir?" one of the sentries asked me. 

"At what?"

"Why, at the top of the trench over there, or at anything you seemoving, " he said. 

But I did not think that it was an invitation for a non-combatant toaccept. If the bullet went over the top of the trench it had still twothousand yards and more to go, and it might find a target before itdied. So, in view of the law of probabilities, no bullet is quite waste. 

"Now, which is my house?" asked Captain P------. 

"I really can't find my own home in the dark. "

Behind the breastwork were many little houses three or four feet inheight, all of the same pattern, and made of boards and mud. Themud is put on top to keep out shrapnel bullets. 

"Here you are, sir!" said a soldier. 

Asking me to wait until he made a light, the captain bent over as ifabout to crawl under the top rail of a fence and his head disappeared. After he had put a match to a candle and stuck it on a stick thrust intothe wall, I could see the interior of his habitation. A rubber sheetspread on the moist earth served as floor, carpet, mattress, and bed. At a squeeze there was room for two others besides himself. Theydid not need any doormat, for when they lay down their feet would beat the door. 

"Quite cosy, don't you think?" remarked the captain. He seemed tofeel that he had a royal chamber. But, then, he was the kind of manwho might sleep in a muddy field under a wagon and regard theshelter of the wagon body as a luxury. "Leave your knapsack here, "he continued, "and we'll see what is doing along the line. "

In other words, after you had left your bag in the host's hall, hesuggested a stroll in the village or across the fields. But only to seewar would he have asked you to walk in such mud. 

"Not quite so loud!" he warned a soldier who was bringing up boardsfrom the rear under cover of darkness. "If the Germans hear theymay start firing. "

Two other men were piling mud on top of a section of breastwork atan angle to the main line. 

"What is that for?" the captain asked. 

"They get an enfilade on us here, sir, and Mr. ------ (the lieutenant) toldme to make this higher. "

"That's no good. A bullet will go right through, " said the captain. "We'llhave to wait until we get more sandbags. "

A little farther on we came to an open space, with no protectionbetween us and the Germans. Half a dozen men were piling earthagainst a staked chicken wire to extend the breastworks. Rather, theywere piling mud, and they were besmirched from head to foot. Theylooked like reeking Neptunes rising from a slough. In the sameposition in daylight, standing full height before German rifles at threehundred yards, they would have been shot dead before they couldleap to cover. 

"How does it go?" asked the captain. 

"Very well, sir; though what we need is sandbags. "

"We'll have some up to-morrow. "

At the moment there was no firing in the vicinity. Faintly I heard theGermans pounding stakes, at work improving their own breastworks. 

A British soldier appeared out of the darkness in front. 

"We've found two of our men out there with their heads blown off byshells, " he said. "Have we permission to go out and bury them, sir?"

"Yes. "

They would be as safe as the fellows piling mud against the chickenwire, unless the Germans opened fire. If they did, we could fire ontheir working-party, or in the direction of the sound. For that matter, we knew through our glasses by day the location of any weak placesin their breastworks, and they knew where ours were. A sort of "after-you-gentlemen-if-you-fire-we-shall" understanding sometimes existsbetween the foes up to a certain point. Each side understandsinstinctively the limitation of that point. Too much noise in working, anumber of men going out to bury dead or making enough noise to beheard, and the ball begins. A deep, broad ditch filled with water madea break in our line. No doubt a German machine-gun was trained onit. 

"A little bridging is required here, " said the captain. "We'll have it doneto-morrow night. The break is no disadvantage if they attack; in fact, we'd rather like to have them try for it. But it makes movement alongthe line difficult by day. "

When we were across and once more behind the breastworks, hecalled my attention to some high ground in the rear. 

"One of our officers took a short cut across there in daylight, " he said. "He was quite exposed, and they drew a bead on him from theGerman trench and got him through the arm. Not a serious hit. Itwasn't cricket for anyone to go out to bring him in. He realized this, and called out to leave him to himself, and crawled to cover. "

I was getting the commonplaces of trench life. Thus far it had been aquiet night and was to remain so. Reddish, flickering swaths of lightwere thrown across the fields between the trenches by the enemy'sRoman candle flares. One tried to estimate how many flares theGermans must use every night from Switzerland to the North Sea. 

On our side, the only light was from our braziers. Thomas Atkins hasbecome a patron of braziers made by punching holes in buckets; andso have the Germans. Punch holes in a bucket, start a fire inside, and you have cheer and warmth and light through the long nightvigils. Two or three days before we had located a sniper between thelines by seeing him swing his fire-pot to make a draught against theembers. 

If you have ever sat around a camp-fire in the forest or on the plainsyou need be told nothing further. One of the old, glamorous featuresof war survives in these glowing braziers, spreading their genial raysamong the little houses and lighting the faces of the men who standor squat in encircling groups around the coals, which dry wet clothes, slake the moisture of a section of earth, make the bayonets againstthe walls glisten, and reveal the position of a machine-gun with itstape ready for firing. 

Values are relative, and a brazier in the trenches makes thesatisfaction of a steam-heated room in winter very superficial andartificial. You are at home there with Tommy Atkins, regular of an oldline English regiment, in his heavy khaki overcoat and solid boots andwool puttees, a sturdy, hardened man of a terrific war. He, theregular, the shilling-a-day policeman of the empire, was still doing thefighting at the front. The new army, which embraces all classes, wasnot yet in action. 

This man and that one were at Mons. This one and that one hadbeen through the whole campaign without once seeing MotherEngland for whom they were fighting. The affection in which CaptainP------was held extended through his regiment, for we had left his owncompany behind. At every turn he was asked about his arm. 

"You've made a mistake, sir. This isn't a hospital, " as one manexpressed it. Oh, but the captain was bored with hearing about thatarm! If he is wounded again I am sure that he will try to keep the facta secret. 

These veterans could "grouse, " as the British call it. Grousing is oneof Tommy's privileges. When they got to grousing worst on the retreatfrom Mons, their officers knew that what they really wanted was tomake another stand. They were tired of falling back; they meant totake a rest and fight a while. Their language was yours, the languagein which our own laws and schoolbooks are written. They made theold blood call. For months they had been taking bitter medicine; verybitter for a British soldier. The way they took it will, perhaps, remain agreater tribute than any part they play in future victories. 

"How do they feel in the States?" I was asked. "Against us?"

"No. By no means. "

"I don't see how they could be!" Tommy exclaimed. 

Tommy may not be much on argument as it is developed by thecontroversial spirit of college professors, but he had said about allthere was to say. How can we be? Hardly, after you come to know T. Atkins and his officers and talk English with them around their camp-fires. 

"The Germans are always sending up flares, " I remarked. "You sendup none. How about it?"

"It cheers them. They're downhearted!" said one of the group. "Youwouldn't deny them their fireworks, would you, sir?"

"That shows who is top dog, " said another. "They're the ones that areworried. "

I had heard of trench exhaustion, trench despair, but there was nosign of it in a regiment that had been through all the hell and mire thatthe British army had known since the war began. To no one hadNeuve Chapelle meant so much as to these common soldiers. It wastheir first real victory. They were standing on soil won from theGermans. 

"We're going to Berlin!" said a big fellow who was standing, palmsdownward to the fire. "It's settled. We're going to Berlin. "

A smaller man with his back against the sandbags disagreed. Therewas a trench argument. 

"No, we're going to the Rhine, " he said. "The Russians are going toBerlin. " (This was in March, 1915, remember. )

"How can they when they ain't over the Balkans yet?"

"The Carpathians, you mean. "

"Well, they're both mountains and the Russians have got to crossthem. And there's a place called Cracow in that region. What's thematter of a pair of mountain ranges between you and me, Bill? You'restrong on geography, but you fail to follow the campaign. "

"The Rhine, I say!"

"It's the Rhine first, but Berlin is what you want to keep your mind on. "

Then I asked if they had ever had any doubt that they would reachthe Rhine. 

"How could we, sir?"

"And how about the Germans. Do you hate them?"

"Hate!" exclaimed the big man. "What good would it do to hate them?No, we don't hate. We get our blood up when we're fighting and whenthey don't play the game. But hate! Don't you think that's kind ofridiculous, sir?"

"How do they fight?"

"They take a bit of beating, do the Boches!"

"So you call them Boches!"

"Yes. They don't like that. But sometimes we call them Allemands, which is Germans in French. Oh, we're getting quite Frenchscholars!"

"They're good soldiers. Not many tricks they're not up to. But in myopinion they're overdoing the hate. You can't keep up to your work onhate, sir. I should think it would be weakening to the mind, too. "

"Still, you would like the war over? You'd like to go home?"

They certainly would. Back to the barracks, out of the trenches! Theycertainly would. 

"And call it a draw?"

"Call it a draw, now! Call it a draw, after all we've been through------"

"Spring is coming. The ground will dry up and it will be warm. "

"And the going will be good to Berlin, as it was back from Paris inAugust, we tell the Boches. "

"Good for the Russians going over the Carpathians, or the Pyrenees, or whatever those mountains are, too. I read they're all covered withsnow in winter. "

It was good, regular soldier talk, very "homey" to me. As you willobserve, I have not elided the h's. Indeed, Tommy has a way ofprefixing his h's to the right vowels more frequently than a generationago. The Soldiers Three type has passed. Popular education willhave its way and induce better habits. Believing in the old remedy forexhaustion and exposure to cold, the army served out a tot of rumevery day to the men. But many of them are teetotalers, these hardyregulars, and not even Mulvaney will think them effeminate when theyhave seen fighting which makes anything Mulvaney ever saw child'splay. So they asked for candy and chocolate, instead of rum. 

Some people have said that Tommy has no patriotism. He fightsbecause he is paid and it is his business. That is an insinuation. Tommy doesn't care for the "hero stuff, " or for waving flags andspeechmaking. Possibly he knows how few Germans that sort ofthing kills. His weapons are bullets. To put it cogently, he is fightingbecause he doesn't want any Kaiser "in his. "

Is not that what all the speeches in Parliament are about and all theeditorials and the recruiting campaign? Is not that what England andFrance are fighting for? It seems to me that Tommy's is a verypractical patriotism, free from cant; and the way that he refuses tohate or to get excited, but sticks to it, must be very irritating to theGermans. 

"Would you like a Boche helmet for a souvenir, sir?" asked a soldierwho appeared on the outer edge of the group. He was the small, active type, a British soldier with the élan of the Frenchman. "Thereare lots of them out among the German dead "--the unburied Germandead who fell like grass before the mower in a desperate and futilecounter-attack to recover Neuve Chapelle. "I'll have one for you onyour way back. "

There was no stopping him; he had gone. 

"Matty's a devil!" said the big man. "He'll get it, all right. He's equalto reaching over the Boches' parapet and picking one off a Boche'shead!"

As we proceeded on our way, officers came out of the little houses tomeet Captain P------and the stranger civilian. They had to come out, as there was no room to take us inside; and sometimes they talkedshop together after I had answered the usual question, "Is Americaagainst us?" There seemed to be an idea that we were, possiblybecause of the prodigious advertising tactics of a minority. But anyfeeling that we might be did not interfere with their simple courtesy, orlead them to express any bitterness or break into argument. 

"How are things going on over your side?"

"Nicely. "

"Any shelling?"

"A little this morning. No harm done. "

"We cleaned out one bad sniper to-day. "

"Ought to have some sandbags up to-night. "

"It's a bad place there. They've got a machine-gun trained which hasquite a sweep. I asked if the artillery shouldn't put in a word, but thegeneral didn't think it worth while. "

"You must run across that break. Three or four shots at you everytime. We're gradually getting shipshape, though. "

Just then a couple of bullets went singing overhead. The group paidno attention to them. If you paid attention to bullets over the parapetyou would have no time for anything else. But these bullets have away of picking off tall officers who are standing up among theirhouses. In the course of their talk they happened to speak of such aninstance, though not with reference to the two bullets I havementioned. 

"Poor S------did not last long. He had been out only three weeks. "

"How is J------? Hit badly?"

"Through the shoulder; not seriously. "

"H------is back. Recovered very quickly. "

Normal trench talk, this! A crack which signifies that the bullet has hit--another man down. One grows accustomed to it, and one of thisgroup of officers might be gone to-morrow. 

"I have one, sir, " said Matty, exhibiting a helmet when we returnedpast his station. "Bullet went right through the head and came out thepeak!"

It was time that Captain P------ was back to his own command. As wecame to his company's line word was just being passed from sentryto sentry:

"No firing. Patrols going out. "

It was midnight now. 

"We'll go in the other direction, " said Captain P------ when he hadlearned that there was no news. 

This brought us to an Irish regiment. The Irish naturally hadsomething to say. 

XVINearer The Germans

Here not the Irish Sea lay between the broad a and the brogue, butthe space between two sentries or between two rifles with bayonetsfixed, lying against the wall of the breastworks ready for their owners'hands when called to arms in case of an alarm. One stepped fromEngland into Ireland; and my prediction that the Irish would havesomething to say was correct. 

The first man who made his presence felt was a good six feet inheight, with a heavy moustache and the earpieces of his cap tiedunder his chin, though the night was not cold. He placed himself fairlyin front of me in the narrow path back of the breastworks and helooked a cowled and sinister figure in the faint glow from a brazier. Icertainly did not want any physical argument with a man of his build. 

"Who are you?" he demanded, as stiffly as if I had broken in at theveranda window with a jemmy. 

For the nearer you come to the front, the more you feel that you arein the way. You are a stray extra piece of baggage; a dead humanweight. Everyone is doing something definite as a part of the machineexcept yourself; and in your civilian clothes you feel the self-conscious conspicuousness of appearing on a dancing-floor in adressing-gown. 

Captain P------was a little way back in another passage. I was aloneand in a rough tweed suit--a strange figure in that world of khaki andrifles. 

"A German spy! That's why I am dressed this way, so as not to excitesuspicion, " I was going to say, when a call from Captain P------identified me, and the sentry's attitude changed as suddenly as if theinspector of police had come along and told a patrolman that I mightpass through the fire lines. 

"So it's you, is it, right from America?" he said. "I've a sister living atNashua, New Hampshire, U. S. A. With three brothers in the UnitedStates army. "

Whether he had or not you can judge as well as I by the twinkle in hiseye. He might have had five, and again he might not have one. I wasa tenderfoot seeing the trenches. 

"It's mesilf that's going to America when me sarvice in the army is upin one year and six months, " he continued. "That's some time yet. I'mgoing if I'm not killed by the Germans. It's a way that they have, or wewouldn't be killing them. "

"What are you going to do in America? Enlist in the army?"

"No. I'm looking for a better job. I'm thinking I'll be one of yourmillionaires. Shure, but that would be to me taste. "

Not one Irishman was speaking really, but a dozen. They came out oftheir little houses and dug-outs to gather around the brazier; and forevery remark I made I received a fusillade in reply. It was an event, an American appearing in the trench in the small hours of themorning. 

A trench-toughened, battle-toughened old sergeant was sitting in thedoorway of his dug-out, frying a strip of bacon over one rim of thebrazier and making tea over the other. The bacon sizzled with anappetizing aroma and a bullet sizzled harmlessly overhead. Behindthat wall of sandbags all were perfectly safe, unless a shell came. Butwho worries about shells? It is like worrying about being struck bylightning when clouds gather in a summer sky. 

"It looks like good bacon, " I remarked. 

"It is that!" said the sergeant. "And the hungrier ye are the better. It'syour nose that's telling ye so this minute. I can see that ye're hungryyoursilf!"

"Then you're pretty well fed?"

"Well fed, is it? It's stuffed we are, like the geese that grow the paty-what-do-you-call-it? Eating is our pastime. We eat when we'venothing else to do and when we've got something to do. We get eggsup here--a fine man is Lord Kitchener--yes, sir, eggs up here in thetrenches!"

When they seemed to think that I was sceptical, he produced someeggs in evidence. 

"And if ye'll not have the bacon, ye'll have a drop of tea. Mind now, while your tongue is trying to be polite, your stomach is calling yourtongue a liar!"

Wouldn't I have a souvenir? Out came German bullets and bucklesand officers' whistles and helmets and fragments of shells andGerman diaries. 

"It's easy to get them out there where the Germans fell that thick!" Iwas told. "And will ye look at this and take it home to give your pro-German Irish in America, to show what their friends are shooting atthe Irish? I found them mesilf on a dead German. "

He passed me a clip of German bullets with the blunt ends instead ofthe pointed ends out. The change is readily made, for the Germanbullet is easily pulled out of the cartridge case and the pointed endthrust against the powder. Thus fired, it goes accurately four or fivehundred yards, which is more than the average distance betweenGerman and British trenches. When it strikes flesh the effect is that ofa dum-dum and worse; for the jacket splits into slivers, which spreadthrough the pulpy mass caused by the explosion. A leg or an armthus hit must almost invariably be amputated. I am not suggestingthat this is a regular practice with German soldiers, but it shows whatwickedness is in the power of the sinister one. 

"But ye'll take the tea, " said the sergeant, "with a little rum hot in it. 'Twill take the chill out of your bones. "

"What if I haven't a chill in my bones?"

"Maybe it's there without speaking to ye and it will be speaking beforean hour longer--or afther ye're home between the sheets with therheumatiz, and yell be saying, 'Why didn't I take that glass?' whichI'm holding out to ye this minute, steaming its invitation to be drunk. "

It was a memorable drink. Snatches of brogue followed me from thebrazier's glow when I insisted that I must be going. 

Now our breastworks took a turn and we were approaching closer tothe German breastworks. Both lines remained where they had "dugin" after the counter-attacks which followed the battle had ceased. Ground is too precious in this siege warfare to yield a foot. Soldiersbecome misers of soil. Where the flood is checked there you buildyour dam against another flood. 

"We are within about sixty yards of the Germans, " said Captain P------at length, after we had gone in and out of the traverses and left thebraziers well behind. 

Between the spotty, whitish wall of German sandbags, quite distinct inthe moonlight, and our parapet were two mounds of sandbags abouttwenty feet apart. Snug behind one was a German and behind theother an Irishman, both listening. They were within easy bombingrange, but the homicidal advantage of position of either resulted in atruce. Sixty yards! Pace it off. It is not far. In other places the enemieshave been as close as five yards--only a wall of earth between them. Where a bombing operation ends in an attack, a German is naturallyon one side of a traverse and a Briton on the other. 

The Germans were as busy as beavers dam-building. They had a lotof work to do before they had their new defences right. We heardthem driving stakes and spading; we heard their voices with snatchesof sentences intelligible, and occasionally the energetic, shouted, guttural commands of their officers. All through that night I neverheard a British officer speak above a conversational tone. The orderswere definite enough, but given with a certain companionablekindliness. I have spoken of the genuine affection which his menshowed for Captain P------, and I was beginning to appreciate that itwas not a particular instance. 

"What if you should shout at Tommy in the German fashion?" Iasked. 

"He wouldn't have it; he'd get rebellious, " was the reply. "No, youmustn't yell at Tommy. He's a little temperamental about some thingsand he will not be treated as if he were just a human machine. "

Yet no one will question the discipline of the British soldier. Disciplinemeans that the officer knows his men, and British discipline, whichbears a retreat like that from Mons, requires that the man likes tofollow his officers, believes in his officers, loves his officers. Eacharmy and each people to its own ways. 

Sixty yards! And the dead between the trenches and death lurkingready at a trigger's pull should life show itself! When daylight comesthe British sing out their "Good-morning, Germans!" and the Germansanswer, "Good-morning, British!" without adding, "We hope to killsome of you to-day!" Ragging banter and jest and worse than jestand grim defiance are exchanged between the trenches when theyare within such easy hearing distance of each other; but always froma safe position behind the parapet which the adversaries squintacross through their periscopes. At the gibe business the German is, perhaps, better than the Briton. 

Early in the evening a regiment on our right broke into a busyfusillade at some fancied movement of the enemy. In trench talk thatis getting "jumpy. " The Germans in front roared out their contempt ina chorus of guying laughter. Toward morning, these same Germansalso became "jumpy" and began tearing the air with bullets, firingagainst nothing but the blackness of night. Tommy Atkins only madesome characteristic comments; for he is a quiet fellow, except whenhe is played on the music-hall stage. Possibly he feels theinconsistency of laughter when you are killing human beings; for, ashis officers say, he is temperamental and never goes to the trouble ofanalysing his emotions. A very real person and a good deal of aphilosopher is Mr. Atkins, Britain's professional fighting man, who wasthe only kind of fighting man she had ready for the war. 

Any small boy who had never had enough fireworks in his life mightbe given a job in the German trenches, with the privilege of firingflares till he fell asleep from exhaustion. All night they were going, withthe regularity of clockwork. The only ones sent up from our side thatnight were shot in order that I might get a better view of the Germandead. 

You know how water lies in the low places on the ground after aheavy rain. Well, the patches of dead were like that, and dark in thespots where they were very thick--dark as with the darkness ofdeeper water. There were also irregular tongues of dead andscattered dead, with arms outstretched or under them as they fell, and faces white even in the reddish glare of the rockets and turnedtoward you in the charge that failed under the withering blasts ofmachine-guns, ripping out two or three hundred shots a minute, andwell-aimed rifle-bullets, each bullet getting its man. Threatening thatcharge would have seemed to a recruit, but measured and calculatedin certainty of failure in the minds of veteran defenders, who knewthat the wheat could not stand before their mowers. Man's flesh issoft and a bullet is hard and travels fast. 

One bit of satire which Tommy sent across the field covered with itsburden of slaughter to the Germans who are given to song, ought tohave gone home. It was: "Why don't you stop singing and bury yourdead?" But the Germans, having given no armistice in other timeswhen British dead lay before the trenches, asked for none here. Thedead were nearer to the British than to the Germans. The discomfortwould be in British and not German nostrils. And the dead cannotfight; they can help no more to win victory for the Fatherland; and thetime is A. D. 1915. Two or three thousand German dead altogether, perhaps--not many out of the Kaiser's millions. Yet they seemed agreat many to one who saw them lying there. 

We stopped to read by the light of a brazier some German soldiers'diaries that the Irishmen had. They were cheap little books, bought fora few cents, each one telling the dead man's story and revealing themonotony of a soldier's existence in Europe to-day. These pawns ofwar had been marched here and there, they never knew why. Thelast notes were when orders came entraining them. They did notknow that they were to be sent out of those woods yonder to recoverNeuve Chapelle out of those woods in the test of all their drill andwaiting. A Bavarian officer--for these were Bavarians--actually rode inthat charge. He must have worked himself up to a strangely exaltedoptimism and contempt of British fire. Or was it that he, too, did notknow what he was going against? that only the German generalknew? Neither he nor his horse lasted long; not more than a dozenseconds. The thing was so splendidly foolhardy that in some little warit might have become the saga of a regiment, the subject of balladsand paintings. In this war it was an incident heralded for a day in onecommand and forgotten the next. 

"Good-night!" called the Irish. 

"Good-night and good luck!"

"Tell them in America that the Irish are still fighting!"

"Good luck, and may your travelling be aisy; but if ye trip, may ye fallinto a gold mine!"

We were back with the British regulars; and here, also, many of themen remained up around the braziers. 

The hours of duty of the few on watch do not take many of thetwenty-four hours. One may sleep when he chooses in the littlehouses behind the breastworks. Night melts into day and day intonight in the monotony of mud and sniping rifle-fire. By-and-by it is yourturn to go into reserve; your turn to get out of your clothes--for thereare no pyjamas for officers or men in these "crawls, " as they aresometimes called. Boots off is the only undressing; boots off andputtees unloosed, which saves the feet. Yes, by-and-by the marchback to the rear, where there are tubs filled with hot water and anoutfit of clean clothes awaiting you, and nothing to do but rest andsleep. 

"How soon after we leave the trenches may we cheer?" officers havebeen asked in the dead of winter, when water stood deep over theporous mud and morning found a scale of ice around the legs. 

You, nicely testing the temperature of your morning tub; you, satisfiedonly with faucets of hot and cold water and a mat to stand on--youknow nothing about the joy of bathing. Your bath is a mere part of thedaily routine of existence. Try the trenches and get itchy with vermin;then you will know that heaven consists of soap and hot water. 

No bad odour assails your nostrils wherever you may go in the Britishlines. Its cleanliness, if nothing else, would make British armycomradeship enjoyable. My wonder never ceases how Tommy keepshimself so neat; how he manages to shave every day and get a part, at least, of the mud off his uniform. This care makes him feel more asif he were "at home" in barracks. 

From the breastworks, Captain P------and I went for a stroll in theVillage, or the site of the village, silent except for the occasionalsinging of a bullet. When we returned he lighted the candle on a stickstuck into the wall of his earth-roofed house and suggested a nap. Itwas three o'clock in the morning. Now I could see that my rubberboots had grown so heavy because I was carrying so much of the soilof Northern France. It looked as if I had gout in both feet--the over-bandaged, stage type of gout--which were encased in large mudpoultices. I tried to stamp off the incubus, but it would not go. I triedscraping one foot on the other, and what I scraped off seemed toreattach itself as fast as I could remove it. 

"Don't try!" said the captain. "Lie down and pull your boots off in thedoorway. Perhaps you will get some sleep before daybreak. "

Sleep! Does a débutante go to sleep at her first ball? Sleep in suchgood company, the company of this captain who was smiling all thewhile with his eyes; smiling at his mud house, at the hardships in thetrenches, and, I hope, at having a guest who had been with armiesbefore!

It was the first time that I had been in the trenches all night; the firsttime, indeed, when I had not been taken into them by an escort in akind of promenade. On this account I was in the family. If it is the rightkind of a family, that is the way to get a good impression. There wouldbe plenty of time to sleep when I returned to London. 

So Captain P------ and I lay there talking. I felt the dampness of theearth under my body and the walls exuded moisture. The averagecellar was dry by comparison. "You will get your death of cold!" anymother would cry in alarm if her boy were found even sitting on suchcold, wet ground. For it was a clammy night of early spring. Yet, peculiarly enough, few men get colds from this exposure. One getscolds from draughts in overheated rooms much oftener. Luckily, itwas not raining; it had been raining most of the winter in the flatcountry of Northern France and Flanders. 

"It is very horrible, this kind of warfare, " said the captain. He wasthinking of the method of it, rather than of the discomforts. "All war isvery horrible, of course. " Regular soldiers rarely take any other view. They know war. 

"With your wounded arm you might be back in England on leave, " Isuggested. 

"Oh, that arm is all right!" he replied. "This is what I am paid for"--which I had heard regulars say before. "And it is for England!" headded, in his quiet way. "Sometimes I think we should fight better ifwe officers could hate the Germans, " he went on. "The German ideais that you must hate if you are going to fight well. But we can't hate. "

Sound views he had about the war; sounder than I have heard fromthe lips of Cabinet ministers. For these regular officers are specialistsin war. 

"Do you think that we shall starve the Germans out?"

"No. We must win by fighting, " he replied. This was in March, 1915. "You know, " he went on, taking another tack, "when one gets back toEngland out of this muck he wants good linen and everything verynice. "

"Yes. I've found the same after roughing it, " I agreed. "One is mostparticular that he has every comfort to which civilization entitles him. "

We chatted on. Much of our talk was soldier shop talk, which you willnot care to hear. Twice we were interrupted by an outburst of firing, and the captain hurried out to ascertain the reason. Some false alarmhad started the rifles speaking from both sides. A fusillade for two orthree minutes and the firing died down to silence. 

Dawn broke and it was time for me to go; and with daylight, whendanger of a night surprise was over, the captain would have hissleep. I was leaving him to his mud house and his bed on the wetground without a blanket. It was more important to have sandbags upfor the breastworks than to have blankets; and as the men had notyet received theirs, he had none himself. 

"It's not fair to the men, " he said. "I don't want anything they don'thave. "

No better food and no better house and no warmer garments! Hespoke not in any sense of stated duty, but in the affection of thecomradeship of war; the affection born of that imperturbable courageof his soldiers who had stood a stone wall of cool resolution againstGerman charges when it seemed as if they must go. The glamour ofwar may have departed, but not the brotherhood of hardship anddangers shared. 

What had been a routine night to him had been a great night to me;one of the most memorable of my life. 

"I was glad you could come, " he said, as I made my adieu, quite as ifhe were saying adieu to a guest at home in England. 

Some of the soldiers called their cheery good-byes; and with alieutenant to guide me, I set out while the light was still dusky, leavingthe comforting parapet to the rear to go into the open, four hundredyards from the Germans. A German, though he could not have seenus distinctly, must have noted something moving. Two of his bulletscame rather close before we passed out of his vision among sometrees. 

In a few minutes I was again entering the peasant's cottage that wasbattalion headquarters; this time by daylight. Its walls were chipped bybullets that had come over the breastworks. The major was justgetting up from his blankets in the cellar. By this time I had a realtrench appetite. Not until after breakfast did it occur to me, with somesurprise, that I had not washed my face. 

"The food was just as good, wasn't it?" remarked the major. "We getquite used to such breaches of convention. Besides, you had beenup all night, so your breakfast might be called your after-the-theatresupper. "

With him I went to see what the ruins of Neuve Chapelle looked likeby daylight. The destruction was not all the result of onebombardment, for the British had been shelling Neuve Chapelle offand on all winter. Of course, there is the old earthquake comparison. All writers have used it. But it is quite too feeble for Neuve Chapelle. An earthquake merely shakes down houses. The shells had done agood deal more than that. They had crushed the remains of thehouses as under the pestle-head in a mortar; blown walls into dust;taken bricks from the east side of the house over to the west andthrown them back with another explosion. Neuve Chapelle had beenliterally flailed with the high explosive projectiles of the new Britishartillery, which the British had to make after the war began in order tocompete with what the Germans already had; for poor, lone, wronged, bullied Germany, quite unprepared--Austria with her fiftymillions does not count--was fighting on the defensive against wicked, aggressive enemies who were fully prepared. This explains why sheinvaded France and took possession of towns like Neuve Chapelle todefend her poor, unready people from the French, who had beenplotting and planning "the day" when they would conquer theGermans. 

Bits of German equipment were mixed with ruins of clocks and familypictures and household utensils. I noticed a bicycle which had beencut in two, its parts separated by twenty feet; one wheel was twistedinto a spool of wire, the other simply smashed. 

Where was the man who had kept the shop with a few letters of hisname still visible on a splintered bit of board? Where the children whohad played in the littered square in front of the church, with itssteeples and walls piles of stone that had crushed the worshippers'benches? Refugees somewhere back of the British lines, working onthe roads if strong enough, helping France in any way they could, notmurmuring, even smiling, and praying for victory, which would letthem return to their homes and daily duties. To their homes!

XVIIWith The Guns

It is a war of explosions, from bombs thrown by hand within ten yardsof the enemy to shells thrown as far as twenty miles and to mines laidunder the enemy's trenches; a war of guns, from seventeen-inchdown to three-inch and machine-guns; a war of machinery, with manstill the pre-eminent machine. 

Guns mark the limit of the danger zone. Their screaming shells laughat the sentries at the entrances to towns and at cross-roads whodemand passes of all other travellers. Anyone who tried to keep outof range of the guns would never get anywhere near the front. It is alla matter of chance with long odds or short odds, according to theneighbourhood you are in. If shells come, they come without warningand without ceremony. Nobody is afraid of shells and everybody is--atleast, I am. 

"Gawd! Wat a 'ole!" remarks Mr. Thomas Atkins casually, at sight ofan excavation in the earth made by a thousand-pound projectile. 

It is only eighteen years since I saw, at the battle of Domoko in theGreco-Turkish war, half a dozen Turkish batteries swing out on theplain of Thessaly, limber up in the open, and discharge salvos withblack powder, in the good, old battle-panorama style. One battery ofmodern field guns unseen would wipe out the lot in five minutes. Onlyten years ago, at the battle of Liao-yang, as I watched a cloud ofshrapnel smoke sending down steel showers over the little hill ofManjanyama, which sent up showers of earth from shells burst byimpact on the ground, a Japanese military attaché remarked:

"There you have a prophecy of what a European war will be like!"

He was right. He knew his business as a military attaché. But theAllies might also make guns and go on making them till they haveenough. The voices of the guns along the front seem never silent. Insome direction they are always firing. When one night the reportsfrom a certain quarter seemed rather heavy, I asked the reason thenext day. 

"No, not very heavy. No attack, " a division staff officer explained. "The Boches had been building a redoubt, and we turned on someh. E. S. "--meaning high explosive shells. 

Night after night, under cover of darkness, the Germans had beenlabouring on that redoubt, thinking that they were unobserved. Theyhad kept extremely quiet, too, slipping their spades into the earthsoftly and hammering a nail ever so lightly; and, of course, theredoubt was placed behind a screen of foliage which hid it from theview of the British trenches. Such is the hide-and-seek character ofmodern war. 

What the German builders did not know was that a British aeroplanehad been watching them day by day, and that the spot was nicelyregistered on a British gunner's map. On this map it was a certainnumbered point. Press a button, as it were, and you ring the bell witha shell at that point. And the gunners waited till the house of cardswas up before knocking it to pieces. 

Surprise is the thing with the guns. A town may go for weeks withoutgetting a single shell. Then it may get a score of shells in ten minutes;or it may be shelled regularly every day for ensuing weeks. "They areshelling X again, " or, "They have been leaving Z alone for a longtime, " is a part of the gossip up and down the line. Towns are proudof having escaped altogether, and proud of the number and size ofthe shells received. 

"Did you get any?" I asked the division staff officer who had told meabout the session the six-inch howitzers had enjoyed. A commonquestion that, at the front, "Did you get any?" (meaning Germans). Apractical question, too. It has nothing to do with the form of play orany bit of sensational fielding; only with the score, with results, withcasualties. 

"Yes, quite a number, " said the officer. "Our observer saw them lyingabout. "

The guns are watching for the targets at all hours--the ever-hungry, ever-ready, murderous, cunning, quick, scientifically-calculating, marvellously-accurate and also the guessing, wondering, blind, groping, helpless guns, which toss their steel messengers overstreams, woodlands, and towns, searching for unseen prey in a widelandscape. 

Accurate and murderous they seem when you drop low behind atrench wall or huddle in a dug-out as you hear an approachingscream and the earth trembles and the air is wracked by aconcussion, and the cry of a man a few yards away tells of a hit. Veryaccurate when still others, sent from muzzles six or seven thousandyards distant, fall in that same line of trench! Very accurate when, before an infantry attack, with bursts of shrapnel bullets they cut tobits the barbed-wire entanglements in front of a trench! The power ofchaos that they seem to possess when the firing-trench and the dug-outs and all the human warrens which protect the defenders arebeaten as flour is kneaded!

Blind and groping they seem when a dozen shells fall harmlessly in afield; when they send their missiles toward objects which may not beworth shooting at; when no one sees where the shells hit and theamount of damage they have done is all guesswork; and helplesswithout the infantry to protect them, the aeroplanes and the observersto see for them. 

One thinks of them as demons with subtle intelligence and longreach, their gigantic fists striking here and there at will, without avisible arm behind the blow. An army guards against the blows of anenemy's demons with every kind of cover, every kind of deception, with all resources of scientific ingenuity and invention; and an armyguards its own demons in their lairs as preciously as if they weremade of some delicate substance which would go up in smoke at aglance from the enemy's eye, instead of having barrels of thestrongest steel that can be forged. 

Your personal feeling for the demons on your side is in ratio to theamount of hell sent by the enemy's which you have tasted. After youhave been scared stiff, while pretending that you were not, by sharingwith Mr. Atkins an accurate bombardment of a trench and areconvinced that the next shell is bound to get you, you fall into theattitude of the army. You want to pat the demon on the back and say, "Nice old demon!" and watch him toss a shell three or four miles intothe German lines from the end of his fiery tongue. Indeed, nothing soquickly develops interest in the British guns as having the Germangunners take too much personal interest in you. 

You must have someone to show you the way or you would not findany guns. A man with a dog trained to hunt guns might spend a weekon the gun-position area covering ten miles of the front and not locatehalf the guns. He might miss "Grandmother" and "Sister" and "Betsy"and "Mike" and even "Mister Archibald, " who is the only one whodoes not altogether try to avoid publicity. 

When an attack or an artillery bombardment is on and you go to ashigh ground as possible for a bird's-eye view of battle, all that you seeis the explosion of the shells; never anything of the guns which arefiring. In the distance over the German lines and in the foregroundover the British lines is a balloon, shaped like a caterpillar with foldedwings--a chrysalis of a caterpillar. 

Tugging at its moorings, it turns this way and that with the breeze. The speck directly beneath it through the glasses becomes anordinary balloon basket and other specks attached to a guy rope playthe part of the tail of a kite, helping to steady the type of balloon whichhas taken the place of the old spherical type for observation. Anyonewho has been up in a captive spherical balloon knows how difficult itis to keep his glasses focussed on any object, because of the jerkingand pitching and trembling due to the envelope's response to air-movements. The new type partly overcomes this drawback. Toshrapnel their thin envelope is as vulnerable as a paper drum-head toa knife; but I have seen them remain up defiantly when shells werebursting within three or four hundred yards, which their commandersseemed to understand was the limit of the German battery's reach. 

Again, I have seen a shrapnel burst alongside within range; and fiveminutes later the balloon was down and out of sight. No balloonobserver hopes to see the enemy's guns. He is watching for shell-bursts, in order to inform the guns of his side whether they are on thetarget or not. 

Riding along the roads at the front one may know that there is abattery a stone's throw away only when a blast from a hidden gun-muzzle warns him of its presence. It is wonderful to me that theartillery general who took me gun-seeing knew where his own gunswere, let alone the enemy's. I imagine that he could return to a fieldand locate a four-leafed clover that he had seen on a previous stroll. His dogs of war had become foxes of war, burrowing in places whichwise old father foxes knew were safest from detection. Hereafter, Ishall not be surprised to see a muzzle poking its head out of an oven, or from under grandfather's chair or a farm wagon, or up a tree, or ina garret. Think of the last place in the world for emplacing a gun andone may be there; think of the most likely place and one may bethere. You might be walking across the fields and minded to gothrough a hedge, and bump into a black ring of steel with a gun'screw grinning behind it. They would grin because you had given proofof how well their gun was concealed. But they wouldn't grin as muchas they would if they saw the enemy plunking shells into anotherhedge two hundred yards distant, where the German aeroplaneobserver thought he had seen a battery and had not. 

"I'll show you a big one, first!" said the general. 

We left the car at a cottage and walked along a lane. I looked allabout the premises and could see only some artillerymen. An officerled me up to a gun-breech; at least, I know a gun-breech when it isone foot from my nose and a soldier has removed its covering. But Ishall not tell how that gun was concealed; the method was soaudacious that it was entirely successful. The Germans would like toknow and we don't want them to know. A little pencil-point on theirmap for identification, and they would send a whirlwind of shells atthat gun. 

And then?

Would the gun try to fire back? No. Its gunners probably would notknow the location of any of the guns of the German battery which hadconcentrated on their treasure. They would desert the gun. If they didnot, they ought to be court-martialled for needlessly risking theprecious lives of trained men. They would make for the "funk-pits, " asthey call the dug-outs, just as the gunners of any other Power would. 

The chances are that the gun itself would not be hit bodily by a shell. Fragments might strike it without causing more than an abrasion; forbig guns have pretty thick cuticles. When the storm was over, thegunners would move their treasure to another hiding-place; whichwould mean a good deal of work, on account of its size. 

It is the inability of gun to see gun, and even when seen to knock outgun, which has put an end to the so-called artillery duel of pitched-battle days, when cannon walloped cannon to keep cannon fromwalloping the infantry. Now when there is an action, though guns stillgo after guns if they know where they are, most of the firing is doneagainst trenches and to support trenches and infantry works, or with aview to demoralizing the infantry. Concentration of artillery fire willdemolish an enemy's trench and let your infantry take possession ofthe wreckage remaining; but then the enemy's artillery concentrateson your infantry and frequently makes their new habitation untenable. 

Noiselessly except for a little click, with chickens clucking in a fieldnear by, the big breech-block which held the shell fast, sending all thepower of the explosion out of the muzzle, was swung back and onelooked through the shining tube of steel, with its rifling which caughtthe driving band and gave the shell its rotation and accuracy in itslong journey, which would close when, descending at the end of itsparabola, its nose struck building, earth, or pavement and it exploded. 

Wheels that lift and depress and swing the muzzle, and gadgets withfigures, and other scales which play between the map and thegadgets, and atmospheric pressure and wind-variation, all worked outwith the same precision under a French hedge as on board abattleship where the gun-mounting is fast to massive ribs of steel--itseemed a matter of book-keeping and trigonometry rather than war. 

If a shell from this gun were to hit at the corner of Wall Street andBroadway at the noon hour, it would probably kill and wound ahundred men. If it went into the dug-out of a support trench it wouldget everybody there; but if it went ten yards beyond the trench intothe open field, it would probably get nobody. "Cover!" someoneexclaimed, while we were looking at the gun; and everybody promptlygot under the branches of a tree or a shed. A German aeroplane wascruising in our direction. If the aviator saw a group of men standingabout he might draw conclusions and pass the wireless word to sendin some shells at whatever number on the German gunners' mapwas ours. 

These gunners loved their gun; loved it for the power which it couldput into a blow under their trained hands; loved it for the care and thelabour it had meant for them. It is the way of gunners to love theirgun, or they would not be good gunners. Of all the guns I saw thatday, I think that two big howitzers meant the most to their masters. These had just arrived. They had been set up only two days. Theyhad not yet fired against the enemy. For many months the gunnershad drilled in England, and they had tried their "eight-inch hows" outon the target range and brought them across the Channel andnursed them along French roads, and finally set them up in theirhidden lair. Now they waited for observers to assist them inregistration. 

When the general approached there was a call to turn out the guard;but the general stopped that. At the front there is an end of theceremoniousness of the barracks. Military formality disappears. Discipline, as well as other things, is simpler and more real. The menwent on with their recess playing football in a near-by field. 

The officers possibly were a trifle diffident and uncertain; they had notyet the veteran's manner. It was clear that they had done everythingrequired by the textbook of theory--the latest, up-to-date textbook ofexperience at the front as taught in England. When they showed ushow they had stored their stock of shells to be safe from a shot by theenemy, one remarked that the method was according to the latestdirections, though there was some difference among military expertson the subject. When there is a difference, what is the beginner todo? An old hand, of course, does it his way until an order makes himdo otherwise. The general had a suggestion about the application ofthe method. He had little to say, the general, and all was in the spiritof comradeship and quite to the point. Not much escaped hisobservation. 

It seems fairly true that one who knows his work well in any branch ofhuman endeavour makes it appear easy. Once a gunner always agunner is characteristic of all armies. The general had spent his lifewith guns. He was a specialist visiting his plant; one of the staffspecialists responsible to a corps commander for the work of theguns on a certain section of map, for accuracy and promptness of firewhen it was required in the commander's plans. 

If the newcomers put their shells into the target on their first trial theyhad qualified; and sometimes newcomers shoot quite as well asveterans, which is a surprise to both and the best kind of news for thegeneral who is in charge of an expanding plant. The war will bedecided by gunners and infantry that knew nothing of guns or drillwhen the war began. 

"Here are some who have been in France from the first, " said thegeneral, when we came to a battery of field guns; of the eighteen-pounders, the fellows you see behind the galloping horses, the "hell-for-leather" guns, the guns which bring the gleam of affection into theeyes of men who think of pursuits and covering retreats and thepitched-battle conditions before armies settled down in trenches andgrowled and hissed at each other day after day and brought up gunsof calibres which we associate with battleships and coastfortifications. 

These are called "light stuff" and "whizz-bangs" now, in armyparlance. They throw only an eighteen-pound shell which carriesthree hundred bullets, but so fast that they chase one anotherthrough the air. There has been so much talk about the need ofheavy guns, you might think that eighteen-pounders were too smallfor consideration. Were the German line broken, these are the oneswhich could gallop on the heels of the infantry. 

They are the boys who weave the "curtain of fire" which you readabout in the official bulletins as checking an infantry charge; whichdemolish the barbed-wire entanglements to let an infantry charge getinto a trench. If a general wants a shower of bullets over any part ofthe German line he has only to call up the eighteen-pounders and it issent as promptly as the pressure of a button brings a pitcher of iced-water to a room in a first-class hotel. A veteran eighteen-poundercrew in action is a poem in precision and speed of movement. Thegun itself seems to possess intelligence. 

There was the finesse of gunners' craft worthy of veterans in the waythat these eighteen-pounders were concealed. The Germans had putsome shells in the neighbourhood, but without fooling the old hands. They did not change the location of their battery and their judgmentthat the shots which came near were chance shots fired at anotherobject was justified. Particularly I should like to mention the nature oftheir "funk-pits, " which kept them safe from the heaviest shells. Forthe veterans knew how to take care of themselves; they had an eyeto the protection which comes of experience with German highexplosives. Their expert knowledge of all the ins and outs of thebusiness had been fought into them for over a year. 

Another field battery, also, I have in mind, placed in an orchard. Which orchard of all the thousands of orchards along the British frontthe German staff may guess, if they choose. If German guns fired atall the orchards, one by one, they might locate it--and then again theymight not. Besides, this is a peculiar sort of orchard. 

It is a characteristic of gunners to be neat and to have an eye for thecomeliness of things. These men had a lawn and a garden, tablesand chairs. If you are familiar with the tidiness of a retired NewEngland sailor, who regards his porch as a quarter-deck and salliesforth to remove each descending autumn leaf from the grass, thenyou know how scrupulous they were about litter. 

For weeks they had been in the same position, unseen by Germanaeroplanes. They had daily baths; they did their weekly laundry, taking care not to hang it where it would be visible from the sky. Everyday they received the London papers and letters from home. Whenthey were needed to help in making war, all they had to do was to slipa shell in the breech and send it with their compliments to theGermans. They were camping out at His Majesty's expense in thepleasant land of France in the joyous summer time; and on the roof ofsod over their guns were pots of flowers, undisturbed by blasts fromthe gun-muzzles. 

It was when leaving another battery that out of the tail of my eye Icaught a lurid flash through a hedge, followed by the sharp, ear-piercing crack that comes from being in line with a gun-muzzle whena shot is fired. We followed a path which took us to the rear of thereport, where we stepped through undergrowth among the busygroup around the breeches of some guns of one of the largercalibres. 

An order for some "heavy stuff" at a certain point on the map wasbeing filled. Sturdy men were moving in a pantomime under theshade of a willow tree, each doing exactly his part in a process thatseemed as simple as opening a cupboard door, slipping in a packageof concentrated destruction, and closing the door. All that detail ofrange-finding and mathematical adjustment of aim at the unseentarget which takes so long to explain was applied as automatically asan adding-machine adds up a column of figures. Everybody was aspractice-perfect in his part as performers who have made hundredsof appearances in the same act on the stage. 

All ready, the word given, a thunder peal and through the air you sawa wingless, black object in a faint curve against the soft blue sky, which it seemed to sweep with a sound something like the escape ofwater through a break in the garden hose multiplied by ten, rising toits zenith and then descending, till it passed out of sight behind agreen bank of foliage on the horizon. 

After the scream had been lost to the ear you heard the faint, thudding boom of an explosion from the burst of that conical piece ofsteel which you had seen slipped into the breech. This was thegunners' part in chessboard war, where the moves are made oversignal wires, while the infantry endure the explosions in their trenchesand fight in their charges in the traverses of trenches at as closequarters as in the days of the cave-dwellers. 

There was no stopping work when the general came, of course. Itwould have been the same had Lord Kitchener been present. Thebattery commander expressed his regret that he could not show mehis guns without any sense of irony; meaning that he was sorry hewas too busy to tell about his battery. In about the time that it took atelegraph key to click after each one of those distant bursts, he knewwhether or not the shot was on the target and what variation ofdegree to make in the next if it were not; or, if the word came, to shiftthe point of aim a little, when you are trying to shake up the enemyhere and there along a certain length of trench. 

At another wire-end someone was spotting the bursts. Perhaps hewas in the kind of place where I found one observer, who was sittingon a cushion looking out through a chink in a wall, with a signal corpsoperator near by. It was a small chink, just large enough to allow thelens of a pair of glasses or a telescope a range of vision; and eventhen I was given certain warnings before the cover over the chinkwas removed, though there could not have been any German inuniform nearer than four thousand yards. But there may be spieswithin your own lines, looking for such holes. 

From this post I could make out the British and the German trenchesin muddy white lines of sandbags running snake-like across the fields, and the officer identified points on the map to me. Every tree andhedge and ditch in the panorama were graven on his mind; all hadlanguage for him. His work was engrossing. It had risk, too; there wasno telling when a shell might lift him off the cushion and provide ahole for the burial of his remains. 

If he were shelled, the observer would go to a funk-pit, as thegunners do, until the storm had passed; and then he would move onwith his cushion and his telegraph instrument and make a hole inanother wall, if he did not find a tree or some other eminence whichsuited his purpose better. Meanwhile, he was not the only observer inthat section. There were others nearer the trenches, perhaps actuallyin the trenches. The two armies, seeming chained to their trenches, are set with veiled eyes at the end of wires; veiled eyes trying tolocate the other's eyes, the other's guns and troops and the leastmovement which indicates any attempt to gain an advantage. 

"Gunnery is navigation, dead reckoning, with the spotting observerthe sun by which you correct your figures, " said one of the artilleryofficers. 

Firing enough one had seen--landscape bathed in smoke and dustand reverberating with explosions; but all as a spectacle from anorchestra seat, not too close at hand for comfort. This time I was tosee the guns fire and the results of the firing in detail. Both can rarelybe seen at the same time. It was not show firing this that we watchedfrom an observing station, but part of the day's work for the guns andthe general. First, the map, "Here and there, " as an officer's fingerpointed; and then one looked across fields, green and brown andgolden with the summer crops. 

Item I. The Germans were fortifying a certain point on a certain farm. We were going to put some "heavy stuff" in there and some "lightstuff, " too. The burst of our shells could be located in relation to acertain tree. 

Item II. Our planes thought that the Germans had a wireless station ina certain building. "Heavy stuff" exclusively for this. No enemy'swireless station ought to be enjoying serene summer weather withoutinterruption; and no German working-party ought to be allowed tobuild redoubts within range of our guns without a break in themonotony of their drudgery. 

Six lyddites were the order for the wireless station; six high explosiveswhich burst on contact and make a hole in the earth large enough fora grave for the Kaiser and all his field marshals. Frequently, not onlythe number of shells to be fired, but also the intervals between themis given by the artillery commander, as part of his plan in hisunderstanding of the object to be accomplished; and it is quite clearthat the system is the same with the Germans. 

One side no sooner develops an idea than the other adopts it. Byeffect of the enemy's shells you judge what the effect of yours mustbe. Months of experience have done away with all theories andpractice has become much the same by either adversary. Forexample, let a German or a British airman be winged by anti-aircraftgun-fire and the guns instantly loosen up on the point over his ownlines, if he regains them, where he is seen to fall. All the soldiers inthe neighbourhood are expected to run to his assistance; and, at anyrate, you may get a trained aviator, whose life is a valuable asset onone side of the ledger and whose death an asset on the other. Thereis no sentiment left in war, you see. It is all killing and avoiding beingkilled. 

By the scream of a shell the practised ear of the artilleryman can tellwhether it comes from a gun with a low trajectory or from a howitzer, whose projectile rises higher and falls at a sharper angle whichenables it to enter the trenches; and he can even tell approximatelythe calibre. 

A scream sweeping past from our rear, and we knew that this was forthe redoubt, as that was to have the first turn. A volume of dust andsmoke breaking from the earth short of the redoubt, and after thesecond's delay of hearing the engine whistle after the burst of steamin the distance on a winter day, came the sound of the burst. Thenext was over. With the third the "heavy stuff" ought to be right on. 

But don't forget that there was also an order for some "Right stuff, "identified as shrapnel by its soft, nimbus-like puff which wasscattering bullets as if giving chase to that working-party as ithastened to cover. There you had the ugly method of this modernartillery fire: death shot downward from the air and leaping up out ofthe earth. Unhappily, the third was not on, nor the fourth--not exactlyon. Exactly on is the way that British gunners like to fill an orderf. O. B. , express charges prepaid, for the Germans. 

Ten years ago it would have seemed good shooting. It was not verygood in the twelfth month of the war; for war beats the target range indeveloping accuracy. At five or six or seven or eight thousand yards'range the shells were bursting thirty or forty yards away from wherethey should. 

No, not very good; the general murmured as much. He did not needto say so aloud to the artillery officer responsible for that shooting, who was in touch with his batteries by wire. The officer knew it. Hewas the high-strung, ambitious sort. You had better not become agunner unless you are. Any "good-enough" temperament is ruled offwasting munitions. Red was creeping through the tan from his throatto the roots of his hair. To have this happen in the presence of thatveteran general, after all his efforts to try to remedy the error in thoseguns!

But the general was quite human. He was not the "strafing" kind. 

"I know those guns have an error!" he said, as he put his hand on theofficer's arm. That was all; and that was a good deal to the officer. Evidently, the general not only knew guns; he knew men. The officerhad suffered admonition enough from his own injured pride. 

Besides, what we did to the supposed wireless station ought to keepany general from being downhearted. Neither guns, nor the powderwhich sent the big shells on their errand, nor the calculations of thegunners, nor their adjustment of the gadgets, had any error. With thefirst one, a great burst of the black smoke of deadly lyddite rose fromthe target. "Right on!"

And again and again--right on! The ugly, spreading, low-hanging, dense cloud was renewed from its heart by successive bursts in thesame place. If the aeroplane's conclusions were right, that wirelessstation must be very much wireless, now. The only safe discount forthe life insurance of the operators was one hundred per cent. 

"Here, they are firing more than six!" said the general. "It's alwayshard to hold these gunners down when they are on the target likethat. "

He spoke as if it would have been difficult for him to resist thetemptation himself. The wireless station got two extra shells for fullmeasure. Perhaps those two were waste; perhaps the first two hadbeen enough. Conservation of shells has become a first principle ofthe artillerists' duty. The number fired by either side in the course ofthe routine of an average so-called peaceful day is surprising. Economy would be easier if it were harder to slip a shell into a gun-breech. The men in the trenches are always calling for shells. Theywant a tree or a house which is the hiding-place of a sniper knockeddown. The men at the guns would be glad to accommodate them, butthe say as to that is with commanders who know the situation. 

"The Boches will be coming back at us soon, you will see!" said oneof the officers who was at our observation post. "They always do. Theother day they chose this particular spot for their target"--which was agood reason why they would not this time, an optimist thought. 

Let either side start a bombardment and the other responds. There isa you-hit-me-and-I'll-hit-you character about siege warfare. Gun-fireprovokes gun-fire. Neither adversary stays quiet under a blow. It wasnot long before we heard the whish of German shells passing somedistance away. 

They say sport is out of war. Perhaps, but not its enthralling andhorrible fascination. Knowing what the target is, knowing the object ofthe fire, hearing the scream of the projectile on the way and watchingto see if it is to be a hit, when the British are fighting the Germans onthe soil of France, has an intensive thrill which is missing to thespectator who looks on at the Home Sports Club shooting at claypigeons--which is not in justification of war. It does explain, however, the attraction of gunnery to gunners. One forgets, for the instant, thatmen are being killed and mangled. He thinks only of points scored ina contest which requires all the wit and strength and fortitude of manand all his cunning in the manufacture and control of material. 

You want your side to win; in this case, because it is the side ofhumanity and of that kindly general and the things that he and thearmy he represents stand for. The blows which the demons from theBritish lairs strike are to you the blows of justice; and you are gladwhen they go home. They are your blows. You have a better reasonfor keeping an army's artillery secrets than for keeping secret thesignals of your Varsity football team, which anyone instinctivelykeeps--the reason of a world cause. 

Yet another thing to see--an aeroplane assisting a battery by spottingthe fall of its shells, which is engrossing enough, too, and amazinglysimple. Of course this battery was proud of its method ofconcealment. Each battery commander will tell you that a Britishplane has flown very low, as a test, without being able to locate hisbattery. If it is located, there is more work due in "make-up" tocomplete the disguise. Competition among batteries is as keen asamong battleships of our North Atlantic fleet. 

Situation favoured this battery, which was Canadian. It was as nicelyat home as a first-class Adirondack camp. At any rate, no otherbattery had a dug-out for a litter of eight pups, with clean straw fortheir bed, right between two gun-emplacements. 

"We found the mother wild, out there in the woods, " one of the menexplained. "She, too, was a victim of war; a refugee from some homedestroyed by shell-fire. At first she wouldn't let us approach her, andwe tossed her pieces of meat from a safe distance. I think those pupswill bring us luck. We'll take them along to the Rhine. Some mascots, eh?"

On our way back to the general's headquarters we must have passedother batteries hidden from sight only a stone's throw away; and yet inan illustrated paper recently I saw a drawing of some guns emplacedon the crest of a bare hill, naked to all the batteries of the enemy, butengaged in destroying all the enemy's batteries, according to theaccount. Twelve months of war have not shaken conventional ideasabout gunnery; which is one reason for writing this chapter. 

Also, on our way back we learned the object of the German fire inanswer to our bombardment of the redoubt and the wireless station. They had shelled a cross-roads and a certain village again. As wepassed through the village we noticed a new hole in the church tower, and three holes in the churchyard, which had scattered clods of earthabout the pavement. A shopkeeper was engaged in repairing awindow-frame that had been broken by a shell-fragment. 

There is no flustering the French population. That very day I heard ofan old peasant who asked a British soldier if he could not getpermission for the old farmer to wear some kind of an armband whichboth sides would respect, so that he could cut his field of wheatbetween the trenches. Why not? Wasn't it his wheat? Didn't he needthe crop?

And the Germans fire into villages and towns; for the women andchildren there are the women and children of the enemy. But those inthe German lines belong to the ally of England. Besides, they arewomen and children. So British gunners avoid towns--which is, in onesense, a professional handicap. 

XVIIIArchibald The Archer

There is another kind of gun, vagrant and free lance, which deservesa chapter by itself. It has the same bark as the eighteen-pounder fieldpiece; the flight of the shell makes the same kind of sound. But itsscream, instead of passing in a long parabola toward the Germanlines, goes up in the heavens toward something as large as yourhand against the light blue of the summer sky--a German aeroplane. 

At a height of seven or eight thousand feet the target seems almoststationary, when really it is going somewhere between fifty and ninetymiles an hour. It has all the heavens to itself, and to the British it is asinister, prying eye that wants to see if we are building any newtrenches, if we are moving bodies of troops or of transport, and whereour batteries are in hiding. That aviator three miles above the earthhas many waiting guns at his command. A few signals from hiswireless and they would let loose on the target he indicated. 

If the planes might fly as low as they pleased, they would know all thatwas going on in an enemy's lines. They must keep up so high thatthrough the aviator's glasses a man on the road is the size of a pin-head. To descend low is as certain death as to put your head overthe parapet of a trench when the enemy's trench is only a hundredyards away. There are dead lines in the air, no less than on the earth. 

Archibald, the anti-aircraft gun, sets the dead line. He watches over itas a cat watches a mouse. The trick of sneaking up under cover of anoonday cloud and all the other man-bird tricks he knows. A couple ofseconds after that crack a tiny puff of smoke breaks about a hundredyards behind the Taube. A soft thistledown against the blue it seemsat that altitude; but it would not if it were about your ears. Then itwould sound like a bit of dynamite on an anvil struck by a hammerand you would hear the whizz of scores of bullets and fragments. 

The smoking brass shell-case is out of Archibald's steel throat, andanother shell-case with its charge slipped into place and started on itsway before the first puff breaks. The aviator knows what is coming. He knows that one means many, once he is in range. 

Archibald rushes the fighting; it is the business of the Taube to side-step. The aviator cannot hit back except through his allies, theGerman batteries, on the earth. They would take care of Archibald ifthey knew where he was. But all that the aviator can see is mottledlandscape. From his side Archibald flies no goal flags. He is one often thousand tiny objects under the aviator's eye. 

Archibald's propensities are entirely peripatetic. He is the vagabondof the army lines. Locate him and he is gone. His home is where nightfinds him and the day's duties take him. He is the only gun that keepsregular hours like a Christian gentleman. All the others, great andsmall, raucous-voiced and shrill-voiced, fire at any hour, night or day. Aeroplanes rarely go up at night; and when no aeroplanes are up, Archibald has no interest in the war. But he is alert at the first flush ofdawn, on the look-out for game with the avidity of a pointer dog; foraviators are also up early. 

Why he was named Archibald nobody knows. As his full name isArchibald the Archer, possibly it comes from some association withthe idea of archery. If there were ten thousand anti-aircraft guns in theBritish army, every one would be known as Archibald. 

When the British Expeditionary Force went to France it had none. Allthe British could do was to bang away at Taubes with thousands ofrounds of rifle-bullets, which might fall in their own lines, and with thefield guns. 

It was pie in those days for the Taubes! Easy to keep out of the rangeof both rifles and guns and observe well! If the Germans did not knowthe progress of the British retreat from on high it was their own fault. Now, the business of firing at Taubes is left entirely to Archibald. When you see how hard it is for Archibald, after all his practice, to geta Taube, you understand how foolish it was for the field guns to try toget one. 

Archibald, who is quite the "swaggerist" of the gun tribe, has his ownprivate car built especially for him. Such of the cavalry's former partas the planes do not play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in this theatreof France, where all the old glamour of war is supposed to belacking? You will find it in the attendants of Archibald. They havepride, élan, alertness, pepper, and all the other appetizers andcondiments. They are as neat as a private yacht's crew, and as livelyas an infield of a major league team. The Archibaldians are naturallybound to think rather well of themselves. 

Watch them there, every man knowing his part, as they send theirshells after the Taube! There is not enough waste motion among thelot to tip over the range-finder, or the telescopes, or the score board, or any of the other paraphernalia assisting the man who is lookingthrough the sight in knowing where to aim next, as a screw answerssoftly to his touch. 

Is the sport of war dead? Not for Archibald! Here you see your target--which is so rare these days when British infantrymen have stormedand taken trenches without ever seeing a German--and the target is abird, a man-bird. Puffs of smoke with bursting hearts of death areclustered around the Taube. One follows another in quick succession, for more than one Archibald is firing, before your entranced eye. 

You are staring like the crowd of a county fair at a parachute act. Forthe next puff may get him. Who knows this better than the aviator?He is, likely, an old hand at the game; or, if he is not, he has all theexperience of other veterans to go by. His ruse is the same as that ofthe escaped prisoner who runs from the fire of a guard in a zigzagcourse, and more than that. If a puff comes near on the right, he turnsto the left; if one comes near on the left, he turns to the right; if onecomes under, he rises; over, he dips. This means that the next shellfired at the same point will be wide of the target. 

Looking through the sight, it seems easy to hit a plane. But here isthe difficulty. It takes two seconds, say, for the shell to travel to therange of the plane. The gunner must wait for its burst before he canspot his shot. Ninety miles an hour is a mile and a half a minute. Divide that by thirty and you have about a hundred yards which theplane has travelled from the time the shell left the gun-muzzle till itburst. It becomes a matter of discounting the aviator's speed andguessing from experience which way he will turn next. 

That ought to have got him--the burst was right under. No! He rises. Surely that one got him! The puff is right in front, partly hiding theTaube from view. You see the plane tremble as if struck by a violentgust of wind. Close! Within thirty or forty yards, the telescope says. But at that range the naked eye is easily deceived about distance. Probably some of the bullets have cut his plane. 

But you must hit the man or the machine in a vital spot in order tobring down your bird. The explosions must be very close to count. It isamazing how much shell-fire an aeroplane can stand. Aviators areaccustomed to the whizz of shell-fragments and bullets, and to havetheir planes punctured and ripped. Though their engines are put outof commission, and frequently though the man be wounded, they areable to volplane back to the cover of their own lines. 

To make a proper story we ought to have brought down this particularbird. But it had the luck, which most planes, British or German have, to escape antiaircraft gun-fire. It had begun edging away after the firstshot and soon was out of range. Archibald had served the purpose ofhis existence. He had sent the prying aerial eye home. 

A fight between planes in the air very rarely happens, except in theimagination. Planes do not go up to fight other planes, but forobservation. Their business is to see and learn and bring home theirnews. 

XIXTrenches In Summer

It was the same trench in June, still a relatively "quiet corner, " which Ihad seen in March; but I would never have known it if its location hadnot been the same on the map. One was puzzled how a place thathad been so wet could become so dry. 

This time the approach was made in daylight through a longcommunication ditch, which brought us to a shell-wreckedfarmhouse. We passed through this and stepped down at the backdoor into deep traverses cut among the roots of an orchard; thenbehind walls of earth high above our heads to battalion headquartersin a neat little shanty, where I deposited the first of the cakes I hadbrought on the table beside some battalion reports. A cake is the rightgift for the trenches, though less so in summer than in winter whenappetites are less keen. The adjutant tried a slice while the colonelconferred with the general, who had accompanied me this far, and heglanced up at a sheet of writing with a line opposite hours of the day, pinned to a post of his dug-out. 

"I wanted to see if it were time to make another report, " he said. "Weare always making reports. Everybody is, so that whoever is superiorto someone else knows what is happening in his subordinate'sdepartment. "

Then in and out in a maze, between walls with straight faces of thehard, dry earth, testifying to the beneficence of summer weather inconstructing fastnesses from artillery fire, until we were in the firing-trench, where I was at home among the officers and men of acompany. General Mud was "down and out. " He waited on the winterrains to take command again. But winter would find an army preparedagainst his kind of campaign. Life in the trenches in summer was notso unpleasant but that some preferred it, with the excitement ofsniping, to the boredom of billets. 

"What hopes!" was the current phrase I heard among the men inthese trenches. It shared honours with strafe. You have only one lifeto live and you may lose that any second--what hopes! Dig, dig, dig, and set off a mine that sends Germans skyward in a cloud of dust--what hopes! Bully beef from Chicago and Argentina is no food forbabes, but better than "K. K. " bread--what hopes! Mr. Thomas Atkins, British regular, takes things as they come--and a lot of them come--shells, bullets, asphyxiating gas, grenades, and bombs. 

There is much to be thankful for. The King's Own Particular Fusiliers, as we shall call this regiment, had only three men hit yesterday. Onevery man's cap is a metal badge crowded with battle honours, fromthe storming of Quebec to the relief of Ladysmith. Heroic its history;but no battle honours equal that of the regiment's part in the secondbattle of Ypres; and no heroes of the regiment's story, whom youpicture in imagination with haloes of glory in the wish that you mighthave met them in the flesh in their scarlet coats, are the equal ofthese survivors in plain khaki manning a ditch in A. D. 1915, whomanyone may meet. 

But do not tell them that they are heroes. They will deny it on theevidence of themselves as eyewitnesses of the action. To remarkthat the K. O. P. F. Are brave is like remarking that water flows downhill. It is the business of the K. O. P. F. To be brave. Why talk about it?

One of the three men hit was killed. Well, everybody in the war ratherexpects to be killed. The other two "got tickets to England, " as theysay. My lady will take the convalescents joy-riding in her car, andafterwards seat them in easy chairs, arranging the cushions with herown hands, and feed them slices of cold chicken in place of bully beefand strawberries and cream in place of ration marmalade. Oh, my!What hopes!

Mr. Atkins does not mind being a hero for the purposes of suchtreatment. Then, with never a twinkle in his eye, he will tell my ladythat he does not want to return to the front; he has had enough of it, he has. My lady's patriotism will be a trifle shocked, as Mr. Atkinsknows it will be; and she will wonder if the "stick it" quality of theBritish soldier is weakening, as Mr. Atkins knows she will. For he hasmore kinks in his mental equipment than mere nobility ever guesses, and he is having the time of his life in more respects thanstrawberries and cream. What hopes! Of course, he will return andhold on in the face of all that the Germans can give, without anypretence to bravery. 

If you go as a stranger into the trenches on a sightseeing tour andsays, "How are you?" and, "Are you going to Berlin?" and, "Are youcomfortable?" etc. , Tommy Atkins will say, "Yes, sir, " and "Very well, sir, " as becomes all polite regular soldier men; and you get to knowhim about as well as you know the members of a club if you areshown the library and dine at a corner table with a friend. 

Spend the night in the trenches and you are taken into the family, intothat very human family of soldier-dom in a quiet corner; and the old, care-free spirit of war, which some people thought had passed, isfound to be no less alive in siege warfare than on a march of regularson the Indian frontier or in the Philippines. Gaiety and laughter andcomradeship and "joshing" are here among men to whom woundsand death are a part of the game. One may challenge highexplosives with a smile, no less than ancient round shot. Settle downbehind the parapet, and the little incongruities of a trench, paltrywithout the intimacy of men and locality, make for humour no lessthan in a shop or a factory. 

Under the parapet runs the tangle of barbed wire--barbed wire fromSwitzerland to Belgium--to welcome visitors from that direction, which, to say the least, would be an impolitic direction of approach for anystranger. 

"All sightseers should come into the trenches from the rear, " says Mr. Atkins. "Put it down in the guidebooks. "

Beyond the barbed wire in the open field the wheat which somefarmer sowed before positions were established in this area is now inhead, rippling with the breeze, making a golden sea up to the wall ofsandbags which is the enemy's line. It was late June at its loveliest;no signs of war except the sound of our guns some distance awayand an occasional sniper's bullet. One cracked past as I was lookingthrough my glasses to see if there were any evidence of life in theGerman trenches. 

"Your hat, sir!"

Another moved a sandbag slightly, but not until after the hat hadcome down and the head under it, most expeditiously. Up to eighthundred yards a bullet cracks; beyond that range it whistles, sighs, even wheezes. An elevation gives snipers, who are always trainedshots, an angle of advantage. In winter they had to rely for cover onbuildings, which often came tumbling down with them when hit by ashell. The foliage of summer is a boon to their craft. 

"Does it look to you like an opening in the branches of that tree--thebig one at the right?"

In the mass of leaves a dark spot was visible. It might be natural, or itmight be a space cut away for the swing of a rifle-barrel. Perhapssitting up there snugly behind a bullet-proof shield fastened to thelimbs was a German sharpshooter, watching for a shot with thepatience of a hound for a rabbit to come out of its hole. 

"It's about time we gave that tree a spray good for that kind of fungus, from a machine-gun!"

A bullet coming from our side swept overhead. One of our ownsharpshooters had seen something to shoot at. 

"Not giving you much excitement!" said Tommy. 

"I suppose I'd get a little if I stood up on the parapet?" I asked. 

"You wouldn't get a ticket for England; you'd get a box!"

"There's a cemetery just behind the lines if you'd prefer to stay inFrance!"

I had passed that cemetery with its fresh wooden crosses on my wayto the trench. These tenderhearted soldiers who joked with death hadplaced flowers on the graves of fallen comrades and boughtelaborate French funeral wreaths with their meagre pay--which isanother side of Mr. Thomas Atkins. There is sentiment in him. Yes, he's loaded with sentiment, but not for the "movies. "

"Keep your head down there, Eames!" called a corporal. "I don't wantto be taking an inventory of your kit. "

Eames did not even realize that his head was above the parapet. Thehardest thing to teach a soldier is not to expose himself. Officers keepiterating warnings and then forget to practise what they preach. Thatmorning a soldier had been shot through the heart and arm sidewaysbehind the trench. He had lain down unnoticed for a nap in the sun, itwas supposed. When he awoke, presumably he sat up and yawnedand Herr Schmidt, from some platform in a tree, had a bloody rewardfor his patience. 

The next morning I saw the British take their revenge. Some Germanwho thought that he could not be seen in the mist of dawn waswalking along the German parapet. What hopes! Four or five mentook careful aim and fired. That dim figure collapsed in a way that wasconvincing. 

As I swept the line of German trenches with the glasses I saw a wispof flag clinging to its pole in the still air far down to the left. Flagsare as unusual above trenches as men standing up in full view ofthe enemy. Then a breeze caught the folds, and I saw that it wasthe tricolour of France. 

"A Boche joke!" Tommy explained. 

"Probably they are hating the French to-day?"

"No, it's been there for some days. They want us to shoot at the flagof our ally. They'd get a laugh out of that--a regular Boche notion ofhumour. "

"If it were a German flag?" I suggested. 

"What hopes! We'd make it into a lace curtain!"

Even the guns had ceased firing. The birds in their evensong had allthe war to themselves. It was difficult to believe that if you stood ontop of the parapet anybody would shoot at you; no, not even if youwalked down the road that ran through the wheatfield, everything wasso peaceful. One grew sceptical of there being any Germans in thetrenches opposite. 

"There are three or four sharpshooters and a fat old Boche professorin spectacles, who moves a machine-gun up and down for a bluff, "said a soldier, and another corrected him:

"No, the old professor's the one that walks along at night sending upflares!"

"Munching K. K. Bread with his false teeth!"

"And singing the hymn of hate!"

Thus the talk ran on in the quiet of evening, till we heard a concussionand a quarter of a mile away, behind a screen of trees, a pillar ofsmoke rose to the height of two or three hundred feet. 

"A mine!" In front of the -th brigade!"

"Ours or the Boches'?"

"Ours, from the way the smoke went--our fuse!"

"No, theirs!"

Our colonel telephoned down to know if we knew whose mine it was, which was the question we wanted to ask him. The guns from bothsides became busy under the column of smoke. Oh, yes, there wereGermans in the trenches which had appeared vacant. Their shotsand ours merged in the hissing medley of a tempest. 

"Not enough guns--not enough noise for an attack!" said experiencedTommy, who knew what an attack was like. 

The commander of the adjoining brigade telephoned to the divisioncommander, who passed the word through to our colonel, whopassed it to us that the mine was German and had burst thirty yardsshort of the British trench. 

"After all that digging, wasting Boche powder in that fashion! TheKaiser won't like it!" said Mr. Atkins. "We exploded one under themyesterday and it made them hate so hard they couldn't wait. They'veawful tempers, the Boches!" And he finished the job on which he wasengaged when interrupted, eating a large piece of ration breadsurmounted by all the ration jam it could hold; while one of thecompany officers reminded me that it was about dinner time. 

"What do you think I am? A blooming traffic policeman?" growled thecook to two soldiers who had found themselves in a blind alley in themaze of streets back of the firing-trench. "My word! Is His Majesty'sarmy becoming illiterate? Strafe that sign at the corner! What do youthink we put it up for? To show what a beautiful hand we had atprinting?"

The sign on a board fastened against the earth wall read, "Nothoroughfare!" The soldier-cook, with a fork in his hand, his sleevesrolled up, his shirt open at his tanned throat, looked formidable. Hewas preoccupied; he was at close quarters roasting a chicken over asmall stove. Yes, they have cook-stoves in the trenches. Why not?The line had been in the same position for six months. 

"Little by little we improve our happy home, " said the cook. 

The latest acquisition was a lace curtain for the officers' mess hall, bought at a shop in the nearest town. 

When the cook was inside his kitchen there was no room to spillanything on the floor. The kitchen was about three feet square, withboarded walls, and a roof covered with tar paper and a layer of earthset level with the trench parapet. The chicken roasted and the fryingpotatoes sizzled as an occasional bullet passed overhead, even asflies buzz about the screen door when Mary is making cakes for tea. 

The officers' mess hall, next to the kitchen and built in the samefashion, had some boards nailed on posts sunk in the ground for atable, which was proof against tipping when you climbed over it orsqueezed around it to your place. The chairs were rifle-ammunitionboxes, whose contents had been emptied with individual care, bulletby bullet, at the Germans in the trench on the other side of thewheatfield. Dinner was at nine in the evening, when it was still twilightin the longest days of the year in this region. The hour fits in withtrench routine, when night is the time to be on guard and you sleepby day. Breakfast comes at nine in the morning. I was invited to helpeat the chicken and to spend the night. 

Now, the general commanding the brigade who accompanied me tothe trenches had been hit twice. So had the colonel, a man aboutforty. From forty, ages among the regimental officers dropped into thetwenties. 

Many of the older men who started in the war had been killed, or wereback in England wounded, or had been promoted to other commandswhere their experience was more useful. To youth, life is sweet anddanger is life. The oldest of the officers of the proud old K. O. P. F. Whogathered for dinner was about twenty-five, though when he assumedan air of authority he seemed to be forty. It was not right to ask theyoungest his age. Parenthetically, let it be said that he is trying tostart a moustache. They had come fresh from Sandhurst to swifttuition in gruelling, incessant warfare. 

"Has anyone asked him it yet?" one inquired, referring to somequestion to the guest. 

"Not yet? Then all together: When do you think that the war will beover?"

It was the eternal question of the trenches, the army, and the world. We had it over with before the soldier-cook brought on the roastchicken, which was received with a befitting chorus of approbation. 

Who would carve? Who knew how to carve? Modesty passed thehonour to her neighbour, till a brave man said:

"I will! I will strafe the chicken!" 'Gott strafe England!' Strafe hasbecome a noun, a verb, an adjective, a cussword, and a term ofgreeting. Soldier asks soldier how he is strafing to-day. When theGermans are not called Boches they are called Strafers. "Won't youstrafe a little for us?" Tommy sings out to the German trenches whenthey are close. What hopes? That gallant youngster of the K. O. P. F. Inthe midst of bantering advice succeeded in separating the meat fromthe bones without landing a leg in anybody's lap or a wing inanybody's eye. Timid spectators who had hung back where he haddared might criticize his form, but they could not deny the efficiency ofhis execution. He was appointed permanent strafer of all the fowlsthat came to table. 

Everybody talked and joked about everything, from plays in Londonto the Germans. There were arguments about favourite actors andmilitary methods. The sense of danger was as absent as if we hadbeen dining in a summer garden. It was the parents and relatives inpleasant English homes in fear of a dread telegram who wereworrying, not the sons and brothers in danger. Isn't it better that way?Would not the parents prefer it that way? Wasn't it the way of theancestors in the scarlet coats and the Merrie England of their day?With the elasticity of youth my hosts adapted themselves tocircumstances. In their lightheartedness they made war seem a keensport. They lived war for all it was worth. If it gets on their nervestheir efficiency is spoiled. There is no room for a jumpy, excitableman in the trenches. Youth's resources defy monotony and deathat the same time. 

An expedition had been planned for that night. A patrol the previousnight had brought in word that the Germans had been sneaking upand piling sandbags in the wheatfield. The plan was to slip out assoon as it was really dark with a machine-gun and a dozen men, getbehind the Germans' own sandbags, and give them a perfectlyinformal reception when they returned to go on with their work. 

Before dinner, however, J------, who was to be the general of theexpedition, and his subordinates made a reconnaissance. Two ormore officers or men always go out together on any trip of this kind inthat ticklish space between the trenches, where it is almost certaindeath to be seen by the enemy. If one is hit the other can help himback. If one survives he will bring back the result of his investigations. 

J----had his own ideas about comfort in trousers in the trench insummer. He wore shorts with his knees bare. When he had to do a"crawl" he unwound his puttees and wound them over his knees. Heand the others slipped over the parapet without attracting theattention of the enemy's sharpshooters. On hands and knees, likeboy scouts playing Indians, they passed through a narrow avenue inthe ugly barbed wire, and still not a shot at them. A matter of thecommonplace to the men in the trench held the spectator insuspense. There was a fascination about the thing, too; that of thesporting chance, without a full realization that failure in this hide-and-seek game might mean a spray of bullets and death for these youngmen. 

They entered the wheat, moving slowly like two land turtles. The grainparted in swaths over them. Surely the Germans might see theturtles' heads as they were raised to look around. No officer can betoo young and supple for this kind of work. Here the company officerjust out of school is in his element, with an advantage over olderofficers. That pair were used to crawling. They did not keep theirheads up long. They knew just how far they might exposethemselves. They passed out of sight, and reappeared and slippedback over the parapet again without the Germans being any thewiser. Hard luck! It is an unaccommodating world! They found thatthe patrol which had examined the bags at night had failed to discernthat they were old and must have been there for some time. 

"I'll take the machine-gun out, anyhow, if the colonel will permit it, "said J------. For the colonel puts on the brakes. Otherwise, there is notelling what risks youth might take with machine-guns. 

We were half through dinner when a corporal came to report that asoldier on watch thought that he had seen some Germans moving inthe wheat very near our barbed wire. Probably a false alarm; but noone in a trench ever acts on the theory that any alarm is false. Eternalvigilance is the price of holding a trench. Either side is cudgelling itsbrains day and night to spring some new trick on the other. If one sidesucceeds with a trick, the other immediately adopts it. No internationalcopyright in strategy is recognized. We rushed out of the mess hallinto the firing-trench, where we found the men on the alert, rifles laidon the spot where the Germans were supposed to have been seen. 

"Who are you? Answer, or we fire!" called the ranking younglieutenant. 

If any persons present out in front in the face of thirty rifles knew theEnglish language and had not lost the instinct of self-preservation, they would certainly have become articulate in response to such anunveiled hint. Not a sound came. Probably a rabbit running throughthe wheat had been the cause of the alarm. But you take no risks. The order was given, and the men combed the wheat with a fusillade. 

"Enough! Cease fire!" said the officer. "Nobody there. If there hadbeen we should have heard the groan of a wounded man or seen thewheat stir as the Germans hugged closer to the earth for cover. "

This he knew by experience. It was not the first time he had used afusillade in this kind of a test. 

After dinner J------rolled his puttees up around his bare knees again, for the colonel had not withdrawn permission for the machine-gunexpedition. J------'s knees were black and blue in spots; they werealso--well, there is not much water for washing purposes in thetrenches. Great sport that, crawling through the dew-moist wheat inthe faint moonlight, looking for a bunch of Germans in the hope ofturning a machine-gun on them before they turn one on you!

"One man hit by a stray bullet, " said J------on his return. 

"I heard the bullet go th-ip into the earth after it went through his leg, "said the other officer. 

"Blythe was a recruit and he had asked me to take him out the firsttime there was anything doing. I promised that I would, and he gotabout the only shot fired at us. "

"Need a stretcher?"

"No. "

Blythe came hobbling through the traverse to the communicationtrench, seeming well pleased with himself. The soft part of the leg isnot a bad place to receive a bullet if one is due to hit you. 

Night is always the time in the trenches when life grows moreinteresting and death more likely. 

"It's dark enough, now, " said one of the youngsters who was out onanother scout. "We'll go out with the patrol. "

By day, the slightest movement of the enemy is easily and instantlydetected. Light keeps the combatants to the warrens which protectthem from shell and bullet-fire. At night there is no telling whatmischief the enemy may be up to; you must depend upon the earrather than the eye for watching. Then the human soldier-fox comesout of his burrow and sneaks forth on the lookout for prey; both sidesare on the prowl. 

"Trained owls would be the most valuable scouts we could have, "said the young officer. "They would be more useful than aeroplanesin locating the enemy's gun-positions. A properly reliable owl wouldcome back and say that a German patrol was out in the wheatfield atsuch a point and a machine-gun would wipe out that patrol. "

We turned into a side trench, an alley off the main street, leading outof the front trench toward the Germans. 

"Anybody out?" he asked a soldier who was on guard at the end of it. 

"Yes, two. "

Climbing out of the ditch, we were in the midst of a tangle of barbedwire protecting the trench front, which was faintly visible in thestarlight. There was a break in the tangle, a narrow cut in the hedge, as it were, kept open for just such purposes as this. When the patrolreturned it closed the gate again. 

"Look out for that wire--just there! Do you see it? We've everything tokeep the Boches off our front lawn except 'Keep off the grass!' signs. "

It was perfectly still, a warm summer night without a cat's-paw ofbreeze. Through the dark curtain of the sky in a parabola rising fromthe German trenches swept the brilliant sputter of red light of aGerman flare. It was coming as straight toward us as if it had beenaimed at us. It cast a searching, uncanny glare over the tall wheat inhead between the trenches. 

"Down flat!" whispered the officer. 

It seemed foolish to grovel before a piece of fireworks. There was nofiring in our neighbourhood; nothing to indicate a state of war betweenthe British Empire and Germany; no visual evidence of any Germanarmy in France except that flare. However, if a guide who knows asmuch about war as this one says you are to prostrate yourself whenyou are out between two lines of machine-guns and rifles--betweenthe fighting powers of England and Germany--you take the hint. Theflare sank into earth a few yards away, after a last insulting, ugly flingof sparks in our faces. 

"What if we had been seen?"

"They'd have combed the wheat in this part thoroughly, and theymight have got us. "

"It's hard to believe, " I said. 

So it was, he agreed. That was the exasperating thing. Always hardto believe, perhaps, until after all the cries of wolf the wolf came; untilafter nineteen harmless flares the twentieth revealed to the watchingenemy the figure of a man above the wheat, when a crackling chorusof bullets would suddenly break the silence of night by concentratingon a target. Keeping cover from German flares is a part of the minute, painstaking economy of war. 

We crawled on slowly, taking care to make no noise, till we broughtup behind two soldiers hugging the earth, rifles in hand ready to fireinstantly. It was their business not only to see the enemy first, but toshoot first, and to capture or kill any German patrol. The officer spoketo them and they answered. It was unnecessary for them to say thatthey had seen nothing. If they had we should have known it. He wasout there less to scout himself than to make sure that they were onthe job; that they knew how to watch. The visit was part of his routine. We did not even whisper. Preferably, all whispering would be done byany German patrol out to have a look at our barbed wire andoverheard by us. 

Silence and the starlight and the damp wheat; but, yes, there waswar. You heard gun-fire half a mile, perhaps a mile, away; and raisingyour head you saw auroras from bursting shells. We heard at ourbacks faintly snatches of talk from our trenches and faintly in front thetalk from theirs. It sounded rather inviting and friendly from both sides, like that around some camp-fire on the plains. 

It seemed quite within the bounds of possibility that you might havecrawled on up to the Germans and said, "Howdy!" But by the timeyou reached the edge of their barbed wire and before you couldpresent your visiting-card, if not sooner, you would have been full ofholes. That was just the kind of diversion from trench monotony forwhich the Germans were looking. "Well, shall we go back?" asked theofficer. There seemed no particular purpose in spending the nightprone in the wheat with your ears cocked like a pointer-dog's. Besides, he had other duties, exacting duties laid down by the colonelas the result of trench experience in his responsibility for thecommand of a company of men. 

It happened as we crawled back into the trench, that a fury of shotsbroke out from a point along the line two or three hundred yardsaway; sharp, vicious shots on the still night air, stabbing, mercilessdeath in their sound. Oh, yes, there was war in France; unrelenting, shrewd, tireless war. A touch of suspicion anywhere and the hornetsswarmed. 

It was two a. M. From the dug-outs came unmistakable sounds ofslumber. Men off duty were not kept awake by cold and moisture insummer. They had fashioned for themselves comfortable dormitoriesin the hard earth walls. A cot in an officer's bedchamber wasindicated as mine. The walls had been hung with cuts from illustratedpapers and bagging spread on the floor to make it "home-like. " He laydown on the floor because he was nearer the door in case he had torespond to an alarm; besides, he said I would soon appreciate that Iwas not the object of favouritism. So I did. It was a trench-made cot, fashioned by some private of engineers, I fancy, who had Germansrather than the American cousin in mind. 

"The wall side of the rib that runs down the middle is the comfortableside, I have found, " said my host. "It may not appear so at first, butyou will find it works out that way. "

Nevertheless, I slept, my last recollection that of sniping shots, to beawakened with the first streaks of day by the sound of a fusillade--the"morning hate" or the "morning strafe" as it is called. After the vigil ofdarkness it breaks the monotony to salute the dawn with a burst ofrifle-shots. Eyes strained through the mist over the wheatfieldwatching for some one of the enemy who may be exposing himself, unconscious that it is light enough for him to be visible. Objects whichare not men but look as if they might be in the hazy distance, calledfor attention on the chance. For ten minutes, perhaps, the serenadelasted, and then things settled down to the normal. The men wereyawning and stirring from their dug-outs. After the muster they wouldtake the places of those who had been "on the bridge" through thenight. 

"It's a case of how little water you can wash with, isn't it?" I said tothe cook, who appreciated my thoughtfulness when I made shiftwith a dipperful, as I had done on desert journeys. We were in a trenchthat was inundated with water in winter, and not more than two milesfrom a town which had water laid on. But bringing a water supply inpails along narrow trenches is a poor pastime, though better thanbringing it up under the rifle-sights of snipers across the fields backof the trenches. 

"Don't expect much for breakfast, " said the strafer of the chicken. Butit was eggs and bacon, the British stand-by in all weathers, at homeand abroad. 

J------was going to turn in and sleep. These youngsters could sleep atany time; for one hour, or two hours, or five, or ten, if they had achance. A sudden burst of rifle-fire was the alarm clock which alwayspromptly awakened them. The recollection of cheery hospitality andtheir fine, buoyant spirit is even clearer now than when I left thetrench. 

XXA School In Bombing

It was at a bombing school on a French farm, where chosen soldiersbrought back from the trenches were being trained in the use of theanarchists' weapon, which has now become as respectable as therifle. The war has steadily developed specialism. M. B. Degrees forMaster Bombers are not beyond the range of possibilities. 

Present was the chief instructor, a Scottish subaltern with blue eyes, a pleasant smile, and a Cock-o'-the-North spirit. He might have beentwenty years old, though he did not look it. On his breast was thepurple and white ribbon of the new order of the Military Cross, whichyou get for doing something in this war which would have won you aVictoria Cross in one of the other wars. 

Also present was the assistant instructor, a sergeant of regulars--andvery much of a regular--who had three ribbons which he had won inprevious campaigns. He, too, had blue eyes, bland blue eyes. Thesetwo understood each other. 

"If you don't drop it, why, it's all right!" said the sergeant. "Of course, if you do------"

I did not drop it. 

"And when you throw it, sir, you must look out and not hit the manbehind you and knock the bomb out of your hand. That hashappened before to an absent-minded fellow who was about to tossone at the Boches, and it doesn't do to be absent-minded when youthrow bombs. "

"They say that you sometimes pick up the German bombs and chuckthem back before they explode, " I suggested. 

"Yes, sir, I've read things like that in some of the accounts of thereporters who write from Somewhere in France. You don't happen toknow where that is, sir? All I can say is that if you are going to do ityou must be quick about it. I shouldn't advise delaying decision, sir, orperhaps when you reached down to pick it up, neither your hand northe bomb would be there. They'd have gone off together, sir. "

"Have you ever been hurt in your handling of bombs?" I asked. 

Surprise in the bland blue eyes. "Oh, no, sir! Bombs are well behavedif you treat them right. It's all in being thoughtful and considerate ofthem!" Meanwhile, he was jerking at some kind of a patent fuse set ina shell of high explosive. "This is a poor kind, sir. It's been discarded, but I thought that you might like to see it. Never did like it. Alwaysmaking trouble!"

More distance between the audience and the performer. "Now I'vegot it, sir--get down, sir!" The audience carried out instructions to theletter, as army regulations require. It got behind the protection of oneof the practice-trench traverses. He threw the discard behind anotherwall of earth. There was a sharp report, a burst of smoke, and somefragments of earth were tossed into the air. 

In a small affair of two hundred yards of trench a week before, it wasestimated that the British and the Germans together threw about fivethousand bombs in this fashion. It was enough to sadden anyMinister of Munitions. However, the British kept the trench. 

"Do the men like to become bombers?" I asked the subaltern. 

"I should say so! It puts them up in front. It gives them a chance tothrow something, and they don't get much cricket in France, you see. We had a pupil here last week who broke the throwing record fordistance. He was as pleased as Punch with himself. A first-classbombing detachment has a lot of pride of corps. "

To bomb soon became as common a verb with the army as tobayonet. "We bombed them out" meant a section of trench taken bythrowing bombs. As you know, a trench is dug and built withsandbags in zigzag traverses. In following the course of a trench it isas if you followed the sides of the squares of a checker board up anddown and across on the same tier of squares. The square itself is abank of earth, with the cut on either side and in front of it. When abombing-party bombs its way into possession of a section of Germantrench, there are Germans under cover of the traverses on eitherside. They are waiting around the corner to shoot the first British headthat shows itself. 

"It is important that you and not the Boches chuck the bombs overfirst, " explained the subaltern. "Also, that you get them into the righttraverse, or they may be as troublesome to you as to the enemy. "

With bombs bursting in their faces, the Germans who are not put outof action are blinded and stunned. In that moment when they are offguard, the aggressors leap around the corner. 

"And then?"

"Stick 'em, sir!" said the matter-of-fact sergeant. "Yes, the cold steel isbest. And do it first! As Mr. MacPherson said, it's very important to doit first. "

It has been found that something short is handy for this kind of work. In such cramped quarters--a ditch six feet deep and from two to threefeet broad--the rifle is an awkward length to permit of prompt andskilful use of the bayonet. 

"Yes, sir, you can mix it up better with something handy--to think thatBritish soldiers would come to fighting like assassins!" said thesergeant. "You must be spry on such occasions. It's no time for wool-gathering. "

Not a smile from him or the subaltern all the time. They were the kindyou would like to have along in a tight corner, whether you had to fightwith knives, fists, or seventeen-inch howitzers. 

The sergeant took us into the storehouse where he kept his supply ofbombs. 

"What if a German shell should strike your storehouse?" I asked. 

"Then, sir, I expect that most of the bombs would be exploded. Bombs are very peculiar in their habits. What do you think, sir?"

It was no trouble to show stock, as clerks at the stores say. Hebrought forth all the different kinds of bombs that British ingenuity hadinvented--but no, not all invented. These would mount into thethousands. Every British inventor who knows anything aboutexplosives has tried his hand at a new kind of bomb. One means allthe kinds which the British War Office has considered worth apractice test. The spectator was allowed to handle each one as muchas he pleased. There had been occasions, that boyish Scottishsubaltern told me, when the men who were examining the products ofBritish ingenuity--well, the subaltern had sandy hair, too, whichheightened the effect of his blue eyes. 

There were yellow and green and blue and black and striped bombs;egg-shaped, barrel-shaped, conical, and concave bombs; bombs thatwere exploded by pulling a string and by pressing a button--all theseto be thrown by hand, without mentioning grenades and other largervarieties to be thrown by mechanical means, which would have madea Chinese warrior of Confucius' time or a Roman legionary feel athome. 

"This was the first-born, " the subaltern explained, "the first thing wecould lay our hands on when the close quarters' trench warfarebegan. "

It was as out of date as grandfather's smooth-bore, the tin-pot bombthat both sides used early in the winter. A wick was attached to thehigh explosive, wrapped in cloth and stuck in an ordinary army jamtin. 

"Quite home-made, as you see, sir, " remarked the sergeant. "Used tofix them up ourselves in the trenches in odd hours--saved burying therefuse jam tins according to medical corps directions--and you threwthem at the Boches. Had to use a match to light it. Very old-fashioned, sir. I wonder if that old fuse has got damp. No, it's going allright"--and he threw the jam pot, which made a good explosion. Later, when he began hammering the end of another he looked up in mildsurprise at the dignified back-stepping of the spectators. 

"Is that fuse out?" someone asked. 

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir, " he replied. "It's safer. But here is the best;we're discarding the others, " he went on, as he picked up a bomb. 

It was a pleasure to throw this crowning achievement of experiments. It fitted your hand nicely; it threw easily; it did the business; it wasfool-proof against a man in love or a war-poet. 

"We saw as soon as this style came out, " said the sergeant, "that itwas bound to be popular. Everybody asks for it--except the Boches, sir. "

XXIMy Best Day At The Front

It was the best day because one ran the gamut of the mechanics andemotions of modern war within a single experience--and oh, thetwinkle in that staff officer's eye!

It was on a Monday that I first met him in the ballroom of a largechâteau. Here another officer was talking over a telephone in anexplicit, businesslike fashion about "sending up more bombs, " whilewe looked at maps spread out on narrow, improvised tables, such asare used for a buffet at a reception. Those maps showed all theBritish trenches and all the German trenches--spider-weblike linesthat cunning human spiders had spun with spades--in that region;and where our batteries were and where some of the Germanbatteries were, if our aeroplane observations were correct. 

To the layman they were simply blue prints, such as he sees in theoffice of an engineer or an architect, or elaborate printed maps withmany blue and red pencil-lings. To the general in command theywere alive with rifle-power and gun-power and other powersmysterious to us; the sword with which he thrust and feinted andguarded in the ceaseless fencing of trench warfare, while higherauthorities than he kept their secrets as he kept his and bided theirday. 

That morning one of the battalions which had its pencilled place onthe map had taken a section of trench from the Germans about thelength of two city blocks. It got into the official bulletins of both sidesseveral times, this two hundred yards at Pilken in the everlastingly"hot corner" north of Ypres. So it was of some importance, though noton account of its length. To take two hundred yards of trenchbecause it is two hundred yards of trench is not good war, tacticiansagree. Good war is to have millions of shells and vast reserves readyand to go in over a broad area and keep on going night and day, witha Niagara of artillery, as fresh battalions are fed into the conflict. 

But the Germans had command of some rising ground in front of theBritish line at this point. They could fire down and crosswise into ourtrench. It was as if we were in the alley and they were in a first-floorwindow. This meant many casualties. It was man-economy and fire-economy to take that two hundred yards. A section of trench mayalways be taken if worth while. Reduce it to dust with shells and thendash into the breach and drive the enemy back from zigzag traverseto traverse with bombs. But such a small action requires as carefulplanning as a big operation of other days. We had taken the twohundred yards. The thing was to hold them. That is always thedifficulty; for the enemy will concentrate his guns to give you thesame dose that you gave him. In an hour after they were in, theBritish soldiers, who knew exactly what they had to do and how to doit, after months of experience, had turned the wreck of the Germantrench into a British trench which faced toward Berlin, rather thanCalais. 

In their official bulletin the Germans said that they had recovered thetrench. They did recover part of it for a few hours. It was then that thecommander on the German side must have sent in his report to catchthe late evening editions. Commanders do not like to confess the lossof trenches. It is the sort of thing that makes headquarters ask: "Whatis the matter with you over there, anyway?" There was a time whenthe German bulletins about the Western front seemed rather truthful;but of late they have been getting into bad habits. 

The British general knew what was coming; he knew that he wouldstart the German hornets out of their nest when he took the trench;he knew, too, that he could rely upon his men to hold till they weretold to retire or there were none left to retire. The British are a home-loving people, who do not like to be changing their habitations. Insucceeding days the question up and down the lines was, "Have westill got that trench?" Only two hundred yards of ditch on the continentof Europe! But was it still ours? Had the Germans succeeded in"strafing" us out of it yet? They had shelled all the trenches in theregion of the lost trench and had made three determined andunsuccessful counter-attacks when, on the fifth day, we returned tothe château to ask if it were practicable to visit the new trench. 

"At your own risk!" said the staff officer. If we preferred we could sit onthe veranda where there were easy chairs, on a pleasant summerday. Very peaceful the sweep of the well-kept grounds and the shadeof the stately trees of that sequestered world of landscape. Who wasat war? Why was anyone at war? Two staff motor-cars awaitingorders on the drive and a dust-laden dispatch rider with messages, who went past toward the rear of the house, were the only visualevidence of war. The staff officer served us with helmets forprotection in case we got into a gas attack. He said that we mightenter our front trenches at a certain point and then work our way asnear the new part as we could; division headquarters, four or fivemiles distant, would show us the way. It was then that the twinkle inthe staff officer's eye as it looked straight into yours became manifest. You can never tell, I have learned, just what a twinkle in a British staffofficer's eye may portend. These fellows who are promoted up fromthe trenches to join the "brain-trust" in the château, know a great dealmore about what is going on than you can learn by standing in theroad far from the front and listening to the sound of the guns. Weencountered a twinkle in another eye at division headquarters, whichmay have been telephoned ahead along with the instructions, "Attheir own risk. "

There are British staff officers who would not mind pulling acorrespondent's leg on a summer day; though, perhaps, it was reallythe Germans who pulled ours, in this instance. Somebody did remarkat some headquarters, I recall, that "You never know!" which showsthat staff officers do not know everything. The Germans possess halfthe knowledge--and they are at great pains not to part with their half. 

We proceeded in our car along country roads, quiet, normal countryroads off the main highway. It has been written again and again, andit cannot be written too many times, that life is going on as usual inthe rear of the army. Nothing could be more wonderful and yetnothing more natural. All the men of fighting age were absent. White-capped grandmothers, too old to join the rest of the family in thefields, sat in doorways sewing. Everybody was at work and the cropswere growing. You never tire of remarking the fact. It brings you backfrom the destructive orgy of war to the simple, constructive things oflife. An industrious people go on cultivating the land and the landkeeps on producing. It is pleasant to think that the crops of NorthernFrance were good in 1915. That is cheering news from home for thesoldiers of France at the front. 

At an indicated point we left the car to go forward on foot, and thechauffeur was told to wait for us at another point. If the car went anyfarther it might draw shell-fire. Army authorities know how far theymay take cars with reasonable safety as well as a pilot knows therocks and shoals at a harbour entrance. 

There was an end of white-capped grandmothers in doorways; anend of people working in the fields. Rents in the roofless walls ofunoccupied houses stared at the passer-by. We were in a dead land. One of two soldiers whom we met coming from the opposite directionpointed at what looked like a small miner's cabin half covered withearth, screened by a tree, as the next headquarters which we wereseeking in our progress. 

It was not for sightseers to take the time of the general who receivedus at the door of his dug-out. German guns had concentrated on asection of his trenches in a way that indicated that another attack wascoming. One company already had suffered heavy losses. It was anhour of responsibility for the general, isolated in the midst of silentfields and houses, waiting for news from a region hidden from hisview by trees and hedges in that flat country. He might not move fromheadquarters, for then he would be out of communication with hiscommand. His men were being pounded by shells and the inexorablelaw of organization kept him at the rear. Up in the trench he mighthave been one helpless human being in a havoc of shells which hadcut the wires. His place was where he could be in touch with hissubordinates and his superiors. 

True, we wanted to go to the trench that the Germans had lost andhis section was the short cut. Modesty was not the only reason for nottaking it. As we started along a road parallel to the front, the head of asoldier popped out of the earth and told us that orders were to walk inthe ditch. I judged that he was less concerned with our fate than withthe likelihood of our drawing fire, which he and the others in aconcealed trench would suffer after we had passed on. 

There were three of us, two correspondents, L------ and myself, andR------, an officer, which is quite enough for an expedition of this kind. Now we were finding our own way, with the help of the large scalearmy map which had every house, every farm, and every group oftrees marked. The farms had been given such names as Joffre, Kitchener, French, Botha, and others which the Germans would notlike. We cut across fields with the same confidence that, following adiagram of city streets in a guidebook, a man turns to the left for thepublic library and to the right for the museum. 

Our own guns were speaking here and there from their hiding-places;and overhead an occasional German shrapnel burst. This seemed awaste of the Kaiser's munitions as there was no one in sight. Yetthere was purpose in the desultory scattering of bullets from on high. They were policing the district; they were warning the hated British inreserve not to play cricket in those fields or march along thosedeserted roads. 

The more bother in taking cover that the Germans can make theBritish, the better they like it; and the British return the compliment inkind. Anything that harasses your enemy is counted to the good. Ifevery shell fired had killed a man in this war, there would be nosoldiers left to fight on either side; yet never have shells been soimportant in war as now. They can reach the burrowing humanbeings in shelters which are bulletproof; they are the omnipresentthreat of death. The firing of shells from batteries securely hidden andem-placed represents no cost of life to your side; only cost ofmaterial, which ridicules the foolish conclusion that machinery and notmen count. It is because man is still the most precious machine--amachine that money cannot reproduce--that gun-machinery is somuch in favour, and every commander wants to use shells as freelyas you use city water when you do not pay for it by meter. 

Now another headquarters and another general, also isolated in adug-out, holding the reins of his wires over a section of line adjoiningthe section we had just left. Before we proceeded we must look overhis shelter from shell-storms. The only time that British generalsbecome boastful is over their dug-outs. They take all the pride inthem of the man who has bought a plot of land and built himself ahome; and, like him, they keep on making improvements and callingattention to them. I must say that this was one of the best shelters Ihave seen anywhere in the tornado belt; and whatever I am not, I amcertainly an expert in dug-outs. Of course, this general, too, said, "Atyour own risk!" He was good enough to send a young officer with usup to the trenches; then we should not make any mistakes aboutdirection if we wanted to reach the neighbourhood of the two hundredyards which we had taken from the Germans. When we thanked himand said "Good-bye!" he remarked:

"We never say good-bye up here. It does not sound pleasant. Make itau revoir. " He, too, had a twinkle in his eye. 

By this time, one leg ought to have been so much longer than theother that one would have walked in a circle if he had not had aguide. 

That battery which had been near the dug-out kept on with its regularfiring, its shells sweeping overhead. We had not gone far before wecame to a board nailed to a tree, with the caution, "Keep to the right!"If you went to the left you might be seen by the enemy, though wewere seeing nothing of him, nor of our own trenches yet. Everysquare yard of this ground had been tested by actual experience, atthe cost of dead and wounded men, till safe lanes of approach hadbeen found. 

Next was a clearing station, where the wounded are brought in fromthe trenches for transfer to ambulances. A glance at the burden on astretcher just arrived automatically framed the word, "Shell-fire!" Thestains over-running on tanned skin beyond the edge of the whitebandage were bright in the sunlight. A khaki blouse torn open, or atrousers leg or a sleeve cut down the seam, revealing the white of thefirst aid and a splash of red, means one man wounded; and by theones the thousands come. 

Fifty wounded men on the floor of a clearing station and the individualis lost in the crowd. When you see the one borne past, if there isnothing else to distract attention you always ask two questions: Willhe die? Has he been maimed for life? If the answers to both are no, you feel a sense of triumph, as if you had seen a human play, builtskilfully around a life to arouse your emotions, turn out happily. 

The man has fought in an honourable cause; he has felt the touch ofdeath's fingers. How happy he is when he knows that he will get well!In prospect, as his wound heals into the scar which will be the lastingdecoration of his courage, his home and all that it means to him. What kind of a home has he, this private soldier? In the slums, with aslattern wife, or in a cottage with a flower garden in front, only a fewminutes' walk from the green fields of the English countryside? Butwe set out to tell you about the kind of inferno in which this man gothis splash of red. 

We come to the banks of a canal which has carried the traffic of theLow Countries for many centuries; the canal where British andFrench had fought many a Thermopylae in the last eight months. Along its banks run rows of fine trees, narrowing in perspective beforethe eye. Some have been cut in two by the direct hit of a heavy shelland others splintered down, bit by bit. Others still standing have beenhit many times. There are cuts as fresh as if the chips had just flownfrom the axeman's blow, and there are scars from cuts made lastautumn which nature's sap, rising as it does in the veins of woundedmen, has healed, while from the remaining branches it sent forthleaves in answer to the call of spring. 

In this section the earth is many-mouthed with caves and cut withpassages running from cave to cave, so that the inhabitants may goand come hidden from sight. Jawbone and Hairyman and Lowbrow, of the Stone Age, would be at home there, squatting on their hunkersand tearing at their raw kill with their long incisors. It does not seem aplace for men who walk erect, wear woven fabrics, enjoy a writtenlanguage, and use soap and safety razors. One would not besurprised to see some figure swing down by a long, hairy arm from abranch of a tree and leap on all fours into one of the caves, where hewould receive a gibbering welcome to the bosom of his family. 

Not so! Huddled in these holes in the earth are free-born men of anold civilization, who read the daily papers and eat jam on their bread. They do not want to be there, but they would not consider themselvesworthy of the inheritance of free-born men if they were not. Onlycivilized man is capable of such stoicism as theirs. They havereverted to the cave-dweller's protection because their civilization isso highly developed that they can throw a piece of steel weighingfrom eighteen to two thousand pounds anywhere from five to twentymiles with merciless accuracy, and because the flesh of man is evenmore tender than in the cave-dweller's time, not to mention that hisbrain-case is a larger target. 

An officer calls attention to a shell-proof shelter with the civic pride ofa member of a chamber of commerce pointing out the new UnionStation. 

"Not even a high explosive"--the kind that bursts on impact afterpenetration--"could get into that!" he says. "We make them forgenerals and colonels and others who have precious heads on theirshoulders. "

With material and labour, the same might have been constructed forthe soldiers, which brings us back to the question of munitions in theeconomic balance against a human life. It was the first shelter of thiskind which I had seen. You never go up to the trenches withoutseeing something new. The defensive is tireless in its ingenuity insaving lives and the offensive in taking them. Safeguards andsalvage compete with destruction. And what labour all that excavationand construction represented--the cumulative labour of months andday-by-day repairs of the damage done by shells! After abombardment, dig out the filled trenches and renew the smasheddug-outs to be ready for another go!

The walls of that communication trench were two feet above ourheads. We noticed that all the men were in their dug-outs; none werewalking about in the open. One knew the meaning of this barometer--stormy. The German gunners were "strafing" in a very lively way thisafternoon. 

Already we had noticed many shells bursting five or six hundredyards away, in the direction of the new British trench; but at thatdistance they do not count. Then a railroad train seemed to havejumped the track and started to fly. Fortunately and unfortunately, sound travels faster than big shells of low velocity; fortunately, because it gives you time to be undignified in taking cover;unfortunately, because it gives you a fraction of a second to reflectwhether or not that shell has your name and your number on Dug-outStreet. 

I was certain that it was a big shell, of the kind that will blow a dug-outto pieces. Anyone who had never heard a shell before would have"scrooched, " as the small boys say, as instinctively as you draw backwhen the through express tears past the station. It is the kind ofscream that makes you want to roll yourself into a package about thesize of a pea, while you feel as tall and large as a cathedral, judgingby the sensation that travels down your backbone. 

Once I was being hoisted up a cliff in a basket, when the rope on thecreaking windlass above slipped a few inches. Well, it is like that, orlike taking a false step on the edge of a precipice. Is the clock aboutto strike twelve or not? Not this time! The burst was thirty yards away, along the path we had just traversed, and the sound was like theburst of a shell and like nothing else in the world, just as the swirling, boring, growing scream of a shell is like no other scream in the world. A gigantic hammer-head sweeps through the air and breaks a steeldrum-head. 

If we had come along half a minute later we should have had a betterview, and perhaps now we should have been on a bed in a hospitalworrying how we were going to pay the rent, or in the place where, hopefully, we shall have no worries at all. Between walls of earth thereport was deadened to our ears in the same way as a revolverreport in an adjoining room; and not much earth had gone down thebacks of our necks from the concussion. 

Looking over the parapet, we saw a cloud of thick, black smoke; andwe heard the outcry of a man who had been hit. That was all. Theshell might have struck nearer without our having seen or heard anymore. Shut in by the gallery walls, one knows as little of whathappens in an adjoining cave as a clam buried in the sand knows ofwhat is happening to a neighbour clam. A young soldier came half-stumbling into the nearest dug-out. He was shaking his head andbatting his ears as if he had sand in them. Evidently he was returningto his home cave from a call on a neighbour which had brought himclose to the burst. 

"That must have been about six or seven-inch, " I said to the officer, trying to be moderate and casual in my estimate, which is the correctform on such occasions. My actual impression was forty-inch. 

"Nine-inch, h. E. , " replied the expert. 

This was gratifying. It was the first time that I had been so near to anine-inch-shell explosion. Its "eat 'em-alive" frightfulness wasdepressing. But the experience was worth having. You want all theexperiences there are--but only "close. " A delightful word that wordclose, at the front!

The Germans were generous that afternoon. Another screamseemed aimed at my head. L------ disagreed with me; he said that itwas aimed at his. We did not argue the matter to the point of apersonal quarrel, for it might have got both our heads. It burst back ofthe trench about as far away as the other shell. After all, a trench is apretty narrow ribbon, even on a gunner's large scale map, to hit. It iswonderful how, firing at such long range, he is able to hit a trench atall. 

This was all of the nine-inch variety for the time being. We got somefours and fives as we walked along. Three bursting as near togetheras the ticks of a clock made almost no smoke, as they brought sometree limbs down and tore away a section of a trunk. Then thethunderstorm moved on to another part of the line. Only, unlike thethunderstorms of nature, this, which is man-made and controlled as afireman controls the nozzle of his hose, may sweep back again andyet again over its path. All depends upon the decision of a Germanartillery officer, just as whether or not a flower-bed shall get anothersprinkle depends upon the will of the gardener. 

We were glad to turn out of the support trench into a communicationtrench leading toward the front trench; into another gallery cut deep inthe fields, with scattered shell-pits on either side. Still more soldiers, leaning against the walls or seated with their legs stretched outacross the bottom of the ditch; more waiting soldiers, only strung outin a line and as used to the passing of shells as people living alongthe elevated railroad line to the passing of trains. They did not look upat the screams boring the air any more than one who lives under thetrains looks up every time that one passes. Theirs was the passivityof a queue waiting in line before the entrance to a theatre or a ball-grounds. 

A senator or a lawyer, used to coolness in debate, or to presidingover great meetings, or to facing crowds, who happened to visit thetrenches could have got reassurance from the faces of any one ofthese private soldiers, who had been trained not to worry about deathtill death came. Harrowing every one of these screams, taken byitself. Instinctively, unnecessarily, you dodged at those which werelow--unnecessarily, because they were from British guns. No dangerfrom them unless there was a short fuse. To the soldiers, the lowscreams brought the delight of having blows struck from their side atthe enemy, whom they themselves could not strike from their reserveposition. 

For we were under the curving sweep of both the British and theGerman shells, as they passed in the air on the way to their targets. Itwas like standing between two railway tracks with trains going inopposite directions. You came to differentiate between themultitudinous screams. "Ours!" you exclaimed, with the same delightas when you see that your side has the ball. The spirit of battlecontest rose in you. There was an end of philosophy. These soldiersin the trenches were your partisans. Every British shell was workingfor them and for you, giving blow for blow. 

The score of the contest of battle is in men down; in killed andwounded. For every man down on your side you want two men downon the enemy's. Sport ceases. It is the fight against a burglar with arevolver in his hand and a knife between his teeth; and a woundedman brought along the trench, a visible, intimate proof of a hit by theenemy, calls for more and harder blows. 

Looking over the parapet of the communication trench you saw fields, lifeless except for the singing birds in the wheat, who had also thespirit of battle. The more shells, the more they warble. It was alwaysso on summer days. Between the screams you hear their full-pitchedchorus, striving to make itself heard in competition with the song ofGerman invasion and British resistance. Mostly, the birds seemed totake cover like mankind; but I saw one sweep up from the golden seaof ripening grain toward the men-brothers with their wings of cloth. 

Was this real, or was it extravaganza? Painted airships and a paintedsummer sky? The audacity of those British airmen! Two of them werespotting the work of British guns by their shell-bursts and watching forgun-flashes which would reveal concealed German battery-positions, and whispering results by wireless to their own batteries. 

It is a great game. Seven or eight thousand feet high, directly over theBritish planes, is a single Taube cruising for the same purpose. Itlooks like a beetle with gossamer wings suspended from a light cloud. The British aviators are so low that the bull's-eye identification marksare distinctly visible to the naked eye. They are playing in and out, likethe short stop and second baseman around second, there in the veryarc of the passing shells from both sides fired at other targets. Butscores of other shells are most decidedly meant for them. In themidst of a lacework of puffs of shrapnel-bursts, which slowly spread inthe still air, from the German anti-aircraft guns, they dip and rise andturn in skilful dodging. At length, one retires for good; probably hisplane-cloth has become too much like a sieve from shrapnel-fragments to remain aloft longer. 

Come down, Herr Taube, come down where we can have a shot atyou I Get in the game! You can see better at the altitude of the Britishairmen! But Herr Taube always stays high--the Br'er Fox of the air. Ofcourse, it was not so exciting as the pictures that artists draw, but itwas real. 

Every kind of shell was being fired, low and high velocity, small andlarge calibre. One-two-three-four in as quick succession as the roll ofa drum, four German shells burst in line up in the region where wehave made ourselves masters of the German trench. British shellsresponded. 

"Ours again!"

But I had already ducked before I spoke, as you might if a pellet ofsteel weighing a couple of hundred pounds, going at the rate of athousand yards a second or more, passed within a few yards of yourhead--ducked to find myself looking into the face of a soldier who wassmiling. The smile was not scornful, but it was at least amused at theexpense of the sightseer who had dodged one of our own shells. Inaddition to the respirators in case of a possible gas attack, suppliedby that staff officer with a twinkle in his eye, we needed a steel rodfastened to the back of our necks and running down our spinalcolumns in order to preserve our dignity. 

We were witnessing what is called the "artillery preparation for aninfantry attack, " which was to try to recover that two hundred yards oftrench from the British. Only the Germans did not limit their attentionto the lost trench. It was hottest there around the bend of our line, from our view-point; for there they must maul the trench into formlessdebris and cut the barbed wire in front of it before the charge wasmade. 

"They touch up all the trenches in the neighbourhood to keep usguessing, " said the officer, "before they make their finalconcentration. So it's pretty thick around this part. "

"Which might include the communication trench?"

"Certainly. This makes a good line shot. No doubt they will spare us afew when they think it is our turn. We do the same thing. So it goes. "

From the variety of screams of big shells and little shells and screamsharrowingly close and reassuringly high, which were indicated asours, one was warranted in suggesting that the British were doingconsiderable artillery preparation themselves. 

"We must give them as good as they send--and better. "

Better seemed correct. 

"Those close ones you hear are doubtless meant for the frontGerman trench, which accounts for their low trajectory; the others fortheir support trenches or any battery-positions that our planes havelocated. " We could not see where the British shells were striking. Wecould judge only of the accuracy of some of the German fire. Considering the storm being visited on the support trench which wehad just left, we were more than ever glad to be out of it. Artillery isthe war burglar's jemmy; but it has to batter the house into ruins andblow up the safe and kill most of the family before the burglar canenter. Clouds of dust rose from the explosions; limbs of trees werelopped off by tornadoes of steel hail. 

"There! Look at that tree!"

In front of a portion of the British support trench a few of a line ofstately shade trees were still standing. A German shell, about aneight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about thesame height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in thebark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of greenwood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by asharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carriedacross the splintered stump with crushing impact from the power ofits flight, plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge whichbroke the shell-jacket into slashing fragments; and the toweringcolumn of limbs, branches, and foliage laid its length on the groundwith a majestic dignity. Which shows what one shell can do, one ofthree which burst not far away at the same time. In time, the shellswould get all the trees; make them into chips and splinters andtoothpicks. 

"I'd rather that it would hit a tree-trunk than my trunk, " said L------. 

"But you would not have got it as badly as the tree, " said the officerreassuringly. "The substance would have been too soft for sufficientimpact for a burst. It would have gone right through!"

XXIIMore Best Day

At battalion headquarters in the front trenches the battalion surgeonhad just amputated an arm which had been mauled by a shell. 

"Without any anaesthetic, " he explained. "No chance if we sent himback to the hospital. He would die on the way. Stood it very well. Already chirking up. "

A family practitioner at home, the doctor, when the war began, hadleft his practice to go with his Territorial battalion. He retains thefamily practitioner's cheery, assuring manner. He is the kind of manwho makes you feel better immediately he comes into the sick-room;who has already made you forget yourself when he puts his fingeron your pulse. 

"The same thing that we might have done in the Crimea, " hecontinued, "only we have antiseptics now. It's wonderful how little youcan work with and how excellent the results. Strong, healthy men, these, with great recuperative power and discipline and resolution--very different patients from those we usually operate on. "

Tea was served inside the battalion commander's dugout. Tea is asessential every afternoon to the British as ice to the averageAmerican in summer. They do not think of getting on without it if theycan possibly have it, and it is part of the rations. As well takecigarettes away from those who smoke as tea from the British soldier. 

It was very much like tea outside the trenches, so far as any signs ofperturbation about shells and casualties were concerned. In that thebattalion commander had to answer telegrams, it had the aspect of abusy man's sandwich at his desk for luncheon. Good news to cheerthe function had just come over the network of wires which connectsup the whole army, from trenches to headquarters--good news in themidst of the shells. 

German West Africa had fallen. Botha, who was fighting against theBritish fifteen years ago, had taken it fighting for the British. Asuggestive thought that. It is British character that brings enemies likeBotha into the fold; the old, good-natured, sportsmanlike live-and-let-live idea, which has something to do with keeping the United Statesintact. A board with the news on it in German was put up over theBritish trenches. Naturally, the board was shot full of holes; for it isclear that the Germans are not yet ready to come into the BritishEmpire. 

"Hans and Jacob we have named them, " said the colonel, referring totwo Germans who were buried back of his dug-out. "It's dull up herewhen the Boches are not shelling, so we let our imaginations play. We hold conversations with Hans and Jacob in our long watches. Hans is fat and cheerful and trusting. He believes every thing that theKaiser tells him and has a cheerful disposition. But Jacob is aprofessor and a fearful 'strafer. ' It seems a little gruesome, doesn't it, but not after you have been in the trenches for a while. "

A little gruesome--true! Not in the trenches--true, too! Where all issatire, no incongruity seems out of place. Life plays in and out withdeath; they intermingle; they look each other in the face and say: "Iknow you. We dwell together. Let us smile when we may, at what wemay, to hide the character of our comradeship; for to-morrow------"

Only half an hour before one of the officers had been shot throughthe head by a sniper. He was a popular officer. The others hadmessed with him and marched with him and known him in thefullness of affection of comradeship in arms and dangers shared. Aheartbreak for some home in England. No one dwelt on the incident. What was there to say? The trembling lip, trembling in spite of itself, was the only outward sign of the depth of feeling that words could notreflect, at tea in the dug-out. The subject was changed to somethingabout the living. One must carry on cheerfully; one must be on thealert; one must play his part serenely, unflinchingly, for the sake of thenerves around him and for his own sake. Such fortitude becomesautomatic, it would seem. Please, I must not hesitate about having aslice of cake. They managed cake without any difficulty up there inthe trenches. And who if not men in the trenches was entitled to cake, I should like to know? "It was here that he was hit, " another officersaid, as we moved on in the trench. "He was saying that thesandbags were a little weak and a bullet might go through and catcha man who thought himself safely under cover as he walked along. He had started to fix the sandbags himself when he got it. The bulletcame right through the top of one of the bags in front of him. "

A bullet makes the merciful wound; and a bullet through the head is asimple way of going. The bad wounds come mostly from shells; butthere is something about seeing anyone hit by a sniper which is morehorrible. It is a cold-blooded kind of killing, more suggestive ofmurder, this single shot from a sharpshooter waiting as patiently as acat for a mouse, aimed definitely to take the life of a man. 

Again we move on in that narrow cut of earth with its waiting soldiers, which the world knows so well from reading tours of the trenches. Noone not on watch might show his head on an afternoon like this. Themen were prisoners between those walls of earth; not evenspectators of what the guns were doing; simply moles. They took it allas a part of the day's work, with that singular, redoubtablecombination of British phlegm and cheerfulness. 

Of course, some of them were eating bread and marmalade andmaking tea. Where all the marmalade goes which Mr. Atkins uses forhis personal munition in fighting the Germans puzzles the ArmyService Corps, whose business it is to see that he is never without it. How could he sit so calmly under shell-fire without marmalade?Never! He would get fidgety and forget his lesson, I am sure, like theboy who had the button which he was used to fingering removedbefore he went to recite. 

Any minute a shell may come. Mr. Atkins does not think of that. Timeenough to think after it has arrived. Then perhaps the burial party willbe doing your thinking for you; or if not, the doctors and the nurseswho look after you will. 

I noted certain acts of fellowship of comrades who are all in the sameboat and have learned unselfishness. When they got up to let youpass and you smiled your thanks, you received a much pleasantersmile in return than you will from many a well-fed gentleman who hasto stand aside to let you enter a restaurant. The manners of thetrenches are good, better than in some places where good mannersare a cult. 

There is no better place to send a spoiled, undisciplined, bumptiousyouth than to a British trench. He will learn that there are other men inthe world besides himself and that a shell can kill a rich brute or aselfish brute as readily as a poor man. Democracy there is in thetrenches; the democracy where all men are in the presence of deathand "hazing" parties need not be organized among the students. 

But there is another and a greater element in the practical psychologyof the trenches. These good-natured men, fighting the bitterest kindof warfare without the signs of brutality which we associate with theprize-fighter and the bully in their faces, know why they are fighting. They consider that their duty is in that trench, and that they could nothave a title to manhood if they were not there. After the war the menwho have been in the trenches will rule England. Their spirit and theirthinking will fashion the new trend of civilization, and the men whohave not fought will bear the worst scars from the war. 

Ridiculous it is that men should be moles, perhaps; but at the sametime there is something sublime in the fellowship of their courage andpurpose, as they "sit and take it, " or guard against attacks, withoutthe passion of battle of the old days of excited charges and quickresults, and watch the toll pass by from hour to hour. Borne bycomrades pick-a-back we saw the wounded carried along thatpassage too narrow for a litter. A splash of blood, a white bandage, alimp form!

For the second permissible--periscopes are tempting targets--Ilooked through one over the top of the parapet. Another film! A bigBritish lyddite shell went crashing into the German parapet. The dustfrom sandbags and dug-outs merged into an immense cloud of ugly, black smoke. As the cloud rose, one saw the figure of a German dartout of sight; then nothing was visible but the gap which the explosionhad made. No wise German would show himself. British snipers werewatching for him. At least half a dozen, perhaps a score, of men hadbeen put out by this single "direct hit" of an h. E. (high explosive). Yes, the British gunners were shooting well, too. Other periscopic glimpsesproved it. 

Through the periscope we learned also that the two lines of sandbagsof German and British trenches were drawing nearer together. Another wounded man was brought by. 

"They're bombing up ahead. He has just been hit. " As we drew asideto make room for him to pass, once more the civilian realized hishelplessness and unimportance. One soldier was worth ten PrimeMinisters in that place. We were as conspicuously mal à propos as anoutsider at a bank directors' meeting or in a football scrimmage. Theofficer politely reminded us of the necessity of elbow room in thenarrow quarters for the bombers, who were hidden from view by thezigzag traverses, and I was not sorry, though perhaps mycompanions were. If so, they did not say so, not being talkative men. We were not going to see the two hundred yards of captured trenchthat were beyond the bombing action, after all. Oh, the twinkle in thatstaff officer's eye!

"A Boche gas shell!" we were told, as we passed an informalexcavation in the communication trench on our way back. "Asphyxiating effect. No time to put on respirators when oneexplodes. Laid out half a dozen men like fish, gasping for air, but theywill recover. "

"The Boches want us to hurry!" exclaimed L------. 

They were giving the communication trench a turn at "strafing, " now, and shells were urgently dropping behind us. There was no use tryingto respond to one's natural inclination to run away from the pursuingshower when you had to squeeze past soldiers as you went. 

"But look at what we are going into! This is like beating up grouse tothe guns, and we are the birds! I am wondering if I like it. "

We could tell what had happened in our absence in the supporttrench by the litter of branches and leaves and by the excavationsmade by shells. It was still happening, too. Another nine-inch, withyour only view of surroundings the wall of earth which you hugged. Crash--and safe again!

"Pretty!" L------ said, smiling. He was referring to the cloud of blacksmoke from the burst. Pretty is a favourite word of his. I find that menuse habitual exclamations on such occasions. R------, also smiling, had said, "A black business, this!" a favourite expression with him. 

"Yes--pretty!" R------and I exclaimed together. 

L------took a sliver off his coat and offered it to us as a souvenir. Hedid not know that he had said "Pretty!" or R------ that he had said "Ablack business!" several times that afternoon; nor did I know that Ihad exclaimed, "For the love of Mike!" Psychologists take notice; andgolfers are reminded that their favourite expletives when they foozlewill come perfectly natural to them when the Germans are "strafing. "Then another nine-inch, when we were out of the gallery in front ofthe warrens. My companions happened to be near a dug-out. Theydid not go in tandem, but abreast. It was a "dead heat. " All that I couldsee in the way of cover was a wall of sandbags, which looked aboutas comforting as tissue paper in such a crisis. 

At least, one faintly realized what it meant to be in the supporttrenches, where the men were still huddled in their caves. They neverget a shot at the enemy or a chance to throw a bomb, unless they aresent forward to assist the front trenches in resisting an attack. It is forthis purpose that they are kept within easy reach of the fronttrenches. They are like the prisoner tied to a chair-back, facing a gun. 

"Yes, this was pretty heavy shell-fire, " said an officer who ought toknow. "Not so bad as on the trenches which the infantry are to attack--that is the first degree. You might call this the second. "

It was heavy enough to keep any writer from being bored. Thesecond degree will do. We will leave the first until another time. 

Later, when we were walking along a paved road, I heard again whatseemed the siren call of a nine-inch. 

Once, in another war, I had been on a paved road when--well, I didnot care to be on this one if a nine-inch hit it and turned fragments ofpaving-stones into projectiles. An effort to "run out the bunt"--Caesar'sghost! It was one of our own shells! Nerves! Shame! Two stretcher-bearers with a wounded man looked up in surprise, wondering whatkind of a hide-and-seek game we were playing. They made a pictureof imperturbability of the kind that is a cure for nerves under fire. If the other fellow is not scared it does not do for you to be scared. 

"Did you get any shells in your neighbourhood?" we asked thechauffeur--also British and imperturbable--whom we found waiting ata clearing station for wounded. 

"Yes, sir, I saw several, but none hit the car. "

As we came to the first cross-roads in that dead land back of thetrenches which was still being shelled by shrapnel, though notanother car was in sight, and ours had no business there (as we weretold afterwards), that chauffeur, as he slowed up before turning, heldout his hand from habit as he would have done in Piccadilly. 

Two or three days later things were normal along the front again, withMr. Atkins still stuffing himself with marmalade in that two hundredyards of trench. 

XXIIIWinning And Losing

Seeming an immovable black line set as a frontier in peace, thatWestern front on your map which you bought early in the war inanticipation of rearranging the flags in keeping with each day's newswas, in reality, a pulsating, changing line. 

At times you thought of it as an enormous rope under the constantpressure of soldiers on either side, who now and then, with an "alltogether" of a tug-of-war at a given point, straightened or made abend, with the result imperceptible except as you measured it by atree or a house. Battles as severe as the most important in SouthAfrica, battles severe enough to have decided famous campaigns inEurope in former days, when one king rode forth against another, became landmark incidents of the give and take, the wrangling andthe wrestling of siege operations. 

The sensation of victory or defeat for those engaged was none theless vivid because victory meant the gain of so little ground anddefeat the loss of so little; perhaps the more vivid in want of themovement of pursuing or of being pursued in the shock of arms as inpast times, when an army front hardly covered that of one brigade inthe trenches. For winners and losers, returning to their billets inFrench villages as other battalions took their places, had time to thinkover the action. 

The offensive was mostly with the British through the summer of1915; any thrust by the Germans was usually to retake a section oftrenches which they had lost. But our attacks did not all succeed, ofcourse. 

Battalions knew success and failure; and their narratives were mineto share, just as one would share the good luck or the bad luck of hisneighbours. 

You may have a story of heartbreak or triumph an hour after youhave been chatting with playing children in a village street, as the carspeeds toward the zone where reserves are billeted and theoccasional shell is a warning that peace lies behind you. First, wealighted near the headquarters of two battalions which have been inan attack that failed. The colonel of the one to the left of the road waskilled. We went across the fields to the right. Among the survivingofficers resting in their shelter tents, where there is plenty of roomnow, is the adjutant, tall, boyish, looking tired, but still with nooutward display of what he has gone through and what it has meantto him. I have seen him by the hundreds, this buoyant type of Englishyouth. 

In army language, theirs had not been a "good show. " We had heardthe account of it with that matter-of-fact prefix from G. H. Q. , wherethey took results with the necessarily cold eye of logic. The twobattalions were set to take a trench; that was all. In the midst ofmerciless shell-fire they had waited for their own guns to draw all theteeth out of the trench. When the given moment came they sweptforward. But our artillery had not "connected up" properly. 

The German machine-guns were not out of commission, and forthem it was like working a loom playing bullets back and forth acrossthe zone of a hundred yards which the British had to traverse. TheBritish had been told to charge and they charged. Theirs not toreason why; that was the glory of the thing. Nothing more gallant inwarfare than their persistence, till they found that it was like trying toswim in a cataract of lead. One officer got within fifty yards of theGerman parapet before he fell. At last they realized that it could notbe done--later than they should, but they were a proud regiment, andthough they had been too brave, there was something splendid aboutit. 

With a soldier's winning frankness and simplicity they told what hadhappened. Even before they charged they knew the machine-gunswere in place; they knew what they had to face. One man spoke ofseeing, as they lay waiting, a German officer standing up in the midstof the British shell-fire. 

"A stout-hearted fighter I We had to admire him!" said the adjutant. 

It was a chivalrous thought with a deep appeal, considering what hehad been through. Oh, these English! They will not hate; they cannotbe separated from their sense of sportsmanship. 

It was not the first time the guns had not "connected up" for eitherside, and German charges on many occasions had met a like fate. Calm enough, these officers, true to their birthright of phlegm. Theydid not make excuses. Success is the criterion of battle. They hadfailed. Their unblinking recognition of the fact was a sort of self-punishment which cut deep into your own sensitiveness. One younglieutenant could not keep his lip from trembling over that naked, grimthought. Pride of regiment had been struck a whip-blow, which meantmore to the soldier than any injury to his personal pride. 

But next time! They wanted another try for that trench, thesesurvivors. No matter about anything else--the battalion must haveanother chance. You appreciated this from a few words and morefrom the stubborn resolution in the bearing of all. There was no "let-us-at-'em-again" frightfulness. In order to end this war you must "lick"one side or the other, and these men were not "licked. " You weresorry that you had gone to see them. It was like lacerating a wound. 

One could only assure them, in his faith in their gallantry, that theywould win next time. And oh, how you wanted them to win! Theydeserved to win because they were such manly losers. 

At home in their rough wooden houses in camp we found a battalionwhich had won--the same undemonstrative type as the one that hadlost; the same simplicity and kindly hospitality, which gives life at thefront a charm in the midst of its tragedy, from these men of one of thedependable line regiments. This colonel knew the other colonel, andhe said about the other what his fellow-officers had said: it was not hisfault; he was a good man. If the guns were not "on, " what happenedto him was bound to happen to anybody. They had been "on" for thewinning battalion; perfectly "on. " They had buried the machine-gunsand the Germans with them. 

When a man goes into the kind of charge that either battalion madehe gives himself up for lost. The psychology is simple. You are goingto keep on until------!

Well, as Mr. Atkins has remarked in his own terse way, a battle was alot of noise all around you and suddenly a big bang in your ear; andthen somebody said, "please open your mouth and take this!" andyou found yourself in a white, quiet place full of cots. 

The winning battalion was amazed how easily the thing was done. They had "walked in. " They were a little surprised to be alive--thanksto the guns. "Here we are! Here we are again!" as the song at thefront goes. It is all a lottery. Make up your mind to draw the deathnumber; and if you don't, that is "velvet. " Army courage these days ishighly sensitized steel in response to will. 

They had won; there was a credit mark in the regimental record. Allhad won; nobody in particular, but the battalion, the lot of them. Theydid not boast about it. The thing just happened. They were alive andenjoying the sheer fact of life, writing letters home, rereading lettersfrom home, looking at the pictures in illustrated papers, as theyleaned back and smoked their brier-wood pipes and discussedpolitics with that freedom and directness of opinion which is anEnglishman's pastime and his birthright. 

The captain who was describing the fight had retired from the army, gone into business, and returned as a reserve officer. The guns wereto stop firing at a given moment. As the minute-hand lay over thefigure on his wrist-watch he dashed for the broken parapet, still in thehaze of dust from shell-bursts, to find not a German in sight. All wereunder cover. He enacted the ridiculous scene with humorousappreciation of how he came face to face with a German as heturned a traverse. He was ready with his revolver and the other wasnot, and the other was his prisoner. 

There was nothing gruesome about listening to a diffident soldierexplaining how he "bombed them out, " and you shared hisamusement over the surprise of a German who stuck up his headfrom a dug-out within a foot of the face of a British soldier who waspeeping inside to see if any more Germans were at home. Yourejoiced with this battalion. Victory is sweet. 

When on the way back to quarters you passed some of the new armymen, "the Keetcheenaires, " as the French call them, you werereminded that although the war was old the British army was young. There was a "Watch our city grow!" atmosphere about it. Little bylittle, some great force seemed steadily pushing up from the rear. Itmade that business institution at G. H. Q. Feel like bankers with anenormous, increasing surplus. In this the British is like no other army. One has watched it in the making. 

XXIVThe Maple Leaf Folk

These were "home folks" to the American. You might know all by theirmaple-leaf symbol; but even before you saw that, with its bronzenone too prominent against the khaki, you knew those who were notrecent emigrants from England to Canada by their accent and bycertain slang phrases which pay no customs duty at the border. 

When, on a dark February night cruising in a slough of a road, I heardout of a wall of blackness back of the trenches, "Gee! Get on to thebus!" which referred to our car, and also, "Cut out the noise!" I wascertain that I might dispense with an interpreter. After I had remarkedthat I came from New York, which is only across the street fromMontreal as distances go in our countries, the American batting aboutthe front at midnight was welcomed with a "glad hand" across thatimaginary line which has and ever shall have no fortresses. 

What a strange place to find Canadians--at the front in Europe! Icould never quite accommodate myself to the wonder of a man fromWinnipeg, and perhaps a "neutral" from Wyoming in his company, fighting Germans in Flanders. A man used to a downy couch and aneasy chair by the fire and steam-heated rooms, who had tenthousand a year in Toronto, when you found him in a chill, dampcellar of a peasant's cottage in range of the enemy's shells wasgetting something more than novel, if not more picturesque, thandog-mushing and prospecting on the Yukon; for we are quite used tothat contrast. 

All I asked of the Canadians was to allow a little of the glory they hadwon--they had such a lot--to rub off on their neighbours. If there mustbe war, and no Canadian believed in it as an institution, why, to mymind, the Canadians did a fine thing for civilization's sake. It hurtsometimes to think that we also could not be in the fight for the goodcause, particularly after the Lusitania was sunk, when my ownfeelings had lost all semblance of neutrality. 

The Canadians enlivened life at the front; for they have a little morezip to them than the thorough-going British. Their climate spells"hustle, " and we are all the product of climate to a large degree, whether in England, on the Mississippi flatlands, or in Manitoba. Eager and high-strung the Canadian born, quick to see and to act. Very restless they were when held up on Salisbury Plain, after theyhad come three-four-five-six thousand miles to fight and there wasnothing to fight but mud in an English winter. 

One from the American contingent knew what ailed them; theywanted action. They may have seemed undisciplined to a drillsergeant; but the kind of discipline they needed was a sight of the realthing. They wanted to know, What for? And Lord Kitchener waskinder to them, though many were beginners, than to his own newarmy; he could be, as they were ready with guns and equipment. Sohe sent them over to France before it was too late in the spring to getfrozen feet from standing in icy water looking over a parapet at aGerman parapet. They liked Flanders mud better than Salisbury Plainmud, because it meant that there was "something doing. "

It was in their first trenches that I saw them, and they were "on thejob, all right, " in face of scattered shell-fire and the sweep ofsearchlights and flares. They had become the most ardent of pupils, for here was that real thing which steadied them and proved theirmetal. 

They refashioned their trenches and drained them with thefastidiousness of good housekeepers who had a frontiersman'sexperience for an inheritance. In a week they appeared to be oldhands at the business. 

"Their discipline is different from ours, " said a British general, "but itworks out. They are splendid. I ask for no better troops. "

They may have lacked the etiquette of discipline of British regulars, but they had the natural discipline of self-reliance and of "go to it"when a crisis came. This trench was only an introduction, apreparation for a thing which was about as real as ever fell to the lotof any soldiers. It is not for me to tell here the story of their part inthe second battle of Ypres, when the gas fumes rolled in upon them. I should like to tell it and also the story of the deeds of many Britishregiments, from the time of Mons to Festubert. All Canada knows it indetail from their own correspondents and their record officer. Englandwill one day know about her regiments; her stubborn regiments of theline, her county regiments, who have won the admiration of all thecrack regiments, whether English or Scots. 

"When that gas came along, " said one Canadian, who expressed theCanadian spirit, "we knew the Boches were springing a new one onus. You know how it is if a man is hit in the face by a cloud of smokewhen he is going into a burning building to get somebody out. Hedraws back--and then he goes in. We went in. We charged--well, itwas the way we felt about it. We wanted to get at them and we wereboiling mad over such a dastardly kind of attack. "

Higher authorities than any civilian have testified to how that chargehelped, if it did not save, the situation. And then at Givenchy--straightwork into the enemy's trenches under the guns. Canada is part of theBritish Empire and a precious part; but the Canadians, all imperialpolitics aside, fought their way into the affection of the British army, ifthey did not already possess it. They made the Rocky Mountainsseem more majestic and the Thousand Islands more lovely. 

If there are some people in the United States busy with their ownaffairs who look on the Canadians as living up north somewheretoward the Arctic Circle and not very numerous, that old criterion ofworth which discovers in the glare of battle's publicity merit whichalready existed has given to the name Canadian a glory which can beappreciated only with the perspective of time. The Civil War left us amartial tradition; they have won theirs. Some day a few of their neutralneighbours who fought by their side will be joining in their armyreunions and remarking, "Wasn't that mud in Flanders------" etc. 

My thanks to the Canadians for being at the front. They brought meback to the plains and the North-West, and they showed theGermans on some occasions what a blizzard is like when expressedin bullets instead of in snowflakes, by men who know how to shoot. Ihad continental pride in them. They had the dry, pungent philosophyand the indomitable optimism which the air of the plains and the St. Lawrence valley seems to develop. They were not afraid to be a littleemotional and sentimental. There is room for that sort of thingbetween Vancouver and Halifax. They had been in some "toughscraps" which they saw clear-eyed, as they would see a boxing-match or a spill from a canoe into a Canadian rapids. 

As for the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, old soldiers ofthe South African campaign almost without exception, knowing andhardened, their veteran experience gave them an earlier opportunityin the trenches than the first Canadian division. Brigaded with Britishregulars, the Princess Pat's were a sort of corps d'élite. ColonelFrancis Farquhar, known as "Fanny, " was their colonel, and he knewhis men. After he was killed his spirit remained with them. Asked ifthey could stick they said, "Yes, sir!" cheerily, as he would havewanted them to say it. 

I am going to tell the story of their fight of May 8th, not to single themout from any other Canadian battalion, or any British battalions, butbecause the story came to me and it seemed illuminative of whatother battalions had endured, this one picturesquely because of itsmembership and its distance from home. 

Losses in that Ypres salient at St. Eloi the P. P. S had suffered in thewinter, dribbling, day-by-day losses, and heavier ones when they hadmade attacks and repulsed attacks. They had been holding down thelid of hell heretofore, as one said graphically, and on May 8th, to usehis simile again, they held on to the edge of the opening by the skin oftheir teeth and looked down into the bowels of hell after the Germanshad blown the lid off with high explosives. 

It was in a big château that I heard the story--a story characteristic ofmodern warfare at its highest pitch--and felt its thrill when told by thetongues of its participants. There were twenty bedrooms in thatchâteau. If I wished to stay all night I might occupy three or four. Asfor the bathroom, paradise to men who have been buried in filthy mudby high explosives, the Frenchman who planned it had the mostspacious ideas of immersion. A tub, or a shower, or a hose, as youpleased. Some bathroom, that!

For nothing in the British army was too good for the Princess Pat'sbefore May 8th; and since May 8th nothing is quite good enough. Askthe generals in whose command they have served if you have anydoubts. There is one way to win praise at the front: by fighting. TheP. P. S knew the way. 

"Too bad Gault is not here. He's in England recovering from hiswound. Gault is six feet tall and five feet of him legs. All day in thattrench with a shell-wound in his thigh and arm. God! How he wassuffering! But not a moan, his face twitching and trying to make thetwitch into a smile, and telling us to stick. 

"Buller away, too. He was the second in command. Gault succeededhim. Buller was hit on May 5th and missed the big show--piece ofshell in the eye. "

"And Charlie Stewart, who was shot through the stomach. How wemiss him! If ever there were a 'live-wire' it's Charlie. Up or down, he'ssmiling and ready for the next adventure. Once he made thirtythousand dollars in the Yukon and spent it on the way to Vancouver. The first job he could get was washing dishes; but he wasn't washingthem long. Again, he started out in the North-West on an expeditionwith four hundred traps, to cut into the fur business of the HudsonBay Company. His Indians got sick. He wouldn't desert them, andbefore he was through he had a time which beat anything yet openedup for us by the Germans in Flanders. But you have heard suchstories from the North-West before. Being shot through the stomachthe way he was, all the doctors agreed that Charlie would die. It waslike Charlie to disagree with them. He always had his own point ofview. So he is getting well. Charlie came out to the war with thepacking-case which had been used by his grandfather, who was anofficer in the Crimean War. He said that it would bring him luck. "

The 4th of May was bad enough, a ghastly forerunner for the 8th. Onthe 4th the P. P. S, after having been under shell-fire throughout thesecond battle of Ypres, the "gas battle, " were ordered forward to anew line to the south-east of Ypres. To the north of Ypres the Britishline had been driven back by the concentration of shell-fire and therolling, deadly march of the clouds of asphyxiating gas. 

The Germans were still determined to take the town, which they hadshowered with four million dollars' worth of shells. It would be bignews: the fall of Ypres as a prelude to the fall of Przemysl and ofLemberg in their summer campaign of 1915. A wicked salient wasproduced in the British line to the south-east by the cave-in to thenorth. It seems to be the lot of the P. P. S to get into salients. On the4th they lost twenty-eight men killed and ninety-eight wounded from agruelling all-day shell-fire and stone-walling. That night they got reliefand were out for two days, when they were back in the front trenchesagain. The 5th and the 6th were fairly quiet; that is, what the P. P. S orMr. Thomas Atkins would call quiet. Average mortals wouldn't. Theywould try to appear unconcerned and say they had been under prettyheavy fire, which means shells all over the place and machine-gunscombing the parapet. Very dull, indeed. Only three men killed andseventeen wounded. 

On the night of May 7th the P. P. S had a muster of six hundred andthirty-five men. This was a good deal less than half of the original totalin the battalion, including recruits who had come out to fill the gapscaused by death, wounds, and sickness. Bear in mind that before thiswar a force was supposed to prepare for retreat with a loss of ten percent, and get under way to the rear with the loss of fifteen per cent, and that with the loss of thirty per cent, it was supposed to haveborne all that can be expected of the best trained soldiers. 

The Germans were quiet that night, suggestively quiet. At 4. 30 a. M. The prelude began; by 5. 30 the German gunners had fairly warmed totheir work. They were using every kind of shell they had in the locker. Every signal wire the P. P. S possessed had been cut. The brigadecommander could not know what was happening to them and theycould not know his wishes; except that it may be taken for grantedthat the orders of any British brigade commander are always to "stickit. " The shell-fire was as thick at the P. P. S' backs as in front of them;they were fenced in by it. And they were infantry taking what the gunsgave in order to put them out of business so that the way would beclear for the German infantry to charge. In theory they ought to havebeen buried and mangled beyond the power of resistance by what iscalled "the artillery preparation for the infantry in attack. "

Every man of the P. P. S knew what was coming. There was relief intheir hearts when they saw the Germans break from their trenchesand start down the slope of the hill in front. Now they could take it outof the German infantry in payment for what the German guns weredoing to them. This was their only thought. Being good shots, with theinstinct of the man who is used to shooting at game, the P. P. S "shootto kill" and at individual targets. The light green of the Germanuniform is more visible on the deep green background of spring grassand foliage than against the tints of autumn. At two or three or fourhundred yards neither Corporal Christy, the old bear-hunter, lying onthe parapet nor other marksmen of the P. P. S could miss their marks. They kept on knocking down Germans; they didn't know that menaround them were being hit; they did not know they were beingshelled except when a burst shook their aim or filled their eyes withdust. In that case they wiped the dust out of their eyes and went on. The first that many of them realized that the German attack wasbroken was when they saw green blots in front of the standingfigures, which were now going in the other direction. Then the thingwas to keep as many of these as possible from returning over the hill. After that they could dress the wounded and make the dying a littlemore comfortable. For there was no taking the wounded to the rear. They had to remain there in the trench perhaps to be wounded again, spectators of their comrades' valour without the preoccupation ofaction. 

In the official war journal where a battalion keeps its records--thatprecious historical document which will be safeguarded in fireproofvaults one of these days--you may read in cold, official language whathappened in one section of the British line on the 8th of May. Thus:

"7 a. M. Fire trench on right blown in at several points . .. 9 a. M. Lieutenants Martin and Triggs were hit and came out of leftcommunicating trench with number of wounded . . . Captain Still andLieutenant de Bay hit also . . . 9. 30 a. M. All machine-guns wereburied (by high explosive shells) but two were dug out and mountedagain. A shell killed every man in one section . . . 10. 30 a. M. Lieutenant Edwards was killed . . . Lieutenant Crawford, who wasmost gallant, was severely wounded . . . Captain Adamson, who hadbeen handing out ammunition, was hit in the shoulder, but continuedto work with only one arm useful . . . Sergeant-Major Frazer, who wasalso handing out ammunition to support trenches, was killed instantlyby a bullet in the head. "

At 10. 30 only four officers remained fit for action. All were lieutenants. The ranking one of these was Niven, in command after Gault waswounded at 7 a. M. We have all met the Niven type anywhere fromthe Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Circle, the high-strung, wiry type whomoves about too fast to carry any loose flesh and accumulates nonebecause he does move about so fast. A little man Niven, rancher andhorseman, with a good education and a knowledge of men. He ratherfits the old saying about licking his weight in wild cats--wild cats beingnearer his size than lions or tigers. 

Eight months before he had not known any more about war thanthousands of other Canadians of his type, except that soldiers carriedrifles over their shoulders and kept step. But he had "Fanny"Farquhar, of the British army, for his teacher; and he studied the bookof war in the midst of shells and bullets, which means that the lessonsstick in the same way as the lesson the small boy receives when hetouches the red-hot end of a poker to ascertain how it feels. 

Writing in the midst of ruined trenches rocked by the concussion ofshells, every message he sent that day, every report he made byorderly after the wires were down was written out very explicitly; whichFarquhar had taught him was the army way. The record is there of hiscoolness when the lid was blown off of hell. For all you can tell by thefirm chirography, he might have been sending a note to a ranchforeman. 

When his communications were cut, he was not certain how muchsupport he had on his flanks. It looked for a time as if he had none. After the first charge was repulsed, he made contact with the King'sRoyal Rifle Corps on his right. He knew from the nature of the firstGerman charge that the second would be worse than the first. TheGermans had advanced some machine-guns; they would be able toplace their increased artillery fire more accurately. 

Again green figures started down that hill and again they were putback. Then Niven was able to establish contact with the ShropshireLight Infantry, another regiment on his left. So he knew that right andleft he was supported, and by seasoned British regulars. This wasvery, very comforting, especially when German machine-gun fire wasnot only coming from the front but in enfilade, which is most trying to asoldier's steadiness. In other words, the P. P. S were shooting atGermans in front, while bullets were whipping crosswise of theirtrenches and of the regulars on their flanks, too. Some of the Germaninfantrymen who had not been hit or had not fallen back had dugthemselves cover and were firing at a closer range. 

The Germans had located the points in the P. P. S' trench occupied bymachine-guns. At least, they could put these hornets' nests out ofbusiness if not all the individual riflemen. So they concentrated highexplosive shells on the guns. This did the trick; it buried them. But aburied machine-gun may be dug out and fired again. It may be dugout two or three times and keep on firing as long as it will work andthere is anyone to man it. 

While the machine-guns were being exhumed every man in onesector of the trench was killed. Then the left half of the right firetrench had three or four shells, one after another, bang into it. Therewas no trench left; only macerated earth and mangled men. Thoseemerging alive were told to retreat to the communication trench. Next, the right end of the left fire trench was blown in. When thesurvivors fell back to the communication trench that also wasblown in their face. 

"Oh, but we were having a merry party!" as Lieutenant Vandenbergput it. 

Niven and his lieutenants were moving here and there to the point ofeach new explosion to ascertain the amount of damage and todecide what was to be done as the result. One soldier describedNiven's eyes as sparks emitted from two holes in his dust-caked face. 

Pappineau tells how a tree outside the trench was cut in two by ashell and its trunk laid across the breach of the trench caused byanother shell; and lying over the trunk, limp and lifeless where he hadfallen, was a man killed by still another shell. 

"I remember how he looked because I had to step around him andover the trunk, " said Pappineau. 

Unless you did have to step around a dead or a wounded man therewas no time to observe his appearance; for by noon there were asmany dead and wounded in the P. P. S' trench as there were men fitfor action. 

Those unhurt did not have to be steadied by their superiors. Knockeddown by a concussion they sprang up with the promptness of disgustof one thrown off a horse or tripped by a wire. When told to movefrom one part of the trench to another where there was desperateneed, a word was sufficient. They understood what was wanted ofthem, these veterans. They went. They seized every lull to drop therifle for the spade and repair the breaches. When they were notshooting they were digging. The officers had only to keep remindingthem not to expose themselves in the breaches. For in the thick of it, and the thicker the more so, they must try to keep some dirt betweenall of their bodies except the head and arm which had to be up inorder to fire. 

At 1. 30 p. M. A cheer rose from that trench. It was in greeting of aplatoon of the King's Royal Rifles which had come as a reinforcement. Oh, but this band of Tommies did look good to the P. P. S! And thelittle prize package that the very reliable Mr. Atkins had with him--the machine-gun! You can always count on Mr. Atkins to remain"among those present" to the last on such occasions. 

Now Niven got word by messenger to go to the nearest point wherethe telephone was working and tell the brigade commander thecomplete details of the situation. The brigade commander asked himif he could stick, and he said, "Yes, sir!" which is what Colonel"Fanny" Farquhar would have said. This trip was hardly what wouldbe called peaceful. The orderly whom Niven had with him both goingand coming was hit by high explosive shells. Niven is so small that itis difficult to hit him. He is about up to Major Gault's shoulder. 

He had been worrying about his supply of rifle-cartridges. There werenot enough to take care of another German infantry charge, whichwas surely coming. After repelling two charges, think of failing to repelthe third for want of ammunition! Think of Corporal Christy, the bear-hunter, with the Germans thick in front of him and no bullets for hisrifle! But appeared again Mr. Thomas Atkins, another platoon of him, with twenty boxes of cartridges, which was rather a risky burden tobring through shell-fire. The relief as these were distributed was thatof having something at your throat which threatens to strangle youremoved. 

Making another tour of his trenches a little later in the afternoon, Niven found that there was a gap of fifty yards between his left andthe right of the adjoining regiment. Fifty yards is the inch on the end ofa man's nose in trench-warfare on such an occasion. He was able toplace eight men in the gap. At least, they could keep a look out andtell him what was going on. 

It was not cheering news to learn that the regiments on his left hadwithdrawn to trenches about three hundred yards to the rear--a longdistance in trench warfare. But the P. P. S had no time to retire. Theycould have gone only in the panic of men who think of nothing in theirdemoralization except to flee from the danger in front, regardless ofmore danger to the rear. They were held where they were under whatcover they had by the renewed blasts of shells, putting the machine-guns out of action. 

Now the Germans were coming on again in their supreme effort. Itwas as a nightmare, in which only the objective of effort is recalledand all else is a vague struggle of every ounce of strength which onecan exert against smothering odds. No use to ask these men whatthey thought. What do you think when you are climbing up a ropewhose strands are breaking over the edge of a precipice? You climb;that is all. 

The P. P. S shot at Germans. After a night without sleep, after a dayamong their dead and wounded, after torrents of shell-fire, afterbreathing smoke, dust and gas, these veterans were in a state ofexaltation entirely oblivious of danger, of their surroundings, mindlessof what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they were trainedto do, even as a man pulls with all his might in the crucial test of a tugof war. Old Corporal Christy, bear-hunter of the North-West, whocould "shoot the eye off an ant, " as Niven said, leaned out over theparapet, or what was left of it, because he could take better aim lyingdown and the Germans were so thick that he could not afford anymisses. 

Corporal Dover had to give up firing his machine-gun at last. Wounded, he had dug it out of the earth after an explosion and set itup again. The explosion which destroyed the gun finally crushed hisleg and arm. He crawled out of the debris toward the support trenchwhich had become the fire trench, only to be killed by a bullet. 

The Germans got possession of a section of the P. P. S' trench where, it is believed, no Canadians were left. But the German effort diedthere. It could get no farther. This was as near to Ypres as theGermans were to go in this direction. When the day's work was done, there, in sight of the field scattered with German dead, the P. P. Scounted their numbers. Of the six hundred and thirty-five men whohad begun the fight at daybreak, one hundred and fifty men and fourofficers, Niven, Pappineau, Clark and Vandenberg, remained fit forduty. 

Vandenberg is a Hollander, but mostly he is Vandenberg. To him thecall of youth is the call to arms. He knows the roads of Europe andthe roads of Chihuahua. He was at home fighting with Villa atZacetecas and at home fighting with the P. P. S in front of Ypres. 

Darkness found all the survivors among the P. P. S in the support andcommunication trenches. The fire trench had become an untenabledust-heap. They crept out only to bring in any wounded unable tohelp themselves; and wounded and rescuers were more than oncehit in the process. It was too dangerous to attempt to bury the deadwho were in the fire-trench. Most of them had already been buried byshells. For them and for the dead in the support trenches interred bytheir living comrades, Niven recited such portions as he could recallof the Church of England service for the dead--recited them with atight throat. Then the P. P. S, unbeaten, marched out, leaving theposition to their relief, a battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Corporal Christy, the bear-hunter, had his "luck with him. " He had noteven a scratch. 

Such is the story of a hard fight by one battalion in the kind of warfarewaged in Europe these days, a story only partially told; a story tomake a book. All the praise that the P. P. S, millionaire or labourer, scapegrace or respectable pillar of society, ask is that they are worthyof fighting side by side with Mr. Thomas Atkins, regular. At best, onepoor, little, finite mind only observes through a rift in the black smokeand yellow smoke of high explosives and the clouds of dust andmilitary secrecy something of what has happened many times in asmall section of that long line from Switzerland to the North Sea. 

Leaning against the wall in a corner of the dining-room of the Frenchchâteau were the P. P. S colours. Major Niven took off the wrapper inorder that I might see the flag with the initials of the battalion whichPrincess Patricia embroidered with her own hands. There is room, one repeats, for a little sentiment and a little emotion, too, betweenHalifax and Vancouver. 

"Of course we could not take our colours into action, " said Niven. "They would have been torn into tatters or buried in a shell-crater. Butwe've always kept them up at battalion headquarters. I believe we arethe only battalion that has. We promised the Princess that we would. "

In her honour, an old custom has been renewed in France: knightsare fighting in the name of a fair lady. 

XXVMany Pictures

A single incident, an impression photographic in its swiftness, achance remark, may be more illuminating than a day's experiences. One does not need to go to the front for them. Sometimes they cometo the gateway of our château. They are pages at random out of alibrary of overwhelming information. 

One of the aviation grounds is not far away. Look skyward at almostany hour of the day and you will see a plane, its propeller a roar or ahum according to its altitude. Sometimes it is circling in practice;again, it is off to the front. At break of day the planes appear; in thegloaming they return to roost. 

If an aviator has leave for two or three days in summer he starts inthe late afternoon, flashing over that streak of Channel in half anhour, and may be at home for dinner without getting any dust on hisclothes or having to bother with military red tape at steamergangways or customs houses. 

The airmen are a type which one associates with certain markedcharacteristics. No nervous man is wanted, and it is time for anaviator to take a rest at the first sign of nerves. They seem rather shy, men given to observation rather than to talking; accustomed to usingtheir eyes and hands. It is difficult to realize that some quiet, youngfellow who is pointed out has had so many hairbreadth escapes. What tales, worthy of Arabian Nights' heroes who are borne away-onmagic carpets, they bring home, relating them as matter-of-factly as ifthey had broken a shoelace. 

Up in their seat, a whir of the motor, and they are off on anotheradventure. They have all the spirit of corps of the oldest regiments, and, besides, a spirit peculiar to the newest branch in the service ofwar. Anonymity is absolute. Everything is done by the corps for thecorps. Possibly because it is so young, because it started withchosen men, the British Aviation Corps is unsurpassed; but partly it isbecause of the British temperament, with that combination ofcoolness and innate love of risk which the British manner sometimesbelies. Something of the old spirit of knighthood characterizes airservice. It is individual work; its numbers are relatively few. 

Some mornings ago I saw several young soldiers with notebooksgoing about our village street. They were from the cadet schoolwhere privates, from the trenches, take a course and return withchocolate drops on their, sleeve-bands as commissioned officers. This was a course in billeting. For ours is not an army in tents, butone living in French houses and barns. The pupils were learning howto carry out this delicate task; for delicate it is. A stranger speakinganother language becomes the guest of the host for whom he isfighting. Mr. Atkins receives only shelter; he supplies his own meals. His excess of marmalade one sees yellowing the cheeks of thechildren in the family where he is at home. Madame objects only tohis efforts to cook in her kitchen; woman-like, she would rather handlethe pots and pans herself. 

Tommy is thoroughly instructed in his duty as guest and under adiscipline that is merciless so far as conduct toward the populationgoes; so the two get on better than French and English militaryauthorities feared that they might. Time has taught them tounderstand each other and to see that difference in race does notmean absence of human qualities in common, though differentlyexpressed. Many armies I have seen, but never one better behavedthan the British army in France and Flanders in its respect forproperty and the rights of the population. 

And while the fledgling officers are going on with their billeting, wehear the t-r-r-t of a machine-gun at a machine-gun school about amile distant, where picked men also from the trenches receiveinstruction in the use of an arm new to them. There are other schoolswithin sound of the guns teaching the art of war to an expanding armyin the midst of war, with the teachers bringing their experience fromthe battle-line. 

"Their shops and their houses all have fronts of glass, " wrote a Sikhsoldier home, "and even the poor are rich in this bountiful land. "

Sikhs and Ghurkas and Rajputs and Pathans and Gharwalis, thebrown-skinned tribesmen in India, have been on a strange Odyssey, bringing picturesqueness to the khaki tone of modern war. Aeroplanes interested them less than a trotting dog in a wheel fordrawing water. They would watch that for hours. 

Still fresh in mind is a scene when the air seemed a moist spongeand all above the earth was dripping and all under foot a mire. I washomesick for the flash on the windows of the New York skyscrapersor the gleam on the Hudson of that bright sunlight in a drier air, that isthe secret of the American's nervous energy. It seemed to me that itwas enough to have to exist in Northern France at that season of theyear, let alone fighting Germans. 

Out of the drizzly, misty rain along a muddy road and turning past uscame the Indian cavalry, which, like the British cavalry, had fought onfoot in the trenches, while their horses led the leisurely life of trueequine gentry. Erect in their saddles, their martial spirit defiant ofweather, their black eyes flashing as they looked toward thereviewing officers, troop after troop of these sons of the East passedby, everyone seeming as fit for review as if he had cleaned hisuniform and equipment in his home barracks instead of in Frenchbarns. 

You asked who had trained them; who had fashioned the brown clayinto resolute and loyal obedience which stood the test of a Flanderswinter? What was the force which could win them to cross the seas tofight for England? Among the brown faces topped with turbansappeared occasional white faces. These were the men; these theforce. 

The marvel was not that the Indians were able to fight as well as theydid in that climate, but that they fought at all. What welcome summerbrought from their gleaming black eyes! July or August could not betoo hot for them. On a plateau one afternoon I saw them in agymkhana. It was a treat for the King of the Belgians, who has hadfew holidays, indeed, this last year, and for the French peasants whocame from the neighbourhood. Yelling, wild as they were in tribal daysbefore the British brought order and peace to India, the horsemengalloped across the open space, picking up handkerchiefs from theground and impaling tent pegs on their lances. The French peasantsclapped their hands and the British Indian officers said, "Good!" whenthe performer succeeded, or, "Too bad!" when he failed. 

If you asked the officers for the secret of the Indian Empire they said:"We try to be fair to the natives!" which means that they are just andeven-tempered. An enormous, loose-jointed machine the BritishEmpire, which seems sometimes to creak a bit, yet holds together forthat very reason. Imperial weight may have interfered with Britishadaptability to the kind of warfare which was the one kind that theGermans had to train for; but certainly some Englishmen must knowhow to rule. 

That church bell across the street from our château begins its clangorat dawn, summoning the French women and children and the oldmen to the fields in harvest time. But its peal carrying across thefarmlands is softened by distance and sweet to the tired workers inthe evening. In the morning it tells them that the day is long and theyhave much to do before dark. After that thought I never complainedbecause it robbed me of my sleep. I felt ashamed not to be up anddoing myself, and worked with a better spirit. 

"Will they do it?"

We asked this question as often in our mess in those August daysas, Will the Russians lose Warsaw? Would the peasants be able toget in their crops, with all the able-bodied men away? I had insideinformation from the village mayor and the blacksmith and the bakerthat they would. A financial expert, the baker. Of course, he said, France would go on fighting till the Germans were beaten, just as theold men and the women and children said, whether the church bellwere clanging the matins or the angelus. But there was the questionof finances. It took money to fight. The Americans, he knew, hadmore money than they knew what to do with--as Europeansuniversally think, only, personally, I find that I was overlooked in thedistribution--and if they would lend the Allies some of their sparebillions, Germany was surely beaten. 

A busy man, the blacksmith, and brawny, if he had no spreadingchestnut tree; busy not only shoeing farmhorses, but repairingAmerican reapers and binders, whose owners profited exceedinglyand saved the day. But not all farmers felt that they could afford thecharge. 

These kept at their small patches with sickles. Gradually the carpetsof gold waving in the breeze became bundles lying on the stubble, and great, conical harvest stacks rose, while children gathered thestray stems left on the ground by the reapers till they had immensebouquets of wheat-heads under their arms, enough to make two orthree loaves of the pain de ménage that the baker sold. So thepeasants did it; they won; and this was some compensation for theloss of Warsaw. 

One morning we heard troops marching past, which was not unusual. But these were French troops in the British zone, en route fromsomewhere in France to somewhere else in France. There was not aperson left in any house in that village. Everybody was out, withaffection glowing in their eyes. For these were their own--their soldiersof France!

When you see a certain big limousine flying a small British flag passyou know that it belongs to the Commander-in-Chief; and though itmay be occupied only by one of his aides, often you will have aglimpse of a man with a square chin and a drooping whitemoustache, who is the sole one among the hundreds of thousands atthe British front who wears the wreath-circled crossed batons of afield-marshal. 

It is erroneous to think that Sir John French or any other commander, though that is the case in time of action, spends all his time in theprivate house occupied as headquarters, designated by two wisps offlags, studying a map and sending and receiving messages, whenthe trench-line remains stationary. He goes here and there oninspections. It is the only way that a modern leader may let hisofficers and men know that he is a being of flesh and blood and not aname signed to reports and orders. A machine-gun company I knewhad a surprise when resting in a field waiting for orders. Theysuddenly recognized in a figure coming through an opening in ahedge the supreme head of the British army in France. No need of acall to attention. The effect was like an electric shock, which sentevery man to his place and made his backbone a steel rod. Thosecrossed batons represented a dizzy altitude to that battery which hadjust come out from England. Sir John walked up and down, lookingover men and guns after their nine months' drill at home, and said, "Very good!" and was away to other inspections where he might notnecessarily say, "Very good!"

Frequently his inspections are formal. A battalion or a brigade isdrawn up in a field, or they march past. Then he usually makes ashort speech. On one occasion the officers had arranged a platformfor the speech-making. Sir John gave it a glance and that wasenough. It was the last of such platforms erected for him. 

"Inspections! They are second nature to us!" said a new army man. "We were inspected and inspected at home and we are inspectedand inspected out here. If there is anything wrong with us it is thegeneral's own fault if it isn't found out. When a general is notinspecting, some man from the medical corps is disinfecting. "

Battalions of the new army are frequently billeted for two or threedays in our village. The barn up the road I know is capable of housingtwenty men and one officer, for this is chalked on . The door. Beforethey turn in for the night the men frequently sing, and the sound oftheir voices is pleasant. 

A typical inspection was one that I saw in the main street. Thebattalion was drawn up in full marching equipment on the road. Ofthose officers with packs on their backs one was only nineteen. Thisis the limit of youth to acquire a chocolate drop on the sleeve. Thesergeant-major was an old regular, the knowing back-bone of thebattalion, who had taken the men of clay and taught them their lettersand then how to spell and to add and subtract and divide. One ofthose impressive red caps arrived in a car, and the general who woreit went slowly up and down the line, front and rear, examining riflesand equipment, while the young officers and the old sergeant werehoping that Jones or Smith hadn't got some dust in his rifle-barrel atthe last moment. 

Brokers and carpenters, bankers and mechanics, clerks andlabourers, the new army is like the army of France, composed of allclasses. One evening I had a chat with two young fellows in abattalion quartered in the village, who were seated beside the road. Both came from Buckinghamshire. One was a schoolmaster and theother an architect. They were "bunkies, " pals, chums. 

"When did you enlist?" I asked. 

"In early September, after the Marne retreat. We thought that it wasour duty, then; but we've been a long time arriving. "

"How do you like it?"

"We are not yet masters of the language, we find, " said theschoolmaster, "though I had a pretty good book knowledge of it. "

"I'm learning the gestures fast, though, " said the architect. 

"The French are glad to see us, " said the schoolmaster. "They call usthe Keetcheenaires. I fancy they thought we were a long time coming. But now we are here, I think they will find that we can keep up ourend. "

They had the fresh complexions which come from healthy, outdoorwork. There was something engaging in their boyishness and theirviews. For they had a wider range of interests than that professionalsoldier, Mr. Atkins, these citizens who had taken up arms. They knewwhat trench-fighting meant by work in practice trenches at home. 

"Of course it will not be quite the same; theory and practice neverare, " said the schoolmaster. 

"We ought to be well grounded in the principles, " said the architectthoughtfully, "and they say that in a week or two of actual experienceyou will have mastered the details that could not be taught inEngland. Then, too, having shells burst around you will be strange atfirst. But I think our battalion will give a good account of itself, sir. All the Bucks men have!" There crept in the pride of regiment, oflocality, which is so characteristically Anglo-Saxon. 

They change life at the front, these new army men. If a carpenter, alawyer, a sign-painter, an accountant, is wanted, you have only tospeak to a new army battalion commander and one is forthcoming--amillionaire, too, for that matter, who gets his shilling a day for servinghis country. Their intelligence permitted the architect and theschoolmaster to have no illusions about the character of the war theyhad to face. The pity was that such a fine force as the new army, which had not become trench stale, could not have a free space inwhich to make a great turning movement, instead of having to goagainst that solid battle front from Switzerland to the North Sea. 

We have heard enough--quite enough for most of us?--about theGerman Crown Prince. But there is also a prince with the British armyin France. No lieutenant looks younger for his years than this one inthe Grenadier Guards, and he seems of the same type as the otherswhen you see him marching with his regiment or off for a walksmoking a brier-wood pipe. There are some officers who would rathernot accompany him on his walks, for he can go fast and far. Hemakes regular reports of his observations, and he has opportunitiesfor learning which other subalterns lack, for he may have both thestaff and the army as personal instructors. Otherwise, his life is that ofany other subaltern; for there is an instrument called the BritishConstitution which regulates many things. A little shy, very desirous tolearn, is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of GreatBritain and Ireland and the Empire of India. He might be called thewilling prince. 

This was one of the shells that hit--one of the hundred that hit. Thetime was summer; the place, the La Bassée region. Probably thefighting was all the harder here because it is so largely blind. Whenyou cannot see what an enemy is doing you keep on pumping shellsinto the area which he occupies; you take no risks with him. 

The visitor may see about as much of what is going on in the LaBassée region as an ant can see of the surrounding landscape whenpromenading in the grass. The only variation in the flatness of theland is the overworked ditches which try to drain it. Look upward, androws of poplar trees along the level, and a hedge, a grove, a cottage, or trees and shrubs around it, limit your vision. Thus, if a breeze startstimidly in a field it is stopped before it goes far. That "hot corner" isall the hotter for a burning July sun. The army water-carts which runback to wells of cool water are busy filling empty canteens, whileshrapnel trims the hedges. 

A stretcher was being borne into the doorway of an estaminet whichhad escaped destruction by shells, and above the door was chalkedsome lettering which indicated that it was a first clearing station for thewounded. Lying on other stretchers on the floor were some woundedmen. Of the two nearest, one had a bandage around his head andone a bandage around his arm. They had been stunned, which wasonly natural when you have been as close as they had to a shell-burst--a shell that made a hit. The concussion was bound to have thiseffect. 

A third man was the best illustration of shell-destructiveness. Bulletsmake only holes. Shells make gouges, fractures, pulp. He, too, had abandaged head and had been hit in several places; but the worstwound was in the leg, where an artery had been cut. He was weak, with a sort of where-am-I look in his eyes. If the fragment which hadhit his leg had hit his head, or his neck, or his abdomen, he wouldhave been killed instantly. He was also an illustration of how hard it isto kill a man even with several shell-fragments, unless some of themstrike in the right place. For he was going to live; the surgeon hadwhispered the fact in his ear, that one important fact. He had beatenthe German shell, after all. 

Returning by the same road by which we came a motor-car ran swiftlyby, the only kind of car allowed on that road. We had a glimpse of thebig, painted red cross on an ambulance side, and at the rear, wherethe curtains were rolled up for ventilation, of four pairs of soldier boot-soles at the end of four stretchers, which had been slid into place atthe estaminet by the sturdy, kindly, experienced medical corps men. 

Before we reached the village where our car waited, the ambulancepassed us on the way back to the estaminet. Very soon after theshell-burst, a telephone bell had rung down the line from the extremefront calling for an ambulance and stating the number of men hit, sothat everybody would know what to prepare for. At the village, whichwas outside the immediate danger zone, was another clearingstation. Here the stretchers were taken into a house--taken without ajolt by men who were specialists in handling stretchers--for any re-dressing if necessary, before another ambulance started journey, with motor-trucks and staff motor-cars giving right of way, to aspotless, white hospital ship which would take them home to Englandthe next night. 

It had been an incident of life at the front, and of the organization ofwar, causing less flurry than an ambulance call to an accident in agreat city. 

XXVIFinding The Grand Fleet

Good fortune slipped a message across the Channel to the Britishfront, which became the magic carpet of transition from the life of theburrowing army in its trenches to the life of battleships; from motorstrailing dust over French roads, to destroyers trailing foam in choppyseas off English coasts. 

But there was more than one place to go in that wonderful week;more than ships to see if one would know something of the intricate, busy world of the Admiralty's work, which makes coastguards a partof its personnel. The transition is less sudden if we begin with a ride inan open car along the coast of Scotland. Dusk had fallen on thepurple cloudlands of heather dotted with the white spots of grazingsheep in the Scottish Highlands under changing skies, withheadlands stretching out into the misty reaches of the North Sea, forbidding in the chill air after the warmth of France and suggestive ofthe uninviting theatre where, in approaching winter, patrols andtrawlers and mine-sweepers carried on their work to within range ofthe guns of Heligoland. A people who lived in such a chill land, insight of such a chill sea, and who spoke of their "Bonnie Scotlandforever, " were worthy to be masters of that sea. The Americans whothink of Britain as a small island forget the distance from Land's Endto John o' Groat's, which represents coast line to be guarded; and wemay find a lesson, too, we who must make our real defence by sea, in tireless vigils which may be our own if the old Armageddon beastever comes threatening the far-longer coast line that we have todefend. For you may never know what war is till war comes. Not eventhe Germans knew, though they had practised with a lifelike dummybehind the curtains for forty years. 

At intervals, just as in the military zone in France, sentries stopped usand took the number of our car; but this time sentries who wereguarding a navy's rather than an army's secrets. With darkness wepassed the light of an occasional inn, while cottage lights made ascattered sprinkling among the dim masses of the hills. A man mighthave been puzzled as to where all the kilted Highland soldiers whomhe had seen at the front came from, if he had not known that thecanny Highlanders enlist Lowlanders in kilty regiments. 

The Frenchmen of our party--M. Stephen Pichon, former ForeignMinister, M. René Bazin, of the Académie Française, M. JosephReinach, of the Figaro, M. Pierre Mille, of Le Temps, and M. HenriPonsot--who had never been in Scotland before, were on the look outfor a civilian Scots in kilts and were grievously disappointed not to finda single one. 

This night ride convinced me that however many Germans might bemoving about in England under the guise of cockney or of Lancashiredialects in quest of information, none has any chance in Scotland. Hecould never get the burr, I am sure, unless born in Scotland; and if hewere, once he had it the triumph ought to make him a Scotsman atheart. 

The officer of the Royal Navy who was in the car with me confessedto less faith in his symbol of authority than in the generations' bredburr of our chauffeur to carry conviction of our genuineness; soarguments were left to him and successfully, including two or threewith Scotch cattle, which seemed to be co-operating with the sentriesto block the road. 

After an hour's run inland, as the car rose over a ridge anddescended on a sharp grade, in the distance under the moonlight wesaw the floor of the sea again, melting into opaqueness, with curvingfringes of foam along the irregular shore cut by the indentations of thefirths. Now the sentries were more frequent and more particular. Oursingle light gave dim form to the figures of sailors, soldiers, and boyscouts on patrol. 

"They have done remarkably well, these boys!" said the officer. "Ourfears that, boy like, they would see all kinds of things which didn'texist were quite needless. The work has taught them a sense ofresponsibility which will remain with them after the war, when theirexperience will be a precious memory. They realize that it isn't play, but a serious business, and act accordingly. "

With all the houses and the countryside dark, the rays of our lampseemed an invading comet to the men who held up lanterns with redtwinkles of warning. 

"The patrol boats have complained about your lights, sir!" said oneobdurate sentry. 

We looked out into the black wall in the direction of the sea and couldsee no sign of a patrol boat. How had it been able to inform this lonesentry of that flying ray which disclosed the line of a coastal road toanyone at sea? He would not accept the best argumentative burr thatour chauffeur could produce as sufficient explanation or guarantee. Most Scottish of Scots in physiognomy and shrewd matter-of-factness, as revealed in the glare of the lantern, he might have beenon watch in the Highland fastnesses in Prince Charlie's time. 

"Captain R------, of the Royal Navy!" explained the officer, introducinghimself. 

"I'll take your name and address!" said the sentry. 

"The Admiralty. I take the responsibility. "

"As I'll report, sir!" said the sentry, not so convinced but he burredsomething further into the chauffeur's ear. 

This seems to have little to do with the navy, but it has much, indeed, as a part of unfathomable, complicated business of guards withinguards, intelligence battling with intelligence, deceiving raiders byland or sea, of those responsible for the safety of England and themastery of the seas. 

It is from the navy yard that the ships go forth to battle and to thenavy yard they must return for supplies and for the grooming beat ofhammers in the dry dock. Those who work at a navy yard keep thenavy's house; welcome home all the family, from Dreadnoughts totrawlers, give them cheer and shelter and bind up their wounds. 

The quarter-deck of action for Admiral Lowry, commanding the greatbase on the Forth, which was begun before the war and hastened tocompletion since, was a substantial brick building. Adjoining his office, where he worked with engineers' blue prints as well as with seacharts, he had fitted up a small bedroom where he slept, to be athand if an emergency arose. 

Partly we walked, as he showed us over his domain of steam-shovels, machine shops, cement factories, of building and repairs, ofcoaling and docking, and partly we rode on a car that ran overtemporary rails laid for trucks loaded with rocks and dirt. Borrowingfrom Peter to pay Paul, a river bottom had been filled in back of thequays with material that had been excavated to form a vast basin withcement walls, where squadrons of Dreadnoughts might rest andawait their turn to be warped into the great dry docks which open off itin chasmlike galleries. 

"The largest contract in all England, " said the contractor. "And here isthe man who checks up my work, " he added, nodding to the lean, Scottish naval engineer who was with us. It was clear from his looksthat only material of the best quality and work that was true would beacceptable to this canny mentor of efficiency, "And the workers?Have you had any strikes here?"

"No. We have employed double the usual number of men from thestart of the war, " he said. "I'm afraid that the Welsh coal troubles havebeen accepted as characteristic. Our men have been reasonable andpatriotic. They have shown the right spirit. If they hadn't, how couldwe have accomplished that?"

We were looking down into the depths of a dry dock blasted out of therock, which had been begun and completed within the year. And wehad heard nothing of all this through those twelve months! No writer, no photographer, chronicled this silent labour! Double lines of guardssurrounded the place day and night. Only tried patriots might enterthis world of a busy army in smudged workmen's clothes, bending totheir tasks with that ordered discipline of industrialism which wears nouniforms, marches without beat of drums, and toils that the shipsshall want nothing to ensure victory. 

XXVIIOn A Destroyer

Now we were on our way to the great thing--to our look behind thecurtain at the hidden hosts of sea-power. Of some eight hundred tonsburden our steed, doing eighteen knots, which was a dog-trot for oneof her speed. 

"A destroyer is like a motor-car, " said the commander. "If you rushher all the time she wears out. We give her the limit only whennecessary. "

On the bridge the zest of travel on a dolphin of steel held the bridle oneagerness to reach the journey's end. We all like to see things welldone, and here one had his first taste of how well things are done inthe British navy, which did not have to make ready for war after thewar began. With an open eye one went, and the experience of othernavies as a balance for his observation; but one lost one's heart tothe British navy and might as well confess it now. A six months' cruisewith our own battleship fleet was a proper introduction to theexperience. 

After the arduous monotony of the trenches and after the traffic ofLondon, it was freedom and sport and ecstasy to be there, with therush of salt air on the face! Our commander was under thirty years ofage; and that destroyer responded to his will like a stringedinstrument. He seemed a part of her, her nerves welded to his. 

"Specialized in torpedo work, " he said, in answer to a question. "Thatis the way of the British navy: to learn one thing well before you go onwith another. If in the course of it you learn how to command, largerresponsibilities await you. If not--there's retired pay. "

Behind a shield which sheltered them from the spray on the forwarddeck, significantly free of everything but that four-inch gun, its crewwas stationed. The commander had only to lean over and speakthrough a tube and give a range, and the music began. For the tubewas bifurcated at the end to an ear-mask over a youngster's head; ayoungster who had real sailor's smiling blue eyes, like thecommander's own. For hours he would sit waiting in the hope thatgame would be sighted. No fisherman could be more patient or morecheerful. 

"Before he came into the navy he was a chauffeur. He likes this, " saidthe commander. 

"In case of a submarine you do not want to lose any time; is that it?"

"Yes, " he replied. "You never can tell when we might have a chanceto put a shot into Fritz's periscope or ram him--Fritz is our name forsubmarines. "

Were all the commanders of destroyers up to his mark? How manymore had the British navy caught young and trained to suchquickness of decision and in the art of imparting it to his men?

Three hundred revolutions! The destroyer changed speed. Fivehundred! She changed speed again. Out of the mist in the distanceflashed a white ribbon knot that seemed to be tied to a destroyer'sbow and behind it another destroyer, and still others, lean, catlike, butrunning as if legless, with greased bodies sliding over the sea. Wesnapped out a message to them and they answered like passingbirds on the wing, before they swept out of sight behind a headlandwith uncanny ease of speed. Literal swarms of destroyers Englandhad running to and fro in the North Sea, keen for the chase and tooquick at dodging and too fast to be in any danger of the under-waterdagger thrust of the assassins whom they sought. There cannot betoo many. They are the eyes of the navy; they gather information andcarry a sting in their torpedo tubes. 

It was chilly there on the bridge, with the prospect too entrancing notto remain even if one froze. But here stepped in naval preparednesswith thick, short coats of llama wool. 

"Served out to all the men last winter, when we were in the thick of itpatrolling, " the commander explained. "You'll not get cold in that!"

"And yourself?" was suggested to the commander. 

"Oh, it is not cold enough for that in September! We're hardened to it. You come from the land and feel the change of air; we are at sea allthe time, " he replied, He was without a great-coat; and the ease withwhich he held his footing made landlubbers feel their awkwardness. 

A jumpy, uncertain tidal sea was running. Yet our destroyer slippedover the waves, cut through them, played with them, and let themseem to play with her, all the while laughing at them in the confidentpower of her softly purring vitals. 

"Look out!" which at the front in France was a signal to jump for a"funk pit. " We ducked, as a cloud of spray passed above the heavycanvas and clattered like hail against the smokestack. "There won'tbe any more!" said the commander. He was right. He knew thatpassage. One wondered if he did not know every gallon of water inthe North Sea, which he had experienced in all its moods. 

Sheltered by the smokestack down on the main deck, one of ourparty, who loved not the sea for its own sake, but endured it as apassageway to the sight of the Grand Fleet, had found warmth, if notcomfort. Not for him that invitation to come below given by the chiefengineer, who rose out of a round hole with a pleasant "How d'y' do!"air to get a sniff of the fresh breeze, wizard of the mysterious power ofthe turbines which sent the destroyer marching so noiselessly. Hewas the one who transferred the commander's orders into thatsymphony in mechanism. Turn a lever and you had a dozen moreknots; not with a leap or a jerk, but like a cat's sleek stretching ofmuscles. Not by the slightest tremor did you realize the acceleration;only by watching some stationary object as you flew past. 

Now a sweep of smooth water at the entrance to a harbour, and aturn--and there it was: the sea-power of England!

XXVIIIShips That Have Fought

But was that really it--that spread of greyish blue-green dots set on ahuge greyish blue-green platter? One could not discern where shipsbegan and water and sky which held them suspended left off. Invisible fleet it had been called. At first glance it seemed to becomposed of phantoms, baffling, absorbing the tone of itsbackground. Admiralty secrecy must be the result of a naval dislike ofpublicity. 

Still as if they were rooted, these leviathans! How could such a shy, peaceful-looking array send out broadsides of twelve and thirteen-fiveand fifteen-inch shells? What a paradise for a German submarine!Each ship seemed an inviting target. Only there were many gatesand doors to the paradise, closed to all things that travel on andunder the water without a proper identification. Submarines that hadtried to pick one of the locks were like the fish who found going goodinto the trap. A submarine had about the same chance of reachingthat anchorage as a German in the uniform of the Death's HeadHussars, with a bomb under his arm, of reaching the vaults of theBank of England. 

And was this all of the greatest naval force ever gathered under asingle command, these two or three lines of ships? But as thedestroyer drew nearer the question changed. How many more? Wasthere no end to greyish blue-green monsters, in order as precise asthe trees of a California orchard, that appeared out of the greyishblue-green background? First to claim attention was the QueenElizabeth, with her eight fifteen-inch guns on a platform which couldtravel at nearly the speed of the average railroad train. 

The contrast of sea and land warfare appealed the more vividly toone fresh from the front in France. What infinite labour for an army toget one big gun into position! How heralded the snail-like travels ofthe big German howitzer! Here was ship after ship, whose gunsseemed innumerable. One found it hard to realize the resisting powerof their armour, painted to look as liquid as the sea, and the stabilityof their construction, which was able to bear the strain of firing thegreat shells that travelled ten miles to their target. 

Sea-power, indeed! And world-power, too, there in the hollow of anation's hand, to throw in whatever direction she pleased. If anAmerican had a lump in his throat at the thought of what it meant, what might it not mean to an Englishman? Probably the Englishmanwould say, "I think that the fleet is all right, don't you?"

Land-power, too! On the continent vast armies wrestled for somesquare miles of earth. France has, say, three million soldiers;Germany, five; Austria, four--and England had, perhaps, a hundredthousand men, perhaps more, on board this fleet which defended theEnglish land and lands far overseas without firing a shot. A battalionof infantry is more than sufficient in numbers to man a Dreadnought. How precious, then, the skill of that crew! Man-power is asconcentrated as gun-power with a navy. Ride three hundred miles ina motor-car along an army front, with glimpses of units of soldiers, and you have seen little of a modern army. Here, moving down thelanes that separated these grey fighters, one could compass thewhole!

Four gold letters, spelling the word Lion, awakened the imagination tothe actual fact of the Bluecher turning her bottom skyward before shesank off the Dogger Bank under the fire of the guns of the Lion andthe Tiger astern of her, and the Princess Royal and the New Zealand, of the latest fashion in battle-cruiser squadrons which are known asthe "cat" squadron. This work brought them into their own; provedhow the British, who built the first Dreadnought, have kept a littleahead of their rivals in construction. With almost the gun-power ofDreadnoughts, better than three to two against the best battleships, with the speed of cruisers and capable of overpowering cruisers, or ofpursuing any battleship, or getting out of range, they can run or strike, as they please. 

Ascend that gangway, so amazingly clean, as were the decks aboveand below and everything about the Lion or the Tiger, and you wereon board one of the few major ships which had been under heavyfire. Her officers and men knew what modern naval war was like; herguns knew the difference between the wall of cloth of a towed targetand an enemy's wall of armour. 

In the battle of Tsushima Straits, Russian and Japanese ships hadfought at three and four thousand yards and closed into much shorterrange. Since then, we had had the new method of marksmanship. Tsushima ceased to be a criterion. The Dogger Bank multiplied therange by five. A hundred years since England, all the while the mostpowerfully armed nation at sea, had been in a naval war of the firstmagnitude; and to the Lion and the Tiger had come the test. TheGermans said that they had sunk the Tiger; but the Tiger afloatpurred a contented denial. 

You could not fail to identify among the group of officers on thequarter-deck Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty, for his victory hadimpressed his features on the public's eye. Had his portrait notappeared in the press, one would have been inclined to say that afirst lieutenant had put on a vice-admiral's coat by mistake. He wasabout the age of the first lieutenant of one of our battleships. Even asit was, one was inclined to exclaim: "There is some mistake! You aretoo young!" The Who is Who book says that he is all of forty-fouryears old and it must be right, though it disagrees with hisappearance by five years. 

A vice-admiral at forty-four! A man who is a rear-admiral with us atfifty-five is very precocious. And all the men around him were young. The British navy did not wait for war to teach again the lesson of"youth for action!" They saved time by putting youth in charge atonce. 

Their simple uniforms, the directness, alertness, and definiteness ofthese officers who had been with a fleet ready for a year to go intobattle on a minute's notice, was in keeping with their surroundings ofdecks cleared for action and the absence of anything which did notsuggest that hitting a target was the business of their life. 

"I had heard that you took your admirals from the schoolroom, " saidone of the Frenchmen, "but I begin to believe that it is the nursery. "

Night and day they must be on watch. No easy chairs; their shop istheir home. They must have the vitality that endures a strain. Oneerror in battle by any one of them might wreck the British Empire. 

It is difficult to write about any man-of-war and not be technical; foreverything about her seems technical and mechanical except the factthat she floats. Her officers and crew are engaged in work which islegerdemain to the civilian. 

"Was it like what you thought it would be after all your training for anaval action?" one asked. 

"Yes, quite; pretty much as we reasoned it out, " was the reply. "Indeed, this was the most remarkable thing. It was battle practice--with the other fellow shooting at you!"

The fire-control officers, who were aloft, all agreed about oneunexpected sensation, which had not occurred to any expertscientifically predicting what action would be like. They are the onlyones who may really "see" the battle in the full sense. 

"When the shells burst against the armour, " said one of theseofficers, "the fragments were visible as they flew about. We had adesire, in the midst of preoccupation with our work, to reach out andcatch them. Singular mental phenomenon, wasn't it?"

At eight or nine thousand yards one knew that the modern battleshipcould tear a target to pieces. But eighteen thousand--was accuracypossible at that distance?

"Did one in five German shells hit at that range?" I asked. 

"No!"

Or in ten? No! In twenty? Still no, though less decisively. You got aconviction, then, that the day of holding your fire until you were closein enough for a large percentage of hits was past. Accuracy was stillvital and decisive, but generic accuracy. At eighteen thousand yardsall the factors which send a thousand or fifteen hundred or twothousand pounds of steel that long distance cannot be so gaugedthat each one will strike in exactly the same line when ten issue fromthe gun-muzzles in a broadside. But if one out of twenty is on ateighteen thousand yards, it may mean a turret out of action. Again, four or five might hit, or none. So, no risk of waiting may be taken, inface of the danger of a chance shot at long range. It was a chanceshot which struck the Lion's feed tank and disabled her and kept thecat squadron from doing to the other German cruisers what they haddone to the Bluecher. 

"And the noise of it to you aloft, spotting the shots?" I suggested. "Itmust have been a lonely place in such a tornado. "

"Yes. Besides the crashing blasts from our own guns we had thescreams of the shells that went over and the cataracts of water fromthose short sprinkling the ship with spray. But this was what oneexpected. Everything was what one expected, except that desire tocatch the fragments. Naturally, one was too busy to think much ofanything except the enemy's ships--to learn where your shells werestriking. "

"You could tell?"

"Yes--just as well and better than at target practice; for the target waslarger and solid. It was enthralling, this watching the flight of ourshells toward their target. " Where were the scars from the wounds?One looked for them on both the Lion and the Tiger. An armour patchon the sloping top of a turret might have escaped attention if it had notbeen pointed out. A shell struck there and a fair blow, too. And whathappened inside? Was the turret gear put out of order?

To one who has lived in a wardroom a score of questions were on thetongue's end. The turret is the basket which holds the precious eggs. A turret out of action means two guns out of action; a broken knucklefor the pugilist. 

Constructors have racked their brains over the subject of turrets inthe old contest between gun-power and protection. Too much gun-power, too little armour! Too much armour, too little gun-power!Finally, results depend on how good is your armour, how sound yourmachinery which rotates the turret. That shell did not go throughbodily, only a fragment, which killed one man and wounded another. The turret would still rotate; the other gun kept in action and the oneunder the shell-burst was soon back in action. Very satisfactory to thenaval constructors. 

Up and down the all but perpendicular steel ladders with their narrowsteps, and through the winding passages below decks in those citiesof steel, one followed his guide, receiving so much information and somany impressions that he was confused as to details between thetwo veterans, the Lion, which was hit fifteen times, and the Tiger, which was hit eight. Wherever you went every square inch of spaceand every bit of equipment seemed to serve some purpose. 

A beautiful hit, indeed, was that into a small hooded aperture wherean observer looked out from a turret. He was killed and another mantook his place. Fresh armour and no sign of where the shot hadstruck. Then below, into a compartment between the side of the shipand the armoured barbette which protects the delicate machinery forfeeding shells and powder from the magazine deep below the waterto the guns. 

"H----was killed here. Impact of the shell passing through the outerplates burst it inside; and, of course, the fragments struck harmlesslyagainst the barbette. "

"Bang in the dug-out!" one exclaimed, from army habit. 

"Precisely! No harm done next door. "

Trench traverses and "funk-pit shelters" for localizing the effects ofshell-bursts are the terrestrial expression of marine construction. Noone shell happened to get many men either on the Lion or the Tiger. But the effect of the burst was felt in the passages, for the air-pressure is bound to be pronounced in enclosed spaces which allowof little room for expansion of the gases. 

Then up more ladders out of the electric light into the daylight, hugging a wall of armour whose thickness was revealed in the cutmade for the small doorway which you were bidden to enter. Now youwere in one of the brain-centres of the ship, where the action isdirected. Through slits in that massive shelter of the hardest steel onehad a narrow view. Above them on the white wall were silhouetteddiagrams of the different types of German ships, which one found inall observing stations. They were the most popular form of muraldecoration in the British navy. 

Underneath the slits was a literal panoply of the brass fittings ofspeaking-tubes and levers and push-buttons, which would havepuzzled even the "Hello, Central" girl. To look at them revealednothing more than the eye saw; nothing more than the face of awatch reveals of the character of its works. There was no telling howthey ran in duplicate below the water line or under the protection ofarmour to the guns and the engines. 

"We got one in here, too. It was a good one!" said the host. 

"Junk, of course, " was how he expressed the result. Here, too, a manstepped forward to take the place of the man who was killed, just asthe first lieutenant takes the place of a captain of infantry who falls. With the whole telephone apparatus blown off the wall, as it were, how did he communicate?

"There!" The host pointed toward an opening at his feet. If that failedthere was still another way. In the final alternative, each turret couldgo on firing by itself. So the Germans must have done on the Bluecherand on the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst in their last ghastlymoments of bloody chaos. 

"If this is carried away and then that is, why, then, we have------" asone had often heard officers say on board our own ships. But thatwas hypothesis. Here was demonstration, which made a glimpse ofthe Lion and the Tiger so interesting. The Lion had had a narrowescape from going down after being hit in the feed tank; but once indry dock, all her damaged parts had been renewed. Particularly itrequired imagination to realize that this tower had ever been struck;visually more convincing was a plate elsewhere which had been leftunpainted, showing a spatter of dents from shell-fragments. 

"We thought that we ought to have something to prove that we hadbeen in battle, " said the host. "I think I've shown all the hits. Therewere not many. "

Having seen the results of German gun-fire, we were next to see themethods of British gun-fire; something of the guns and the men whodid things to the Germans. I stooped under the overhang of the turretarmour from the barbette and climbed up through an opening whichallowed no spare room for the generously built, and out of the dimlight appeared the glint of the massive steel breech block and gun, set in its heavy recoil mountings with roots of steel supports sunk intothe very structure of the ship. It was like other guns of the latestimproved type; but it had been in action, and you kept thinking of thisfact which gave it a sort of majestic prestige. You wished that it mightlook a little different from the others, as the right of a veteran. 

As the plugman swung the breech open I had in mind a giantplugman on the U. S. S. Connecticut whom I used to watch at drillsand target practice. Shall I ever forget the flash in his eye if therewere a fraction of a second's delay in the firing after the breech hadgone home! The way in which he made that enormous block obey histouch in oily obsequiousness suggested the apotheosis of the wholebusiness of naval war. I don't know whether the plugman of H. M. S. Lion or the plugman of the U. S. S. Connecticut was the better. It wouldtake a superman to improve on either. 

Like the block, it seemed as if the man knew only the movements ofthe drill; as if he had been bred and his muscles formed for that. Youcould conceive of him as playing diavolo with that breech. Hebelonged to the finest part of all the machinery, the human element, which made the parts of a steel machine play together in a beautifulharmony. 

The plugman's is the most showy part; others playing equallyimportant parts are in the cavern below the turret; and most importantof all is that of the man who keeps the gun on the target, whose trueright eye may send twenty-five thousand tons of battleship toperdition. No one eye of any enlisted man can be as important as thegun-layer's. His the eye and the nerve trained as finely as theplugman's muscles. He does nothing else, thinks of nothing else. Incommon with painters and poets, gun-layers are born with a gift, andthat gift is trained and trained and trained. It seems simple to keepright on, but it is not. Try twenty men in the most rudimentary test andyou will find that it is not; then think of the nerve it takes to keepright on in battle, with your ship shaken by the enemy's hit. 

How long had the plugman been on his job? Six years. And the gun-layer? Seven. Twelve years is the term of enlistment in the Britishnavy. Not too fast but thoroughly is the British way. The idea is tomake a plugman or a gun-layer the same kind of expert as a masterartisan in any other walk of life, by long service and selection. 

None of all the men serving these guns from the depths to the turretsaw anything of the battle, except the gun-layer. It was easier forthem than for him to be letter-perfect in the test, as he had to guardagainst the exhilaration of having an enemy's ship instead of a clothtarget under his eye. Super-drilled he was to that eventuality; super-drilled all the others through the years, till each one knew his part aswell as one knows how to turn the key of a drawer in his desk. Usedto the shock of the discharges of their own guns at battle practice, many of the crew did not even know that their ship was hit, sopreoccupied was each with his own duty and the need of going onwith it until an order or a shell's havoc stopped him. Every mind wasclosed except to the thing which had been so established by drill inhis nature that he did it instinctively. 

A few minutes later one was looking down from the upper bridge onthe top of this turret and the black-lined planking of the deck eighty-five feet below, with the sweep of the firm lines of the sidesconverging toward the bow on the background of the water. Suddenlythe ship seemed to have grown large, impressive; her structure had arocklike solidity. Her beauty was in her unadorned strength. One wasabsorbing the majesty of a city from a cathedral tower after havingbeen it its thoroughfares and seen the detail of its throbbing industry. 

Beyond the Lion's bow were more ships, and port and starboard andaft were still more ships. The compass range filled the eye with thestately precision of the many squadrons and divisions of leviathans. One could see all the fleet. This seemed to be the scenic climax; butit was not, as we were to learn later when we should see the fleet goto sea. Then we were to behold the mountains on the march. 

You glanced back at the deck and around the bridge with a sort ofrelief. The infinite was making you dizzy. You wanted to be in touchwith the finite again. But it is the writer, not the practical, hardenedseaman, who is affected in this way. To the seaman, here was abattle-cruiser with her sister battle-cruisers astern, and there aroundher were Dreadnoughts of different types and pre-Dreadnoughts andcruisers and all manner of other craft which could fight each in itsway, each representing so much speed and so much metal whichcould be thrown a certain distance. 

"Homogeneity!" Another favourite word, I remember, from our ownwardrooms. Here it was applied in the large. No experimental shipsthere, no freak variations of type, but each successive type as a unitof action. Homogeneous, yes--remorselessly homogeneous. TheBritish do not simply build some ships; they build a navy. And ofcourse the experts are not satisfied with it; if they were, the Britishnavy would be in a bad way. But a layman was; he was overwhelmed. 

From this bridge of the Lion on the morning of the 24th of January, 1915, Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty saw appear on the horizon asight inexpressibly welcome to any commander who has scoured theseas in the hope that the enemy will come out in the open and givebattle. Once that German battle-cruiser squadron had slipped acrossthe North Sea and, under cover of the mist which has ever been thefriend of the pirate, bombarded the women and children ofScarborough and the Hartle-pools with shells meant to be fired athardened adult males sheltered behind armour; and then, thanks tothe mist, they had slipped back to Heligoland with cheering news tothe women and children of Germany. This time when they came outthey encountered a British battle-cruiser squadron of superior speedand power, and they had to fight as they ran for home. 

Now, the place of an admiral is in his conning tower after he hasmade his deployments and the firing has begun. He, too, is a part ofthe machine; his position defined, no less than the plugman's and thegun-layer's. Sir David watched the ranging shots which fell short atfirst, until finally they were on, and the Germans were beginning toreply. When his staff warned him that he ought to go below, he putthem off with a preoccupied shake of his head. He could not resist thetemptation to remain where he was, instead of being shut up lookingthrough the slits of a visor. 

But an admiral is as vulnerable to shell-fragments as a midshipman, and the staff did its duty, which had been thought out beforehand likeeverything else. The argument was on their side; the commanderreally had none on his. It was then that Vice-Admiral Beatty sent SirDavid Beatty to the conning tower, much to the personal disgust ofSir David, who envied the observing officers aloft their free sweep ofvision. 

Youth in Sir David's case meant suppleness of limb as well as youth'sspirit and dash. When the Lion was disabled by the shot in her feedtank and had to fall out of line, Sir David must transfer his flag. Hesignalled for his destroyer, the Attack. When she came alongside hedid not wait for a ladder, but jumped on board her from the deck ofthe Lion. An aged vice-admiral with chalky bones might have brokensome of them, or at least received a shock to his presence of mind. 

Before he left the Lion Sir David had been the first to see theperiscope of a German submarine in the distance, which sighted thewounded ship as inviting prey. Officers of the Lion dwelt more on thecruise home than on the battle. It was a case of being towed at fiveknots an hour by the Indomitable. If ever submarines had a fairchance to show what they could do it was then against that battleshipat a snail's pace. But it is one thing to torpedo a merchant craft andanother to get a major fighting ship, bristling with torpedo defenceguns and surrounded by destroyers. The Lion reached port withoutfurther injury. 

XXIXOn The "Inflexible"

What Englishman, let alone an American, knows the names of evenall the British Dreadnoughts? With a few exceptions, the units of theGrand Fleet seem anonymous. The Warspite was quite unknown tothe fame which her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth had won. For"Lizzie" was back in the fold from the Dardanelles; and so was theInflexible, heroine of the battle of the Falkland Islands. Of all the shipswhich Sir John Jellicoe had sent away on special missions, theInflexible had had the grandest Odyssey. She, too, had been at theDardanelles. 

The Queen Elizabeth was disappointing so far as wounds went. Shehad been so much in the public eye that one expected to find herbadly battered, and she had suffered little, indeed, for the amount ofsport she had had in tossing her fifteen-inch shells across the Gallipolipeninsula into the Turkish batteries and the amount of risk she hadrun from Turkish mines. Some of these monsters contained onlyeleven thousand shrapnel bullets. A strange business for a fifteen-inch naval gun to be firing shrapnel. A year ago no one could haveimagined that one day the most powerful British ship, built with thesingle thought of overwhelming an enemy's Dreadnought, would everbe trying to force the Dardanelles. 

The trouble was that she could not fire an army corps ashore alongwith her shells to take possession of the land after she had putbatteries out of action. She had some grand target practice; sheescaped the mines; she kept out of reach of the German shells, andreturned to report to Sir John with just enough scars to give zest tothe recollection of her extraordinary adventure. All the fleet wasrelieved to see her back in her proper place. It is not the business ofsuper-Dreadnoughts to be steaming around mine-fields, but to besurrounded by destroyers and light cruisers and submarinessafeguarding her giant guns, which are depressed and elevated aseasily as if they were drum-sticks. One had an abrasion, a tracery ofdents. 

"That was from a Turkish shell, " said an officer. "And you are standingwhere a shell hit. "

I looked down to see an irregular outline of fresh planking. 

"An accident when we did not happen to be out of their reach. Wehad the range of them, " he added. 

"The range of them" is a great phrase. Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdeeused it in speaking of the battle of the Falkland Islands. "The range ofthem" seems a sure prescription for victory. Nothing in all the historyof the war appeals to me as quite so smooth a bit of tactics as theFalkland affair. It was so smooth that it was velvety; and it is worthtelling again, as I understand it. Sir Frederick is another youngadmiral. Otherwise, how could the British navy have entrusted himwith so important a task? He is a different type from Beatty, who in anarmy one judges might have been in the cavalry. Along with thepeculiar charm and alertness which we associate with sailors--theyimbibe it from the salt air and from meeting all kinds of weather andall kinds of men, I think--he has the quality of the scholar, with asuspicion of merriness in his eye. 

He was Chief of the War Staff at the Admiralty in the early stages ofthe war, which means, I take it, that he assisted in planning themoves on the chessboard. It fell to him to act; to apply the strategyand tactics which he planned for others at sea while he sat at a desk. It was his wit against von Spee's, who was not deficient in thisrespect. If he had been he might not have steamed into the trap. Thetrouble was that von Spee had some wit, but not enough. It wouldhave been better for him if he had been as guileless as a parson. 

Sir Frederick is so gentle-mannered that one would never suspecthim of a "double bluff, " which was what he played on von Spee. Aftervon Spee's victory over Cradock, Sturdee slipped across to the SouthAtlantic, without anyone knowing that he had gone, with a squadronstrong enough to do unto von Spee what von Spee had done untoCradock. 

But before you wing your bird you must flush him. The thing was tofind von Spee and force him to give battle; for the South Atlantic isbroad and von Spee, it is supposed, was in an Emden mood andbent on reaching harbour in German South-West Africa, whence hecould sally out to destroy British shipping on the Cape route. Whenhe intercepted a British wireless message--Sturdee had left off thesender's name and location--telling the plodding old Canopus seekinghome or assistance before von Spee overtook her, that she would beperfectly safe in the harbour at Port William, as guns had beenerected for her protection, von Spee guessed that this was a bluff, and rightly. But it was only Bluff Number One. He steamed to theFalklands with a view to finishing off the old Canopus on the wayacross to Africa. There he fell foul of Bluff Number Two. Sturdee didnot have to seek him; he came to Sturdee. 

There was no convenient Dogger Bank fog in that latitude to coverhis flight. Sturdee had the speed of von Spee and he had to fight. Itwas the one bit of strategy of the war which is like that of the storybooks and worked out as strategy always does in proper story books. Practically the twelve-inch guns of the Inflexible and the Invinciblehad only to keep their distance and hang on to the Scharnhorst andthe Gneisenau in order to do the trick. Light-weights or middle-weights have no business trafficking with heavy-weights in navalwarfare. 

"Von Spee made a brave fight, " said Sir Frederick, "but we kept himat a distance that suited us, without letting him get out of range. "

He had had the fortune to prove an established principle in action. Itwas all in the course of duty, which is the way that all the officers andall the men look at their work. Only a few ships have had a chance tofight, and these are emblazoned on the public memory. But they didno better and no worse, probably, than the others would have done. Ifthe public singles out ships, the navy does not. Whatever is done andwhoever does it, why, it is to the credit of the family, according to thespirit of service that promotes uniformity of efficiency. Leaders andships which have won renown are resolved into the whole in thatharbour where the fleet is the thing; and the good opinion they mostdesire is that of their fellows. If they have that they will earn thepublic's when the test comes. 

Belonging to the class of the first of battle-cruisers is the Inflexible, which received a few taps in the Falklands and a blow that was nearlythe death of her in the Dardanelles. Tribute enough for its courage--the tribute of a chivalrous enemy--von Spee's squadron receivesfrom the officers and men of the Inflexible, who saw them go downinto the sea tinged with sunset red with their colours still flying. Thenin the sunset red the British saved as many of those afloat as theycould. 

Those dripping German officers who had seen one of their batteredturrets carried away bodily into the sea by a British twelve-inch shell, who had endured a fury of concussions and destruction, with steelmissiles cracking steel structures into fragments, came on board theInflexible looking for signs of some blows delivered in return for thecrushing blows that had beaten their ships into the sea and saw noneuntil they were invited into the wardroom, which was in chaos--andthen they smiled. 

At least, they had sent one shell home. The sight was sweet to them, so sweet that, in respect to the feeling of the vanquished, the victorsheld silence with a knightly consideration. But where had the shellentered? There was no sign of any hole. Then they learned that thefire of the guns of the starboard turret midships over the wardroom, which was on the port side, had deposited a great many things on thefloor which did not belong there; and their expression changed. Eventhis comfort was taken from them. 

"We had the range of you!" the British explained. The chaplain of theInflexible was bound to have an anecdote. I don't know why, exceptthat a chaplain's is not a fighting part and he may look on. His placewas down behind the armour with the doctor, waiting for wounded. Hestood in his particular steel cave listening to the tremendous blasts ofher guns which shook the Inflexible's frame, and still no woundedarrived. Then he ran up a ladder to the deck and had a look aroundand saw the little points of the German ships with the shells sweepingtoward them and the smoke of explosions which burst on board them. It was not the British who needed his prayers that day, but theGermans. Personally, I think the Germans are more in need ofprayers at all times because of the damnable way they act. 

Perhaps the spirit of the Inflexible's story was best given by amidshipman with the down still on his cheek. Considering how youngthe British take their officer-beginners to sea, the admirals are notyoung, at least, in point of sea service. He got more out of the actionthan his elders; his impressions of the long cruises and the actionshad the vividness of boyhood. Down in one of the caves, doing hispart as the shells were sent up to feed the thundering guns above, the whispered news of the progress of battle was passed on atintervals till, finally, the guns were silent. Then he hurried on deck inthe elation of victory, succeeded by the desire to save those whomthey had fought. It had all been so simple; so like drill. You had only togo on shooting--that was all. 

Yes, he had been lucky. From the Falklands to the Dardanelles, which was a more picturesque business than the battle. Any minuteoff the Straits you did not know but a submarine would have a try atyou or you might bump into a mine. And the Inflexible did bump intoone. She had two thousand tons of water on board. It was fast workto keep the remainder of the sea from coming in, too, and the samekind of dramatic experience as the Lion's in reaching port. Yes, hehad been very lucky. It was all a lark to that boy. 

"It never occurs to midshipmen to be afraid of anything, " said one ofthe officers. "The more danger, the better they like it. "

In the wardroom was a piece of the mine or the torpedo, whichever itwas, that struck the Inflexible; a strange, twisted, annealed bit ofmetal. Every ship which had been in action had some souvenir whichthe enemy had sent on board in anger and which was preserved witha collector's enthusiasm. 

The Inflexible seemed as good as ever she was. Such is the way ofnaval warfare. Either it is to the bottom of the sea or to dry docks andrepairs. There is nothing half-way. So it is well to take care that youhave "the range of them. "

XXXOn The Fleet Flagship

Thus far we have skirted around the heart of things, which in a fleet isalways the Commander-in-Chief's flagship. Our handy, agiledestroyer ran alongside a battleship with as much nonchalance asshe would go alongside a pier. I should not have been surprised tosee her pirouette over the hills or take to flying. 

There was a time when those majestic and pampered ladies, thebattleships--particularly if there were a sea running as in this harbourat the time--having in mind the pride of paint, begged all destroyers tokeep off with the superciliousness of grandes dames holding theirskirts aloof from contact with nimble, audacious street gamins, whododged in and out of the traffic of muddy streets. But destroyers havelearned better manners, perhaps, and battleships have beendemocratized. It is the day of Russian dancers and when aeroplanesloop the loop, and we have grown used to all kinds of marvels. 

But the sea has refused to be trained. It is the same old sea that itwas in Columbus' time, without any loss of trickiness in bumpingsmall craft against towering sides. The way that this destroyer slid upto the flagship without any fuss and the way her bluejackets held heroff from the paint, as she rose on the crests and slipped back into thetrough, did not tell the whole story. A part of it was how, at the rightinterval, they assisted the landlubber to step from gunwale togangway, making him feel perfectly safe when he would have beenperfectly helpless but for them. 

I had often watched our own bluejackets at the same thing. They didnot grin--not when you were looking at them. Nor did the British. Bluejackets are noted for their official politeness. I should like to haveheard their remarks--they have a gift for remarks--about thoseinvaders of their uniformed world in Scottish caps and other kinds ofcaps and the different kinds of clothes which tailors make for civilians. Without any intention of eavesdropping, I did overhear one askinganother whence came these strange birds. 

You knew the flagship by the admirals' barges astern, as you knowthe location of an army headquarters by its motor-cars. It seemed inthe centre of the fleet at anchor, if that is a nautical expression. Where its place would be in action is one of those secrets asimportant to the enemy as the location of a general's shell-proofshelter in Flanders. Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe may be on some othership in battle. If there is any one foolish question which you should notask it is this. 

As you mounted the gangway of this mighty super-Dreadnought youwere bound to think--at least, an American was--of another flagship inPortsmouth harbour, Nelson's Victory. Probably an Englishman wouldnot indulge in such a commonplace. I would like to know how manyEnglishmen had ever seen the old Victory. But then, how manyAmericans have been to Mount Vernon and Gettysburg?

It was a hundred years, one repeats, since the British had fought afirst-class naval war. Nelson did his part so well that he did not leaveany fighting to be done by his successors. Maintaining herself asmistress of the seas by the threat of superior strength--except in thelate 'fifties, when the French innovation of iron ships gave France atemporary lead on paper--ship after ship, through all the grades ofprogress in naval construction, has gone to the scrap heap withoutfiring a shot in anger. The Victory was one landmark, or seamark, ifyou please, and this flagship was another. Between the two weregenerations of officers and men, working through the change fromstagecoach to motors and aeroplanes and seaplanes, who had keptup to a standard of efficiency in view of a test that never came. A yearof war and still the test had not come, for the old reason that Englandhad superior strength. Her outnumbering guns which had kept thepeace of the seas still kept it. All second nature to the Englishmanthis, as the defence of the immense distances of the steppes to theRussian or the Rocky Mountain wall and the Mississippi's flow to theman in Kansas. But the American kept thinking about it; and hewanted the Kansans to think about it, too. When he was about tomeet Sir John Jellicoe he envisaged the tall column in TrafalgarSquare, surmounted by the one-armed figure turned toward thewireless skein on top of the Admiralty building. 

I first heard of Jellicoe fifteen years ago when he was Chief of Staff toSir Edward Seymour, then Commander-in-Chief of the AsiaticSquadron. Indeed, you were always hearing about Jellicoe in thosedays on the China coast. He was the kind of man whom people talkabout after they have met him, which means personality. It was inChina seas, you may remember, that when a few British seamenwere hard pressed in a fight that was not ours the phrase, "Blood isthicker than water, " sprang from the lips of an American commander, who waited not on international etiquette but went to the assistance ofthe British. 

Nor will anyone who was present in the summer of '98 forget how SirEdward Chichester stood loyally by Admiral George Dewey, when theGerman squadron was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay, until our Atlantic fleet had won the battle of Santiago and AdmiralDewey had received reinforcements and, east and west, we wereable to look after the Germans. The British bluejackets said that therations of frozen mutton from Australia which we sent alongside wereexcellent; but the Germans were in no position to judge, doubtlessthrough an oversight in the detail of hospitality by one of AdmiralDewey's staff. Let us be officially correct and say there was no muttonto spare after the British had been supplied. 

In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to relieve thelegations against some hundreds of thousands of Boxers, CaptainBowman McCalla and his Americans worked with Admiral Seymourand his Britons in the most trying and picturesque adventure of itskind in modern history. McCalla, too, was always talking of Jellicoe, who was wounded on the expedition; and Sir John's face lighted atmention of McCalla's name. He recalled how McCalla had paintedon the superstructure of the little Newark that saying of Farragut's, "The best protection against an enemy's fire is a well-directed fireof your own"; which has been said in other ways and cannot besaid too often. 

"We called McCalla Mr. Lead, " said Sir John; "he had been woundedso many times and yet was able to hobble along and keep onfighting. We corresponded regularly until his death. "

Beatty, too, was on that expedition; and he, too, was anotherpersonality one kept hearing about. It seemed odd that two men whohad played a part in work which was a soldier's far from home shouldhave become so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when, with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedition had givenup hope of ever returning alive, they had not accidentally come uponthe Shi-kou arsenal, one would not be commanding the Grand Fleetand the other its battle-cruiser squadron. 

Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty Lords and others who hadthe decision to make were discussing who should command in caseof war, opinion ran something like this: "Jellicoe! He has the brains. ""Jellicoe! He has the health to endure the strain, with years enoughand not too many. " "Jellicoe! He has the confidence of the service. "The choice literally made itself. When anyone is undertaking thegravest responsibility which has been an Englishman's for a hundredyears, this kind of a recommendation helps. He had the guns; he hadsupreme command; he must deliver victory--such was England'smessage to him. 

When I mentioned in a dispatch that all that differentiated him fromthe officers around him was the broader band of gold lace on his arm, an English naval critic wanted to know if I expected to find him in clothof gold. No; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I saw himappear on the screen at a theatre in London. 

Any general of high command must be surrounded by more pompthan an admiral in time of action. A headquarters cannot have thesimplicity of the quarter-deck. The force which the general commandsis not in sight; the admiral's is. You saw the commander and you sawwhat it was that he commanded. Within the sweep of vision from thequarter-deck was the terrific power which the man with the broad goldband on his arm directed. At a signal from him it would move or itwould stand still. That command of Joshua's if given by Sir John onethought might have been obeyed. 

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred twelve-inchguns and larger, which could carry two hundred tons of metal in asingle broadside for a distance of eighteen thousand yards! But donot forget the little guns, bristling under the big guns like needles froma cushion, which would keep off the torpedo assassins; or the lightcruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the 2, 300 trawlers andmine-layers, and what not, all under his direction. He hadsubmarines, too, double the number of the German. But with all theGerman men-of-war in harbour, they had no targets. Where werethey? You did not ask questions which would not be answered. Thewhole British fleet was waiting for the Germans to show their heads, while cruisers were abroad scouting in the North Sea. 

At the outset of the war the German fleet might have had one chancein ten of getting a turn of fortune in its favour by an unexpected strokeof strategy. This was the danger against which Jellicoe had to guard. For in one sense, the Germans had the tactical offensive by sea aswell as by land; theirs the outward thrust from the centre. They couldchoose when to come out of their harbour; when to strike. The Britishhad to keep watch all the time and be ready whenever the enemyshould come. 

Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early part of the war, cruising here and there, begging for battle. Then it was that it learnedhow to avoid submarines and mine-fields. Submarines had played agreater part than expected, because Germany had chosen a guerrillanaval warfare: to harass, to wound, to wear down. Doubtless shehoped to reduce the number of British fighting units by attrition. 

Weak England might be in plants for making arms for an army, butnot in ship-building. Here was her true genius. She was a maritimepower; Germany a land power. Her part as an ally of France andRussia being to command the sea, all demands of the Admiralty formaterial must take precedence over demands of the War Office. Atthe end of the first year she had increased her fighting power by seato a still higher ratio of preponderance over the Germans; in anotheryear she would increase it further. 

Admiral von Tirpitz wanted nothing so much as to draw the Britishfleet under the guns of Heligoland or into a mine-field and submarinetrap. But Sir John Jellicoe refused the bait. When he had completedhis precautions and his organization to meet new conditions, his fleetneed not go into the open. His Dreadnoughts could rest at anchor ata base, while his scouts kept in touch with all that was passing, andhis auxiliaries and destroyers fought the submarines. Without a BritishDreadnought having fired a shot at a German Dreadnought, nowhereon the face of the seas might a single vessel show the German flagexcept by thrusting it above the water for a few minutes. 

If von Tirpitz sent his fleet out he, too, might find himself in a trap ofmines and submarines. He was losing submarines and England wasbuilding more. His naval force rather than Sir John's was sufferingfrom attrition. The blockade was complete from Iceland to the NorthSea. While the world knew of the work of the armies, the care thatthis task required, the hardships endured, the enormous expenditureof energy, were all hidden behind that veil of secrecy which obviouslymust be more closely drawn over naval than over army operations. 

From the flagship the campaign was directed. One would think thatmany offices and many clerks would be required. But the offices andthe clerks were at the Admiralty. Here was the execution. In a roomperhaps four feet by six was the wireless focus which received allreports and sent all orders, with trim bluejackets at the keys. "Go!"and "Come!" the messages were saying; they wasted no words. Officers of the staff did their work in narrow space, yet seemed tohave plenty of room. Red tape is inflammable. There is no more placefor it on board a flagship prepared for action than for unnecessarywoodwork. 

At every turn compression and concentration of power were like theguns and the decks, cleared for action, significant in directness ofpurpose. The system was planetary in its impressive simplicity, themore striking as nothing that man has ever made is morecomplicated or includes more kinds of machinery than a battleship. One battleship was one unit, one chessman on the naval board. 

Not all famous leaders are likeable, as every world traveller knows. They all have the magnetism of force, which is quite another thingfrom the magnetism of charm. What the public demands is that theyshall win victories, whether personally likeable or not. But if they arelikeable and simple and human and a sailor besides--well, we knowwhat that means. 

Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe is not a great man. It is not for a civilianeven to presume to judge. We have the word of those who ought toknow, however, that he is. I hope that he is, because I like to thinkthat great commanders need not necessarily appear formidable. Nelson refused to be cast for the heavy part, and so did Farragut. Itmay be a sailor characteristic. I predict that after this war is over, whatever honours or titles they may bestow upon him, the English aregoing to like Sir John Jellicoe not alone for his service to the nation, but for himself. 

Admiral Jellicoe is one with Captain Jellicoe, whose cheeriness evenwhen wounded kept up the spirits of the others on the reliefexpedition of Boxer days. "He could do it, too!" one thought, having inmind Sir David Beatty's leap to the deck of a destroyer. Spare, ofmedium height, ruddy, and fifty-seven--so much for the healthqualification which the Admiralty Lords dwelt upon as important. Afterhe had been at sea for a year he seemed a human machine, much ofthe type of the destroyer as a steel machine--a thirty-knot humanmachine, capable of three hundred or five hundred revolutions, engines running smoothly, with no waste energy, slipping over thewaves and cutting through them; a quick man, quick of movement, quick of comprehension and observation, of speech and of thought, with a delightful self-possession--for there are many kinds--which isinstantly responsive with decision. 

A telescope under his arm, too, as he received his guests. You likedthat. He keeps watch over the fleet himself when he is on the quarter-deck. You had a feeling that nothing could happen in all his range ofvision, stretching down the "avenues of Dreadnoughts" to the light-cruiser squadron, and escape his attention. It hardly seems possiblethat he was ever bored. Everything around interests him. Energy hehas, electric energy in this electric age, this man chosen to commandthe greatest war product of modern energy. 

Fastened to the superstructure near the ladder to his quarters was anew broom which South Africa had sent him. He was highly pleasedwith the present; only the broom was Tromp's emblem, while Blake'shad been the whip. Possibly the South African Dutchmen, nowfighting on England's side, knew that he already had the whip andthey wanted him to have the Dutch broom, too. 

He had been using both, and many other devices in his campaignagainst von Tirpitz's "unter See" boats, as was illustrated by one ofthe maps hung in his cabin. Quite different this from maps in ageneral's headquarters, with the front trenches and support andreserve trenches and the gun-positions marked in vari-colouredpencillings. Instantly a submarine was sighted anywhere, Sir Johnhad word of it, and a dot went down on the spot where it had beenseen. In places the sea looked like a pepper-box cover. Dots wereplentiful outside the harbour where we were; but well outside, like fliesaround sugar which they could not reach. 

Seeing Sir John among his admirals and guests one had a glimpse ofthe life of a sort of mysterious, busy brotherhood. I was still searchingfor an admiral with white hair. If there were none among theseseniors, then all must be on shore. Spirit, I think, that is the word; thespirit of youth, of corps, of service, of the sea, of a ready, buoyantdefiniteness--yes, spirit was the word to characterize these leaders. Sir John moved from one to another in his quick way, asking aquestion, listening, giving a direction, his face smiling and expressivewith a sort of infectious confidence. 

"He is the man!" said an admiral. I mean, several admirals andcaptains said so. They seemed to like to say it. Whenever heapproached one noted an eagerness, a tightening of nerves. Naturalleadership expresses itself in many ways; Sir John gave it a sailor'sattractiveness. But I learned that there was steel under his happysmile; and they liked him for that, too. Watch out when he is notsmiling, and sometimes when he is smiling, they say. 

For failure is never excused in the fleet, as more than onecommander knows. It is a luxury of consideration which the Britishnation cannot afford by sea in time of war. The scene which onewitnessed in the cabin of the Dreadnought flagship could not havebeen unlike that of Nelson and his young captains on the Victory, inthe animation of youth governed with one thought under the one rulethat you must make good. 

Splendid as the sight of the power which Sir John directed from hisquarter-deck while the ships lay still in their plotted moorings, it paledbeside that when the anchor chains began to rumble and, column bycolumn, they took on life slowly and, majestically gaining speed, oneafter another turned toward the harbour's entrance. 

XXXISimply Hard Work

Besides the simple word spirit, there is the simple word work. Takethe two together, mixing with them the proper quantity of intelligence, and you have something finer than Dreadnoughts; for it buildsDreadnoughts, or tunnels mountains, or wins victories. 

In no organization would it be so easy as in the navy to becomeslack. If the public sees a naval review it knows that its ships cansteam and keep their formations; if it goes on board it knows that theships are clean--at least, the limited part of them which it sees; and itknows that there are turrets and guns. 

But how does it know that the armour of the turrets is good, or thatthe guns will fire accurately? Indeed, all that it sees is the shell. Therest must be taken on trust. A navy may look all right and be quitebad. The nation gives a certain amount of money to build ships whichare taken in charge by officers and men who, shut off from publicobservation, may do about as they please. The result rests with theirindustry and responsibility. If they are true to the character of thenation by and large that is all the nation may expect; if they are better, then the nation has reason to be grateful. Englishmen take moreinterest in their navy than Americans in theirs. They give it the bestthat is in them and they expect the best from it in return. Everyyoungster who hopes to be an officer knows that the navy is no placefor idling; every man who enlists knows that he is in for no junket on apleasure yacht. The British navy, I judged, had a relatively largepercentage of the brains and application of England. 

"It is not so different from what it was for ten years preceding thewar, " said one of the officers. "We did all the work we could standthen; and whether cruising or lying in harbour, life is almost normal forus to-day. "

The British fleet was always on a war footing. It must be. Lackof naval preparedness is more dangerous than lack of landpreparedness. It is fatal. I know of officers who had had only a week'sleave in a year in time of peace; their pay is less than our officers'. Patriotism kept them up to the mark. 

And another thing: once a sailor, always a sailor, is an old saying; butit has a new application in modern navies. They become fascinatedwith the very drudgery of ship existence. They like their world, whichis their house and their shop. It has the attraction of a world ofpriestcraft, with them alone understanding the ritual. Their drill at theguns becomes the preparation for the great sport of target practice, which beats any big-game shooting when guns compete with guns, with battle practice greater sport than target practice. Bringing a shipinto harbour well, holding her to her place in the formation, roamingover the seas in a destroyer--all means eternal effort at the masteryof material, with the results positively demonstrated. 

On one of the Dreadnoughts I saw a gun's crew drilling with a dummysix-inch; weight, one hundred pounds. 

"Isn't that boy pretty young to handle that big shell?" an admiral askeda junior officer. 

"He doesn't think so, " the officer replied. "We haven't anyone whocould handle it better. It would break his heart if we changed hisposition. "

Not one of fifty German prisoners whom I had seen filing by over inFrance was as sturdy as this youngster. In the ranks of an infantrycompany of any army he would have been above the average ofphysique; but among the rest of the gun's crew he did appear slight. Need more be said about the physical standard of the crews of thefighting ships of the Grand Fleet?

You had an eye to more than guns and machinery and to more thanthe character of the officers. You wanted to get better acquainted withthe personnel of the men behind the guns. They formed patches ofblue on the decks, as one looked around the fleet, against thebackground of the dull, painted bulwarks of steel--the human elementwhose skill gave the ships life--deep-chested, vigorous men in theirprime, who had the air of men grounded in their work by longexperience. I noted when an order was given that it was obeyedquickly by one who knew what he had to do because he had done itthousands of times. 

There are all kinds of bluejackets, as there are all kinds of other men. Before the war some took more than was good for them when onshore; some took nothing stronger than tea; some enjoyed thesailor's privilege of growling; some had to be kept up to the marksharply; an occasional one might get rebellious against the mercilessrepetition of drills. 

The war imparted eagerness to all, the officers said. Infractions ofdiscipline ceased. Days pass without anyone of the crew of aDreadnought having to be called up as a defaulter, I am told. Andtheir health? At first thought, one would say that life in the steel cavesof a Dreadnought would mean pasty complexions and flabbymuscles. For a year the crews had been prisoners of that readinesswhich must not lose a minute in putting to sea if von Tirpitz shouldever try the desperate gamble of battle. 

After a turn in the trenches the soldiers can at least stretch their legsin billets. A certain number of a ship's company now and then get atramp on shore; not real leave, but a personally conducted outing notfar from the boats which will hurry them back to their stations onsignal. However, all that one needs to keep well is fresh air andexercise. The blowers carry fresh air to every part of the ship; thebreezes which sweep the deck from the North Sea are fresh enoughin summer and a little too fresh in winter. There is exercise in theregular drills, supplemented by setting-up exercises. The food is goodand no man drinks or eats what he ought not to, as he may on shore. So there is the fact and the reason for the fact: the health of the men, as well as their conduct, had never been so good. 

"Perhaps we are not quite so clean as we were before the war, " saidan officer. "We wash decks only twice a week instead of every day. This means that quarters are not so moist, and the men have morefreedom of movement. We want them to have as much freedom aspossible. "

Waiting, waiting, in such confinement for thirteen months; waiting forbattle! Think of the strain of it! The British temperament is wellfitted to undergo such a test, and particularly well fitted are thesesturdy seamen of mature years. An enemy may imagine themwearing down their efficiency on the leash. They want a fight; naturally, they want nothing quite so much. But they have the seaman'sphilosophy. Old von Tirpitz may come out and he may not. It is forhim to do the worrying. They sit tight. The men's ardour is not imposedupon. Care is taken that they should not be worked stale; for themarksman who puts a dozen shots through the bull's-eye had betternot keep on firing, lest he begin rimming it and get into bad habits. 

Where an army officer has a change when he leaves the trench forhis billet, there is none for the naval officer, who, unlike the armyofficer, is Spartan-bred to confinement. The army pays its daily toll ofcasualties; it lies cramped in dug-outs, not knowing what minuteextinction may come. The Grand Fleet has its usual comforts; it issafe from submarines in a quiet harbour. Many naval officers spokeof this contrast with deep feeling, as if fate were playing favourites, though I have never heard an army officer mention it. 

The army can give each day fresh proof of its courage in face of theenemy. Courage! It takes on a new meaning with the Grand Fleet. The individual element of gallantry merges into gallantry of the whole. You have the very communism of courage. The thought is to keep acool head and do your part as a cog in the vast machine. Courage isas much taken for granted as the breath of life. Thus, Cradock's menfought till they went down. It was according to the programme laid outfor each turret and each gun in a turret. 

Smith, of the army, leads a bomb-throwing party from traverse totraverse; Smith, of the navy, turns one lever at the right second. Armygunners are improving their practice day by day against the enemy;all the improving by navy gunners must be done before the battle. Nosieges in trenches; no attacks and counter-attacks: a decision withina few hours--perhaps within an hour. 

This partially explains the love of the navy for its work; its cheerfulrepetition of the drills which seem such a wearisome business to thecivilian. The men know the reason of their drudgery. It is an all-convincing bull's-eye reason. Ping-ping! One heard the familiar soundof sub-calibre practice, which seems as out of proportion in a fifteen-inch gun as a mouse-squeak from an elephant whom you expect totrumpet. As the result appears in sub-calibre practice, so it ispractically bound to appear in target practice; as it appears in targetpractice, so it is bound to appear in battle practice. It was on theflagship that I saw a device which Sir John referred to as the nextbest thing to having the Germans come out. He took as much delightin it as the gun-layers, who were firing at German Dreadnoughts ofthe first line, as large as your thumb, which were in front of a sort ofhooded arrangement with the guns of a British Dreadnought inside--the rest I censor myself before the regular censor sees it. 

When we heard a report like that of a small target rifle inside thearrangement a small red or a small white splash rose from themetallic platter of a sea. Thus the whole German navy has beenpounded to pieces again and again. It is a great game. The gun-layers never tire of it and they think they know the reason as well asanybody why von Tirpitz keeps his Dreadnoughts at home. 

But elsewhere I saw some real firing; for ships must have their regulartarget practice, war or no war. If those cruisers steaming across therange had been sending six or eight-inch shrapnel, we should havepreferred not to be so near that towed square of canvas. Flashesfrom turrets indistinguishable at a distance from the neutral-tonedbodies of the vessels and the shells struck, making great splashesjust beyond the target, which was where they ought to go. 

A familiar scene, but with a new meaning when the time is one of war. So far as my observation is worth anything, it was very goodshooting, indeed. One broadside would have put a destroyer out ofbusiness as easily as a "Jack Johnson" does for a dug-out; and itwould have made a cruiser of the same class as the one firing prettygroggy--this not from any experience of being on a light cruiser or anydesire to be on one when it receives such a salute. But it seems to bewaiting for the Germans any time that they want it. 

Oh, that towed square of canvas! It is the symbol of the object of allbuilding of guns, armour, and ships, all the nursing in dry dock, all theadmiral's plans, all the parliamentary appropriations, all the striving onboard ship in man's competition with man, crew with crew, gun withgun, and ship with ship. One had in mind some vast factory plantwhere every unit was efficiently organized; but that comparison wouldnot do. None will. The Grand Fleet is the Grand Fleet. Ability gets itsreward, as in the competition of civil life. There is no linear promotionindulgent to mediocrity and inferiority which are satisfied to keep stepand harassing to those whom nature and application meant to lead. Armchairs and retirement for those whose inclinations run that way;the captain's bridge for those who are fit to command. Officers'records are the criterion when superiors come to making promotions. But does not outside influence play a part? you ask. If professionalconscience is not enough to prevent this, another thing appears tobe: that the British nation lives or dies with its navy. Besides, theBritish public has said to all and sundry outsiders: "Hands off thenavy!" All honour to the British public, much criticized and often mostdispleased with its servants and itself, for keeping its eye on thatcanvas square of cloth! The language on board was the same as onour ships; the technical phraseology practically the same; we hadinherited British traditions. But a man from Kansas and a man fromDorset live far apart. If they have a good deal in common they rarelymeet to learn that they have. Our seamen do meet British seamenand share a fraternity which is more than that of the sea. Close one'seyes to the difference in uniform, discount the difference in accent, and one imagined that he might be with our North Atlantic fleet. 

The same sort of shop talk and banter in the wardroom, which trimsand polishes human edges; the same fellowship of a world apart. Securely ready the British fleet waits. Enough drill and not too much;occasional visits between ships; books and newspapers and alighthearted relaxation of scattered conversation in the mess. Onewardroom had a thirty-five-second record for getting past all thepitfalls in the popular "Silver Bullet" game, if I remember correctly. 

XXXIIHunting The Submarine

Seaplanes cut practice circles over the fleet and then flew away ontheir errands, to be lost in the sky beyond the harbour entrance. Withtheir floats, they were like ducks when they came to rest on the water, sturdy and a little clumsy looking compared to those hawks the armyplanes, soaring to higher altitudes. 

The hawk had a broad, level field for its roost; the duck, bobbing withthe waves after it came down, had its wings folded as became a birdat rest, after its engines stopped, and, a dead thing, was lifted onboard its floating home with a crane, as cargo is swung into the hold. 

On shipboard there must be shipshapeness; and that capacious, one-time popular Atlantic liner had undergone changes to prepare itfor its mothering part, with platforms in place of the promenadeswhere people had lounged during the voyage and bombs in place ofdeck-quoits and dining-saloons turned into workshops. Of course, one was shown the different sizes and types of bombs. Aviatorsexhibit them with the pride of a collector showing his porcelains. Every time they seem to me to have grown larger and morediabolical. Where will aerial progress end? Will the next war be foughtby forces that dive and fly like fishes and birds?

"I'd like to drop that hundred-pounder on to a Zeppelin!" said one ofthe aviators. All the population of London would like to see him do it. And Fritz, the submarine, does not like to see the shadow of man'swings above the water. 

Seaplanes and destroyers carry the imagination away from the fleetto another sphere of activity, which I had not the fortune to see. Anaviator can see Fritz below a smooth surface; for he cannot travelmuch deeper than thirty or forty feet. He leaves a characteristic rippleand tell-tale bubbles of air and streaks of oil. When the planes havelocated him they tell the hunters where to go. Sometimes it is knownthat a submarine is in a certain region; he is lost sight of and seenagain; a squall may cover his track a second time, and the hunters, keeping touch with the planes by signals, course here and there onthe look out for another glimpse. Perhaps he escapes altogether. It isa tireless game of hide and seek, like gunnery at the front. Navalingenuity has invented no end of methods, and no end ofexperiments have been tried. Strictest kept of naval secrets, these. Fritz is not to be told what to avoid and what not to avoid. 

Very thin is the skin of a submarine; very fragile and complicated itsmachinery. It does not take much of a shock to put it out of order or alarge charge of explosives to dent the skin beyond repair. It being inthe nature of submarines to sink, how does the hunter know when hehas struck a mortal blow? If oil and bubbles come up for some time inone place, or if they come up with a rush, that is suggestive. Then, itdoes not require a nautical mind to realize that by casting about onthe bottom with a grapnel you will learn if an object with the bulk andsize of a submarine is there. The Admiralty accept no guessworkfrom the hunters about their exploits; they must bring the brush toprove the kill. 

With Admiral Crawford I went to see the submarine defences of theharbour. It reminded one of the days of the drawbridge to a castle, when a friend rode freely in and an enemy might try to swim the moatand scale the walls if he pleased. 

"Take care! There is a tide here!" the coxswain was warned, lest thebarge should get into some of the troubles meant for Fritz. "A cunningfellow, Fritz. We must give him no openings. "

The openings appear long enough to permit British craft, whethertrawlers, or flotillas, or cruiser squadrons, to go and come. Lying asclose together as fish in a basket, I saw at one place a number oftorpedo boats home from a week at sea. 

"Here to-day and gone to-morrow, " said an officer. "What a time theyhad last winter! You know how cold the North Sea is--no, you cannot, unless you have been out in a torpedo boat dancing the tango in theteeth of that bitter wind, with the spray whipping up to the tops of thesmoke-stacks. In the dead of night they would come into this pitch-dark harbour. How they found their way is past me. It's a trick of thoseyoung fellows, who command. "

Stationary they seemed now as the quay itself; but let a signal speak, an alarm come, and they would soon be as alive as leapingporpoises. The sport is to those who scout and hunt. But do notforget those who watch, those who keep the blockade, from theChannel to Iceland, and the trawlers that plod over plotted sea-squares with the regularity of mowing-machines cutting a harvest, ontheir way back and forth sweeping up mines. They were fishermenbefore the war and are fishermen still. Night and day they keep at it. They come into the harbours stiff with cold, thaw out, and return tohardships which would make many a man prefer the trenches. Tributes to their patient courage, which came from the heart, wereheard on board the battleships. 

"It is when we think of them, " said an officer, "that we are most eagerto have the German fleet come out, so that we can do our part. "

XXXIIIThe Fleet Puts To Sea

There is another test besides that of gun-drills and target practicewhich reflects the efficiency of individual ships, and the larger thenumber of ships the more important it is. For the business of a fleet isto go to sea. At anchor, it is in garrison rather than on campaign, anassembly of floating forts. Navies one has seen which seemedexcellent when in harbour, but when they started to get under way theresult was hardly reassuring. Some erring sister fouled her anchorchain; another had engine-room trouble; another lagged for someother reason; there was fidgeting on the bridges. Then one asked, What if a summons to battle had come? Our own officers wereauthority enough that the British had no superiors in any of the tests. But strange reports dodged in and out of the alleys of pessimism inthe company of German insistence that the Tiger and other shipswhich one saw afloat had been sunk. Was the fleet really heldprisoner by fear of submarines? If it could go and come freely when itchose, the harbour was the place for it while it waited. If not, then, indeed, the submarine had revolutionized naval warfare. AdmiralJellicoe might lose some of his battleships before he could get intoaction against the Germans. 

"Oh, to hear the hoarse rattle of the anchor chains!" I kept thinkingwhile I was with the fleet. "Oh, to see all these monsters on themove!"

A vain wish it seemed, but it came true. A message from theAdmiralty arrived while we were on the flagship. Admiral Jellicoecalled his Flag Lieutenant and spoke a word to him, which waspassed in a twinkling from flagship to squadron and division and ship. He made it as simple as ordering his barge alongside, this sending ofthe Grand Fleet to sea. 

From the bridge of a destroyer beyond the harbour entrance we sawit go. I shall not attempt to describe the spectacle, which convincedme that language is the vehicle for making small things seem greatand great things seem small. If you wish words invite splendid andmagnificent and overwhelming and all the reliable old friends to comeforth in glad apparel from the dictionary. Personally, I was inarticulateat sight of that sea-march of dull-toned, unadorned power. 

First came the outriders of majesty, the destroyers; then the gracefullight cruisers. How many destroyers has the British navy? I am onlycertain that it has not as many as it seems to have, which wouldmean thousands. Trying to count them is like trying to count the beesin the garden. You cannot keep your eye on the individual bees. Youare bound to count some twice, so busy are their manœuvres. 

"Don't you worry, great ladies!" you imagined the destroyers weresaying to the battleships. "We will clear the road. We will keep watchagainst snipers and assassins. "

"And if any knocks are coming, we will take them for you, greatladies!" said the cruisers. "If one of us went down, the loss would notbe great. Keep your big guns safe to beat other battleships intoscrap. "

For you may be sure that Fritz was on the watch in the open. Healways is, like the highwayman hiding behind a hedge and envyingpeople who have comfortable beds. Probably from a distance he hada peep through his periscope at the Grand Fleet before the approachof the policeman destroyers made him duck beneath the water; andprobably he tried to count the number of ships and identify theirclasses in order to take the information home to Kiel. Besides, healways has his fingers crossed. He hopes that some day he may geta shot at something more warlike than a merchant steamer or anauxiliary; only that prospect becomes poorer as life for him growsharder. Except a miracle happened, the steaming fleet, with itscordons of destroyers, is as safe from him as from any other kind offish. 

The harbour which is the fleet's home is landlocked by low hills. Thereis an eclipse of the sun by the smoke from the ships getting underway; streaming, soaring columns of smoke on the move rise abovethe skyline from the funnels of the battleships before they appeararound a bend. Indefinite masses as yet they are, under their night-black plumes. Each ship seems too immense to respond to any willexcept its own. But there is something automatic in the regularity withwhich, one after another, they take the bend, as if a stop watch hadbeen held on twenty thousand tons of steel for a second's variation. As they approach they become more distinct and, showing lesssmoke, there seems less effort. Their motive-power seems inherent, perpetual. 

There is some sea running outside the entrance, enough to make adestroyer roll. But the battleships disdain any notice of its existence. Itis no more to them than a ripple of dust to a motor truck. They ploughthrough it. 

Though you were within twenty yards of them you would feel quitesafe. An express train was in no more danger of jumping the track. Mast in line with mast, they held the course with a majesticsteadiness. Now the leading ship makes a turn of a few points. At thesame spot, as if it were marked by the grooves of tyres in a road, theothers make it. Any variation of speed between them would havebeen instantly noticeable, as one forged ahead or lagged; but thedistance between bows and sterns did not change. A line of onelength would do for each interval so far as one could discern. 

It was difficult to think that they were not attached to some taut, moving cable under water. How could such apparently unwieldymonsters, in such a slippery element as the sea, be made to obeytheir masters with such fine precision?

The answer again is sheer hard work! Drills as arduous in the engine-room as at the guns; machinery kept in tune; traditions inmanoeuvring in all weathers, which is kept up with tireless practice. 

Though all seemed perfection to the lay eye, let it be repeated thatthis was not so to the eyes of admirals. It never can be. Perfection isthe thing striven for. Officers dwell on faults; all are critics. Thus youhave the healthiest kind of spirit, which means that there will be nocessation in the striving. 

"Look at that!" exclaimed an officer on the destroyer. "They ought totry another painting on her and see if they can't do better. "

Ever changing that northern light. For an instant the sun's rays, strained by a patch of peculiar cloud, playing on a Dreadnought'sside, made her colour appear molten, exaggerating her size till sheseemed as colossal to the eye as to the thought. 

"But look, now!" said another officer. She was out of the patch andseemed miles farther away to the vision, a dim shape in the sea-haze. 

"You can't have it right for every atmospheric mood of the North Sea, I suppose!" muttered the critic. Still, it hurt his professional pridethat a battleship should show up as such a glaring target evenfor a moment. 

The power of the fleet was more patent in movement than at rest; forthe sea-lion was out of his lair on the hunt. Fluttering with flags at areview at Spithead, the battleships seemed out of their element;giants trying for a fairy's part. Display is not for them. It ill becomesthem, as does a pink ribbon on a bulldog. 

Irresistibly ploughing their way they presented a picture of resoluteutility--guns and turrets and speed. No spot of bright colour wasvisible on board. The crew was at the guns, I took it. Turn the turrets, give the range, lay the sights on the enemy's ships, and the battlewas on. 

"There is the old Dreadnought, " said an officer. The old Dreadnought--all of ten years of age, the senile old thing! What a mystery she waswhen she was building! The mystery accentuated her celebrity--andalmost forgotten now, while the Queen Elizabeth and the Warspite, and others of their class with their fifteen-inch guns, would be in thepublic eye as the latest type till a new type came. A parade of navaltypes was passing. One seemed to shade into the other inharmonious effect. But here was an outsider, whom one notedinstantly as he studied those rugged silhouettes of steel. She hadtwelve twelve-inch guns, with turret piled on turret in an exoticfashion--one of the two Turkish battleships building in England at thetime of the war and taken over by the British. 

One division, two divisions, four ships, eight Dreadnoughts--even asquadron coming out of a harbour numbs the faculties with a senseof its might. Sixteen--twenty--twenty-four--it was the unendingnumbers of this procession of sea-power which was most impressive. An hour passed and all were not by. One sat down for a few minutesbehind the wind-screen of the destroyer's bridge, only to look backand see more Dreadnoughts going by. A spectator had not realizedthat there were so many in the harbour. He had a suspicion thatAdmiral Jellicoe was a conjuror who could take Dreadnoughts out ofa hat. 

The first was lost in the gathering darkness far out in the North Sea, and still the cloud of smoke over the anchorage was as thick as ever;still the black plumes kept appearing around the bend. The KingEdward VII. Class with their four twelve-inch guns and other ancientsof the pre-Dreadnought era, which are still powerful antagonists, wereyet to come. One's eyes ached. Those who saw a German corpsmarch through Brussels said that it seemed irresistible. What if theyhad seen the whole German army? Here was the counterpart of thewhole German army in sea-power and in land-power, too. 

The destroyer commander looked at his watch. 

"Time!" he said. "I'll put you on shore. "

He must take his place in the fleet at a given moment. A word to theengine-room and the next thing we knew we were off at thirty knotsan hour, cutting straight across the bows of a Dreadnought steamingat twenty knots, towering over us threateningly, with a bone in herteeth. 

Imagination sped across seas where a man had cruised intoharbours that he knew and across continents that he knew. He wastrying to visualize the whole globe--all of it except the Baltic seas anda thumb-mark in the centre of Europe. Hong-Kong, Melbourne, Sydney, Halifax, Cape Town, Bombay--yes, and Rio and Valparaiso, Shanghai, San Francisco, New York, Boston, these and the landsback of them, where countless millions dwell, were all safe behind thebarrier of that fleet. 

Then back through the land where Shakespeare wrote to London, with its glare of recruiting posters and the throbbing of that individualfreedom which is on trial in battle with the Prussian system--and asone is going to bed the sound of guns in the heart of the city! Fromthe window one looked upward to see, under a searchlight's play, thesilken sheen of a cigar-shaped sort of aerial phantom which wasdropping bombs on women and children, while never a shot is fired atthose sturdy men behind armour. 

When you have travelled far; when you think of Botha and his Boersfighting for England; when you have found justice and fair play andopen markets under the British flag; when you compare thevociferations of von Tirpitz, glorying in the torpedoing of a Lusitania, with the quiet manner of Sir John Jellicoe, you need only a little sparkof conscience to prefer the way that the British have used their sea-power to the way that the men who send out Zeppelins to war onwomen and children would use that power if they had it. 

XXXIVBritish Problems

Throughout the summer of 1915 the world was asking, What aboutthe new British army? Why was it not attacking at the opportunemoment when Germany was throwing her weight against Russia? Afacile answer is easy; indeed, facile answers are always easy. Unhappily, they are rarely correct. None that was given in thisinstance was, to my mind. They sought to put a finger on one definitecause; again, on an individual or a set of individuals. 

The reasons were manifold; as old as Waterloo, as fresh as the lastspeech in Parliament. They were inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race. Whoever raised a voice and said, This, or that, or you, areresponsible! should first have looked into his own mind and into thehistory of his race and then into a mirror. Least of all should anyAmerican have been puzzled by the delay. 

"Oh, we should have done better than that--we are Americans!" Ihear my countrymen say. Perhaps we should. I hope so; I believe so. The British public thought that they were going to do better; militarymen were surprised that they did as well. 

Along with laws and language we have inherited our military ideasfrom England. In many qualities we are different--a distinct type; but innothing are we more like the British than in our attitude toward thesoldier and toward war. The character of any army reflects thecharacter of its people. An army is the fist; but the muscle, thestrength, of the physical organism behind the blow in the long runbelong to the people. What they have prepared for in peace theyreceive in war, which decides whether they have been living in theparadise of a fool or of a wise man. 

As a boy I was brought up to believe, as an inheritance of theAmerican Revolution, that one American could whip two Englishmenand five or six of any other nationality, which made the feathers of theeagle perched on the national escutcheon look glossy. It was asatisfying sort of faith. Americans had never tried five or six of anyfirst-class fighting race; but that was not a thought which occurred tome. As we had won victories over the English and the English hadwhipped the French at Waterloo, the conclusion seemed obvious. English boys, I understand, also had been brought up to believe thatone Englishman could whip five or six men of any other nationality, but, I take it for granted, only two Americans. This clothed the Britishlion with majesty, while the lower ratio of superiority over Americansreturned the compliment in kind from the sons of the lion to the sonsof the eagle. 

After I began to read history for myself and to think as I read, I foundthat when British and Americans had met, the generals on either sidewere solicitous about having superior forces, and in case of odds oftwo to one they made a "strategic retreat. " When either side wasbeaten, the other always explained that he was overcome by superiornumbers, though perhaps the adversary had not more than ten orfifteen per cent, advantage. Then I learned that the British had notwhipped five or six times their number on the continent of Europe. The British Expeditionary Force made as fine an effort to do so atMons as was ever attempted in history, but they did not succeed. 

It was a regular army that fought at Mons. The only two first-classnations which depend upon regulars to do their fighting are the Britishand the American. This is the vital point of similarity which is thepractical manifestation of our military ideas. We have been the earth'sspoiled children, thanks to the salt seas between us and otherpowerful military nations. Before any other Power could reach theUnited States it must overwhelm the British navy, and then it mustoverwhelm ours and bring its forces in transports. Sea-power, yousay. That is the facile word, so ready to the lips that we do not realizethe wonder of it any more than of the sun rising and setting. 

When we want soldiers our plan still is to advertise for them. Theways of our ancestors remain ours. We think that the volunteer mustnecessarily make the best soldier because he offers his services;while the conscript--rather a term of opprobrium to us--must belukewarm. It hardly occurs to us that some forms of persuasion mayamount to conscription, or that the volunteer, won by oratoricalappeal to his emotions or by social pressure, may suffer a reactionafter enlistment which will make him lukewarm also, particularly as hesees others, also young and fit, hanging back. Nor does it occur to usthat there may be virtue in that fervour of national patriotism arousedby the command that all must serve, which, on the continent in thiswar, has meant universal exaltation to sacrifice. The life of Jonesmeans as much to him as the life of Smith does to him; and when thewhole nation is called to arms there ought to be no favourites in life-giving. 

For the last hundred years, if we except the American Civil War, ourshave been comparatively little wars. The British regular army haspoliced an empire and sent punitive expeditions against rebellioustribes with paucity of numbers, in a work which the British so wellunderstand. Our little regular army took care of the Red Indians asour frontier advanced from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. To put itbluntly, we have hired someone to do our fighting for us. 

Without ever seriously studying the business of soldiering, theaverage Anglo-Saxon thought of himself as a potential soldier, takinghis sense of martial superiority largely from the work of the long-service, severely drilled regular. Also, we used our fists rather thandaggers or duelling swords in personal encounters and, man to man, unequipped with fire-arms or blades, the quality which is responsiblefor our sturdy pioneering individualism gave us confidence in ourphysical prowess. 

Alas! modern wars are not fought with fists. A knock-kneed man whoknows how to use a machine-gun and has one to use--which is alsoquite important--could mow down all the leading heavy-weights of theUnited States and England, with the latest champion leading thecharge. 

Now, this regular who won our little wars was not representative ofthe people as a whole. He was the man "down on his luck, " who wentto the recruiting depot. Soldiering became his profession. He was in aclass, like priests and vagabonds. When you passed him in the streetyou thought of him as a strange being, but one of the necessities ofnational existence. It did not interest you to be a soldier; but as theremust be soldiers, you were glad that men who would be soldiers wereforthcoming. 

When trouble broke, how you needed him! When the wires broughtnews of his gallantry you accepted the deeds of this man whom youhad paid as the reflection of national courage, which thrilled you witha sense of national superiority. To him, it was in the course of duty;what he had been paid to do. He did not care about being called ahero; but it pleased the public to make him one--this professional whofights for a shilling a day in England and $17. 50 a month in the UnitedStates. 

Though when the campaign went well the public was ready to takethe credit as a personal tribute, when the campaign went badly theysought a scapegoat, and the general who might have been a herowas sent to the wilderness perhaps because those busy men inCongress or Parliament thought that the army could do without thatlittle appropriation which was needed for some other purpose. Thearmy had failed to deliver the goods which it was paid to produce. The army was to blame, when, of course, under free institutions thepublic was to blame, as the public is master of the army and not thearmy of the public. 

A first impression of the British army is always that of the regiment. Pride of regiment sometimes appears almost more deep-seated thanarmy pride to the outsider. It has been so long a part of British martialinheritance that it is bred in the blood. In the old days of small armiesand in the later days of small wars, while Europe was making everyman a soldier by conscription, regiment vying with regiment won thebattles of empire. The memory of the part each regiment played is theinspiration of its present; its existence is inseparable from thetraditions of its long list of battle honours. 

The British public loves to read of its Guards' regiment and to watchthem in their brilliant uniforms at review. When a cadet comes out ofSandhurst he names the regiment which he wishes to join, instead ofbeing ordered to a certain regiment, as at West Point. It rests with theregimental commander whether or not he is accepted. Frequently theyoung man of wealth or family serves in the Guards or another crackregiment for awhile and resigns, usually to enjoy the semi-leisurely lifewhich is the fortune of his inheritance. 

Then there are the county line regiments, such as the Yorkshires, theKents, and the Durhams. In this war each county wanted to readabout its own regiments at the same time as about the Guards, justas Kansans at home would want to read about the Kansas regimentand Georgians about the Georgia regiment. The most trying featureof the censorship to the British public was its refusal to allow theexploitation of regiments. The staff was adamant on this point; for thestaff was thinking for the whole and of the interests of the whole. Inthe French and the German armies, as in our regular army, regimentsare known by numbers. 

The young man who lives in the big house on the hill, the son of theman of wealth and power in the community, as a rule does not go toWest Point. None of the youth of our self-called aristocracy whichcame up the golden road in a generation past those in modestcircumstances who have generations of another sort back of them, think of going into the First Cavalry or the First Infantry for a few yearsas a part of the career of their class. A few rich men's sons enter ourarmy, but only enough to prove the rule by the exception. They do notregard the army as "the thing. " It does not occur to them that theyought to do something for their country. Rather, their country ought todo something for them. 

But sink the plummet a little deeper and these are not our aristocracynor our ruling class, which is too numerous and too sound of thoughtand principle for them to feel at home in that company. Any boy, however humble his origin, may go to West Point if he can pass thecompetitive examination. Europe, particularly Germany, would notapprove of this; but we think it the best way. The average graduate ofthe Point, whether the son of a doctor, a lawyer, or a farmer, sticks tothe army as his profession. We maintain the Academy for the strictbusiness purpose of teaching young men how to train our army intime of peace and to lead and direct it in time of action. 

Our future officers enter West Point when they are two years youngerthan is the average at Sandhurst; the course is four years comparedwith two at Sandhurst. I should venture to say that West Point is theharder grind; that the graduate of the Point has a more specificallyacademic military training than the graduate of Sandhurst. This is notsaying that he may be any better in the performance of the simpleduties of a company officer. It is not a new criticism that we traineverybody at West Point to be a general, when many of the studentsmay never rise above the command of a battalion. However, it is asignificant fact that at the close of the Civil War every armycommander was a West Point man and so were most of the corpscommanders. 

The doors are open in the British army for a man to rise from theranks; not as wide as in our army, but open. The Chief of Staff of theBritish Expeditionary Force, Sir William Robertson, was in the ranksfor ten years. No man not a West Pointer had a position equivalent inimportance to his at the close of the Civil War. His rise would havebeen possible in no other European army. 

But West Point sets the stamp on the American army, and Sandhurstand Woolwich, the engineering and artillery school, on the Britisharmy. At the end of the four years at West Point the men who survivethe hard course may be tried by courtmartial not for conductunbecoming an officer, but an officer and a gentleman. They aresupposed, whatever their origin, to have absorbed certain qualities, ifthey were not inborn, which are not easily described but which we allrecognize in any man. If they are absent it is not the fault of WestPoint; and if a man cannot acquire them there, then nature nevermeant them for him. From the time he entered the school thegovernment has paid his way; and he is cared for until he dies, if hekeeps step and avoids courtmartials. 

His position in life is secure. His pay, counting everything, is betterthan that of the average graduate of a university or a first-classprofessional school who practises a profession. Yet only three boys, Iremember, wanted to go to West Point from our congressional districtin my youth. Nothing could better illustrate the fact that we are not amilitary people. From West Point they go out to the little army which isto fight our wars; to the posts and the Philippines, and become aworld in themselves; an isolated caste in spite of themselves. I amnot at all certain that either the British or the American officer worksas hard as the German in time of peace. Neither has the practicalincentive nor the determined driver behind him. 

For it takes a soldier Secretary of War to drive a soldier; for example, Lord Kitchener. Those British officers who applied themselves inpeace to the mastery of their profession and were not content withthe day's routine requirements, had to play chess without chessmen;practise manœuvres on a board rather than with brigades, divisions, corps, and armies. They became the rallying points in the concourseof untrained recruits. 

German and French officers had the incentive and the chessmen. The Great War could not take them by surprise. They took the roadwith a machine whose parts had been long assembled. They hadbeen trained for big war; their ambition and intelligence were underthe whip of a definite anticipation. 

A factor overlooked, but even more significant than training or staffwork, was that what might be called martial team-play had becomean instinct with the continental peoples through the necessity of theirsituation. This the Japanese also possess. It is the right materialready to hand for the builder. Not that it is the kind of material oneadmires; but it is the right material for making a war-machine. Onehad only to read the expert military criticism in the British and theAmerican Press at the outset of the war to realize how vague was thetruth of the continental situation to the average Englishman orAmerican--but not to the trained British Staff. 

So that little British Expeditionary Force, in ratio of number one totwenty or thirty of the French army, crossed the Channel to help saveBelgium. Gallantry it had worthy of the brightest chapter in theimmortal history of its regiments from Quebec to Kandahar, fromAgincourt, Blenheim and Waterloo to South Africa, Guards andHussars, Highlanders and Lowlanders, kilts and breeks, ConnaughtRangers and Royal Fusiliers, Duke of Wellington's and Prince ofWales' Own, come again to Flanders. The best blood of England wasleading Tommy Atkins. Whatever British aristocracy is or is not, itnever forgets its duty to the England of its fathers. It is never ingrateto its fortune. The time had come to go out and die for England, ifneed be, and these officers went as their ancestors had gone beforethem, as they would go to lectures at Oxford, to the cricket field andthe polo field, in outward phlegm, but with a mighty passion in theirhearts. 

The Germans affected to despise this little army. It had not beentrained in the mass tactics which hurl columns of flesh forward to gaintactical points that have been mauled by artillery fire. You do not usemass tactics against Boers, nor against Afridis, nor Filipinos. It isdifficult to combine the two kinds of efficiency. Those who were on themarch to the relief of the Peking Legations recall how the Germanswere as ill at ease in that kind of work as the Americans and Britishwere at home. It made us misjudge the Germans and the Germansmisjudge us when they thought of us as trying to make war on thecontinent of Europe. A small, mobile, regular army, formed to gooverseas and march long distances, was to fight in a war wheremillions were engaged and a day's march would cover an immensestretch of territory in international calculations of gain and loss. 

For its own purposes, the British Expeditionary Force was well-nigh aperfect instrument. As quantity of ammunition was an important factorin transport in the kind of campaign which it was prepared for, itsguns were the most accurate on a given point and its system of fireadapted to that end; but the French system of fire, with plentifulammunition from near bases over fine roads, was better adapted fora continental campaign. To the last button that little army wasprepared. Man for man and regiment for regiment, I should say it wasthe best force that ever fired a shot in Europe; this without regard tonational character. As England must make every regular soldiercount, and as she depended upon the efficiency of the few ratherthan on numbers, she had trained her men in musketry. Nocontinental army could afford to allow its soldiers to expend theamount of ammunition on the target range that the British hadexpended. Only by practice can you learn how to shoot. This givesthe soldier confidence. He stays in his trench and keeps on shootingbecause he knows that he can hit those advancing figures and thatthis is his best protection. The more I learn, the more I am convincedthat the Germans ought to have got the British Expeditionary Force;and the Germans were very surprised that they did not get it. Withtheir surprise developed a respect for British arms, reported by allvisitors to Germany. 

Mr. Thomas Atkins, none other, is the hero of that retreat from Mons. The first statue raised in London after the war ought to be of him. Ifthere had been five hundred thousand of him in Belgium at the end ofthe second week in August, Brussels would now be under the Belgianflag. Like many other good things in this world, including the Frencharmy, there were not enough of him. Many a company on that retreatsimply got tired of retreating, though orders were to fall back. It dug atrench and lay down and kept on firing--accurately, in the regular, businesslike way, reinforced by the "stick it" British character--untilkilled or engulfed. This held back the flood long enough for theremainder of the army to retire. 

Not all the generalship emanated from generals. I like best that storyof the cross-roads where, with Germans pressing hard on all sides, two columns in retreat fell in together, uncertain which way to go. Withconfusion developing for want of instructions, a lone, exhausted staffofficer who happened along took charge, and standing at the junctionin the midst of shell-fire told every doubting unit what to do, with aone-two-three alacrity of decision. His work finished, he and his redcap disappeared, and I never could find anyone who knew who hewas. 

After the retreat and after the victory of the Marne, what wasEngland's position? The average Englishman had thought thatEngland's part in the alliance was to send a small army to France andto take care of the German fleet. England's fleet was her firstconsideration; that must be served. France's demand for rifles andsupplies must be attended to before the British demand. Serbianeeded supplies; Russia needed supplies; a rebellion threatened inSouth Africa; the Turks threatened the invasion of Egypt. Englandhad to spread her energy out over a vast empire with an army thathad barely escaped annihilation. Every soldier who fought must besupplied overseas. German officers put a man on a railroad train andhe detrained near the front. Every British soldier had to go on board atrain and then a ship and then disembark from the ship and go onboard another train. Every article of ordnance, engineering, medicalsupply, food supply, must be handled four times, while in Germanythey need be handled but twice. Any railway traffic manager willunderstand what this means. Both the British supply system and themedical corps were marvels. 

Germany was stronger than the British public thought. Germany andAustria could put at the front in the first six months of the warpractically double the number which the Allies could maintain. Russiahad multitudes to draw from in reserve, but the need was multitudesat the front. There she was only as strong as the number she couldfeed and equip. In the first year of the war England suffered 380, 000casualties on land, more than three times the number of men thatshe had at Mons. This wastage must be met before she could beginto increase her forces. The length of line on the western front that shewas holding was not the criterion of her effort. The French whoshared with the British that terrible Ypres salient realized this. 

Apart from the regulars she had the Territorials, who are much thesame as our National Guard and vary in quality in the same way. Native Indian troops were brought to France to face the diabolicalshell-fire of modern guns, and Territorials went out to India to take theplace of the British regulars who were withdrawn for France. Everyrifle that England could bring to the assistance of the French in theirheroic stand was a rifle to the good. 

Meanwhile, she was making her new army. For the first time sinceCromwell's day, all classes in England were going to war. Making anarmy out of the raw is like building a factory to be manned by expertlabour which you have to train. Let us even suppose that the factoryis ready and that the proprietor must mobilize his managers, overseers, foremen, and labour from far and near--a force individuallycompetent, but which had never before worked together. It wouldrequire some time to organize team-play, wouldn't it? Particularly itwould if you were short of managers, overseers, and foremen. Toexpress my meaning from another angle, in talking once with anEnglish pottery manufacturer he said:

"We do not train our labour in the pottery district. We breed it fromgeneration to generation. "

In Germany they have not only been training soldiers, but breedingthem from generation to generation. You may think that system iswrong. It may be contrary to our ideals. But in fighting against thatsystem for your ideals when war is violence and killing, you musthave weapons as effective as the enemy's. You express only a partof Germany's preparedness by saying that the men who left theplough and the shop, the factory and the office, became trainedsoldiers at the command of the staff as soon as they were in uniformand had rifles. These men had the instinct of military co-ordinationbred in them, and so had their officers, while England had to takemen from the plough and the shop, the factory and the office, andequip them and teach them the rudiments of soldiering before shecould consider making them into an army. 

It was one thing for the spirit of British manhood to rise to theemergency. Another and even more important requisite went with it. Ifmy country ever faces such a crisis I hope that we also may have thecourage of wisdom which leaves an expert's work to an expert. England had Lord Kitchener, who could hold the imagination and theconfidence of the nation through the long months of preparation, when there was little to show except repetition of drills here and thereon gloomy winter days. It required a man with a big conception andpatience and authority to carry it through, and recruits with anunflinching sense of duty. The immensity of the task of transforming anon-military people into a great fighting force grew on one in all itshumdrum and vital details as he watched the new army forming. "Areyou learning to think in big numbers?" was Lord Kitchener's questionto his generals. 

Half of the regular officers were killed or wounded. 

Where the leaders? Where the drillmasters for the new army? Oldofficers came out of retirement, where they had become used to aneasy life as a rule, to twelve hours a day of hard application. "Dug-outs" they were called. Veteran non-commissioned officers had to drillnew ones. It was demonstrated that a good infantry soldier can bemade in six months; perhaps in three. But it takes seven months tobuild a rifle-plant; many more months to make guns--and the navymust never be stinted. Probably the English are slow; slow andthoroughgoing. They are good at the finish, but not quick at the start. They are used to winning the last battle, which they say is the onethat counts. The complacency of empire with a century's power was ahandicap, no doubt. We are inclined to lean forward on our oars, theyto lean back--which does not mean that they cannot lean forward inan emergency or that they lack reserve strength. It may lead us tomisjudge them. 

Public impatience was inevitable. It could not be kept silent; that is theEnglish of it--the American, too. It demands to know what is beingdone. It was not silent in the Civil War. From the time McClellanstarted forming his new army until the Peninsular campaign was sixmonths, if I remember rightly. Von Moltke, who built the German staffsystem, said that the Civil War was a strife between two armed mobs;though I think if he had brought his Prussians to Virginia a year later, in '63, which would have ended the Civil War there and then, hewould have had an interesting time before he returned to Berlin. 

The British new army was not to face another new army, but the mostthoroughly organized military machine that the world has ever known. Not only this, but the Germans, with a good start and their systemestablished, were not standing still and waiting for the British to catchup, so that the two could begin again even, but were adaptingthemselves to the new features of the war. They had been the world'sarms-makers. With vast munition plants ready, their feudal socialisticorganization could make the most of their resources in men andmaterial. 

More than two million Englishmen went to the recruiting depots, though no invader had set foot on their soil, and offered to serve inFrance or wherever they were needed overseas. If no magic couldput rifles in their hands or summon batteries of guns to follow them onthe march, the fact of their volunteering, when they knew by watchingfrom day to day the drudgery that it meant and what trench warfarewas, shows at least that the race is not yet decadent. Perhaps weshould have done better. No one can know until we try it. If liberaltreatment by the government and the course set by Secretary Rootmeans anything, our staff ought to be better equipped for such a taskthan the English were; this, too, only war can decide. 

Whatsoever of pessimism appeared in the British Press wastelegraphed to America. Pessimism was not permitted in the GermanPress. Imagine Germany holding control of the cable and allowingpress dispatches from Germany to pass over it with the freedom thatEngland allowed. Imagine Germany having waited as long asEngland before making cotton contraband. The British Pressdemanded information from the government which the German Presswould never have dared to ask. I have known an Americancorrespondent, fed out of hand in Germany and thankful for anythingthat the fearful German war-machine might vouchsafe, turning abelligerent when he was in London for privileges which he wouldnever have thought of demanding in Berlin. 

If an English ship were reported sunk, he believed it must be, despitethe government's denial. Did he go to the Germans and demand thathe might publish the rumours of what had happened to the Moltke inthe Gulf of Riga, or how many submarines Germany had really lost?Indeed, he was unconsciously paying a compliment to British freeinstitutions. He expected more in England; it seemed a right to him, as it would at home. Englishmen talked frankly to him about mistakes;he heard all the gossip; and sometimes he concluded that Englandwas in a bad way. In Germany such talk was not allowed. EveryGerman said that the government was absolutely truthful; everyGerman believed all of its reports. But ask this critical American howhe would like to live under German rule, and then you found how anti-German he was at heart. Nothing succeeds like success, andGermany was winning and telling no one if she had any setbacks. 

If there were a strike, the British Press made the most of it, for it wasbig news. Pessimism is the Englishman's natural way of arousinghimself to fresh energy. It is also against habit to be demonstrative inhis effort; so it is not easy to understand how much he is doing. Then, pessimism brought recruits; it made the Englishman say, "I've got toput my back into it!" Muddling there was and mistakes, such as thatof the method of attack at Gallipoli; but in the midst of all thisdispiriting pessimism, no Englishman thought of anything but ofputting his back into it more and more. Lord Kitchener had said that itwas to be a long war and evidently it must be. Of course, England'smisfortune was in having the war catch her in the transition from anold order of things to social reforms. 

But if the war shows anything it is that basically English character hasnot changed. She still has unconquerable, dogged persistence, andher defects for this kind of war are not among the least admirable ofher traits to those who desire to live their own lives in their own way, as the English-speaking people have done for five hundred years, without having a verboten sign on every street corner. 

It is still the law that when a company of infantry marches throughLondon it must be escorted by a policeman. This means a good deal:that civil power is superior to military power. It is a symbol of whatEnglishmen have fought for with spades and pitchforks, and what wehave fought Englishmen for. My own idea is that England is fightingfor it in this struggle; and starting unready against a foe which wasready, as the free peoples always have done, she was fighting fortime and experience before she could strike her sturdiest blows.