The Square Jaw

CHAPTER VI. 9. THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. A Minister has actually dared to bring about a real mobilisation of transport. He has ordered the seizure of all trucks in good condition, and the captured have gone to the front. All of them are overflowing with every species of coal. Coal! When one thinks of the shortage in Paris and the provinces of France, one can appreciate the sight of these millions of tons being rushed back from the front. Coal is the black bread of war. At the level crossings the British regiments going up into the line naturally give way to the greater urgency of these supply trains. We have just come back from visiting, under the guidance of a Staff-Major, the land of shafts and mines. Certainly, war is being waged there, but in a curious way, as if it were added on to ordinary existence. B——, N——, les M——, V—— are so many stages in our sooty pilgrimage! In front of V——, after having wandered in these endless streets with houses of miners' dwellings, all exactly alike, we come upon a huge slag heap, 800 yards high, like some black pyramid. The neighbouring pits, with their sheds, lifts and air-shafts, are working as usual. We pass a party of miners, solemn and resolute-looking people, their ages varying from 16 to 40, who are going to relieve the workers in the galleries 200 yards below soil. These civilian workers have just decided to do another hour a day. They, too, have behaved like heroes. The smoking pits are not a stone's throw from the smoking cannons. The howitzers concealed in the Black Country alternate their "boom!" with the sharper "crack!" of trench mortars. A London motor-'bus, ingeniously disguised, crowded with soldiers inside and out, is carrying a whole platoon of armed men to the shelter of one of these slag heaps which line the roads. Here, owing to the nature of the soil, the trenches cannot be dug down. Thousands of pumps would be wanted to dry this sector alone. The Royal Engineers have overcome the difficulty by having recourse to the old system of breastworks. Here redoubts, facing all ways, strong points with sloping parapets, buttresses, bastions, half-moons, etc., are made with sandbags—the triumph of improvisation like the inventions of a Pacciotto or a de Vauban. But more numerous than the Tommies are the groups of women carrying baskets of provisions for their menfolk. Under the guidance of the General Commanding the Artillery of the Army, we visited some batteries of 9.2 howitzers, those magnificent weapons of destruction. What ruses! What profligate conceits are used to hide these monstrous treasures from the enemy aircraft! After the war we must consecrate a whole chapter to those obscure painters, designers of "take-in's," who, working in the open country, succeed in faking the skyline and every aspect of the earth—nay, all Nature herself. A forward observing officer hidden somewhere on the ridge, which used to be called the Hohenzollern Redoubt, has just rung up to say that he has spotted some enemy transport moving in the mist behind their lines. The map reference is immediately verified and the range ascertained. A junior subaltern blows his whistle. In a second N.C.O.'s and men are in position. Then they open fire, disturbing the peaceful landscape. Just beside the battery was a beautiful pond with two swans—the most unwarlike thing in the world. Five minutes later we hear that the shooting was good and the transport was scuppered. In these miners' dwellings and allotments, where war and humdrum life are so strangely intermingled, there are many alarms. Aeroplane bombs, gas attacks and hostile bombardments. When the siren starts, everyone—women, children, old men and soldiers—go quietly into the cellars and come up again when it is all over, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Such is the life in the coal country. The Tommies in the trenches, the artillery in the fields and gardens and the workmen in the mines. Endless strife above ground, endless labour below, each night, each day, the same. France should honour these miners of Artois and Flanders just as much as her soldiers. CHAPTER VI. THE ART OF SAVING. Our hosts were very anxious to show us their Base at Calais, and, the visit being over, we fully realise their reasons. The fact is they have achieved miracles of hard work and organisation, of which they are justly proud. Dare I say that we had not taken full advantage of the port previous to the war? It is possible that in this matter, as in so many others, the war will have taught us useful lessons. Why should Germany have consented to make such bloody sacrifices on the Yser if Calais had not been a prize of great value? A complete study of a base like Calais would require days and days. We had only a few hours, and we only saw a few things, but things of the utmost meaning, as the reader will see. Everyone knows that the wear and tear of an army in the field is not merely concerned with losses in men. There is a huge combustion of materials which is almost as important. Even when there is no actual offensive there is considerable wastage of material, as also of men. But just as the commanders of fighting units have taken appropriate measures to spare the human animal, such as sending troops back to rest for a certain time, so the heads of army administration have devised means of saving every article of "war-soiled" material. It is this organisation that we have seen at work in Calais. Nothing could be more instructive. There exists in each British division at the front a divisional salvage company, whose duty it is to clear up a battlefield and collect somewhere behind the lines all damaged equipment—rifles, uniforms, bayonets, guns, empty cases, machine-guns, helmets, leather waistcoats, boots, etc. This poor material, dirty, rusty, even blood-stained, is sorted out at the salvage dump and sent down to the base by train. We saw one of these trains arrive at Calais, and we were able to see some of the ingenious devices invented for dealing with this curious hotch-potch. All this takes place in an old sawmill, which has been enlarged to five times its natural size since the beginning of the war. A thousand skilled British workers and two thousand French women are now employed in the workshops. Most of the women are, in normal times, lacemakers in the town. The men, skilled labourers in uniform, work by time, not by the piece. They earn eighteenpence a day—i.e., 6d. more than the ordinary Tommy in the trenches. The women, of all ages, are used for light and not very exhausting work, and they earn on the average 3 francs a day (the trades-union price). What miracles take place! In the "snob-shop," the ammunition boots, glorious souvenirs of the front, which come back in a shocking state, are examined and repaired. Twenty thousand pairs a week. The hopeless pairs are made into laces. One woman can make 150 per day. At the saddlery, harness and leather, covered with mud and blood, are cleaned as good as new. At the forge, wheels and couplings of gun-carriages are repaired. Elsewhere the essential parts of the guns are examined and all missing sections replaced. In another place the dixies and camp-cookers, all dented and rusty, are cleaned and re-soldered. Old petrol tins are made into trench braziers. Steel helmets recover their form, picks and shovels their handles, and all the iron that cannot be made use of is sent back to the foundry to be melted down for ammunition. Over the door of this war factory might be inscribed the motto of Lavoisier, with a slight addition:— "Here nothing new is made, but nothing old is wasted." The science that is taught and practised is the science, hitherto too little known, of economy. That is the reason why many men of the world (and others) should, like us, visit this base. CHAPTER VII "BROTHERS IN ARMS." The Times , through the medium of its distinguished representative with the British Army, Mr. Robinson, has recently published a very laudatory and somewhat flattering article on the attitude of the French soldier and the civil population of France towards the British Expeditionary Force. "It must not be forgotten," said the great journal of the metropolis, "that we are foreigners in France. Thus the spectacle of good-comradeship which we witness every day is altogether honourable to our French hosts." We must be allowed to say in our turn that never before has it been so easy to practise the military virtue of comradeship, for my countrymen are fully alive to the tact and perfect courtesy of the officers and men of King George. There is nothing to add to what has been known from the beginning about the relations of the soldiers of both countries. Even before the military prowess of Great Britain had been proved on the field of battle, her collaboration in this war was desired by our soldiers and civilians alike. We will always remember with emotion the fateful days of 2nd and 4th August—when we asked ourselves, "Will England fight with us?" Then, when that foolish Emperor of Germany talked of General French's "contemptible little Army," we had in France the presentiment that the British Army would be able to take its revenge. Recent events have confirmed the early promise of fine achievements; the battle of the Marne, the two battles of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, the Somme, and the Ancre have sealed the friendship of the two armies. Equally courageous and loyal, sharing the same ideas about the original aims of the war, enduring the same hardships, patiently bearing common misfortunes, and jubilant alike over common victory, the Tommy and the "Poilu" have become "chums" that will be difficult to separate. Two sorts of " agents de liaison " have helped in the good work—these are the French interpreters and the Staff officers of the French Mission to the British Army. The former, a goodly number, well chosen, well-bred, and well educated, have been, each in his own unit, sowers of the good seed of Franco-British friendship. The latter, a very small number (the result of careful sifting), having a consummate experience of war, most of them possessing honourable wounds, highly educated, some writers of reputation, known all over the world—such as the author of " Quand on se bat "—deserve our utmost thanks for their work with our Allies which they have carried out so brilliantly. The question of the relations of the British Army with the civil population is delicate in appearance only. As a matter of fact, a mutual goodwill from the very start has removed all suspicion of awkwardness and strain. The danger was obvious. In the records of history it is impossible to find a case of a country tolerating without a murmur the presence of a foreign army, even an allied army. This miracle has been rendered possible by the goodwill of the French, fully understood and recognised by our friends, and by the tact and common sense of the British. Far from assuming an attitude of conquerors, which would most certainly have estranged the sympathies of the patriotic inhabitants of North-West France, the British have rigorously respected our manners and customs. Our administrative organisation has been maintained. We have still our prefects and sub-prefects, our tribunals, justices of the peace, savings banks, postal services and schools, living in absolute independence in the midst of the British war machine. Better still, our own military organisation still exists. In every part of our country occupied by the British our Army has its representatives, such as workers on the roads, Army Service Corps units, and military police. All this crowd, civilians and soldiers alike, "carry on" without the smallest hitch or quarrel with our British guests. This occupation of our territory, carried out with so much understanding and discipline, could not possibly cause any discontent among our peasants. Over and above the protection of a rich district, the British Army has developed commercially a great number of ports and inland towns, has created industries hitherto unknown, increased the railways, put to the utmost use the resources of the country, and, in fact, has improved local commerce in every respect. Those who listen to the vile insinuations of the Germans and impute to the British the desire of remaining in France after the war, little understand the love of every British citizen for his native soil and his respect for our own independence. In order to divide our two friendly nations the Germans must find another trick. Some money, great sympathy, and, alas! many dead, are all that will be left of our friends in France after the war. [B] [B] From the last despatch of Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig: "I cannot close this Despatch without alluding to the happy relations which continue to exist between the Allied Armies and between our troops and the civil population in France and Belgium. The unfailing co-operation of our Allies, their splendid fighting qualities, and the kindness and goodwill universally displayed towards us have won the gratitude, as well as the respect and admiration, of all ranks of the British Armies." 10. THE PRINCE OF WALES. PART IV. IMPRESSIONS OF "NO MAN'S LAND." CHAPTER I. AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL. Yesterday I met the Prince of Wales in the lines. The Prince of Wales! What does that name not say to a Frenchman! It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. A small, soaking rain was falling over the dismal plateau where once stood so many smiling villages and fair woods, now ruined, whose names, immortalised by British valour, must live forever in history. It was close on nightfall. Through the sticky, heavy mud troops and wagons crawled towards the firing line. The men, with naked chests that defied the bitter cold, sweated furiously under the load of their equipment. Horses with huge, hairy feet, mounted by Australians like so many cowboys, struggled, foaming, to drag the huge lorries through the deep ruts of the roadway. Men from the pioneer battalions, directed by Engineers, worked with pick and shovel to drain away the water, to rebuild the fallen embankments, or to fill up boggy places. So while the guns roared, methodically and in silence the Army prepared the soil for Victory. Suddenly, into this microcosm of the war, came a body of horsemen, climbing towards us up the slopes of the plateau. At their head rode a lad whose features were so refined and so delicate that I could not choose but remark him. I have already met in the British battle lines several faces of this kind. They are almost feminine. They are like miniatures. My eyes—may I be forgiven—dwelt upon this boy with a complete lack of respect. He looked between 18 and 20 years old at the most. He had cocked his cap a trifle over his left eye, and his fair head was cropped close as rabbit's fur. "Did you recognise him?" someone asked me. "Who?" "The Prince of Wales." The Prince of Wales had gone by. It was only then that I noticed the British soldiers standing to attention and saluting the Prince with "eyes right" as he went along amongst them. The officers, too, saluted him with more ceremony than is usual. And he, as he rode slowly past, very charmingly acknowledged the salutes. I have learned only this morning that a little farther on, at the highest part of the plateau, the Prince left his horse and—this is a thing that he is very fond of doing—joined a relieving party for a piece of its journey. He returned in the evening to the simple quarters which are his. A Staff Captain at twenty-three, the Prince, heir to the Crown of the British Empire, is a pattern of the best soldierly qualities. He can only live happily among the soldiers, with whom he is prodigiously popular. It is said that he would have liked to do still more. One day he asked permission of Lord Kitchener, who was then Secretary of State for War, to perform the ordinary duties of an officer with his regiment, the Grenadier Guards. He proposed to lead his men in an advance. But Kitchener refused absolutely, and we can imagine the valiant argument which ensued between Prince and Sirdar—the one all youth and pluck, the other concerned alone with the welfare of the Empire. The Prince ultimately was obliged to yield to reasons of State. It was a soldier's first victory—over himself. CHAPTER II. A HERO AFTER THE MANNER OF ROLAND. December. General Vaughan Campbell, Brigadier of the —th Infantry Brigade, having done us the honour to pay us a visit, invited us, for this Thursday, to share his meal. The General has made his winter quarters in a country house, beside which there is a duck-pond. An English breakfast awaited us; that is to say, a hearty welcome, no ceremony, and food of the best. Outside in the park, under the trees that the hoar-frost loads, the brigade band favours us with the liveliest melodies from Bric-à-brac , The Girl in the Taxi and, above all, those Bing Boys , who seem fated to eclipse Tipperary itself in the general favour. It is three degrees below freezing-point. All round the band they have had to set a circle of braziers. I am on the General's left, a particular distinction which I purchase at the cost of sitting with my back against an open window, where I become the sport of a whole battlefield of draughts. But it is a cheap price for the company of General Vaughan Campbell. This is one of the most popular men in the British Army. He must surely be the youngest of its Generals, for he is not yet 38. This very month King George has still further swelled the number of his orders by giving him the Victoria Cross. Only 250 men in the whole Army can boast of this honour. The man's quality is evident. He is strength and good nature personified. With his rider's legs, his broad, short body, muscular yet supple, he is the picture of a sporting Englishman. The merry eye betrays the simple heart. The wind and the open-air life have tanned his face like a seaman's. He wears, moreover, an odd little cat's moustache, two red, bristling tufts, which makes one think of the traditional musketeers of Louis XIV. A little time ago I saw him run in a two-mile race against some of his younger Staff Officers. This General is a hero; a hero in that great style which glorifies every gallant action with the touch of chivalry. One evening in the trenches he performed a feat worthy of Roland. The story is well known. In September last General Vaughan Campbell was a Colonel in the Guards. His regiment held the first line, immediately next to the Germans. One evening the order came to attack at midnight. It fell to the Coldstreams to undertake this dangerous business. It was a sweet and tranquil autumn night. The men fought with sleep, harder to resist than any pain. But the hour for the attack had come. This Colonel has a knightly soul. He perceives that his men, far from their home, living for ever in holes, and mud and fog, sometimes lose their vision of the true meaning of this war. It is their souls that must be stirred. And the Colonel, who used to be the keenest Master of Fox Hounds in Shropshire, recollected that he had among his things a hunting-horn whose call was clearer than any cornet's. He got his men together, gave them the word to "go over," and then, jumping on to the parapet, blew "gone away" with the full strength of his lungs. As if in this fierce summons they heard the very voice of their own country, the Coldstreams, wild with delight, charged madly on the heels of this new Roland. The call of the horn sounded weirdly through the night above "No Man's Land." It is to these men like the bagpipes to the Highlander; a voice from the Homeland and the call of the Empire. Colonel Campbell is the first man in the enemy's trench. His cat's moustache has become a tiger's. Even with his horn he lays about him. With it he stuns the first Saxon he meets, to whose dazed eyes he seems like some spectre from another age. And two lines of trenches are taken. FORRARD AWAY! The Dream The Reality 11. A DRAWING IN "PUNCH" INSPIRED BY GENERAL CAMPBELL'S HEROIC ACT. Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of "Punch." All England has heard the tale. The Guards, whom the Colonel left but yesterday to become a General, have presented him with a silver hunting-horn, inscribed, in commemoration of his deed, with an account of it and this glorious motto: "Nulli Secundus." The King has rewarded his magnificent exploit with the rank of General. And the Empire has awarded him unhesitatingly that for which the bravest soldiers of this brave race rejoice to die—the Cross that bears the words "For Valour." A little time after the splendid action which I have recorded a young girl, whose name is not known, sent the following letter to General Campbell. This touching message alone would be enough to illustrate this Book of the Friendship of France and Britain. " Paris, "8th December, 1916. "I send you the thanks of a French girl for the gallant deed—the deed à la française —which you have performed. We do not know one another, perhaps we never shall, but in the sky there is many a meeting between the stars. Why should not souls on earth come sometimes, then, together? "General—Paladin, should I not say?—I knew your country very little. I thought that the Divine Pity and the Greatest Beauty were unknown to you; that through your fogs the light could never find its way. And then you put your hunting horn to your lips; you were inspired so beautifully to go to your encounter with Death, your head held high, the music of your homeland sounding your advance. "My ancestor fought at Fontenoy, and I can appreciate the refinements of chivalry. And so I beg you to receive my apologies. You have conquered much more than a horde out of Saxony. You have disclosed to France the fabric of your soul, and you know that my country values above all the courage that can laugh and the dazzling chivalry that meets Death, as we say, in white gloves. "And if, now and then, you are ever sad, think, I pray you, of the fair little twenty-year-old French girl whose ignorance you have enlightened, whom you have shown how to judge England. And if you have no love of your own, no woman's tender care to warm your heart with its genial kindliness, permit me to embrace you with all my soul. And smile, sometimes, to think that the daughter of an officer of France, the Land of Chivalry, is thinking of you. "'A Happy Christmas. A Glad New Year.' I wish you a great victory and a great love." "Copy of a letter sent to General John Vaughan Campbell by favour of Monsieur Tudesq. Will you have the very great kindness to bring this expression of my admiration to the General? Accept also my congratulations upon your truly heart-stirring narrative. "J. F." CHAPTER III. MIDNIGHT IN THE FRONT LINE. 7th November. "So you knew those people that have just gone by in the carriage, Lovel." "How should I know them?" "Then why did you let them past you?" "It's true, I wasn't strict enough. But they roared out such a G.H.Q. [C] at me that I didn't dare to stop them." [C] General Head Quarters. "Wave your lantern, Lovel. Here's another carriage." So chatted, during this night of 7th November, on the road to Bapaume, two of His Majesty's Tommies. They were two scrubby little Scotsmen. Each wore his tam-o'-shanter falling over one eye. The night was almost beautiful; the sky covered with fleecy clouds, among which, like a great liquid eye, the moon showed herself now and then. We were going to spend the night in the English lines. Very few sounds are to be heard. The farmers' dogs have long abandoned this unpeaceful country, and the crowing of the cocks, those earliest victims of every war, has even longer been stilled. Silence reigns. How is it, then, that this silence seems menacing? It only seems so. Stop a moment and listen. Do you not now hear in the darkness a host of little sounds? An invisible world is moving about us. Listen! Yes, there is the sound of many feet on the road—not the brisk tramp of the parade ground, but the steps of the poor souls who are fighting their way through the mud. It is as if ten thousand little wings were flapping. All lights are out. The long stream of motor-cars moves upon the road in perfect order. Midnight. Now the preparations for the advance are at their height. Now is the time when the reliefs come up, the blessed hour, so long expected by those who quit the trenches, by those who go into them so bravely met. In their English helmets, which look like basins upside-down, caked with mud—already—to the eyes, with their rifles shouldered, slung, or carried in the hand, but each one carefully protected by its canvas cover, smoking their pipes, their chests thrown forward against the weight of their bursting haversacks, steady of step and bright of eye, the Tommies go forward to relieve their friends. When they feel the need of a rest the men in khaki, quite regardless of the mud, throw themselves down on the sopping earth, and man, clothing, and soil become one. In this country of the dead you may hardly distinguish shadows from the objects which throw them. Every now and then a despatch rider passes us—day and night, it is all one to these links in the chain of communication—a motor-cyclist, crouched over his handle-bar, hands and nose frozen, eyes red, his nerves on edge, skirting the side of the road, and sometimes remaining there, stuck. Or perhaps it is a horseman, leading his exhausted beast by its bridle, but determined, though he kill his horse, to get his work done before morning. But now the horizon, black hitherto, lights up with flashes that seem to be lightning. These are followed by dull thuds. The British artillery has chosen this moment before the dawn to reawaken the Boche to the realisation of his own abominable existence. Shall we climb this tree for a better view? Up there we shall see marvellously. We grope our way upwards. The wind, which has risen and now blows strongly, rocks the great tree and us with it in the darkness. It is delightful. Think of all the brave fellows who climb up here at all times of the day and night, to sit for hours in constant peril of their lives! A stimulating thought! And what a fine seat for the fireworks! One doesn't miss a thing. See that blue light! And the red fire on the right! What's that glow—look!—over there? "An eighteen-inch," says somebody. He means that they have just fired one of the great eighteen-inch guns. It is, of course, an English gun. We continue our journey through the night, coming ever nearer to the firing line. Our guide knows every smallest path of this section like the palm of his hand—better, indeed, than his own London streets. Here, lately, he got his first wound. There—where that anti-aircraft gun is lurking—he saw his best friend fall. And this place is not safe even yet. All round us the guns, great and small, sing their chorus to the night. Was not that short thud, a moment ago, a 75? Odd, how things get mixed up nowadays! A 75 with the English! Hullo, there! Can you tell us what that was just now? And now we are amazed to see an immense light which, how I cannot tell, has suddenly flooded the whole sky with a red glare. Our guide, who has passed months on end in the trenches, tells us that he has never before seen this appearance. It seems like an Aurora borealis , pierced to the zenith by a perpendicular ray, like an L, of a still fiercer red. And now upon this weirdly-lit background rise thick spirals of vapour. And the picture is miles long. Mysterious, deadly beauty, that the bursting of the shrapnel seems to applaud! There is no mystery. A squadron of German war planes has crossed the first lines in the darkness and dropped incendiary bombs where it has supposed a store of munitions to be. The perpendicular beam—a stripe upon that red cloth—is the ray of a searchlight, probing the dark sky. This Aurora borealis —this Northern Dawn—is the work of man, and will soon be put to flight by the dawn of the coming day. "And what's that, Major?" one of us asks, pointing to a star. "One of the good God's aeroplanes," says the Englishman. CHAPTER IV. THROUGH THE MINE AREA. In Picardy, November. A nobleman, with blue eyes and the haughty carriage that tells of ancient blood, presented us to that diabolical young creature who is making such a stir in the world to-day, and will make a good deal more before she is done: Mademoiselle Crème de Menthe. Observe the "de." She is a noble of the 1916 creation. Nothing less than a Peer and a Staff Officer might fittingly act as Master of Ceremonies to a young person of such quality. We made our bow with a civility which bordered upon that terror which nightmare alone can inspire. Consider how it would be, some mild, foggy morning, to come plump upon a Diplodocus. The scene of this presentation was an old mansion, with courtyard and park, whose gates were made illustrious by the arms of the La Rochefoucaulds. This was our first experience as war correspondents with the British Army. Our account of to-day's adventures will be no less fantastic. Programme: A Journey to the Land of Mines. We have had rain. Moving in opposite directions, the two streams of the traffic plough up the road. Commissariat lorries, motor ambulances, artillery ammunition wagons, despatch riders, the motor-cars of the Staff, and then, in the middle of this mad torrent of traffic, some country gig, creeping along at a jog-trot. The roads are a river of mud. We wallow in it frantically; we drown in unsuspected lakes. We suffer the modern equivalent of the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah. At once we find ourselves being changed into clumsy statues of clay. It is not more cars that are needed to get forward, but those Venetian boats that glide along the canals before the strokes of a curved oar. One does get on, however. And here we are at Albert already. Ah! these little towns of Picardy! The German shells have no surprises left for them. Their houses gutted from roof to cellar, their churches that the guns have chiselled to new shapes, their farms that have neither roof nor wall, and seem, with their bare beams, like huge empty cages—these sorrows no longer count. Yesterday Albert was once again bombarded. What of it? The fronts of a few more houses have crumbled into dust. The great golden Virgin, who, 100 feet in the air, leans with crossed arms from her belfry over the ruined town, has fallen forwards at a rather dizzier angle! 12. A MINE CRATER. As in London or Paris, the police direct the traffic at the cross-ways and the corners of the lanes. The streets have been re-christened of late. One reads: "Oxford Street," "Cannon Street." We are here in the heart of the war zone. And in this strange country our little old French towns rub their eyes in wonder to find themselves, heretofore so insignificant, now in the very moment of their utter destruction, wakened to share the dignity of capitals . Still more miles of mud. We leave the road and, with the heavy gait of sewer-men, move through the fields. Far ahead, on the winding ridges, we see great white marks, like the letter "Y." They are the German trenches, dug in the solid chalk at the beginning of the offensive. It is as if someone had made chalk drawings on those slopes to amuse the aeroplanes. In front, following their lines, are walls of sand-bags, so high and so deep that they appear to be a citadel: the English trenches. It is a stiff climb. We hop from puddle to puddle like sparrows. Everywhere the earth is in heaps. Holes filled with water—shell-holes, you understand—have turned the whole place into a chessboard of sunken squares. Here, there and everywhere, sole lords of this "No Man's Land," stand the shells of the two-hundred-and-tens or the two-hundred-and-forties, like terminal gods, red painted. But the real surprise still awaits us. Here may I ask you to recall to your most particular remembrance the landscapes of the Moon as Wells and Jules Verne have pictured them for us. Or if chance has offered you the privilege of leaning over the lip of Etna or Vesuvius, summon now your best recollections of the experience. We are on the threshold of a chaos for whose description the tongue of man is poorly equipped. A plateau, according to the geographers, is a dome, flattened or rounded, in the direction of Heaven; these plateaux, as war constructs them, are gulfs that lead down towards hell. Over hundreds of yards between the opposing trenches surges a sea of vast funnels. One stands amazed before them as before those abysses which open at one's feet among the Alps. Here the destructive genius of man has nothing to learn from the dreadful wrath of Nature. It is raining. Bogs, where the grass is already sprouting between the yellow pools, lie in the low places, like those cold lakes that fill the tall craters of Auvergne. Here yawns an opening, propped with beams, and three-quarters covered with the continually sliding earth. A sap. There again stands a notice, posted too late: "Poison!—Danger!" Wreckage of every kind—rusty tins, heaps of cases bursting with rotten bags of powder and saltpetre, litter these strange craters. And what an amazing efflorescence of old iron, grenades and bits of shell! In this Land of Mines we find a symbol of the savage splendour of this war. All these carefully prepared horrors, all these apocalyptic monstrosities, for the conquest of an acre or two! One can understand why King George came here, as a wooden tablet records, to the edge of this fabulous, petrified tide race, to salute the victorious courage of the Empire's soldiers. Beast-like around us roar the guns. Lightnings flicker through the haze. A line of skeleton trees jags the horizon—Delville Wood. To the West vague clouds of smoke from camp fires, vague heaps of bricks. This is all that we can call Mametz and Montauban. A sausage balloon rises jerkily—over there, towards Maricourt. One cannot speak these names with a steady voice. They are the foretaste of Freedom. And it is here, in the Land of Mines, that the foundations of Victory have been laid. CHAPTER V. THE MENACE OF THE GOLDEN VIRGIN. I have now to tell of the reconquered ground, and I own that the description, which I cannot claim to have invented, more nearly than any other suggests the reality. Indeed, there are not in the French language, nor can there be in any other, for the imagination cannot conceive such things, any words that can give a just idea of so much wretchedness and desolation. So I have thought a score of times, while, during these last days, I have been making my way over the plateau which lies between the Ancre and the Somme, a quite narrow section of the battle front. What would be my difficulty had I to describe the land that the French have retaken! We had set out on our pilgrimage from Albert. "Albert! That's an old story—ancient history. Tell us about something else," say those who look for new sensations. Not so. We may not yet forget Albert, that ruined outpost of Picardy, for her sufferings are not ended. Within the last few days the Boches bombarded her from an immense distance. They only succeeded in knocking over ruins, since all is ruin at Albert, but "if one can't get thrushes one eats blackbirds," eh, friend Fritz? "Well, Mother So-and-So," said an old fellow to an old dame the other morning in a street in Amiens, "when do you think the folks will get back into Albert?" "Indeed, Father Such-and-Such, you know that as well as I do. When the Golden Virgin falls." For a superstition runs in this country that the war will be near its end when the Golden Virgin, who hangs suspended—by what miracle?—between Heaven and Earth, from the top of the belfry of Albert, shall fall to break in pieces upon the ground. But the trouble is that the Virgin "holds on." From Albert to Fricourt, going via Bécordel-Bécourt, the road is hardly 1-1/2 miles long. By this way one skirts in an almost straight line the South-western slopes of the plateau. A few steps beyond the German line that was taken on the 1st July, and we are in Fricourt. You will look a long time in the guide-books that were held in esteem before the war ere you will find the smallest mention of Fricourt. Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, Contalmaison and a dozen other villages that now can never be forgotten, did not exist for the tourist. He got on most happily without them. Well, to-day all these villages can be found on their own soil no more than in those guide-books. That, Fricourt! This grey blotch in front of the wood of the same name! That, the Public Square, that rectangle of tree-trunks! That? Yes, that is very surely Fricourt. All the villages are like that. Let us get on and you shall see for yourself. A short climb, but a stiff one, and we are in Mametz. You look about you and you see nothing at all. Believe me, I am not joking. The number of mounds and wooden crosses of every size that border the edges of the road tell us plainly enough at what a cost to both sides these ruined hamlets were captured. Another fight with the mud and we are in Montauban de Picardie. Montauban looks over all this plateau that lies between the Ancre and the Somme. In clear weather one can see everywhere around, and towards the North-west the houses of Bapaume are visible. To-day the clouds are too low and the rain too heavy for us to try to see anything at all. One can, moreover, look at nothing but the earth, for it is here that the story of recent events is most clearly to be read.

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