1 files changed, 7263 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/17978.txt b/17978.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08d741f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17978.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7263 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leaves from a Field Note-Book, by J. H. Morgan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Leaves from a Field Note-Book
+
+Author: J. H. Morgan
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2006 [EBook #17978]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
+
+BY
+
+J.H. MORGAN
+
+LATE HOME OFFICE COMMISSIONER WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
+
+
+     "And my delights were with the sons of men."
+
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+
+1916
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR C.F.N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.
+
+ADJUTANT-GENERAL TO THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book is an unofficial outcome of the writer's experiences during
+the five months he was attached to the General Headquarters Staff as
+Home Office Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force. His
+official duties during that period involved daily visits to the
+headquarters of almost every Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field,
+and took him on one or two occasions to the batteries and into the
+trenches. They necessarily involved a familiar and domestic acquaintance
+with the work of two of the great departments of the Staff at G.H.Q. So
+much of these experiences of the work of the Staff and of the life of
+the Army in the field as it appears discreet to record is here set down.
+The writer desires to express his acknowledgments to his friends, Major
+E.A. Wallinger, Major F.C.T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain W.A. Wallinger,
+for their kindness in reading the proofs of some one or more of the
+chapters in this book. Nor would his acknowledgments be complete
+without some word of thanks to that brilliant soldier, Colonel E.D.
+Swinton, D.S.O., with whom he was closely associated during the
+discharge of the official duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is the
+unofficial outcome. Most of these chapters originally appeared in the
+pages of the _Nineteenth Century and After_, under the title to which
+the book owes its name, and the writer desires to express his
+obligations to the Editor, Mr. Wray Skilbeck, for his kind permission to
+republish them. Similar acknowledgments are due to the Editor of
+_Blackwood's Magazine_ for permission to reprint the short story,
+"Stokes's Act," and to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_ in whose
+hospitable pages some of the shorter sketches appeared--sometimes
+anonymously.
+
+The reader will observe that many of these sketches appear in the form
+of what, to borrow a French term, is called the _conte_. The writer has
+adopted that form of literary expression as the most efficacious way of
+suppressing his own personality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of
+"Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether disproportionate and
+impertinent in view of the magnitude and poignancy of the great events
+amid which it was his privilege to live and move. Moreover, his own
+duties were neither spirited nor glorious. But the characters pourtrayed
+and the events narrated in these pages are true in substance and in
+fact. The writer has not had the will, even if he had had the power, to
+"improve" the occasions; the reality was too poignant for that.
+"Stokes's Act" and "The Coming of the Hun" are therefore "true"
+stories--using truth in the sense of veracity not value--and the facts
+came within the writer's own investigation. The investiture of fiction
+has been here adopted for the obvious reason that neither of the
+principal characters in these two stories would desire his name to be
+known. So, too, in the other sketches, although the characters are
+"real"--I can only hope that they will be half as real to the reader as
+they were and are to me--the names are assumed.
+
+It is my privilege to inscribe this little book to Lieut.-General Sir
+C.F.N. Macready, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., to whose staff I was attached and to
+whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality I owe a debt which no
+words can discharge.
+
+                                                             J. H. M.
+
+_January 1916._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I
+
+THE BASE
+                                                    PAGE
+  I. BOBS BAHADUR                                      3
+ II. AT THE BASE DEPOT                                11
+III. THE WILTSHIRES                                   17
+ IV. THE BASE                                         26
+  V. A COUNCIL OF INDIA                               36
+ VI. THE TROOP TRAIN                                  45
+
+
+II
+
+THE FRONT
+
+ VII. THE TWO RICHEBOURGS                             59
+VIII. IDOLS OF THE CAVE                               65
+  IX. STOKES'S ACT                                    73
+   X. THE FRONT                                       92
+  XI. AT G.H.Q.                                      103
+ XII. MORT POUR LA PATRIE                            119
+XIII. MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS                        128
+ XIV. THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS                        134
+
+
+III
+
+UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES
+
+   XV. A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE"                      143
+  XVI. PETER                                         154
+ XVII. THREE TRAVELLERS                              166
+XVIII. BARBARA                                       173
+  XIX. AN ARMY COUNCIL                               178
+   XX. THE FUGITIVES                                 189
+  XXI. A "DUG-OUT"                                   195
+ XXII. CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914                           202
+
+
+IV
+
+THE FRONT AGAIN
+
+ XXIII. THE COMING OF THE HUN                        209
+  XXIV. THE HILL                                     226
+   XXV. THE DAY'S WORK                               232
+  XXVI. FIAT JUSTITIA                                244
+ XXVII. HIGHER EDUCATION                             252
+XXVIII. THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS      259
+  XXIX. THE "FRONT" ONCE MORE                        270
+   XXX. HOME AGAIN                                   288
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE BASE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+BOBS BAHADUR
+
+
+It had gone eight bells on the S.S. _G----_. The decks had been
+washed down with the hosepipe and the men paraded for the morning's
+inspection. The O.C. had scanned them with a roving eye, till catching
+sight of an orderly two files from the left he had begged him, almost as
+a personal favour, to get his hair cut. To an untutored mind the
+orderly's hair was about one-eighth of an inch in length, but the O.C.
+was inflexible. He was a colonel in that smartest of all medical
+services, the I.M.S., whose members combine the extensive knowledge of
+the general practitioner with the peculiar secrets of the Army surgeon,
+and he was fastidious. Then he said "Dismiss," and they went their
+appointed ways. The Indian cooks were boiling _dhal_ and rice in the
+galley; the bakers were squatting on their haunches on the lower deck,
+making _chupattis_--they were screened against the inclemency of the
+weather by a tarpaulin--and they patted the leathery cakes with
+persuasive slaps as a dairymaid pats butter. Low-caste sweepers glided
+like shadows to and fro. Suddenly some one crossed the gangway and the
+sentry stiffened and presented arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper
+deck and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure with white moustaches and
+"imperial"; the eyes were of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad
+in a general's field-service uniform, and on his shoulder-straps were
+the insignia of a field-marshal. The colonel stared for a moment, then
+ran hastily down the ladder and saluted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Together they passed down the companion-ladder. At the foot of it they
+encountered a Bengali orderly, who made a profound obeisance.
+
+"Shiva Lal," said the O.C., "I ordered the portholes to be kept
+unfastened and the doors in the bulkheads left open. This morning I
+found them shut. Why was this?"
+
+"Sahib, at eight o'clock I found them open."
+
+"It was at eight o'clock," said the colonel sternly, "that I found them
+shut."
+
+The Bengali spread out his hands in deprecation. "If the sahib says so
+it must be so," he pleaded, adding with truly Oriental irrelevancy, "I
+am a poor man and have many children." It is as useless to argue with
+an Indian orderly as it is to try conclusions with a woman.
+
+"Let it not occur again," said the colonel shortly, and with an apology
+to his guest they passed on.
+
+They paused in front of a cabin. Over the door was the legend "Pathans,
+No. 1." The door was shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened the
+door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic features and bearded
+like the pard, stood up and saluted. The colonel made a mental note of
+the closed door; he looked at the porthole--it was also closed. The
+Pathan loves a good "fug," especially in a European winter, and the
+colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation. A kind of
+guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect
+politeness, had been going on for some days between him and the Pathans.
+The Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the atmosphere. At
+last he had met them halfway, or, to be precise, he had met them with a
+concession of three inches. He had ordered the ship's carpenter to fix a
+three-inch hook to the jamb and a staple to the door, the terms of the
+truce being that the door should be kept three inches ajar. And now it
+was shut. "Why is this?" he expostulated. For answer they pointed to the
+hook. "Sahib, the hook will not fasten!"
+
+The colonel examined it; it was upside down. The contumacious Pathans
+had quietly reversed the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was
+now useless without being ornamental. With bland ingenuous faces they
+stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent
+craftsmanship. The Field-Marshal smiled--he knew the Pathan of old; the
+colonel mentally registered a black mark against the delinquents.
+
+"Whence come you?" said the Field-Marshal.
+
+"From Tirah, Sahib."
+
+"Ah! we have had some little trouble with your folk at Tirah. But all
+that is now past. Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be well with
+you."
+
+"Ah! Sahib, but I am sorely troubled in my mind."
+
+"And wherefore?"
+
+"My aged father writes that a pig of a thief hath taken our cattle and
+abducted our women-folk. I would fain have leave to go on furlough and
+lie in a nullah at Tirah with my rifle and wait for him. Then would I
+return to France."
+
+"Patience! That can wait. How like you the War?"
+
+"_Burra Achha Tamasha_,[1] Sahib. But we like not their big guns. We
+would fain come at them with the bayonet. Why are we kept back in the
+trenches, Sahib?"
+
+"Peace! It shall come in good time."
+
+They passed into another cabin reserved for native officers. A tall Sikh
+rose to a half-sitting posture and saluted.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"H---- Sing, Sahib."
+
+"There was a H---- Sing with me in '78," said the Field-Marshal
+meditatively. "With the Kuram Field Force. He was my orderly. He served
+me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted to subadar."
+
+The aquiline features of the Sikh relaxed, his eyes of lustrous jet
+gleamed. "Even so, Sahib, he was my father."
+
+"Good! he was a man. Be worthy of him. And you too are a subadar?"
+
+"Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King's salt these twelve years."
+
+"That is well. Have you children?"
+
+"Yea, Sahib, God has been very good."
+
+"And your lady mother, is she alive?"
+
+"The Lord be praised, she liveth."
+
+"And how is your 'family'?"
+
+"She is well, Sahib."
+
+"And how like you this War?"
+
+"Greatly, Sahib. The _Goora-log_[2] and ourselves fight like brothers
+side by side. But we would fain see the fine weather. Then there will be
+some _muzza_[3] in it."
+
+The Field-Marshal smiled and passed on.
+
+They entered the great ward in the main hold of the ship. Here were
+avenues of swinging cots, in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as
+snow, and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save where some
+were sitting up--the Sikhs binding their hair as they fingered the
+_kangha_ and the _chakar_, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring,
+which are of the five symbols of their freemasonry. The Field-Marshal
+stopped to talk to a big _sowar_. As he did so the men in their cots
+raised their heads and a sudden whisper ran round the ward. Dogras,
+Rajputs, Jats, Baluchis, Garhwalis clutched at the little pulleys over
+their cots, pulled themselves up with painful efforts, and saluted. In a
+distant corner a Mahratta from the aboriginal plains of the Deccan, his
+features dark almost to blackness, looked on uncomprehendingly; Ghurkhas
+stared in silence, their broad Mongolian faces betraying little of the
+agitation that held them in its spell. From the rest there arose such a
+conflict of tongues as has not been heard since the Day of Pentecost.
+From bed to bed passed the magic words, "It is he." Every man uttered a
+benediction. Many wept tears of joy. A single thought seemed to animate
+them, and they voiced it in many tongues.
+
+"Ah, now we shall smite the _German-log_ exceedingly. We shall fight
+even as tigers, for Jarj Panjam.[4] The great Sahib has come to lead us
+in the field. Praised be his exalted name."
+
+The Field-Marshal's eyes shone.
+
+"No, no," he said, "my time is finished. I am too old."
+
+"Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on painfully to his pulley, "the
+body may be old but the brain is young."
+
+The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not. He suddenly turned on
+his heel and rushed up the companion-ladder. When halfway up he
+remembered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears were streaming
+down his face.
+
+"Sir," he said, in a voice the deliberate sternness of which but ill
+concealed an overmastering emotion, "your hospital arrangements are
+excellent. I have seen none better. I congratulate you. Good-day." The
+next moment he was gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five days later the colonel was standing on the upper deck; he gripped
+the handrail tightly and looked across the harbour basin. Overhead the
+Red Cross ensign was at half-mast, and at half-mast hung the Union Jack
+at the stern. And so it was with every ship in port. A great silence lay
+upon the harbour; even the hydraulic cranes were still, and the winches
+of the trawlers had ceased their screaming. Not a sound was to be heard
+save the shrill poignant cry of the gulls and the hissing of an exhaust
+pipe. As the colonel looked across the still waters of the harbour basin
+he saw a bier, covered with a Union Jack, being slowly carried across
+the gangway of the leave-boat; a little group of officers followed it.
+In a few moments the leave-boat, after a premonitory blast from the
+siren which woke the sleeping echoes among the cliffs, cast off her
+moorings and slowly gathered way. Soon she had cleared the harbour mouth
+and was out upon the open sea. The colonel watched her with straining
+eyes till she sank beneath the horizon. Then he turned and went
+below.[5]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A jolly fine show.
+
+[2] The English soldiers.
+
+[3] Spice.
+
+[4] King George the Fifth.
+
+[5] The writer can vouch for the truth of this narrative. He owes his
+knowledge of what passed to the hospitality on board of his friend the
+O.C. the Indian hospital ship in question.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+AT THE BASE DEPOT
+
+     Any enunciation by officers responsible for training of principles
+     other than those contained in this Manual or any practice of
+     methods not based on those principles is forbidden.--_Infantry
+     Training Manual._
+
+
+The officers in charge of details at No. 19 Infantry Base Depot had made
+their morning inspections of the lines. They had seen that blankets were
+folded and tent flies rolled up, had glanced at rifles, and had
+inspected the men's kits with the pensive air of an intending purchaser.
+Having done which, they proceeded to take an unsympathetic farewell of
+the orderly officer whom they found in the orderly room engaged in
+reading character by handwriting with the aid of the office stamp.
+
+"I never knew there was so much individuality in the British Army," the
+orderly officer dolefully exclaimed as he contemplated a pile of letters
+waiting to be franked and betraying marked originality in their
+penmanship.
+
+"You're too fond of opening other people's letters," the subaltern
+remarked pleasantly. "It's a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go
+home you'll never be able to resist it. You'll be unfit for decent
+society."
+
+"Go away, War Baby," retorted the orderly officer, as he turned aside
+from the subaltern, who has a beautiful pink and white complexion, and
+was at Rugby rather less than a year ago.
+
+The War Baby smiled wearily. "Let's go and see the men at drill," he
+remarked. "We've got a corporal here who's A1 at instruction." As we
+passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly across the small of
+the butt of his rifle, and, seeing the Major behind us, brought the
+rifle to the present.
+
+We came out on a field sprinkled with little groups of men in charge of
+their N.C.O.'s. They were the "details." These were drafts for the
+Front, and every regiment of the Division had sent a deputation. Two or
+three hundred yards away a platoon was marching with a short quick trot,
+carrying their rifles at the trail, and I knew them for Light Infantry,
+for such are their prerogatives. Concerning Light Infantry much might be
+written that is not to be found in the regimental records. As, for
+example, the reason why the whole Army shouts "H.L.I." whenever the ball
+is kicked into touch; also why the Oxford L.I. always put out their
+tongues when they meet the Durhams. Some day some one will write the
+legendary history of the British Army, its myth, custom, and folklore,
+and will explain how the Welsh Fusiliers got their black "flash" (with a
+digression on the natural history of antimacassars), why the 7th Hussars
+are called the "White Shirts," why the old 95th will despitefully use
+you if you cry, "Who stole the grog?" and what happens on Albuera day in
+the mess of the Die Hards. But that is by the way.
+
+The drafts at No. 19, having done a route march the day before, had been
+turned out this morning to do a little musketry drill by way of keeping
+them fit. A platoon lay flat on their stomachs in the long grass, the
+burnished nails on the soles of their boots twinkling in the sun like
+miniature heliographs. From all quarters of the field sharp words of
+command rang out like pistol shots. "Three hundred. Five rounds. Fire."
+As the men obeyed the sergeant's word of command, the air resounded with
+the clicking of bolts like a chorus of grasshoppers. We pursued a
+section of the Royal Fusiliers in command of a corporal until he halted
+his men for bayonet exercise. He drew them up in two ranks facing each
+other, and began very deliberately with an allocution on the art of the
+bayonet.
+
+"There ain't much drill about the bayonet," he said encouragingly. "What
+you've got to do is to get the other fellow, and I don't care how you
+get 'im as long as you knock 'im out of time. On guard!"
+
+The men in each rank brought the butts of their rifles on to their right
+hips and pointed with their left feet forward at the breasts of the men
+opposite. "Rest!" The rifles were brought to earth between twelve pairs
+of feet. "Point! Withdraw! On guard!" They pointed, withdrew, and were
+on guard again with the precision of piston-rods.
+
+"Now watch me, for your life may depend upon it," and the corporal
+proceeded to give them the low parry which is useful when you are taking
+trenches and find a _chevaux-de-frise_ of the enemy's bayonets
+confronting you. Each rank knocked an imaginary bayonet aside and
+pointed at invisible feet. The high parry followed. So far the men had
+been merely nodding at each other across a space of some twelve yards,
+and it was hot work and tedious. The sweat ran down their faces, which
+glistened in the sun. "Now I'm going to give you the butt exercises";
+they brightened visibly.
+
+"I am pointing--so!--and 'ave been parried. I bring the butt round on
+'is shoulder, using my weight on it. I bring my left leg behind 'is left
+leg. I throw 'im over. Then I give the beggar what for. So!" The words
+were hardly out of his mouth before he had thrown himself upon the
+nearest private and laid him prostrate. The others smiled faintly as No.
+98678 picked himself up and nonchalantly returned to his old position as
+if this were a banal compliment. "Now then. First butt exercise." One
+rank advanced upon the other, and the two ranks were locked in a close
+embrace. They remained thus with muscles strung like bowstrings,
+immobile as a group of statuary.
+
+"That'll do. Now I'll give you the second butt exercise. You bring the
+butt round on 'is jaw--so!--and then kick 'im in the guts with your
+knee." Perhaps the section, which stood like a wall of masonry, looked
+surprised; more probably the surprise was mine. But the corporal
+explained. "Don't think you're Tottenham Hotspur in the Cup Final. Never
+mind giving 'im a foul. You've got to 'urt 'im or 'e'll 'urt you. Kick
+'im anywhere with your knees or your feet. Your ammunition boots will
+make 'im feel it. No!"--he turned to a young private whose left hand was
+grasping his rifle high up between the fore-sight and the
+indicator--"You mustn't do that. Always get your 'and between the
+back-sight and the breech. So! The back-sight will protect your fingers
+from being cut by the other fellow. Now the third butt exercise."
+
+As we turned away the Major thoughtfully remarked to me, "There isn't
+much of that in the Infantry Manual. But the corporal knows his job.
+When you're in a scrap you haven't time to think about the rules of the
+game; the automatic movements come all right, but in a clinch you've got
+to fight like a cat with tooth and claw, use your boots, your knee, or
+anything that comes handy. Perhaps that's why your lithe little Cockney
+is such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the Hun is a hefty beggar,
+and he isn't hampered by any ideas of playing the game, but he's as
+mechanical as a vacuum brake, and he's no good in a scrap."
+
+We returned to the orderly room. The orderly officer had a pile of
+letters on his right impressed with a red triangle, and contemplated the
+completion of his labours with gloomy satisfaction. "But it's very
+interesting--such a revelation of the emotions of battle and all that,"
+I incautiously remarked. "Oh yes, very revealing," he yawned. "Look at
+that"; and he held out a letter. It ran:
+
+
+     DEAR MOTHER--I'm reported fit for duty and am going back
+     to the Front with the new drafts. I forgot to tell you we were in a
+     bit of a scrap before I came here. We outed a lot of Huns. How is
+     old Alf?--
+
+     Your loving son,                                     JIM.
+
+
+The "bit of a scrap" was the battle of Neuve Chapelle. The British
+soldier is an artist with the bayonet. But he is no great man with the
+pen. Which is as it should be.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE WILTSHIRES
+
+
+"You talk to him, sir. He zeed a lot though he be kind o' mazed like
+now; he be mortal bad, I do think. But such a cheerful chap he be. I
+mind he used to say to us in the trenches: 'It bain't no use grousing.
+What mun be, mun be.' Terrible strong he were, too. One of our officers
+wur hit in front of the parapet and we coulden get 'n in nohow--'twere
+too hot; and Hunt, he unrolled his puttees and made a girt rope of 'em
+and threw 'em over the parapet and draw'd en in. Ah! that a did."
+
+It was in one of the surgical tents of "No. 6 General" at the base. The
+middle of the ward was illuminated by an oil-lamp, shaped like an
+hour-glass, which shed a circle of yellow radiance upon the faces of the
+nurse and the orderly officer, as they stood examining a case-sheet by
+the light of its rays. Beyond the penumbra were rows of white beds, and
+in the farthest corner lay the subject of our discourse. "Can I talk to
+him?" I said to the nurse. "Yes, if you don't stay too long," she
+replied briskly, "and don't question him too much. He's in a bad way,
+his wounds are very septic."
+
+He nodded to me as I approached. At the head of the bed hung a
+case-sheet and temperature-chart, and I saw at a glance the
+superscription--
+
+
+     Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. ---- Wiltshires.
+
+
+I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply upwards on the chart.
+
+"So you're a Wiltshireman?" I said. "So am I." And I held out my hand.
+He drew his own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in an iron
+grip.
+
+"What might be your parts, sir?"
+
+"W---- B----."
+
+His eyes lighted up with pleasure. "Why, zur, it be nex' parish; I come
+from B----. I be main pleased to zee ye, zur."
+
+"The pleasure is mine," I said. "When did you join?"
+
+"I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist."
+
+"You have been out a long time, then?"
+
+"Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I han't seen B---- since. I
+mind how parson, 'e came to me and axed, 'What! bist gwine to fight for
+King and Country, Jarge?' And I zed, 'Yes, sur, that I be--for King and
+Country and ould Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two Gloster
+men any day though they do call us 'Moon-rakers.' Not but what the
+Glosters ain't very good fellers," he added indulgently. "Parson, he be
+mortal good to I; 'e gied I his blessing and 'e write and give I all the
+news of the parish. He warnt much of a preacher though a did say 'Dearly
+beloved' in church in a very taking way as though he were a-courting."
+
+"What was I a-doin', zur? Oh, I wur with Varmer Twine, head labr'er I
+was. Strong? Oh yes, zur, pretty fair. I mind I could throw a zack o'
+vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy o' vourteen. Why! I wur stronger
+then than I be now. 'Twas India that done me."
+
+"Is it a large farm?" I asked, seeking to beguile him with homely
+thoughts.
+
+"Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to do, and I could turn me
+hands to most things, though I do say it. There weren't a man in the
+parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a hackle on a rick, though I
+do say it. And I could drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were.
+The soil be stiff clay, as ye knows, zur. This Vlemish clay be very
+loike it. Lord, what a mint o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to
+be sure. And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes."
+
+"Are your parents alive?" I asked.
+
+"No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom come. Poor old feyther," he said
+after a pause. "I mind 'un now in his white smock all plaited in vront
+and mother in her cotton bonnet--you never zee 'em in Wiltshire now.
+They brought us all up on nine shillin' a week--ten on us we was."
+
+"I suppose you sometimes wish you were back in Wiltshire now?" I said.
+
+"Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. "It'll be about over with lambing
+season, now," he added reflectively. "Many's the tiddling lamb I've
+a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the may'll soon be out in
+blossom. And the childern makin' daisy-chains."
+
+"Yes," I said. "And think of the woods--the bluebells and anemones! You
+remember Folly Wood?"
+
+He smiled. "Ah, that I do: I mind digging out an old vixen up there,
+when 'er 'ad gone to earth, and the 'ounds with their tails up
+a-hollering like music. The Badminton was out that day. I were allus
+very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be squire's keeper there. Many a
+toime we childern went moochin' in thuck wood--nutting and bird-nesting.
+Though I never did hold wi' taking more'n one egg out of a nest, and I
+allus did wet my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's nest. They
+do say as the little bird 'ull never go back if ye doant."
+
+His mind went roaming among childhood's memories and his eyes took on a
+dreaming look.
+
+"Mother, she were a good woman--no better woman in the parish, parson
+did say. She taught us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in
+heaven'--I often used to think on it at night in the trenches. Them
+nights--they do make you think a lot. It be mortal queer up there--you
+veels as if you were on the edge of the world. I used to look up at the
+sky and mind me o' them words in the Bible, 'When I conzider the
+heavens, the work o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast made,
+what is man that Thou art mindful of him?' One do feel oncommon small in
+them trenches at night."
+
+"I suppose you've had a hot time up there?"
+
+"Ah that I have. And I zeed some bad things."
+
+"Bad?"
+
+"Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur dree weeks come Monday.[6]
+We wur in an advance near Wypers--'bout as far as 'tis from our village
+to Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a house. We knowed 'twould be
+hot work, and Jacob Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e zed,
+'if I be took write to my wife and tell 'er it be the Lard's will and
+she be not to grieve.' And I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the same
+for I.' Our Officer, Capt'n S---- T----, d'you know 'en, sir? No? 'E com
+from Devizes way, he wur a grand man, never thinking of hisself but only
+of us humble chaps--he said, 'Now for it, lads,' and we advances in
+'stended order. We wur several yards apart, just loike we was when a
+section of us recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust jined
+the Army an' sergeant made us drill with skipping-ropes a-stretched out
+so as to get the spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that there
+house--you know how they sputters. It cut down us poor chaps loike a
+reaper. Jacob Scaplehorn wur nex' me and I 'eerd 'un say 'O Christ
+Jesus' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'e never said no more. 'E wur a
+good man, wur Scaplehorn"--he added musingly--"and 'e did good things.
+And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs as if they did'n b'long
+to 'em. I sort o' saw all that wi'out seeing it, in a manner o' spaking;
+'twere only arterwards it did come back to me. There warn't no time to
+think. And by the toime we got to thic house there were only 'bout
+vifteen on us left. We had to scrouge our way in through the buttry
+winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside, sort o' scuffling; 'twere the
+Germans makin' for the cellar. And our Capt'n posted some on us at top
+of cellar steps and led the rest on us up the stairs to a kind o' tallet
+where thuck machine-gun was. And what d'ye think we found, sir?" he
+said, raising himself on his elbow.
+
+"What?"
+
+"There was a poor girl there--half daft she wur--wi' nothing on but a
+man's overcoat. And she rushed out avore us on the landing and began
+hammering with her hands against a bedroom door and it wur locked. We
+smashed 'en in wi' our rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we found a poor
+woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast all bloody an' her
+clothes torn. I could'n mak' out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told
+us as the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used our field-dressings and
+tried to make the poor soul comfortable and Capt'n 'e sent a volunteer
+back for stretcher-bearers."
+
+"And what about the Germans?" I asked.
+
+"Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says, 'Now, men, we're going to
+reckon with those devils down below.' And we went downstairs and he
+stood at top of cellar-steps, 'twere mortal dark, an' says, 'Come on up
+out o' that there.' And they never answered a word, but we could 'ear
+'em breathing hard. We did'n know how many there were and the cellar
+steps were main narrow, as narrow as th' opening in that tent over
+there. So Capt'n 'e says, 'Fetch me some straw, Hunt.' 'Twere a kind o'
+farmhouse and I went out into the backside and vetched some. And Capt'n
+and us put a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more vurther
+down, using our rifles like pitchforks and then 'e blew on his tinder
+and set it alight. 'Stand back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'em
+with the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no manner o' use shooting; 'twere too close
+in there and our bullets might ha' ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'em
+a-coughing. There wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there wur we
+a-waiting at top of them stairs for 'em to come up like rats out of a
+hole. And two on 'em made a rush for it and we caught 'em just like's we
+was terriers by an oat-rick; we had to be main quick. 'Twere like
+pitching hay. And then three more, and then more. And none on us uttered
+a word.
+
+"An' when it wur done and we had claned our bay'nets in the straw,
+Capt'n 'e said, 'Men, you ha' done your work as you ought to ha' done.'"
+
+He paused for a moment. "They be bad fellows," he mused. "O Christ! they
+be rotten bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good 'ull come to men
+what abuses wimmen and childern. But I'm afeard they be nation
+strong--there be so many on 'em."
+
+His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the telling of it had been
+too much for him. Beads of perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it
+was time for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind away from the
+contemplation of these tragic things.
+
+"Are you married?" I asked. The eyes brightened in the flushed face.
+"Yes, that I be, and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap."
+
+"And what are you going to make of him?"
+
+"I'm gwine to bring un up to be a soldjer," he said solemnly. "To fight
+them Germans," he added. He saw the great War in an endless perspective
+of time; for him it had no end. "You will soon be home in Wiltshire
+again," I said encouragingly. He mused. "Reckon the Sweet Williams 'ull
+be out in the garden now; they do smell oncommon sweet. And
+mother-o'-thousands on the wall. Oh-h-h." A spasm of pain contracted his
+face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw my time was up. "My dear
+fellow," I said lamely, "I fear you are in great pain."
+
+"Ah!" he said, "but it wur worth it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day I called to have news of him. The bed was empty. He was
+dead.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] This story is here given as nearly as possible in the exact words of
+the narrator.--J.H.M.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE BASE
+
+
+If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart.
+For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the
+systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of
+its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To
+and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses,
+supplies, and ordnance.
+
+The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage.
+If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and
+understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position
+on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the
+harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at
+their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the _patois_ of the
+littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the
+shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the Military Police are on
+point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a
+trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an
+A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for
+the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their
+moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships
+unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile
+up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless
+concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here
+are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's
+brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate
+palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of
+ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate
+supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board
+ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond
+the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the
+grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two
+amphibious petty officers darning their socks.
+
+In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps
+officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables,
+and indents, what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his
+train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more
+stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is
+_litera scripta manet_--which has been explained by an A.S.C. sergeant,
+instructing a class of potential officers, as meaning "Never do anything
+without a written order, but, whatever you do, never write one." For an
+A.S.C. court of inquiry has as impassioned a preference for written over
+oral evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that if your way-bill
+testifies:
+
+
+     Truck No.        Contents
+      19414          Jam 36 x 50
+
+
+and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot of jam is missing on
+arrival at rail-head, then, though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your
+labels undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Officer unless you
+can produce that pot.
+
+For the feeding of the Army is a delicate business and complicated. It
+is not enough to secure that there be sufficient "caloric units" in the
+men's rations; there are questions of taste. The Brahmin will not touch
+beef; the Mahomedan turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vegetarian;
+the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the goat. And every Indian must have his
+ginger, garlic, red chilli, and turmeric, and his chupattis of
+unleavened bread. One such warehouse we entered and beheld with
+stupefaction mountainous boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, rice,
+dried apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. Storekeepers in turbans stood
+round us, who, being asked whether it was well with the Indian and his
+food, answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians, "Yea, the
+exalted Government hath done great things and praised be its name." To
+which we replied "Victory to the Holy Ganges water." Their lustrous eyes
+beamed at the salutation.
+
+Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies manna in the wilderness, and
+like the manna of the Israelites it has never been known to fail. It is
+of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in the words of the
+prophet, "He hath filled my belly with his delicates." And his caravans
+cover the face of the earth. You meet them everywhere, each Supply
+Column a self-contained unit like a fleet. It has its O.C., its cooks,
+its seventy-two motor lorries, with three men to each, and its "mobiles"
+or travelling workshops with dynamo, lathe, drilling machine, and a crew
+of skilled artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is put out
+of action. I take off my hat to those handy-men; many times have they
+helped me out of a tight place and performed delicate operations on the
+internal organs of my military car in the inhospitable night. It is a
+brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out
+between the poplars on the perilously arched _pave_ of the long sinuous
+roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and
+every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the
+tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder
+to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it.
+It is his caravan. Many a time, on long and lonely journeys from the
+Base to the Front, have I been cheered to find a Supply Column drawn up
+on the roadside in a wooded valley, on a bare undulating down, or in a
+chalk quarry, while the men were making tea over a blue wood fire. If
+you love a gipsy life join the A.S.C.
+
+Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. headquarters at the Base are
+some twenty military hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses,
+and railway waiting-rooms. For the Base is the great Clearing House for
+the sick and wounded, and its register of patients is a kind of
+barometer of the state of affairs at the Front. When that register sinks
+very low, it means that the atmospheric conditions at the Front are
+getting stormy, and that an order has come down to evacuate and prepare
+four thousand beds. Then you watch the newspapers, for you know
+something is going to happen up there. And in those same hospitals men
+are working night and day; the bacteriologists studying "smears" under
+microscopes, while the surgeons are classifying, operating, "dressing,"
+marking temperature-charts, and annotating case-sheets. And in every
+hospital there is a faint mysterious incense, compounded not
+disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised catgut, which intensifies
+the dim religious atmosphere of the shaded wards. If G.H.Q. is the
+greatest of military academies, the Base hospitals are indubitably the
+wisest of medical schools. Never have the sciences of bacteriology and
+surgery been studied with such devotion as under these urgent clinical
+impulses. Here are men of European reputation who have left their
+laboratories and consulting-rooms at home to wage a never-ending
+scientific contest with death and corruption. They have slain
+"frostbite" with lanoline, turpentine, and a change of socks; they have
+fought septic wounds with chloride of sodium and the ministries of
+unlimited oxygen; they have defied "shock" after amputation by
+"blocking" the nerves of the limb by spinal injection, as a signalman
+blocks traffic. They have called in Nature to the aid of science and
+have summoned the oxygen of the air and the lymph of the body to the
+self-help of wounds.
+
+High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp. Here the O.C. has turned
+what was a swamp last December into a Garden City, draining, planting,
+building, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, disinfectors, laundries,
+and shower-baths, constructing turf incinerators and laying down
+pavements of brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass sown, and
+shrubs and trees put up--all this with the labour of the convalescents.
+There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose,
+for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or
+neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's
+reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an
+afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained
+community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two
+neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and
+cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache and
+temperature he is segregated there, preparatory to being sent down to
+No. 14 Stationary to have his spinal fluid examined by the
+bacteriologists. Here, in fact, the man and his kit, instead of being
+thrown on the scrap-heap, are renewed and made whole, restored in mind,
+body, and estate, his clothes disinfected and mended, the "snipers"
+treated to a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced.
+
+For true it is that at the Base they study loving-kindness, and
+chaplains and doctors and nurses are busy with delicate ministries
+seeking to cure, to assuage, and to console. Alas! on what tragic
+errands do so many come and go; parents like Joseph and Mary seeking
+their child, and wives their husbands, in hope, in fear, in joy, in
+anguish, too often finding that the bright spirit has returned to God
+Who gave it, and that nothing is left but to follow him behind the bier
+draped with the Union Jack to the little cemetery on the hill.... But
+for one that is buried here a thousand lie where they fell. Those
+stricken fields of Flanders! nevermore will they be for us the scene of
+an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of
+prayer. I well remember--I can never forget--a journey I made in the
+company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between
+Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in
+the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and
+between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little
+tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden
+cross. By each cross was a soldier's kepi, and sometimes a coat,
+bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as
+we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind us
+muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of
+the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth
+will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by
+share or sickle. They are holy ground.
+
+So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead
+lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them
+for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in
+August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose
+ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram,
+they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of
+exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the
+drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a
+friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price--youth,
+health, life--too high to pay for the country of their birth and their
+devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet
+her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was
+guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping
+cinque-foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation
+of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw
+an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon
+was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing
+from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively
+protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured
+lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A
+troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south,
+their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no
+lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with
+pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and diastole of the Base.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A COUNCIL OF INDIA
+
+
+"And I said, 'Nay, I who have eaten the King's salt cannot do this
+thing.' And the _German-log_ said to me, 'But we will give you both
+money and land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this thing, and
+bring sorrow and shame upon my people?'"
+
+It was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his words were exceeding clear
+as Holy Writ.
+
+"And what did they do then?"
+
+"They took my _chupattis_, sahib, and offered me of their bread in
+return. But I said, 'Nay, I am a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they
+said thrice unto me, 'We will give you money and land.' And I thrice
+said, 'Nay.' Then said they, 'Thou art a fool. Go to, but if thou comest
+against us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my comrades."
+
+"Yea, to me also they said these things." It was a jemindar of the 129th
+who spoke. "Yes, a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, '_Ham dost
+hein_--_Hamari pas ao_--_Ham tum Ko Nahn Marenge_.'" Which being
+translated is, "We are friends, come to us, we won't kill you."
+
+"And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this war?"
+
+The Woordie-Major replied: "Sahib, never was there a war like this war,
+since the world began. No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought
+Pandu."
+
+Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall Sikh with his beard
+curled like the ancient Assyrians. He had shown me the five symbols of
+the Sikh freemasonry--nay, he had taken the _kangha_ out of his hair and
+shown me the two little knives, also the hair-ring and the bracelet, and
+had unwound the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we were
+friends. "All wars are but _shikkar_ to this war, sahib." "Shikkar?"
+"Yea, even as a tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great war."
+
+"Nay, this is a fine war--a hell of a fine war." The speaker was an
+Afridi from Tirah, whose strongly marked aquiline features reminded me
+of nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in Whitechapel. He lacks every
+virtue except courage, and his one regret is that he has missed the
+family blood-feud. There have been great doings in his family on the
+frontier in his absence--two abductions and one homicide. "If I had not
+come home," his brother has written reproachfully to him from Tirah,
+"things had gone ill with us. But never mind about all this now. Do your
+duty well." And even so has he done.
+
+"And how like you this war?"
+
+"Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of a fine war, but for the great guns."
+
+"And wherefore?"
+
+"Because we cannot come nigh unto them. But I, I have slain many men."
+
+"And what is your village?" asks my friend, Major D----, of the I.M.S.
+
+"Chorah."
+
+"Why, I was there in the Tirah campaign."
+
+"Even so, sahib."
+
+The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at our symposium, their broad
+Mongolian faces inscrutable. But Shiva Lal, a Brahmin surgeon, who all
+this while has been eager to speak, for he is a pundit, and loves the
+sound of his own voice, here thrust forward his quaint countenance,
+whose walrus-like moustache conceals a row of teeth projecting like the
+spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs his hands and thus he speaks
+in English: "Sahib, I had charge of a German sahib--wounded. And I said
+unto him, 'How is it that you, who are Christians, treat the Tommies
+so? We' (Major D---- looks at me with the hint of a twinkle in his
+eye--for has he not told me at mess of that surprising change in the
+Indian vernacular whereby their speech is no longer of "Goora-log" and
+"Sahib-log" but of "We," which fraternal pronoun is significant of
+much)--'we shave you and feed you, we wash you and dress your wounds,
+even as one of ourselves, and you kill our wounded Tommies, yea, and do
+these things and worse even unto women. Are you not Christians? We'
+(there is a return to old habits of speech)--'we are only Indians, but I
+have read in your Bible that if one smite on the one cheek'"--here Shiva
+Lal, who has now what he loves most in the world, an audience, and is
+easily histrionic, smites his face mightily on the right side--"'one
+should turn to him the other. Why is this?'"
+
+"And what said the German officer, Shiva Lal?"
+
+"Nay, sahib, he said nothing." We also say nothing. For Shiva Lal needs
+but little encouragement to talk from sunset to cock-crow. Perhaps the
+unfortunate German officer divined as much. But the spell of Shiva Lal's
+eloquence is rudely broken by Major D----, who takes me by the arm to go
+elsewhere. And the little group squatting on their haunches at their
+mid-day meal cease listening and dip their _chupattis_ in the aromatic
+_dhal_, in that slow, ruminant, ritualistic way in which the Indian
+always eats his food.
+
+"_Ram, Ram! Tumhi kothun alle?_" said my friend Smith, turning aside to
+a lonely figure on my right. A cry of joy escapes a dark-featured
+Mahratta who has been looking mournfully on from his bed of pain,
+comprehending nothing of these dialogues. We have, indeed, been talking
+in every language except Mahrathi. And he, poor soul, has lost both
+feet--they were frostbitten--and will never answer the music of the
+charge again. But at the sound of his own tongue he raises his body by
+the pulley hanging at the head of his cot, and gravely salutes the
+sahib. Like Ruth amid the alien corn, his heart is sad with thoughts of
+home, and he has been dreaming between these iron walls of the wide,
+sunlit spaces of the Deccan. As his feverish brain counts and re-counts
+the rivets on the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before his
+wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village with its grove of
+mangoes and its sacred banyan on the inviolable _otla_; he hears once
+again the animated chatter of the wayfarers in the _chowdi_.
+
+"Where is thy home?"
+
+"Sahib, it is at Pirgaon."
+
+"I know it--is not Turkaran Patal the head-man?"
+
+The dark face gleams with pleasure. "Even so, sahib."
+
+"Shall I write to thy people?"
+
+"The sahib is very kind."
+
+"So will I do, and, perhaps, prepare thy people for thy homecoming. I
+will tell them that thou hast lost thy feet with the frostbite, but art
+otherwise well."
+
+"Nay, sahib, tell them everything but that, for if my people hear that
+they will neither eat nor drink--nay, nor sleep, for sorrow."
+
+"Then will I not. But I will tell them that thou art a brave man."
+
+The Mahratta smiles mournfully.
+
+"And have you heard from your folk at home?" I ask of the others,
+leaving Smith and the Mahratta together.
+
+"Yea, sahib, the exalted Government is very good to us. We get letters
+often." It is a sepoy in the 107th who speaks. "My brother writes even
+thus," and he reads with tears in his eyes: "'We miss you terribly, but
+such is the will of God. I have been daily to Haji Baba Ziarat' (it is a
+famous shrine in India), 'and day and night I pray for you, and am very
+distressed. I am writing to tell you to have no anxiety about us at
+home, but do your duty cheerfully and say your prayers. Repeat the
+beginning with the word "Kor" and breathe forty times on your body.
+Your father is well, but is very anxious for you, and weeps day and
+night.'"
+
+"I also have received a letter." The speaker is a Bengali, and, though a
+surgeon and non-combatant, must have his say. "My brother writes that I
+am to enlight the names of my ancestors, who were tiger-like warriors,
+and were called Bahadurs, by performing my duties to utmost
+satisfaction." This is truly Babu English.
+
+"And you will do the same?"
+
+"Yea, I must do likewise. My brother writes to me, 'If you want to face
+this side again, face as Bahadur.' And he saith, 'Long live King George,
+and may he rule on the whole world.' And so say we all, sahib."
+
+"And you?" This to a Shia Mahomedan whose right hand is bandaged.
+
+"Ah, sahib, my people can write to me, but write to them I cannot. Will
+the honourable sahib send a word for me who am thus crippled?"
+
+"Yea, gladly; what shall the words be?"
+
+"Say, then, oh sahib, these words: 'Your servant is well and happy here.
+You should pray the God of Mercy that the victory may be to our King,
+Jarj Panjam. And to my lady mother and my lady the sister of my father,
+and to my brother, and to my dear ones the greetings of peace and
+prayer. And the sum of fifty rupees which I arranged for my family' (his
+wife) 'will be paid to you every month.' The sahib is very kind."
+
+"The sahib would like to hear a story?" The speaker is a jemadar of the
+59th. "So be it. Know then, sahib, that I and twelve men of my company
+were cut off by the _German-log_, and I, even I only, am left. It was in
+this wise. My comrades advanced too far beyond the trenches, and we lost
+our way. And the _German-log_ make signs to us to surrender, but it is
+not our way and we still advance. And they open fire with a
+machine-gun--so!" The speaker makes sounds as a man who stutters. "And
+we are all hit--killed and wounded, and fall like ripe corn to the
+sickle. And I am wounded in the leg and I fall. And the German officer,
+he come up and hitted me in the buttock to see if I were dead. But I lay
+exceeding still and hold my breath. And they pull me by the leg" (can it
+be that the jemadar is pulling mine?), "a long way they pull me but
+still I am as one dead. And so I escaped." He looks round for approval.
+
+"That was well done, jemadar." His lustrous eyes flash with pleasure.
+"And how is it with your food?"
+
+"Good" ("_Bahout accha_"), comes a chorus of voices. "The exalted
+Government has done great things. We have _ghee_"--a clarified butter
+made of buffalo or cow's milk--"and _goor_"--unrefined sugar. "And we
+have spices for our _dhal_--ginger and garlic and chilli and turmeric.
+Yea, and fruits also--apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What more can
+man want?"
+
+"It is well." But it is time for me to go. Smith is still talking to the
+Mahratta, whose eyes never leave his face. "Come on, old man," I say,
+"it is time to go." Smith turns reluctantly away. As I looked over my
+shoulder the Mahratta was weeping softly.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE TROOP TRAIN
+
+
+We were standing in the lounge of the Hotel M---- at the Base. "I'll
+introduce you to young C---- of the Guards when he comes in," the Major
+was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the
+troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see
+he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's
+a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother.
+He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of
+mine. Hulloa, C----, my boy. Allow me to introduce you."
+
+A youth with the milk and roses complexion of a girl, blue eyes, and
+fair hair, well-built, but somewhat under the middle height--such was
+C----, and he was good to look upon.
+
+Introductions being made, we filed into the _salle a manger_.
+
+"Chambertin, Julie, s'il vous plait," said the Major. "There's nothing
+like a good burgundy to warm the cockles of your heart." He had the
+radiant eye of an Irishman, and smiled on Julie as he gave the order.
+
+"So you're leaving your hospital to go up and join a Field Ambulance?" I
+said.
+
+"That's so, old man. There was a chance of my being made A.D.M.S. at the
+Base some day if I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front, and
+I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with
+my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always worrying the O.C.'s. Talking
+about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the story of how I pulled the leg
+of old Macassey in South Africa?"
+
+"No," I said, although B---- had a way of telling the same stories twice
+over occasionally. The one story he never told, not even once, was how
+he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other
+men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tell
+you that to know B---- and have the privilege of his friendship, is to
+be admitted to the largest freemasonry of officers in the British Army.
+
+"Well, it was like this," continued B----. "The A.D.M.S. was a thorn in
+the side of every O.C. at the Base, walking up and down like the very
+devil, seeking whose reputation he might devour, and ordering every
+O.C. to turn his hospital upside down. He took a positive delight in
+breaking men. You know the type, the kind of man who breaks his wife's
+heart not because he's bad, but because he's querulous. The nagging
+type. Nothing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show,
+where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got
+accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a
+recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very
+good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Macassey
+with a cock of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up,
+as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a
+devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of
+any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban.
+However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked
+than ever, but I thought I'd have it in black and white; so I saluted
+and said, 'Bad memory, sir, my old wound in India, d'you mind writing
+the order down?'"
+
+"My dear B----," I interrupted, "you know you've the memory of a
+Recording Angel."
+
+"So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew that Macassey's memory,
+like that of most fussy men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought I'd
+catch him out sooner or later. He and I went round the camp, and, after
+about half-an-hour of the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught sight
+of some double-roofed Indian tents that Simpson had got together with
+great difficulty for the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin huts, and
+in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Macassey
+wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me
+have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four,
+and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I
+said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field
+Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who
+can say 'No' to B----.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally
+I took care of those pages. Next day old Macassey must have remembered
+that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me
+to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And
+he knew that I had first-class documentary evidence, and that I guarded
+his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at
+Sotheby's. He never troubled us any more."
+
+"That was unkind of you, Major," I said insincerely.
+
+"Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been worrying old Simpson, and he
+wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! have you never
+heard the story of Simpson and the giddy goat?"
+
+"The goat?" said the sub.
+
+"Yes, the goat. Useful animal the goat, if a trifle capricious. It was
+like this. Old Simpson, who's got a head on his shoulders big enough to
+do all the thinking for the Royal College of Physicians, and ditto of
+Surgeons, with a good few ideas left over for the R.A.M.C., determined
+to get to the bottom of Mediterranean Fever--a nasty complaint, which
+had worried the Malta garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do
+when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say in the children's
+picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to
+suspect the goat. Why? Well, because he'd noticed that goat's milk was
+drunk in Malta and Egypt. So he began to study the geographical
+distribution of the goat with the zeal of an anthropologist localising
+dolicocephalic and brachycephalic races. He found eventually that
+wherever you could 'place' a goat you would find the fever. Wherefore he
+took some goat's milk and cultivated it assiduously in an alluring
+medium of Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus."
+
+"Dot and carry one. Please repeat," I interjected.
+
+"Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus," repeated the Major.
+
+"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar-man,
+thief," soliloquised the subaltern, who was brightening up.
+
+"Quite so," said the Major with a benignant glance. "Well, he then got a
+culture."
+
+"A what?"
+
+"Culture. Poisonous growth; hence German 'Kultur,'" said the Major
+etymologically. "To proceed. He then inoculated some guinea-pigs. No! I
+don't mean directors in the City, though he might have done worse. And
+lo! and behold! he found the fever. You know the four canons of the
+bacteriologist? One, 'get'; two, 'cultivate'; three, 'inoculate'; four,
+'recover.'"
+
+"Well done, Simpson," I said.
+
+"You may say that, my friend. And now there's old Simpson down at the
+Base in charge of No. 12 General saving lives by hundreds and thousands.
+You know while the bullet slew its thousands, septicaemia has slain its
+tens of thousands. How did he stop it? Why, by doing the obvious, which,
+you may have observed, no one ever does till a wise man comes along. He
+got wounds to heal themselves. He promoted a lymphatic flow from the
+rest of the body by putting suppositories of chloride of sodium inside
+drainage-tubes in the wound. The heat of the body melts them, you see.
+There are three great medical heroes of this war--Almroth Wright,
+Martin-Leake, and Simpson."
+
+I could have named a fourth, but I held my tongue.
+
+"Time to get on our hind legs," the Major now said monitorily. "Julie,
+_l'addition_ s'il vous plait."
+
+"Bien, monsieur," said Julie, who had been watching the Major admiringly
+without comprehending a word of what he said. Women have a way of
+falling in love with the Major at first sight.
+
+We stumbled along between the rails and over the sleepers, led by the
+Major, who carried a hurricane lamp, and by the help of its fitful rays
+we leapt across the pools of water left in every hollow. We passed some
+cattle-trucks. The Major held up the lamp and scrutinised a legend in
+white letters--
+
+
+     Hommes 40. Chevaux 12.
+
+
+"Reminds me of the Rule of Three," said the Major meditatively. "If one
+Frenchman is equal to three and one-third horses, how many Huns are
+equal to one British soldier?"
+
+"They are never equal to him," said the subaltern brightly. "If it
+wasn't for machinery we'd have crumpled them up long ago."
+
+"True, my son," said the Major, "and well spoken."
+
+The men were grouped round the cattle-trucks, each man with his kit and
+120 rounds of ammunition. They had just been through a kit inspection,
+and the O.C. in charge of details had audited and found it correct by
+entering up a memorandum to that effect in each man's pay-book. Though
+how the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft, and certifies
+that nothing from a housewife to thirty pairs of laces per man is
+missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to
+understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the
+opaque integument of a ground-sheet at one glance. Also the Medical
+Officer at the Base Depot had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after
+scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's naked body, with the
+aid of a tallow candle stuck in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of
+three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and
+bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each
+truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the
+off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in
+command of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very
+soon.
+
+We were now opposite a first-class compartment, and a slim figure loomed
+up out of the darkness.
+
+"Halloa! is that you, C----? I thought you were gone on ahead of us, my
+boy."
+
+"So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing, and I'm sending a
+corporal to hunt them up. We're off in a few minutes. I met young T----
+just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident
+that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of
+cheering other fellows up. "He's feeling rather blue," he continued.
+"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know."
+
+"Oh, that's no good. Tell him I've got a plum-pudding and a bottle of
+whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur."
+
+I looked at B----'s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the
+kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable
+acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a
+darkness which you could almost feel with your hand.
+
+"I say, B----," I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, "what's
+the regulation allowance for an officer's luggage? I forget."
+
+"One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may laugh, old chap, but I got round
+the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can stow it in my billet.
+Cheers the other fellows up, you know."
+
+B----'s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a
+ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service
+regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing
+elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage. He would
+gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know.
+
+"Major," I said, "you are a 'carrier'!"
+
+"Carter Paterson?" said the Major, with a glance at his luggage.
+
+"No, I didn't mean that. You are not as quick in the uptake as usual,
+especially considering your medical qualifications. What I meant was
+that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get
+typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they
+become immune from them themselves. You're diffusing a gaiety which you
+no longer feel."
+
+It was a bold shot, and if we hadn't been pretty old friends it would
+have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me
+aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit the
+bull's-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don't give me away.
+Come into the carriage."
+
+He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment,
+each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of
+them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say
+were trivial irrelevancies. Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and
+showed me a photograph.
+
+"My wife and Pat--you've never seen Pat, I think? We christened her
+Patricia, you know?"
+
+It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls,
+aged, I should say, about two.
+
+"Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter.
+She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field
+Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B---- studied it intently
+for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly he
+leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way. "I say, old chap, write to my
+wife!"
+
+"But, my dear fellow, I've never met her except once. She must have
+quite forgotten who I am."
+
+"I know. But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the
+top of my form. Merry and bright, you know."
+
+We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised.
+
+There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as
+C---- sprang in. I grasped B----'s hand, and jumped on to the footboard
+of the moving train.
+
+"Good-bye, old chap."
+
+"Good-bye, old man."
+
+B---- had gone to the front. I never saw him again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks later I was sitting at _dejeuner_ in the Metropole, when a
+ragamuffin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the
+leave-boat. I took up the _Times_ and looked, as one always looks
+nowadays, at the obituary column. I looked again. In the same column,
+one succeeding the other, I read the following:
+
+
+     Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur Hamilton C----
+     of the ---- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur C.
+     and of Mrs. C. of the Red House, Little Twickenham, aged 19.
+
+
+     Behold! I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke.
+
+
+     Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier
+     under fire, Major Ronald B----, D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical
+     Corps, aged 42.
+
+
+     Greater love hath no man than this.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE FRONT
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE TWO RICHEBOURGS
+
+
+We had business with the _maire_ of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast.
+Any one who looks at a staff map of North-West France will see that
+there are two Richebourgs; there is Richebourg St. Vaast, but there is
+also Richebourg l'Avoue, and although those two communes are separated
+by a bare three or four kilometres there was in point of climate a
+considerable difference between the two. In those days we had not yet
+taken Neuve Chapelle, and Richebourg l'Avoue, which was in front of our
+lines, was considered "unhealthy." Richebourg St. Vaast, on the other
+hand, was well behind our lines and was considered by our billeting
+officers quite a good residential neighbourhood.
+
+We had left G.H.Q., and after a journey of two hours or so passed
+through Laventie, which had been rather badly mauled by shell-fire, and
+began to thread our way through the skein of roads and by-roads that
+enmeshes the two Richebourgs. The natural features of the country were
+inscrutable, and landmarks there were none. The countryside grew
+absolutely deserted and the solitary farms were roofless and untenanted.
+Eventually we found our road blocked by a barricade of fallen masonry in
+front of a village which was as inhospitable as the Cities of the Plain.
+
+A vast silence brooded over the landscape, broken now and again by a
+noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot. As we took cover behind
+a wall of ruined houses we heard a sinister hiss, but whence it came or
+what invisible trajectory it traced through the leaden skies overhead
+neither of us could tell. Silence again fell like a mist upon the land;
+not a bird sang, not a twig moved. The winter sun was sinking in the
+west behind a pall of purple cloud in a lacquered sky--the one touch of
+colour in the sombre greyness. The land was flat as the palm of one's
+hand, its monotony relieved only by lines of pollarded willows on which
+some sappers had strung a field telephone. Raindrops hung on the copper
+wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy clay of the fields was
+scooped and moulded by the rain into little saucer-like depressions as
+if by a potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches, their clay
+walls shored up with wickerwork, and their outskirts fringed with barbed
+wire whose intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown. The
+village behind whose walls we now sheltered lay in a No Man's Land
+between the enemy's lines and our own, and the sodden fields were not
+more desolate.
+
+A tornado of artillery fire had swept over it, and of the houses nothing
+was left but indecencies, shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath
+which were choked heaps of household furniture, broken beds, battered
+lamps, and a wicker-chair overturned as in a drunken brawl. What had
+once been the street was now a quarry of broken bricks, with here and
+there vast circular craters as though a gigantic oak-tree had been torn
+out of the earth by the roots. And now the weird silence was broken by
+sounds as of some one playing a lonely tattoo with his fingers upon a
+hollow wooden board, but the player was invisible, and as we looked at
+each other the sound ceased as suddenly as it began. Our practised ear
+told us that somewhere near us a machine-gun was concealed, but these
+furtive sounds were so homeless, so impersonal, that they eluded us like
+an echo.
+
+It was this complete absence of visible human agency that impressed us
+most disagreeably, as with a sense of being utterly forlorn amid a play
+of the elements, like Lear upon the heath. There came into my mind, as
+our eyes groped for some human sign in the brooding landscape, the
+thought of the prophet upon the mount amid the wind and the earthquake
+and the fire seeking the presence of his God and finding it not. And
+here too all these assaults upon our senses were fugitive and ghostly,
+and we felt ourselves encompassed about as by some great conspiracy. We
+walked curiously up the little street until we reached the last house in
+the village, and came out beyond the screen of its wall. At the same
+instant something sang past my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my
+foot caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My companion,
+lagging behind and not yet clear of the friendly wall, stopped dead and
+cried to me not to stand up. I crawled back among the rubbish to the
+cover of the house. We took counsel together. To retreat were perilous,
+but to advance might be fatal. We lowered our voices as, cowering behind
+walls, and picking our way delicately among the _debris_, we crept back
+to our car behind the entrance to the village. The driver started the
+engine and we moved forlornly along the narrow causeway, skirting the
+unfathomable mud that lay on either side, until we spied a ruined
+farmhouse where a company had made its billet and mud-coloured knots of
+soldiers stood round braziers of glowing coals. We had some parley with
+the company commander, who was of the earth earthy. His words were few
+and discouraging. As we crawled on, darkness enveloped us, but we dared
+not light our head-lamps. Suddenly the car slipped on the greasy road,
+staggered, and lurched over into the morass, hurling us violently upon
+our sides. We clambered out and contemplated it solemnly as we saw our
+right wheels over the axles in mud. No friendly billet was now in sight,
+and as we stood profanely considering our plight the darkness behind us
+was split by a long shaft of greenish light, and the whole landscape was
+illuminated with a pallid glow, as the German star-shells discharged
+themselves over the fan-like tops of the elms silhouetted against the
+sky. The jack was useless in the soft mud, it sank like a stone, and as
+we shoved and cursed we awaited each fresh discharge of the star-shells
+with increasing apprehension, for we presented an obvious target to the
+enemy's snipers. On the seat of the car was my despatch-box, and in that
+box was a little dossier of papers marked "O.H.M.S. German Atrocities.
+Secret and Confidential." "If the Germans catch us there'll be one
+atrocity the more," remarked my Staff Officer grimly, "but they'll spare
+us the labour of recording it."
+
+Our futile efforts were interrupted by the sound of feet upon the
+causeway as a column of reliefs loomed up out of the darkness. A hurried
+altercation in low tones, a subdued word of command, and a dozen men,
+their rifles and entrenching tools slung over their shoulders, applied
+themselves to the back of our car, and slowly it slithered out of the
+mud. The column broke into file to allow us to pass, my companion went
+on ahead with a tiny electric torch to show the way, and with infinite
+caution we nudged slowly along the rank, the faint light of the torch
+bringing face after face out of the darkness into _chiaroscuro_, faces
+young and fresh and ruddy. Not a word was spoken save a whispered
+command carried down the rank, mouth to ear, "No smoking, no talking
+"--"No smoking, no talking "--"No talking, no smoking." Mules, carrying
+sections of machine-guns and packs of straw, loomed up out of the
+darkness as we passed, until the last of the column was reached and the
+frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the night. We drew a
+long breath, for we knew now from the colonel of the battalion whose men
+had delivered us from that Slough of Despond that we had been within 150
+yards of the German lines. We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoue for
+Richebourg St. Vaast.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IDOLS OF THE CAVE
+
+
+Like the Cyclopes they dwelt in hollow caves, and each Colonel uttered
+the law to his children and recked not of the others except when the
+Brigadier came round. True there were two and a half battalions in their
+line of 2700 yards, but all they knew was that the next battalion to
+their own was the Highlanders; it was only when the five days were up
+and they were marched back to billets that they were able to cultivate
+that somewhat exclusive society. Their trenches were like the suburbs,
+they were faintly conscious that people lived in the next street, but
+they never saw them. Their neighbours were as self-contained and silent
+as themselves, except when their look-outs or machine-guns became
+loquacious. Then they too became eloquent, and the whole line talked
+freely at the Germans 200 yards away. By day the men slept heavily on
+straw in hollows under the parapet, supported with crates and sprinkled
+with chloride of lime; by night they were out at the listening posts,
+in the sap-heads, or behind the parapet, with their eyes glued to the
+field of yellow mustard in front of us. They had watched that field for
+three months. They knew every blade of grass therein. No experimental
+agriculturist ever studied his lucerne and sainfoin as they have studied
+the grasses of that field. They have watched it from winter to spring;
+they have seen the lesser celandine give way to pink clover and sorrel,
+and the grass shoot up from an inch to a foot. They have, indeed, been
+studying not botany but ethnology, searching for traces of that species
+of primitive man known to anthropologists as the Hun. They have never
+found him except once, when one of our look-outs saw something crawling
+across that field about midnight and promptly emptied his magazine. In
+the morning they saw a grey figure lying out in the open; the days
+passed and the long grass sprang up and concealed it till nothing was
+left to attest its obscene presence except a little cloud of black
+flies. Their horizon is bounded by rows of sand-bags, and their interest
+in those sand-bags is only equalled by their interest in the field in
+front of them. Occasionally one of our men finds them more than usually
+interesting. There is a loud report, the click of a bolt, and the
+pungent smell of burnt cordite. Then all is still again.
+
+The tangent-sight on the standard of their machine-gun is always at 200,
+and they have not altered the range for three months. Occasionally at
+night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles, and with his thumb on
+the button slowly sweeps that range of sand-bags, till the feed-block
+sucks up the cartridge-belt like a chaff-cutter and the empty
+cartridge-cases lie as thick round the tripod as acorns under an oak.
+The Huns reply by taking a flashlight photograph of us with a calcium
+flare, and then all is still again. In such excursions and alarms do
+they pass the long night.
+
+Though five-sixths of them slept stertorously in their holes by day, by
+night they were as wakeful as owls, and not less predatory. Life in the
+trenches is one long struggle for existence, and in the course of it
+they developed those acquired characteristics whereby the birds of the
+air and the beasts of the field maintain themselves in a world of
+carnage. They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their feet as
+silently as hares, to see in the dark like foxes, to wriggle like the
+creeping things of the field, to lower their voices with the direction
+of the wind, to select a background with the moonlight, and to stand
+motionless on patrol with muscles rigid like a pointer when the
+star-shells dissolved the security of the night. They studied to
+dissemble with their lips and to imitate the vocabulary of nature. They
+grew more and more chary of human speech, and listening posts talked
+with the trenches by pulls on a fishing-reel. They never sheathed their
+claws, and working-parties wore their equipment as though it were the
+integument of nature. Bayonets were never unfixed unless the moon were
+very bright. At night they scraped out their earths like a badger, and,
+like the badger's, those earths were exceeding clean. The men were
+numbered off by threes from the flank, and one in three watched for two
+hours while the other two worked, repairing parapets, strengthening
+entanglements, and filling sand-bags. Every half-hour the N.C.O. on duty
+crept round to report, or to post and relieve, while now and again a
+patrol went out to observe. All this was done stealthily and with an
+amazing economy of speech. Night was also the time of their foraging,
+when the company's rations were brought up the communication trench and
+handed over by the C.Q.M.S. to each platoon sergeant, who passed them on
+to the section commander, and he in turn distributed them among his men
+in such silence and with such little traffic that it seemed like the
+provision of manna in the wilderness. At dawn pick-axe and spade were
+laid aside, the rum ration was served out, and all men stood to, for
+dawn was the hour of their apprehension.
+
+Two miles behind them is a battery of our field guns, and they have with
+them an observing officer who talks intimately to his battery on the
+field telephone in that laconic language of which gunners are so fond,
+such as "One hundred. Twenty minutes to the left." Then the shells sing
+over their heads with a pretty low trajectory, and the Huns, beginning
+to get annoyed, reply with their heavy guns. There is a low whistle up
+aloft, a noise like the fluttering of invisible wings, and the next
+moment a cloud of black smoke rises over the village of X---- Y----,
+behind the trenches. The Smoke Prevention Society ought to turn their
+attention to "Jack Johnsons"; their habits are positively filthy.
+
+These things, however, disturbed them but little and bored them a great
+deal. So they set to work to make their particular rabbit-warren into a
+Garden City. They held it on a repairing lease, and were constantly
+filling sand-bags, but that was merely to prevent depreciation, and
+didn't count. They first of all paved their trenches with bricks; there
+was no difficulty about the supply, as the "Jack Johnsons" obligingly
+acted as house-breakers in the village behind our lines, and bricks
+could be had for the fetching. Then the orderly transplanted some
+pansies and forget-me-nots from the garden of a ruined house, and made a
+border in front of the company commander's dug-out. The communication
+trench had been carried across a stream with some planks, and one day a
+man with a gift for carpentry fixed up a balustrade out of the arms of
+an apple-tree, which had been lopped off by shell, and we had a rustic
+bridge. When May came, water anemones opened their star-like petals on
+the surface of the clear amber stream, the orchard through which the
+communication trench had been cut burst into blossom, the sticky clay
+walls of the trench became hard as masonry in the sun, and one morning a
+board appeared with the legend "Hyde Park. Keep off the grass."
+
+With these amenities their manners grew more and more refined. I have
+read somewhere, in one of those dull collections of sweeping
+generalisations that are called sociology, that each species of the
+_genus homo_ has to go through a normal sequence of stages from
+barbarism to civilisation, and that we were once what the South Sea
+Islanders are now. Which may be very true, but as regards that
+particular primitive community I can testify that their social evolution
+has in three months gone through all the stages that occupy other
+communities three thousand years. They began as cave-dwellers and they
+end by occupying suburban villas--the captain's dug-out has a roof of
+corrugated iron, a window, a book-shelf, a table, and even chairs, and
+his table manners have vastly improved. They have progressed from
+candles stuck in bully-beef tins to electric reading-lamps. Three months
+ago they were hairy men whose beards did grow beneath their shoulders,
+and their puttees were cemented with wet clay; to-day they are
+clean-shaven and their Burberrys might be worn in Piccadilly. They slept
+with nothing between them and the earth but a ground sheet what time
+they were not, like the elephant, sleeping on their feet and propped
+against a trench wall. Now they sleep on a bed with a wooden frame. I
+have read somewhere that for a thousand years Europe was unwashed. It
+may be so, but I know that this particular tribal community progressed
+rapidly through all such stages, from a bucket to a shower-bath in
+billets, in about six weeks, and you can see their men any day washing
+themselves to the waist near the support trenches--men who a month or
+two ago had forgotten how to take their clothes off. They are, in fact,
+a highly civilised community. Some traces of their aboriginal state they
+still retain, and they cherish their totem, which is a bundle of black
+ribbons, rather like the flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to
+the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night
+some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out
+on their stomachs with a hand-grenade to get as near as may be to the
+enemy's listening posts and taste the joy of killing. But by day they
+are as demure and sleepy as the tortoiseshell cat which has taken up its
+quarters in the dug-out.
+
+Such is their life. But they are quietly preparing to get a move on.
+Some R.G.A. men have arrived with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and
+one fine morning they are going to disturb those sand-bags opposite them
+with a battery of trench mortars; our field guns will draw a curtain of
+shrapnel in front of the German support trenches, and then they will
+satisfy their curiosity as to what is behind those inscrutable
+sand-bags.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+STOKES'S ACT
+
+     An offender when in arrest is not to bear arms except by order of
+     his C.O. or in an emergency.--_The King's Regulations._
+
+
+I
+
+The President of the Court and the Judge-Advocate stood in private
+colloquy in one of the deep traverse-like windows of the Hotel de Ville
+over-looking the Place. A heavy rain was falling from a sullen sky, and
+the deserted square was a dancing sea of agitation as the raindrops
+smote the little pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a
+multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind swept across, and the
+rain rattled against the windows. On the opposite side of the square one
+of the houses gaped curiously, with bedroom and parlour exposed to view,
+as though some one had snatched away the walls and laid the scene for
+one of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters pursue a
+complicated domestic intrigue on two floors at once. That house, with
+its bed exposed to the rain dripping from the open rafters, was indeed
+both farcical and indecent; it stood among its unscathed neighbours like
+a pariah. The rain was loud and insistent, but not so loud as to dull
+the distant thunder of the guns. The intermittent gusts of wind now and
+again interrupted its monotonous theme, but the intervals were as brief
+as they were violent, and in this polyphonic composition of rain, wind,
+and guns, the hissing of the raindrops came and went as in a fugue and
+with an inexpressible mournfulness.
+
+Inside the room was a table covered with green baize, on which were
+methodically arranged in extended order a Bible, an inkstand, a sheaf of
+paper, and a copy of the _Manual of Military Law_. Behind the table were
+seven chairs, and to the right and left of them stood two others. The
+seven chairs were for the members of the court; the chair on the extreme
+right was for the "prisoner's friend," that on the left awaited the
+Judge-Advocate. About five yards in front of the table, in the centre of
+an empty space, stood two more chairs turned towards it. Otherwise the
+room was as bare as a guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it a
+certain dignity of its own as of a place where nothing was allowed to
+distract the mind from the serious business in hand. At the door stood
+an orderly with a red armlet bearing the imprint of the letters "M.P."
+in black.
+
+"I have read the summary pretty carefully," the Judge-Advocate was
+saying, "and it seems to me a clear case. The charge is fully made out.
+And yet the curious thing is, the fellow has an excellent record, I
+believe."
+
+"That proves nothing," said the Colonel; "I've had a fellow in my
+battalion found sleeping at his post on sentry-go, a fellow I could have
+sworn by. And you know what the punishment for that is. It's these night
+attacks; the men must not sleep by night and some of them cannot sleep
+by day, and there are limits to human nature. We've no reserves to speak
+of as yet, and the men are only relieved once in three weeks. Their feet
+are always wet, and their circulation goes all wrong. It's the puttees
+perhaps. And if your circulation goes wrong you can't sleep when you
+want to, till at last you sleep when you don't want to. Or else your
+nerves go wrong. I've seen a man jump like a rabbit when I've come up
+behind him."
+
+"Yes," mused the Judge-Advocate, "I know. But hard cases make bad law."
+
+"Yes, and bad law makes hard cases. Between you and me, our military law
+is a bit prehistoric. You're a lawyer and know more about it than I do.
+But isn't there something for civilians called a First Offenders Act?
+Bind 'em over to come up for judgment if called on--that kind of thing.
+Gives a man another chance. Why not the soldier too?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Judge-Advocate, "there is. I believe the War Office
+have been talking about adopting it for years. But this is not the time
+of day to make changes of that kind. Everybody's worked off his head."
+
+Eight officers had entered the room at intervals, the subalterns a
+little ahead of their seniors in point of time, as is the first duty of
+a subaltern whether on parade or at a "general," and, having saluted the
+President in the window, they stood conversing in low tones.
+
+The Colonel suddenly glanced at his left wrist, walked to the middle
+chair behind the table, and taking his seat said, "Now, gentlemen, carry
+on, please!" As they took their places the Colonel, as President of the
+Court, ordered the prisoner to be brought in. There was a shuffle of
+feet outside, and a soldier without cap or belt or arms, and with a
+sergeant's stripes upon his sleeve, was marched in under a sergeant's
+escort. His face was not unpleasing--the eyes well apart and direct in
+their gaze, the forehead square, and the contours of the mouth firm and
+well-cut. The two took their places in front of the chair, and stood to
+attention. The prisoner gazed fixedly at the letters "R.F.," which
+flanked the arms of the Republic on the wall above the President's
+head, and stood as motionless as on parade. A close observer, however,
+would have noticed that his thumb and forefinger plucked nervously at
+the seam of his trousers, and that his hands, though held at attention,
+were never quite still. The escort kept his head covered.
+
+At the President's order to "bring in the evidence," the soldier on duty
+at the door vanished to return with a squad of seven soldiers in charge
+of a sergeant, who formed them up in two ranks behind the prisoner and
+his escort. And they also stood exceeding still.
+
+The President read the order convening the court, and, as he recited
+each officer's name and regiment, the owner acknowledged it with "Here,
+sir." When he came to the prisoner's name he looked up and said, "Is
+that your name and number?" The escort nudged the prisoner, who recalled
+his attention from the wall with an immense effort and said "Yes, sir."
+
+"Captain Herbert appears as prosecutor and takes his place." As the
+ritual prescribed by the Red Book was religiously gone through, the
+prisoner continued to stare at the wall above the President's head, and
+the rain rattled against the window-panes with intermittent violence.
+Having finished his recital, the President rose, and with him all the
+members of the court rose also. He took a Bible in his hand and faced
+the Judge-Advocate, who exhorted him that he should "well and truly try
+the accused before the court according to the evidence," and that he
+would duly administer justice according to the Army Act now in force,
+without partiality, favour, or affection.... "So help you God." As the
+colonel raised the book to his lips he chanted the antiphon "So help me
+God." And the Judge-Advocate proceeded to swear the other members of the
+court, individually or collectively, three subalterns who were jointly
+and severally sworn holding the book together with a quaint solemnity,
+as though they were singing hymns at church out of a common hymn-book.
+Then the Judge-Advocate was in turn sworn by the President with his own
+peculiar oath of office, and did faithfully and with great earnestness
+promise that he would neither divulge the sentence, nor disclose nor
+discover any votes or opinions as to the same. Which being done, and the
+President having ordered the military policeman to march out the
+evidence, the sergeant in charge cried "Left turn. Quick march. Left
+wheel," and the little cloud of witnesses vanished through the doorway.
+
+The President proceeded to read the charge-sheet:--
+
+
+     "_The accused, No.       , Sergeant John Stokes, 2nd Battalion
+     Downshire Regiment, is charged with Misbehaving before the enemy in
+     such a manner as to show cowardice, in that he at       , on
+     October 3rd, 1914, when on patrol, and when under the enemy's fire,
+     did run away._"
+
+
+All this time the prisoner had been studying the wall, his eyes
+travelling from the right to the left of the frieze, and then from the
+left to the right again. It was noticeable that his lips moved slightly
+at each stage of this laborious visual journey. "Forty-seven."
+"Forty-nine." "Forty-eight." Stokes was immensely interested in that
+compelling frieze. He counted and recounted the number of figures in the
+Greek fret with painful iteration. Apparently he was satisfied at last,
+and then his eyes began to study the inkstand in front of the President.
+The President seemed an enormous distance away, but the inkstand very
+near and very large, and he found himself wondering why it was round,
+why it wasn't square, or hexagonal, or elliptic. Then he speculated
+whether the ink was blue or black, or red, and why people never used
+green or yellow. His brain had gone through all the colours of the
+spectrum when a pull at his sleeve by the escort attracted his
+attention. Apparently the Colonel was saying something to him.
+
+"Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"
+
+The prisoner stared, but said nothing. The escort again pulled his
+sleeve as the Colonel repeated the question.
+
+Stokes cleared his throat, and looking his interlocutor straight in the
+face, said, "Guilty, sir." The members of the court looked at each
+other, the Colonel whispered to the Judge-Advocate, the Judge-Advocate
+to the Prosecutor. The Judge-Advocate turned to the prisoner, "Do you
+realise," he asked, not unkindly, "that if you plead 'Guilty' you will
+not be able to call any evidence as to extenuating circumstances?" The
+prisoner pondered for a moment; it seemed to him that the
+Judge-Advocate's voice was almost persuasive.
+
+"Well, I'll say 'not guilty,' sir."
+
+He now saw the President quite close to him; that monstrous inkstand had
+diminished to its natural size. Nothing was to be heard beyond the
+hissing of the rain but the scratching of the Judge-Advocate's quill, as
+he slowly dictated to himself the words "The--prisoner--pleads--'not
+guilty.'" But why they had asked him a question which could only admit
+of one answer and then persuaded him to give the wrong one, was a thing
+that both puzzled and distressed John Stokes. Why all this solemn
+ritual, he speculated painfully; he was surely as good as dead already.
+He found himself wondering whether the sentence of the Court would be
+carried out in the presence of only the firing party, or whether the
+whole of his battalion would be paraded. And he fell to wondering
+whether he would be reported in the casualty lists as "killed in
+action," or would it be "missing"? And would they send his wife his
+identity-disc, as they did with those who had fallen honourably on the
+field? All these questions both interested and perplexed him, but the
+proceedings of the Court he regarded little, or not at all.
+
+Meanwhile the Prosecutor was unfolding the charge in a clear, even
+voice, neither extenuating nor setting down aught in malice. In a
+court-martial no Prosecutor ever "presses" the charge; he may even
+alleviate it. Which shows that Assizes and Sessions have something to
+learn from courts-martial. The case was simple. Prisoner had gone out on
+the night of the 3rd with a patrol commanded by a subaltern. An alarm
+was raised, and he and the greater part of the patrol had run back to
+the trenches, leaving the officer to stand his ground and to return
+later with his left arm shattered by a German bullet.
+
+All this Stokes remembered but too well, though it seemed to have
+happened an immense time ago. He remembered how the subaltern had warned
+him that the only thing to do when a German flare lit up the night was
+to stand quite still. And he had not stood still, for one of the most
+difficult things for a man to believe is that to see suddenly is not the
+same thing as being seen; he had ducked, and as he moved something
+seared his right cheek like red-hot iron, and then--but why recall that
+shameful moment? A paradoxical psychologist in a learned essay on "the
+Expression of Emotion" has argued gravely that the "expression" precedes
+the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is afraid but is afraid
+because he runs. Sergeant Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to
+this day he believes that it was his first start that was his undoing.
+He had begun to run without knowing why, until he knew why he ran--he
+was afraid. Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army vernacular, "cold
+feet." But why he ran in the first instance he did not know. It was true
+he hadn't slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as N.C.O. to
+go round every half-hour during the night to watch the men and stare at
+that inscrutable field, and to post and relieve, had made him very
+jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in his arms the day before
+that fatal night--he could see the grey film glistening on his face like
+a clouded glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But what had that to
+do with the charge? Nothing at all.
+
+And while the prisoner pondered on these things he was recalled by the
+voice of the President. Did he wish to ask the witness any questions?
+His company commander had been giving evidence. No; he had no questions
+to ask. And as each witness was called, and sworn, and gave evidence,
+all of which the Judge-Advocate repeated like a litany and duly wrote
+down with his own hand--the prisoner always returned the same answer.
+
+Now the prisoner's friend, a young officer who had never played that
+_role_ before, and who was both nervous and conscientious, had been
+studying Rule 40 in the Red Book with furtive concentration. What was he
+to do with a prisoner who elected neither to make a statement nor to put
+questions to witnesses, and who never gave him any lead? But he had
+there read something about calling witnesses as to character, and,
+reading, recollected that the company commander had glanced at the
+prisoner with genuine commiseration. And so he persuaded Stokes, after
+some parley, to call the captain to give evidence as to character. The
+captain's words were few and weighty. The prisoner, he testified, was
+one of the best N.C.O.'s in his company, and, with the latitude which is
+characteristic of court-martial proceedings, the captain went on to tell
+of the testimony borne by the dead subaltern to the excellent character
+of John Stokes, and how the said John Stokes had been greatly affected
+by the death of the subaltern. And for the first time John Stokes hung
+his head. But beyond that and the quivering of his eyelashes he made no
+sign.
+
+And it being a clear case the Judge-Advocate, as a Judge-Advocate may
+do, elected not to sum up, and the prisoner was taken to the place from
+whence he came. And the Court proceeded to consider their finding and
+sentence, which finding and sentence, being signed by the President and
+the Judge-Advocate, duly went its appointed way to the Confirming
+Authority and there remained. For the General in Chief command in the
+field was hard pressed with other and weightier matters, having reason
+to believe that he would have to meet an attack of three Army Corps on a
+front of eight miles with only one Division. Which belief turned out to
+be true, and had for Sergeant John Stokes momentous consequences, as you
+shall hear.
+
+
+II
+
+When John Stokes found himself once more in charge of a platoon he was
+greatly puzzled. He had been suddenly given back his arms and his belt,
+which no prisoner, whether in close or open arrest, is supposed to wear,
+and his guard had gone with him. He knew nothing about Paragraph 482 of
+the King's Regulations, which contemplates "emergencies"; still less did
+he know that an emergency had arisen--such an emergency as will cast
+lustre upon British arms to the end of time. But that strange things
+were happening ahead he knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly
+made up as Falstaff's army: gunners, cooks, and A.S.C. drivers were all
+lumped together to make a company. Some carried their rifles at the
+slope and some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had not, certain
+details from the Rifle Brigade marched with their own quick trot, and
+some wore spurs.
+
+Of one thing he was thankful: his old battalion, wherever they were,
+were not there. And the company commander coming along and perceiving
+the stripes on his sleeve, had, without further inquiry, put him in
+charge of a platoon, and thereafter he lost sight of his guard
+altogether.
+
+He knew nothing of where he was. Few soldiers at the Front ever do: they
+will be billeted in a village for a week and not know so much as the
+name of it. But that big business was afoot was evident to him, for they
+were marching in column of route almost at the double, under a faint
+moon and in absolute silence--the word having gone forth that there was
+to be no smoking or talking in the ranks.
+
+Not a sound was to be heard, except the whisper of the poplars and the
+tramp of the men's feet upon the _pave_. The road was so greasy with mud
+that it might have been beeswaxed, and Stokes's boots, the nails of
+which had been worn down, kept slipping as on a parquet floor. As they
+passed through the mean little villages not a light was to be seen; even
+the _estaminets_ were shut, but now and again a dog barked mournfully at
+its chain. Once a whispered command was given at the head of the column,
+which halted so suddenly that the men behind almost fell upon the men in
+front, and then backed hastily; and these movements were automatically
+communicated all down the column, so that the sections of fours lurched
+like the trucks of a train which is suddenly pulled up. At that moment
+something flashed at the head of the column, and Stokes suddenly caught
+a glimpse of the faces of the captain and the subaltern in an aureole of
+light lit by the needle-like rays of an electric torch as they studied a
+map and compass.
+
+But in no long time their ears told them they were nearing their
+destination, even as a traveller learns that he is nearing the sea. For
+they heard the crackle of musketry following upon the altercation of
+guns. All this passed as in a dream, and it seemed little more than a
+few minutes before Sergeant Stokes, having passed through a curtain of
+shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some shallow support trenches to
+which the remnants of the regiment whom they were called upon to stiffen
+had fallen back. It was a critical moment: our first trenches were in
+the hands of the enemy, and the whole line was sagging under the impact
+of the German hordes. Somehow that trench had to be recaptured--to be
+recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into an
+invulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of machine-guns to sweep
+with a crossfire the right and left flanks, where our line curved in
+like a gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes knew as little
+as is usually given to one platoon to know on a front of eight miles.
+
+As dawn broke and the stars paled, the word came down the line, and, in
+a series of short rushes, stooping somewhat in the attitude of a man who
+is climbing a very steep hill, they moved forward in extended order
+about eight or ten paces apart carrying their rifles with bayonets
+fixed. A hail-storm of lead greeted them, and all around him Sergeant
+Stokes saw men falling, and as they fell lying in strange attitudes and
+uncouth--some stumbling (he had seen a hare shot in the back dragging
+its legs in just that way), others lying on their faces and clutching
+the earth convulsively as they drummed with their feet, and some very
+still. Overhead there was a sobbing and whimpering in the air. A little
+ahead to the left of him a machine-gun was tap-tapping like a telegraph
+instrument, and as it traversed the field of their advance the men went
+down in swathes.
+
+If only he could get to that gun! On the right a low hedge ran at right
+angles to the German trench, and making for it he took such little cover
+as it afforded, and ran forward as he had never run before, not even on
+that night of baneful memory. His heart was thumping violently, there
+was a prodigious "stitch" in his side; and something warm was trickling
+down his forehead into his eyes and half blinding him, while in his ears
+the bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees. The next moment he
+was up against a little knot of grey-coated figures with toy-like
+helmets, he heard a word that sounded like "Himmel," and he had emptied
+his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing,
+parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very
+faint....
+
+That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For
+the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense
+distance--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was
+coming to after a spell of gas--was saying something to him as he seemed
+to be rising, rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable
+depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and
+then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at
+the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent thing in
+woman--was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was
+impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew--he was in
+hospital.
+
+
+III
+
+"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a
+certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field
+Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious
+case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making
+hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up
+all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had
+been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking.
+Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and
+not reduced by one stripe."
+
+"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw
+forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day
+singing--singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of
+course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a
+few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that
+cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to
+breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of
+sheer weariness--well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the
+scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them,
+but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made
+us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at
+that."
+
+The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the
+table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial."
+He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a
+Parliamentary draughtsman. "Yes," he said, after some pertinent
+emendations, "it'll do. But the title is too long for common use at
+G.H.Q."
+
+"Why!" said the other with a certain paternal sensitiveness, "what do
+you suggest?"
+
+"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pensively,--"I suggest we call it
+Stokes's Act."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now this story has one merit--if it has no other. It is true. And as
+for the rest of the Act and its preamble, and its sections and its
+sub-sections, are they not written in the Statute Book? In the Temple
+they call it 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But out there they call it "Stokes's
+Act."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE FRONT
+
+
+Persons of a rheumatic habit are said to apprehend the approach of damp
+weather by certain presentiments in their bones. So people of a nervous
+temperament--like the writer--have premonitions of the approach to "the
+Front" by a feeling of cold feet. These are usually induced by the
+spectacle of large and untimely cavities in the road, but they may be
+accentuated, as not infrequently happened, by seeing the process of
+excavation itself--and hearing it. The effect on the auditory nerves is
+known as "k-r-rump," which is, phonetically speaking, a fairly literal
+translation. The best thing to do on such occasions is to obey the
+nursery rhyme, and "open your mouth and shut your eyes." The intake of
+air will relieve the pressure on your ear-drums. I have been told by one
+of our gunners that the gentle German has for years been experimenting
+in order to produce as "frightful" and intimidating a sound by the
+explosion of his shells as possible. He has succeeded. Cases have been
+known of men without a scratch laughing and crying simultaneously after
+a too-close acquaintance with the German hymnology of hate. The results
+are, however, sometimes disappointing from the German point of view, as
+in the case of the soldier who, being spattered with dirt but otherwise
+untouched, picked himself up, and remarked with profound contempt, "The
+dirty swine!"
+
+The immediate approach to the trenches is usually marked by what sailors
+call a "dodger," which is to say, a series of canvas screens. These do
+not conceal your legs, and if you are exceptionally tall, they may not
+conceal your head. Your feet don't matter, but if you are wise you duck
+your head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate pride in walking
+upright, and will laugh at you most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in
+the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of
+course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I
+visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to
+admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up
+ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as
+wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the
+approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible,
+the latter object being effected by frequent "traversing." To reach the
+fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of
+them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it
+with innumerable junctions and small depots in the shape of dug-outs,
+and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering
+as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is
+complicated by frequent traverses--something after the pattern of a
+Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to
+prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these
+things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb
+and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part
+of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a
+lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the
+right and left of you. The delivery of a bomb serves as a very effective
+notice of ejectment. The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of
+earth commonly known as a parados. My servant, whose vocabulary was
+limited, called it a paradox, and was not very wide of the mark.
+
+Somewhere behind the trenches at varying distances are the batteries.
+The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their
+guns, and if none are to be found they improvise them. Hop-poles
+trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a
+delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf
+emplacements are constructed for the six guns, and turfed dug-outs house
+the telephone-operator and the gunners. The battery officers are
+billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farmhouse, whose chief
+decorative feature is a midden-heap; in England it would promptly be the
+subject of a closing order by any Public Health authority.
+
+There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun. As a ship answers her
+helm or an aeroplane its controls, so does an eighteen-pounder respond
+to every turn of her elevating and traversing gear. Watch a gunner
+laying his gun on a target he cannot see; observe him switch the gun
+round from the aiming point to the target; remark the way in which the
+sight clinometer registers the angle of sight and the drum registers the
+range; and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship that ever sailed
+the high seas could be more docile to a turn of the wheel. With perfect
+simplicity did a man in the R.F.A. once say to me, "We feel towards our
+gun as a mother feels to her child; we'd sooner lose our lives than our
+gun." In that confession of faith you have the whole of the gunner's
+creed.
+
+The heavy guns are generally to be found in splendid isolation; one
+such I visited and I marvelled at its appearance; it resembled nothing
+so much as the mottled trunk of a decayed plane-tree except for its
+girth. "Futurist art," explained the major deprecatingly as I stared at
+its daubed surface; "it makes it unrecognisable." It certainly did.
+Close by were what looked at a distance like a bed of copper cucumbers.
+"More gardening?" I asked. "Yes, market gardening," replied the major;
+"if we lay the shells like that with sand-bags between them we prevent
+their igniting one another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver
+the goods."
+
+A mile or two from the battery headquarters at X---- Y---- was the
+observing station. The battery-major and myself were accompanied thither
+by a huge mastiff who in civil life was a dairyman by profession and
+turned a churn, but had long since attached himself to the major as
+orderly. We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point the
+mastiff stopped dead and declined to come any further. I thought this
+churlish, and told him so, but he merely wagged his tail. When we
+entered the farmyard I understood. It was pitted with shell-holes, and
+they were obviously of very recent excavation. As a matter of fact the
+Huns suspected that farm, and with good reason, and treated it to
+intermittent "Hate." The mastiff therefore always waited for the
+battery-major at what it judged, quite erroneously, to be a safe
+distance. We clambered up into a loft by means of unreliable ladders. In
+the roof of the loft some tiles had been removed, and leaning our arms
+on the rafters we looked out. "You see that row of six poplars over
+there?" said the Major, pointing to a place behind the German trenches.
+I recognised them, for the same six poplars I had seen through a
+periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a
+house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned
+to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft. "Lay No. 2 on the
+register! Report when ready!" The operator repeated the words
+confidentially to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the receiver
+answered "Ready!" "Fire!" I had my eyes glued to the house, yet nothing
+seemed to happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously with my
+pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed? Even as I speculated there was a
+puff of smoke and a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between the
+poplars. We had delivered the goods.
+
+If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the
+chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in
+billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in
+their habits, and change their positions according as they are wanted.
+But a field ambulance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a unit
+of the R.A.M.C, with a major or a colonel in charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S.
+of a division has three field ambulances under him, and when an attack
+in force is projected he mobilises these three units at forward dressing
+stations in the rear of the trenches. They are a link between the
+aid-posts in front and the collecting stations behind. From the
+collecting stations the wounded are sent on to the clearing hospitals
+and thence to the base. It sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The
+most eloquent compliment to its perfection was the dreamy reminiscence
+of a soldier I met at the base: "I got hit up at Wipers, sir; something
+hit me in the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard somebody
+saying 'Drink this,' and I found myself in bed at Boulogne." Every field
+ambulance has an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he usually is.
+Is the soldier sick, he visits him; penitent, he shrives him; dying, he
+comforts him. One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two, and a
+mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was often longing for a shot at
+the Huns, and as often imposing penances upon himself for such
+un-ghostly desires. He found consolation in confessing the Irishmen
+before they went into the trenches: "The bhoys fight all the better for
+it," he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his flock; the only
+doubts he had were about his own. We all loved him.
+
+There is one great difference between life in billets and life in the
+trenches. In billets the soldier "grouses" often, in trenches never.
+This may be partly due to a very proper sense of proportion; it may also
+be due to the fact that, the necessity for vigilance being relaxed and
+the occasions for industry few, life in billets is apt to become a great
+bore. The small Flemish and French towns offer few amenities; in our
+mess we found our principal recreation in reunions with other
+fraternities at the _patisserie_ or in an occasional mount. Of
+_patisseries_ that at Bethune is the best; that at Poperinghe the worst.
+Besides, the former has a piano and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In the
+earlier stages of our occupation some of the officers at G.H.Q. did a
+little coursing and shooting, but there was trouble about _delits de
+chasse_, and now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big game--namely,
+Germans--although I have heard of an irresponsible Irishman in the
+trenches who vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more
+remarkable, returned with it. Needless to say, his neighbours were
+Saxons. As for the men, their opportunities of relaxation are more
+circumscribed. Much depends on the house in which they are billeted. If
+there is a baby, you can take the part of mother's help; one of the most
+engaging sights I saw was a troop of our cavalrymen (they may have been
+the A.V.C.) riding through Armentieres, leading a string of remounts,
+each remount with a laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can wash.
+If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has
+the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like
+Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a
+pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other
+with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the
+inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think it indecent, or merely
+eccentric; perhaps both. But then, as Anatole France has gravely
+remarked, a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of chastity.
+Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals has reminded us, cleanliness
+of body is next to orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you
+may, with God's grace, escape one or more of the seven plagues of
+Flanders. These seven are lice, flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and
+"souvenirs." The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean
+cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsmanlike and irritating habits
+they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not
+entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too
+much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from
+an impassive man with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room.
+
+But it may well happen that in spite of babies, and baths, and brass
+bands, and footballs, and boxing-gloves, and playing marbles (the
+General in command of one of our divisions told me he had seen six
+Argyll and Sutherland sergeants playing marbles with shrapnel bullets in
+some support trenches), the men get bored. They are often very crowded,
+and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate
+shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his
+neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may
+become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander
+sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a
+good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in
+the winter months, when out visiting Divisional Headquarters, did I, in
+the shameful luxury of my car, come across a battalion slogging along
+ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing with almost reproachful
+unction:
+
+
+     Last night I s-s-aw you, I s-saw you, you naughty boy!
+
+
+Some one ought to make an anthology (for private circulation only) of
+the songs most affected by our men, and also of the topographical
+Limericks with which they beguile the long hours in the trenches. And if
+the English soldier is addicted to versifying it may be pleaded in his
+behalf that, as Mommsen apologetically remarks of Caesar, "they were
+weak verses." Not always, however, I have seen some unpublished verses
+by a young officer on the staff of the late General Hubert Hamilton, a
+man beloved by all who knew him, describing the burial of his dead chief
+at night behind the firing-line, which in their sombre and elegiac
+beauty are not unworthy to rank with the classical lines on the burial
+of Sir John Moore. And there is that magnificent _Hymn before Battle_ by
+Captain Julian Grenfell, surely one of the most moving things of its
+kind.
+
+With such diversions do our men beguile the interminable hours. After
+all it is the small things that men resent in life, not the big ones. I
+once asked a French soldier over a game of cards--in civil life he was a
+plumber, whom we shall meet again[7]--whether he could get any sleep in
+the trenches amid the infernal din of the guns. "Oh, I slept pretty well
+on the whole," he explained nonchalantly, "mais mon voisin,
+celui-la"--he pointed reproachfully to a comrade who was imperturbably
+shuffling the pack--"il ronflait si fort qu'il finissait par me
+degouter."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[7] See Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AT G.H.Q.[8]
+
++-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+|                        Billet de Logement.                            |
+|                                                                       |
+| Mme. Bonnard, 131 rue Robert le Frisson, logera les sous-dits,        |
+| savoir: un officier, un sous officier, deux hommes; fournira le lit,  |
+| place au feu et a la chandelle, conformement a loi du 3 juillet, 1877.|
+|     Delivre a la Mairie,                                              |
+|       le 31me Janvier, 1915.                                          |
+|     Le Maire ----                                                     |
++-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+The Camp Commandant, who is a keeper of lodging-houses and an Inspector
+of Nuisances, had given me a slip of paper on which was inscribed the
+address No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson and a printed injunction to the
+occupier to know that by these presents she was enjoined to provide me
+with bed, fire, and lights. Armed with this billeting-paper and
+accompanied by my servant, a private in the Suffolks, who was carrying
+my kit, I knocked at the door of No. 131, affecting an indifference to
+my reception which I did not feel. It seemed to me that a
+rate-collector, presenting a demand note, could have boasted a more
+graceful errand. The door opened and an old lady in a black silk gown
+inquired, "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, M'sieu'?" I presented my
+billeting-paper with a bow. Her waist was girt with a kind of
+bombardier's girdle from which hung a small armoury of steel implements
+and leather scabbards: scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a
+button-hook, and other more or less intimidating things. "Jeanne," she
+called in a quavering voice, and as the _bonne_ appeared, tying her
+apron-strings, they read the billeting-paper together, the one looking
+over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading the words as a child
+reads, and as though she were speaking to herself. The paper shook in
+her tremulous hands, and I could see that she was very old. It was
+obvious that my appearance in that quiet household was as agitating as
+it was unexpected. "Et votre ordonnance?" she asked, with a glance at my
+servant. "Non, il dort dans la caserne." "Bien!" she said, and with a
+smile made me welcome.
+
+
+It was soon evident that, my credentials being once established, I was
+to be regarded as a member of the household, and nothing would satisfy
+Madame but that I should be assured of this. Having shown me my bedroom,
+with its pompous bed draped with a tent of curtains, she took me on a
+tour of her _menage_. I was conducted into the kitchen, bright with
+copper pans and the _marmite_--it was as sweet and clean as a dairy; the
+resources of the still-room were displayed to me, and the confitures and
+spices were not more remarkable than the domestic pharmacy in which the
+herbs of the field had been distilled by Madame's own hands to yield
+their peculiar virtues, rue for liver, calamint for cholera, plantain
+for the kidneys, fennel for indigestion, elderberry for sore throat, and
+dandelion for affections of the blood. Then I was shown the oak presses
+full of linen white as snow and laid up in lavender. This inventory
+being concluded, I was presented with a key of the front door to mark my
+admission into the freedom of the house, and invited to take a glass of
+Burgundy while Sykes was unpacking my kit upstairs.
+
+Madame, it seemed, was a widow of eighty-five years of age, without
+issue, and if her eyes were dim and her natural force abated, her teeth,
+as she proudly told me, were her own. She obviously belonged to that
+_rentier_ class who spend the evening of their days in the quiet town
+which serves as G.H.Q.--a town which has a kind of faded gentility, and
+which, behind its inscrutable house-fronts, conceals a good deal of
+quiet opulence in the matter of old china, silver, and oak. In her youth
+Madame had kept a _pension_ and had had English demoiselles among her
+charges. She had never been to England but she had heard of "Hyde Park."
+Did I know it? She received my assurance with obvious gratification as
+though it established a personal intimacy between us. "Avez-vous tue des
+Allemands?" My negative answer left her disappointed but hopeful.
+
+"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?" interjected the _bonne_, who, I
+afterwards found, had a husband at the war. Those interrogatories were
+to become very familiar to me. Every evening, when I returned from my
+visits to Divisional and Brigade Headquarters, mistress and servant
+always put me through the same catechism:
+
+"Avez-vous tue des Allemands?"
+
+"La guerre, quand finira-t-elle?"
+
+The immense seriousness, not to say solicitude, with which these
+inquiries were addressed to me eventually led me into the most
+enterprising mendacities. I killed a German every day, greatly to
+Madame's satisfaction, and my total bag when I came away was
+sufficiently remarkable to be worth a place in an official _communique_.
+I think it gave Madame a feeling of security, and I hoped Jeanne might
+consider that it appreciably accelerated the end of the war. But
+"Guillaume," as she always called him, was the principal object of
+Madame's aversion, and she never mentioned the name of the All-Highest
+without a lethal gesture as she drew her tremulous hand across her
+throat and uttered the menacing words: "Couper la gorge." She often
+uttered these maledictions to Sykes in the kitchen, as she watched him
+making the toast for my breakfast, and I have no doubt that the "Oui,
+Madame," with which he invariably assented, gave her great satisfaction.
+Doubtless it made her feel that the heart of the British Army was sound.
+Sykes used to study furtively a small book called _French, and how to
+speak it_, but he was very chary of speaking it, and seemed to prefer a
+deaf-and-dumb language of his own. But he was naturally a man of few
+words, and phlegmatic. He described the first battle of Ypres, in which
+he had been "wownded," in exactly twenty-four words, and I could never
+get any more out of him, though he became comparatively voluble on the
+subject of his wife at Norwich and the twins. He was an East Anglian,
+and made four vowels do duty for five, his e's being always pronounced
+as a's; he had done his seven years' "sarvice" with the colours, and was
+a reservist; he was an admirable servant--steady, cool, and honest. I
+imagine he had never acted as servant to any of his regimental officers,
+for on the first occasion when he brought up my breakfast I was not a
+little amused to observe that the top of the egg had been carefully
+removed, the rolls sliced and buttered, and the bread and butter cut
+into slender "fingers," presumably for me to dip into the ochreous
+interior of the egg; it reminded me of my nursery days. Perhaps he was
+in the habit of doing it for the twins. I gently weaned him from this
+tender habit. He performed all his duties, such as making my bed, or
+handing me a letter, with quick automatic movements as though he were
+presenting arms. Also his face, which was usually expressionless as
+though his mind were "at ease," had a way of suddenly coming to
+"attention" when you spoke to him. He had a curious and recondite
+knowledge of the folk-lore of the British Army, and entertained me at
+times with stories of "Kruger's Own," "The White Shirts," "The Dirty
+Twelfth," "The Holy Boys," "The Saucy Seventh," having names for the
+regiments which you will never find in the _Army List_. In short, he was
+a survival and in a way a tragic survival. For how many of the old Army
+are left? I fear very few, and many traditions may have perished with
+them.
+
+In his solicitude for me Sykes had jealous rivals in Madame and Jeanne.
+Madame reserved to herself as her peculiar prerogative the deposit of a
+hot-water "bottle" in my bed every night, such a hot-water bottle as I
+have never seen elsewhere. It reminded me of nothing so much as the
+barrel of one of the newer machine-guns, being a long fluted cylinder of
+black steel. This was always borne by Madame every night in ritualistic
+procession, Jeanne following with a silver candlestick and a
+night-light. The ceremony concluded with a bow and "good-night," two
+words of which Madame was inordinately proud. She never attained
+"good-morning," but she more than supplied the deficiency of English
+speech by the grace of her French manners, always entering my room at 8
+A.M. as I lay in bed, with the greeting, "Bon matin, M'sieu',
+avez-vous bien dormi?" Perhaps I looked, as I felt, embarrassed on the
+first occasion, for she quickly added in French, "I am old enough to be
+your mother"--as indeed she was. She had at once the resignation in
+repose and the agitation in action of extreme old age. I have seen her
+dozing in her chair in the salon, as I passed through the hall, with her
+gnarled hands extended on her knees in just that attitude of quiet
+waiting which one associates with the well-known engraving in which
+Death is figured as the coming of a friend. But when she was on her feet
+she moved about with a kind of aimless activity, opening drawers and
+shutting them and reopening them and speaking to herself the while,
+until Jeanne, catching my puzzled expression, would whisper loudly in
+my ear with a tolerant smile, "Elle est tres VIEILLE." Jeanne had
+acquired a habit of raising her voice, owing to Madame's deafness, which
+resulted in her whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those
+stage asides which, by a curious convention, while audible at the very
+back of the dress circle, are quite inaudible to the other characters on
+the stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these auricular confidences I
+know not. If she did, I doubt if she regarded them, for she was under
+the illusion, common to very old people who live in the society of a
+younger generation and were mature adults when their companions were
+merely adolescent, that Jeanne, who had entered her service as a child,
+had never grown up. If Madame seemed "tres vieille" to Jeanne, it was
+indisputable that Jeanne continued "tres jeune" to Madame. She was,
+indeed, firmly convinced that she was looking after Jeanne, whereas in
+truth it was Jeanne who looked after her. For Jeanne was at least
+thirty-five, with a husband at the war, in virtue of whom she enjoyed a
+separation allowance of one franc a day, and a boy for whom she received
+ten sous. Her husband, a _pompier_, got nothing. It never occurred to
+her to regard this provision as inadequate. And she was as capable as
+she was contented, and sang at her work.
+
+It was often difficult to believe that this quiet backwater was within
+an hour or two of the trenches. G.H.Q. was indeed situated well back
+behind "the Front," which, however precise the maps in the newspapers
+may affect to make it, is, like the Equator of our school-books, a more
+or less "imaginary line drawn across the earth's surface." Imaginary
+because if a line be, as we were taught with painful reiteration, length
+without breadth, then "the Front" is not a line at all, much less a
+straight line in the sense of the shortest distance between two points.
+It is not straight, for it curves and sags and has its salients and
+re-entrant angles; and it is not a line, for it has breadth as well as
+length. Broadly speaking, the Front extends back to the H.Q. of the
+armies (to say nothing of the H.Q. of corps, divisions, and brigades),
+and thence to G.H.Q. itself, which may be regarded as being "the Back of
+the Front," to vary a classical expression of _Punch_. The Front is,
+indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened
+fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of
+communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we
+extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just
+expand our fan a little more. When we come to make a general advance all
+along the periphery, the whole fan will be thrust forward, and the
+knuckle with it, for the relative distances of General Headquarters,
+and minor Headquarters, from this periphery and from one another are a
+more or less constant quantity, being determined by such fixed
+considerations as the range of modern guns and the mobility of
+transport.
+
+From G.H.Q., the brain of the Army, the volitional centre of the whole
+organism, radiate the sensory and motor nerves by which impressions at
+the Front are registered and plans for action transmitted. It is the
+home of the Staff, not of the Armies, and contains more "brass hats"
+than all the other Headquarters put together. Beyond the "details" in
+the barracks it contains few of the rank and file, and its big square
+betrays little of the crowded animation of the towns nearer the fighting
+line, with their great parks of armoured cars, motor lorries, and
+ammunition waggons, their filter-carts, and their little clusters and
+eddies of men resting in billets. The Military Police on point-duty have
+a comparatively quiet time, although despatch-riders are, of course, for
+ever whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the Front. It is as
+full of departmental offices as Whitehall itself--some 153 of them to be
+exact--each one indicated by a combination of initial letters, for staff
+officers are men of few words and cogent, and it saves time to say "O."
+when you mean Operations, "I." for Intelligence, "A.G." for
+Adjutant-General; a fashion which is faithfully followed at the other
+H.Q., for D.A.A.Q.M.G. saves an enormous number of polysyllables.
+
+Hence the proximity of hostilities has left but little outward and
+visible sign upon the ancient town. The tradesmen have, it is true, made
+some concessions to our presence, and one remarks the inviting legends
+"Top-hole Tea" in the windows of a _patisserie_ and "High life" over the
+shop of a tailor. Four of us made a private arrangement with a buxom
+housewife, whereby, in return for four francs per head a day and the
+pooling of our rations, she undertook to provide us with lunch and
+dinner, thereby establishing a "Mess" of our own. Many such fraternities
+there were in the absence of a regular regimental mess. But these
+arrangements were more private than military, the only obligation on the
+ordinary householder being the furnishing of billets. Occasionally the
+cobbled streets became the scene of an unwonted animation when young
+French recruits celebrated their call to the colours by marching down
+the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German
+prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which
+they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd. One such squad I saw
+arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down
+to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen
+stones, landed heavily in his ammunition boots from a height of about
+five feet on the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter winced
+and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond that gave no sign; I wondered
+whether, had the positions been reversed and the scene laid across the
+Rhine, a German guard would have exhibited a similar tolerance. I doubt
+it.
+
+The town itself seemed to be living on its past, for indubitably it had
+seen better days. An ancient foundation of the Jesuits now converted
+into the Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a church whose huge
+nave had been secularised to the uses of motor transport, a museum which
+served to incarcerate the German prisoners, all testified to the
+vanished greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a
+kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double
+doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking
+of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and
+secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no
+great effort of the imagination--especially at night when not a light
+showed--to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch
+which they must have witnessed some centuries before. The very names of
+the streets--such as the _Rue d'Arbalete_--held in them something of
+romance. To find one's billet at night was like a game of blind man's
+buff, and one felt rather than saw one's way. Not a soul was to be seen,
+for the whole town was under _droit de siege_, and the civilian
+inhabitants had to be within doors by nine o'clock, while all the
+entrances and exits to and from the town were guarded by double sentries
+night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry,
+and my own office boasted a corporal's guard--presumably because the
+Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly
+medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed
+an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every
+morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the precincts
+were not without a certain beauty, and every side of the town was
+approached through an avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the
+sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just
+that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to
+the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De
+Vigny's known to literature as _Laurette_.
+
+Such was the country and such the town in which we were billeted. Now
+upon a morning in February it happened that I was smoking a cigarette in
+the little garden, bordered by hedges of box, while waiting for my car,
+and as I waited I watched Jeanne, with her sleeves rolled up to her
+elbows and a clothes-peg in her mouth, busy over the wash-tub. "Vous
+etes une blanchisseuse, aujourd'hui?" I remarked. She corrected me.
+"Non, m'sieu', une lessiveuse." "Une lessiveuse?" For answer Jeanne
+pointed to a linen-bag which was steeping in the tub. The linen-bag
+contained the ashes of the beech-tree; it is a way of washing that they
+have in some parts of France, and very cleansing. To specialise thus is
+_lessiver_. As we talked in this desultory fashion I let fall a word
+concerning a journey I was about to undertake to the French lines, a
+journey that would take me over the battlefield of the Marne. "La Marne!
+Helas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped her eyes with the corner
+of her apron. "But it was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes, but
+Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the battle of the Marne. She
+pulled out of her bosom a frayed letter, bleached, stained, and
+perforated with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed it to me.
+I could make nothing of it. She handed me another letter. "Son
+camarade," she explained, and no longer attempted to hide her tears.
+And this was what I read:
+
+
+                                                       Le 10 sept., 1914.
+
+     CHERE MADAME--Comme j'etais tres bon camarade avec votre frere Paul
+     Duval et que le malheur vient de lui arriver, je tient a vous le
+     faire savoir, car peut-etre vous serai dans l'inquietude de pas
+     recevoir de ces nouvelles et de ne pas savoir ou il est. Je vous
+     dirai que je vient de lui donner du papier a lettre et une enveloppe
+     pour vous ecrire et aussitot la lettre finit il l'a mis dans son
+     kepi pour vous l'envoye le plus vite possible et malheureusement un
+     obus est arriver, et il a etait tue. Heureusement nous etions trois
+     pres de l'un l'autre et il n'y a eut de lui de touche. Je vous envoi
+     la petite lettre qu'il venait de vous faire, et en meme tant vous
+     verrez les trous que les eclats d'obus l'on attrapper. Recevez de
+     moi chere madame mes sinceres salutations.
+
+                                          JULES COPPEE.
+
+                                 Tambour au 151e Regiment d'Inf.,
+                                 2e Cie 42e Division, Secteur postale 56.
+
+
+Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble
+simplicity. "Tres gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and
+thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much
+circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple
+request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne--yes? I
+assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and
+perhaps if he found it he would take a photograph. "Why, certainly," I
+said, little knowing what I promised. But the request was to have a
+strange sequel, as you shall hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the
+door. As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell, Madame and
+Jeanne stood on the doorstep to wish me _bon voyage_. "J'espere que vous
+tuerez plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering voice.
+"Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried Jeanne wistfully. I waved my
+hand, and had soon left rue Robert le Frisson far behind me.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[8] The town described in this sketch is described not as it is, but as
+it was some months ago, and nothing is to be inferred from the title as
+to its present significance.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+MORT POUR LA PATRIE
+
+
+Two days later a French staff-officer greeted me in the vestibule of the
+Hotel de Crillon at Paris. It was the Comte de G----; he had been
+deputed by the Ministry of War to act as my escort on my tour of the
+French lines. He proved to be a charming companion. He was a magnificent
+figure of a man six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of
+dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard, embroidered in gold
+with a design of forked lightning, which is the prerogative of the
+staff. A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy furs
+awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde. It was a sumptuous car,
+upholstered in green corded silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying
+on its panels the motto _Quand meme_, and the monogram of a famous
+actress. It had been requisitioned. The air was cold--there had been
+frost overnight--but the sun was brilliant. As we threaded our way
+through Paris and its suburbs, a Paris chastened and resolute, I caught
+a glimpse of the barges upon the Seine with the women standing on the
+convex hatches hanging out clothes to dry--and I thought of Daudet and
+_La Belle Nivernaise_. As more and yet more men are called up to the
+colours women take their place, until the houses of business are like
+nunneries--with a few aged Fathers Superior. Having had business the day
+before at the Societe Generale, I had had occasion to reflect on these
+things as I stood in the counting-house watching some fifty girl typists
+at work, the room resounding with the tap-tap of their machines, as
+though fifty thrushes were breaking snails upon a stone. A wizened
+little clerk, verging upon superannuation, had beguiled my time of
+waiting with talk of the war: how his wife from Picardy had lost fifteen
+of her _parents_, while of four painters and paper-hangers who had
+started doing up his flat on the 2nd of July only one--disabled--had
+returned to finish the job; the rest were dead. Musing on these things
+as we drove through the Bois de Vincennes I understood the resolution of
+our Allies and the significance of the things my companion pointed out
+to me as we drove: here a row of trees felled to provide a field of
+fire, there a gun emplacement, and reserve trenches all the way from
+Paris to Soissons. They are leaving nothing to chance.
+
+Our journey was uneventful until we reached Coulommiers, where we had
+certain inquiries to make which have nothing to do with this narrative.
+We interviewed the _maire_ in his parlour at the Hotel de Ville, a
+little man, and spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German
+occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the
+lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of
+municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of
+deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to
+the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the
+faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy
+also. Doubtless it appeals to their sinister sense of humour, when two
+of their own men get drunk and shoot at one another, to execute a French
+citizen by way of punishment. It happened that during the German
+occupation of Coulommiers the gas supply gave out. The _maire_ was
+informed by a choleric commandant that unless gas were forthcoming in
+twenty-four hours he would be shot. The little man replied quietly:
+"M'eteindre, ce n'est pas allumer le gaz." This illuminating remark
+appears to have penetrated the dark places of the commandant's mind, and
+although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all
+called up to the colours) the _maire_ was not molested. It was here
+that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch)
+of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in
+amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who,
+having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a
+horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town. As to what became of
+him afterwards nothing was known, but the worst was suspected. The Huns
+have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders
+and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a
+cruel death.
+
+At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La
+Ferte-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne,
+approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible
+for many miles. Here we had lunch at the inn--a dish of perch caught
+that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for
+which La Ferte is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and
+excellent vintage. The landlord's wife waited on us with her own hands,
+and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town.
+The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much
+frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous
+losses on the pigs of La Ferte. It reminded me of the satirical
+headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great
+slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize--"Les
+Bosches s'entregorgent!" Madame told us with much spirit how she had
+saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far
+more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the
+Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the
+cellar. Her pig is now a local celebrity. People come from afar to see
+the pig which escaped the Bosches. For the pigs whom the Bosches love
+are apt to die young. But what had impressed her most was the treatment
+meted out by a German officer, a certain von Buelow, who was quartered at
+the inn, to one of his men. The soldier had been ordered to stick up a
+lantern outside the officer's quarters, and had been either slow or
+forgetful. Von Buelow knocked him down, and then, as he lay prostrate,
+jumped upon him, kicked him, and beat him about the head and face with
+sabre and riding-whip. The soldier lay still and uttered not a cry.
+Madame shuddered at the recollection, "Epouvantable!"
+
+We crossed the _place_ and called on a prominent burgess. He received us
+hospitably. In the hall of his house was a Uhlan's lance with drooping
+pennon which excited our curiosity. How had it come here? He was only
+too pleased to explain. He had taken it from a marauding Uhlan with whom
+he had engaged in single combat, strangling him with his own hands--so!
+
+
+     I took by the throat the circumcised dog
+     And smote him, thus!
+
+
+He held out a pair of large fat hands of the consistency of clay; he was
+of a full habit and there were pouches under his eyes. In England he
+would have been a small tradesman, with strong views on total
+abstinence, accustomed to a diet of high tea, and honoured as the
+life-long superintendent of a Sunday school. I was more astonished than
+sceptical, but perhaps, as the Comte suggested in a whisper, the Uhlan
+was drunk. Here, too, we heard tales of loot, especially among ladies'
+wardrobes. It is a curious fact that there is nothing the Hun loves so
+much as women's underclothing. As to what happens when he gets hold of
+the _lingerie_ many scandalous stories are told, and none more
+scandalous than the one which appeared in the whimsical pages of _La Vie
+Parisienne_. But that is, most emphatically, quite another story.
+
+From La Ferte we drove on to Lizy, where the gendarme, wiping his mouth
+as he came hurriedly from the inn, told us a harrowing tale, and then to
+Barcy, where the _maire_, though busy with a pitch-fork upon a manure
+heap, received us with municipal gravity. We were now nearing the
+battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the
+trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by
+lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral
+beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a
+team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing
+machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an
+oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional
+passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. As we raced
+along, the furrows, running at right angles to the road, seemed to be
+eddying away from us in pleats and curves, and this illusion of a
+stationary car in a whirling landscape was fortified by the contours of
+the countryside, which were those of a great plain, great as any sea,
+stretching away to a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly the car slowed
+down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound
+was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing
+machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a
+breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked
+around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against
+small wooden staves. It was the battlefield of the Marne, the scene of
+that immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted the sons of France
+to conquer or die where they stood. As he had commanded, so had they
+done. With an emotion too deep for words we each contemplated these
+plaintive memorials of the heroes who lay where they fell. Our orderly
+wept and made no effort to hide his tears. I thought of Jeanne's wistful
+petition, but my heart sank, for these graves were to be numbered not by
+hundreds but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible!" said the
+Comte, to whom I had communicated my quest. A sudden cry from the
+orderly, who was moving from grave to grave in a close scrutiny of the
+inscriptions, arrested us. He was standing by a wooden cross, half
+draped by a tattered blue coat and covered with wreaths of withered
+myrtle. A kepi pierced with holes lay upon the grave. And sure enough,
+by some miracle of coincidence, he had found it. On a wooden slab we
+read these words:
+
+
+        PAUL DUVAL,
+      151e Reg. d'Inf.
+        6 sept. 1914
+     MORT POUR LA PATRIE.
+
+
+The sun was fast declining over the chalk hills and it grew bitter cold.
+I unfolded my camera, stepped back eight paces, and pressed the trigger.
+We clambered back into the car and resumed the road to Meaux. As I
+looked over my shoulder the last things I saw in the enfolding twilight
+were those little flags still fluttering wistfully in the wind.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS
+
+
+We lay the night at Meaux. It was a town which breathed the enchantments
+of the Middle Ages and had for me the intimacy of a personal
+reminiscence. Sixteen years earlier, when reading for a prize essay at
+Oxford, I had studied the troubled times of Etienne Marcel in the
+treasures of the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, and I knew every
+kilometre of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux, Compiegne,
+Senlis--they called to my mind dreamy hours in the dim religious light
+of muniment-rooms and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart.
+Little did I think when I read those belligerent chronicles in the
+sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian and the Bibliotheque Nationale,
+tracing out the warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the Dauphin
+and the Provost of the Merchants, that the day would come when I would
+be traversing these very fields engaged in detective enterprises upon
+the footprints of contemporary armies. To compare the _variae
+lectiones_ of two manuscripts concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish
+is good, it has all the excitement of the chase; but to be collating the
+field note-book of a living Hun with the _dossier_ of a contemporary
+Justice de Paix, this is better. It has all the contact of reality and
+the breathless joy of the hue and cry. And, after all, were things so
+very different? Generations come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but
+the earth endureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and valleys
+that have witnessed the devastation of the Hun have also seen the
+ravages of the mercenaries and free companies of the Middle Age. As I
+lay in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the pages of my pocket
+volume of M. Zeller's _Histoire de France racontee par les
+contemporains_, and hit on the "Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marches,"
+ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of widows' houses. And as I
+read, it seemed as though I were back in the department _du Contentieux_
+of the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages of a German
+officer's field note-book. For thus speaks Aimerigot Marches in the
+delectable pages of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern French:
+
+
+     There is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of
+     the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How
+     blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on a rich
+     abbe, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from
+     Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with
+     the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices
+     from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours
+     or was to ransom at our sweet will. Every day we had more money.
+     The peasants of Auvergne and Limousin provisioned us and brought to
+     our camp corn and meal, and baked bread, hay for the horses and
+     straw for their litter, good wines, oxen, and fine fat sheep,
+     chicken, and poultry. We carried ourselves like kings and were
+     caparisoned as they, and when we rode forth the whole country
+     trembled before us. Par ma foi, cette vie etait bonne et belle.
+
+
+Is not that your very Hun? He is a true reversion to type. Only, whereas
+among the French he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans he
+is a product of the kultured present. And to turn from the field
+note-book of the German soldier with its swaggering tale of loot, lust,
+and maudlin cups, its memoranda of stolen toys for Felix and of ravished
+lingerie for Bertha, all viewed in the rosy light of the writer's
+egotism as a laudable enterprise, to the plain depositions of the
+Justice de Paix, and see the reverse side of the picture with its tale
+of ruined homes and untilled fields, was just such an experience as it
+had been to turn from the glittering pages of Froissart to the sombre
+story of Jean de Venette,[9] a monk of Compiegne, Little Brother of the
+Poor and chronicler of his times, as he pondered on these things in the
+scriptorium:
+
+
+     In this year 1358, the vines, source of that beneficent liquor
+     which gladdens the heart of man, were no longer cultivated; the
+     fields were neither tilled nor sown; the oxen and the sheep went no
+     longer to the pasture. The churches and houses, falling into decay,
+     presented everywhere traces of devouring flames or sombre ruins and
+     smouldering. The eye was no longer gladdened as before with the
+     sight of green meadows and yellowing harvests, but rather afflicted
+     by the aspect of briers and thistles, which clustered everywhere.
+     The church bells no longer rang joyously to call the faithful to
+     the divine offices, but only to give the alarm to the peasants at
+     the approach of the enemy and the signal for flight.
+
+
+As it was in the days of Jean de Venette, so it is now. I thought of
+that mournful passage as I wandered next day among the ruins of
+Choisy-au-Bac, a village not twenty miles from the place where Jean de
+Venette was born, and saw old women cowering among the ruins of their
+burnt-out homes.
+
+If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century returned to Meaux to-day
+he would have little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for
+though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little.
+The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of
+the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century,
+and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window--though
+it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the
+flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent
+adventures when he feels the first chill of age--is stamped with the
+characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would
+find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for
+like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in
+procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and
+white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty
+consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And
+it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German
+occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese
+like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting a
+_maire_, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he
+fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See.
+Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little
+house--surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which
+there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and
+his biretta.
+
+We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial
+mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and,
+having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I
+applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open
+the window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least
+responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made
+demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite
+simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before.
+With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hotel
+de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning,
+and thus also had the aged waiter at the Metropole disposed of a
+flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough;
+gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and
+in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was
+purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and
+imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after
+all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could
+hear the thunder of their guns.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[9] Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de
+Nangis. See M. Lacabane in the _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_ (1e
+serie), t. iii.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS
+
+
+We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away
+betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a
+flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crepy-en-Valois we entered the Forest
+of Compiegne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and
+grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead
+in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a
+sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs
+and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like
+figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when
+men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums
+beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the
+silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the
+charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to
+certain soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain
+in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern
+guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough,
+as we drove into Compiegne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as
+our own, in their mouse-coloured _couvre-casques_ and cavalry cloaks,
+though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal
+conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood
+about the square in front of the exquisite Hotel de Ville, with its
+high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many
+pinnacles. North and east of Compiegne lie the zones of the respective
+armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our
+passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass
+appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to
+the south of us between Compiegne and Paris.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to
+the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of
+spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made
+patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the
+blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of
+the more distant woodlands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we
+neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon
+the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer
+appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of
+trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms--just such an avenue as that
+along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbe
+Lantaigne--yet not a soul was to be seen upon the _trottoir_. A brooding
+silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost
+menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which
+froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing
+perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay
+with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose.
+And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers,
+blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry.
+And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise
+as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as
+porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon
+these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out.
+
+In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was
+not until we sought out the house of a captain of dragoons, a friend of
+my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes.
+The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge,
+and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as
+he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he
+were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of
+which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the
+impact of bullets. And this was his tale.
+
+One afternoon early in September--it was the second day of the month, he
+remembered it because there had been an untimely frost over night--he
+heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of the town, and a column
+of grey-coated men suddenly appeared in the street. An officer blew a
+whistle, and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion,
+the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears
+and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms
+he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the
+tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there
+panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of
+furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers.
+And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And after that
+silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands
+and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles;
+he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of
+smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked
+and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge
+heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid
+himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied
+with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a
+lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry
+and sang lustily--the concierge thought they had been drinking; they
+sang thus, "_comme ca!_" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a
+tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his
+life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn:
+
+
+     Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.
+
+
+Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile the _maire_, M. Odent, a good man and
+greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hotel de Ville. His secretary
+proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the _maire_ tranquilly,
+"one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb
+of Chammont, the headquarters of von Kluck, and his guards buffeted him
+and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death.
+He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them--"tres
+dignement," the concierge had been told--handed them his papers, and
+bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into
+a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it
+the next day; the feet were protruding.
+
+All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as
+he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he
+spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed
+to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu
+he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our
+salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round
+towards Compiegne. I shall never see Senlis again.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE"
+
+     Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la
+     guerre. Manier des armes, revetir l'uniforme, monter a cheval ou
+     marcher au commandement, _etre redoutable sans cesser d'etre
+     aimable_, depasser le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grace
+     s'il se peut, defier l'ennemi, connaitre l'aventure, jouer ce qui a
+     peu dure, ce qui est encore illusion, reve, ambition, ce qui est
+     encore une beaute, o jeunesse, voila ce que vous aimez! Vous n'etes
+     pas liee, vous n'etes pas fanee, vous pouvez courir le
+     monde.--RENE BAZIN, _Recits du temps de la guerre_.
+
+
+Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda--never had I seen such a
+multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind
+congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them
+everywhere--Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage
+of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital--orderly,
+subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors
+and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of
+wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights
+extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single cafe,
+faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which
+the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz
+and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all
+either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the
+colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from
+the _Mairie_ at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at
+street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle,
+held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old
+woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and
+hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so
+far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured
+motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a
+stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their
+insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by
+rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm
+beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything,
+accentuated; much was "defendu," and many things which were still lawful
+were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones--it was only the
+wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were
+the picture postcards in the shops--I had forgotten them--nothing more
+characteristically _macabre_ have I ever seen. One such I bought one
+morning--a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden
+horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the
+horse--I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai due le
+cavalier, foila le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Heros."
+
+
+It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war,
+that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The
+ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and
+it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing
+cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had
+answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garcon!" in a big Paris hotel,
+and was now a _sous-officier_ in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds
+received in the thick of the fighting round Muelhausen. He was enjoying
+his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he
+confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly
+satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he
+not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your
+own job--particularly if he does it badly? The _sous-officier_ nearly
+wept with joy when, a moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With
+him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner
+which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's
+vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye
+while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a
+distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his
+chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked
+on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the
+voluptuous pages of _La Vie Parisienne_.
+
+The _sous-officier_, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a
+histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge
+of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and
+followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended
+his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the
+height of the leaping earth.
+
+"_Quinze metres--comme ca, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!_ And
+they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (_sur l'epaule_)--so!
+They shoot under the arm (_sous le bras_)--so! And they like to join
+hands like children--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the
+wood crouching like dogs--one behind the other. They are a bad
+lot--_canaille_. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on
+church-towers. There was one of our sappers--_diable!_ they tied him to
+a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him."
+
+"But you make them pay for that?"
+
+He smiled grimly. "_Mais oui!_ When they see us they throw everything
+away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, '_Pas
+de mal, Alsatien_.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through
+them like butter and say, '_Pour vous!_' A little _etrenne_, you know,
+monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim
+recollection.
+
+"_Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!_[10] _Ja!_" It was the Alsatian who
+was speaking.
+
+"_Sie sprechen Deutsch!_"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+"_Ja, ich kann nicht anders--um so mehr schade!_"[12] he replied
+mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having
+deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear
+him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way
+the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I
+interpolated, "it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get
+away like yourself."
+
+"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German
+army. They watch us--and they put Prussian _sous-officiers_ over us to
+spy. So when we see the _sous-officier_ sneaking about, we raise our
+voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when
+we are alone--well, then we say what we think."
+
+And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits--how
+they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies,
+like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the
+knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources
+of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied
+territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other
+such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful
+silence and then told a tale.
+
+"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my
+company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good--not
+too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"--he bowed
+apologetically to me--"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he
+talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our
+captain noticed something--two things. First, monsieur, the English
+officer was very troubled with his eyes--he was always applying a large
+white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the
+English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was
+the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly--the weather
+was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground
+was too wet. And the German shells--they begin to fall right in the
+midst of us--they had been so wide before. So the captain was very
+concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very
+politely and says he had better see the doctor. A _sous-officier_ and
+two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor'
+was the _liaison_ officer with our brigade--an English officer. And he
+finds that the officer is a spy--a Bosche. He have no more trouble with
+his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to
+spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that.
+
+"You like the bayonet?" I asked.
+
+"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a _bon enfant_," said the
+_sous-officier_. "And they can't fence (_escrimer_), the Bosches--they
+are too _lourds_. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men
+fought like tiger-cats--so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no
+one said a word. Nor a sound except the clash of steel." His eyes
+flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go
+through them--they grunt, _comme un cochon_." Perhaps I shuddered
+slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (_ruses
+honteuses_). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands
+after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave
+a snort of contempt.
+
+"What do they cry?"
+
+"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German
+pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a
+minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had
+wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any
+longer. And so perish all Germans!
+
+The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards.
+"We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispassionately.
+"Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many
+dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were
+leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire--such a
+stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been
+killed with the bayonet--they are quite black. I suppose it's the
+grease."
+
+"The grease?"
+
+"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting
+rusty."
+
+He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a
+battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The
+reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further
+recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French
+shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans--they had been surprised by a
+shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in
+their hands, monsieur, just as you see us--and they hadn't got a
+scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre."
+
+"Yes," said the _sous-officier_, "I have seen them like that. I remember
+I found a big Bosche--six feet four he must have been--sitting dead in a
+house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there
+like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff--yes! _comme
+une poupee_. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not one! And do you
+know what he had on--a woman's chemise! _Ecoutez!_" he added suddenly,
+and he held up a monitory hand.
+
+Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat
+of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the
+measure--who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a trumpet. The
+door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing
+a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas
+"crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his
+heels.
+
+Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice:
+
+
+     Allons! enfants de la Patrie!
+
+
+A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown
+down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The
+others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The
+Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of
+his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops,
+with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick
+child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default
+of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage
+way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum,
+more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant
+cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed!
+To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying
+men with its _viaticum_. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has
+exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to
+the side of men:
+
+
+       Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:
+       S'ils tombent, nos jeunes heros,
+       La terre en produit de nouveaux
+       Contre vous tout prets a se battre.
+     Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons:
+     Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.
+
+
+As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor
+on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of
+joy:
+
+
+     Le jour de gloire est arrive!
+
+
+It was the note of the conqueror.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians!
+
+[11] You speak German!
+
+[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+PETER
+
+
+My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his
+sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term
+as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly
+confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up
+their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without
+reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of
+many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the
+cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill
+like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one
+might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite.
+The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional
+slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous
+stones, was unmistakable.
+
+"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We
+knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel
+every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the
+silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from
+the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we
+heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down
+and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room,
+the upturned faces of the men.
+
+"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French
+soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that _vade mecum_ (price
+one penny) of the British soldier: _French, and how to speak it_. It was
+night, not day, but that didn't matter.
+
+"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.
+
+"Good-night"--"Good-night, old chap"--"Good-night, my son"--the men
+shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely
+saluted.
+
+"It's Peter," said T----; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."
+
+"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the
+rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the
+bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure
+in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.
+
+"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The
+light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's
+shoulder from the window.
+
+"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They
+saluted me! Did _you_ see?" he said, turning to me.
+
+"I did, Major Peter."
+
+"You're kidding!"
+
+"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you
+commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future
+to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to
+salute you too, now."
+
+This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to
+Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always
+addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was
+ordering him to bed. At such times--there was a nightly contest on the
+matter--the paternal authority could not afford to concede any
+prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be
+reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.
+
+"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know
+lots of officers up there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly.
+Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his
+preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and
+domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards.
+"Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from
+his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of
+_The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_, _The Cock-House at Fellsgarth_, and
+Newbolt's _Pages from Froissart_. Peter was rather eclectic in his
+tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents
+of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his
+father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys'
+jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental
+inventory of them:
+
+
+     (1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers.
+
+     (2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun
+     requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground.
+
+     (3) A miniature aeroplane--the wings rather crumpled as though the
+     aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent.
+
+     (4) A knife.
+
+     (5) Several pieces of string.
+
+     (6) A coloured "alley."
+
+     (7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord
+     Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien.
+
+     (8) A top.
+
+     (9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops.
+
+
+For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was
+certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being
+included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than
+some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber
+officers at the Front.
+
+The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter
+piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in
+which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and
+graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and
+proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole
+business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated
+airman.
+
+"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the
+aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.
+
+"It's me, Captain S----," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend
+----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He's
+attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first
+time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather
+a personage.
+
+The Captain and I discussed the merits of the new Lewis machine-gun,
+while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and
+monoplanes.
+
+"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in
+an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for
+Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a
+Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views.
+He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is
+now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the
+prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him
+that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my
+question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was
+mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked.
+
+Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties
+which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the
+public service--the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian
+Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or
+Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether
+it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of
+Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in
+the R.F.A., saved a battery at X---- Y----. Another is the chief of the
+most mysterious of our public services--a man who speaks little and
+listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who
+changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a
+price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He
+neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands
+an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this
+uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle Dick's got eyes like
+gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public
+Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know
+such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored
+expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the
+counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of
+the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most,
+although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to
+know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it
+_The Man behind the Scenes_.
+
+Such was Peter's family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he
+feared God, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had
+promised Peter that he would let him see the new Lewis machine-gun. It
+is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the
+bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the
+back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in
+this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of
+Peter's private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged
+his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded
+to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This
+interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful.
+
+"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked.
+
+"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"--Peter now calls other
+boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a
+West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as
+"niggers"--"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must
+send them something."
+
+He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with
+the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That's from Jackson
+minor," he said. "Cheek, isn't it?"
+
+I began reading the letter aloud.
+
+
+     DEAR OLD PAN--You must be having a ripping time. I see
+     your letter is headed "The Front" ...
+
+
+I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably.
+
+
+     ... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully
+     bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's....
+
+
+"What's Fenner's?" I said to Peter.
+
+"Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end
+of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term.
+But we beat them at footer."
+
+
+     We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder
+     Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I
+     showed him the envelope of your letter with "Passed by the Censor"
+     on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said,
+     "That's proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll
+     get the V.C. or something--the Head'll be sure to give us a
+     half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's
+     newspaper when he leaves it lying about--you know how he swanks
+     about it--said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French
+     kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of
+     Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion
+     of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was
+     rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to
+     command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of
+     devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that
+     legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you
+     get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you
+     can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.
+
+
+"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was
+pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.
+
+"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round.
+He was very red.
+
+"I didn't mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says
+at the end."
+
+I read on--this time in silence:
+
+
+     I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to
+     tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at
+     center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod--we
+     hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never
+     saw one. We've given up German this term--beastly language; it's
+     just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never
+     know what he's driving at.
+
+
+Then followed a sentence heavily underlined:
+
+
+     _By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last
+     term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on
+     it, German blood I mean_.--Yours to a cinder,
+
+                                                     ARTHUR JACKSON.
+
+
+I handed this priceless missive back to Peter.
+
+"Cheek, isn't it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a
+bayonet!"
+
+"But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you
+can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know."
+
+Peter blushed.
+
+"Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the Front, and the fellows
+wouldn't think anything of me if I hadn't been _near_ the Front," he
+said, apologetically. "Hullo, they're going up!"
+
+An aeroplane was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across
+the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by
+pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she
+gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She
+took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and
+gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he
+promised to take me up some day," he said sadly.
+
+"Yes, some day, Peter," I said encouragingly. "But it's time we were
+getting back. You know you've got to catch the leave-boat at four
+o'clock this afternoon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter's father and I stood on the quay, having taken farewell of Peter.
+There was an eminent Staff Officer going home on leave--a very great man
+at G.H.Q., a lieutenant-general, who inspired no less fear than respect
+among us all. He knew Peter's father in his distant way, and had not
+only returned his salute, but had even condescended to ask, in his
+laconic style, "Who is the boy?"--whereupon Peter's father had, with
+some nervousness, introduced him. All the other officers going home on
+leave, from a Brigadier down to the subalterns, stood at a respectful
+distance, glancing furtively at the hawk-like profile of the great man,
+and lowering their voices. It was a tribute not only to rank but to
+power. As the ship gathered way and moved slowly out of the harbour I
+pulled the sleeve of Peter's father. "Look!" I said. The
+Lieutenant-General and Peter were engaged in an animated conversation on
+the deck, and the great man, usually as silent as the sphinx and not
+less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some warmth and great
+interest, as though hard put to keep his end up, some point of debate
+propounded to him by Peter.
+
+"T----, old chap," I said, "Peter'll be a great man some day."
+
+Peter's father said nothing, but his eyes grew misty. Perhaps he was
+thinking of that lonely grave in the distant plains of the Deccan where
+Peter's mother sleeps.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THREE TRAVELLERS
+
+(_October 1914_)
+
+
+My train left Paris at 1.52 in the afternoon. It was due at Calais at
+eight o'clock the same evening. But it soon became apparent that
+something was amiss with our journey--we crawled along at a pace which
+barely exceeded six miles an hour. At every culvert, guarded by its
+solitary sentry, we seemed to pause to take breath. As we approached
+Amiens, barely halfway on our journey, somewhere about 9.30 P.M., we
+passed on the opposite line of rails a Red Cross train, stationary, and
+throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of
+an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor.
+It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky,
+and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far
+behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering above river banks, out
+of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape
+were a Japanese print. Through the open door of the horse-box I saw a
+soldier stretched upon his straw, with a red gaping wound in his
+half-naked body. Over him stooped a nurse, improvising with delicate
+ministries a hasty dressing. In the next carriage the black face of a
+wounded Senegalese looked out, unearthly in the moonlight. Ahead of us
+an interminable line of trains (some seventy of them I was told) had
+passed, conveying fresh troops. Then I knew. The Germans, hovering like
+a dark cloud some twenty miles away, had been reinforced, and a fierce
+battle was in progress. The news of it had travelled by some mysterious
+telepathy to every village along the line, and at every crossing groups
+of pale-faced women, silent and intent, kept a restless vigil. They
+looked like ghosts in the moonlight; no cheer escaped them as we passed,
+no hand waved an exuberant greeting. In the twilight we had already seen
+red-trousered soldiers, vivid as poppies against the grass, digging
+trenches along the line, and at one point a group of sappers improvising
+a wire footbridge across the river. The contagion of suspense was in the
+air,--you seemed to catch it in the faint susurrus of the poplars.
+
+"Shall we get to Calais?" I asked.
+
+"Bon Dieu! I know not," was the reply of the harassed guard.
+
+We pursued our stealthy journey, reached Abbeville somewhere about
+midnight, and Boulogne in the small hours. 4 A.M. Calais at last! I
+joyfully exclaimed. But between Calais Ville and Calais Maritime a group
+of officers boarded our train and, for some mysterious reason, we were
+headed off to Dunkirk. It grew colder and more cold, and I had had no
+food since noon of yesterday. But my thoughts were with our men, the men
+whom I had lately come to know, now lying out on the bare earth in the
+moonlit trenches, keeping their everlasting vigil and blowing on their
+fingers numbed with cold. We reached Dunkirk at 6 A.M. No explanation
+why the train had played truant at Calais was vouchsafed me, nor was any
+hope held out of a return. In those days I was travelling as a private
+person, and was not yet endowed with the prerogatives by which, in the
+name of a Secretary of State, I could requisition cars and impress men
+to do my bidding.
+
+At a hopeless moment I had the good fortune to fall in with a King's
+Messenger, carrying despatches, who was in the next carriage. He
+produced his special passports, and the prestige of "Courrier du Roi,"
+Knight of the Order of the Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every
+one was at our service. We were escorted to the military headquarters
+of Dunkirk--through streets already echoing with the march of French
+infantry, each carrying a big baton of bread and munching as he kept
+step, to an office in which the courteous commandant was just completing
+his toilet. The Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of the
+English officers was rung up, and thither we went through an ambuscade
+of motor-cars in the courtyard.
+
+A lieutenant of the Naval Flying Squadron was ready for us with his
+powerful Rolls-Royce, and we were soon on the high road to Calais.
+Everywhere were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of barbed-wire
+entanglements in the distant fields, deep trenches, earthworks six feet
+thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were
+stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the
+shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the
+steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy
+of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and
+presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive
+cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a little group of French
+soldiers, their cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sunk in deep
+black hollows by their eternal vigil. "Officier Anglais!" "Courrier du
+Roi!" we exclaimed, and were sped on our way with a weary smile and
+"Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men were already toiling in the
+fields, stooping like the figures in Millet's "Gleaners," as we raced
+through an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed inns, past
+depopulated farms, past wooden windmills, perched high upon wooden
+platforms like gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre word was
+exchanged about Antwerp--again that strange telepathy of peril. Calais
+at last! and a great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was a London wine-merchant of repute, who had got here at last from
+Rheims, whither he had gone to pay his yearly inspection of the
+champagne vintage, only to find the red wine-press of war. Three weeks
+he had lived like primitive man in the wine-cellars of Rheims, with the
+shells screaming overhead--screaming, he says, just like the long-drawn
+sobbing whistle of an express train as it leaves a tunnel. Never has he
+lived such days before; never, he fervently prays, will he live them
+again. From his narrative I got a glimpse of a subterranean existence,
+as tenebrous and fearful as the deepest circle of Dante's _Inferno_,
+with a river of tears falling always in the darkness of the vaults. A
+great wine-cellar--there are ten miles of them at Rheims--crowded with
+four thousand people, lighted only by candles, and swarming with huge
+rats; the blanched faces of women, the crying of children, the wail of
+babies at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling masonry--the men had
+armed themselves with big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the
+vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one long threnody of
+anguish. Outside, the conscious stone of the great monument of mediaeval
+aspiration was being battered to pieces, and the glorious company of the
+apostles, the goodly fellowship of the martyrs, suffered another and a
+less resurgent martyrdom. After days of this crepuscular existence he
+emerged to find the cathedral less disfigured than he had feared. One
+masterpiece of the mediaeval craftsmen's chisel is, however,
+irremediably destroyed--the figure of the devil. We hope it is a
+portent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The King's Messenger had posted from a distant country, and his way
+through Dijon had been truly a Via Dolorosa. Thirty-six people standing
+in the corridor, and in his own crowded compartment--he had surrendered
+his royal prerogative of exclusion--was a woman on the verge of
+hysteria, finding relief not in tears but in an endless recital of her
+sorrow. She and her husband had a son--the only son of his mother--gone
+to the front, reported badly wounded, and for days, like Joseph and
+Mary, the anxious parents had sought him, only to find him on the
+threshold of death, with a bullet in his liver. Again and again she
+beguiled her anguish by chronicles of his miraculous childhood--his
+precocious intelligence at five, his prescience at six, his unfathomable
+wisdom at seven. The silent company of wayfarers listened in patience to
+the twice-told tale. No one could say her nay as she repeated her litany
+of pain. She was, indeed, the only passenger in that compartment whose
+eyes were dry. _Stabat Mater Dolorosa._
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+BARBARA
+
+
+It was the Duchess of X.'s Hospital at a certain _plage_ on the coast. I
+had motored thither through undulating country dotted with round beehive
+ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the
+distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we
+neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand,
+fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of
+broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate
+existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held
+up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave
+of the sky. The bare needle-like branches of the broom and fir stood out
+blackly against the biscuit-coloured sand with the sharp outlines of an
+etching.
+
+I had taken a hospitable cup of tea with the Duchess in the Matron's
+room. She was clothed in fine linen but without her purple; she wore
+the ordinary and serviceable slate-coloured dress of a nurse. It was
+here I had the honour of being introduced to Barbara. She was nursing a
+doll with great tenderness, and had been asking the Duchess why she did
+not wear her "cowonet."
+
+"This is Barbara--our little Egyptian," said the matron.
+
+Barbara repudiated the description hotly.
+
+"She was born in Egypt," explained the matron.
+
+"Ah," I said, "that wasn't your fault, Barbara, was it? But it was
+Egypt's good fortune."
+
+Barbara ignored the compliment with the simplicity of childhood, and
+proceeded to explain with great seriousness: "You see, Mummy was
+travelling, and she comed to Egypt. She didn't know I was going to
+happen," she added as if to clear Mummy of any imputation of
+thoughtlessness.
+
+"And your birthday, Barbara?"
+
+Barbara and I discovered that both of us have birthdays in March--only
+six days apart. This put us at once on a footing of intimacy--we must
+have been born under the same star. Barbara proceeded to inform me that
+she rather liked birthdays--except the one which happened in Egypt. I
+had half a mind to execute a deed of conveyance on the spot, assigning
+to her all my own birthdays as an estate _pour autre vie_, with all
+_profits a prendre_ and presents arising therefrom, for I am
+thirty-eight and have no further use for them.
+
+"I am afraid there are more than six years between us, Barbara," I said
+pensively.
+
+Barbara regarded me closely with large round eyes.
+
+"About ten, I fink. I'm seven, you know."
+
+"How nice of you to say that, Barbara. Then I'm only seventeen."
+
+Barbara regarded me still more closely.
+
+"A little more, p'waps--ten monfs."
+
+"Thank you, Barbara. I'll remind you of that some day." After all, ten
+years is no obstacle to the course of true love. "But what is the matter
+with the doll?" Despite a rosy flush the doll has a field-dressing round
+her auburn locks, and one leg is immensely stout owing to a tourniquet.
+
+Barbara looked at me rather less favourably than before. It was evident
+that she now thought poorly of my intelligence, and that I had made a
+_faux pas_.
+
+"I'm a nurse," Barbara explained, loftily, showing an armlet bearing the
+ensign of the Red Cross. I was about to remind her of 1 & 2 Geo. V. cap.
+20, which threatens the penalties of a misdemeanour against all who wear
+the Red Cross without the authority of Army Council, but I thought
+better of it. Instead of anything so foolish, I exhibit a delicate
+solicitude about the health of the patient. I put myself right by
+referring to it as "he." A less intelligent observer might pronounce it
+to be decidedly of the female sex. Still, I reflected, women have
+enlisted in the Army before now. I proceeded to inspect the injured limb
+with professional gravity. "A compound fracture, I think, Barbara. He
+will require careful nursing."
+
+Barbara liked this--no one in the matron's room had ever exhibited such
+a clinical interest in the case before, and she thinks "fwacture" rather
+imposing.
+
+"Let me feel his pulse," I said. I held a waxen arm between my thumb and
+forefinger, and looked at my wrist-watch for some seconds, Barbara
+gazing at me intently.
+
+"Hum! hum! I think we had better take his temperature," I said, as I
+held a clinical thermometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the
+rosebud lips of the patient. "103, I think."
+
+"Will you wite a pwescwiption?" asked Barbara anxiously.
+
+"Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara. Let me see, will this do,
+do you think?" I scribbled on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and
+handed it to Barbara.
+
+
+     Brom. Potass.            3 grs.
+     Hydrochl.                5 quarts.
+     Quin. Sulph.             1 pt.
+
+
+She scrutinised it closely. It puzzled her, though her bewilderment was
+nothing to the astonishment which that prescription would have excited
+in a member of the medical profession.
+
+"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who
+tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo
+of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a
+respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying.
+
+I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a
+tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung
+on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature--Pwomise?"
+
+I promised.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+AN ARMY COUNCIL
+
+(_October 1914_)
+
+
+All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy
+between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches. The country had the
+delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the skies were of that
+unforgettable blue which is the secret of France. The end of my journey
+found me at No. ---- General Hospital. The chaplain, an old C.F.
+attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the
+war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore
+the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's
+overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with
+red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone
+betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every
+regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect from
+John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk was of the great retreat.
+
+"Hell it was--fire and brimstone," said a R.F.A. man. "We limbered up,
+our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were
+more like a blooming ambulance than a battery. We had our limbers and
+waggons chock full o' details--fellers who'd been wounded or crocked up.
+And reservists wi' sore feet--out o' training, I reckon," he added
+magisterially.
+
+"Never you mind about resarvists, my son," interjected a man in the
+Suffolks. "We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for
+miles. We ain't no chickens."
+
+"No, that we bain't," said a West-countryman. "I reckon we can teach
+them young fellers zummat. Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish[13] when
+they was under foire the fust time. Though they were middlin' steady,
+arterwards," he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his
+regiment.
+
+"'Twere all a duddering[14] mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it
+afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry; we
+could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried some o' the little
+'uns. And girt fires a-burnin' at night loike ricks--a terrible
+blissey[15] on the hills. And 'twere that dusty and hot oi did get
+mortal drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my water-bottle;
+I'd gied it all to the childer."
+
+"What about rations?" said the chaplain.
+
+"Oh I were bit leery[16] i' my innerds at toimes, but oi had my
+emargency ration, and them A.S.C. chaps were pretty sprack;[17] they kep
+up wi' us most times. 'Twere just loike a circus procession--lorries and
+guns and we soldjers all a-mixed up. And some of the harses went cruel
+lame and had to be left behind."
+
+"That they did," said a small man in the 19th Hussars who was obviously
+a Londoner. He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the deliberate
+gait of the cavalryman on his feet. "Me 'orse got the blooming 'ump with
+corns."
+
+"Ah! and what do you think of the Uhlans?"
+
+He sniffed. "Rotten, sir! They never gives us a chawnce. They ain't no
+good except for lootin'. Regular 'ooligans. We charged 'em up near Mons,
+our orficer goin' ahead 'bout eight yards, and when we got up to 'em 'e
+drops back into our line. We charges in a single line, you know, knee to
+knee, as close together as us can get, riding low so as to present as
+small a target as we can."
+
+"And you got home with the Uhlans?" I asked.
+
+"Once. Their lances ain't much good except for lightin' street-lamps."
+
+"Street-lamps?" said the chaplain literally.
+
+"Yuss. They're too long. The blighters 'ave no grip on them. We just
+parry and then thrust with the point; we've giv' up cutting exercises.
+If the thrust misses, you uses the pommel--so!" He executed an
+intimidating gesture with his stick.
+
+"Well, ah've had ma bit o' fun," interjected a small H.L.I. man
+irrelevantly, feeling, apparently, it was his turn in the symposium, as
+he thrust a red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones into the
+group. "Ah ken verra weel ah got 'im. It was at a railway stashon where
+we surprised 'em. Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer--I thocht he were
+drunk--and he fired three times aht me with a ree-vol-ver. But ah got
+'im. Yes, ah've had ma bit o' fun," he said complacently as he cherished
+an arm in a sling.
+
+With him was a comrade belonging to the "Lilywhites," the old 82nd, now
+known as the first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the H.L.I.
+have an ancient friendship. The South Lancs have also their
+antipathies--the King's Liverpools among them--but that is neither here
+nor there.
+
+"It were just like a coop-tie crowd was the retreat," he drawled in the
+broad Lancashire dialect. "A fair mix-up, it were."
+
+"What do you think of the Germans?"
+
+There was a chorus of voices. "Not much"--"Blighters"--"Swine."
+
+"Their 'coal-boxes' don't come off half the time," said the R.F.A. man
+professionally. "And their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours has.
+Ours is a treat--like sugar-loaf." The German gunnery has become deadly
+enough since then.
+
+"Their coal-boxes do stink though," said a Hoxton man in the Royal
+Fusiliers. "Reminds me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War; they used
+to let off a lot of stuff that turned yellow. I've seen Boers--hairy
+men, you know, sir--with their beards turned all yellow by them. Regular
+hair-restorers, they was."
+
+"I remember up on the Aisne," continued the Hoxton man, who had an
+ingenuous countenance, "one of our chaps shouted 'Waiter,' and about
+fifty on 'em stuck their heads up above the trenches and said, 'Coming,
+sir.'"
+
+There was a shout of laughter. The chaplain looked incredulous. "Don't
+mind him, he's pulling your leg, sir," said his neighbour. It is a
+pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately fond.
+
+"They can't shoot for nuts, that's a fact," said a Rifleman. "They
+couldn't hit a house if they was in it. We can give them five rounds
+rapid while they're getting ready to fire one. Fire from the hips, they
+do. I never seen the likes of it." It was the professional criticism of
+the most perfectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and we
+listened with respect. "But they've got some tidy snipers," he added
+candidly.
+
+"They was singing like an Eisteddfod," said a man in the South Wales
+Borderers, "when they advanced. Yess, they was singing splendid. Like a
+_cymanfa ganu_,[18] it wass. Fair play."
+
+"And what do you boys do?" asked the chaplain. "Do you sing too?"
+
+"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters, "I used every name but a
+saint's name." The speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was Church
+of England, or he might have been less candid.
+
+"There was a mon in oor company," said the red-headed one, feeling it
+was his turn again, "that killed seven Jerrmans--he shot six and
+baynitted anither. And he wur fair fou[19] afterwards. He grat like a
+bairn."
+
+"Aye, mon," said a ruddy man of the Yorks L.I., "ah knaw'd ah felt mysen
+dafflin[20] when ah saw me pal knocked over. He comed fra oor toon, and
+he tellt me hissen the neet afore: 'Jock,' 'e said, 'tha'll write to me
+wife, woan't tha?' And ah said, 'Doan't be a fule, Ben, tha'll be all
+right.' 'Noa, Jock,' he tellt me, 'ah knaw'd afore ah left heeam ah
+should be killt. Ah saw a mouldiwarp[21] dead afore oor door; me wife
+fair dithered[22] when she saw't.'"
+
+The chaplain and myself looked puzzled. "It's a kind o' sign among the
+fouk in our parts, sir," he proceeded, enlightening our ignorance. "And
+'e asked me to take his brass for the wife. But ah thowt nowt of it. And
+we lost oor connectin' files and were nobbut two platoons, and we got it
+somethin' cruel; the shells were a-skirling[23] like peewits ower our
+heids. And Ben were knocked over and 'e never said a ward. And then ah
+got fair daft."
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"I found this," suddenly interrupted a despatch-rider. He was a
+fair-spoken youth, obviously of some education. He explained, in reply
+to our interrogatories, that he was a despatch-rider attached to a
+Signal Company of the R.E. He produced a cap, apparently from nowhere,
+by mere sleight of hand. It was greasy, weather-stained, and in no
+respect different from a thousand such Army caps. It bore the badge and
+superscription of the R.E. We looked at it indifferently as he held it
+out with an eleemosynary gesture.
+
+"A collection will now be taken," said the Hoxton man with a grin.
+
+But the despatch-rider did not laugh. "I found this cap," he said
+gravely, "on Monday, September 7th, in a house near La Ferte. We stopped
+there for four hours while the artillery were in action. We saw a broken
+motor bicycle outside a house to which the people pointed. We went in.
+We found one of our despatch-riders with an officer's sword sticking in
+him. Our section officer asked the people about it, and they told him
+that the despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost his way and
+knocked at the door of the house. There were German officers billeted
+there. They let him in, and then they stuck him up against a wall and
+cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts," he added quietly.
+
+No one laughed any more. We all crowded round to look at that tragic
+cap. "The number looks like one--nought--seven--something," said the
+chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor
+lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the
+men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported
+fit for duty.
+
+The English soldier hides his feelings as though he were ashamed of
+them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal
+twilight, and I sought to disperse it.
+
+"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed
+to leave nothing to be desired.
+
+But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier
+begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable--and not before. He
+will bear without repining everything but luxury.
+
+"One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about
+this New Army getting four bob?"
+
+"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently.
+
+"Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls
+themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And
+those shuvvers--they're like fighting cocks."
+
+"Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I
+said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across
+trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer
+uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam
+upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread
+and butter, the whole representing a most interesting geological
+formation and producing a startling chromatic effect.
+
+"Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw
+pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat
+oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?"
+
+My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander
+affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull.
+"Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!"
+
+A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time
+to go bye-bye. Parade--hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round
+soon. Scoot, my sons."
+
+They scooted.
+
+The silvery notes of the bugle died away over the woods. Night was
+falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray.
+We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures,
+his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old.
+He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for
+the best part of my life," he said simply, "and I had retired on a
+pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly, "that it has pleased Him
+to extend my days long enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I
+know the British soldier and--to know him is to love him. Do you
+understand?" he added, as he nodded in the direction the men had gone.
+
+As I looked at him, there came into my mind the haunting lines of
+Tennyson's "Ulysses."
+
+"Yes," I said, "I understand."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[13] Pale.
+
+[14] Confusing.
+
+[15] Blaze.
+
+[16] Empty.
+
+[17] Smart.
+
+[18] Welsh for a singing meeting.
+
+[19] Mad.
+
+[20] Imbecile.
+
+[21] A mole.
+
+[22] Trembled.
+
+[23] Screaming.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE FUGITIVES
+
+     "But pray that your flight be not in the winter."
+
+
+Some four or five miles north of Bailleul, where the _douane_ posts mark
+the marches of the Franco-Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre.
+Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills,
+through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the
+earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies
+another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came
+upon two lonely wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with
+moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of
+the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a
+few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the
+landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of
+privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape. Not a living
+thing appeared, and the secret promises of spring were so remote as to
+seem incredible.
+
+
+The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant class; the man, gnarled
+like an old oak, the purple clots in the veins of his wrists betraying
+the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap
+had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other
+end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the
+axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart
+the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed,
+a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a
+spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen
+utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, clanked
+together.
+
+As our car drew up, they stopped, the woman holding her hands to her
+side as though to recover breath.
+
+"Who are you? Where do you come from?" said my companion, a French
+officer.
+
+They stared uncomprehendingly.
+
+He spoke again, this time in Flemish:
+
+"_Van waar komt gy? Waar gaat gy heen?_"
+
+The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the direction of the Menin
+ridge.
+
+There followed a conversation of which I could make but little. But I
+noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as
+though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves.
+
+"They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by
+the Bosches near the Menin ridge."
+
+"Are they all alone?" I asked.
+
+He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the
+Germans when they billeted there."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They don't know. The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock
+away. These few sticks are all they have left. Curious, isn't it," he
+added meditatively, "that you never see any Flemish fugitives without
+their feather-beds?" I had often noticed it. Also I had noticed the
+curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save
+everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence.
+Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become
+equally dear when you have to leave them.
+
+"But where are they going?"
+
+The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed
+vacantly at the lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The
+canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of
+sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull
+thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and
+forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration.
+The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the
+cart as though seeking support.
+
+We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the
+spasms of his malady.
+
+"He says he doesn't know," my companion translated. "He's never been
+outside his parish before. But he thinks he'll go to Brussels and see
+the King of the Belgians. He doesn't know the Germans are in Brussels.
+And anyhow he's on the wrong road."
+
+"But surely," I hazarded, "the _maire_ or the _cure_ could have told him
+better."
+
+"He says the Germans shot the _cure_ and carried off the _maire_. It's a
+way they've got, you know."
+
+It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted
+sea. Their little world was in ruins. The bells that had called them to
+the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had
+knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the
+great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their
+hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the
+heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields
+which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry,
+and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This
+was the secret of their heavy lethargy.
+
+My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to
+maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul
+had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it,
+the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of
+the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a
+time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the
+refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom
+has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by
+parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would
+supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we
+directed them to go.
+
+But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still
+standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man
+gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary
+humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their
+inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A "DUG-OUT"[24]
+
+
+Driver George Hawkins, of the ----th Battery (K), was engaged in drying
+one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he
+felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that
+morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy
+should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He
+performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive
+great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical
+expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a
+sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a
+utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering
+the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism,
+and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not
+been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's fetlocks he would
+have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back. But being
+something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to
+the ground, for he suspected corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins found
+himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable.
+Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder.
+Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt. He looked at
+Tommy with pained surprise.
+
+"I feeds yer," he said reproachfully, "I waters yer, I grooms yer, I
+stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it? Now I ask
+yer?" Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence.
+
+"What do I get for it?" he repeated argumentatively. "I gets a blooming
+kick."
+
+"Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a
+matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive
+functions, and cannot be set down here.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the
+Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment. The Major
+was trying hard to repress a smile. "Go on with your catechism,
+Hawkins," he said. It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral
+Education League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for
+the repression of vice.
+
+"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Hawkins?" I said unguardedly. But
+no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's reply was
+disconcerting. "I 'ates 'em, sir," he whispered to me as the Major
+turned his back; "I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They gives me
+'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache something cruel."
+
+"He doesn't, though," said the Major, who had overheard this auricular
+confidence. We had left the stable. "Our drivers are mighty fond of
+their horses--and proud of them too. It's quite an infatuation in its
+way. But come and see the O.T.C. We've got them down here for the
+weekend, by way of showing them the evolutions of a battery. They've got
+their instructor, an N.C.O. who's been dug out for the job, and I've
+lent him two of the guns to put them through their paces. He's quite
+priceless--a regular chip of the old Army block."
+
+"Now, sir," the sergeant was saying, "get them into single file." They
+were to change from Battery Column to Column of Route.
+
+"Battery...!" began the cadet in a piping voice.
+
+"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mild expostulation. "You've
+got to get it off your chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So!" And he gave a
+stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and surprising performance, for
+he was fat and scant of breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at
+the ---- Club, after twenty-one years' service in the Army, had produced
+a fatty degeneration which no studious arrangement of an Army belt could
+altogether conceal.
+
+"Battery!" began the cadet, as he threw his head back and took a deep
+breath. "Advance in single file from the right. The rest mark time."
+
+"Rest!" said the sergeant reproachfully. "There ain't no rest in the
+British Army. Rear, say, 'Rear,' sir."
+
+"Rear, mark time!" said the cadet uncomfortably.
+
+"Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows, "double them back,
+sir."
+
+"Battery, run!" said the cadet brightly.
+
+"As y' were! How could yer, Mr. ----?" said the sergeant grievously.
+"The British Army never runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed at
+the aspersion upon the reputation of the British Army into which he had
+been betrayed.
+
+"Double--march!"
+
+They doubled.
+
+The sergeant now turned his attention to a party at gun drill. It was a
+sub-section, which means a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment
+was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd numbers in front, even
+numbers behind.
+
+"Section tell off!"
+
+"One," from the front row. "Two," from the back. "Three," from the
+front. The tale was duly told in voices which ran up and down the scale,
+tenor alternating with baritone.
+
+"Without drag-ropes--prepare to advance!" shouted the sergeant. The odd
+numbers shifted to the right of the gun, the evens to the left, but
+numbers "4" and "6," being apparently under the impression that it was a
+game of "musical chairs," found themselves on the right instead of the
+left.
+
+"Too many odds," shouted the sergeant. "The British Army be used to
+'eavy hodds, but not that sort. Nos. 4 and 6 get over to the near side."
+
+"Halt! Action front!" They unlimbered, and swung the gun round to point
+in the direction of an imaginary enemy.
+
+The detachment were now grouped round the gun, and I drew near to have a
+look at it. No neater adaptation of means to end could be devised than
+your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a child, and her "bubble" is
+as sensitive to a touch as mercury in a barometer.
+
+"No. 1 add one hundred. Two-nought minutes more left!" shouted the
+sergeant, who, with the versatility of a variety artiste, was now
+playing another part from his extensive repertoire. He was forward
+observing officer.
+
+One of his pupils turned the ranging gear until the range-drum
+registered a further hundred yards, while another traversed the gun
+until it pointed twenty minutes more left.
+
+As we turned away they were performing another delicate and complicated
+operation which was not carried through without some plaintive
+expostulation from the N.C.O.
+
+"It reminds me," remarked the Major colloquially, as we strolled away,
+"of Falstaff drilling his recruits. So does the texture of the khaki
+they serve out to the O.T.C. 'Dowlas, filthy dowlas!' But you've no idea
+how soon he'll lick them into shape. These 'dug-outs' are as primitive
+as cave-dwellers in their way but they know their job. And what is more,
+they like it."
+
+As we passed the stables I heard ecstatic sounds--a whinny of equine
+delight and the blandishments of a human voice. Through the open door I
+caught a glimpse of Driver Hawkins with his back turned towards us. His
+left arm was round Tommy's neck and the left side of his face rested
+upon Tommy's head; the fingers of his right hand were delicately
+stroking Tommy's nose.
+
+"I forgives yer," I heard him say with rare magnanimity, "yus, I
+forgives yer, old boy. But if yer does it again, yer'll give me the
+blooming 'ump."
+
+I passed hurriedly on. It was not for a stranger to intrude on anything
+so intimate.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[24] On leave in England.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+(_1914_)
+
+
+"Halt! Stop, I mean."
+
+The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool
+looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and
+painful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in the annexe of a
+Base hospital on Christmas Eve, and the sergeant was as hard to please
+as if they were recruits doing their first squad drill. They were a
+scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning chaplain to the Forces, from
+Base "details" and convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their
+time erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead and gaining audibly
+with each lap despite the desperate spurts of the rest.
+
+"Opened out his throttle--'e has," whispered an Army driver
+professionally to his neighbour; "'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the
+speed limit."
+
+The sergeant glanced magisterially at the offender, a young Dorset, who
+a year ago was hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blackmore, but who
+has lately done enough digging for a whole parish.
+
+"You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he exclaimed reproachfully;
+"you ain't out on patrol, yer know. 'Shun! Now again! 'Christians'."
+
+
+     Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn,
+     Whereon ...
+
+
+The familiar melody was shut behind me as I closed the door. Those
+West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and,
+in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night,
+illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a
+luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the
+window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the
+nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered
+mazily whether they had brought Father Christmas with them.
+
+A low cry of pain reached my ears as I opened the door of Surgical Ward
+A.I. A nurse was removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought
+down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him ready to spray the wound
+with peroxide. "Buck up, old chap," cried the patients in the
+neighbouring beds who looked on encouragingly at these ministries.
+Another moan escaped him as the discoloured bandage, with its faint
+odour of perchloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed flesh.
+
+"Next gramophone record, please!" chanted his neighbours. The patient
+smiled faintly at the exhortation and set his teeth.
+
+"That's better, sonny," whispered the nurse with benign approval.
+
+"It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going to drain off the septic
+matter," interjected the surgeon in holland overalls, with sleeves
+tucked up to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The dresser handed
+him a nickel reed from the sterilising basin.
+
+With a few light quick movements the wound was sprayed, dressed,
+cleansed, and anointed, and the surgeon, like the good Samaritan, passed
+on to the next case. Only last night the patient was in the trenches,
+moaning with pain, as the stretcher-bearers carried him to the aid-post,
+and from the aid-post to the forward dressing station, whence by an
+uneasy journey (there were no sumptuous hospital-trains in those days)
+he had come hither. But what of the others who were hit outside the
+trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas Eve, in that dreadful No
+Man's Land swept by the enemy's fire, whither no stretcher-bearer can
+go--lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping forms, some
+quivering in the barbed wire, where dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping
+only for a cleanly death from a bullet before their wounds fester and
+poison the blood in their veins.
+
+
+     Whereon--the Saviour--of mankind--was--born.
+
+
+The measured cadence fell on my ear as I left the ward and passed beyond
+the annexe. The sergeant had now got his section well in hand. I turned
+up the long winding road towards my quarters. It was a cold moonlight
+night, and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a
+black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as
+though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the
+Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible--or so it
+seemed to me--as Mars in all that starry heraldry.
+
+"Bon soir, monsieur!" It was the voice of the sentry, and came from
+behind a barricade of hurdles, thatched with straw, on the crest of the
+road over the downs. His bayonet gleamed like a silver needle in the
+moonlight, and he was alone in his vigil. No shepherds watched their
+flocks by night, neither did angels sing peace on earth and goodwill
+towards men. Only the cold austerity of the stars kept him company.
+Perhaps the first Christmas Eve was just such a starry night as this;
+the same stars may have looked down upon a manger in Bethlehem. But on
+the brow of the hill was one of those wayside shrines which symbolise
+the anguish of the Cross, and these very stars may have looked down upon
+the hill of Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE FRONT AGAIN
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE COMING OF THE HUN
+
+
+The _maire_ sat in his parlour at the Hotel de Ville dictating to his
+secretary. He was a stout little man with a firm mouth, an indomitable
+chin, and quizzical eyes. His face would at any time have been
+remarkable; for a French provincial it was notable in being
+clean-shaven. Most Frenchmen of the middle class wear beards of an
+Assyrian luxuriance, which to a casual glance suggest stage properties
+rather than the work of Nature. The _maire_ was leaning back in his
+chair, his elbows resting upon its arms and his hands extended in front
+of him, the thumb and finger-tips of one hand poised to meet those of
+the other as though he were contemplating the fifth proposition in
+Euclid. It was a characteristic attitude; an observer would have said it
+indicated a temperament at once patient and precise. He was dictating a
+note to the _commissaire de police_, warning the inhabitants to conduct
+themselves "paisiblement" in the event of a German occupation, an event
+which was hourly expected. Much might depend upon that proclamation; a
+word too little or too much and Heaven alone knew what innuendo a German
+Commandant might discover in it. Perhaps the _maire_ was also not
+indifferent to the question of style; he prided himself on his French;
+he had in his youth won a prize at the Lycee for composition, and he
+contributed occasional papers to the journal of the Societe de
+l'Histoire de France on the antiquities of his _department_. Most
+Frenchmen are born purists in style, and the _maire_ lingered over his
+words.
+
+"Continuez, Henri," he said with a glance at the clerk. "_Le Maire,
+assiste de son adjoint et de ses conseillers municipaux et de delegues
+de quartier, sera en permanence a l'hotel de Ville pour assurer_--"
+There was a kick at the door and a tall loutish man in the uniform of a
+German officer entered, followed by two grey-coated soldiers. The
+officer neither bowed nor saluted, but merely glared with an
+intimidating frown. The _maire's_ clerk sat in an atrophy of fear,
+unable to move a muscle. The officer advanced to the desk, pulled out
+his revolver from its leather pouch, and laid it with a lethal gesture
+on the _maire's_ desk. The _maire_ examined it curiously. "Ah, yes, M.
+le Capitaine, thank you; I will examine it in a moment, but I have seen
+better ones--our new service pattern, for example. Ja! Ich verstehe ganz
+gut," he continued, answering the officer's reckless French in perfect
+German. "Consider yourself under arrest," declaimed the officer, with
+increasing violence. "We are in occupation of your town; you will
+provide us within the next twenty-four hours with ten thousand kilos of
+bread, thirty thousand kilos of hay, forty thousand kilos of oats, five
+thousand bottles of wine, one hundred boxes of cigars." ("Mon Dieu! it
+is an inventory," said the _maire_ to himself.) "If these are not
+forthcoming by twelve noon to-morrow you will be shot," added the
+officer in a sudden inspiration of his own.
+
+The _maire_ was facing the officer, who towered above him. "Ah, yes,
+Monsieur le Capitaine, you will not take a seat? No? And your
+requisition--you have your commandant's written order and signature, no
+doubt?" The officer blustered. "No, no, Monsieur le Capitaine, I am the
+head of the civil government in this town; I take no orders except from
+the head of the military authority. You have doubtless forgotten Hague
+Regulation, Article 52; your Government signed it, you will recollect."
+The officer hesitated. The _maire_ looked out on the _place_; it was
+full of armed men, but he did not flinch. "You see, monsieur," he went
+on suavely, "there are such things as receipts, and they have to be
+authenticated." The officer turned his back on him, took out his field
+note-book, scribbled something on a page, and, having torn it out,
+handed it to one of his men with a curt instruction.
+
+The _maire_ resumed his dictation to the hypnotised clerk, while the
+officer sat astride a chair and executed an impatient _pas seul_ with
+his heels upon the parquet floor. Once or twice he spat demonstratively,
+but the _maire_ took no notice. In a few minutes the soldier returned
+with a written order, which the officer threw upon the desk without a
+word.
+
+The _maire_ scrutinised it carefully. "Ten thousand kilos of bread!
+Monsieur, we provide five thousand a day for the refugees, and this will
+tax us to the uttermost. The bakers of the town are nearly all _sous les
+drapeaux_. Very well, monsieur," he added in reply to an impatient
+exclamation from the officer, "we shall do our best. But many a poor
+soul in this town will go hungry to-night. And the receipts?" "The
+requisitioning officer will go with you and give receipts," retorted the
+officer, who had apparently forgotten that he had placed the _maire_
+under arrest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Subdued lights twinkled like glow-worms in the streets as the _maire_
+returned across the square to the Hotel de Ville. He threaded his way
+through groups of infantry, narrowly escaped a collision with three
+drunken soldiers, who were singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" with laborious
+unction, skirted the park of ammunition waggons, and reached the main
+entrance. He had been on his feet for hours visiting the _boulangeries_,
+the _patisseries_, the hay and corn merchants, persuading,
+expostulating, beseeching, until at last he had wrung from their
+exiguous stores the apportionment of the stupendous tribute. It was a
+heavy task, nor were his importunities made appreciably easier by the
+receipt-forms tendered, readily enough, by the requisitioning officer
+who accompanied him, for the inhabitants seemed to view with terror the
+possession of these German documents, suspecting they knew not what. But
+the task was done, and the _maire_ wearily mounted the stairs.
+
+The officer greeted him curtly. The _maire_ now had leisure to study his
+appearance more closely. He had high cheek-bones, protruding eyes, and a
+large underhung mouth which, when he was pleased, looked sensual, and,
+when he was annoyed, merely cruel. The base of his forehead was square,
+but it rapidly receded with a convex conformation of head, very closely
+shaven as though with a currycomb, and his ears stood out almost at
+right angles to his skull. The ferocity that was his by nature he
+seemed to have assiduously cultivated by art, and the points of his
+moustaches, upturned in the shape of a cow's horns, accentuated the
+truculence of his appearance. In short, he was a typical Prussian
+officer. In peace he would have been merely comic. In war he was
+terrible, for there was nothing to restrain him.
+
+Meanwhile the officer called for a corporal's guard to place the _maire_
+under arrest. "But you will first sign the following _affiche_--by the
+General's orders," he exclaimed roughly.
+
+
+     Le Maire informe ses concitoyens que le commandant en chef des
+     troupes allemandes a ordonne que le maire et deux notables soient
+     pris comme otages pour la raison que des civils aient tire sur des
+     patrouilles allemandes. Si un coup de fusil etait tire a nouveau
+     par des civils, les trois otages seraient fusilles et la ville
+     serait incendiee immediatement.
+
+     Si des troupes alliees rentraient le maire rappelle a la population
+     que tout civil ne doit pas prendre part a la guerre et que si l'un
+     d'eux venait a y participer le commandant des troupes allemandes
+     ferait fusilier egalement les otages.
+
+
+"One moment," said the _maire_ as he took up a pen, "'_les civils_'! I
+ordered the civil population to deposit their arms at the _mairie_ two
+days ago, and the _commissaire de police_ and the gendarmes have
+searched every house. We have no armed civilians here."
+
+"Es macht nichts," said the officer; "we shall add '_ou peut-etre des
+militaires en civil_.'"
+
+The _maire_ shrugged his shoulders at the disingenuous parenthesis. It
+was, he knew, useless to protest. For all he knew he might be signing
+his own death-warrant. He studied the style a little more attentively.
+"Mon Dieu, what French!" he said to himself; "'etait,' 'seraient,'
+'venait'! What moods! What tenses! Monsieur le Capitaine," he continued
+aloud, "if I had used such French in my exercises at the Lycee my
+instituteur would have said I deserved to be shot. Pray allow me to make
+it a little more graceful." But the Prussian's ignorance of French
+syntax was only equalled by his suspicion of it. The _maire's_ irony
+merely irritated him and his coolness puzzled him. "I give you thirty
+seconds to sign," he said, as he took out his watch and the inevitable
+revolver. The _maire_ took up a needle-like pen, dipped it in the ink,
+and with a sigh wrote in fragile but firm characters "X---- Y----." The
+officer called a corporal's guard, and the _maire_, who had fasted since
+noon, was marched out of the room and thrust into a small closet upon
+the door of which were the letters "_Cabinet_." This, he reflected
+grimly, was certainly what in military language is called "close
+confinement." The soldiers accompanied him. There was just room for him
+to stretch his weary body upon the stone floor; one soldier remained
+standing over him with fixed bayonet, the others took up their position
+outside.
+
+Meanwhile a company of Landwehr had bivouacked in the square, four
+machine-guns had been placed so as to command the four avenues of
+approach, patrols had been sent out, sentries posted, all lights
+extinguished, and all doors ordered to be left open by the householders.
+Billeting officers had gone from house to house, chalking upon the doors
+such legends as "_Drei Maenner_," "_6 Offiziere--Eingang verboten_," and,
+on rare occasions "_Gute Leute hier_." The trembling inhabitants had
+been forced to wait on their uninvited guests as they clamoured noisily
+for wine and liqueurs. All the civilians of military age, and many
+beyond it, had been rounded up and taken under guard to the church;
+their wives and daughters alone remained, and were the subject of
+menacing pleasantries. So much the _maire_ knew before he had returned
+from his errand. As he lay in his dark cell he speculated painfully as
+to what might be happening in the homes of his fellow-townsmen. He sat
+up once or twice to listen, until the toe of the sentry's boot in his
+back reminded him of his irregularity. Now and again a woman's cry broke
+the silence of the night, but otherwise all was still. He composed
+himself to sleep on the floor, reflecting that he must husband his
+strength and his nerves for what might lie ahead of him. He was very
+tired and slept heavily in spite of his cold stone bed. At the hour of
+one in the morning he was awakened by a kick, and he found himself
+staring at an electric torch which was being held to his face by a tall
+figure shrouded in darkness. It was the captain. He sat up and rubbed
+his eyes.
+
+"'_Fusille_'! Bien! so I am to be shot! and wherefore, Monsieur le
+Capitaine?"
+
+"Some one has fired upon us," said the officer, "one of your dirty
+fellows; you must pay for it."
+
+"And the order?" asked the _maire_ sleepily; "you have the Commandant's
+order?"
+
+"Never mind about the order," said the officer reassuringly, "the order
+will be forthcoming at eight o'clock. Oh yes, we shall shoot you most
+authoritatively--never fear."
+
+The officer knew that nothing could be done until eight o'clock, for he
+dared not wake the Commandant, but he did not see why he should deny
+himself the pleasure of waking up this pig of a _maire_ to see how he
+would take it. The _maire_ divined his thoughts, and without a word
+turned over on his side and pretended to go to sleep again. From under
+his drooping eyelids he saw the officer gazing at him with a look in
+which dislike, disappointment, and pleasurable expectation seemed to be
+struggling for mastery. Then with a click he extinguished his torch and
+withdrew.
+
+At eight o'clock the _maire_ awoke to learn with mild surprise that he
+was not to be shot. Beyond that his guard would tell him nothing. It was
+only afterwards he learnt that one of the drunken revellers had been
+prowling the streets, and, having given the sentries a bad fright by
+letting off his rifle at a lamp-post, had expiated his adventure at the
+hands of a firing party in the cemetery outside the town.
+
+For two days the _maire_ was unmolested. He was allowed to see his
+_adjoint_,[25] who came to him with a troubled face.
+
+"The babies are crying for milk," he said, "the troops have taken it
+all. I begged one of the officers to leave a little for the inhabitants,
+but he said the men did not like their coffee without plenty of hot
+milk." The _maire_ reflected for a moment, and then dictated an _avis_
+to the inhabitants enjoining upon them to be as sparing in their
+consumption of milk as possible for the sake of the "meres de famille"
+and "les petits enfants."
+
+"Tell the _commissaire de police_ to have that posted up immediately,"
+he added. "We can do no more."
+
+"They have taken the bread out of our mouths," resumed the _adjoint_,
+"and now they are despoiling us of our goods. They are like a swarm of
+bailiffs let loose upon our homes. Everywhere they levy a distress upon
+our chattels. There is an ammunition waggon outside my house; they have
+put all the furniture of my _salon_ upon it."
+
+"You should make a protest to the Commandant," said the _maire_, but not
+very hopefully.
+
+"It is no use," replied the _adjoint_ despondingly. "I have. He simply
+shrugged his shoulders and said, 'C'est la guerre.' It is always so.
+They have shot Jules Bonnard."
+
+"Et pourquoi?" asked the _maire_.
+
+"I know not," said the _adjoint_. "They found four market-gardeners
+returning from the fields last night and shot them too--they made them
+dig their own graves, and tied their hands behind their backs with their
+own scarves. I protested to a Staff officer; he said it was 'verboten'
+to dig potatoes. I said they did not know; how could they? He said they
+ought to know. Then he abused me, and said if I made any more complaints
+he would shoot me too. They have made the _civils_ dig trenches."
+
+"Ah," said the _maire_. He knew it was a flagrant violation of the Hague
+Regulations, but it was not the tithe of mint and cummin of the law that
+troubled him. It was the reflection that the _civil_ who is forced to
+dig trenches is already as good as dead. He knows too much.
+
+"And the women," continued the _adjoint_, in a tone of stupefied horror,
+"they are crying, many of them, and will not look one in the face. Some
+of them have black eyes. And the young girls!"
+
+The _maire_ brooded in impotent horror. His meditations were interrupted
+by the entrance of the captain. "The Commandant wishes to see you _tout
+de suite_," he exclaimed. "March!" He was conducted by a corporal's
+guard, preceded by the captain, into the presence of the General, who
+had taken up his quarters in the principal mansion looking out upon the
+square. The General was a stout, square-headed man, with grey moustaches
+and steel-blue eyes, and the _maire_ divined at a glance that here was
+no swashbuckler, but a man who had himself under control. "I have
+imposed a fine of 300,000 francs upon your town; you will collect it in
+twenty-four hours; if it is not forthcoming to the last franc I shall be
+regretfully compelled to burn this town to the ground."
+
+"And why?" exclaimed the _maire_, whom nothing could now surprise,
+though much might perplex.
+
+The General seemed unprepared for the question. He paused for a moment
+and said, "Some one has been giving information to the enemy."
+"No!"--he held up his hand, not impolitely but finally, as the _maire_
+began to expostulate--"I have spoken."
+
+"But," said the _maire_ desperately, "we shall be ruined. We have not
+got it. And all our goods have been taken already."
+
+"You have our receipts," said the General. "They are as good as gold.
+German credit is very high; the Imperial Government has just floated a
+loan of several milliards. And you have our stamped _Quittungen_." He
+became at once voluble and persuasive in his cupidity, and forgot
+something of his habitual caution. "You surely do not doubt the word of
+the German Government?" he said. The _maire_ doubted it very much, but
+he discreetly held his tongue. "And our requisitioning officers have not
+been niggardly," continued the General; "they have put a substantial
+price on the goods we have taken." This was true. It had not escaped the
+_maire_ that the receipt-forms had been lavish.
+
+"I will do my best," said the _maire_ simply.
+
+He was now released from arrest, and he retired to his house to think
+out the new problem that had presented itself. The threat to burn down
+the town might or might not be anything but bluff; he himself doubted
+whether the German Commandant would burn the roofs over his men's
+heads, as long as the occupation lasted. The military disadvantages were
+too obvious, though what the enemy might do when they left the town was
+another matter. They might shoot him, of course; that was more than
+probable.
+
+But how to find the money was an anxious problem and urgent. The
+municipal _caisse_ was empty: the managers of the banks had closed their
+doors and carried their deposits off to Paris before the Germans had
+entered the town; of the wealthier bourgeoisie some had fled, many were
+ruined, and the rest were inadequate. The _maire_ pondered long upon
+these things, leaning back in his chair with knitted brows in that
+pensive attitude which was characteristic. Suddenly he caught sight of a
+blue paper with German characters lying upon a walnut table at his
+elbow. He took it up, scrutinised it, and studied the signature:
+
+
+     Empfangschein.
+     Werth 500 fr. erhalten.
+     Herr Hauptmann von Koepenick.
+
+
+Then he smiled. He got up, put on his overcoat, took up his hat and
+cane, and went forth into the drizzling rain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later he was at the headquarters of the Staff and asked to see
+the Commandant. He was shown into his presence without delay. "Well?"
+said the Commandant. "Monsieur le General, I have collected the fine,"
+said the _maire_. The General's face relaxed its habitual sternness; he
+grew at once pleasant and polite. "Good," he said. The _maire_ opened a
+fat leather wallet and placed upon the table under the General's
+predatory nose a large pile of blue documents, some (but not all)
+stamped with the violet stamp of the German A.Q.M.G. "If the
+_hochgeehrter_ General will count them," said the _maire_, "he will see
+they come to 325,000 francs. It is rather more than the fine," he
+explained, "but I have made allowance for the fact that they are not
+immediately redeemable. They are mostly stamped, and--_they are as good
+as gold_."
+
+For three minutes there was absolute silence in the room. The gilt clock
+in its glass sepulchre on the mantelpiece ticked off the seconds as
+loudly as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the night. The
+_maire_ speculated with more curiosity than fear as to how many more of
+these seconds he had to live. Never had the intervals seemed so long nor
+their registration so insistent. The ashes fell with a soft susurrus in
+the grate. The Commandant looked at the _maire_; the _maire_ looked at
+the Commandant. Then the Commandant smiled. It was an inscrutable smile;
+a smile in which the eyes participated not at all. There was merely a
+muscular relaxation of the lips disclosing the teeth; to the _maire_
+there seemed something almost canine in it. At last the General spoke.
+"Gut!" he said gutturally; "you may go."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You astonish me," I said to the _maire_, as he concluded his narrative.
+We were sitting in his parlour, smoking a cigar together one day in
+February in a town not a thousand miles from the German lines. "You
+know, Monsieur le Maire, they have shot many a municipal magistrate for
+less. I wonder they didn't make up their minds to shoot you." The
+_maire_ smiled. "They did," he said quietly. He carefully nicked the ash
+off his cigar, as he laid it down upon his desk, and opened the drawer
+of his escritoire. He took out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It
+was an order in German to shoot the _maire_ on the evacuation of the
+town.
+
+"You see, monsieur," he exclaimed, "your brave soldiers were a little
+too quick for them. You made a surprise attack in force early one
+morning and drove the enemy out. So surprising was it that the Staff
+officers billeted in my house left a box half full of cigars on my
+sideboard! You are smoking one of them now--a very good cigar, is it
+not?" It was. "And they left a good many official papers behind--what
+you call 'chits,' is it not?--and this one among them. Please mind your
+cigar-ash, monsieur! You see I rather value my own death-warrant."
+
+Moved by an irresistible impulse I rose from my chair and held out my
+hand. The _maire_ took it in mild surprise. "Monsieur," I said frankly,
+if crudely, "you are a brave man. And you have endured much."
+
+"Yes, monsieur," said the _maire_ gravely, as he glanced at a
+proclamation on the wall which he has added to his private collection of
+antiquities, "that is true. I have often been _tres fache_ to think that
+I who won the Michelet prize at the Lycee should have put my name to
+that thing over there."[26]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] Deputy.
+
+[26] This narrative follows with some fidelity the course of events as
+related to the writer by the _maire_ of the town in question. But for
+the most obvious of reasons the writer has deemed it his duty to
+suppress names, disguise events, and give the narrative something of the
+investiture of fiction. It is, however, true "in substance and in
+fact."--J.H.M.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE HILL
+
+
+It was one of those perfect spring days when the whole earth seems to
+bare her bosom to the caresses of the sun. The sky was without a cloud
+and in the vault overhead, blue as a piece of Delft, a lark was
+ascending in transports of exultant song. The hill on which we stood was
+covered with young birch saplings bursting into leaf, and the sky itself
+was not more blue than the wild hyacinths at our feet. Here and there in
+the undergrowth gleamed the pallid anemone. A copper wire ran from pole
+to pole down the slope of the hill and glittered in the sun like a
+thread of gold. A little to our right two circular mirrors, glancing
+obliquely at each other, stood on a tripod, and a graduated sequence of
+flashes came and went, under the hands of the signallers, with the
+velocity of light itself. A few yards behind us on the crest of the hill
+stood a windmill, its great sails motionless as though it were a brig
+becalmed and waiting for a wind, and astride one arm, like a sailor on
+a yard, a carpenter was busy, with his mouth full of nails. The tapping
+of his hammer and the song of the lark were the only sounds that broke
+the warm stillness of the April day. A great plain stretched away at our
+feet, and in the fields below women were stooping forward over their
+hoes.
+
+The white towers of Ypres gleamed ghostlike in the distant haze. The
+city had the wistful fragility of some beautiful mirage, and looking at
+it across the pleasant landscape I thought of the Pilgrim's vision of
+the Golden City shining in the sun beyond the Land of Beulah. Two or
+three miles away on our right the ground rose gently to a range of low
+wooded hills, and on their bare green slopes brown furrows showed up
+like a cicatrice. They were the German trenches. On the crest of the
+ridge a white house peeped out between the trees. That house seemed an
+object of peculiar interest to the battery-major at my side. He was
+stooping behind the "Director" with his eye to the sights as though he
+was focussing the distant object for a photograph. He fixed the outer
+clamp, unscrewed the inner clamp, and having got his sights on the
+house, he reversed the process and swung round the sights to bear on a
+little copse to our left. "One hundred and five," he said meditatively
+as he found the angle. The N.C.O. took up the range-finder and measured
+the distances first to the house, then to the copse. The major took up
+an adjustable triangle, and with a movement of thumb and forefinger
+converted it into the figure of an irregular "X." As he read off the
+battery angle on the "Plotter" the N.C.O. communicated it and the
+elevation to the telephone operator, who in turn communicated it to the
+battery in the copse. "Battery angle seventy. Range four thousand."
+Gunners are a laconic people, and their language is as economical of
+words as a proposition in Euclid; their sentences resemble those
+Oriental languages in which the verb is regarded as a superfluous
+impertinence. Language is to them a visual and symbolical thing in which
+angles and distances are predicated of churches, trees, and four-storied
+houses. Now in the copse on our left six field-guns were cunningly
+concealed, and even as the telephone operator spoke the dial-sights of
+those six guns were being screwed round and the elevating gear adjusted
+till they and the range-drum recorded the results of the major's
+meditations upon the hill. Then the guns in the copse spoke, and the air
+was sibilant with their speech. A little cloud no bigger than a man's
+hand arose above the roof of the white house on the ridge. Our battery
+had found its mark.
+
+Somewhere behind that ridge were the enemy's batteries and they were
+yet to find. But even as we searched the landscape with our
+field-glasses an aeroplane rose from behind our own position and made
+for the distant ridge, its diaphanous wings displaying red, white, and
+blue concentric circles to our glasses like the scales of some huge
+magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke made faint
+pencillings in the sky behind it. As it hovered above the ridge seven or
+eight little white clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared from
+nowhere just below it. They were German shrapnel. But the aeroplane
+passed imperturbably on, leaving the little feathers to float in the sky
+until in time they faded away and disappeared. In no long time the
+aeroplane was retracing its flight, and certain little coloured discs
+were speaking luminously to the battery, telling it of what the observer
+had seen beyond the ridge. Between the aeroplane, the observer, the
+telephone, and the guns, there seemed to be some mysterious freemasonry.
+And this impression of secret and collusive agencies was heightened by
+the vibration of the air above us, in which the shells from the
+batteries made furrows that were audible without being visible, as
+though the whole firmament were populated with disembodied spirits. The
+passivity of the toilers in the field below us, who, absorbed in their
+husbandry, regarded not the air above them, and the dreaming beauty of
+the distant city almost persuaded us that we were the victims of a
+gigantic illusion. But even as we gazed the city acquired a desperate
+and tragic reality. Voices of thunder awoke behind the ridge, the air
+was rent like a garment, and first one cloud and then another and
+another rose above the city of Ypres, till the white towers were blotted
+out of sight. A black pall floated over the doomed city, and from that
+moment the air was never still, as a rhythm of German shells rained upon
+it. The storm spread until other villages were involved, and a fierce
+red glow appeared above the roofs of Vlamertinge.
+
+Yet the clouds and flame that rose above the white towers had at that
+distance a flagrant beauty of their own, and it was hard to believe that
+they stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men. Beyond the
+voluminous smoke and darting tongues of fire, our field-glasses could
+show us nothing. But we knew--for we had seen but yesterday--that behind
+that haze there was being perpetrated a destruction as mournful and
+capricious as that which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives overtook
+Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one was even now being taken and
+the other left; he who was upon the housetop would not come down to take
+anything out of his house, neither would he who was in the field return
+to take away his clothes. The great cathedral was crumbling to dust,
+and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their
+niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal
+contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that
+while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe
+were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men
+hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper pans, and stumbling
+under the weight of feather-beds, while whimpering children fumbled
+among their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies each of the shells,
+whose trajectory we heard ever and anon in the skies overhead, were
+making in that living stream were to us a subject of poignant
+speculation.
+
+But as I looked immediately around me I found it ever more difficult to
+believe that such things were being done upon the earth. The carpenter
+went on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade his eyes with his
+hand and gaze out over the plain, the peasants in the field continued to
+hoe, a woman came out of a cottage with a child clinging to her skirts,
+and said, "La guerre, quand finira-t-elle, M'sieu'?" From far above us
+the song of the lark, now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated down
+upon the drowsy air.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE DAY'S WORK
+
+
+It was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some dozen of us all
+told--the Camp Commandant, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General, the
+Assistant-Provost-Marshal, the Assistant-Director of Medical Services,
+the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective has nothing to do with his
+personal habits), the Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a
+_padre_, and myself. Most of us were known by our initials--our official
+initials--for the use of them saves time and avoids pomposity. Our
+duties were both extensive and peculiar, as will presently appear, for
+we were in the habit of talking shop. There was, indeed, little else to
+talk about. When you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with no
+amusements and few amenities--neither theatres, nor sport, nor
+books--and with little prospect of getting a move on, you can but
+chronicle the small beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be
+engaging enough at times.
+
+As we sat down to the stew which our orderly had compounded with the
+assistance of the ingenious Mr. Maconochie, the Camp Commandant sighed
+heavily. "I am a kind of receptacle for the waste products of
+everybody's mind," he exclaimed petulantly. "This morning I was rung up
+on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian
+Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done.
+Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier--_un soldat
+discret_--to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant,
+who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to
+ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as
+she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act."
+
+The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence.
+Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to
+whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much
+may legitimately be expected. "Well, you may think yourself lucky you
+haven't my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General at length.
+"I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm
+like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading
+Bradshaw, except that I don't boast of it and it isn't a
+recreation--it's damned hard work. I have to read the Army List for
+about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong
+there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone
+and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd
+Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having
+died of heart failure on the 22nd inst."
+
+"Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?" asked the Camp Commandant.
+
+"He is the regimental goat," replied the D.A.A.G. "I suppose they
+thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade
+Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a
+member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species."
+
+"Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets," said
+the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. "I've been on the
+trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the
+Downshires are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with
+them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that
+they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the
+trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was
+spreading like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. At last I tracked it
+down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about five years ago
+and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a
+carrier."
+
+"What did you do with him?" said the A.D.M.S.
+
+"He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a
+perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy."
+
+"Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more
+honourable than cure," said he whom we know as "Smells," and who has a
+nose like a fox-terrier's. "I am the _avant-garde_ of the Staff, and you
+fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make
+my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue
+parties, where would you all be?"
+
+"We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it," said
+the A.P.M. ungratefully.
+
+"The _maire_ thinks I'm mad, of course," continued 'Smells,' "and I
+can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street
+are not conducive to health."
+
+"I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our
+phylacteries," said the Assistant Provost Marshal. "Now I'm a sort of
+licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and
+the _estaminet_ proprietors think I'm a Temperance fanatic," he said,
+as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. "One of them told me the
+other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the
+Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm
+sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my
+loins any day."
+
+"Yes," said the Camp Commandant, "it's our melancholy duty to be
+impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I
+stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again
+at the Base or somewhere else _en route_; it would relieve me of any
+compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the
+envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably."
+
+"I'm something of a handwriting expert myself," said the A.P.M.,
+ignoring the aspersion. "They have changed the colour of the passes
+again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s
+signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour
+of the pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance," he
+murmured dreamily; "I believe I could now forge his signature very
+artistically."
+
+"I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.," said
+the A.D.M.S. "I believe I receive more chits than any man on the
+staff." "Chits," it should be explained, are the billets-doux of the
+Army wherein officers send tender messages to one another and make
+assignations.
+
+"Did you hear about that chit the Camp Commandant at the Headquarters of
+the ----th Corps sent to the A.Q.M.G.?" asked the A.P.M. "No? Well, the
+A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to Ferrers asking if they had made use
+of any Ammonal and, if so, whether the results were satisfactory.
+Ferrers sent it on to the Camp Commandant for report and the Camp
+Commandant wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is not
+understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used--is it a drug or an
+explosive?' Ferrers told him to ask the Medical Officer attached to
+Corps headquarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back another chit
+to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had informed him that 'Ammonal' was a
+compound drug extensively used in America in cases of abnormal neurotic
+excitement, and that, so far as he knew, it was not a medical issue to
+Corps H.Q. He therefore regretted that he was unable to report results,
+but promised that if occasion should arise to administer it to any of
+the Corps H.Q. _personnel_ he would faithfully observe the effects and
+report the same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he betrayed a quite
+abnormal degree of neurotic excitement; in fact, he was quite nasty
+about it."
+
+"What the devil did he mean?" asked the A.D.M.S.
+
+"Well, that points the moral of your remarks about handwriting," said
+the A.P.M. encouragingly. "The Camp Commandant had written what looked
+like an 'o' in place of an 'a.' Ammonol is a drug; ammonal is an
+explosive."
+
+"Well, I wish some one would teach the Huns how to write decently." The
+speaker was Summersby of the Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence are a
+corps of detectives and have to estimate the strength, the location, and
+the composition of the enemy's forces. Everything is grist that comes to
+their mill and they will perform surprising feats of induction. They can
+reconstruct a German Army Corps out of a Landwehr man's bootlace, his
+diary, his underclothing, or his shoulder-strap--but the greatest of
+these is his diary. "I've been studying the diaries of prisoners until I
+feel a Hun myself. They remind me of the diary I used to keep at school,
+they are all about eating and drinking. The Hun is a glutton and a
+wine-bibber. But I found something to-day--'Keine Gefangene' in an
+officer's field note-book."
+
+"Translate, my Hunnish friend," said the A.P.M.
+
+"No prisoners," replied Summersby shortly.
+
+"I hope you handed the swine over to the P.M.," said the Camp
+Commandant.
+
+"Well, no," said Summersby. "You see he had a plausible explanation--by
+the way, what perfect English those German officers talk; I'll bet that
+man has eaten our bread and salt some time. He said it was a Brigade
+order to the men not to make the taking of prisoners a pretext for going
+back to the rear in large parties but to leave them to the supports when
+they came up. The curious thing is that that officer belongs to the
+112th and we've our eye on the 112th. One of their men, a fellow named
+Schmidt, who surrendered on the 19th of last month, said they'd had an
+order to take no prisoners but kill them all. His regiment was the
+112th," he added darkly.
+
+"The filthy swine!" we cried in a chorus, and our talk grew sombre as we
+exchanged reminiscences.
+
+"What pleases me about you fellows," said Ponsonby, who had been
+listening with a languid air, and who was formerly in the F.O. where he
+composed florid speeches in elegant French for Hague Plenipotentiaries,
+"is your habits of speech. In diplomacy we contrive to talk a lot
+without saying anything, whereas Army men manage to talk little and say
+a great deal. You've got four words in the Army which seem to be a
+mighty present help in trouble at H.Q. Their sustaining properties are
+remarkable and they seem to tide over very anxious moments. When you
+are in a hole you say 'Damn all,' and when you are asked for
+instructions you cry 'Carry on.' I suppose it's by sitting tight and
+using those words with discrimination that you fellows arrive at
+greatness and attain Brigadier rank. That seems to be the first thing a
+third-grade staff-officer learns."
+
+"The first thing a third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak
+respectfully of his superiors," said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion
+at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in
+spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him. He turned
+to the D.A.A.G. and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten to say grace. For
+what we have _not_ received"--he added, with a meaning glance at a
+Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.'s wife has sent out from home and which
+remained on the sideboard--"the Lord make us truly thankful." This was
+an allusion to the D.A.A.G.'s sacerdotal functions. For the
+Adjutant-General and his staff, who know the numbers of all the Field
+Ambulances, can lay hands--but not in the apostolic sense--upon every
+chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and
+can admonish, deprive, and suspend.
+
+The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction. "I think we've fixed it
+up with those Red Cross drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s
+department had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented
+by these birds of passage on the lines of communication. "We've decided
+that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the
+Army Act, and that you 'follow' the British Army from the moment you
+accept a pass to H.Q. My chief called some of them together yesterday,
+and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under
+military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days'
+field-punishment to the punishment of death. This was _pour encourager
+les autres_. They looked quite thoughtful."
+
+"That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby pensively. "Should an Army
+follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot? I put it to you," he
+added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I want counsel's opinion."
+
+"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the man of law. "But the
+safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards."
+
+"Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put
+you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because
+Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously
+untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts--that's a legal
+expression for fraud, isn't it?--his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie.
+What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?"
+Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as _Aquila
+vulgaris_, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of
+them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by
+an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode.
+Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as "missing," and go to
+some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return. Ponsonby
+glances suspiciously at Slingsby's portly figure.
+
+But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of
+"proceedings," and his departure was the signal for a general
+dispersion. "Come and have a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I" man.
+"Can't, you slacker," was the reply. "I've got to go and make up an 'I'
+summary. 'Notes of an Air Reconnaissance. Distribution of the enemy's
+forces. Copy of a German Divisional Circular. Notes on the German system
+of signalling from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of thing.
+Just now we're trying to discover how many guns they've got in the
+batteries of their new formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm.
+projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns
+have been withdrawn. But it may be only a blind."
+
+As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our
+respective offices a supply column rumbled over the _pave_, each of the
+seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a
+fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their
+motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the
+aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible
+from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60
+again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow the casualty returns
+will come in. Good God! will it never end?"
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+FIAT JUSTITIA
+
+             PARQUET
+               du
+     Tribunal de Iere Instance
+             d'Ypres
+
+
+At last I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking
+out the _procureur du roi_, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to
+be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of
+mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed
+among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city
+like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes
+strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a
+deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a
+spectacle at once tragic and whimsical--the brass lectern still stood
+upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as
+with a gesture of reproof. The sight of those scrambling chairs all
+huddled together and fallen headlong upon one another had something
+oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts. Ypres is an
+uncanny place.
+
+We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops,
+pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until
+all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt
+for the _procureur du roi_--who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to
+Poperinghe--we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with
+French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl
+exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely
+boy, who regarded A----, the Staff officer accompanying me, with a
+hypnotic stare. He peered at him from under drooping eyelids, flanking a
+nose without a bridge, and my companion didn't like it. "He is admiring
+you," I remarked by way of consolation, as indeed he was. "What do you
+call it?" said A---- petulantly to a R.A.M.C. officer who was lunching
+with us. The latter looked at the boy with a clinical eye.
+"Necrosis--syphilitic," he said dispassionately. "And he's handing us
+the cakes!" A---- exclaimed with horror. "Fetch me an ounce of civet."
+We declined the cakes, and, having paid our _addition_, hastily departed
+to resume our quest of the _procureur_.
+
+Eventually we found the legend set out above. It was a placard stuck on
+the door of a private house. We entered and found ourselves in a kitchen
+with a stone floor; japanned tin boxes, calf-bound volumes, and fat
+registers, all stamped with the arms of Belgium, were grouped on the
+shelves of the dresser. A courteous gentleman, well-groomed and
+debonair, with waxed moustaches, greeted us. It was the _procureur du
+roi_. With him was another civilian--the _juge d'instruction_. They
+politely requested us to take a seat and to excuse a judicial
+preoccupation. The _juge d'instruction_ was interrogating an inhabitant
+of Poperinghe. The _procureur_ explained to me that the _prevenu_ (the
+accused), who was not present but was within the precincts, was charged
+with _calomnie_[27] under Section 444 of the _Code Penal_. "But," I
+exclaimed in astonishment, "are you still administering justice?"
+"Pourquoi non?" he asked in mild surprise. It was true, he admitted,
+that his office at Ypres had been destroyed by shell-fire, the _maison
+d'arret_--in plain English, the prison--was open to the four winds of
+heaven, and warders and gendarmes had been called up to the colours. But
+justice must be done and the majesty of the King of the Belgians upheld.
+The King's writ still ran, even though its currency might be limited to
+the few square miles which were all that remained of Belgian territory
+in Belgian hands. All this he explained to me with such gravity that I
+felt further questions would be futile, if not impertinent. I therefore
+held my tongue and determined to follow the proceedings closely, being
+not a little curious to observe how the judgment would be enforced.
+
+The witness took the oath to say the truth and nothing but the truth
+("rien que la verite"), concluding with the solemn invocation, "Ainsi
+m'aide Dieu." The parties had elected to have the proceedings taken in
+French.
+
+"Your name?" said the judge, as he studied the proces-verbal prepared by
+the _procureur_.
+
+"Jules F----."
+
+"Age?"
+
+"Cinquante-cinq."
+
+"Profession?"
+
+"Cordonnier."
+
+"Residence?"
+
+"Rue d'Ypres 32."
+
+This preliminary catechism being completed, the prosecutor unfolded his
+tale. He had been drinking the health of His Majesty the King of the
+Belgians and confusion to his enemies in an _estaminet_ at the crowded
+hour of 7 P.M. The accused had entered, and in the presence of many of
+his neighbours had said to him, "Vous etes un Bosche." "Un Bosche!"
+repeated the witness indignantly. "It is a gross defamation." With
+difficulty had he been restrained from the shedding of blood. But, being
+a law-abiding, peaceful man and the father of a family, he volubly
+explained, he had laid this information ("denonciation") before the
+_procureur du roi_.
+
+The judge looked grave. But he duly noted down the testimony, after some
+perfunctory cross-examination, and, it being read over to the witness,
+the judge added "Lecture faite," and the persisting witness signed the
+deposition with his own hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other
+witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty, came forward and testified
+to the same effect. And they also signed their depositions and withdrew.
+
+The magistrate ordered the usher to bring in the accused, who had been
+summoned to appear by a _mandat d'amener_. He was a stout, dark,
+convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of
+the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these
+proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him
+into knots, and reduced him to a state of extreme penitence.
+
+"Where were you on the 3rd of April at 7 P.M.?" began the magistrate,
+making what gunners call a ranging shot. The accused appeared to have
+been everywhere in Poperinghe except at the _estaminet_. He had been to
+the butcher's, the baker's, and the candlestick-maker's.
+
+"At what hour did you enter the Cafe a l'Harmonie?"
+
+The accused tried to look as if he now heard of the Cafe "A l'Harmonie"
+for the first time, but under the searching eye of the magistrate he
+failed. He might, he conceded, have looked in there for a thirsty
+moment.
+
+"Do you know Jules F----?" the magistrate persisted. The accused
+grudgingly admitted the existence of such a person. "Is he a German?"
+asked the magistrate pointedly. The accused pondered. "Would you call
+him a Bosche?" persisted the magistrate. "I never _meant_ to call him 'a
+Bosche,'" the accused said in an unguarded moment. The magistrate
+pounced on him. He had found the range. After that the result was a
+foregone conclusion. The duel ended in the accused tearfully admitting
+he thought he must have been drunk, and throwing himself on the mercy of
+the magistrate.
+
+"It is a grave offence," said the magistrate severely, as he
+contemplated the lachrymose delinquent. "An _estaminet_ is a public
+place within the meaning of Section 444 of the Code Penal. Vous avez
+mechamment impute a une personne un fait precis qui est de nature a
+porter atteinte a son honneur." "And calculated to provoke a breach of
+the peace," he added. "It is punishable with a term of imprisonment not
+exceeding one year." The face of the accused grew long. "Or a fine of
+200 francs," he pursued. The lips of the accused quivered. "You may have
+to go to a _maison de correction_," continued the magistrate pitilessly.
+The accused wept.
+
+I grew more and more interested. If this was a "correctional" offence,
+the magistrate must in the ordinary course of things commit the prisoner
+to a _chambre de conseil_, thereafter to take his trial before a
+Tribunal Correctionnel. But chamber and tribunal were scattered to the
+four corners of the earth.
+
+Here, I felt sure, the whole proceedings must collapse and the
+magistrate be sadly compelled to admit his impotence. The magistrate,
+however, appeared in nowise perturbed, nor did he for a moment relax his
+authoritative expression. He was turning over the pages of the _Code
+d'Instruction Criminelle_, glancing occasionally at a now wholly
+penitent prisoner trembling before the majesty of the law. At last he
+spoke. "I will deal with you," he said with an air of indulgence, "under
+Chapter VIII. of the Code. You will be bound over to come up for
+judgment at the end of the war if called upon. You will deposit a
+_cautionnement_ of twenty francs. And now, gentlemen, we are at your
+service."
+
+"Fiat justitia ruat coelum," whispered A---- to me, as the prisoner,
+deeply impressed, opened a leather purse and counted out four greasy
+five-franc notes.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[27] Defamation. It is a misdemeanour according to Belgian law.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+HIGHER EDUCATION
+
+
+British Headquarters must, I think, be the biggest Military Academy in
+the world. It has its Sandhurst and its Woolwich and even its Camberley.
+It ought long ago to have been incorporated by Order in Council as a
+University with Sir John French as Chancellor. It has more schools in
+the Art of War than I can remember, and every School has an Instructor
+who deserves to rank as a full-time Professor. To graduate in one of
+those schools you must get a fortnight's leave from your trenches or
+your battery, at the end of which time you return to do a little
+post-graduate work of a very practical kind with the aid of a
+machine-gun or a trench-mortar. At the beginning of the war higher
+education at G.H.Q. was somewhat neglected, and the company officer who
+desired to improve himself in the lethal arts had to be content with
+private study. Company officers went in for applied chemistry by making
+flares out of a test-tube full of water, delicately balanced in a
+bully-beef tin containing sodium. The tins were tied to the barbed-wire
+entanglements in front of our trenches, and when the stealthy Hun,
+creeping on his stomach, bumped against the wire the test-tube
+overflowed into the tin and a lurid patch of greenish flame revealed the
+clumsy visitor to our look-outs. That was before we were supplied with
+calcium flares. Then, too, the sappers went in for experimental research
+by making trench-mortars out of old stove-pipes.
+
+To-day all that is changed. A chemical corps has come out to join the
+sappers, and the gunners have received some highly finished
+trench-mortars from Vickers's. A trench mortar is a kind of toy howitzer
+and very useful when you want to try conclusions with a neighbouring
+trench at short range. The mortars are not exactly things to play with,
+and so two "schools" of mortars have been instituted to teach R.G.A. men
+how to handle them. Every morning at nine o'clock two young subalterns
+meet their class of fifty pupils in a chateau, and explain with the aid
+of a diagram on a blackboard the internal economy of the mortar and its
+50-lb. bomb, the adjustment of angles of elevation to ranges, and the
+respective offices of fuse, charge, and detonator. When the class have
+had enough of this they go off to a neighbouring field to simulate
+trench warfare and hold a demonstration. This is real sport. They have
+dug a sector of trenches, duly traversed, and at some two or three
+hundred yards distance have dug another sector and decorated it
+realistically with barbed-wire entanglements. Thither one afternoon we
+conveyed the mortar to the first trenches on an improvised carriage,
+placed it behind one of the traverses, and duly clamped it down. The
+subaltern took up a periscope and got the thread-line on the target--you
+find the range without instruments and by your own intuitions. "Three
+hundred, I think," he remarked pensively. A pupil adjusted the range
+indicator at 71.30 to get the elevation, and his assistant took up what
+looked like a huge jar of preserved ginger. It was the bomb. Having put
+the tail to it he inserted the detonator. "Fuse at 27." He set the
+indicator with as much care as if he were setting the hands of his
+watch. The man took the fuse delicately, put in the test-tube and
+attached the lanyard. These operations had been closely followed by the
+class, who made a circle round the bomb like a football "scrum." It was
+now time to line the trenches, for the "tail" of the bomb is apt to kick
+viciously when the thing is fired. As they spread out, the man removed
+the two safety-pins in the top of the fuse and pulled the lanyard. There
+was a voice of thunder and a sheet of flame, followed by what seemed an
+interminable pause. We scanned the brown furrows in front of us and
+suddenly the earth shot skywards in a fan; a cloud of dirty-black smoke
+floated over our target. The whole class leapt the parapet and streamed
+away across the furrows like a pack of hounds in full cry, until they
+suddenly disappeared below the surface of the earth. We followed and
+found them standing in a huge crater whose sides were hollowed out as
+neatly as those of a cup. "Done it again," said the subaltern
+complacently, "we've never had a blind."
+
+At the Machine-gun School they do things on a larger scale, and Wren's
+could teach them nothing in the art of cramming. The Instructor reckons
+to put his class of 200 officers and men through a six months' course in
+a fortnight. There is need for it. The Germans started this war with
+eleven machine-guns (it is now anything from twenty to forty) to a
+battalion. We started with two. For years they have enlisted, trained,
+and paid a special class of men to man them. Consequently we had a great
+deal of leeway to make up. We are making it up, hand over fist, thanks
+to the Instructor, one of the most brilliant and devoted officers I
+know, and a man who spends his nights in inventing or perfecting
+improvements. He has got a pocket edition of a machine-gun made of
+tempered steel and weighing only 27 lb., as against our old one, which
+is of gun-metal and weighs 58 lb.--a material difference when it is a
+question of an advance. The new one, he explains somewhat illogically,
+with paternal pride, can be carried into action "like a baby." Having
+decided to give it a trial we carried it tenderly to a quarry and
+proceeded to "feed" it with a belt of cartridges. The Instructor set up
+a small stick against the bank of a gravel quarry and returned and
+adjusted the tangent-sight at 100 on the standard. He got the fore-sight
+and back-sight in a line on the stick, seized the traversing-handles,
+released the safety-catch, and pressed the button with his right thumb
+with the persistency of a man who cannot make the waiter answer the
+electric bell. "Tap--tap--tap." There was a series of explosions as
+though the sparking plug of a motor-bicycle was playing tricks. The
+target danced like a thing possessed. It hopped and skipped and curtsied
+under that deadly stream of bullets. Then he slowly swept that gravel
+bank with the traversing handles till the pebbles jumped like
+hailstones. "I think she'll do," he remarked appreciatively as he folded
+up the tripod.
+
+The R.E. is the Army's school of technology. To do a survey or make a
+bridge or lay a telephone is all in the day's work. But your sapper is
+a man of ideas, and is for ever seeking out new inventions. So he has
+turned his attention to chemistry, and "R.E." has a chemical corps which
+has put aside the blow-pipe and the test-tube at home to come out and
+study the applied chemistry of war. Just now they are engaged in
+discovering the most effective method of laying noxious gases. Copper
+vessels of ammonia in a trench to disperse the gas when it gets there
+are all very well, but by that time you may have more pressing
+attentions of the enemy to engage you; the thing is to prevent the gas
+getting there. Hence ingenious minds are considering how to project with
+a spray something upon the advancing fog which will bring it to earth in
+the form of an innocuous compound. Spray that something over the
+parapet, and if you can spray it far enough and wide enough you may
+precipitate the deadly green and brown mists into chlorides or bromides
+which will be as harmless as bleaching-powder and not less salubrious.
+
+Others have turned their attention to automatic flares. You can get a
+startling illuminant if you suspend a test-tube containing sulphuric
+acid in a vessel of chlorate of potash, and it will be all the better if
+you add a little common sugar and salt. You balance your test-tube in
+the hollow of a bamboo stick and fill the top knot of the stick with
+the chlorate of potash; then you plant your sticks, not too securely,
+outside your barbed-wire entanglements, and string them together with a
+trip-wire. As for the patrolling Hun who bumps against that trip-wire,
+it were better for him that a millstone were hung round his neck.
+
+This is Higher Education and post-graduate research. But elementary
+education is not neglected. At the H.Q. of the --th Corps is an O.T.C.
+where privates in the H.A.C. and the Artists practise the precepts of
+the _Infantry Manual_ and study night operations in the meadows within
+sound of the guns.
+
+Truly it is, in the words of the stout Puritan, a nation not slow and
+dull but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent,
+subtle and sinewy, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that
+human capacity can soar to.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS
+
+
+The little towns of Flanders and Artois are Aire, Hazebrouck, Bethune,
+Armentieres, Bailleul, Poperinghe, and Cassel. They are known in the
+Army vernacular as Air, Hazybrook, Betoon, Arm-in-tears, Ballyhool
+(occasionally Belial), Poperingy, and Kassel. The fairest of these is
+Cassel. For Cassel is set upon a hill which rises from the interminable
+plain, salient and alluring as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to
+the fretful wayfarer, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary, and I will
+give you rest." For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh,
+the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the
+wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a
+great peace. The motor-lorries avoid the declivities of Cassel, and the
+horsemen pass by on the other side. Some twenty windmills--no less and
+perhaps more--are perched like dovecots on the hill, lifting their
+sails to the blue sky. Some day I will seek out a notary at Cassel and
+will get him to execute a deed of conveyance assigning to me, with no
+restrictive covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for I have
+coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to the enchantments of _Lettres de
+mon moulin_. True, Flanders is not Provence, and the croaking of the
+frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the willows in the plains
+below is a poor exchange for the chant of the _cigale_. But these mills
+look out over a landscape that is now dearer to me than Abana and
+Pharpar, for many a gallant friend of mine lies beneath its sod.
+
+Cassel is approached by a winding road that turns and returns upon
+itself like a corkscrew, and is bordered by an avenue of trees. It has a
+bandstand--what town in Flanders and Artois has not?--and a church.
+Cheek by jowl with the church is a place of convenience, which seems to
+me profane in more senses than one. I have never been able to make up my
+mind whether such secularisation of a church wall is the expression of
+anti-clerical antipathies, or of a clerical common-sense peculiarly
+French in its practical and unblushing acceptance of the elementary
+facts of life. But about Cassel I am not so sure. The sight of that
+shameless annexe is too familiar in France to please our fastidious
+English tastes--it seems to express a truculent nonconformity, it is too
+like a dissenting chapel-of-ease.
+
+
+     Wherever God erects a house of prayer
+     The devil always builds a chapel there.
+
+
+I have never had the courage to solve my uncertainties by buttonholing a
+Frenchman and asking him what is the truth of the matter. I am sure
+Anatole France could supply me with any number of whimsical
+explanations, all of them suggestive, and not one of them true.
+
+But, except for this sauciness, Cassel is a demure and pleasant place.
+
+Bailleul is mean in comparison, though it has a notable church tower in
+which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither,
+perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which
+is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and the
+_chatelaine_ of which answers your lame and halting French in nimble
+English. On the road to Locre it has those Baths and Wash-houses which
+have become so justly famous, and whence hosts of British soldiers come
+forth like Naaman white as snow, but infinitely more companionable.
+Almost any day you may see a bathing-towel unit marching thither or
+thence in column of route, their towels held at the slope or the trail
+as it pleases their fancy. And in a field outside Bailleul I have seen
+open-air smithies and the glow of hot coals, the air resounding with the
+clink of hammers upon the anvil--a cheering spectacle on a wet and
+inclement winter's day. But Bailleul has few amenities and no charms. It
+is, however, occasionally visited by that amazing troupe of variety
+artistes, known as the Army Pierrots, who provide the men in billets
+with a most delectable entertainment for 50 centimes, the proceeds being
+a "deodand," and appropriated to charitable uses. For all that, Bailleul
+stinks in the nostrils of fatigue-parties.
+
+Bethune is like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land, for it is
+the rendezvous of the British Army, and men tramp miles to warm their
+hands at its fires of social life. Its _patisserie_ has the choicest
+cakes, and its hairdresser's the most soothing unguents of any town in
+our occupation. It has a great market-place, where the peasants do a
+thriving business every Saturday, producing astonished rabbits by the
+ears from large sacks, like a conjuror, and holding out live and
+plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it
+has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of
+a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct
+unbecoming an officer and a gentleman--a spectacle as melancholy as it
+is rare, and of which the less said the better. It has a church with
+some lurid glass of indifferent quality, and (if I remember rightly) a
+curious dovecote of a tower. The transepts are hemmed in by shops and
+warehouses. To the mediaevalist there is nothing strange in such
+neighbourliness of the world and the Church. The great French churches
+of the Middle Ages--witness Notre Dame d'Amiens with its inviting
+ambulatory--were places of municipal debate, and their sculpture was, to
+borrow the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political "liberty of
+speech" at a time when the chisel of the sculptor might say what the pen
+of the scrivener dared not, for fear of the common hangman, express.
+Bethune is not the only place where I have seen shops coddling churches,
+and the conjunction was originally less impertinent than it now seems.
+It was not that the Church was profaned, but that the world was
+consecrated; honest burgesses trading under the very shadow of the
+flying buttresses were reminded that usury was a sin, and that to charge
+a "just price" was the beginning of justification by works. But I have
+not observed that the shopkeepers of Bethune now entertain any very
+mediaeval compunction about charging the British soldier an unjust
+price.
+
+Armentieres is on the high road to Lille, but at present there is no
+thoroughfare. It's a dispiriting town, given over to industrial
+pursuits, and approached by rows of mean little cottages such as you may
+see on the slopes of the mining valleys of South Wales. Two things stand
+out in my memory--one, the spectacle of a corporal being tried for his
+life in the Town Hall by a court-martial--there had been a quarrel over
+a girl in billets and he had shot his comrade; the other the sight of a
+regiment of Canadians ("Princess Pat's," I believe), drawn up in the
+square for parade one winter afternoon before they went into the
+trenches for the first time. And a very gallant and hefty body of men
+they were.
+
+Poperinghe is a dismal place, and to be avoided.
+
+Hazebrouck is not without some pretentiousness. It has the largest
+_place_ of any of them, with a town-hall of imposing appearance, but
+something of a whited sepulchre for all that. I remember calling on a
+civilian dignitary there--I forget what he was; he sat in a long narrow
+corridor-like room, all the windows were hermetically sealed, a
+gas-stove burnt pungently, some fifty people smoked cigarettes, and at
+intervals the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffled his foot
+over the spot as a concession to public hygiene. Therefore I did not
+tarry. The precincts of the railway-station are often crowded by batches
+of German prisoners, villainous-looking rascals, and usually of the
+earth earthy. I watched some of them entraining one day; with them was a
+surly German officer who looked at his fellow-prisoners with contempt,
+the crowd of inhabitants with dislike, and (so it seemed to me) his
+guards with hatred. No one spoke to him, and he stood apart in
+melancholy insolence. Perhaps he was the German officer of whom the
+story is told that, being conducted to the Base in a third-class
+carriage in the company of some of his own men, and under the escort of
+some British soldiers, he declaimed all the way down against being
+condemned to such low society, until one of his guards, getting rather
+"fed up" with it all, bluntly cut him short with the admonition: "Stow
+it, governor, we'd have hired a blooming Pullman if we'd known we was
+going to have the pleasure of your society. Yus, and we'd have had Sir
+John French 'ere to meet you. But yer'll have to put up with us low
+fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it,
+and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his
+bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was
+impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way
+they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed into a thoughtful
+silence.
+
+Hazebrouck has a witty and pleasant _procureur de la Republique_, who
+once confided to me that the English were "irresistible." "In war?" I
+asked. "_Vraiment_," he replied, "but I meant in love."
+
+But the towns occupied by our Army are monotonously lacking in
+distinction. To tell the truth they wear an impoverished look, and are
+singularly unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small chateaux
+built on grassy mounds surrounded by moats, and the timbered farm-houses
+with their red-tiled roofs and barns big enough to billet a whole
+company at a pinch. The country is one vast bivouac, and every cottage,
+farm, and mansion is a billet. Near the edge of the Front you may see
+men who have just come out of action; I remember once meeting a group of
+Royal Irish, only forty-seven left out of a Company, who had been in the
+attack by the 8th Division at Fleurbaix, and I gazed at them with
+something of the respectful consternation with which the Babylonians
+must have regarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego after their ordeal in
+the fiery furnace. Yet nothing of their demeanour betrayed the brazen
+fury they had gone through; they sat by the hedge cleaning their
+accoutrements with the utmost nonchalance. They reminded me of the North
+Staffords, one of whose officers, whom I know very well, when I asked
+him what were his impressions of a battle, replied, after some
+reflection: "I haven't got any; all I can remember of a hot corner we
+were in near Oultersteen was that my men, while waiting to advance, were
+picking blackberries." It was a man of the North Staffords who,
+according to the same unimpeachable authority, was heard shouting out
+when half the trench was blown in by a shell, and he had extricated
+himself with difficulty: "'Ere, where's my pipe? Some one's pinched my
+pipe!"
+
+But it isn't always quite as comforting as that. The servant of a friend
+of mine, a young subaltern in the Black Watch, whom, alas! like so many
+other friends, I shall never see again, in describing the church parade
+held after the battle of Loos, in which his master was killed by a
+shell, wrote that when the chaplain gave out the hymn "Rock of Ages" the
+men burst into tears, their voices failed them, and they broke down
+utterly. And I remember that on one occasion when some four-fifths of
+the officers of a certain battalion had gone down in the advance, and
+the shaken remnant fell back upon their trenches, deafened and
+distraught, one of the officers--he had been a master in a great public
+school before the war--took out of his pocket a copy of the _Faerie
+Queene_, and began in a slow, even voice to read the measured cadences
+of one of its cantos, and, having read, handed it to a subaltern and
+asked him to follow suit. The others listened, half in wonder, half in
+fear, thinking he had lost his senses, but there was method in his
+madness and a true inspiration. The musical rhythm of the words
+distracted their terrible memories, and soon acted like a charm upon
+their disordered nerves.
+
+
+     And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,
+     The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,
+     For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,
+     And dead (as living) ever him adored:
+     Upon his shield the like was also scored,
+     For sovereign hope, which in his help he had:
+     Right faithful true he was in deed and word;
+     But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad:
+     Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.
+
+
+Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-march to keep them fit;
+Indian cavalry jogging along on the footpath with lances in rest; herds
+of tethered horses in rest-camps; a string of motor-buses painted a
+khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling workshop) with its dynamo humming
+like a top and the mechanics busy upon the lathe; an Army Postal van
+coming along, like a friend in need, to tow my car, stranded in the mud,
+with a long cable; sappers, like Zaccheus, up a tree (but not
+metaphorically); despatch-riders whizzing past at sixty miles an
+hour--these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they
+lend a variety to the monotonous countryside without which it would be
+dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight
+lines--straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less
+straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without
+their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our occupation, as you
+leave G.H.Q. for the Base, you exchange these plains of sticky clay and
+stagnant dykes for a pleasant country of undulating downs and noble
+beech woods, and one seems to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency.
+
+It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is
+painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. It is merely a heap of
+stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are not more desolate.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE FRONT ONCE MORE
+
+
+A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long
+boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear. All men would emphasise
+the boredom, and most men would admit the fear. The only soldiers I ever
+met who affected to know nothing of the fear were Afridis, and the
+Afridi is notoriously a ravisher of truth. But the predominant
+feeling--in the winter months at any rate--was the boredom. There was a
+time when some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only relieved
+once every three weeks, and time hung heavy on their hands. Under these
+circumstances they began to take something more than a professional
+interest in their neighbours opposite. The curiosity was reciprocated.
+Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches
+were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse. Curious conventions
+grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the
+night, there was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour
+of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded as consecrated to "private business," and
+certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of bounds by the
+snipers on both sides. On many occasions working parties toiled with
+pick and shovel within talking distance of one another, and, although it
+was, of course, never safe to presume upon immunity, they usually
+forbore to interfere with one another. The Bedfords and the South
+Staffords worked in broad daylight with their bodies half exposed above
+the trenches, raising the parapet as the water rose. About 200 yards
+away the Germans were doing the same. Neither side interfered with the
+navvy-work of the other, and for the simplest of all reasons: both were
+engaged in fighting a common foe--the underground springs. When two
+parties are both in danger of being drowned they haven't time to fight.
+To speak of drowning is no hyperbole; the mud of Flanders in winter is
+in some places like a quicksand, and men have been sucked under beyond
+redemption. A common misery begat a mutual forbearance.
+
+It was under such circumstances that the following exchange of
+pleasantries took place. The men of a certain British regiment heard at
+intervals a monologue going on in the trenches opposite, and every time
+the speaker stopped his discourse shouts of guttural laughter arose,
+accompanied by cries of "Bravo, Mueller!" "Sehr komisch!" "Noch einmal,
+Mueller!" Our men listened intently, and an acquaintance with German, so
+imperfect as to be almost negligible, could not long disguise from them
+the fact that their Saxon neighbours possessed a funny man whose name
+was Mueller. Their interest in Mueller, always audible but never visible,
+grew almost painful. At last they could restrain it no longer. At a
+given signal they began chanting, like the gallery in a London theatre,
+except that their voices came from the pit:
+
+
+     We--want--Mueller! We--want--Mueller! We--want--Mueller!
+
+
+The refrain grew more and more insistent. At last a head appeared above
+the German parapet. It rose gradually, as though the owner were being
+hoisted by unseen hands. He rose, as the principal character in a Punch
+and Judy show rises, with jerky articulations of his members from the
+ventriloquial depths below. The body followed, until a three-quarter
+posture was attained. The owner, with his hand upon his heart, bowed
+gracefully three times and then disappeared. It was Mueller!
+
+It is some months since I was in the British trenches,[28] and I often
+wonder how our men have accommodated themselves to the ever-increasing
+multiplication of the apparatus of war. The fire trenches I visited were
+about wide enough to allow two men to pass one another--and that was
+all. Obviously the wider your trench the greater your exposure to the
+effects of shell-fire, and if we go on introducing trench-mortars, and
+gas-pumps, and gas-extinguishers, to say nothing of a great store of
+bombs, as pleasing in variety and as startling in their effects as
+Christmas crackers, our trenches will soon be as full of furniture as a
+Welsh miner's parlour. But doubtless the sappers have arranged all that.
+Some of these improvements are viewed by company officers without
+enthusiasm. The trench-mortar, for example, is distinctly unpopular, for
+it draws the enemy's fire, besides being an uncanny thing to handle,
+although the handling is done not by the company but by a "battery" of
+R.G.A. men, who come down and select a "pitch." I have seen a
+trench-mortar in action--it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a
+prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It
+is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and,
+incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a
+large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing
+cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I
+know nothing except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in
+the chemical corps of the sappers, and your corporal is, in nine cases
+out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one
+of considerable distinction. He is usually a lecturer or
+Assistant-Professor in Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who
+has left his test-tubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting
+allurements of the trenches. I sometimes wonder what name the fertile
+brain of the British soldier has found for him--probably "the squid." He
+has three gases in his repertoire, each more deadly than the other. One
+of them is comparatively innocuous--it disables without debilitating;
+and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes. The truth is that we
+do not take very kindly to the use of this kind of thing. Still, our men
+know their business, and our gas, whichever variety it was, played a
+very effective part in the capture of the Hohenzollern Redoubt.
+
+For the greater part of the winter months the "Front" was, to all
+appearances above ground, as deserted as the Sahara and almost as
+silent. Everybody who had to be there was, for obvious reasons,
+invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who found himself between the
+lines was in a wilderness whose intimidating silence was occasionally
+interrupted by the sound of projectiles coming he knew not whence and
+going he knew not whither. The effect was inexpressibly depressing. But
+a mile or two behind our lines all was animation, for here were
+Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked up by a network of field
+telephones, which in turn communicated with Divisional Headquarters
+farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under the care of a pigeon
+fancier, who figures in the Army List as a captain in the R.E., are kept
+at these places for use in sudden emergency when the wires get destroyed
+by shell-fire. The sappers must, I think, belong to the order of
+Arachnidae; they appear to be able to spin telephone wires out of their
+entrails at the shortest notice. Moreover, they possess an uncanny
+adhesiveness, and a Signal Company man will leg up a tree with a coil of
+wire on his arm and hang glutinously, suspended by his finger-tips,
+while he enjoys the view. These acrobatic performances are sometimes
+exchanged for equestrian feats. He has been known to lay cable for two
+miles across country at a gallop with the cable-drum paying out lengths
+of wire. The sapper is the "handy man" of the Army.
+
+The location of these Headquarters on our side of the line is a constant
+object of solicitude to the enemy on the other. Very few officers even
+on our side know where they all are. I had confided to me, for the
+purpose of my official duties, a complete list of such Headquarters,
+and the first thing I did, in pursuance of my instructions, was to
+commit it to memory and then burn it. To find out the enemy's H.Q.--with
+a view to making them as unhealthy as possible--is almost entirely the
+work of aeroplane reconnaissance. To discover the number and composition
+of the units whose H.Q. they are is the work of our "Intelligence." Of
+our Intelligence work the less said the better--by which I intend no
+aspersion but quite the contrary. The work is extraordinarily effective,
+but half its effectiveness lies in its secrecy. It is all done by an
+elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate to say that the "I"
+officers discover the location of the H.Q. of captured Germans by a
+geological analysis of the mud on the soles of their boots, in the
+classical manner of Sherlock Holmes; but I should be equally indisposed
+to deny it. There is nothing too trivial or insignificant to engage the
+detective faculties of an "I" man. He has to allow a wide margin for the
+probability of error in his calculations; shoulder-straps, for example,
+are no longer conclusive data as to the composition of the enemy's
+units, for the intelligent Hun has taken of late to forging
+shoulder-straps with the same facility as he forges diplomatic
+documents. Oral examination of prisoners has to be used with caution.
+But there are other resources of which I shall say nothing. It is not
+too much to say, however, that we have now a pretty complete
+comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German
+brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One
+thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence
+staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military
+authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of
+mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to say _De minimis
+non curatur_.
+
+If "I" stands for the Criminal Investigation Department (and the study
+of the Hun may be legitimately regarded as a department of criminology)
+the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be described as a kind of
+Metropolitan Police. The P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are the _Censores Morum_
+of the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are the _Aediles_.
+It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visit _estaminets_,
+keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences
+of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is
+more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I
+remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had
+already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his
+particular district daily, I had never once been stopped or questioned
+by his police. "No," he said quietly, "they reported you the first day
+two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions;
+we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff,
+and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite
+a lively time at X----," which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q.
+itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for
+their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark
+doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
+needle than to get into that town--or out of it. As for the "Society
+ladies," of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they
+were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew
+anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be
+had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into
+G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the
+left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a
+needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them
+takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to assist
+you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in
+their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for
+traces of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with
+your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the
+fifth rib--at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his
+right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle, and by that masonic
+sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the
+conversation.
+
+Still, holders of authorised passes sometimes lose them, and
+unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and "convert" them to
+their own unlawful uses. The career of these adventurers is usually as
+brief as it is inglorious; when apprehended they are handed over to the
+French authorities, and the place that knew them knows them no more.
+They are shot into some mysterious _oubliette_. The rest is silence, or,
+as a mediaeval chronicler would say, "Let him have a priest."
+
+We have taught the inhabitants of Flanders and Artois three things: one,
+to sing "Tipperary"; two, to control their street traffic; and three, to
+flush their drains. The spectacle of the military police on point duty
+agitatedly waving little flags like a semaphore in the middle of narrow
+and congested street corners was at first a source of great
+entertainment to the inhabitants, who appeared to think it was a kind of
+performance thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delectation.
+Their applause was quite disconcerting. It all so affected the mind of
+one good lady at H---- that she used to rush out into the street every
+time she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth gestures with her
+arms and legs, to the no small embarrassment of the supply columns, the
+confusion of the military police, and the unconcealed delight of our
+soldiers, who regard the latter as their natural enemy. Gentle
+remonstrances against such gratuitous assistance were of no avail, and
+eventually she was handed over to the French authorities for an inquiry
+into the state of her mind.
+
+Drains are looked after by the Camp Commandant, assisted by the sanitary
+section of the R.A.M.C. It is an unlovely duty. I am not sure that the
+men in the trenches are not better off in this respect than the
+unfortunate members of the Staff who are supposed to live on the fat of
+the land in billets. In the trenches there are easy methods of disposing
+of "waste products"; along some portion of the French front, where the
+lines are very close together, the favourite method, so I have been
+told, is to hurl the buckets at the enemy, accompanied by extremely
+uncomplimentary remarks. In the towns where we are billeted public
+hygiene is a neglected study, and the unfortunate Camp Commandants have
+to get sewage pumps from England and vast quantities of chloride of
+lime. Fatigue parties do the rest.
+
+The C.C. has, however, many other things to do.
+
+Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a "chit" to the
+C.C.:
+
+
+     Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would
+     be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be
+     issued to his office.
+
+
+A laconic message came back by my servant:
+
+
+        No. 105671A.   The Camp Commandant presents his compliments to
+         ---------     Mr. M., and begs to inform him that he is not an
+             2         ironmonger. The correct procedure is for Mr. M.
+     to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to send in the
+     account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged.
+
+
+The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his
+reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under
+the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply
+desks and tables--the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them
+out at the shortest notice--and he could produce stationery, but he drew
+the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings.
+
+The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the
+Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as
+"transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a
+field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap.
+And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with
+men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains,
+and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a
+battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It
+is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of
+all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is
+made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger
+affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one--the
+transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong
+battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in
+England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the
+agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are
+alive or dead.
+
+It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is
+done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers
+and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry
+Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves
+lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a chateau used as
+the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the
+curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the
+Front is one vast cemetery--a "God's Acre" hallowed by prayers if
+unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has
+shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill
+has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of
+every grave with a view to its preservation.
+
+The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the
+Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of
+courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the
+Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you
+are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting "hearsay." He never
+prosecutes--that is always the task of some officer specially assigned
+for the purpose--but he may "sum up." Officers are not usually familiar
+with the mysteries of the Red Book,[29] however much they may know of
+the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One
+Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious,
+instituted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of
+Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and
+inadmissibility of evidence in the most "unhealthy" places. Speaking
+with some knowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial
+proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things
+considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the
+enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of
+this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the
+hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and "went
+for" the latter, declaring his intention to "do him in," as he had, he
+alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There
+was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was
+fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification
+was, however, not absolutely conclusive--one Prussian guardsman is
+strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the
+doubt.
+
+The prisoner gets all the assistance he may require from a "prisoner's
+friend" if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a
+charge--he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges
+of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely,
+justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young
+subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was
+as straightforward as it was brief:
+
+
+     I had just been ordered up to the Front. So I stood my friends a
+     dinner; I had a bottle of Burgundy, two liqueurs, and a brandy and
+     soda, and--I am just nineteen.
+
+
+This ingenuous plea in confession and avoidance pleased the Court. He
+got off with a reprimand.
+
+The _liaison_ officers deserve a chapter to themselves. Their name alone
+is so endearing. Their mission is not, as might be supposed, to promote
+_mariages de convenance_ between English Staff officers and French
+ladies, but to transmit billets-doux between the two Armies and,
+generally, to promote the amenities of military intercourse. As a rule
+they are charming fellows, chosen with a very proper eye to their
+personal qualities as well as their proficiency in the English language.
+Among them I met a Count belonging to one of the oldest families in
+France, an Oriental scholar of European reputation, and a Professor of
+English literature. The younger ones studied our peculiarities with the
+most ingratiating zeal, and one of them, in particular, played and sang
+"Tipperary" with masterly technique at an uproarious tea-party in a
+_patisserie_ at Bethune. Also they smoothed over little
+misunderstandings about _delits de chasse_, gently forbore to smile at
+our French, and assisted in the issue of the _laisser-passer_. Doubtless
+they performed many much more weighty and mysterious duties, but I only
+speak of what I know. To me they were more than kind; they gave me
+introductions to their families when I went on official visits to Paris
+and to the French lines; zealously assisted me to hunt down evidence,
+and sometimes accompanied me on my tour of investigation. Among the many
+agreeable memories I cherish of the _camaraderie_ at G.H.Q. the
+recollection of their constant kindness and courtesy is not the least.
+
+One word before I leave the subject of the Staff. There has been of late
+a good deal of pestilential gossip by luxurious gentlemen at home about
+the Staff and its work. It is, they say, very bad--mostly beer and
+skittles. I have already referred to these charges elsewhere; here I
+will only add one word. A Staff is known by its chief. He it is who sets
+the pace. During the time I was attached to it, the G.H.Q. Staff had two
+chiefs in succession. The first was a brilliant soldier of high
+intellectual gifts, now chief of the Imperial Staff at home, who,
+although embarrassed by indifferent health, worked at great pressure
+night and day. His successor at G.H.Q. is a man of stupendous energy,
+commanding ability, and great force of character, who has risen from the
+ranks to the great position he now holds. By their chiefs ye shall know
+them. Under such as these there was and is no room for the "slacker" at
+G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were very few of that undesirable
+species at G.H.Q., and as soon as they were discovered they were sent
+home. I sometimes wonder whether one could not trace, if it were worth
+while (which it isn't), these ignoble slanders to their origin in the
+querulous lamentations of these deported gentlemen, whence they have
+percolated into Parliamentary channels. But it really isn't worth while.
+The public has, I believe, taken the thing at its true valuation. In
+plain speech it is "all rot."
+
+
+     NOTE.--The last paragraph was written before the recent changes at
+     G.H.Q. and at the War Office, but the reader will not need any
+     assistance in the identification of the two distinguished Chiefs of
+     Staff here referred to.--J.H.M.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[28] The writer's experience of the trenches is described in some detail
+in Chapter VIII.
+
+[29] _The Manual of Military Law_.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+HOME AGAIN
+
+
+Sykes had finished packing my kit and had succeeded with some difficulty
+in re-establishing the truth of the axiom that a whole is greater than
+its parts. When I contemplated my valise and its original constituents,
+it seemed to me that the parts would prove greater than the whole, and I
+had in despair abandoned the problem to Sykes. He succeeded, as he
+always did. One of the first things that an officer's servant learns is
+that, as regards the regulation Field Service allowance of luggage,
+nothing succeeds like excess.
+
+Sykes had not only stowed away my original impedimenta but had also
+managed to find room for various articles of _vertu_ which had enriched
+my private collection, to wit:
+
+
+     (1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel.
+
+     (2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-looking brass heads.
+
+     (3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets villainously
+     reversed.
+
+     (4) A copper loving-cup--_i.e._, an empty shell-case presented to
+     me with a florid speech by Major S---- on behalf of the ----th
+     Battery of the R.F.A.
+
+     (5) An autograph copy of _The Green Curve_ bestowed on me by my
+     friend "Ole Luk-Oie" (to whom long life and princely royalties).
+
+     (6) The sodden Field Note-book of a dead Hun given me by Major
+     C---- of the Intelligence, with a graceful note expressing the hope
+     that, as a man of letters, I would accept this gift of
+     _belles-lettres_.
+
+     (7) A duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of
+     Ammonal[30] (original very scarce, and believed to be in the
+     muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting
+     it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of the Red Cross
+     Fund).
+
+     (8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on English political
+     philosophers presented to me by the author, one of the _liaison_
+     officers, who in the prehistoric times of peace was a University
+     professor at Avignon.
+
+     (9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest Britannia metal,
+     bestowed on me with much ceremony by a Field Ambulance at Bethune,
+     and prized beyond rubies and fine gold.
+
+     (10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne.[31]
+
+
+To these Madame[32] had added her visiting-card--it was nearly as big
+as the illuminated address presented to me by the electors of a Scottish
+constituency which I once wooed and never won--wherewith she reminded me
+that my billet at No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson would always be waiting
+for me, the night-light burning as for a prodigal son, and steam up in
+the hot-water bottle.
+
+I had said my farewells the night before to the senior officers on the
+Staff, in particular that distinguished soldier and gallant gentleman
+the A.G., to whose staff I had been attached (in more senses than one),
+and who had treated me with a kindness and hospitality I can never
+forget. The senior officers had done me the honour of expressing a hope
+that I should soon return; their juniors had expressed the same
+sentiments less formally and more vociferously by an uproarious song at
+their mess overnight.
+
+The latter had also, with an appearance of great seriousness, laden me
+with messages for His Majesty the King, the Prime Minister, Lord
+Kitchener, the two Houses of Parliament, and the ministers and clergy of
+all denominations: all of which I promised faithfully to remember and to
+deliver in person. Sykes, with more modesty, had asked me if I would
+send a photograph, when the film was developed of the snapshot I had
+taken of him, to his wife and the twins at Norwich.
+
+My car, upon whose carburettor an operation for appendicitis had been
+successfully performed by the handy men up at the H.Q. of the Troop
+Supply Column, stood at the door. I held out my hand to Sykes, who was
+in the act of saluting; he took it with some hesitation, and then gave
+me a grip that paralysed it for about a quarter of an hour.
+
+"If you be coming back again, will you ask for me to be de-tailed to
+you, sir? My number is ----. Sergeant Pope at the Infantry Barracks sees
+to them things, sir."
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Bon voyage, monsieur," cried Madame in a shrill voice.
+
+"Bon voyage," echoed Jeanne.
+
+I waved my hand, and the next moment I had seen the last of two noble
+women who had never looked upon me except with kindness, and who, from
+my rising up till my lying down, had ministered to me with unfailing
+solicitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the Base I boarded the leave-boat. Several officers were already on
+board, their boots still bearing the mud of Flanders upon them. It was
+squally weather, and as we headed for the open sea I saw a dark object
+gambolling upon the waves with the fluency of a porpoise. A sailor
+stopped near me and passed the time of day.
+
+"Had any trouble with German submarines?" I asked.
+
+"Only once, sir. A torpedo missed us by 'bout a hund-erd yards."
+
+"Only once! How's that?"
+
+For answer the sailor removed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the
+other by a surprisingly alert act of stowage and nodded in the direction
+of the dark object whose outlines were now plain and salient. It was
+riding the sea like a cork.
+
+"Them," he said briefly. It was a t.b.d.
+
+At the port of our arrival the sheep were segregated from the goats. The
+unofficial people formed a long queue to go through the smoking-room,
+where two quiet men awaited them, one of whom, I believe, always says,
+"Take your hat off," looks into the pupil of your eyes, and lingers
+lovingly over your pulse; the other, as though anxious to oblige you,
+says, "Any letters to post?" But his inquiries are not so disinterested
+as they would seem.
+
+The rest of us, being highly favoured persons, got off without ceremony,
+and made for the Pullman. As the train drew out of the station and
+gathered speed I looked out upon the countryside as it raced past us.
+England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and
+orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its spinneys of
+beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The
+friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed
+to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with
+garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in
+the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked
+down the length of the saloon, and everywhere I saw the blithe and eager
+faces of England's gallant sons who had fought, and would fight again,
+to preserve this heritage from the fire and sword of bloody sacrilege.
+Fairer than the cedars of Lebanon were these russet beeches, nobler than
+the rivers of Damascus these amber streams; and the France of our new
+affections was not more dear.
+
+Twilight was falling as the guard came round and adjured us to shut out
+the prospect by drawing the blinds. As we glided over the Thames I drew
+the blind an inch or two aside and caught a vision of the mighty city
+steeped in shadows, and the river gleaming dully under the stars like a
+wet oilskin. At a word from the attendant I released the blind and shut
+out the unfamiliar nocturne. Men rose to their feet, and there was a
+chorus of farewells.
+
+"So long, old chap, see you again at battalion headquarters."
+
+"Good-bye, old thing, we meet next week at H.Q."
+
+"To-morrow night at the Savoy--rather! You must meet my sister."
+
+As I alighted on the platform I saw a crowd of waiting women. "Hullo,
+Mother!" "Oh, darling!" I turned away. I was thinking of that platform
+next week when these brief days, snatched from the very jaws of death,
+would have run their all too brief career and the greetings of joy would
+be exchanged for heart-searching farewells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was dining at my club with two friends, one of them a young Dutch
+attache, the other a barrister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well,
+and took our cigars into the smoking-room, which was crowded. Some men
+in a corner were playing chess; the club bore, decent enough in peace
+but positively lethal in war, was demonstrating to a group of impatient
+listeners that the Staff work at G.H.Q. was all wrong, when, catching
+sight of me, he came up and said, "Hullo, old man, back from the Front?
+When will the war end?" I returned the same answer as a certain D.A.A.G.
+used to provide for similar otiose questions: "Never!"
+
+"Never! Hullo, what's that?"
+
+Every one in the room suddenly rose to their feet, the chess players
+rising so suddenly that they overturned the board. "Damn it, and it was
+my move, I could have taken your queen," said one of them. Outside there
+was a noise like the roaring of the lion-house at the Zoo; your
+anti-aircraft gun has a growl of its own. "They're here," said some one,
+and we all made for the terrace.
+
+I looked up and saw in the dim altitudes a long silvery object among the
+stars. As the searchlights played upon it, it seemed almost diaphanous,
+and the body appeared to undulate like a trout seen in a clear stream.
+Jupiter shone hard and bright in the southern hemisphere, and suddenly a
+number of new planets appeared in the firmament as though certain stars
+shot madly from their spheres. Round and about the monster came and went
+these exploding satellites. Then another appeared close under her, and
+like a frightened fish she swerved sharply and was lost to view among
+the Pleiades.
+
+"Let's go and see what's happened," said one of my friends. "I hear
+she's dropped a lot of bombs down----."
+
+As we went down the street I saw that for about two hundred yards ahead
+it was sparkling as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of our boots
+"scrunched" something underfoot. I looked down. The ground was covered
+with splinters of glass. As we drew nearer we caught sight of a cordon
+of police, and behind them a great fire springing infernally from the
+earth, and behind the fire a group of soldiers, whose figures were
+silhouetted against the background. Our way was impeded by curious
+crowds, among whom one heard the familiar chant of "Pass along, please!"
+
+We stopped. Close to us two men were stooping with heads almost knocking
+together and searching the ground, while one of them husbanded a lighted
+match against the wind.
+
+"Blimey, Bill," said one to the other, "I've found 'un!"
+
+"What have you found?" we asked of him.
+
+"A souvenir, sir!"
+
+Truly, they know not the stomach of this people.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[30] See Chapter XXV.
+
+[31] See Chapter XI.
+
+[32] _Ibid._
+
+THE END
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+SOME RECENT BOOKS
+
+FRANCE AT WAR. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net.
+
+     _SPECTATOR._--"A picture of France at work which will be an
+     inspiration to thousands. It is all the more powerful for its
+     brevity."
+
+
+THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net.
+
+     _PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"A classic in descriptive journalism which no
+     collector and no patriot will miss."
+
+
+THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET. By RUDYARD KIPLING. 16mo. Sewed. 6d. net.
+
+     _SPECTATOR._--"We have read, we think, most of what has appeared
+     about the navy and its subsidiary services during the war, but
+     nothing we have seen has been comparable with these brief
+     sketches."
+
+
+ORDEAL BY BATTLE. By FREDERICK SCOTT OLIVER. 24th Thousand.
+8vo. 6s. net.
+
+     _MORNING POST._--"Both for statesmanship and for style (style which
+     is the shadow of personality) Mr. F.S. Oliver's book on the causes
+     and conditions of the war is by far the best that has yet
+     appeared."
+
+
+FIGHTING FRANCE. From Dunkerque to Belfort. By EDITH WHARTON.
+Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+     _DAILY NEWS._--"Mrs. Wharton, as was to be expected, has written
+     one of the most distinguished books on the war from the point of
+     view of the non-combatant."
+
+
+THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY. By OWEN WISTER. Sixth Impression.
+Crown 8vo. 2s. net.
+
+     _DAILY MAIL_.--"One of the wisest and tenderest books on the war that
+     have come from an American writer. He analyses the German temperament
+     with perfect insight."
+
+
+THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY. By R.W. SETON-WATSON, D.Litt., J. DOVER WILSON,
+ALFRED E. ZIMMERN, and ARTHUR GREENWOOD. 23rd Thousand.
+Crown 8vo. 2s. net.
+
+     _THE TIMES_.--"The essays are of high quality. They go more fully and
+     deeply into the underlying problems of the war than most of the
+     pamphlets and books which have appeared in such profusion."
+
+
+LETTERS FROM A FIELD HOSPITAL. By MABEL DEARMER. With a Memoir of the
+Author by STEPHEN GWYNN. Third Impression. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net.
+
+     _DAILY GRAPHIC_.--"A poignant book, yet a book full of inspiration."
+
+
+ESSAYS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. A First Guide toward the Study of the War. By
+STEPHEN PAGET. Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+     _STANDARD_.--"It is well that the boys and girls of to-day--the men
+     and women of to-morrow--should understand on the threshold of their
+     life the causes and the probable issues of the Great War which is
+     now in progress. They could have no better guide than Mr. Stephen
+     Paget."
+
+
+AIRCRAFT IN WAR AND PEACE. By WILLIAM A. ROBSON. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+
+
+THE MILITARY MAP. By GERALD MAXWELL. With Diagrams and Maps. 8vo.
+
+ABBAS II. (Ex-Khedive of Egypt). By the EARL OF CROMER. 8vo.
+2s. 6d. net.
+
+     _PALL MALL GAZETTE._--"A monograph which is of supreme value at the
+     present moment.... It makes an indispensable pendant to the
+     author's _Modern Egypt_.... The book is a masterpiece of knowledge
+     and wisdom, framed on lines of profound and permanent portraiture."
+
+
+THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY OF MARY. By STEPHEN GRAHAM. With
+Frontispiece in Colour. Third Impression. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
+
+     _STANDARD._--"Mr. Graham's illuminating pen-pictures of Russian
+     life and Russian people tell us more about that baffling problem
+     the Russian Nation than pages of analysis can do."
+
+
+THE FAITH AND THE WAR. A Series of Essays by Members of the Churchmen's
+Union and Others on the Religious Difficulties aroused by the Present
+Condition of the World. Edited by F.J. FOAKES-JACKSON, D.D.
+8vo. 5s. net.
+
+     _STANDARD._--"The ten essays are all of a high order. Their tone is
+     reassuring; they fairly envisage present difficulties. They are
+     meant to help any whose faith has been disturbed by the fiery trial
+     of the war. For the large class of persons so troubled no better or
+     more effective aid could possibly be offered."
+
+
+WAR-TIME SERMONS. By Dean H. HENSLEY HENSON. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.
+
+     _WESTMINSTER GAZETTE._--"Beyond all doubt, the Dean of Durham has a
+     great message for the nation in this time of conflict.... The
+     sermons deserve a place among the most memorable declarations of
+     Christian principles which the nation has received in this time of
+     crisis."
+
+
+HOLY GROUND. Sermons Preached in Time of War. By Dean J. ARMITAGE
+ROBINSON. Crown 8vo. 1s. net.
+
+     _CHALLENGE._--"In _Holy Ground_ Dr. Armitage Robinson's sermons
+     preached during the South African War are available for a
+     generation to whom they will come afresh and with a wealth of
+     spiritual insight that we shall be the richer for."
+
+
+THE CALIPHS' LAST HERITAGE. Travels in the Turkish Empire. By Sir
+MARK SYKES, Bart., M.P. Illustrated. 8vo. 20s. net.
+
+     _THE TIMES._--"Sir Mark Sykes' book is full of first-hand facts and
+     acute observation.... It is a book of intense interest and present
+     importance."
+
+
+HEART OF EUROPE. By RALPH ADAMS CRAM. Illustrated. 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
+
+     This work describes Northern France, Belgium and Flanders, and the
+     treasures of art and beauty enshrined in that beautiful land before
+     the devastation of the great war.
+
+
+WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY. By Major ROBERT R. MCCORMICK.
+Illustrated. Extra Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
+
+     _STANDARD._--"In the first year of the war Mr. McCormick was
+     invited by the Grand Duke Nicholas to visit the field of active
+     fighting.... He was permitted to examine closely the Russian
+     military organisation in the field, the training schools, and the
+     frontier fortresses. In this informative and graphic volume he now
+     gives a full idea of these unique observations."
+
+
+THE MILITARY UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE UNITED STATES. By F.L. HUIDEKOPER.
+With Maps. 8vo. 17s. net.
+
+     _ARMY AND NAVY GAZETTE._--"This most important book deals
+     exhaustively with matters of the greatest moment."
+
+
+THE BOOK OF FRANCE. By distinguished French and English Authors and
+Artists. Issued in aid of the French Parliamentary Fund for the Relief
+of the Invaded Departments. Edited by WINIFRED STEPHENS, and published
+under the auspices of an Honorary Committee presided over by His
+Excellency Monsieur PAUL CAMBON. Fcap. 4to. 5s. net.
+
+THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS (LE LIVRE DES SANS-FOYER). Containing original
+contributions by Belgian, French, English, Italian, and American
+Authors, Artists and Composers. Published for the benefit of the
+American Hostels for Refugees and Children of the Flanders Rescue
+Committee, and Edited by EDITH WHARTON. With an Introduction by
+THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 8vo. 21s. net.
+
+LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Leaves from a Field Note-Book, by J. H. Morgan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK ***
+
+***** This file should be named 17978.txt or 17978.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/9/7/17978/
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+