SILHOUETTES 
 OF MARS 
 
 W.G.PETERSON
 
 
 l*. A 
 
 /3o
 
 UfiSfi HBRARt
 
 ON ACTIVE SERVICE SERIES 
 
 SILHOUETTES OF MARS
 
 SILHOUETTES 
 OF MARS 
 
 MAJOR W. G. PETERSON, D.S.O. 
 
 Late the Royal Canadian Regiment and 
 Royal Highlanders of Canada 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
 
 Printed, by Miller, Son et- Co.. Fakenham and London.
 
 To 
 
 MY FATHER 
 
 As To ALL MoGiLL MEN 
 
 WHO GAVE THEMSELVES IN THE WAR.
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 THE following sketches, products of various moods, 
 wore written In many quite different places trench 
 and hospital, camp and barracks, mess-room and 
 billet. Yet as all these are avenues or side-tracks 
 of war, so it is hoped that the same connecting link 
 will be found visibly stringing together the former. 
 
 They are BO bound in the writer's mind by his 
 admiration of the men who won the war, the British 
 private, from whatsoever part of the Empire he came, 
 and his junior officers more particularly of such 
 as wore the kilt 1 
 
 Of these "essays," five have already been published 
 in the University Magazine, Montreal, and one in that 
 of Christ's College, Cambridge. 
 
 UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB, 
 LONDON, 
 
 Qth October, 1919.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE LOST LEGION ... 1 
 
 II. THE FIELD TELEPHONE SPEAKS . 9 
 
 III. THEIR VILLAGE . . . .16 
 
 IV. PARIS LEAVE . . . .21 
 V. THE BURGOMASTER OF DICKEBUSCH 29 
 
 VI. A VISIT TO ARRAS ... 49 
 
 VII. IN HOSPITAL .... 56 
 
 VIII. SIGNA SEVERA .... 64 
 
 IX. PASSCHENDAELE .... 74 
 
 X. AVE C^SAR IMMORTALIS ! . . 86 
 
 XI. AN INTERLUDE OF WAR . . 125 
 
 XII. THE BATTLE 136 
 
 XIII. THE LAST NIGHT . . . .143 
 
 XIV. MONS, 1918 152 
 
 XV. BILLETING IN BELGIUM . . .158 
 
 XVI. DIARY OF A JOURNEY FROM ARRAS 
 
 TO COLOGNE IN THE FALL OF 1918 169 
 
 XVII. CITIES OF THE SOUL . . ,185 
 
 XVIII. A MILITARY FUNERAL . . . .196 
 
 XIX. THE CITY OF FRIENDS . . . 200 
 
 XX. OF NEWSPAPER BOYS . . . 209 
 
 XXI. "KiT INSPECTION" . , ' .217 
 
 XXII. ROSES OF PICARDY . . . 237 
 
 XXIII. THE GAS ATTACK . . . .244 
 
 XXIV. To THE UNKNOWN DEAD . . 254 
 
 XXV. RETROSPECT OF WAR . 259
 
 SILHOUETTES OF MARS
 
 SILHOUETTES OF MARS 
 i 
 
 THE LOST LEGION 
 
 WE had dreamed of war ; now we lived amidst its 
 realities. We had often read of battles ; now, at last, 
 we fought them. The Oxford don, learned in the 
 latest theory of the true inwardness of the battle of 
 Marathon, gave his mind to planning a trench raid 
 which should be better than the other fellow's. It 
 seemed months since that hot sunny afternoon in 
 August when we marched off from our Surrey parade 
 ground to a bourne at which even the Brigadier 
 could only vaguely guess. So much had happened 
 since then. 
 
 In reality, it was only a fortnight, but already we 
 had looked upon our dead. For war had gripped us 
 swiftly, pulling off his mask and suddenly disclosing 
 the hideousness of the face beneath. One night 
 upon an ancient highway death had spoken out of 
 the darkness swiftly, mercilessly, with no chance of 
 retaliation. Back in rest billets we had counted our 
 losses. Strange to think that the friend who had 
 shared your blanket upon the stone floor of a cellar 
 in Ypres a short twenty hours ago would never ask 
 for anything again. The papers were right then ! 
 This is war !
 
 2 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Slowly, half dazedly, the battalion, which had 
 never moved before save circumspectly to the sound 
 of whistle or long drawn-out word of command, 
 adjusted its mind to the new conditions. The flinty 
 stones of the Belgian roads hurt its feet in the fre- 
 quent treks from one night's rest to another. This 
 is war. 
 
 But the sudden hardships were more than counter- 
 balanced by the novelty of it all ! The windmills, the 
 Flemish farm-houses, the long straight roads with the 
 lofty poplars on either side we had never seen any- 
 thing like this before. Surely the horrors of which 
 we had read must be far removed from these quaint 
 towns and smiling orchards. One would have thought 
 so ; but we knew. 
 
 None who has been there will ever forget the first 
 few days at the front. They will live daily in the 
 memory for ever, vivid, bright-hued, though it be 
 with the colour of blood or of the poppies which grow 
 scarlet in the fields and disused trenches around 
 Ypres. Looking back, they seem to be more than 
 half of one's life. Each incident, and there were 
 many such, stands out clear-cut in cameo -like 
 relief. 
 
 Do you remember, my friend, that reconnaissance 
 we made together the first time we were in the trenches ? 
 How you stopped to talk to a mere General while I, 
 pushing boldly past, wandered up a sap ? At the 
 head there was a periscope; and through it, under 
 the tutelage of a friendly N.C.O., I had my first 
 glimpse of the enemy, or rather of the enforced habi- 
 tation thereof. Then, in answer to my low call, you 
 sped the General on his way in peace and came to 
 me, stepping delicately the while with those long legs
 
 The Lost Legion 3 
 
 of yours over the interjacent obstacles. You too 
 had a " look see," and expressed entire contentment 
 with the view. Did the thought cross your mind 
 that perhaps now we might go home in peace ? Strange 
 to think now of the fascination held by the first view 
 of that scarred line of dirty grey soil and broken 
 rusty wire for those eyes which were to close for ever 
 amid the thunder of the Somme ! 
 
 One knew how he met death, even though not 
 there oneself. There had been an incident some- 
 what similar already in his life. 
 
 German shells falling along a front line trench in 
 Flanders, and a Company Commander who rushes 
 out of his dug-out to see that his men are safe. Re- 
 assured on this point, a laugh and a joke for the 
 unique fowl, which was to have been the chief feature 
 of a marvellous dinner, flung high upon the top of 
 the wrecked company kitchen. Comedy. 
 
 German shells dropping along a front line trench in 
 Picardy. A Company Commander who rushes out of 
 his dug-out to see if his men are safe. A whizz- 
 bang pitches right at his feet. Tragedy. 
 
 The two were strangely mixed in that life, as in 
 this war, but through them both there run the same 
 grand loyalty and devotion to duty. He lies at 
 Contay ; the most gallant soldier and the very greatest 
 gentleman whom any of us will ever know. 
 
 But the Somme was not yet for us and new faces 
 appeared from England to take the places of the 
 old. Fresh friends were made and old ones found 
 again. Men last seen in Canada were discovered in 
 other divisions of the corps. One found again the 
 regiment which he had left at Bermuda, upon the 
 ramparts of Ypres. It was curious, moreover, to
 
 4 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 see how the personal peculiarities of some came more 
 and more to the front under the conditions of active 
 service. Jones, who was darkly reputed to be some- 
 thing of a poet himself, could always be trusted to 
 produce a book or magazine from the depths of his 
 pack, so if you could find the candle you need not 
 go to sleep too soon. How convenient again of 
 Patterson always to carry around with him more kit 
 than he could ever possibly need even for a second 
 Hundred Years War, so that a lost trench coat could 
 always be replenished from his ample store 1 
 
 Over it all was an atmosphere of fellowship and 
 open-air health. Some there were, however, who 
 were fit neither physically nor spiritually to be mem- 
 bers of the British Expeditionary Force. Useless 
 to expect to command others when one cannot com- 
 mand oneself. These, however, did not last long. 
 
 For the younger ones among us the novelty of 
 the life was its great attraction even though they 
 did not phrase it to themselves thus. There was 
 so much that was new to be done and seen. Even 
 the ordinary routine of life took on a fresh colour 
 of romance from the new surroundings. 
 
 Life in the back areas behind the trenches and on 
 the lines of communication approximates more 
 nearly to that depicted in the novels of Stanley Wey- 
 man than anything else on earth. The solitary 
 cavalier riding on duty through the sunny land of 
 France comes at evening to some ancient town. He 
 rides at sunset through the gate-way, and at dusk 
 of the short wintry day reaches his lodging in some 
 inn. His horse is stabled in the courtyard along 
 with others. Then dinner in the long low wains- 
 coted salle a manger, the light of the candles reflected
 
 The Lost Legion 
 
 from the keen ruddy faces of the diners, officers 
 from perhaps twenty different regiments. Then a 
 night's sound sleep in bed. Up betimes in the morn- 
 ing, to ride off after a light breakfast. So rode 
 d'Artagnan when he was here ! Then the bustle, 
 confusion and excitement of it all ; the sights to be 
 seen on the roads ! Imagine the quiet of some little 
 Flemish village behind the line broken by the blare 
 of a military band, all the remaining inhabitants 
 turning out to see an Ontario battalion marching 
 through to the strains of the " Marseillaise." 
 
 The regular soldier took a quiet professional joy in 
 seeing all the paraphernalia and frillings of war laid 
 out for his inspection on a scale previously undreamed 
 of. 
 
 All this may be the lighter and brighter side of war, 
 but the ability to appreciate its picturesqueness goes 
 far to sustain us when confronted with the reverse 
 side of the shield. 
 
 But it is the other memories that will dwell with 
 most of us for ever. Memories of friends whom we 
 were never to see again, though unwittingly we bade 
 farewell to them casually, as if for an afternoon. It 
 is of the boys who will never come marching home 
 that those of us who survive will always think, when- 
 ever in the happy years to come the great war is 
 mentioned the boys who have " gone West " ; 
 further West than Canada. God grant that they have 
 reached those western isles, the islands of the 
 blest ! 
 
 The death of battalions at the front is, however, 
 worse even than that of individuals to those who 
 survive. There were two battalions in the Canadian 
 Army Corps which went up the slope of the Vimy
 
 6 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Ridge on the 9th of April, 1917, with the knowledge 
 that what might be left of them when the day was 
 over would be broken up to make room for fresh units 
 from Canada. Theirs was an austere devotion like 
 unto despair. 
 
 Such things are not conducive to that esprit de 
 corps which lies at the base of all military organisation. 
 It is treachery to the memory of these young heroes 
 whose bodies, clad in the uniform of the regiment 
 they loved so well and for which they died so gloriously, 
 lie far within the German lines. You know the story 
 of Kipling's and the pity felt by the Sikhs for the 
 sahib who, though a soldier, was without a regiment. 
 What shall they answer in Valhalla when asked the 
 name and number of the regiment for which they 
 gave their lives so gladly ? We who survive feel 
 that the strongest link with our dead is broken in our 
 hand. For we are all that is left of the Lost Legion 
 and we are scattered throughout the army the one 
 not witting where the others are. 
 
 We are bound together, however, by the fine cord of 
 memory, for together we first entered upon the great 
 adventure. And what memories they are I 
 
 For the Lost Legion before it disappeared from 
 the Army List had served in each of the three great 
 theatres of war of the Canadian Corps Flanders, 
 Picardy, and the Artois. We can remember together 
 Ypres gleaming white in the moonlight like a dead city 
 of romance, and the quaint Flemish country-side 
 known equally to our forefathers in the days " quand 
 Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre." 
 
 Together we marched down to the Somme and 
 saw from afar the great golden Virgin of Albert, which 
 still stands bent but not broken, above the plain of
 
 The Lost Legion 7 
 
 Picardy. To some of us the greatest contrast our 
 lives have yet furnished has been to pass in a single 
 day out of the noise and fury of the battle of the 
 Somme to the majestic mediaeval peace and quiet of 
 Amiens Cathedral, set in its quaint old square. 
 
 Then the winter shut down on the armies and for long 
 we saw no further than the Vimy Ridge. Bleak and 
 grim it lay across our path through the long months of 
 snow and rain limiting the vision of those who clung 
 like ants to its side, to a few yards. Bleak and hostile 
 it looked in the grip of an iron frost, but when the 
 snow fell it grew strangely familiar to Canadian eyes. 
 Then the spring came. The barrier was broken and 
 we emerged upon the promised land. 
 
 To-day, in June, the writer came back from the 
 trenches across the Vimy Ridge. It is a beautiful 
 summer's day. In La Folie wood the birds are sing- 
 ing and the grass is dotted with flowers, red, white, and 
 blue. Bright-winged insects fly past one's head. 
 Only occasionally does a shell now burst on that 
 ground once daily so rent and riven. 
 
 Pausing on the top of the ridge one has a view of 
 the whole theatre of the surrounding war of the 
 rolling plains of Douai scarred with the white chalk 
 seams of the trenches of the opposing armies. In 
 the distance Lens and Avion are burning. Here is 
 peace, and birds and flowers. 
 
 This is a view which few of the Lost Legion have 
 ever seen, though many of them died to realize it. 
 
 As I came back I thought of these, of our Bayard 
 our knight sans peur et sans reproche who sleeps by 
 the Somme ; of the gallant boy who fell here gloriously 
 leading his men that bleak February day ; of many 
 others.
 
 8 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 And it seemed to me that they were all around me, 
 that once more I marched in the midst of the legion 
 that was lost. And I knew that all was well, that the 
 legion was not really lost, that such a legion could not 
 be lost for ever, and that somewhere, sometime, per- 
 haps beyond the sunset and stars, the " Assembly " 
 will surely sound for us again.
 
 II 
 
 THE FIELD TELEPHONE SPEAKS 
 
 SEEST in daylight Watling Street was not a thing of 
 beauty ; was, indeed, emphatically all that a properly 
 constructed communication trench should not be. It 
 lagged far behind the regulation dimensions for such 
 things, in respect of both breadth and depth. Perhaps 
 it had never been built to conform to them ; or per- 
 haps again it was, but had been almost immediately 
 battered out of every likeness to its original plan by 
 the German artillery. 
 
 Certainly it bore no resemblance to the broad 
 spacious Roman highway, from which presumably it 
 derived its name, save that it too had been constructed 
 as a passage-way for troops. In this very similarity 
 of function, indeed, lay the greatest incongruity be- 
 tween the two ; an incongruity best expressed by 
 saying that whereas the original, after the lapse of 
 centuries, could still sustain the stately march of the 
 legions, the more hasty construction of a later war 
 had become, within a month of its completion, an 
 object of malediction to every unfortunate working 
 party that had painfully to make their way along it 
 in single file. Even the telephone wire had been 
 lifted out of the trench to run above ground, despite 
 the risk of shell-fire. Only the old German wires 
 were left, twisted congeries of various coloured threads, 
 sagging and drooping underfoot from both walls of
 
 10 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 the trench where they had been torn from their 
 staples. 
 
 Narrow it was, yet shallow, combining the maximum 
 of inconvenience with the minimum of safety to the 
 hardy voyager who attempted to follow its tortuous 
 sinuous course. More than one full-bodied brigadier, 
 pursuing his bustling way to the front line, was said 
 to have stuck fast between its clammy sides until 
 extricated by his staff and foisted heavily to the 
 realms above, henceforward to continue his journey 
 along the berm. Lesser men habitually disdained it, 
 preferring the overland route. 
 
 And, indeed, this was the best course, for in places 
 the trench was hard to distinguish from the debris 
 of the surrounding fields. 
 
 Here, both sides had caved in and their fall had 
 rendered the trench impassible ; there, it had widened 
 out and merged into the surrounding shell-holes, 
 like a stream that has overflowed its banks. It 
 resembled an Earl's Court switchback, up here, 
 down there, so that at one moment the wayfarer was 
 lost to view, while the next he would emerge visible 
 from the ankles upwards, fair mark for a wakeful 
 sniper's bullet, as he strove to surmount a mound of 
 earth where the trench had fallen in. It was a journey 
 up hill and down dale. 
 
 Elsewhere the trench in summer resembled a country 
 lane, for, owing to its comparative disuse for reasons 
 above stated, wild flowers had overgrown both its 
 banks and stretching out towards each other formed 
 a mass of blooms, cornflowers, poppies, even wild 
 roses, through which the hasty traveller had to 
 force his way, his passage being clearly marked 
 by the agitation of the foliage above his head, as if
 
 The Field Telephone Speaks 11 
 
 he were voyaging up some virgin off-shoot of the 
 Amazon. 
 
 When on a night like this, however, the full moon 
 hung low in heaven, it threw a silvery glamour over 
 what was merely crude and ugly seen by day. The 
 dirty white chalk of this trench in Picardy turned to 
 marble, and the shadows of poppies in the wind seemed 
 like the swaying of palm-trees on a tropic shore. The 
 discarded rifle and battered helmet became relics of an 
 older, knightlier, more romantic war, and the broken 
 rusty wire some web of elfish weaving. 
 
 A Company Headquarters stood in the trench not 
 far from its junction with the front line, and the 
 moonlight, as it fell down the sodden steps of the dug- 
 out, mingled with the light of the guttering candle 
 within. The Company Commander was sitting on a 
 rude wire bed of enemy construction writing a letter 
 with his knees for a desk. On an upturned wooden 
 box beside him stood his field telephone. 
 
 From time to time the officer looked up at the 
 instrument as if he knew that it would ring sooner or 
 later. He was expecting a message from the Adjutant 
 about some rations which had not yet reached the 
 company. 
 
 The Company Commander closed his writing tablet 
 and looked up at the telephone. He was very tired, 
 and it struck him that here was an opportunity to 
 snatch a little sleep. Everything was in order in 
 his sector of the trenches save these confounded 
 rations and he could do nothing to hurry them up. 
 The senior subaltern was on duty, the rest of the 
 company officers asleep in the next dug out. If the 
 telephone rang it would awaken him, or the runner 
 standing outside the entrance would hear. He called
 
 12 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 to the soldier and gave him instructions to rouse him 
 if the bell rang, then, resting head on hand, closed his 
 eyes. The last thing he saw as he did so was his 
 telephone. 
 
 The light from the flickering candle threw dancing 
 shadows on the walls of the dug-out. Once he turned, 
 and half opening his eyes looked at the telephone as 
 if he had heard it ring. 
 
 It stood on its box, a little squat black thing, save 
 where the moon fell on the steel parts of it, with its 
 black tentacles trained along the wall and passing 
 up the steps into the darkness of the trench outside. 
 
 Though silent for the moment it had a sinister look 
 of waiting, as if to say : 
 
 " Yes, I am here your master. You never knew me 
 before you came to war. At home I was merely a 
 necessary drudge in your business, a slave of your 
 every whim, a convenience for the use of your wife in 
 assembling her dinner parties. Here it is different 
 and our positions are reversed. I am the master, 
 you are the slave." 
 
 The mouth of the telephone appeared to have grown 
 in size, to have become a well of inky depth ming- 
 ling with the black fantastic shadows on the walls. 
 It seemed to fascinate him, to be drawing him to- 
 wards it, to be engulfing him. 
 
 " Here am I, the modern voice of Mars, able with 
 my tinkle to summon his votaries, and you my ser- 
 vant, more loudly and quickly with the very noise of 
 battle than ever did clarion or bugle, watchfire or 
 beacon. And you can never escape me, you who are 
 sworn to my service, or refuse to listen to me, when I 
 call, and to do my bidding, for I am with you by day 
 in dug-out and billet, and at night I sit by your bedside
 
 The Field Telephone Speaks is 
 
 and the thought of my voice disturbs your rest and 
 mingles with your dreams." 
 
 The man on the bed stirred uneasily in his sleep, but 
 the telephone went on : 
 
 " I am with you always, whether templed in state 
 at headquarters with a room given up solely to me 
 and my companions, tended by acolytes with the 
 blue and white band of my service on their arms ; 
 or whether you worship me alone by night in a little 
 dug-out in the front line where I can stand up straight, 
 but you perforce must bend before me when you wish 
 to have speech with me. 
 
 " To whom do you turn save to me in times of 
 sudden peril when the panting runner falls into your 
 dug-out with news of the attack ! Then my voice wakes 
 those of my other servants, the guns, in swift retalia- 
 tion and all is well. Or perchance it is not, and then I 
 give warning to others, sound the alarm. You do 
 not know whether I have spoken well or ill, and yet 
 your life and trust depends upon my answer. If my 
 voice sounds clear and distinct and speaks in time, to 
 you come the guns ringing you round, as you cower 
 in the trench, with a safety curtain of steel, the friendly 
 barrage. Speak I ill or late and it is the Hun who 
 comes. Do you see his grey-clad figures rising above 
 the parapet ? 
 
 " Again, my servants carry my missives hither and 
 thither at top speed and great doings wait upon my 
 word to start. 
 
 " You take great care of me, as well you may. 
 When I am injured anywhere throughout my length, 
 you send my best attendants forth to find the place 
 and mend it if they can. At all times go they 
 forth, even when death rains thickest on the ground ;
 
 14 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 and if they return not again, why then you send others 
 and if need be yet again others till I am whole. 
 For I am your hope of victory." 
 
 The noise of laughter and men talking came from 
 outside, but it did not wake the sleeper. The candle 
 was burned out now, but the moon still shone. It 
 was not yet " stand to." 
 
 " Generals are my servants, and in the great hours 
 they do naught but commune with me, clasping me 
 to them, holding me tight to one ear while they muffle 
 the other so as to hear me alone. I am alike the 
 friend and the curse of subalterns. I crawl with 
 them through sap and along trench. I go with 
 them, paying out my length across no man's land, 
 close behind the thundering reeking barrage. I am 
 first into the captured trench, and it is my voice that 
 proclaims it ours to those that wait behind. Men 
 have died clutching me, spending their last breath in 
 the effort to talk to me and I, I have not always 
 chosen to hear. It is I who give news of victory, 
 and the sudden ceasing of my voice is often alike the 
 first warning of danger and the final presage of disaster. 
 I am Life, I am Death. I am Victory, I am Defeat. 
 I am all that the brain and science of man can devise 
 to make certain an event and yet a thing of chance. 
 For I am War." 
 
 There came a sudden commotion in the trench 
 without, mingled with the crash of shells in front. 
 
 A runner, out of breath with haste, steel helmet 
 gone from his head, his kilt caked with mud, stumbled 
 down the steps of the dug-out. It was nearing dawn 
 and the V6ry lights were pale against the growing 
 greynese of the sky. The Company Commander 
 awoke with the ringing of the telephone bell in his ears.
 
 The Field Telephone Speaks 15 
 
 The panting runner spoke. 
 
 " Sir, Mr. Jones says that they've blown in the para- 
 pet in two bays and " 
 
 " Which ones ? " He was wide awake now. 
 
 " K3 and K4, sir." 
 
 The Company Commander seized the phone. He 
 did not appear to hear its ringing. 
 
 But when he took up the receiver the nicely modu- 
 lated voice and crisp intonation of the youthful 
 adjutant first met his ear. 
 
 " That you, old man ? The C. 0. wants you to 
 detail an officer, a sergeant and four other ranks to 
 attend a lecture on Christianity in war at Warloy 
 to-morrow at What's that ? " 
 
 " Damn," said the Company Commander, " they 
 are shooting up K.3 and K.4. Put the battery on, 
 will you ? " 
 
 He stood and waited, till the swish of out-going shells 
 overhead told him that his request had been attended 
 to, then seizing his trench stick and helmet turned to 
 the door. 
 
 The telephone rang again and, cursing, he went 
 towards it. 
 
 " Is that enough, old thing, or shall I ask the L. O. 
 to give you another fifteen per gun ? All right. 
 
 " Oh, about those rations. I am afraid that we 
 shall not be able to get them up before to-morrow 
 night. But I will ring you up later. You don't see 
 any Boche about, I suppose ? Well, ta-ta." 
 
 He rang off. 
 
 Was it a trick of a late moonbeam on the steel cap 
 of the telephone, or had it really winked at him ?
 
 ( 16) 
 
 in 
 
 THEIR VILLAGE 
 
 THE cross-roads had certainly been the centre of 
 the village's life, while the village yet lived ; the 
 biggest heaps of ruins are near-by. Now the whole 
 village lies prostrate, in form a rough parallelogram, 
 around the cross-roads. 
 
 Perhaps this mound already overgrown with grass, 
 and crowned with a litter of broken pottery and bits 
 of twisted iron-work which stick out from amidst 
 the nettles, was once the mairie ; that other, there, the 
 auberge. Here, at evening, when the day's work 
 on the fields or roads was done, the inhabitants 
 came to sit at the little trim round iron-tables and 
 drink a glass of wine together and gossip pleasantly, 
 while the children played around the edges of the 
 square, or on the doorsteps, which were not then 
 overgrown with weeds. No children play in the 
 streets to-day, or have done for these three long years ; 
 or, if they did, it was before we came and must have 
 been in fear and trembling. 
 
 The village has no life of its own to-day, though it 
 stands on one of the great highways of France. An 
 alien soldiery tenants its ruins and cellars, and the 
 moon, as it comes out of a late afternoon, must won- 
 der where these mild revellers have gone. 
 
 A field dressing-station is housed among the most 
 imposing pile of ruins at one corner of the otherwise
 
 Their Village n 
 
 deserted square. The Red Cross flag, stuck on the 
 highest part of the building the top of one of the door- 
 posts proclaims its mission. The sick and wounded 
 lie on stretchers, underground, in its roomy cellars. 
 
 The village stands in the middle of a valley which 
 runs north and south. The valley is bounded by a 
 long ridge on one side and by broken heights and 
 fertile fields on the other. In the distance rise the 
 gaunt towers of an ancient abbey, a landmark for 
 miles around. 
 
 A little stream runs through the valley, choked and 
 diverted throughout much of its course by shell- 
 holes. Close by the village it runs smooth and deep, 
 however, for a little ; and here at all hours of the day 
 and evening the English come to bathe themselves in 
 peace, like Pisan soldiery, for there is none, save them- 
 selves, to see. 
 
 It is easy to picture the life of the village, because 
 it must have been so simple. It stood in the valley 
 for centuries, almost within sight of the " dreaming 
 spires " of Douai and of Arras. 
 
 Day after day the men would arise and go to work 
 in the fields and the women busy themselves with 
 housework. Then at night there would be a welcome 
 from the little populace in the square to the home- 
 coming carts. Some one would read aloud extracts 
 from yesterday's Paris paper, with news perhaps of 
 the war in the Balkans. "Chut! Chut!" the wise- 
 acres would say. " What have we to do with war, 
 and what do the Serbians matter to us ? " and call for 
 another glass of vin blanc or rouge. Then, at six 
 o'clock precisely, monsieur le notaire, he who lives at 
 the chateau beyond the village, would drive through 
 on his way back from his office at Douai, and
 
 is Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 perhaps give the loungers in the square news later 
 still. 
 
 " Good luck to you, monsieur le notaire, your house 
 still stands, though the windows are shattered and 
 your library is not in good repair ! Moreover, the 
 furniture is broken and many of the pictures are 
 missing. Perhaps they are in Berlin ! 
 
 " Ah, we cannot tell you about your office and the 
 law-courts at Douai. But your house for many years 
 has given shelter to the headquarters of many British 
 brigades, and we should be glad to meet you in the 
 flesh, we, who so often have sat at your hearth and, 
 by the light of the guttering candles, gazed up into 
 your kind old face surmounting your black frock- 
 coat, above the fireplace. Kind, despite that Ger- 
 man sword-cut 1 
 
 " No, it was not we who burned your barns and 
 out-houses for fire-wood." 
 
 Then on Thursdays many went marketing. Arras 
 was nearer, but probably things were cheaper at 
 B6thune. To get to Douai one would have to cross 
 the ridge. 
 
 You can picture the old family voiture crawling a 
 black speck along the road, smothered in white dust, 
 in the morning sunlight, towards Bethune. Neigh- 
 bours, perhaps about to start themselves, would shout 
 greetings from the outlying farms, which link village 
 to village, as it passed. There were cattle, then, 
 which lowed in the fields, and young colts which 
 frisked and cantered, or stood leaning their long 
 faces over the hedges to watch the travellers go by. 
 There would be a day of great doings and vast ex- 
 penses in the market square of the old Spanish town, 
 under that tower which seems like a shadow of
 
 Their Village 19 
 
 the Escurial set up amidst the sunny fields of 
 France. 
 
 Then the drive home in the early evening, when the 
 light was beginning to fail and the stars hung low above 
 the black shadow of the ridge. There would be 
 excitement and little laughters at their purchases. 
 Had Marie really paid only ten francs for that neck- 
 lace and surely Pierre did not need another pipe 1 
 
 And all the time the Ridge would block the sky to 
 eastwards. 
 
 Home again, they would look once more at what 
 they had bought and then seek their beds, after 
 prayers to the crucifix on the wall. And the moon- 
 light would come in at the windows, and the soft 
 scent of the new-cut hay, of the lilac, and all the night 
 fragrance of that country-side in summer. 
 
 To-morrow they would be up before the morning sun- 
 light had filled the room. 
 
 The younger ones perhaps called the life uneventful, 
 and wished for something to happen to break its 
 monotony. 
 
 Peaceful indeed was their existence, each quiet day 
 followed by its quieter night in one long tranquil never- 
 ceasing round. Their lives began diversely in the 
 different little whitewashed houses, thatched or 
 tiled to end, all alike, in the village churchyard. 
 
 The church stood on a knoll in the centre of the 
 village and the churchyard lay around it. It seemed 
 very enduring and orderly, as if set up for ever in the 
 faith of the country-side. Surely those who had found 
 their haven here might rest in peace. So the father 
 must have thought, as passing the gate, he looked 
 in at his parents' graves and shrewdly calculated 
 that there was yet room for himself, his wife, and his
 
 20 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 children possibly even his children's children in the 
 family plot. 
 
 But over it all was the Ridge, and its shadow was 
 black on the country-side. 
 
 Pregnant with fate was the Ridge to many in far 
 lands who had never yet heard its name. Surely it 
 looked ominous and forbidding, even then when there 
 were yet trees on it bearing branches, and with 
 leaves on the branches. 
 
 For the Ridge knew what lay behind it. 
 
 And because of the Ridge, and of the terror that 
 was to come over it, it was not to be. 
 
 But no one in the village guessed that this remote 
 country graveyard would ever be ploughed through 
 and through with German shells, its stones, torn and 
 uprooted, to be flung cracked and splintered to posture 
 indecently for all. That these quiet dead would yet 
 arise, before their time, to greet the fresh dead, their 
 sons and grandsons, and the peaceful order of their 
 last rustic resting-place be turned into a hideous 
 chaos of splintered stone, twisted iron-work, and up- 
 ploughed fearful earth. Only the Ridge knew what 
 was behind it and waited for its coming. 
 
 To-day the village is dead and a broken shattered 
 corpse. Those of the villagers who creep back to 
 unearth their little savings buried in the soil of their 
 kitchens have first to remove the wreckage of their 
 homes before they can reach the ground. House is 
 confused with house and garden runs into garden, in 
 the common soil which is the country for miles around. 
 
 To-day the village is the sign-manual of the great 
 beast that is German war.
 
 (21) 
 
 IV 
 PARIS LEAVE 
 
 THE advantages, if any, of the above proceeding are 
 hotly debated at the Front. " Why go to Paris when 
 you can go to Blighty ? " asks one school of thought. 
 The idea strikes them as absurd. 
 
 The answer is that one never knows when one may 
 go to Blighty, that one may make a hurried exit 
 there any day. Why not then take advantage of 
 one's temporary position out here to see life and 
 Paris? 
 
 So it comes about that a minority of pleasure 
 seekers continue to visit the French capital, if only 
 to prove to themselves that there exist in France 
 boulevards as well as communication-trenches, hotels 
 besides dug-outs. Safely returned to the bosom of 
 their unit, they affect superiority : Paris is all very 
 well for once, but next time and every subsequent 
 next time give them home ! 
 
 Slowly and reluctantly the train, one of these rustic 
 affairs, a cross between a real train and an electric 
 street-car, pulled out of the station and started to 
 chug-chug its way towards St. Pol, at the rate of 
 ten miles an hour. There were no doors to the car- 
 riages and no glass to the windows, so that the cool 
 autumn breezes could wander in and play with the 
 knees of the Highlanders. Never was there a more 
 dismal method of starting out upon a holiday.
 
 22 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Every now and then the train stopped, apparently 
 to regain its breath. These arrests usually took 
 place in the midst of ploughed fields. Once, how- 
 ever, it selected a place immediately opposite a large 
 canteen of the British Expeditionary Force. Im- 
 mediately there was a concerted movement out of 
 the train and into the canteen. Fifty different com- 
 mercial transactions were commenced simultaneously 
 with the harassed staff. 
 
 Suddenly some one discovered that the train had 
 gone, had in fact sneaked quietly away with none of 
 the snorts and grunts with which it had previously 
 never failed to herald its intention of getting a move 
 on. I would like to know the balance of profit and 
 loss in the books of that canteen. 
 
 An impromptu Marathon along the railway track 
 at once commenced. One by one the competitors 
 reached their goal, and climbed or were hauled into 
 the train. At last there were only two in the running, 
 a Brigadier and a subaltern. The Brigadier was one 
 of those youthful old-boys, and ran well, but was 
 obviously not in the same condition as his opponent, 
 who had got away to a late start. Still he had a 
 good lead and struggled gallantly to maintain it. The 
 thing became quite exciting. Heads were poked 
 out from both sides of the train and bets freely offered 
 against the Brigadier, who, with his face as red as 
 his gorget patches, was now steadily losing ground. 
 They reached the last carriage together, though the 
 Brigadier was obviously all in. Perhaps the sub- 
 altern was in the Brigadier's brigade and was aware 
 that the other knew it. In one last gallant effort to 
 spring upon the step, the Brigadier tripped over his 
 own spurs which, quite contrary to dress regulations
 
 Paris Leave 23 
 
 and clothing allowance even to brigadiers when 
 travelling by train, he wore over a pair of top boots of 
 the most nutty nut-brown shade. He was got on 
 board at last, his late rival being particularly solicitous, 
 and dusted down inside the train. Then there were 
 tales of the Brigadier's youth. 
 
 One of the advantages of Paris leave is the ability to 
 break the journey for a night at Amiens with its 
 wonderful cathedral. There is plenty of khaki in 
 the streets there, but on the whole sky-blue is more 
 predominantly the colour motif than in Paris. It is 
 nice to drink coffee in the beautiful little walled 
 garden of the Hotel du Rhin, which has changed 
 its proprietor since the war but not its name as in- 
 deed why should it, for the Rhine is as much French 
 as German ? It is strange to sit in the new Officers' 
 Club, and hear once more all the old place names of 
 the Somme, and get the gossip from the line beyond 
 Bapaume ! 
 
 Next day on to Paris in the Boulogne-Paris ex- 
 press, which is full of officers British, French, Portu- 
 guese, Belgian, Russian, and American, in a kaleido- 
 scope of uniforms. One resolves to study the rank 
 badges of our Allies so as to be able to determine 
 whether it was a General who offered one a cigarette 
 or merely a sous-lieutenant. 
 
 One's first impression of Paris is strangely reminis- 
 cent of London seen under similar conditions. There 
 is the same long-drawn-out approach through streets 
 after streets of houses, culminating in the same vast 
 ill-lit station. There is the same crowd at the barriers 
 awaiting the return of their menfolk ; the same diffi- 
 culty in obtaining a taxi. This latter obstacle over- 
 come or circumvented, the Red Caps satisfied that one
 
 24 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 really has a right to be in Paris, and you are free of 
 the city. Your leave has begun. 
 
 Paris in September, with the first few brown leaves 
 beginning to swirl down upon the streets, with the 
 heat of summer melting into the cool of autumn, is 
 very lovely. The boulevards are crowded. Every 
 second man you see is in uniform, and nearly every 
 French soldier has the Croix de Guerre or of the Legion. 
 
 It is not yet too cold to sit outside the Cafe de la 
 Paix and watch the passing crowd on the Boulevard 
 des Italiens. 
 
 This is the real panorama of the Allied armies that 
 flows past your chair. This is the real distinction of 
 Paris, the number of foreign uniforms that it con- 
 tains. The French, of course, predominate, but to 
 nothing like the extent that the British army does in 
 London. 
 
 Every shade of " bleu horizon " is to be seen here, 
 from the blue-black of the Chasseurs Alpins to the 
 lightest shade of April skies. 
 
 Infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers, they pour 
 past by the hundred. Then there are Belgians, 
 familiar in London, not too uniformly clothed, but 
 with their little coloured tassels hanging down in front 
 of their forage caps. Portuguese in grey, cut on the 
 lines of our own uniform but with the French kepi. 
 Tall Russians in their smartly cut abbreviated smocks 
 and breeches of various shades of green, with bright 
 rainbows of ribbons across their breasts. Soft, 
 hatted Australians, Highlanders, troops of the line 
 all are there. Perhaps the smartest of them all 
 are the French flying men in their blue and black 
 with the silver laurel wreath on their breasts. 
 
 It is the Americans, however, who are at present
 
 Paris Leave 25 
 
 the lions and novelty in Paris. They are everywhere. 
 Either the percentage of leave allowed from American 
 battalions is very high or there must be an immense 
 American army somewhere in France larger than the 
 Germans care to admit. Tall, youthful, slim, with 
 their closely-fitting khaki tunics w T hich one hears 
 have been in many instances remade by English 
 tailors one cannot remember ever seeing finer look- 
 ing troops. They are just now the most popular 
 strangers in Paris, with the exception of " les Ecossais " 
 the kilt has a unique and never-failing attraction for 
 the Parisian, and still more for the Parisienne. 
 Regular or Reserve or National Guard, they will give 
 a good account of themselves. 
 
 The most strikingly individual corps in Paris are 
 the different orders of the Red Cross ambulance 
 drivers. The majority of these are Americans, serv- 
 ing with the French or Belgian armies. Each man 
 gives one the impression of having chosen his own 
 uniform, and of endeavouring to show by the varied 
 nature of its composition, firstly the nationality of 
 the forces with which he is himself serving, and secondly 
 his practical realization of the fact that these forces 
 constitute part of a larger international whole. One 
 American youth in an English officer's jacket, without 
 the rank badges of course, a Belgian cap and sky 
 blue puttees, particularly took my fancy. He also 
 wore a white hunting stock round his neck. 
 
 Unquestionably the thing best worth doing in 
 Paris is to pay a visit to the Invalides that hospital 
 built by Louis le Grand for his old soldiers, veterans 
 of Flanders and the Artois. The museum of arms 
 and armour, dating from far back in French history, 
 has overflowed into the great courtyard. Here is
 
 26 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 massed together a whole Hunnish armament, quick- 
 firers, bomb-throwing trench mortars, monstrous Krupp 
 guns the fruits of victory in the Somme and Cham- 
 pagne offensives. Cheek by jowl with these, going 
 up the steps, one passes the antique cannon which 
 Charles of Bourbon, High Constable of France, dragged 
 against the walls of Rome. 
 
 And so we pass on to the inner shrine of him whose 
 spirit, purged of its egotism, surely breathes on 
 France to-day. 
 
 Perhaps you have visited Napoleon's tomb in 
 peace-time, to look in company with a few tourists at 
 the last resting-place of the great Emperor. You 
 may then have hurried away to complete the round 
 of sightseeing. 
 
 Now it is very different. Here to this shrine come 
 soldiers from all the armies which are to-day fighting 
 the battles of that cause of which France has always 
 been the reckless standard-bearer. From Ypres to 
 Verdun they come to look upon the Great Captain. 
 
 Here comes the Russian, forgetting the humiliation 
 of Moscow ; the Englishman regretting that of St. 
 Helena. Here comes the youthful American soldier 
 to gaze with clear young eyes upon him whom he 
 may have been taught to regard as a " militarist," but 
 whom he feels perhaps that he understands better now. 
 
 The wounded poilu comes here, and standing rev- 
 erently at the brink gazes down upon the magnificent 
 sarcophagus of porphyry which contains the remains of 
 Napoleon. Here he lies, winged with the names of 
 his victories and girdled with captured Teuton ban- 
 ners : as he wished to rest on the banks of the Seine 
 among that French people whom he loved so well 
 and who stand fast in his memory to-day.
 
 Paris Leave 27 
 
 And the soldier of France, down-gazing, smiles to 
 himself. The golden eagle of Austerlitz soared to 
 heights where the black eagles of the Hohenzollerns 
 and Hapsburgs could never have lived. This is the 
 great disproof of the boastings of the enemy, even upon 
 his own chosen ground. For this was the greatest 
 soldier of them all, to whom the choicest products of 
 the Great General Staff would have been but as 
 marshals or chiefs of staS, his Berthiers and Ber- 
 trands. 
 
 The main note of Paris to-day, as of all France, is 
 the military one. The life of the " Quarter " is dead. 
 Far more than in London have the normal lives of 
 the place been thrown out of gear. Any description 
 of Paris to-day must be one of a city given over 
 wholly to soldiers. 
 
 Many of the big hotels, such as the Elysee, have been 
 turned into hospitals. The wounded and convales- 
 cent are everywhere, on the boulevards, in the Bois, 
 in the parks of Fontainebleau and Versailles. There 
 seems to be less grumbling than in London. 
 
 Ten days in Paris admit of visits to Versailles and 
 Fontainebleau. As one passes through these ornate 
 rooms, with their memories of the Grand Monarque 
 and of Napoleon, one muses furiously on the per- 
 mutations and combinations of history. 
 
 At night, motoring back to the city, one is stopped 
 at the barriers and scrutinized while the great search- 
 lights flit through the sky in the hunt for enemy air- 
 craft. 
 
 Ten days are soon finished, and the return journey 
 comes in the nature of an anti-climax. One is glad, 
 however, to have seen Paris in September, when the 
 summer heat is melting into the coolness of autumn,
 
 28 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 when the first leaves are falling ever so gently, not 
 with the dry whirr that comes later, down upon the 
 boulevards, as if tired of affording shade to ungrate- 
 ful man. Or perhaps they know that he will soon 
 need all the sunshine he can get. 
 
 Above all, one is glad to have seen Paris in war- 
 time.
 
 THE BURGOMASTER OF DICKEBUSCH 
 
 (N.B. This tale disclaims all historical accuracy.} 
 
 IT was the great Retreat and the first battalion of 
 the Campbell Highlanders were in it, as they had 
 been in the thick of the fighting after Mons. Dazed 
 and tired they struggled along the flinty Belgian road. 
 Many a man was asleep in the ranks, but borne up 
 by the shoulders and elbows of his comrades, with his 
 feet still mechanically trudging on. Gone was the swing 
 of the kilts ; gone, too, save in a few instances, the 
 jaunty cock of the Highland bonnets. In these 
 some had placed scarlet poppies, plucked from the 
 surrounding corn-fields with their petals half blown 
 away ; and, as all Scotland knows, the poppy is the 
 emblem of death. Certainly the wearers seemed to 
 be thereto dedicate. 
 
 Even the pipes were still ; which was probably just 
 as well, as right and left on parallel roads moved long 
 grey columns of German infantry. These, some miles 
 away, had failed to notice the British regiment, or 
 seeing them with their tartans covered with the dust, 
 which was rising in a steady cloud from the road, 
 judged them to be long-coated infantrymen like 
 themselves and pressed on with the pursuit. 
 
 On his side Captain Jack Macdonald, now in com- 
 mand of the battalion which numbered few more
 
 30 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 than the company he had originally taken into action, 
 had serious misgivings. As he sat on his horse at 
 the head of the main-guard, he was wondering 
 whether he ought not to attack and measure his 
 handful against eight times their numbers. A curi- 
 ous sensation this, to be part of the infantry of the 
 German advanced guard. Or should he carry on in 
 peace, if he could, until the line of a general resistance 
 was reached ? A stand ! Could there be such a thing 
 after what he had seen ? 
 
 As he pondered this, he felt a touch upon his leg. 
 Young Gordon, who walked beside him, his self- 
 appointed adjutant, was trying to attract his atten- 
 tion. 
 
 " What is it, Billy," he asked. 
 
 For answer, the boy, one of the few subalterns left 
 in the battalion, pointed ahead to where in the middle 
 distance the spire of a church rose from out of surround- 
 ing gardens and corn-fields. 
 
 " That's Dickebusch in front," he said. 
 
 " Yes, and Berlin behind," growled Macdonald. 
 " And I don't see how either fact is going to help us, 
 my son, even if your highly accurate map happens 
 not to be wrong this time for once," he added with 
 bitter emphasis. 
 
 Gordon merely remarked in aggrieved tones that at 
 least they now knew where they were, at least roughly. 
 
 " Damned roughly," was the unfeeling reply. 
 " We seem to have been retreating in quite a different 
 direction from the rest all along." 
 
 At this moment there came the noise of shells 
 bursting in the air on either side, followed by the long 
 drawn-out whine of their flight. 
 
 Looking up, they saw the sky dotted with little
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 3i 
 
 soft white fleecy clouds, like so many balls of cotton- 
 wool, which began at once to dissolve. Each cloud 
 was followed by a bang and then a whine of its own. 
 
 " Shrapnel," said the adjutant succinctly. 
 
 " How did you guess it ? " queried his Command- 
 ing Officer. 
 
 The shells now began to come fast and furious. 
 Thick black clouds seemed to spring out of the ground, 
 followed by the whump and rush of high explosive. 
 The effect on the Germans was immediate. They 
 seemed literally to leap into artillery formation, and 
 the fields were soon covered with little clumps of 
 men. Here and there a company deployed into 
 extended order. 
 
 " Ho," said Private Jock Walker, the left hand 
 man in the leading section of fours, company humorist, 
 accepting the occasion as a direct challenge to him- 
 self. " So the Gerboys are scattering, are they ? 
 Why, it's only Sergeant Smith and eight men of the 
 ' Thou shalt not Kills,' fighting a rear-guard action 
 for the British army ! Private Jones has jammed 
 his magazine, and so French has left a few of the 
 heavy howitzers behind to help him a bit ! " 
 
 His further remarks were drowned in the bang of 
 a shell which came extra near. 
 
 The death of the explosion caught a thin plaintive 
 voice remarking that : 
 
 " We are nae Germains, so what's the guid o' 
 treatin' us as sic ? Disowned and r-repudiated by 
 baith sides, that's what we are." 
 
 The Campbells pushed steadily on, their flankers 
 beating off, not without casualties, the spasmodic 
 attacks that were now made upon them. The enemy, 
 on the other hand, began to halt and dig themselves in ;
 
 32 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 and no wonder, as judging by the amount of heavy 
 stuff that was falling they might well feel nonplussed. 
 
 Some half-mile outside the village Macdonald 
 halted his men; and, after dealing with the Uhlan 
 patrols which were cautiously circling round, started 
 them at digging a fire trench. Gordon he sent on to 
 Dickebusch, if it really were Dickebusch, to find out 
 what was going on. 
 
 There was not much firing now, though the British 
 covering party was engaged with the enemy, and the 
 boy reached the outskirts of the town in safety. The 
 streets were deserted until he arrived at the large 
 square of open ground where the church stood. There 
 a five-gun field-battery was in action. 
 
 Gordon approached the Major in command a 
 stout jovial looking officer and told him his mission. 
 
 " Happy to meet you, I'm sure," said the other. 
 " We must be getting out of here, however, after we 
 have given them five rounds more per gun. Yes, this 
 is Dickebusch. There are other guns behind you 
 though ; Belgian, I believe, now. Come with me, and 
 I will show you our dug-out." 
 
 The Major led Gordon to a small grey stone house, 
 its front covered with creeping roses, which stood 
 about a hundred yards away. 
 
 " This is the mayor's burgomaster's house, I 
 mean, and we have our orderly-room here. The 
 telephone is connected with the artillery in rear." 
 
 The door was opened by one of the most beautiful 
 girls that Gordon had ever seen in his life. Tall, fair, 
 her finely-cut features surmounted by a wealth of 
 golden hair, in which the sun was glinting, she offered 
 a most attractive picture, framed as she was in the 
 roses of the open doorway.
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 33 
 
 " Good morning, Mademoiselle Cecile," eaid the 
 Major. " Is your father in ? " 
 
 " No, monsieur le commandant. He has just gone 
 out." 
 
 " Well, perhaps I can catch him. We are going 
 away, mademoiselle. This is the officer who is taking 
 over from us. Will you act as his guide ? " So say- 
 ing, the Major saluted and turned busily away. 
 
 The girl led Gordon down the passage and into a 
 room which had evidently been the mayor's study 
 and just as evidently was now an orderly-room. On 
 a large desk in one corner stood a telephone. Gordon 
 picked up the receiver and when a voice sounded on 
 the other end of the wire he learned the battery's 
 identity, gave his own and explained the situation. 
 It was, as the Major had said, a Belgian battery. 
 
 Turning suddenly, Gordon found the girl looking at 
 him curiously. She blushed quickly, and then spoke 
 to cover her confusion : 
 
 " This will be your office now that monsieur le 
 commandant is going. We have the billets for three 
 officers here." 
 
 " Thank you, mademoiselle, for the office," replied 
 Gordon. " I don't know, however, whether we will 
 need the billets or not. That depends on our plans, 
 and I should be sorry to inconvenience you, perhaps 
 for nothing." 
 
 " Captain," said the girl, " we have billets for three 
 officers who are fighting the Germans. Me, I hate 
 Germans ! There is only one person I know who 
 hates them more than I do and that is my father. 
 If he was here now he would tell you so himself." 
 
 " Thank you very much, mademoiselle ; it is very 
 kind of you. I don't know what Captain Macdonald,
 
 34 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 my C.O., may do, however. By the way, please do 
 not call me captain. I am not a captain, but a subal- 
 tern, what you call sous-lieutenant" 
 
 The girl laughed. 
 
 " Why, I am sure you are a captain, and I shall call 
 you captain, as I choose, to show you that you will 
 be one soon, Captain ! " 
 
 They both laughed, and at this moment the door 
 opened and somebody entered. 
 
 Turning round, Gordon saw that this was a tall 
 dark man with a very pale complexion, and jet black 
 hair. He wore a neat blue suit and his eyes were 
 covered by tinted glases. 
 
 " Father " C6cile was beginning. 
 
 " I know, I know, child," said the new-comer. 
 " I have just met Major Burns. How do you do, Mr. 
 Gordon ? I am the burgomaster of Dickebusch, 
 and needless to say in times like these entirely at your 
 service. Is there any information that I can give you ? " 
 
 " Not much just now, thank you, Sir," said Gordon, 
 " until I find out what we are going to do." 
 
 " You must be in great force out there," said the 
 burgomaster, " to hold the Germans off like that. I 
 don't know why they don't advance." 
 
 " Oh, we will hold them off all right," said Gordon 
 cheerfully. 
 
 ' I am glad to hear you say so. What regiment 
 do you belong to ? Highlanders, I see ! " 
 
 Gordon admitted the self -evident fact that he was 
 a Highlander. 
 
 " I imagine that the enemy are frightened of being 
 surrounded if they follow you too closely," continued 
 the burgomaster. " I suppose you have considerable 
 reinforcements in rear."
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 35 
 
 " Oh, of course, all kinds of troops," replied the 
 boy. 
 
 " You must pardon my curiosity, but I am a Belgian. 
 Moreover, I spent five years in England once, and 
 it was actually there that my daughter and I learned 
 to speak your language. Naturally, we both feel 
 particular interest in English troops who are fighting 
 for Belgium." 
 
 " Not at all, sir. I only wish that I could tell you 
 more. I was wondering how you could speak English 
 so well. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be going. 
 If we move back here I will bring my C.O. to see you." 
 
 He bowed to them both and left the room, being 
 accompanied to the gate by the burgomaster with 
 fresh offers of any help he might require. 
 
 Going back was more difficult than coming had 
 been, and there were bullets whistling all round now. 
 Once, as one of these flew past his head, he stumbled 
 and discovered a ditch by the simple process of falling 
 into it. Soon, however, he found a sunken road which 
 served as a communication trench to the battalion. 
 He reached Macdonald and delivered his report. 
 
 The Germans were firing steadily now, but instead 
 of coming on and overwhelming the defenders, as 
 they could easily have done, they had halted to dig 
 themselves in. 
 
 " They will rush us at night," said Macdonald, 
 " only we won't be there. As they appear to have 
 no guns I shall withdraw to the town, as soon as it 
 gets dark." 
 
 But the Campbells did not move that night, nor the 
 next, nor indeed for many nights to come. In a 
 few hours Macdonald received orders to hang on 
 where he was ; which gave, moreover, information as
 
 36 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 to neighbouring units, the line to be held, etc. 
 Accordingly darkness was used to deepen the fire 
 trench and to dig others for support and communi- 
 cation. 
 
 For three days Macdonald kept Battalion Head- 
 quarters up in the line ; and then, as the situation 
 appeared to have steadied down, he and Gordon 
 with their satellites moved back to Dickebusch and 
 established themselves at the burgomaster's house. 
 By this time they were linked up with the front line 
 by telephone. Evidently they were outside the 
 main route of French's retreat and in the Belgian 
 zone. 
 
 Curiously enough the Germans did not attack, 
 though they had brought up artillery and shelled the 
 village as well as the trenches. It seemed as if they 
 were waiting for something. 
 
 To the enemy's fire the Belgian battery, which was 
 supporting the Campbells, made a hot but rather in- 
 effective return. Gordon was constantly receiving 
 complaints from the company commanders in the line 
 as to the futile nature of the return fire. Our shells 
 were said to be grazing our own parapet, or to be 
 exploding harmlessly in no man's land. Many and 
 frequent were the expostulations addressed to the 
 supporting battery, but the consequent improvement 
 was only partial and shortlived. Artillery officers 
 came up to the line, looked, smiled, promised, and 
 went their way, but the shooting remained as bad as 
 ever. 
 
 At last Macdonald could stand it no longer, and 
 one day Gordon sent an urgent message over the 
 phone, asking if Major Vachel, of the Belgian Field 
 Artillery, could make it convenient to join the officer
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 37 
 
 commanding the nth battalion Royal Campbell High- 
 landers in doing a tour of the line with a view to 
 improving the liaison between the two arms. 
 
 The answer came back that Major Vachel would 
 call upon Captain Macdonald at 9 a.m. next morning. 
 
 " Good," said Macdonald, when he heard the news. 
 " I wonder what excuse he will be able to dig up this 
 time. Beer Company had a bit of their parados 
 blown in by the fools yesterday. They can't blame 
 the cold weather for their short shooting anyway." 
 
 Punctual to the minute Major Vachel was ushered 
 into the orderly-room. He was a man of forty-five or 
 so, in close-fitting dark uniform. Like many Belgian 
 officers, he wore a beard. After mutual introductions 
 the artilleryman went off with Macdonald. 
 
 That evening his C.O. told Gordon that Vachel had 
 been extremely solicitous and had made copious notes 
 of everything. 
 
 " He was certainly tremendously interested in the 
 line ; the fellow seems keen enough." 
 
 For some days the situation remained unchanged. 
 Macdonald was daily expecting to be superseded in 
 his command by a senior officer sent out from England. 
 In the meantime, he and his little staff were made very 
 comfortable by Monsieur Bourget, and his daughter. 
 Cecile was anxious to do everything that could be 
 done for " les Ecossais," while her father was always 
 equally keen to receive or impart information. 
 
 The shooting of the Belgian battery had grown 
 better, but there was still plenty of room for improve- 
 ment. Their Major kept coming and going in and out 
 of the trenches, and proved on better acquaintance to 
 be an affable cosmopolitan, though he drew a line 
 at Germans. Strangely enough, he and the bur-
 
 38 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 gomaster did not appear to hit it off together any 
 too well. It would appear that the one was a Walloon 
 and a Red, the other Flemish and Catholic. 
 
 One day Cecile came to Gordon in great distress. 
 She had evidently nerved herself for the interview, 
 but broke down and wept before she could begin. 
 
 " Monsieur Gordon," she began, " I want to tell you 
 something. But before I tell it to you, you must 
 promise me to keep it a secret. Perhaps it will be 
 nothing, rien du tout that which I shall say ; perhaps 
 again it will be a good lot. That will be duty for you 
 to find out, but if it is nothing all what you call 
 tommy nonsense you will say of it nothing. Is it 
 so to be ? " 
 
 Gordon, of course, promised faithfully. 
 
 " Last night I woke up. I sleep in a little room 
 opening off our sitting-room. My door was half jar, 
 and my father was standing there with the lamp in 
 his hand trying to see into the room. As the door 
 closed I thought I heard him speak. ' It is all right, 
 she is sleeping,' he said. I was only half awake and 
 must to sleep have gone again, because when I woke 
 up next I heard voices in the salon, those of my father 
 and of monsieur le commandant Vachel. Monsieur 
 Gordaine, they were talking about you." 
 
 ' Yes, but, mademoiselle," began Gordon, " I don't 
 see how Major Vachel got in without letting us know." 
 
 " About you but not of yourself, but of your 
 regiment. They were saying the most awful things. 
 Oh ! I must have had a mare of the night and dreamed 
 it all ! " 
 
 " What things ? " asked Gordon curiously. 
 
 " They did not seem to wish you us, I mean to 
 win. They talked of the sacres Anglais coming where
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 39 
 
 they were not wanted. Oh, Monsieur Gordaine, 
 can it be true ! He he even said " 
 
 " Go on," said Gordon. 
 
 " He my father spoke of some attack which was 
 to be made on your regiment and our guns were to 
 fire at you instead of at the Allemands. It was too 
 horrible." 
 
 " But, good heavens, mademoiselle, are you cer- 
 tain that you were awake. Surely your father 
 and " ' 
 
 "He is not my father, monsieur, but only my 
 step-father. I thought you did not know ! But still 
 I would save him. But I could not keep quiet, so 
 I come to you." 
 
 ' YCB, but I must act if you are not mistaken ; if 
 what you say is true." 
 
 " I know ; that is why I tell you. But you will 
 not shoot my stepfather, will you ? Oh, monsieur, 
 I know it was true, I know that. I was not dream- 
 ing ! " 
 
 " Yes, mademoiselle, I promise, but you in return 
 must promise me one thing." 
 
 " Oh, but yes, monsieur." 
 
 " That you will not mention this to any other soul." 
 
 " I promise, monsieur, and I feel that a load is gone 
 from my heart." 
 
 Gordon went straight to Macdonald and told him 
 of the conversation. The senior was frankly incredu- 
 lous, but, with Scots canniness, he determined to 
 take no chances. Between the two of them they 
 concocted a scheme. 
 
 Thus it came about that Major Vachel, coming to 
 visit Macdonald at the latter's request, found that the 
 Scotsman had been obliged to go to the trenches at
 
 40 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 a moment's notice, taking Gordon with him. Tea 
 was, however, laid for him in the orderly-room, and 
 a note had been left saving that Macdonald 
 hoped the Belgian would be able to await his return as 
 there were matters of mutual importance to discuss. 
 What more natural than that the burgomaster should 
 come in to bear his fellow countryman company, or 
 that Gordon through a hole in the ceiling should hear 
 every word of their conversation ? 
 
 For some time the two men in the room below were 
 silent while drinking their tea. They sat at either 
 end of a small oblong table, Vachel in a brand new 
 uniform of khaki, over which his black beard spread 
 itself impressively, the burgomaster in a dark blue 
 suit with a black tie. His black glasses gleamed like 
 two ink-wells above his high stiff collar, set in the 
 midst of that cavernous white face. 
 
 At last Vachel pushed his plate away from him 
 with a little sigh of satisfaction. 
 
 " Many thanks to our Scottish friend for this good 
 cheer," he said. And Gordon could almost have 
 sworn he gave a wink. 
 
 The burgomaster arose and went to the door, opened 
 it casually, and looked out. Apparently there was 
 no one near, for he closed it again softly and re- 
 sumed his seat. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the other, " that is good ; now listen 
 attentively to what I am going to say." 
 
 They had been speaking in French, but did not 
 continue the conversation in that or any other lan- 
 guage. Instead, Vachel drew a little tablet of paper 
 from his pocket, wrote something on the top sheet, 
 and then, tearing it off, passed it to his companion. 
 The burgomaster read it quickly, turned it over and
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 4i 
 
 wrote something on the back, and in his turn pushed 
 it across the table. And so this strange conversa- 
 tion, if conversation it can be called, went on. Each 
 slip in turn was carefully burned by Vachel and the 
 ashes pressed into the bowl of his pipe. Once a piece 
 of paper fluttered gently to the floor and the heart 
 of the watcher above gave a bound ; but both men had 
 seen it and it shared the common fate. 
 
 Once the burgomaster did not appear to agree with 
 what he read, and started to speak, but was cut short 
 by the other : 
 
 " No words if you please, monsieur ; be BO good as 
 to write anything you may have to say. I thought 
 you were too rash the other day. We will run no 
 risks this time." 
 
 The watching Gordon was in a quandary. He 
 could see every detail of the room beneath him with its 
 heavy oaken dressers, and the Dutch tiles in the fire- 
 place. He could see the faces of the two men be- 
 low ; the one heavy and impassive, even apart from 
 his great beard ; the other expressing in his nervous 
 features every mood as it mastered him, of doubtful 
 questioning or enthusiastic acquiescence. Only these 
 little fateful bits of paper he could not read and it 
 was maddening to watch them being burned, one 
 after the other. He lay in an agony of doubt won- 
 dering whether he should give the alarm. In that 
 case, they would have the men certainly, but the 
 last paper would surely be burned. Better wait and 
 see. That he was on the track of some vile con- 
 spiracy he knew well, when he remembered that they 
 were in the Flemish country around Ypres and 
 thought of the tales he had heard of white cows and 
 the like being driven about in the fields of the farms
 
 42 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 behind our lines to act as guides to the German 
 gunners. 
 
 At last it was over. Vachel was speaking : 
 
 "The final memoranda are there, Burgomaster, I 
 should advise you to burn them too." 
 
 He passed over a slip of paper in the writing of 
 which he had spent rather more time. The other 
 read it carefully, and then with a half defiant glance at 
 his companion opened his cigarette-case and put the 
 bit of paper inside. Vachel watched, but beyond 
 shrugging his shoulders gave no outward expression 
 to his opinion of this proceeding. 
 
 The two men rose and went to the door. Gordon 
 could even hear Vachel telling Cecile how sorry he 
 was that he could wait no longer. 
 
 " Give my compliments to Captain Macdonald 
 when he returns, if you please, mademoiselle, and do 
 not forget to tell him how much I have enjoyed his 
 hospitality." 
 
 Macdonald, when told the story, put away all 
 doubt. He, too, knew what his junior told him of 
 the doubtful fidelity of so many of the Flemish to 
 the allied cause. To Gordon's eager question as to 
 whether ho had done right in not arresting the con- 
 spirators at once, he replied after some hesitation : 
 
 " You say that Bourget carried off the last bit of 
 paper in his cigarette-case. It all depends on whether 
 we can get hold of that, and whether it will give us a 
 clue to what is going on. Of course we can lay hold 
 of him at any time though Vachel may be more 
 difficult. We had better get that paper before he 
 destroys it." 
 
 " Couldn't we get it and read it without his know- 
 ing ? I don't think, somehow, that he means to
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 43 
 
 destroy it at once. If he does we can arrest him 
 immediately." 
 
 " All right, go to it, my son. I will give you twelve 
 hours to get the paper. In the meantime, I shall 
 keep my weather eye open and watch Mr. Burgomaster 
 like a cat. If you don't get that paper in the time, 
 I shall know what to do." 
 
 " You might try asking him for a cigarette," were 
 Macdonald's last words, as the boy went off. 
 
 This suggestion was acted upon five minutes later, 
 but Monsieur Bourget was desolated that his case 
 was empty. He opened it in proof thereof, and 
 Gordon was thrilled to see that though innocent of 
 cigarettes it still contained a piece of paper. It needed 
 all his self-restraint to prevent him from throwing 
 himself upon the man and wresting it from him, parti- 
 cularly when the burgomaster, with a smile, held it 
 aloft between his finger and thumb. 
 
 " Only a scrap of paper, Monsieur Gordon," he said, 
 as the Chancellor I mean the German Chancellor 
 called it. I wonder if it would do to make a cigarette for 
 you to smoke ? " 
 
 " It will do to light one," said Gordon. 
 
 " It might do to light a fire, Monsieur Gordon, at 
 which some of us may warm our hands and laugh," 
 replied Monsieur Bourget, restoring the little folded 
 billet to his case, and the case to his pocket, with a 
 smile. 
 
 The incident more than ever confirmed the young 
 officer in his idea of obtaining a surreptitious perusal 
 of the precious piece of paper, and of thereby per- 
 haps making the enemy fall into the pit which it was 
 evident he was so carefully digging. He resolved to 
 take Cecile into his confidence.
 
 44 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 " But of course I will help all I can do possibly, 
 Monsieur Gordon. Is it not for my country as well 
 as yours to win the war ? But you, you will remember 
 not to shoot my step-father, even if he is a bad traitor, 
 for to me he has been often kind. Tell me what it is 
 for me to do." 
 
 Gordon could only reply by begging her to do her 
 best to get hold of the paper somehow, and to let 
 him have it even if only for a minute. 
 
 " It may be hardly impossible, monsieur," she 
 replied, " but I will try. I will do my best." 
 
 Next morning to Gordon's delight she took him 
 apart and handed him the little piece of paper. 
 
 " Bead it quick," she said, " and I will put it back 
 before he misses it." 
 
 He did better, for with her help he deciphered 
 and copied the few words in French, and it was not 
 till it had been safely restored whence it came that he 
 asked her how she had succeeded. 
 
 " In the end it was easy," she said, " my father put 
 his coat down for a moment to wash his hands. I 
 managed to take his case out without his noticing it and 
 to bring you the paper. After you had it copied I 
 put it back in the case, and put the case on the floor 
 beside the chair in his room. When he missed it 
 we had quite a hunt, and it was he himself who found 
 it where he remembered to have put his coat. He has 
 burned the paper now," she added. 
 
 On that which Gordon took to Macdonald, there 
 were only a few words, which were easily translated : 
 
 " 28th, at midnight. Fire will fall behind trenches, 
 which should go at once. Push on. On light show- 
 ing in tower fire drops back to village. Will lift at 
 1 a.m. Tell friends."
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 45 
 
 " Now what does that mean ? " said Gordon. 
 " What do you make of it, Skipper ? " 
 
 " The same as you do, my son," replied his C.O. ; 
 " the wily Hun having completed his arrangements 
 will attack our line at twelve midnight 28/29th of the 
 month. Vachel will drop his barrage, when I ask for it, 
 behind instead of in front of our line, so that the bat- 
 talion will be cut off. He will then bring it back to 
 the village that is us, Billy, my boy and at 1 a.m. 
 shut it off altogether, at which hour precisely his 
 friends will stroll in. Damn him, the infernal scoun- 
 drel ! " he broke off hotly. 
 
 " Good Lord, what a scheme ! Vachel would appear 
 to be a pukka Hun." 
 
 " Just as bad as one, at any rate ; but we will be 
 too many for him, thanks to your friend mademoiselle." 
 
 " What are we going to do ? " 
 
 " Wait and see, as they say in Parliament. I will 
 tell you about it when I have made arrangements and 
 got my orders." 
 
 With this answer, Gordon had to be content for a 
 while. Both felt it difficult to live through the in- 
 tervening time under the same roof with the sinister 
 black and white figure of the burgomaster. The 
 duplicity and unctuous hypocrisy of the man were at 
 times unendurable. Nor did the reflection that, but 
 for C6cile, his words and acts would have passed 
 current at their face value, make the situation more 
 palatable. Tact and restraint were necessary, but 
 both were forthcoming. Meantime the Campbells 
 with the help of those in authority had made their 
 arrangements. 
 
 Thus it came about that the sequence of events on 
 the night of the 28/29th October was not such as
 
 46 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 certain gentlemen had willed. For instance, that ener- 
 getic officer, Major Vachel, suddenly found himself 
 under close arrest, just at the moment when he fondly 
 imagined that he was about to endear himself to his 
 masters for ever, and direction of the battery taken over 
 by his Second in Command under the watchful eyes 
 of a representative of the Belgian General Staff. So 
 well was this event timed and so quickly carried out, 
 that the false range tables and subtly inaccurate fire 
 orders were discovered ready and freshly written in 
 the late commander's dug-out, while the battery 
 fought the action without knowing of the change in 
 its command. It was, moreover, helped in its task by 
 many other batteries which appeared to have a night 
 off for the purpose. 
 
 Nor did things go better for his confederate or for 
 their mutual friends who won through the artillery 
 barrage only to encounter British rifle and machine-gun 
 fire from the trenches. They were beaten back with 
 heavy losses so grievous that they did not come again. 
 
 Monsieur Bourget was, though he knew it not, a 
 marked man and watchful eyes saw him leave his house, 
 a dark silent figure, at 11 p.m. of that night of battle. 
 It was a moonlight night, and stealthy feet followed 
 him through the routes of the town, half streets, half 
 country lanes, till he came to the church of Dicke- 
 busch, which lifts its squat tower from the midst of 
 an open space. It had been easy from the first to 
 guess that this was his destination there are not 
 many towers in Dickebusch. He entered and 
 mounted, and while he climbed, though he knew it 
 not, silent figures were surrounding the base of his 
 eyrie. There they sat or stood in the dusk like 
 wolves around the prey which they have treed.
 
 The Burgomaster of Dickebusch 7 
 
 Monsieur Bourget made great play at intervals 
 with his lamp up to 1 a.m., but no shells fell into the 
 village, save a few that came from the east. He 
 must have suspected something then, even if not be- 
 fore, for when Gordon's men came stealing through 
 the night, and mounted the staircase, they thought 
 they heard a shot. 
 
 Inside the little turret-room at the top of the tower 
 the burgomaster of Dickebusch was lying on the 
 ground with a bullet in his head and the pale face 
 looking paler than ever. What must his thoughts 
 have been, changing from anxiety to despair, from 
 the first dawning of perplexity to the final desperate 
 knowledge that he was betrayed ! By his side, 
 scrawled at the end of a note-book, was his will, leav- 
 ing all his property to his stepdaughter, with the 
 solemn promise of a dying man that none of it rep- 
 resented German gold. He had his points as a 
 father, and private citizen, had Monsieur Bourget 1 
 So Gordon did not need to keep his promise. 
 
 In course of time Major Macdonald now Second in 
 Command of the Campbells acquired the right to 
 wear the red and green ribbon of a Belgian decora- 
 tion on his breast, to commemorate the fight that the 
 battalion fought that night. Cecile received a per- 
 sonal letter of thanks from her Sovereign. 
 
 Major Vachel was not much seen again from the 
 moment when he left his battery under escort in a 
 motor car, bound for the little seaside town which 
 served as headquarters for the Belgian armies in the 
 field, and as a capital for the King of that salient 
 land. Gordon went there too a little later to give 
 evidence at the trial, which ended in front of a fir- 
 ing party on the seashore in the grey of an early
 
 48 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 morning. The rest of the story lies under one of the 
 sand-dunes of that low-lying coast. Investigation 
 showed that Vachel had been in German pay ever 
 since he came of age, and his successive rises, as 
 an officer in the Belgian army, were only one more 
 instance of the thoroughness with which the country 
 had been inoculated with spies. Till the end of the 
 war his career furnished a text for lectures de- 
 livered by the intelligence and police officers of the 
 Allied jarmies.
 
 VI 
 A VISIT TO ARRAS 
 
 IT was on a gusty day in early spring that I left the 
 
 chateau at and struck across the untilled 
 
 fields to the high road. I had a day's leave and had 
 decided to spend it in a visit to Arras, one of the 
 great show places on the western front. At the cross- 
 roads an empty field ambulance received me, and I 
 was off upon my joy-ride. A change at Aubigny, into 
 the care of a friendly R.F.C. man, and we were out 
 on the great national highway which runs in Roman 
 fashion from St. Pol to Arras. 
 
 One more transfer to the Ram Corps was necessary, 
 and it was under their friendly care that I rolled 
 under the St. Pol gate to the city, down the Rue 
 Gambetta, and got out at the great Neptune foun- 
 tain which cleaves the street in two. Arras at 
 last ! 
 
 Not that the ride or rather rides had been unin- 
 teresting, particularly to a Scotsman. Every High- 
 land regiment in existence seemed that day to have 
 one or more battalions in the vicinity, and the roads 
 were gay with the tartans. Moreover, what a con- 
 trast between the long snake-like streams of traffic, the 
 fields scarred by shells, and then close by some little 
 village apparently untouched by the war, save that it 
 is women, old men, and boys who are working in the 
 fields ! Of the rest nefas amplius loqui. This day of
 
 60 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 April, 1917, however, the Boche knows part of what 
 I saw. 
 
 The first view of Arras is disappointing to the con- 
 noisseur in ruins. In degrees of destruction it holds 
 a place midway between the classic fragments of 
 Ypres and the tawdry pretentiousness of Albert. 
 The bulk of the city still stands very much as it must 
 have stood in July, 1914 ; the greater part of the Ger- 
 man fire being concentrated on certain buildings 
 the cathedral, the old episcopal palace, the hdtel 
 de wile, the pride of the Artois. At Ypres the Hun 
 has left himself no marks to range upon. It is but a 
 shell, with its stone ruins gleaming white in the moon- 
 light like a dead city of romance. Arras, like Albert, is 
 built of brick ; some of the houses with their stone 
 facings bear a curious resemblance to a Fifth Avenue 
 mansion done in the colonial style ; but she is saved 
 from the blatant vulgarity of the Somme city by her 
 architectural glories and her associations with the 
 past. For she was the queen of the Artois plain, the 
 bulwark of France against Spanish and Imperial 
 Flanders. 
 
 It is a curious sensation to walk down one of the 
 long winding streets of the city, keeping close to the 
 houses on either side, for it is forbidden to walk on 
 the road ; far more curious than being in a trench. 
 Every now and then the bang followed by the long- 
 drawn whine of an incoming shell is heard. For 
 aught you know it may have burst just round the 
 corner. The Germans still shell Arras in a desultory 
 fashion now that they have obliterated their principal 
 ranging marks, or else they are firing by the map, 
 so many shells per diem into each section of the city. 
 
 The majority of the houses are still standing, though
 
 A Visit to Arras 51 
 
 shaken aa with the palsy. Here and there, however, 
 there is one with its interior indecently exposed, the 
 result of a direct hit by a shell. It is like gazing 
 from the stalls at a house set on the stage of a theatre, 
 or as if some scientific giant had cut a cross-section 
 with a monstrous scalpel. Here are the little intimacies 
 of that particular family life just as they were left 
 immediately before the hurried flight, and all who list 
 can see. It is all so pitiable ! 
 
 There are only a few civilians in the streets, though I 
 did meet some prosperous looking individuals in the 
 Grande Place, and not many soldiers. The latter 
 strictly obeying the notices posted up at every street 
 corner move along in single file, their shoulders brush- 
 ing against the shuttered and barred windows of the 
 houses, steel helmets on head and gas masks to hand. 
 Even the little children on their way to school carry 
 gas helmets, along with their slates and books, in 
 France to-day ! The state instructs them in the use of 
 both, for the gas like its master is no respecter of 
 persons. 
 
 The street leading towards the station is barricaded 
 and loop-holed, for no German attack will ever again 
 spill itself on the streets of Arras. These barricades 
 are a model of engineering according to the text book, 
 with their low parapets and trenches dug behind to 
 give the requisite height to fire over. The two sides 
 of the obstacle overlap in the most approved style so 
 as to afford through the centre a narrow crooked 
 channel for traffic. The houses round about are 
 pitted with bullets from the rear-guard action that 
 the Germans fought to cover their evacuation of the 
 town. In front of the station there is a large oval 
 " square " which must be crossed circumspectly, i.e.
 
 52 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 not across its diameter but by crawling around the 
 circumference. This takes time, but there are pic- 
 quete posted to enforce the rule ; a very necessary one, 
 as at any moment a German observation balloon may 
 appear like a gigantic slug on the horizon. The 
 trenches are only about a mile away, as the Germans 
 hold the north-eastern parts of the city. 
 
 The station itself, in its monstrous futility, is in 
 many ways the most tragic sight to be met with on 
 the whole of the western front. Imagine a vast 
 building, red in colour, about hah* the size of the 
 Waverley Station, Edinburgh, and not altogether 
 dissimilar, wrecked by shell-fire. The near platform 
 has been put into a state of defence with a sandbag 
 parapet. The rails lie twisted and broken on the 
 track, mixed with the debris of such sleepers as have 
 not been removed for firewood. Over all is a fine 
 impalpable dust from the glass roof above, the iron 
 supporting stanchions of which have been wrenched 
 asunder by the shock of high explosive. It is well 
 over two years since the last train ran into Arras 
 station. 
 
 As one goes out one passes the ticket office. Piles 
 of tickets, to Amiens, to Lens, to Lille, to St. Pol, 
 neatly done up in bundles and tied with string, litter 
 the floor. It is as if a devil's child had laughed at its 
 play. 
 
 The cathedral of Arras has been destroyed ; not 
 wrecked, as has happened to so many, but completely 
 demolished. It would be as easy now to rear an hotel 
 out of its ruins as another house of God. A pile of 
 stone and debris some fifty feet high chokes the side- 
 street. Climb up that, make a similar descent on 
 the other side, and you are in the cathedral. There
 
 A Visit to Arras 53 
 
 is no roof, and the interior is one vast shambles of 
 broken glass, shattered stone work, and fallen plaster. 
 Here and there an image or altar stands intact amidst 
 the surrounding ruin. In its prune it must have been 
 a florid enough structure, with its great Corinthian 
 capitals ; but that does not excuse the foe who battered 
 Rheims and would like to batter Amiens. 
 
 Adjoining the ruins of the cathedral are the remains 
 of the Palace of St. Vaast. In this long rambling 
 building, an affair of cloisters and colonnades, for- 
 merly a Benedictine Abbey, there were housed at the 
 time of the bombardment the museum, the picture 
 gallery, and the library of the city of Arras. Very 
 little remains of all these. In particular, of the 
 50,000 printed books contained in the latter, not a 
 single volume is left, unless the municipality of 
 Karlsruhe with true Teutonic tact means to restore 
 the single volume that it borrowed therefrom before 
 the war. The building was fired by means of incen- 
 diary shells, while it is alleged on good authority that 
 a box barrage was put around it in order to prevent 
 the rescue of its priceless contents. 
 
 It is difficult to prevent an account like this from 
 becoming an indictment of the enemy for their sense- 
 less brutalities against mankind and its creations. 
 
 The greatest loss of all from the aesthetic point of 
 view is the destruction of the Grande Place with its 
 hdtel de ville ringed in by old Flemish houses. The 
 hdtel de ville was destroyed in October, 1914, by means 
 of incendiary shells. For its counterpart, with its 
 noble oaken wainscot, its priceless tapestries, its lustres 
 and chandeliers, one has to go to Brussels. A poor 
 consolation under present circumstances. 
 
 Last of all the superb Belfry came down to the
 
 54 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 sound of its own bells. What the golden Virgin of 
 Albert is still to the rolling pastures of Picardy, that 
 was the Belfry of Arras to the Artois plain. For cen- 
 turies it had stood with its Lion and its Golden Sun 
 and its Golden Crown, a guide and a landmark for 
 miles around. It is as if we had gone back in history 
 over two thousand years to the council chamber of 
 some once free city, torn from the diadem of Hellas 
 by a barbarian foe. 
 
 The last place that I visited in Arras was the citadel, 
 which really forms a quarter of the city itself. Used 
 by the French before the war as an infantry and ar- 
 tillery barracks, it was one of the masterpieces of 
 Vauban. With its massive walls, deep moats, long 
 and low barrack rooms with their quaintly sloping 
 roofs, it reminds one of the fortifications and citadel 
 of Quebec, in New France, and like them sings the 
 swan song of the glories of the Bourbon kings. Mem- 
 ories of the great Turenne cling round the place, 
 though the quaint old garrison church has been 
 wrecked by shell-fire. 
 
 On my way back along the main street of the city, 
 I paused to watch the efforts of a party of Gordons, 
 who, in conjunction with two French Engineers, are 
 trying to lift from the road a massive bell as tall as 
 the tallest of them, and finely moulded in relief. Per- 
 haps it belongs to the ruined convent close by, or it 
 may be one of the great carillon bells of the Belfry 
 itself. 
 
 The officer in charge does not know whether it is 
 to be set up once more in its original station or Is 
 to be placed somewhere to serve as a gas alarm. As 
 I watch the Highlanders straining their strong young 
 backs in the effort to lift the monstrous bell, I notice
 
 A Visit to Arras 55 
 
 every one suddenly look upwards. Then there happens 
 one of those things which seem to stand out with cameo- 
 like distinctness from their setting, and which once 
 seen can never be forgotten. 
 
 A plane with a broken wing one of ours is com- 
 ing slowly back from the German lines. Like a great 
 stricken bird it is looking for a place to land. Suddenly, 
 as if from nowhere, six enemy machines materialize. 
 Only a thousand feet above our heads the half-dozen 
 Taubes go for our solitary single-seater, who can do 
 little against his foes as they circle round, above, and 
 beneath him, and rake him with their machine guns. 
 We, alas, can do nothing, save watch. 
 
 It is soon over. Slowly at first, and then with ever 
 increasing speed, the solitary machine with the red, 
 white, and blue target painted on it begins to fall. 
 Five of the Boche planes seeing their work completed 
 make off. The sixth, sportsmanlike, remains hang- 
 ing above its victim, now fast rushing earthwards, and 
 continues to fire on him with its machine gun. But it 
 is quite needless to " mak' siccar." The falling plane 
 bursts into flame, though this does not stop the Ger- 
 man, and the aviator jumps or falls out to drop a few 
 yards from our feet. Satisfied at last the Boche plane 
 flies off. 
 
 So I passed out through the great gates of Arras, 
 where the British picquet keeps guard over the city 
 of the cave men.
 
 (66) 
 
 VII 
 
 IN HOSPITAL 
 
 THERE are many hospitals in France ; BO many 
 places where broken men can be mended and refitted 
 and go up the line again, perhaps to be broken again. 
 Hospitals of all kinds and in all sorts of places, from 
 the great ones housed in the palace hotels of Paris to 
 the first rude dressing-station, in the semi-shelter 
 of a trench, which the wounded man sees as he limps 
 from out the battle. 
 
 Queerly lodged are some of them, as befits this all 
 subversive war that has turned everything to other 
 uses, in theatres and casinos, churches and libraries. 
 They lie in small sleepy provincial towns, that breathe 
 from the very soul of France, set far off the usual 
 lines of travel, clinging to the sun-mellowed walls or 
 resting among the ruins of their Vauban-built citadels, 
 which seem to waken and preen themselves upon this 
 revival of their old-time glories. 
 
 They are housed in many a fine chateau, though one 
 does not find in Picardy or the Pas-de-Calais the 
 splendours of Touraine, and up the long avenues 
 between the chestnut-trees come the ambulances 
 with their living, too often dying, loads. From the 
 great base-hospitals of Boulogne and the sea-towns, 
 from ducal Etaples where bands play at the patients 
 and they in turn can play at golf, from the Riviera,
 
 In Hospital 57 
 
 the vast hospital organization runs through every 
 intermediate stage of stationary hospital, C.C.S. and 
 field ambulance, until, with the stretcher-bearers, 
 it reaches the front line trench. It is like a great 
 chain, the links of which grow ever smaller but more 
 numerous, one end held firm in master hands, while 
 the others are moved up and down, here and there, 
 eager and quivering, ever responsive to the chang- 
 ing surge of battle. 
 
 This clearing station stood in the fields beside a 
 road which ran to the mining town close by. A little 
 town it was in itself, with its streets paved with 
 duck-boards, its houses of tin or canvas and the busy 
 life within. In the morning the rain fell on it, in the 
 afternoon the sun came out and dried its tents, so that 
 in the evening, when the wind brought the dust, the 
 stiffened canvas sides of the marquees swung, creaked 
 and flapped like so many rusty gates. 
 
 At night fell other things from above but not from 
 heaven ; things which fell in the fields and exploded 
 while the patients lay in bed and listened to the reports 
 coming ever nearer, and the careful sisters put out the 
 lights. The Hun would not have cared which town 
 he hit. 
 
 For the hospital lay close behind the line, which gave 
 it a character of its own. Here came patients of all 
 sorts, those who would merely be slightly ill for a 
 short period and whom it was not worth while, having 
 regard to the insistent call for men, to send down the 
 line, and also the badly wounded who could not be 
 moved further back. So for different reasons both 
 stayed here. Many were buried here in the little 
 cemetery which attaches itself to all such places. 
 There was a poignant contrast in the wards, for in
 
 58 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 one bed there might be an officer, suffering merely 
 from a little influenza, playing cards, laughing and 
 joking, perhaps, at the prospect of a month on the 
 Riviera and the knowledge that the war will not be 
 over before he gets back ; while his next bed neigh- 
 bour is groaning his life out with a bullet wound in 
 the stomach. 
 
 It is not insensibility, far less callousness, but merely 
 the familiar philosophy born of war, which reaches 
 beneath the appearance of things and knows it foolish 
 to exchange joy for grief, when the one is fleeting and 
 the other useless. Nor, indeed, would it be expected 
 by the dying man of the laughing boy propped up 
 on his pillows. The one is a sharer in that philo- 
 sophy, the other knows that he can do nothing and 
 that it is not his funeral yet. But given the possi- 
 bility of things, ah, then what tenderness ! 
 
 He was a Catholic, a French-Canadian officer from 
 a famous battalion, who had led a raid and been 
 caught when our barrage dropped short. They sent 
 for the chaplain to give the dying man the last rites 
 of his faith. He came, a gaunt emaciated figure, a 
 Savonarola in khaki, with a fine open-work garment 
 of white lace thrown over his uniform. Round his 
 neck he wore a stole of purple and gold : the Church 
 militant and universal playing her part, as she has 
 played it so often before in similar scenes throughout 
 the ages. They pulled a screen round the bed, and 
 from behind this came the murmur of the voice of the 
 kneeling priest as he recited the office for the dying. 
 His military boots and puttees and the golden tassels 
 of his stole appeared beneath the screen in full view 
 of the card-players. His penitent died that night 
 and was carried out while the others slept. They
 
 In Hospital 59 
 
 awoke to find his bed empty and knew what had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 The officers' ward was in a Nissen hut, a single long 
 low rounded room. Imagine half a dozen half -hoops 
 of barrels stuck in the ground at both ends and then 
 covered over with tin, and you have a model of such 
 a hut. Light came in through the transepts at the 
 top and by the doors at either end. 
 
 The interior was painted green along the walls and 
 white above. On both sides were ranged the beds, 
 fifteen to a side, with their heads touching the walls. 
 By each stood a little table. Down the whole length 
 of the hut, between the feet of the two rows of beds, 
 ran a narrow passage, the common gangway for all. 
 The clothes of the occupants were folded neatly and 
 placed under their respective beds, for there is no 
 room to spare. 
 
 In the middle of the hut was a large stove, which 
 heated the whole room in winter. It served also as 
 a centre for the social life of the ward, for the passage 
 somehow widened out there and convalescents sat 
 round it, even in summer, on the wooden chairs, with 
 their feet on the cold stove. 
 
 There was a continual going up and down of doc- 
 tors, sisters, orderlies and visitors on the narrow cen- 
 tral gangway so strait that two could not pass 
 abreast, and the spaces between the beds had to serve 
 as slit-trenches. The beds held officers from various 
 parts of the Empire English, Scotch, Canadians, 
 Australians, but mostly Canadians for the hospital 
 lies behind their front. 
 
 Occasionally Flying Corps men are brought in. 
 One was here last week from the great drome near. 
 His life during the war read like a story from the
 
 eo Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 " Arabian Nights." He had flown over Bagdad and 
 Damascus, had been taken prisoner by the Turks and 
 had escaped from them. Transferred to the western 
 front, on his first day up there he fought six Hun 
 planes, bringing down three. Unfortunately, a bullet 
 got him at the tail end of the fight. Now he is dying 
 in a bed in the corner ; will not even live to receive 
 his medal. Poor boy, he is half delirious and talks 
 wildly in his pain, but the sister pretends not to hear 
 him and the others talk as loudly as they can. 
 
 The burial of an officer in the R.F.C. is quite a cere- 
 mony. A plane flies over the hospital and drops a 
 message with streamers attached giving the details. 
 Next day a Flying Corps car drives up to take away 
 the body. It is borne out on a stretcher, covered by 
 the Union Jack. The Flying Corps always buries its 
 own dead. 
 
 And so life goes on in the hospital with its ever- 
 changing inhabitants. Men are continually being 
 sent down the line sick, or discharged cured, and their 
 places taken by others. They come and go singly or 
 in batches. 
 
 Twice a week, if the railway schedule works to time, 
 there take place great evacuations to the stationary 
 and general hospitals down the line. The opportunity 
 is Seized to clear out the place, and it may take much 
 pleading, on the part of one anxious not to lose touch 
 with his unit, that he may be given another four days 
 to see if he does not get better, before he is allowed to 
 stay. Sometimes the powers that be are inexorable, 
 and the victim only knows his destiny when the fatal 
 tag is tied on to his clothing, a few minutes before the 
 arrival of the train. He is hustled off, with his few 
 belongings, protesting volubly that he is really all
 
 In Hospital 61 
 
 right and his presence indispensable to his C.O. and 
 the winning of the war. 
 
 These evacuations are great occasions of hurry and 
 bustle. The train does not always come ; while, if 
 it does, its arrival very probably will only emerge from 
 the region of guess-work into that of probability some 
 twenty minutes before it does come if, indeed, it 
 cometh. Those being evacuated have to be dressed 
 in some fashion, their belongings sent off with them, 
 and themselves divided into lying and walking cases. 
 The former class are carried on stretchers to the 
 train. 
 
 Half an hour before the problematical arrival of 
 the train, these stretcher cases are laid on the floor 
 between the beds and along the aisle. There they 
 become objects of envy or of jeering to those whose con- 
 tinued tenancy of their beds proves them not to have 
 been selected for this particular Hegira. Many are the 
 questions thrown at the labouring attendants. " No, 
 sir, I can't say ; they will tell you at the Base whether 
 you are to go to Blighty or the south of France." 
 Then the signal is given, soldiers troop in, and the 
 stretchers and those on them are carried outside to 
 be put in the waiting ambulances en route for the 
 train. Next day the hospital is quite full again. 
 
 The men's wards indeed are overflowing with the 
 arrival of a complete platoon, officers, N.C.O's. and 
 all, of Highlanders who have been gassed when ap- 
 parently there was no gas about. The explanation, 
 as furnished from a harassed orderly-room, is of sucti 
 importance as to be sent immediately to G.H.Q., 
 thence to be disseminated in the form of rush notices 
 to all the British armies in France. 
 
 The night before it had been cold and the Ger-
 
 62 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 mans had poured over gas. No casualties had occurred. 
 Next morning the sun came out and liberated the 
 gas from the ground into which it had sunk. The 
 platoon was caught by the noxious upward-stealing 
 fumes before they could put on their masks and 
 literally gassed from the ground. Their kilts were no 
 protection to such an insidious form of attack. 
 
 Though its personnel is always changing, there are 
 certain stock jokes of the hospital that are handed 
 over from one ephemeral generation to another. The 
 friendship between the pretty, or rather the prettiest, 
 sister and the young doctor is watched with warm 
 approval. The foible, common to all quarter-masters 
 of hospitals, of shutting up officers' kit in a far off in- 
 accessible stronghold, immediately on arrival, from 
 which it is never afterwards allowed to emerge until the 
 final departure of its owner, is a fruitful topic of dis- 
 cussion. The peregrinations of the C.O. and his 
 attendant satellites, medical and otherwise, are closely 
 scrutinized. 
 
 Above all there is the great grievance of the early 
 morning wash. " Why, oh why, sister " it is always 
 the sister who is addressed " should I be awakened 
 up at six in the morning, made to wash, and then, now 
 thoroughly awake, expected to amuse myself by sleep- 
 ing or otherwise until breakfast at 8.30 ? Surely 
 the days are long enough here as it is 1 " Through 
 all these years of war the same cry has gone up from 
 a million throats. And it has never been answered. 
 It is, indeed, part of the wail of the eternal man-child 
 to the eternal mother, or, from another point of view, 
 one aspect of the conflict between the common sense 
 of the male and the doctrinaire idealism of the in- 
 ferior sex. We do not blame the orderlies, because
 
 In Hospital 63 
 
 we feel vaguely somehow that, though the hand may 
 be the hand of Jones, it is the brain of Dorcas Florence 
 Delilah that planned this thing. 
 
 But it is the last for us, for to-day we are to go up 
 the line just in time, though we do not know it until 
 we get there, for the great push.
 
 ( 64) 
 
 - 
 
 VIII 
 SIGNA SEVERA 
 
 THE traffic-control man at the cross-roads was busy. 
 It was sunset and both roads were in use : the one 
 which went east to the trenches, and the other which 
 crossed it at right angles. Either way, along each 
 of them, flowed the traffic, strong, silent, and in- 
 sufferably slow. The control man was at the four 
 corners, in the centre of it all, and directed. 
 
 From him, as their starting-point, the four roads 
 radiated outwards to the four points of the compass. 
 He was the golden mile-stone of that particular little 
 corner of the war. From his position at the hub of 
 its universe, he could see all things. 
 
 Behind him, the road ran darkly eastwards, to- 
 wards those trenches which were in present occupation. 
 He could not follow its course far through the ruins 
 of the village, as it made a sharp turn past a mound 
 of rubbish and was lost to view. Presumably further 
 on, though lost to sight, it found its way again : per- 
 haps even reached the great mass of the ridge which 
 blocked the sky in that direction, and behind which 
 the sun was sinking. Did it cross that height, or in 
 despair break up into shallow tracks ? In any case 
 the transport men, mules, waggons and horses 
 crossed it to the lines beyond. He was there to set 
 them on their way. 
 
 In front of him this same road ran back, probably
 
 Signa Severn 65 
 
 even to the sea. He was not particularly interested 
 in the road in front. It had had its day and history, 
 of triumph and terror, of ground gained and comrades 
 lost. Perhaps to look at it recalled sad memories, 
 old, as the war counts age. 
 
 On his right the road ran to Be"thune. It was not 
 safe to use this in day-time, however, as though it 
 dipped and was lost to sight in the middle distance it 
 came into view again climbing boldly up a hill which 
 was on its way. Though partially screened and 
 camouflaged throughout its course, it was neverthe- 
 less under direct observation from the enemy lines. 
 
 On the left it went straight as an arrow for Arras. 
 
 It is wrong, however, to use the words " right " 
 and " left," with reference to the traffic man. He 
 turned round and about so often. Similarly with 
 " front " and " rear." He was a sentry, and had a 
 post indeed, but no front. 
 
 As he stood there with his back turned to Germany 
 and gilded by the rays of the setting sun, he looked 
 like a figure of fate ; an incarnation of Nemesis, of 
 which there are many in this country now. He was 
 of the things on our side of the line which were to win 
 the war in two years hence. 
 
 He stood for chance also. Speak to him for two 
 minutes on your way up the line, and by so much 
 might you miss the rendezvous with a bursting shell 
 that had been otherwise arranged. 
 
 In this darkening world, with his wide-brimmed steel 
 helmet, his strong-lined thoughtful face impassive 
 beneath it, and the rigidity of outline given him by his 
 long military great -coat, he might have been mis- 
 taken for some warrior-god of old Japan. With one 
 arm frozen majestically above his head, arresting one
 
 66 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 line of traffic, while he encouraged the advance of 
 the counter-stream with a gentle benignant swaying 
 of the other from rear to front beneath the shoulder, 
 he might have been a London policeman meta- 
 morphosed and transplanted. Very probably he 
 was. Horse and carts and the men that drive them 
 exhibit the same characteristics, all the world over, 
 when a block occurs. The mules alone imparted the 
 mystery and romance of the unknowable. 
 
 At one of the four corners of the point man's little 
 circus, not behind other circuses in the traffic that 
 passed it daily, stood his place of rest. This, built 
 like an abbreviated sentry-box, he used when tunes 
 were quiet. Had you passed up the road an hour be- 
 fore, you would have seen him, seated cross-legged 
 within, huddled over his brazier. The figure, with its 
 arms crossed beneath the passive immobile face, 
 would have reminded you irresistibly of a figure of 
 the brooding Buddha, set in its shrine by some road- 
 side in an eastern land. The lowering sun gave to the 
 steel and khaki of him the quality of bronze. 
 
 And the traffic flowed up to him, past him, and 
 beyond him, steadily without ceasing, save where 
 for a time a little eddy of disturbance might be caused 
 by the originality of a mule, as if conscious that the 
 war must go on, could not go on, in fact, if this were 
 to cease. For the transport in all its branches is the 
 life of the army, the very breath of victory. 
 
 Strange, how the vision of these slow-moving 
 lines will mingle with all one's recollections of the 
 war ! 
 
 Transport, moving in two streams going in opposite 
 directions, along an ancient high-road in France or 
 Belgium, and the pedestrian adventure of steering a
 
 Signa Severa 67 
 
 course between them, for there is no room on either 
 side. A push is on. 
 
 Transport, rumbling through the great square at 
 Ypres when the night is as black as the mouth of the 
 hell they are nearing, when the rain comes down like 
 arrows ; or when the moon is shining, reflected from 
 helmet and harness, and they move through her great 
 silence past ruined rampart and shattered tower, 
 each dowered for this night by her magic with the 
 grace of silver. 
 
 Transport, creeping up to the line as close as they 
 can go, perhaps reaching battalion headquarters, 
 halting here but never hurrying there ; to return in 
 the blackness of the early hours of the morning to 
 their lines, but not as many as they went forth, either 
 beasts or men. A journey repeated to-morrow night, 
 as it was last, and will be for many nights to come. 
 
 The village, in the square of which the four roads 
 meet and over which the traffic man reigns, is now in 
 ruins. Such life as it possesses is one borrowed from 
 overseas. Moreover, this life is a transitory one, 
 here to-day and gone to-morrow. The town is truly 
 a " battered caravanserai," the home of a constantly 
 changing soldiery. Figures flit anxious about its 
 ruined streets, ready, when the warning whine of an 
 incoming shell is heard, to dive down among its cellars. 
 It is fortunate that these are so numerous and so 
 roomy. 
 
 The village lies in the midst of a valley. The sides 
 of the valley used to be covered with fields. Trim 
 and neat they doubtless looked, with their long straight 
 plough furrows, each field marked off from its neigh- 
 bours by well-kept hedges. 
 
 The hedges are gone now, merged and obliterated
 
 68 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 in the general desolation. German artillerymen are 
 now the only ploughmen, and the furrows made by 
 their shells run criss-cross and zigzag through these 
 old ones in all directions. 
 
 Some of the fiercest fighting of the whole war took 
 place here. The valley is, as it were, an epitome of 
 these years of conflict. Held, lost, won, lost again, 
 re-won and held till the great advance, that is its 
 record. 
 
 Here, in the early days of the war, took place a 
 disaster, to the French arms, later retrieved at a cost 
 in lives that shook the republic to its centre. It is a 
 small and narrow valley, yet more than 150,000 French 
 soldiers sleep therein, and since then English and 
 Scots, Canadians and Australians, have fought over 
 its sides. Then, there are always the Germans. 
 
 Most of the dead have been collected and buried 
 together in different places, up and down the valley. 
 
 There, by day, the sun shines upon thousands and 
 thousands of little wooden crosses, and its light is re- 
 flected from them, as if in benison and sure promise 
 that the purpose with which they who sleep below 
 last looked upon it will yet be fulfilled. At night 
 the long rows of crosses seem to creak and sway in 
 the wind, as if to ask how long before its completion. 
 They are very patient these soldiers of France. 
 
 There are other villages in the valley other heaps 
 of ruins scattered up and down its length. 
 
 Some there are, however, which are still standing. A 
 roof gone here, a wall there, but many houses intact. 
 
 These have a horror of their own, as if of places over 
 which the breath of plague has passed, sparing only 
 that which had no life before. The belated traveller, 
 losing his way perhaps and coming suddenly upon
 
 Signa Severa 69 
 
 such a spot, coming upon it of a sudden, as it were, 
 rising to meet him out of moonlight or out of the 
 mist, may well feel a peculiar terror. He hesitates to 
 enter the town, even though his road runs through it. 
 Once in, he walks rapidly or else slowly and fearfully 
 along its streets for there is no middle gait cast- 
 ing sidelong glances at the grim gaunt grey houses as 
 he goes. The empty shell of the town echoes hollowly 
 his footsteps if he runs, while, if he walks, it is so long 
 to go. 
 
 There are many such places in the valley, and one 
 who had lost his bearing on a dark night of mist might 
 spend the hours till dawn in wandering from 
 one to another. On such a night the whole valley, 
 with all that it contains, seems to be lying beneath 
 its shroud. 
 
 For it is a vale of death : a valley of death, past, 
 present, and to come. Old death is in the ground 
 beneath one's feet, the death to come, is coming, in 
 the air above. 
 
 Guns speak in the valley with the very voice of 
 death, their wheels sunk fast into its slime, their 
 fodder ranged beside them. Here is one set amid the 
 ruins of a house. Here, another, behind a pile of 
 debris among the ruins of what once were trees. The 
 gunners serving it sink above their ankles in the mud. 
 Sometimes one trips over a skull which glistens ivory 
 white in the moonshine. There are many such in 
 the valley. 
 
 Let us follow the road that goes to the trenches, up 
 and through the village. 
 
 At first it is a mere track of sand and mud running 
 through what once were fields : a guiding line, ever 
 scratched out anew, amid the surrounding desola-
 
 70 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 tion. Small trees are planted by its sides to mark the 
 way ; brought from far behind, their branches and 
 withered leaves are strangely out of keeping, as if they 
 were things that have died, a natural death. 
 
 Far and wide on both sides stretches the broken 
 country-side in one great sea of mud. Here and there 
 a dirty white wall stands up like a broken tooth. For 
 the rest, it is formless and void. A tainted exhalation, 
 part mist, part phosphorus, part God knows what, 
 hangs over it all. There is nothing majestic in the 
 scene, nothing to stir the imagination. One cannot 
 even call it grim or terrible, knows only that it is hate- 
 ful, filling you with jaundiced disgust. It is like those 
 squalid fields of mud, through which Virgil's hero 
 passed on htfs way to hell. 
 
 It is merely a country-side that has been laid waste 
 by war ; a sordid scene. 
 
 Even the moonlight cannot make it anything save 
 ugly, and now that she has gone behind a cloud, and 
 a drizzling rain has begun, it is uglier still. We plod 
 on through the mud and filth. 
 
 Suddenly on the right looms up, gaunt and dark, the 
 remains of a wood. It has been well trimmed by in- 
 visible woodsmen. The spectres of what once were 
 trees, scarred and notched, twisted into monstrous 
 impossible shapes, rise like so many totem-poles 
 out of the sodden ground. The rain glistens on their 
 blackened trunks. Then: branches, snapped off close 
 to the body of the tree, stick out in all directions at 
 strange angles, like the stumps of arms and legs. 
 
 There is no bark on the trees, no leaves on the 
 branches, no moss or green of any kind in the wood. 
 Yet it is an ancient one. Scarcely can there be a 
 blade of grass in the wood, unless one were to pry
 
 Signa Severn ?i 
 
 and peer among the secrets of the tangled under- 
 growth. 
 
 The wind blows through the wood without a sigh, 
 the rain comes down upon it with never a rustle. For 
 there is nothing to move or be stirred within it. Not 
 even a single dry and withered leaf left solitary upon 
 a branch. The leaves of three years ago have long 
 since disappeared, ground to powder and mingled 
 with the loathsome paste upon the ground. There is 
 nothing vocal in the wood ; not a bird sings there, all 
 seem to avoid it. Perhaps, however, at night, the 
 rats come forth from the shattered dug-outs. It re- 
 minds one of " Macbeth " with its blasted heath. 
 To look on the black boles of its trees is as if one were to 
 gaze upon black shadows silhouetted on a screen. There 
 is no thought of fire, because fire is pure. At night, 
 looking through the wood at the moon, the trees seem 
 to rise like fingers of fate, and ghosts of the sylvan 
 beauty that once was here, 
 
 Past the wood, the track runs into a road well- 
 paved save for the shell-holes in it. Some are old, 
 others were not here last night. Fresh earth and 
 splintered stone lie scattered around their margins. 
 High banks rise on either side, full of broken dug-outs 
 and the litter of years of war. Uprooted trees sprawl 
 down their slopes, almost on to the highway. It is 
 one of these sunken roads that have played so sinister 
 a part in the war. 
 
 Along it goes the traffic. Ever and anon the flare 
 of a match rises out of the darkness for a moment, as 
 some one stops to light his pipe. Otherwise one feels 
 and hears their presence without seeing them. 
 
 The road runs past a village which is the site of a 
 battery. The guns stand by the roadside while the
 
 72 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 men shelter in the vast underground caves, cut from 
 the chalk, which have come down from the religious 
 wars of France. So after nearly four hundred years 
 they are once more tenanted. 
 
 A gun is fired and its flame lights up the night. 
 For one long second all is revealed, and then is gone 
 again. We have seen the long line of drivers and 
 mules moving unconcernedly on, silhouetted against 
 the background of ruined buildings. The men with 
 their steel helmets and great-coats, some riding and 
 some walking by the side of the waggons, the horses 
 and plodding mules, look like figures from an archaic- 
 frieze. The limbers are like chariots. And so they 
 move through this land lit by the flames of war. 
 
 We are nearing the ridge now and the road moves 
 on past line after line of old and disused trenches. 
 There they be, one behind the other, broken down 
 and half -buried by shell-fire. Ruins two thousand 
 years old look not so ancient. Think of the mon- 
 strous futility of it all and of the agonies of those that 
 dwelt therein, bearing up against assault after assault, 
 while all the while the artillery was pounding their 
 habitations out of all seeming and recognition. They 
 are half filled with earth and debris. Parapet and 
 parados alike are gone and the traverses demolished, 
 and in many cases the whole trench has been beaten 
 out of all shape, smashed, pulverized, by the German 
 artillery. 
 
 Branching off from the road lies a support trench, 
 silent and dead. It is half filled with sand which has 
 silted up against both sides, leaving small room to 
 walk. It is an old trench, because the surface of the 
 sand and earth is smooth, as the wind has made it. 
 There are dug-outs in both sides of the trench, their
 
 Signa Severa 73 
 
 entrances half buried. With their blackened tim- 
 bers, and dark entrances partially covered with the 
 silted earth, they look like so many dead eyes, star- 
 ing at you through the night. They have been smashed 
 by shell-fire. Look down this one, this long deep 
 German one, and you will find the steps gone. Sand 
 has fallen in on top of them, gradually narrowing the 
 descent until the foot of the shaft is completely 
 blocked. One wonders what one would find if one 
 went down. 
 
 In the trench itself old helmets and broken rifles 
 stick out from the ground in all directions. This 
 trench has had a history of bravery and terror such as 
 has never yet been written. 
 
 So, on, and up the ridge, past these great craters on 
 its summit which for so many months furnished a 
 debatable-land, fought for as never was pass at 
 Thermopylae or farm at Waterloo. We are on the 
 top now. But we see nothing of the great view that 
 can be seen from here by day. 
 
 Instead, we see two great arcs of lights, ever bend- 
 ing towards, ever receding from, each other. From 
 both go up rockets, which, bursting into stars, seem 
 to seek to supply a want surely felt on a night like 
 this in heaven. The wider arc, the one further away, 
 from which most of the lights are going up, is the 
 German lines. All along its length go up these signs of 
 fear and watchfulness, rockets, red, green and white, 
 and those great golden clusters of stars. And it 
 looks almost Broadway that we have come so far to 
 see. 
 
 Meanwhile the slope and black void behind is lit 
 by the flash of the British guns, as of gigantic fire-flies 
 spangling this summer's night.
 
 (74) 
 
 IX 
 
 PASSCHENDAELE 
 
 IT seemed as if we had heard of it, under various 
 names, all through that blood-stained Artois summer, 
 into the long months of which was packed perhaps 
 the fiercest fighting of all these weary years of war. 
 
 It had started as the battle of Messines : had begun 
 when the crest of that old debatable land, the ridge, 
 went up under the feet of the enemy in nineteen 
 separate and gigantic explosions. We knew the 
 ground well ; for these old trenches in front of Kem- 
 mel, which have stood since the war began, from which 
 probably the attacking waves jumped off, had been 
 for long reputed a quiet part of the line and had accor- 
 dingly been used as a training-ground in which to 
 break in successive divisions, raw from England, to the 
 routine of trench warfare. We had done our first 
 tour there and could still picture the view from the 
 front line trenches, east to the red brick powdered 
 ruins of Wytschaete, and the greyness of Vierstraate 
 and the country behind us. 
 
 The battle was said to have been an immense 
 success as to results and staff -work. Certainly we 
 had scored off the Boche for once, particularly if 
 his view as to the relative importance of this sector 
 had coincided with ours. It must have been the 
 greatest exhibition of pyrotechnics in history, and we
 
 Passchendaele 75 
 
 could wish to have seen it from the top of Kemmel 
 Hill. 
 
 Then there was a pause, as the fight passed north 
 to mingle with still older memories round Ypres. 
 Absorbed in our own affairs, we marked it not or 
 followed its course half -consciously. 
 
 Suddenly, in the early autumn, the rumour ran that 
 the battle was still raging and that we, perhaps a 
 month hence, were to fight in it. Interest revived and 
 we identified our campaign, now figuring in the 
 " Times " as the third battle of Ypres or the battle 
 of Flanders. 
 
 In a night, as it were, it became the battle of the 
 Menin road, and we followed its course up that grim 
 stretch of horror, halting at a wood here, held up by a 
 village there, but ever going north-east, though at 
 an unutterable cost. Critics of the high command 
 said that it was the Somme over again, without the 
 Somme's strategical excuse, a monstrous folly, and 
 from the list of battalions annihilated it looked to be 
 so. 
 
 At Poperinghe, on the way up, some first learned to 
 know our battle under the name that it will always 
 bear for us. It was a young Scottish officer who spoke 
 of Paris, where he was going on leave, and of the pill- 
 boxes of the Passchendaele ridge, of which he was 
 glad to have seen the last. Then we tried to learn to 
 spell the village, which was to give its name to our 
 battle, for we, or rather the corps, were destined to 
 finish the battle by taking the village. It has often 
 thus been our luck. We could not quite picture the 
 pill-boxes to ourselves. We laughed at the alliter- 
 ation that was the Scotsman's fate.
 
 76 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 It was the night before the attack. In reality, 
 it was no more the attack than any of two 
 dozen previous nights. But this was our attack ; 
 the stage in the great battle, or campaign of battles, 
 was this night being dressed for our entrance on the 
 morrow. The old actors were shuffling off, one by one, 
 as we relieved them. At times the stage was peri- 
 lously crowded. 
 
 Perhaps the enemy suspected this, for all night his 
 artillery kept up a vicious shelling, sweeping the back 
 areas scientifically with concentrated fire, section by 
 section, trying to overwhelm our guns, for he had 
 learned counter-battery work from us on the Somme. 
 He caught our troops going up and the troops com- 
 ing out. He caught the mules and transport going 
 up part of the way in single file. He put down 
 barrages where there had once been cross-roads. He 
 followed the tracks up and down with his shells. He 
 was nervous, as his planes testified, ever flying over 
 our lines, bombing them and bombing the ramparts 
 of Ypres. Right back they reached to Potijze and 
 the White Chateau, which is neither white nor a house 
 but a heap of blackened ruins. The morning before, 
 a desperate attack had been flung against the right 
 of our predecessors in the line, had broken it, and 
 had only been beaten off by fierce fighting and the 
 rushing up of our reserves. In the evening a 
 Company Commander, shot through the stomach, 
 bade his men lay him on the parados and thence con- 
 tinued to give his orders through the night. He died 
 with the morning. 
 
 It was a black night with no moon or other light ; 
 a night of unsleeping anxiety, of boundless prepara- 
 tion, of endless confusion. Doubled up in the small
 
 Passchendaele 77 
 
 rooms at the foot of the captured pill-boxes, like 
 those chambers at the base of pyramids, the staff 
 thought and wrote furiously and continuously. Yet 
 the best laid plans are bound to go wrong when the 
 runners who carry the orders leave and are never heard 
 of again ; when those entrusted with their execution 
 are killed on the way to their positions. 
 
 The whole ground is a quaking morass of hideous 
 mud and other things. Once leave the narrow duck- 
 boards, which have been laid down from one head- 
 quarters to another, whether by slipping, by losing 
 the way, or as the result of a shell which shakes you 
 off them and blows duck-boards for yards around into 
 the air, and you are stuck fast in the greedy mud. 
 Perhaps you can get out if not alone ; perhaps you 
 will become as the others there. 
 
 But all night long the work goes on, though many 
 of those who work the hardest and do the most will 
 not live to see the testing of their labours in the morn- 
 ing. All night the doctors prepare ; while up in front 
 the assaulting troops spend the time as best as they 
 can in bits of trenches or curled up in shell-holes. 
 At midnight comes the rain. 
 
 Through it all men work for the morning's dawn, 
 blindly, unceasingly, confusedly groping through the 
 blackness of the night, falling off the rotten slippery 
 duckboards coated with slime and wet mud, falling 
 into shell-holes full of water, broken wire and un- 
 speakable corruption. 
 
 An officer stood on the slope that leads to Passchen- 
 daele in the greyness of the early morning. Ever 
 and anon he glanced at his wrist-watch, for dawn
 
 78 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 came slowly this 30th of October, 1917. This day 
 Canada was going forward and meant that nothing 
 should stop her ; with guns linked wheel to wheel 
 behind her there was aaid actually to be a gun, great 
 or little, for every fifteen yards of front knew that 
 nothing would stop her. 
 
 The dawn came slowly. All night long the guns 
 had flamed and their red mist had hung low in the 
 sky, seeming to sit on all sides on the tops of the 
 surrounding hills. Now, however, there was com- 
 parative quiet, as if both sides were saving themselves 
 for what each knew was coming. In the distance the 
 guns still spoke, but the ear, attuned to the night's 
 infernal chorus, did not notice them or the noise of 
 straggling shots near at hand. 
 
 Suddenly in the silence a single gun spoke. Was 
 there something in its tone to differentiate it from 
 all others of that day and night, as if it spoke with 
 the voice of doom ? A single gun, then two others 
 close together, then hah* a dozen, hurryingly together 
 as if frightened of being late, and with one awful 
 blast, a roar full-throated as from a thousand mouths 
 of hell, with a noise that seemed to shake the earth 
 and rive the ground, the British barrage burst into 
 life. 
 
 
 
 Within half an hour of the firing of the first gun, 
 all objectives were captured. 
 
 But meantime the German counter-barrage had 
 come down on our support line, to continue in a 
 measure throughout the day. Men went about the 
 business of succouring the wounded, and of getting up 
 supplies to all, amidst a hail of shells. The enemy 
 had every pill-box which he had lost throughout the
 
 Passchendaele 79 
 
 summer registered, and, as these were the only places 
 where the work of dressing wounds could be carried 
 on, the doctors laboured to save life where men fell 
 dead at every moment. 
 
 The brigade aid-post was in a ruined Heinie pill- 
 box, which stood on the slope with others around it. 
 It was the centre of a rude ring of similar forts, like 
 another Stonehenge. The dressing -station was under 
 the leeward side of the pill-box, where a rough breast- 
 work of mud-bags had been raised waist-high. This 
 small enclosure was covered over with a tarpaulin, 
 which ran slantwise to the top of the pill-box. A 
 single shell, rightly placed, would have demolished 
 the whole crazy structure, but it is difficult to drop a 
 shell exactly on the far side of a building, and though 
 dozens of direct hits were registered on the pill-box 
 itself, for the Germans naturally had its range to a 
 nicety, and many skimming its edge seemed to brush 
 the tarpaulin in passing, yet it remained intact and 
 was ultimately handed over to the incoming brigade. 
 There have been other miracles. 
 
 Here in the first moments of victory came the regi- 
 mental stretcher-bearers with those that had paid its 
 price. Here they came in a hurrying crowd, hurry- 
 ing so that they might return for more, with the shells 
 dropping all round and often obliterating bearers, 
 stretcher and wounded. Here, too, came the Ger- 
 man prisoners to be used to carry the wounded fur- 
 ther back and spare the lives of our men. 
 
 The interior of the lean-to was so small that only 
 four of the wounded men could be treated at once. 
 Nor, indeed, were there more doctors. At first they 
 came in dozens and, though laid behind the pill-box, 
 in old trenches, and anywhere which might give a
 
 80 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 little shelter until their turn came inside, yet the shells 
 sought them out and killed them as they lay. It 
 must have seemed hard to them. 
 
 Meanwhile, inside, the M.O.'s laboured unceasingly 
 each to himself. As soon as he had finished with one 
 man, another was brought in to him. Here, in this 
 rude lean-to, with nothing save a strip of canvas be- 
 tween them and the death that was all around, he 
 dealt, coolly, skilfully and above all quickly, with in- 
 juries which in more leisured times would not have 
 been diagnosed without much consultation and 
 searching of hearts. And great is the need for haste, 
 to save men from what had already been done, and 
 to get them removed from out the shelled area ere a 
 worse befell. Usually the most serious cases are 
 dealt with first ; those obviously hopeless last if at 
 all. 
 
 A soldier, a mere boy, with a bullet through his 
 knee-cap, is brought inside. He belongs to one of 
 the units of the brigade that we relieved, was wounded 
 in their last attack and has lain two days and nights 
 in what was, until this morning, no man's land. 
 There he was found by our stretcher-bearers, an hour 
 ago, in a shell-hole. His face shows white in the 
 guttering candlelight, and he moans with pain as the 
 doctor, gently as he can, cuts away the cloth from 
 round the wound. They try to stop his mouth with 
 food but he is in too great pain to eat. Some rum 
 gives him strength for the downward journey. 
 
 And what a journey it is of nearly four miles on 
 stretchers borne by men. The roads have been de- 
 stroyed for far behind, so that it is impossible to bring 
 wheeled traffic up beyond a certain point. To this the 
 wounded must be carried by troops specially de-
 
 Passchendaele si 
 
 tailed for the purpose ; four, or often six, men to a 
 stretcher. So the ragged procession, the long stream 
 of rocking swaying stretchers, the bearers stumbling 
 along, avoiding the shell-holes, sinking up to their 
 ankles or knees in mud at every step, with the wounded 
 groaning on the top, goes downhill out of the 
 fight. 
 
 They have a long journey before them, passing out 
 of one barrage into another and vexed by other shells 
 between. It is well to send empty stretchers and spare 
 bearers along at intervals with them to pick up the 
 casualties that occur en route. The mud causes many 
 deaths these days ; for, say what you will, a man 
 can sometimes get out of the way when he hears a 
 shell coming at least if his feet are free. On the 
 other hand, the shells seem to nose and bury them- 
 selves in the mud before exploding, and thus their 
 effect is localized. So in the end it is six to one and 
 half a dozen to the other, though not in particular 
 cases. 
 
 So they pass down the roads littered with dead 
 horses and slain mules, with derelict burning tanks 
 in the fields where men serve the howitzers midst a 
 shower of German shells. A terrific detonation 
 shakes the ambulance as the huge gun leaps back at 
 the report and its orange flames light the darkness of 
 the road. Through it all comes the vicious plop, 
 plop, of fragments of enemy high explosive, which 
 perhaps burst hundreds of yards away, and, if shrapnel, 
 into the lakes and ponds and marshes formed by the 
 intermingling of the shell-holes filled with rain. For 
 they are spraying the battery. So they pass out by 
 stages to Ypres and the hospital beneath its prison and 
 the safety beyond.
 
 82 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Not all are so fortunate, however, and there is a 
 savage irony about the fate of some that- almost out- 
 bounds thought. A young officer looks in at the 
 dressing-station on his way down to get some iodine 
 to put on a cut in his hand. " I was going on leave to 
 Paris to-morrow morning, anyway," he says, " and 
 when I got this they said that I had better not take 
 any more chances of missing my leave but start right 
 away." The orderly turns inside to get the iodine, 
 a shell bursts meantime, and when he comes back the 
 other is dead. Leave is off 1 
 
 It is getting late in the afternoon and the light is 
 growing dimmer. The grey ness of the day mingles 
 with the ghastly grey ness of the scene. Grey skies 
 above, grey mud beneath, so that it is hard to say 
 where one leaves off and the other begins. Grimmest 
 of all is the old cemetery a few hundred yards away, 
 lately in German hands and crowded with their dead 
 of past battles. We held it once before, and they 
 say that some Canadians who fell here at the second 
 battle, as this is the third, are surely buried there. 
 
 There is less pressure of work now, though the 
 shells still fall viciously, and the doctor stands at the 
 entrance to the pill-box smoking. 
 
 Suddenly, silhouetted against the jagged crosses on 
 the horizon, appears a dark figure, scarce discernible 
 from out the surrounding mud, waving its arms 
 grotesquely. The doctor looks at it and then, realizing 
 that it is a wounded man trying to reach the pill- 
 box, runs to meet it. The wavering figure comes 
 stumbling towards him. When he reaches it he 
 places his arm round the shoulder in spite of the other's 
 protest his trench-coat carries the bloodstains till 
 the end of the war and supports him in. " God
 
 Passchendaele 83 
 
 bless you, sir," says the wounded man and then, as if 
 remembering something, " there's an officer out there 
 wounded." The doctor shouts to a team of stretcher- 
 bearers to go and find the officer, and as soon as the 
 wounded man is inside, goes after them himself. 
 
 The doctor finds him first, guided by a low moaning. 
 He is put on a stretcher and brought back to the 
 dressing-station. On the way a shell bursts close 
 beside them and involuntarily the men drop the 
 stretcher. The doctor swore. " You may well say 
 that, sir," said one of the bearers. The officer 
 and his runner had gone up to make a reconnaissance 
 for one of the battalions behind. His case was hope- 
 less from the first, and he died on his stretcher outside 
 the pill-box. 
 
 German prisoners were made to help to carry the 
 stretchers. Some of them were killed, but as well they 
 as others. Many wore spectacles, which have a curi- 
 ous effect beneath the low-hanging German steel 
 helmet. Among them was a " Privatdocent " of 
 Greek at Leipzig University, and a young Prussian 
 officer who talked quite freely and repeated over and 
 over again this sentence : " You will not take Passch- 
 endaele, you will not take Passchendaele. Our 
 general says you will not take Passchendaele." He 
 had a touching belief in his general. 
 
 Night came down, covering up some of the ugliness 
 of the battlefield but accentuating more. Through it 
 men groped their way from place to place. It fell 
 on the pill-box, and on those others broken and 
 smashed, standing in the water of the Revelsbeek, 
 which had overflowed its banks when the level of the
 
 84 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 surrounding country had been reduced by shell-fire. 
 Ugly and horrible these looked, half sunk in the 
 water and morass with the wire of their defences 
 broken around them. Five of them here in the form 
 of a star, a more powerful fortress with their machine 
 guns than Rhodes or Chateau Gaillard. Go inside 
 one and you are up to your waist in water. Yet the 
 German metal cups of field grey are on the table with 
 German bread and German tobacco. German men 
 may be there too, lying very still on the wire beds in 
 the corner, or you may come upon them beneath the 
 water. 
 
 This fort lay in a hollow and, as if fearful that 
 troops might be assembling here for a fresh attack, the 
 enemy artillery lashed its waters with their shells. 
 High explosive sank into them and came up again 
 with the roar of a geyser, shrapnel rebounded from 
 the concrete of the pill-boxes and with so many 
 separate splashes as if heaven were raining stones. 
 His barrage caught also a large pill-box much further 
 to the left. This was used as the headquarters of 
 two battalions and also as a brigade dressing-station. 
 Crowds of runners and wounded waited outside, and 
 every now and then a shell would swish down into the 
 crowd and whirl the broken torn bodies aloft. 
 
 Next morning the inhabitants of the pill-box col- 
 lected the dead that lay near. The identity discs 
 were dealt with and the bodies laid in the old trench 
 which was then filled in. The divisional chaplain 
 came up and read a prayer over the spot. The tall, 
 grey-haired figure stood there with his lips moving^ 
 and they were all that moved when a chance shell came
 
 Passchendaele ss 
 
 near. The few who were left at the pill-box stood 
 around with their tin hats in their hands, and looked 
 out on the empty grey waste of mud and shell-holes 
 that is the scene of a modern victory.
 
 (86) 
 
 AVE CAESAR IMMORTALIS ! 
 
 " You speak of the transmigration of souls, is it not, 
 messieurs ? Of the passing of the soul of one man 
 into the body of another metempsychosis they 
 call it, I believe, in a language which all can under- 
 stand it sounds so foolish and yet I do not laugh 
 with you. No, Mr. Etherington, I repeat, I do not 
 laugh with you this time. Ah, I was more than like 
 you once, for in the manner of my countrymen I 
 used to laugh at everything. But that was before 
 the war, to hide the ache of our hearts, and now that 
 the pain is gone we are free to smile and weep some- 
 times. Is it not so, messieurs ? " 
 
 The three men were sitting at one of the little marble- 
 topped tables outside the Caf6 de la Paix. Jones, of 
 the Cheshires, and Etherington, of the Coldstream, 
 were on leave from the army of the Rhine and had 
 formed the habit of dropping in here every evening at 
 1 1 o'clock, sure of finding Monsieur Tardieu no one 
 ever called him anything save that always seated 
 at the same table with " Le Matin " open before him, 
 and always two vacant chairs, one on either side of him. 
 These chairs seemed somehow to be eternally empty 
 and waiting, even though the rest of the cafe might 
 be filled to overflowing. The two subalterns were 
 too young to have seen very much of the war, which 
 is as much as to say that they were very young indeed.
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 87 
 
 Monsieur Tardieu, on the contrary, had seen it all 
 from its tumultuous beginnings, when he was appar- 
 ently a private in the Chasseurs, to the end, which 
 found him attached as interpreter to the British Mission 
 at the Grand Quartier Ge"n6ral. Hence the interest of 
 his conversation. 
 
 Along the street by their side as they sat passed 
 Paris, victorious Paris, for it was six months after the 
 Armistice. 
 
 " No," Monsieur Tardieu continued, after having 
 commanded the waiter to produce " encore trois," 
 " I do not choose to believe that the human soul after 
 death is born again with a different body ; it is not an 
 essential doctrine of the early Fathers of the Church, 
 as you, being a bishop's son, are doubtless perfectly 
 aware, Mr. Etherington. Moreover, apart from the 
 danger of being reborn as a sale Boche, for I have led 
 a somewhat variegated life and might perhaps sink 
 down through several thousand stages of animal 
 existence as a punishment, though really I have com- 
 mitted no series of crimes worthy of such a trans- 
 formation, I do not know that personally I would 
 care to begin life again under any circumstances. . . ." 
 
 " Ah ! You are young, of course, messieurs ; if 
 I may say so, very young, and that makes all the 
 difference in these cases." 
 
 He sipped placidly for a while at the glass the waiter 
 brought ; his tired old eyes gazing into space while the 
 spring sunlight turned the silver of his hair to gold. 
 He had a fine head, had Monsieur Tardieu, round, 
 yet with a high forehead, and an aquiline nose, which, 
 with the smile on his lips, gave him the appearance of 
 an amiable old eagle or other bird of prey. He gazed 
 benevolently about him, nodding his head slowly as
 
 88 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 if drugged with the sunshine and wine, and then with 
 a wave of the thin blue -veined hand at the women in 
 the Boulevard des Italiens he said : 
 
 " These were doubtless butterflies last time ; since 
 then they have moved one ; whether up or down, who 
 shall say ? " And he laughed quietly to himself. 
 
 " No, mes enfants. I do not believe in all that. 
 Nevertheless, there is such a thing as the transmi- 
 gration of souls, in the sense of one man's etrer call it 
 personality, individuality, what you will laying hold 
 of another. Such have I seen often in my life. The 
 story which I am going to tell you, or rather read to 
 you, for it is not my story, carries the thing one stage 
 further. With your permission, messieurs ? " 
 
 He beckoned to the waiter, and with the same move- 
 ment drew from an inner pocket a small roll of ordinary 
 flimsy note-paper, such as was torn in thousands 
 daily during the war from these little " En Campagne " 
 writing- tablets that they sell in France. This he laid 
 on the table before him, where it attracted to itself 
 the contents of a little puddle of spilt wine, drawing an 
 impatient " tcha " " tcha " from its owner; straddled 
 his nose with a pair of pince-nez from which depended 
 a heavy black ribbon, and turned to Etherington. 
 
 " These papers, Monsieur Etherington, were written 
 by a countryman of yours, and my very good friend. 
 The writer is dead now, he was killed shortly after 
 writing this, and I have never shown them to anyone 
 until now. I do not know why I shall read them to 
 you, save that our conversation points that way. 
 Before I read these " and he lightly touched the 
 papers with his hand " I was sceptical as you are, 
 and should be so still if I did not know the writer. 
 He was a plain honest John Bull of a man, messieurs,
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 89 
 
 and like you, messieurs you will pardon me ? bien 
 he laughed at most things that matter. My friend 
 was what you call a very sound man who always 
 slept at night. Between writing these and the time 
 of his death he did brilliant staff-work, work which 
 really mattered. This story is about one whom I 
 was brought up to hate, for I am of the old noblesse, 
 and it has destroyed the settled convictions of my life- 
 time but I am glad that he sent it to me. I received 
 it about a year ago ; my friend spread the writing of it 
 over some time, jotting the details down in the odd 
 moments of many busy days, and evidently trying, as 
 you will see, to give it a literary dress. Immediately 
 I received it, I wrote to him, but he never got my 
 letter. He was then mort pour la patrie. Shall I 
 proceed, messieurs ? Very well." 
 
 He raised his glass as if in salutation, spread open the 
 thin sheets on the table, and began to read : 
 
 It was close upon midnight 20th/21st March, 
 1918 as I, John Marshall Tavernay, Major in the 
 nth Royal Fusiliers, turned out of the Rue de Doullens 
 into the main Amiens road. I remember glancing 
 at the dial of my wrist watch as we passed the red 
 lamp of the Traffic Control Post at the junction of the 
 two streets. Turning to the left I and my two com- 
 panions continued our way towards the great square 
 of Albert. 
 
 It was a lovely moonlight night, and for once the 
 town looked almost beautiful. Normally, there is 
 little to distinguish Albert from any other large French 
 provincial town that has been destroyed to make a 
 Hunnish holiday. Built entirely of brick, it has an 
 air of commonplace tawdry pretentiousness from
 
 90 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 which even its honourable scars scarcely avail to 
 save it. Seen by day, with its few remaining dirty 
 shops and estaminets, its mud and general aspect of 
 tumble-down confusion, it reminds me irresistibly 
 of a blowzy woman in curl-papers. When one walks 
 through its streets and sees so many of the houses, 
 their fronts having fallen in, standing open to the gaze 
 of the passer-by, who can thus inspect every detail 
 of the domestic arrangements of their two or three 
 stories, including the all-pervading grey mud which 
 carpets the floors, one thinks of some vulgar pre- 
 tentious and painted beauty suddenly stricken with 
 paralysis. It is often a queer sensation to gaze from 
 the street as if from the front row of the stalls 
 into such a section of a house, displayed as if it were 
 upon the stage for one's amusement, and to notice 
 the doings of its picturesque soldier inmates, the fire- 
 light dancing upon the bare walls throwing upon them 
 the silhouettes of armed be-helmeted figures, the 
 light from smoky lantern or guttering candle reflected 
 back from bayonet or rifle barrel. By day, as I 
 have said, there is Ijttle to interest a man in Albert ; 
 and I for one hate the town, and after the war is over 
 hope never to set eyes upon it again. To-night, how- 
 ever, the moon, riding high above, threw upon the 
 road before us the shadows of gaping walls and ruined 
 houses, the originals of which one could easily imagine 
 might have been built of granite under the Valois 
 kings. To-night au clair de lune crude modern 
 red-brick Albert had a touch of the grey magic loveli- 
 ness of Ypres with her ruined houses and palaces and 
 grim old battlements. 
 
 From these thoughts I was brought back to the 
 world of realities by my right-hand companion
 
 Ave Caesar Immor tails! 01 
 
 Bissette, the interpreter temporarily attached to my 
 unit, gently jogging my arm. Evidently it was his 
 desire that I should join in the discussion that had 
 apparently been raging between himself and young 
 Vaux. 
 
 I knew and dreaded these arguments that were sure 
 to arise whenever the pair met, for never were two 
 Frenchmen more dissimilar in character, appearance 
 and indeed in everything than my two companions. 
 
 Bissette, a man of about fifty, black-haired, short, 
 stout, filling to a nicety his green-blue uniform, with 
 its gilt sphinx-head badges of the Corps of Interpreters, 
 had been with us now for some weeks and was very 
 popular with our battalion headquarter mess to 
 which he was attached. Really a sous-oflicier of the 
 French infantry of the line he had served in the 
 Senegalese campaign, as the light blue and white 
 ribbon on his left breast testified. He had been 
 wounded at the Marne, which had caused his transfer 
 to the Interpreters' Corps where, owing to his 
 linguistic powers, he had been given a commission as 
 lieutenant. He was well educated; though, like so 
 many who are not, he prided himself greatly upon 
 being what he called " practical." For the rest he 
 was a black-haired, bright, vivacious little French- 
 man ; could tell a good story and was, as I have said, 
 a great favourite with us all. 
 
 No greater contrast could have been found to 
 Lieutenant Bissette than his fellow-countryman 
 Armand de Vaux, captain of infantry. Of good 
 family and plentifully blessed with the means to enjoy 
 life, young Armand had been distinctly one of the 
 jeunesse doree of France before the war. A graduate 
 of St. Cyr he had somehow managed not to go into
 
 92 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 the regular army, though he had of course served his 
 term. Since then his acquaintance had lain more 
 with the boulevards than the barracks ; he had even 
 posed as an aesthete for a time, attended lectures at 
 the Sorbonne, written poetry and painted in his 
 friends ateliers. He, too, had served since the be- 
 ginning, and had risen to his present rank as the result 
 of an especially daring act before Verdun. Now he 
 was attached to our division as French liaison officer, 
 though I knew that his time was nearly up and that 
 he was shortly to rejoin his regiment. Tall, fair- 
 haired, with features almost classic in their regularity, 
 he was surely the direct antithesis of Bissette in all 
 things, save their temporarily common profession. 
 Perhaps that was why the two, though in reality good 
 enough friends, seemed always to be arguing about 
 something or other. 
 
 I forget what it was they were discussing on this 
 occasion, and in any case the talk died out and we 
 walked on in silence. 
 
 We were by this time crossing the square, keeping 
 to the side-walk on the right of the road, which here 
 skirted the dug-outs occupied by a Field Ambulance. 
 
 Suddenly Bissette asked me that question which is 
 so often asked at the front half in jest and half in 
 earnest when did I think the war would end. I 
 was about to return the usual non-committal answer, 
 when I was interrupted by de Vaux. 
 
 " Why, when she falls," he said pointing upwards. 
 " What other answer do you expect in this place, 
 Bissette ? " 
 
 We were opposite the ruined church of Notre 
 Dame de Brebieres, and involuntarily all glanced up to 
 the figure on the top of the tower which dominates
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 93 
 
 the country-side for miles around. There she hung, 
 gleaming like electrum in the moonlight ; the great 
 golden Virgin of Albert bent at an absurd and perilous 
 angle over the street. There she will hang according 
 to the prophecy until she marks by her fall the end 
 of the war in victory for the Allies. Only that fall 
 must come naturally it is no good climbing up to 
 the tower one night to expedite matters with a hatchet. 
 
 "Bah," said Bissette, "you surely don't believe 
 these old wives' stories, do you ? " 
 
 " No," replied Vaux, " I don't suppose I do, but I 
 like to pretend to myself sometimes that I believe 
 them. To-night, for instance, it is much the best 
 way to answer your question to point to that lady 
 up there." 
 
 " Well," said the other, " I will answer my own 
 question. The war will end six months from the 
 time when France finds her great general. That is 
 all we need to go through there," and he pointed in 
 the direction of the line. 
 
 " Another Napoleon, eh, what ? " said I. 
 
 It was a tactless remark, as I realized a fraction of a 
 second too late, for the Bonaparte cult was the pet 
 aversion of Bissette, an ardent republican, while Vaux's 
 ancestors had fought Hoch in the Vend6e and had 
 been among the Garde Rouge who had protected 
 the flight of Louis XVI. 
 
 "Napoleon," snorted Bissette, "why, what could 
 he have done ?" 
 
 I weakly murmured something about having heard 
 somewhere that the person in question had once been 
 considered a very fair general. 
 
 " My dear man, he was the greatest military genius 
 of all time. Don't imagine that I don't believe that.
 
 94 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 But still what could he do now ? Every man, no 
 matter how much of a genius he may be, is the creature 
 of his own time and cannot be expected to deal with 
 circumstances which lie outside its scope. Napoleon, 
 for instance, knew nothing of that." And he pointed 
 upwards, whence from out the darkness came the 
 steady threshing of an aeroplane's wings. 
 
 " But he would have soon got on to it all, or at any 
 rate as much as he required. In any case his staff 
 would have run all these things for him, don't you 
 think ? " 
 
 " No, I don't feel any certainty that Napoleon 
 would have done better than anyone else. After all, 
 he had his chance to serve France, did not take it, 
 and we are still paying for his mistake. You agree 
 with me, de Vaux, don't you ? " and he turned to- 
 wards the younger man. 
 
 " I suppose you are right. Nevertheless, I don't 
 mind confessing that I wish Napoleon was alive to- 
 day. Trenches, bombs, aeroplanes and so on are, 
 I think, excrescences in warfare. He could have 
 taken a few courses in them, you know, and then ' 
 
 " Jena and Austerlitz, eh, on a bigger scale ? " 
 
 " Perhaps ; who knows ? At any rate, I should 
 have seen him, and I would give a good deal to have 
 done that 1 " 
 
 " Why, Vaux," said I, " I did not know that you 
 were such an ardent Bonapartist 1 " 
 
 " I'm not. My ancestors fought against him for 
 the Bourbons, but he was the greatest man in the 
 world, and I say again, I should like to have seen 
 him." 
 
 Bissette and I laughed. 
 
 While talking we had walked some little distance
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 95 
 
 along the Albert-Bapaume road and had got clear of 
 the town, save for a few outlying houses. 
 
 Before us lay the road, fringed at this point on both 
 sides with trees, running almost straight, as we well 
 knew, past the shell-holes and debris that mark the 
 sites of Pozieres and Courcelette to the key of the old 
 German position in this section, the fortified village of 
 Bapaume. In places the light of the moon turned the 
 grey mud to silver. 
 
 In the far distance the horizon was lit up by a steady 
 glare as if of electricity. Rockets continually arose 
 to burst in showers of many-coloured stars. The 
 noise of the guns came in one continuous rumble, 
 reminding us of old times when the crescendo of the 
 Somme offensive was nearing its climax. 
 
 We walked on a few hundred yards to Tara Hill, 
 where the brigade was bivouacked. There Bissette 
 and I said good-night to Vaux, struck oS through 
 the mud to the right, and after considerable difficulty 
 found our respective tents. 
 
 This is the first time that I ever tried to spin a yarn, 
 and I find that I am not much good at it. I don't 
 know why I have written down the above conversa- 
 tion, because I forgot it as soon as I went to sleep that 
 night. The events of the next few days left me small 
 time to think of it again, and it was only when Amiens 
 appeared to be definitely saved for the time, and after 
 I had actually begun to set down on paper the happen- 
 ings that followed, that I recollected it. My story, 
 such as it is, therefore begins here. 
 
 I must explain that the brigade to which the nth 
 Royal Fusiliers belonged had been sent back to rest 
 for a while at Albert. It was therefore with consider- 
 able disgust that I received next day early morning
 
 96 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 instructions from my servant that I must get up at 
 once as the whole brigade had been ordered back into 
 the line tout de suite. It was indeed a poor time to 
 choose for a rest, as that day the great German offensive 
 began, which, as we learned afterwards, was meant to 
 seize Amiens, the lid that guarded the apple of our 
 eye, paralyse our railway communications, and cut 
 us off from the French to the South. It was an 
 anxious time. We moved up in lorries at dawn to- 
 wards we knew not what. 
 
 I need not recount the events which followed in the 
 next few days ; they are only too well known. You 
 know how the full weight of the German offensive, 
 over forty-five divisions, led by shock troops specially 
 trained in the new tactics of infiltration, were flung 
 against General Gough's fourteen divisions, which 
 were holding, moreover, an impossibly long front. 
 The Fifth Army reeled beneath the shock and broke 
 not in one, but in half a score of places. I suppose 
 it was the greatest military disaster that the British 
 arms have ever undergone. 
 
 It was always the same old story. First the Boche 
 would dribble a few men with light machine guns 
 around both flanks and then, if that did not dislodge 
 you and it became increasingly difficult to stand 
 when we saw those on both sides of us going back 
 he would hurl his Sturmtruppen led by men, stout 
 fellows, bearing Flammenwerfer at your front. 
 Soldiers are always extremely sensitive about their 
 flanks, you know. We were taught to be in the pre- 
 war text-books. The thing became an obsession at 
 the end ; one platoon or company would withdraw, 
 because it had to, or at least with some excuse ; then 
 the others on both sides would promptly follow suit
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 97 
 
 " in order to conform to the line." Of course when 
 you once get a business like that started there is no 
 end to it. It was like an infectious disease, and 
 became a never-ending process. In the end it was 
 a choice between standing and being cut off to a man, 
 or withdrawing. All honour, say I, to those who 
 stood, for they undoubtedly saved the game for their 
 side. 
 
 Under such circumstances there was not much 
 difference between "withdrawing" and "retiring." 
 That was the hell of it, there was no place to with- 
 draw to. It was the same behind all the armies. 
 Lines pink, green, all the colours of the rainbow 
 existed on paper and on the staff maps, but actually 
 not one of them had been even scratched out. If 
 the powers that be in the Fifth Army it is easy to 
 be wise after the event made a mistake, it was in 
 issuing orders that, if an absolute necessity arose, 
 troops would withdraw to a line of resistance previ- 
 ously prepared in rear. Still these were the orders 
 that all armies were issuing at the time, and it was 
 only in consequence of the lesson learned thank God, 
 in front of Amiens that Haig issued his famous 
 " back to the wall " manifesto. 
 
 My battalion was in the thick of it from the moment 
 at which we reached what was left of the line, and 
 relieved a company that called itself a battalion. 
 The Colonel was killed almost at once, and I had to 
 take over. Step by step, we fell back, always fighting 
 and always being killed. We seemed to make some sort 
 of a stand in each of the thousand old trenches that 
 run at right angles from the Albert -Bapaume road. 
 It was hateful always to be going back and to see 
 those well-remembered names Bapaume, Courcelette,
 
 98 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Pozi^res, and the rest places for which so many of the 
 best had died pass to the Huns once more. Tired 
 was no word for it ; men fought in their sleep, loading 
 and firing their rifles mechanically, and we fired the 
 Lewis guns until they jammed. All the while they 
 were said to be digging trenches behind us, the staff 
 from all the schools and rest camps down the line. 
 They kept sending us chits telling us to hold on until 
 they had a line ready and then to fall back on that 
 and make a stand there. I used to think that if we 
 ever reached that line all we would be able to do would 
 be to fall back into it ! Always we were retreating 
 and always looking for the reserves which never 
 came, and for the very good reason that there were 
 none between us and the sea. It was the British 
 Empire's supreme hour of destiny. 
 
 In the early morning of the 30th came another 
 smashing attack by the foe. We seemed to have been 
 doing nothing else for years save empty our rifles 
 at these on-coming grey figures. I thought that 
 this time it would be the last, but by a miracle we 
 staved them off. Then it became a game of bluff, 
 for if the Boche had known how weak we were, and 
 that we had nothing in rear, they would simply have 
 ignored us and walked over us to Amiens and the 
 coast. 
 
 After it was over, for the time, I received the worst 
 news of all from a brigade runner who found me in 
 my dug-out in a shell-hole. Two of the acting 
 Brigadiers were killed and the Divisional Commander 
 had been thrown from his horse and injured himself 
 severely. Our Brigadier was going to take over the 
 division, and I was bidden to amalgamate my handful 
 of men with another battalion and report to him at
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 99 
 
 once. The divisional staff had also apparently been 
 shot to pieces. 
 
 I did not altogether relish the prospect, for I knew 
 old Fore and Aft as the men called him, on account 
 of his being almost as broad as he was long of old. 
 He was a regular, but one of the rough and ready 
 school, the very antithesis of a staff college man, and 
 had at the start of the war commanded my own 
 battalion. There I had several times come into 
 contact with him, and recalled vividly a particularly 
 irritating trick of his of laying his hand on your 
 shoulder while talking to you. He professed to 
 despise what he called theories and " book-soldiering," 
 and to believe that those who studied their profession 
 were wont to cry " here are the enemy where are my 
 books " when the foe was sighted. General Browne, 
 though well enough liked by the men, was absurdly 
 ignorant on many matters which are usually assumed 
 to be common knowledge. 
 
 Having once in peace-tune made a trip to Boulogne, 
 he cordially disliked our Allies the French, and it was a 
 great trial to him that he felt in honour bound under 
 present circumstances not to refer to Waterloo. 
 Napoleon, of course, he considered a theorist. 
 
 However, there was no help for it, so after making 
 the necessary arrangements I made my way to where 
 I judged the Division must be. 
 
 I found them all in an old farm-house behind a 
 wood. General Browne had already taken over, 
 and as I entered he was engaged in lecturing Bissette 
 on the general slackness of the French in allowing the 
 present situation to develop. He blamed it all on 
 the insistent demands of Paris for an extension of the 
 British front. He had the interpreter backed up into
 
 ioo Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 a corner of the kitchen and pinning him there with 
 his left arm thrust, alternately, his right fore finger 
 and two red cheeks into the Frenchman's face. 
 
 " You keep talking of Napoleon," he cried poor 
 Bissette obviously had not opened his mouth for 
 many sentences past " well, he's dead, isn't he ? 
 Died at Elba, didn't he, after Wellington licked him, 
 eh ? What I say is, if you have any more Napoleons 
 left, trot them out, man; trot them all out. Very 
 glad to see them I'm sure. Now's the time for them, 
 my boy." He released his prisoner and turned to me. 
 " Glad to see you, Tavernay, my boy, damned glad to 
 see you. Things in a bit of a mess here, I should say, 
 since General WaUingford left. Too bad of the French 
 to leave us in the lurch like this, isn't it ? What I say 
 is where are the reserves, where the hell are the 
 reserves ? Surely we've got some somewhere. Can't 
 expect us to hold without reserves, can they, Taver- 
 nay ? " 
 
 I soon found out that things were in a bit of a mess, 
 as indeed was only to be expected after the retirement 
 by leaps and bounds that divisional headquarters had 
 been undertaking for many days past. A " carte 
 Taride " of north-eastern France, belonging to Vaux, 
 appeared to be all that was left in the way of maps 
 that were of any use. After giving the General my 
 own report, I set to work to try to locate and to get 
 into touch with our various units. It was a difficult 
 job. 
 
 All night long we toiled, preparing for the attack 
 which we felt sure would come at dawn. It came, 
 and when it was over we had been pushed back some 
 odd miles along the Albert-Amiens road. At 3 a.m. 
 the General had gone up the line. Mine was the
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 101 
 
 harder task of staying with our rapidly moving head- 
 quarters and trying to estabk'sh a report centre for 
 the slowly retreating line. Once more the Germans 
 failed to press home their advantage. It was the only 
 thing that saved us. When you look at a map of the 
 great German offensive of 1918, you will probably 
 see the red line running through Albert town, but, 
 believe me, it did not. 
 
 Late that afternoon, the General came back, bent 
 and weary, and all the comfort I had for him was two 
 wires from Army to say that such reserves as were 
 available had gone in to the south, but that probably 
 we would be relieved by the French after two nights, 
 and that meantime we must depend on our own 
 exertions alone to prevent a general break-through. 
 
 For two more days we did it, hanging on by the 
 skin of our teeth, as it were. It was a succession of 
 miracles. Always the Boche seemed to be through, 
 but always at the last gasp there was some one with a 
 Lewis gun to head him off, provide a nucleus to rally 
 on and permit a fresh line to form. We were holding 
 a divisional frontage in terms of platoons and minor 
 tactics. It is the breath after your last that counts 
 in war just as in rowing. 
 
 General Browne was magnificent ; it was just the 
 sort of situation that brought out all that was best in 
 him. This old man, who rarely wrote his own orders, 
 whether as Battalion Commander or Brigadier, was up 
 the line the whole time. He had grown strangely 
 silent of late, and would return to headquarters, 
 listen to my scanty reports, and then throw himself 
 on the ground to sleep. We had formed a reserve 
 of five hundred of the least -tired men with odds and 
 ends from behind, and used them whenever things
 
 102 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 looked blackest. They were led, I remember, by an 
 old dug-out Major, an R.T.O., or something, from 
 Boulogne, who had been pronounced physically unfit 
 for active service. This was his chance, however, 
 and he took it, this man, who had never been nearer 
 fighting before than hearing a bomb burst in front of 
 the Louvre Hotel. I wish the doctors could have 
 seen him ! Well may he rest in peace, for it was he 
 and Vaux, his second in command, who undoubtedly 
 saved us. As it was, the waning of the storm found 
 us perched astride the Albert-Amiens road at the 
 very apex of the German-created British salient. 
 
 The night of the expected relief was like a repeti- 
 tion of the first that I had spent at headquarters. 
 The General came back from the line at about 7 
 p.m., and we had supper. He was in very good 
 spirits, more so, I thought, than the receipt of the 
 last wire from Corps, wherein it was stated that the 
 French reserves might be diverted from us " for 
 reasons that may be imperative," justified. 
 
 " Never mind, Tavernay," he said, " I know they 
 will come ; they cannot fail me again." 
 
 All through supper he laughed and joked with 
 Vaux, who had come in to make a report, and whom 
 he called " mon capitaine." Bissette he addressed as 
 " mon enfant," and checked all repartee by telling him 
 not to be silly. I saw both Frenchmen looking at him 
 curiously and did not wonder at it. 
 
 After the meal a curious thing happened. General 
 Browne was standing in front of the empty fireplace 
 with his hands behind his back, laughing and talking 
 to Bissette. Most of the conversation, judged by the 
 scraps that I overheard, was in French. Curiously 
 enough I had never considered the possibility of Old
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 103 
 
 Fore and Aft being able to speak French ; indeed, I 
 would almost have sworn, from recollections of him 
 as my battalion O.C., that he could not have framed 
 two consecutive sentences in that language to save 
 his life. Evidently, I was wrong, however. The 
 conversation ended with a quick " Chut! chut! " of 
 impatience from the General, accompanied by his 
 well-known trick of laying his hand on his companion's 
 shoulder. Only this time the hand did not stay 
 on Bissette's shoulder, but crept up to his face and 
 gave what I can only describe as a tug at his ear. 
 I had a curious feeling that I must have seen the 
 General do the same thing often before, without 
 noticing it. 
 
 The General turned to me. 
 
 ' The French will come to-morrow, Tavernay, I 
 know it ; but we must hold them to-night. They 
 will attack us in the dark about 2 a.m. Write out 
 an order to all units saying that relief will come to- 
 morrow morning, and that to-night every position 
 must be held to the last man. I am going to have 
 a look round." 
 
 He left the hut taking Vaux with him, and I turned 
 to the upturned wooden box which did duty as a 
 desk, in order to write the order. It did not take 
 me long, and after I had summoned the runners I 
 lit a pipe and sat looking out of the unglazed window 
 at the gathering darkness. To-night I knew would 
 be the supreme test ; and if we failed now, of what 
 avail all the heroism of the past weeks ? Moreover, 
 I had no confidence in the certainty of the French 
 coming to-morrow. It was dark outside, but no 
 blacker than my thoughts. I knew how tired the 
 men up there must be.
 
 104 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 It began to rain, even though the wind was rising. 
 Having nothing to do, I must have fallen into a doze, 
 for the next thing that I remember was the telephone 
 bell ringing. A message from Corps to say that the 
 situation was urgent and that all positions must be 
 held at all costs. The probability was that the French 
 would not arrive for twenty-four hours, even if they 
 were not diverted to the south. Cheerful news 1 
 As I hung up the receiver, the General entered. One 
 look at him showed me that he was all in. His trench 
 coat was covered with mud, and he had a field dress- 
 ing and his handkerchief tied round his right 
 arm I 
 
 " A bit of shrapnel," he said. " My God, Tavernay, 
 the men are utterly used up. I don't think we can 
 do it." 
 
 I told him the purport of the message which I had 
 just logged. He listened in silence, instead of the 
 outburst of profanity which I had half expected, and 
 then, turning his white drawn face to me, said : 
 
 *' You have issued the orders I suppose ? Good. 
 It is all we can do. The attack will come at 2 a.m. 
 I feel sure. No, I won't worry about my arm now. 
 I have some iodine on it. I must get some sleep ; 
 wake me at midnight. 
 
 He turned into the inner room, and I heard the 
 creak and rustle of his trench coat as he lay down 
 upon the floor. I lit another pipe and picked up a 
 book. Soon I heard the General's snores. I must 
 have read for some time before there came another 
 noise from the inner room ; the General was getting 
 up, though, as I saw by a glance at my wrist-watch, it 
 was scarcely eleven pip emma. A minute later he 
 passed me on his way to the door. As he reached
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! ios 
 
 it my candle threw his shadow for a second on the 
 wall, and again I had that feeling of something curiously 
 familiar about it, as if I had lived that scene before. 
 As I sat and smoked I could hear him pacing to and 
 fro in the little garden, for it had grown very still 
 with the down-going of the wind. I went to the 
 window, and looked out. 
 
 The General was walking up and down with his 
 head sunk on his breast and his hands clasped behind 
 him. His gait struck me as very peculiar, being 
 more like a run than a walk. He would take a dozen 
 quick little uneven steps in one direction, turn with a 
 short shrug of his shoulders and take twelve more. 
 General Browne was a short corpulent little man, 
 but like many small men he habitually took some- 
 what long strides when walking, and I can remember 
 thinking how unlike him it was and that it boded 
 no good for our chances that night, before I returned 
 to my chair. 
 
 Anon as I sat there the sound of these queer little 
 running steps ceased. The moon had come up, and 
 by its light I saw his great black shadow grotesquely 
 outlined on the little patch of grass in front of the 
 window. His steel helmet he had lost his general's 
 cap the day before lent it the appearance of wearing 
 a cocked hat and made me think of a soldier of Marl- 
 borough's time or Washington's. He moved and the 
 illusion was destroyed. A minute later I heard him 
 calling me and went to the door. 
 
 He was standing at the foot of the solitary tree 
 that the garden possessed, with his legs planted far 
 apart and his chin sunk over his collar. He had 
 placed his wounded arm within the breast of his 
 trench-coat ; the other was still behind him. His
 
 106 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 long coat covered with mud looked black, not khaki 
 in that light, and gave the whole figure a strangely 
 foreign appearance. As I approached I realized that 
 he wished to dictate an order and pulled out my 
 A.F.B. 163. 
 
 He spoke for twenty minutes while I struggled 
 hard to get it all down, and with a lucidity and direct- 
 ness which I would never have expected from him. 
 All the time he was looking at his boots, yet the stac- 
 cato sentences reached my ears, each with the crack of 
 a whip. Never once did he falter or seem at a loss for 
 a word ; it might have been a reading from a type- 
 written manuscript. He spoke of places which I had 
 never heard of before, and which were certainly not 
 on Vaux's map. When I questioned him about them 
 he merely said : "I know this country, sir ; who 
 should know it if I did not ? " and went on with the 
 dictation. It was a marvellous performance, for the 
 man seemed to know the position of the remnants of 
 every platoon in his division and left me breathless 
 but desperate. 
 
 For these orders were a complete cancellation of 
 the ones already issued. I need not go into details ; 
 but, in brief, all our units were to retire at once for 
 about three quarters of a mile. The old line of 
 resistance was to be held by Vaux and his reserves 
 and held to the last : talk of sacrifice troops, the S.O.S. 
 line for the few guns we possessed was drawn behind 
 them. It was sheer murder for them. With extra 
 flares given them and planes, they were to create the 
 impression of a strong force and then die as best they 
 could. And we had only a couple of hours to arrange 
 it all in ! 
 
 I resolved to speak to the General and not to let
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis! 10? 
 
 these extraordinary orders go out under my signature 
 unchallenged. 
 
 " But, sir," I said, "do you think we can get out 
 orders to all concerned and make the necessary 
 alterations in time ? It is 11.30 now." 
 
 " We must, Tavernay. I have already given orders 
 to the reserve, through de Vaux. You must see to 
 the rest. Understand me clearly, it must be done. 
 More depends on it than you know. I have just 
 learned from Army, Corps does not seem to be working, 
 that the final German offensive will fall on this front 
 during the night. I regret that I do not feel quite 
 certain whether it will be 2 a.m. or at dawn." 
 
 " But, sir," I stammered, " how do they know ? 
 We " 
 
 He cut me short. 
 
 " I have been studying the map since assuming 
 command, and have communicated my decision to 
 the Staff. Acting on my advice the whole weight of 
 the French reserves is even now being diverted to us 
 again. Saint-Maurice is a good man, I knew er 
 his father, and he will be here in time as I have stated 
 in my orders. Of that all the armies may rest assured. 
 Acting on my orders they are concentrating their 
 planes on this front, and I am guaranteed mastery 
 of the air for some hours from dawn. That is well, 
 for the enemy will not be able to observe us I mean 
 the French coming up." 
 
 " But, sir," I broke in, in an agony of apprehension, 
 " do you realize what you are doing ? Have you 
 any conception of the responsibility you are taking ? 
 Personally, I do not " 
 
 He turned on me with the snarl of a tiger on his 
 yellow teeth. The black eyes seemed to blaze like
 
 108 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 twin living coals in his face, white and drawn from 
 loss of sleep. 
 
 " You force me to remind you, Marshall, that I am 
 accustomed to responsibility, but most unaccustomed 
 to hear my decisions questioned by those whom I 
 have made. This is not a council of war, nor are 
 you yet my Chief of Staff. You will issue these 
 orders at once, and report to me when you have done 
 so." 
 
 I saluted stiffly and, sick at heart, went back into 
 the room. Why had he called me " Marshall " and 
 not " Tavernay ? " Was he mad or shell-shocked ? 
 Still thinking this, I got on the line to Army and asked 
 to speak to Major- General Green of the General Staff. 
 He came at last and summoning up all my courage 
 I gave him a brief precis of General Browne's orders, 
 stated that I did not think the General was very well, 
 and asked for instructions. 
 
 He heard me with patience to the end, and then 
 asked but one question : How had these orders 
 reached my General ? I replied that he had just dic- 
 tated them to me, ten minutes ago, and that, so far as 
 I knew, they were his own. 
 
 " Impossible," he replied, and then, " Wait a 
 minute, Tavernay." 
 
 I could hear him shouting questions at the other end 
 of the phone, and then speaking rapidly in a low voice 
 to some other person near at hand. 
 
 There came a new voice over the line, quiet and 
 pleasant, which yet thrilled me to hear it, for it was 
 that of the man on whose brain all the Empire de- 
 pended to lead her battered armies home. He was 
 not at Montreuil then, but here behind those scanty 
 divisions which were bearing the shock of battle.
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 109 
 
 To him, at his command, I read General Browne's 
 orders, word for word, and then . . . 
 
 " I do not understand how your General has got 
 hold of these orders, Major Tavernay " there was a 
 note of hesitation and anxiety in that voice " for 
 they are substantially those which are just about 
 to go to him through signals. The French cannot 
 have communicated direct ; but that is a question 
 which must wait. You have not yet issued them ? " 
 
 " Then please do so at once. You will then report 
 to your General your reasons for having called up 
 these headquarters. The rest I will leave with him." 
 
 " Then, sir, we are to act on General Browne's 
 orders ? " 
 
 " You are to act at once on the orders which you 
 have read which have just reached me from General 
 Foch. I have concurred in them. Good night." 
 
 The orders sent off, I braced myself for a difficult 
 and disagreeable task. I knew quite well what I had 
 done, ruined my career as a soldier, probably irre- 
 trievably, and yet I can say in all humbleness that I 
 had acted as I thought my duty dictated and would do 
 so again under similar circumstances. You see things 
 might have been wrong, and what was my career 
 compared to England's ? 
 
 I found General Browne in the garden, once more 
 pacing up and down with those cat-like strides, and 
 to him I related my conversation with the Commander- 
 in-Chief and what had lead up to it. 
 
 He heard me to the end and then gave me a look 
 one long look. I felt as if his eyes were diving down 
 into the depths of my soul searching for whatever of 
 meanness, deceit, or hypocrisy might be there. In 
 my dreams I can still see that white face and those
 
 no Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 implacable eyes. There was a short silence and then 
 he spoke : 
 
 " Mar er Major Tavernay, I have formed a 
 favourable opinion of your zeal in a subordinate 
 capacity. You will endeavour to see that my opinion 
 of you remains unaltered." 
 
 I bowed and saluted with a heart too full for words, 
 and turned on my heel, but he called me back. 
 
 "So you thought fit to question my orders, my 
 boy I Many have done that, but they were never 
 right. I wonder if you will ever know to what a 
 distinguished company you thereby allied yourself." 
 
 He gave me a smile which I shall always remember, 
 for its wonderful sweetness and sadness. The whole 
 figure of the man seemed to diffuse a personal mag- 
 netism. I felt as if I wanted to die for him for this 
 commonplace looking little British Brigadier in his 
 dirty uniform. He put the hand of his unwounded 
 arm to my cheek and pinched my ear. 
 
 " So you do not know me even after all these years, 
 Bertram ! " he said. 
 
 " Bertram " he called me, or at least some name of 
 two syllables, which began with B I wish I could 
 remember what it was and again he smiled. I felt 
 as if I could not speak, and so I left him without 
 asking when the orders had come. 
 
 My story is growing longer than I had meant, but 
 from now on there is not so much to tell. 
 
 The enemy attacked at 2 a.m., and thank God wo 
 were ready for them but only just ready. If we had 
 been compelled to wait until we got the orders to 
 change our dispositions through signals, I tremble 
 for the result. We should have been caught on the 
 move. As the attack started I felt strangely elated,
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! in 
 
 for now I saw the practical possibilities of the new 
 scheme. 
 
 The enemy attacked just before dawn, but it took 
 four successive waves of their infantry to pass our 
 outpost line, for Vaux and his band of heroes played 
 up nobly before they were submerged. The next 
 wave of Germans, evidently according to orders, split 
 up into small bombing parties to overcome the last 
 vestiges of resistance, and there was a distinct pause. 
 
 The General and I with a field telephone had 
 established ourselves in an improvised O.P. in rear 
 of my own battalion. From there we could see every- 
 thing that was happening. 
 
 " They think they have carried our main line of 
 resistance," said General Browne, " and have nothing 
 to do save to push on, for I have taken care to let 
 them know that we have no reserves." 
 
 " It was very simple," he added, seeing my look of 
 amazement. '' You will doubtless remember Captain 
 Robertson of your battalion. He was rather ill and 
 very stupid, but I made good use of him. I sent him 
 with a message to the Corps on our right imploring 
 help, and saying that as we had no reserves behind 
 us an attack would go through us like so much brown 
 paper. He did not know that those on our right 
 had lost ground much ground and so naturally 
 he carried the message to the Germans. This is his 
 work now that you are going to see. I shall award 
 him the Legion of Honour, if he is still alive." 
 
 Even as he spoke what he had predicted happened. 
 The sixth and following waves of the grey-coated 
 infantry reached the battle line and pushed stolidly 
 through it in artillery formations. Evidently they 
 imagined that they had nothing to do save to carry
 
 112 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 out Ludendorff's imperative commands and reach 
 our gun positions immediately after breaking our 
 front line. Already I could see light field pieces 
 galloping forward to support them. 
 
 " In five minutes time I shall order barrage fire," 
 said the General. " We have not many shells, but 
 we will shoot off what we have then. See, it is getting 
 light ; now for the French ! Only it is imperative 
 for the complete success of my plans that they " 
 he waved a comprehensive hand behind him " keep 
 their promise to me and hold the air for the next 
 couple of hours. Go and look for the French, mon 
 ami." He handed me a battered and black old tele- 
 scope, which he drew out of his pocket, and turned 
 once more to the front. 
 
 I stood up and looked through the telescope, but it- 
 was not yet light enough to see anything. When I 
 told him so, he merely nodded and continued to stare 
 in front of him. 
 
 There the small grey columns were steadily cover- 
 ing the ground between our first and second positions. 
 Their advance was now protected by a fringe of 
 men in extended order. Not a sound or a movement 
 on our part. It was uncanny. Suddenly General 
 Browne spoke again : 
 
 "War is the great game, is it not, Tavernay, and 
 has its own rules which must be followed ? Yet he 
 who never departs from them will always miss its 
 greatest prizes. It can be played in two moods, 
 that of the mathematician handling a chess problem 
 or that of the poet writing a sonnet to his mistress. 
 Yet neither by itself is sufficient, for the one may 
 conceivably win a campaign, if he does not lose the 
 most important battle, and to win battles is, after
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis 1 us 
 
 all, the chief end in war I do not believe in planning 
 campaigns until you have won your first battle 
 while the other might possibly win all his battles 
 and yet be no nearer his goal. I hope you follow me, 
 Tavernay. It is the great lover who is also the great 
 soldier, the man who can write the most beautiful 
 verses without ever having seen a woman who was 
 worthy to read them, and who can work out the most 
 difficult chess problem in a way which was never 
 conceived by its author as possible. The enemy 
 have come far enough, sir ; give the artillery orders 
 to open fire." 
 
 I did so and that moment a runner came up to 
 report from the Signal Officer at the farm that all 
 lines were down past the artillery control post. He 
 handed me the last mutilated message that had come 
 through ! " Y Division AAA French two divisions 
 
 reported at " the rest, as Shakespeare says, was 
 
 silence. 
 
 Our guns opened with a roar, to which the Germans 
 almost immediately replied with twice the volume. 
 But whereas they were searching for our battery 
 positions we laid down a definite barrage. It caught 
 their infantry midway between the two lines of 
 trenches, some shells bursting harmlessly between 
 the small shallow columns, others annihilating a 
 whole squad or platoon at a time. It caught their 
 field pieces galloping up in support, or in the act of 
 unlimbering, and blew their carriages to pieces. Still, 
 however, the enemy infantry pushed steadily on, 
 winding their way through the barrage. 
 
 Suddenly, when they were within about four 
 hundred yards of our lines, their scouts seemed to 
 take alarm. I saw signals being passed back, and
 
 114 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 their leading columns began to shake themselves 
 out into extended order. At the same moment, we 
 opened fire and seemed literally to blow their leading 
 files off the ground. They melted and withered, but, 
 as our surprise fire sank down in volume and as fresh 
 waves caught them up, came gallantly on again. 
 It was enthralling to watch them. 
 
 Suddenly, I noticed that General Browne was no 
 longer beside me. He had repossessed himself of 
 the telescope, and was standing some little distance 
 away from the O.Pip endeavouring to ^ook through 
 the telescope which he held unsteadily in one hand. 
 
 " What is the use of looking in front of you, 
 Tavernay ? " he called out to me. " I know perfectly 
 well what will happen there. We shall hold them 
 once but not twice. It is here behind you that the 
 battle is being won or lost. If the French are at 
 Epernay " naming a village which was hidden in 
 a dip of the country behind us " we shall win ; if 
 not, we won't. Come here ! " 
 
 I went to him, and standing behind me he laid the 
 telescope over my right shoulder and turned it on the 
 road behind us. I remember that I had to bend over 
 to enable him to see. Long and anxiously he scanned 
 the roads now plainly visible in the growing light. 
 
 Suddenly, with a yell of rage, he dropped the tele- 
 scope and danced upon it, and then kicked it away 
 with his foot. His features were contorted with 
 passion, and he shook his fist towards the West. 
 
 "They are not coming," he yelled. "These dam- 
 ned French will be too late again. I tell you they 
 are fools and cannot march. All my generals are fools. 
 Was ever a man so unfortunate to have only idiots 
 and imbeciles to command ! Come, I will go and
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 115 
 
 die at the head of my troops. We must hold them 
 yet." 
 
 He turned and set off at an ungainly trot for the 
 line. I gave the A.D.C. some instructions and then 
 followed him. 
 
 Never have I run such a race. In spite of the 
 seriousness of it all, I could hardly keep from laughing, 
 so ridiculous did the fat little figure, with the wind 
 blowing his coat out behind him, appear. On and on 
 he went, falling into shell-holes and scrambling up 
 again, tearing himself on bits of forgotten wire, cursing 
 and screaming. When I at last caught up to him he 
 was almost crying with pain and rage. I took his arm 
 and together we hurried on, the shells dropping all 
 round us. Once a big one burst close beside us and blew 
 us off our feet. I do not know how we ever got through. 
 
 Even as we ran I was able to notice the turmoil 
 that was going on above us. We must have massed, 
 I don't know how many squadrons, behind this front. 
 Apparently this fight meant more than I had dreamed. 
 Two machines dropped close beside us, both, as I was 
 glad to note, were Huns. Evidently, we were holding 
 our " ground " in the air. 
 
 At last we got to the trenches where a desperate 
 struggle was in progress. In places, as I could see at a 
 glance, the Germans would never reach us in face of 
 our rifle and machine-gun fire ; elsewhere they had 
 already done so, and a hand to hand fight was going on. 
 Straight for one of these made General Browne, and 
 flung himself into the fray, with me after him. A 
 huge German rifleman had got a boy officer of ours 
 down, and was in the act of bayoneting the lad through 
 the stomach as he lay on the ground, when General 
 Browne hurled his steel hat in the man's face, and
 
 116 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 followed this up by falling upon him literally with 
 tooth and nail, biting and scratching. It was as if a 
 fat little pug-dog were trying to worry a mastiff, for 
 the German was a huge flaxen bearded brute of a 
 man and stood at least six foot high. He flung the 
 General gasping from him with a drive of his rifle 
 butt to the stomach, and was in the act of administering 
 the coup de grace when I shot him through the head. 
 There came a rush with bayonet and bomb, led by 
 the subaltern whom we had just rescued, and the 
 enemy were driven out. I helped the General, gasp- 
 ing and panting, to his feet, and ventured to remon- 
 strate with him on his foolhardiness. As soon as he 
 had got his breath he screamed at me : 
 
 " I cannot die, I tell you. I cannot die. Mon 
 dieu, how often have I tried to die ! " and then in a 
 calmer voice, " But you are right. Come." 
 
 Up and down the line we went, encouraging, en- 
 treating. " Courage, my children," the General would 
 cry, " hold but this once and the French will be here. 
 They are coming even now. Only this once, mes 
 enfants. I swear to you. I, your General." Those 
 who heard him seemed highly amused, but I noticed 
 that the men around him, wherever he was, fought 
 like demons and no Huns got to him again. At last 
 it was over ; and pursued by our fire the enemy broke 
 for their trenches, so lately ours. There they would 
 lick their wounds like tigers and like tigers come again. 
 
 Back we went to our O.Pip, for the General's 
 position was obviously there. On the way he pointed 
 out to me how our planes still held the air, and with 
 the sloping country behind our ridge the enemy would 
 not be able to observe the coming of the French if 
 they came.
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 
 
 " These English fight well," he said. " They always 
 told me that, but I did not believe it until I knew. 
 Now I wish there were more of them instead of less. 
 Only once have I seen them tight before." 
 
 I thought him quite mad, but we were obviously 
 doing well under a mad general ! 
 
 Back at our old position he seized my field-glasses 
 and with a shaking hand put them to his eyes. No 
 sooner had he done so then he gave a shout of joy. 
 
 " They come ; they come," he cried, " see them as 
 they come. Look you, Tavernay, and tell me who 
 they are ! " 
 
 He thrust the glasses at me, and I looked long and 
 carefully. Far off along the brown winding road 
 I could just see a moving smudge, tipped with some- 
 thing that shone and gleamed. French or British 
 I knew not. I heard an oath beside me. 
 
 " Who are they, I say ? Can't you see, man ? " 
 He thrust a face distorted with passion into mine and 
 shook his fist at me. " They are not Prussians ; 
 surely they can't be Prussians. If you say they are 
 Prussians, man, I will have you shot. It's him at 
 last. Damn you, don't you know Frenchmen when 
 you see them ? I know it is him. They can't 
 they must not be Prussians ! " 
 
 At that moment a figure in a sky-blue uniform 
 coated with dust came round a bend in the road 
 immediately below us on a motor bike. He was head- 
 ing for our headquarters in the farm-house. All doubts 
 were set at rest though why he should imagine 
 Prussians in his rear I could not guess they were French . 
 
 " Come," he said, " we will go and meet them. I 
 told you they were French, not Prussians. They 
 could not be Prussians, you know. My God ! How
 
 118 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 I loathe the sight of Prussians stealing up behind one. 
 I don't know why I should have thought them 
 Prussians, save that I dream of them so often. But 
 he could not fail me twice, could he ? Come ! " 
 
 Hardly had we reached the farm-house when a grey 
 French staff-car drove up, and a tall distinguished 
 looking officer with grey hair entered the room, 
 followed by his staff. General Browne stepped for- 
 ward to meet them. 
 
 " Have I the honour of speaking to the Commander 
 of this so gallant division ? " asked the Frenchman 
 and promptly embraced the General. 
 
 I extricated them with difficulty and the two general 
 officers sat down at my box with their two maps. 
 
 " I have one division here, mon general," said the 
 Frenchman, " and another is close behind. As you 
 are so hard pressed I shall counter-attack at once, 
 here, I think," and he laid his finger on the map. 
 
 " No, sir, these are not my orders and I am in com- 
 mand of the defence of this section." 
 
 The Frenchman raised a deprecating palm in the 
 air. 
 
 " Oh, monsieur le general, let us not converse on 
 these terms." 
 
 " Very well. But please, sir, understand that you 
 are under my orders as officer commanding this sector 
 of the defence." 
 
 The other general flushed. 
 
 " I will have two complete French divisions here 
 within an hour, monsieur ; you, I imagine " and 
 he bowed " are, to your honour be it said, less than 
 a brigade." 
 
 " Nevertheless, sir, your orders are to act under 
 me. Is it not so ? "
 
 Ave Caesar Immor tails ! H9 
 
 The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " It is true that my instructions are to assist the 
 local commander on the spot in carrying out any plan 
 that he may have conceived to aid the defence. You 
 have a plan, air, different from mine ? " 
 
 " I have. These are your orders. You will move 
 your advanced troops up to this line which I draw 
 on the map here. Not a man under your command 
 will cross it until I give the word. The enemy will 
 attack again in an hour's time. He cannot know that 
 you are here." 
 
 " But, mon general, can you hold him this time ? " 
 
 " No, but we can do better ; we can throw him into 
 confusion and then " he swept his hand over the 
 map. " Do not dig your field guns in, sir, you will 
 be moving them soon." 
 
 " But when I attack, if I open fire, shall I not kill 
 some of your so gallant soldiers ? " 
 
 " When you attack, sir, there will be so few of them 
 left that you will probably miss them " 
 
 He stood up and so did the other. I can see that 
 scene now, in that little whitewashed room, if I shut 
 my eyes. The tall old Frenchman confronting our 
 Brigadier. Then they shook hands and saluted. 
 
 As the French general reached the door General 
 Browne started speaking again in French. Never 
 have I heard French spoken so quickly. As far as I 
 could follow it he was going over the general scheme 
 for the day, amplifying it and filling in details. At 
 the end the Frenchman replied meekly : 
 
 " Oui, mon general," saluted again and left the 
 room. 
 
 A minute later General Browne went out into the 
 garden.
 
 120 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Bissette turned an amazed face to me. 
 
 "Where did the General learn to speak French 
 like that, Major ? It was Gascon ; no Prove^al. 
 I am of the South, but I never heard anything quite 
 like it before. I should not say that he was born in 
 France." 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Bissette," I said crossly, for 
 the thing was getting on my nerves. " Of course he 
 wasn't born in France. You know quite well he was 
 born in Glasgow." 
 
 In a quarter of an hour we all went back to the old 
 O.Pip, where we were joined by General de Saint - 
 Maurice with a few of his officers. 
 
 The Hun attack when it came was a repetition of 
 the last one on a larger scale. Our line held them up 
 for half an hour before it gave and by that time had 
 disorganized the whole attack, except for the German 
 reserves. These were now pushed recklessly in from 
 the flank with the evident intention of overrunning 
 our gun positions. Not a Frenchman was to be seen 
 and our planes were still in the ascendant. 
 
 General Browne stood upright beside the O.Pip 
 making no attempt at concealment. One arm was 
 still in the breast of his coat ; the other clutched the 
 lapel. The rest of us stood or lay behind him. Shells 
 began to drop round. 
 
 At last he turned to the other and spoke : 
 
 " Laissez-aller, monsieur le mare"chal." 
 
 A French officer seized the phone and spoke down 
 it, and in ten seconds' time the noise of the German 
 guns was broken by a greater impact of sound. The 
 air seemed to quiver with the deep boom of the heavies, 
 and to be stabbed again and again by the angry bark
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 121 
 
 of the seventy-fives. Behind their barrage the French 
 infantry began to advance. 
 
 They came on in perfect order in artillery formation, 
 preceded by lines of infantry in extended order. At 
 the sight General Browne seized General de Saint- 
 Maurice by the lobe of his left ear. 
 
 " Ah, that is the way to do it, mon ami," he cried, 
 " first a cloud of skirmishers and then your columns 
 behind them." 
 
 The other rubbed his ear and said something which 
 I could not catch. 
 
 The French were now almost up to the broken 
 German advance. The leading columns had already 
 extended. Nothing could stop them. The German 
 infantry went down submerged before them, as does 
 a sand bar before some gigantic wave, but did not 
 reappear. Instead, the whole mass rolled back upon 
 the line of trenches. The barrage lifted and came 
 down behind them. 
 
 Suddenly General Browne turned furiously on 
 Saint-Maurice. 
 
 " God damn you, sir, you are killing my men. Stop 
 your infernal guns at once I say. Look at that one 
 dropping short." He swore at him again savagely. 
 
 The Frenchman kept calm under the insult. 
 
 " They are your own orders, sir," he said, " and the 
 barrage will lift now." 
 
 Even as he spoke it did so, and the French reached 
 the line. It hung for a minute like a long cluster 
 of bees swaying both ways at once before it broke. 
 Then I could see the French seventy-fives pulled and 
 manhandled into action between the columns of their 
 infantry and the gunners shooting over open sights at 
 five hundred yards range and tearing red lanes through
 
 122 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 the broken enemy. It was an hour such as pays the 
 artillery for weeks and months of the dull and danger- 
 ous routine work that usually falls to their share. 
 
 " It is all over," said General Browne. " This is 
 how I planned it. This is how it should have gone." 
 
 He turned to the few men the offscourings of 
 headquarters who were behind, held his hat above 
 his head, and shouted something at them to which 
 they replied with a cheer. I did not hear what he 
 said, for at that moment I heard a shell coming. 
 It came and burst some distance away, throwing up 
 a cloud of earth and stones which rattled off our 
 helmets. I turned laughing, as did the others, to 
 see the General lying upon the ground with the blood 
 oozing from his head. It is strange how a big shell 
 can burst two hundred yards off, apparently harm- 
 lessly, and just one small fragment catch a man. 
 Bissette, who was nearest to him raised him in his 
 arms, but he was dead. 
 
 We advanced two miles before we were halted by 
 orders from behind. 
 
 We carried the General back and laid him upon two 
 chairs in the inner room. Bissette would not believe 
 that he was dead. 
 
 We buried him next day beneath the lone tree in 
 the little garden. I remember that Bissette threw 
 some early spring violets which he had gathered into 
 the grave, and talked a lot of nonsense afterwards. 
 He seems to be full of silly ideas and theories. 
 
 I am writing this account of what happened in 
 hospital where I have been for six weeks. Of course 
 I do not believe what Bissette says, but it is very 
 strange. The strangest thing of all, in my opinion, is 
 that our Signals have no record of any orders coming
 
 Ave Caesar Immortalis ! 123 
 
 to General Browne before my telephone conversation 
 with Army Headquarters. I cannot imagine how he 
 got them. Bissette does not see anything strange 
 in this at all. 
 
 I have been reading a lot of books while in bed 
 about Napoleon and Waterloo, which Bissette has sent 
 me. He wants to make me agree with him " con- 
 vert " me, he says. He will never do that. 
 
 It is all very curious, however. Thank heaven 
 the French came up, or our goose would have been 
 burnt to cinders. Our battle certainly did bear some 
 resemblance on a small scale to Waterloo. 
 
 I have been looking at a picture of Napoleon at 
 Austerlitz standing on the top of a hill with his staff 
 behind him. I can see this quite clearly until I shut 
 the book. Then it becomes blurred and Napoleon's 
 face changes to that of General Browne. It is the 
 same with a lot of other pictures. 
 
 " That is my friend's story," said Monsieur Tardieu, 
 laying his hands on the top of the manuscript and 
 studying the backs of his fingers. " He was not, as 
 you will have perceived, an imaginative man." 
 
 " But surely " broke in Jones. 
 
 " But how else do you account for it ? " said Mon- 
 sieur Tardieu. 
 
 " No, messieurs," he continued, " nor am I over- 
 much given to believing things, but yet it is possible 
 that, given certain conditions, certain things happen. 
 Why may we not at certain crises come under the 
 influence of a personality greater than our own and all 
 the stronger for being incorporeal ? I have seen General 
 Foch praying by himself in the little church at Cassel 
 in the hour of tribulation, and walking by himself in
 
 124 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 the garden at Doullens in the hour of anxiety and 
 perplexity. I have seen Marshal Foch tracing plans 
 in the gravel in that same garden with his stick before 
 the hour of triumph. I for one believe that when 
 General de Saint-Maurice, general of division of the 
 armies of the Republic, stood at the salute, rigid as 
 the ramrod from one of the rifles with which he fought 
 in his youth, before the body of General Browne, 
 the soul of a greater soldier than either was near at 
 hand. One who at Jena and Auerstadt broke the 
 military domination of Prussia in two battles on a 
 single day. We have also, have we not, seen miracles 
 in our time, messieurs ? They talk of Gouraud's 
 tactics in the Champagne, which three months later 
 saved Rheims again and Paris, but I, messieurs, saw 
 them first that day employed by a British brigadier." 
 
 There was a pause while he studied the blue veins in 
 his hands. 
 
 " Shall I tell you, messieurs, the words which 
 General Browne spoke to his little reserve just before 
 he was killed the words which Major Tavernay did 
 not hear ? They were ' Up Guards, and at them,' 
 and he was smiling as if amused at something, and 
 yet sadly, when he was killed. You are in the Garde 
 Anglaise, are you not, Mr. Etherington ? " 
 
 " Did Bissette hear what he said ? " asked Jones. 
 
 " Perhaps I was Bissette, Mr. Jones," replied 
 Monsieur Tardieu. 
 
 " And you really believe that, sir ? " asked Jones 
 again. 
 
 " How else do you account for it, messieurs ? " 
 said Monsieur Tardieu.
 
 ( 125 ) 
 
 XI 
 
 AN INTERLUDE OP WAR 
 
 THE village lies on the main road from St. Pol to 
 Boulogne, which here runs through neat whitewashed 
 cottages, overgrown with climbing honeysuckle and 
 roses and shaded by the chestnut -trees, instead of 
 the open fields. Go east, up the vanishing road, 
 and a few hours' ride or drive will bring you to the 
 war-zone proper with its ring after ring of deserted 
 broken trenches ; west, and you will reach in shorter 
 time the revelry of Etaples or Boulogne. Groups of 
 soldiers seem to be perpetually standing, with their packs 
 on their backs and steel helmets strapped on top, 
 outside the door of the village inn in the little square. 
 Some are dusty and travel-stained, others not. They 
 are looking for suitable transport up or down the 
 road. One pictures them standing thus these past 
 four years. 
 
 Doubtless in the days before the war mine host 
 would often sit on the little rustic bench, which en- 
 circles the bole of the great chestnut-tree planted 
 with Gallic precision in the exact centre of the square. 
 The gossips of the village society would assemble here 
 of a May evening, as now, when all the flowers of the 
 tree are out above their heads, and discuss the doings 
 of greater and lesser men. Not these days, however, 
 for it would be too dusty a business. The eternally
 
 126 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 passing traffic holds undisputed title to the main street 
 of the village ; not even an errant hen, or child, seems 
 ever to cross it now. Only the soldiers use the bench 
 to-day ; sometimes an odd permissionnaire, from the 
 armies to the south, returned to his native village for 
 a while. The blue of his uniform blends strangely 
 well with the rest of the scene. 
 
 It is a charming peaceful village, even though set 
 out along one of the main arteries of war, though 
 many soldiers inhabit here. The dust from the high- 
 road, raised by every species of military vehicle, from 
 the stately cloud of the ponderous slow-moving lorry, 
 to the lighter and more volatile essence of the aristo- 
 cratic staff-car, seems not to settle on those gardens 
 behind the houses. The leaves of the creepers on the 
 fronts, of the trees in the street, may be covered over 
 with a grey film turning their verdant springtime 
 green to the darker shade of August, but there the 
 lilac and roses of Picardy bloom unstained. It is a 
 tangle and riot of flowers, growing over the low stone 
 walls and peering above the fences, which are meant 
 to keep garden from garden. 
 
 There are not many men in the village apart from 
 the British soldiers. Old men and boys, for the rest 
 are soldiering elsewhere. The women seem to do 
 everything in the fields and gardens, and in the houses 
 where are lodged their guests. Shrewd, practical, and 
 kindly, as all French women in the country are, they 
 remind one of the Scotch in many ways, and seem to 
 change in a few years from young girlhood to middle 
 age. There would appear to be but few women here 
 who are in their thirties. Only in their sublime 
 indifference to the most elementary principles of 
 sanitation do they fail to win our confidence. We
 
 An Interlude of War 12? 
 
 cannot treat an open midden in the courtyard, or last 
 year's refuse amidst the rose garden, as anything save 
 out of place. Perhaps in a few more years, how- 
 ever 1 
 
 The village lies in the midst of a valley which runs 
 almost as straight as a furrow for miles. At the foot 
 of the valley is a little stream, dignified on the maps 
 with the title of river clear, limpid, and withal swift- 
 flowing. Up from this level rise on both sides the 
 hills, the gently sloping flanks of the valley, here 
 wooded and there billowing outwards in fields of corn. 
 Half-way up one side, mid-way between the river and 
 the top, lies the village with its old church standing 
 apart on a knoll by itself. All up and down the 
 valley, far as the eye can reach, rise other spires, each 
 standing for its own village lost among the dense 
 foliage of the trees. 
 
 At one point another valley runs at right angles to 
 the first on the heights above, but not so deep as it. 
 It stops up there and seems shut off from the greater, 
 and then to fall down towards it, on a convex slope. 
 A road, white amidst the surrounding green, goes 
 winding up, and where it crosses the main road is the 
 village square. The road continues upwards, BO that 
 looking down we can see the village, all white and 
 green and lilac, and then falls into the other valley, 
 along the bottom of which it runs, parallel to its stream 
 a tributary of the first. Above is the blue horizon 
 and light fleecy clouds of early summer. 
 
 Words may perhaps give a geometric idea of the 
 lie of the land ; but none can paint its beauty, with 
 such diversity of stream, here lost in the woods, there 
 running clearly to be seen through a few scattered 
 trees, of field and wooded knoll, garden and little dell.
 
 128 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Half-way up this valley, which like the other runs 
 from village to village, is situated the military school. 
 Once it had lain nearer feudal St. Pol, but in March the 
 enemy had begun to shell the place as they crept ever 
 nearer Arras. No use in that, so it had been moved 
 here, where the twin valleys lent many features for 
 mimic tactics, where the wooden bridges over the 
 river could be held or blown up at will. Here, for a 
 month at a time, came sixty officers and others from 
 out the line to rest and practise open warfare, then 
 to return again and help to stay the battle. For 
 most it was an interlude of war. 
 
 The village held many delights which might have 
 passed unnoticed in days of peace, but now were 
 luxuries and all the more valued from old associations. 
 One could stand on the bridge and watch the fish and 
 think of past conquests over salmon. There was one 
 estaminet, that purported to be an officers' club, 
 where the French beer was disguised in English bottles. 
 At another a musical box and C6lestine to set it 
 going. 
 
 The school lay in a field, which sloped gently down 
 from the wood to the road. The buildings, wooden 
 huts, formed four sides of a square, with the parade 
 ground in the centre. Some of the huts seemed to be 
 set actually in the wood, so thick was the foliage at 
 its outskirts. Below the road there ran a little silvery 
 stream where all day long soldiers seemed to bathe. 
 
 It is a most fair forest, one of the favourite hunting- 
 grounds of the old French kings. A great forest 
 covering the country-side for miles. The govern- 
 ment has taken care to preserve it, so that not a stick 
 is ever taken away, and throughout its length it is as 
 nature is making it every day. One meets no woods-
 
 An Interlude of War 129 
 
 men therein or hunters ; can walk for miles without 
 seeing anyone at all. There is no order there which 
 is not nature's, and the ferns and undergrowth grow 
 as they please in wild profusion according to her plan. 
 Wild flowers pick out the rich ancient grass and spread 
 to the edges of the wood which, strengthened with the 
 small trees and undergrowth that find room to grow 
 there, seem almost as impassable as the heart of the 
 forest itself. 
 
 There are few paths throughout the wood to thread 
 its glories, yet underneath its green welkin it has a 
 topography of its own of hill and dale and running 
 water. Here the great trees grow close together, 
 and at noon between their trunks it is dark as night ; 
 there they open out so that the eye can separate the 
 foliage and branches of each above, can even catch 
 glimpses of the blue sky which seems, thus seen, to 
 belong to another world. The eye can pass down deep 
 glades, long alley-ways of trees, their branches twined 
 above, and understand whence came the dream of 
 Canterbury and of Rheims. The sun pierces through 
 the boughs and weaves a dancing golden pattern on 
 the grass. The air is full of the scent of wild-flowers 
 and of spring. The birds sing in the trees and bright- 
 coloured butterflies flit from bush to bush. 
 
 The wood has thrown its spell over the inhabitants 
 of the camp, as it has done over others of their pro- 
 fession for so many years. In the early morning, 
 while yet abed or shaving beneath the trees, they 
 can hear the cuckoo there and at night the nightin- 
 gale. In the afternoon, when the day's work is over, 
 there are always some who walk through the wood 
 to the ancient town beyond, whose battlements are 
 washed on two sides by its sea of green.
 
 130 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 To walk in the wood then, when the soft afternoon 
 sunlight has filled it, mingling its warm gold with all 
 the greens and other tints, when a gentle breeze is 
 scarce stirring in the tree-tops and beneath the ferns 
 are dancing gently to the tune, is to forget the war 
 and think of beauty only. One-half expects to find 
 the boastful Bottom and his simple crew rehearsing 
 their interlude, here in this dell, for instance. 
 
 Hesdin is a picturesque old mediaeval town, now 
 the headquarters of the British Third Army. One 
 sees its towers, rising out of the hollow in which the 
 town is set, through openings in the wood. It is a 
 town of old streets and houses, of boulevards where 
 once were ramparts, a delight to the eye that has been 
 surfeited by the raw crudity of modern war. The 
 river runs through the town, and the quaint old houses 
 grow sheer to its bank, affording a vista most pictur- 
 esque to those who stand upon the bridge. Buy a 
 picture-postcard of the town as it was three hundred 
 years ago, and you will notice no difference save that 
 the walls are gone. 
 
 The history of Hesdin is one of warfare and capture 
 oft repeated, so that it accords well with its past that 
 it should be full of soldiers to-day. Charles V founded 
 it in 1554 on a new site, five kilometres away from 
 that more ancient Hesdin which the year before he 
 had taken from the French and sacked. A quiet 
 village stands on the site of Viel Hesdin now ; and the 
 soldier returning to the school at night, as he passes 
 through it, hears but from high aloft the chime of its 
 old clock to remind him that this should not be as 
 other villages ; and, as he looks up, a cloud drifts over 
 the moon and the face of the clock disappears with 
 its last note. The French re-took Hesdin in 1639,
 
 An Interlude of War isi 
 
 their general, the Due de la Meilleraye, receiving the 
 baton of Marshal of France in the breach of the town's 
 wall. Dumas is said to have used this incident in his 
 account of the death of d'Artagnan. 
 
 To-day the town is full of military bustle, as befits 
 an army headquarters at the climax and crisis of the 
 war. Staff-cars flash up and down its streets, trans- 
 port goes rattling over its ancient cobbles. There 
 is much saluting, and notices in French and English 
 posted up at every corner. Yet, sitting on the bench 
 in the square, under the Jidtel de wile, or outside the 
 courtyard of the inevitable Hotel de France, it is 
 easy to picture again the days when vivacious French- 
 man and stately Spaniard jostled each other in her 
 streets. The cars change to chargers, the steel helmets 
 to morions, the atmosphere remains the same. 
 Though French now, as is all this country, Hesdin 
 will always be half-Spanish in appearance, a reminder, 
 like Arras and Bthune, of the days when it was part 
 of the Hapsburg empire of the Spains and took its 
 laws from Madrid and not from Paris. 
 
 Returning to camp, the moon is up and the gold of 
 the forest turned to silver : the young grace of the 
 spring leaves and delicate tracery of the ferns are like 
 fine fretwork washed in silver. One passes many a 
 grassy bank, overgrown with flowers, where Titania 
 might be resting had we but eyes young enough to 
 see. This might be that other wood near Athens, 
 which is yet in Warwickshire, and the figures of the 
 fantastic pah's of lovers flitting by at the end of yonder 
 glade. But all we see is a charcoal-burner going 
 home to his rough hut of unpainted pine in the midst 
 of one of the clearings in the forest. 
 
 At the week-ends, there is the chance of going
 
 132 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 farther afield. The method is always the same : to 
 wait at the corner and hail a passing vehicle going 
 west. The request for a ride is never refused, for 
 such is the unwritten law of the road throughout the 
 British zone in France ; an enactment as well known 
 as others more official. So off one goes on car or 
 lorry, ambulance or trailer. It is only a two hours' 
 ride along the dusty road to reach the coast, to bathe 
 in the sea and eat lobsters at Paris Plage, or to 
 the more stern delights of the Officers' Club at 
 Boulogne. 
 
 Thus can one gain Montreuil, its ancient battle- 
 ments and walls rising high above the road on the 
 left-hand side, while on the right it sinks down to the 
 valley, the railway station and the more modern 
 town. But we go to the left, and up and through the 
 long winding approach to the city set on the top of 
 the hill. It is like entering Mont St. Michel on the 
 Norman coast. The houses seem to hang over the 
 narrow road. We pass through the massive gateway, 
 fronting the little square, and are challenged by a 
 khaki-clad sentry instead of the more normal man-at- 
 arms. 
 
 Inside in the winding streets the enchantment is 
 redoubled of the mediaeval town which has outgrown 
 its walls. All the houses are old, but here and there 
 is set one that seems no older than the seventeenth 
 century among the rest, built of old brick and old 
 stone, with quaintly carved and jutting gables and 
 narrow slits of windows. There can be seen here 
 every style of domestic architecture known to France 
 from the days of the Valois kings. 
 
 To walk along the top of the ramparts is to realize 
 the enormous strength of the place throughout the
 
 An Interlude of War 133 
 
 middle ages. The glacis falls down from the foot of 
 the monstrously thick walls at a sheer smooth angle 
 to mingle with the corn-fields at its foot. There is a 
 broad view of the smiling country-side for miles 
 around. The great deep moat between the two 
 circuits of walls is like the bed of an ancient river 
 with a tangled stream of flowers. The grass has 
 overgrown the mellow old brick walls and has climbed 
 out here and there among its crannies. At one corner 
 of the town is the ancient citadel where died Queen 
 Berthe deserted of Philip I. There are Roman re- 
 mains beneath the mediaeval aspect of the town, and 
 in the old church spoils of the crusades from Venice 
 and Byzantium. 
 
 In summer, when the chestnut-trees are in bloom 
 with the lilacs and magnolias, the old town, set on a 
 high hill, is like a sweetly-scented missal of the middle 
 ages that has come down to us mellowed but not 
 gnawed by time ; and to wander from one of its quaint 
 old gardens to another, set among the ancient houses 
 and fortifications, is to understand why the garden 
 figures so largely in the French romance of the twelfth 
 century and thus through the whole of mediaeval 
 literature ; is to see places where the Rose might 
 have grown and all fair ladies dwelt. 
 
 The old inn, the Hotel de France, which looks as if it 
 might have sheltered those who rode from Paris on 
 the morrow of St. Bartholomew, has grown round 
 its court, now full of vines. One sleeps in low ceilinged 
 rooms, in vast beds ; and at night, leaning out of the 
 window, the stone street beneath is bathed in moon- 
 light, which lies on every sloping roof and ancient 
 niche and cornice. Lying in bed one hears the voices 
 and challenge of the picket as it passes, as it must
 
 134 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 have done here so often, on so many different occa- 
 sions and in diverse forms and garments, throughout 
 these centuries. Look out of the window again, and 
 you will see the lantern they carry gleaming in the 
 darkness below. Anon silence falls, save for the jokes 
 of Whitechapel called across from house to house in 
 this heart of mediaeval France. A popular song of 
 the London music halls is whistled in the street be- 
 neath the open window, sounds of laughter and 
 women's voices from the next garden suggest that 
 the entente is progressing and that Montreuil, grown 
 old in the wars, is used to foreign soldiers within its 
 gates and knows how to give and take. 
 
 Later in the night a shrill whistle sounds and there 
 is the crash and blinding flash of exploding bombs. 
 The raiding squadrons seem to hum directly over the 
 house, to brush its roof with their wings. A lone 
 airship looks like a gigantic moth against the moon. 
 There is a continuous whirr and noise in the streets 
 of the little town, for all the staff-cars packed in the 
 big square, under orders, seek the open country. It 
 is as if in the darkness the street below were again 
 full of figures in armour, mounted upon snorting, 
 prancing steeds canopied alike in mail. The raiders 
 pass and are gone, though they may return. In any 
 case the night will not regain its silence before the 
 coming of the dawn. To-morrow nay, to-day 
 rather mine host will talk of his experiences, and 
 there will be fresh regulations enacted anent the 
 showing of candles at a window. 
 
 It is an historic stretch of road from Etaples to 
 Arras, running past many an ancient town and attend- 
 ant fortress. To-day with its parallel railroad feeding 
 the fighting troops in front of Arras, it is one of the
 
 An Interlude of War 135 
 
 main arteries in a war greater than any of those looked 
 out on, in all their history that is past. There is many 
 a crossing there to-day that may prove as dangerous 
 as the " pont perilous " of these older times.
 
 ( 136) 
 
 XII 
 THE BATTLE 
 
 THE sun beat vertically down on both sides alike ; 
 and, what with its rays and those others that came 
 from the guns, the heat was terrific. It was an inferno 
 of noise and smoke, of blood and the noxious reek of 
 high explosive and of gas. The gunners laboured at 
 the guns, feeding their charges, now grown hot from 
 surfeit of such fare like so many brazen images of 
 Moloch, with bare bodies and matted clinging hair. 
 The infantry fought and died in their shirt sleeves, 
 and coming upon one of these quiet bodies among 
 the fields, with the young smooth face upturned to 
 heaven and clear unwinking eyes, it might have been 
 a farmer's boy resting, with his head on his arm, at 
 the noonday heat. 
 
 It was the beginning of the end. The great four 
 years' battle was opening out like a river, which no 
 longer thunders along in full spate, one mighty flood 
 confined in a single channel ; but now, as if conscious 
 that its end is near, meeting the tenacious resistance 
 of the sand, which may be submerged but never 
 removed from its course, spreads out into a dozen 
 shallow channels over its surface and thereby glides 
 quietly to the sea. The country over which they 
 were fighting was a pleasant landscape of field and 
 orchard, meadowland and plough. All the shell- 
 holes there were new and fresh, for, in those early
 
 The Battle 137 
 
 months, the German river of war had flowed over it 
 without stopping ; and now, being dammed, was hither 
 come again on its backward course. The ground 
 furnished too great a contrast to what was being 
 done thereon, and those accustomed to the eternal 
 slaughter, in its proper setting of mud and filthy 
 grey trench, were startled to find it still here among 
 the corn and flowers. Mars and his close friend and 
 ally, the Devil, were here fouling the country-side ; 
 would they pass and leave the trail of their slime 
 behind them, or camp for some days, or weeks, and 
 blot its beauty out for ever ? 
 
 Meantime, while the question was being decided, 
 men no longer died in swathes, but here and there 
 over a larger area in pairs and bunches. Old women 
 came from behind the barns and showed our scouts the 
 figures of their predecessors lying stiff and soiled 
 beneath the hayrick or in the shadow of the wall. 
 There was blood among the roses in the garden, 
 splashes of it on the white walls of the cottages ; 
 blood lent a darker shade to the poppies in the field, 
 turning their flaunting scarlets to a common shade of 
 crimson. A battle fought here seemed more than 
 ever a desecration. And all the while the August 
 sun beat down on the steel-helmeted heads and naked 
 chests. There was so little to throw a shadow in all 
 that country-side. Even the trenches were too rude 
 and hasty to give much shade unless one crouched 
 in the foot, and then the sun seemed always directly 
 overhead. 
 
 This battle was the turn of the tide and, like that, 
 came slowly at first but inevitably and with ever in- 
 creasing speed. Only a few months before this same 
 brigade had made a relief here in the line, on the very
 
 138 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 fringe of the German offensive. They had found 
 their predecessors, shaken but tenacious, and holding 
 grimly on; though the whole line south of them had 
 gone to blazes and their right was resting on a newly - 
 created vast German salient. There they were, 
 perched high and dry on the edge of the boiling hostile 
 flood below, which every moment threatened to wash 
 away their foundations. It had been a hurried relief, 
 carried out confusedly in darkness and great dread 
 lest it should be interrupted. The new-comers, in 
 single file, went stumbling upwards throughout the 
 night towards they knew not what. 
 
 Meanwhile, in a broken dug-out in rear the Brigadier 
 who was being relieved, a choleric Anglo-Indian 
 veteran, a chutney and curry soldier, was endeavour- 
 ing to withdraw his shattered legions. He was in 
 telephonic communication with Major Jones, com- 
 manding the 9th Battalion of the Londonehire Regi- 
 ment, surrounded bv his prompting staff. 
 
 " Is that you, Jones ? How are you getting on, eh ? " 
 
 The General was all benignity in the certainty of 
 being relieved. 
 
 " Well, we're going now. You know those two 
 lots of yours, that I told you to send to a certain place, 
 get them in. And, by the way, Jones, what did you 
 send there ? " 
 
 " No, no, what strength did you send there ? " 
 
 " Where ! Where I told you to, of course. I'm 
 not going to give you names over the phone, man." 
 
 The General's face was beginning to assume a deeper 
 tinge of red. 
 
 " Well, look here, you've got four somethings in 
 your battalion, haven't you ? " 
 
 The General's face was now very red indeed.
 
 The Battle 139 
 
 " Very well then, how many have you sent to this 
 place that I'm talking about ? " 
 
 " No, damn it all, I'm not talking about machine 
 guns. Look at my message, will you." 
 
 " Oh, you haven't had my message. Well, look 
 here, Jones, you have got four somethings in the 
 battalion. Every battalion has 'em you know. What 
 I want to know now is whether they are all with you 
 or not. The message told you to send two, if possible, 
 somewhere else." 
 
 " Yes, but every battalion has four of them ; for- 
 mations you know " with the air of one explaining 
 things to a child. 
 
 " Well, God-damn it, man, you don't want me to 
 use the word ' COMPANIES ' over the phone, do 
 you ? " 
 
 The fatal word was roared out at the top of a 
 crescendo wave of bitterness at the denseness of his 
 subordinate, and to the great delectation of the new- 
 comers in his dug-out office. Such are the difficulties 
 of carrying on a war in accordance with the spirit 
 which speaks of a box of Mr. Mill's best as a box of 
 Chocolates Mark I. 
 
 It was strange to be back once more where this 
 little comedy, an interlude in a far greater all- 
 embracing tragedy, had been played ; to be once more 
 in that railway cutting, quiet now, which had then 
 been shelled so heavily, so that the Brigade-Major, 
 passing to his breakfast in the dug-out, would be 
 blown through the open door by a bursting shell. 
 We had started from here again and pushed the 
 battle back beyond. 
 
 To-day the attack had been meant as a surprise ; 
 but quick as we had been, the enemy's barrage had
 
 140 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 seemed only a few seconds later than our start, 
 though it appeared somehow always to miss our 
 troops going steadily forward in artillery formations. 
 Our attack had been made without artillery support, 
 perhaps for the sake of the surprise, or else because 
 the guns were moving forward. 
 
 A battalion headquarters in a concrete gun- 
 emplacement lay in the midst of the beaten zone. In 
 front of the entrance, sunk beneath the ground, was 
 a small trench lined also with concrete and like nothing 
 so much as the " area " of a London dwelling. It 
 looked to be a safe refuge and was full of the battah'on 
 runners. A shell lit right in it, in front of the door, 
 where two runners were sitting on the concrete step. 
 It broke the arm of one and removed the face and 
 scalp of the other. Those within heard a cry, "Oh, 
 sir, I'm hit," and through the entrance saw the 
 wounded man start up. The other fell over on to his 
 shoulder as he rose, and turning his head he found 
 himself staring into the red mask of his comrade's 
 face. " Oh, look at Bill, sir," he cried out to his 
 colonel inside and broke down in hysterical laughter. 
 
 And the attack goes on ; past where the German 
 soldiers had risen to meet it, coming from their little 
 two-man bivouacs of field grey. Peep inside one of 
 these and see their metal cups and gaudy boxes of 
 cigarettes from Leipzig or Cologne. Their bodies 
 lie there now, and the succeeding waves of our infantry, 
 parched with thirst, imsling the dead men's water- 
 bottles as they pass through, but cannot drink the 
 villainous acorn coffee which seems to be the German 
 field ration. 
 
 Here, at the juncture of the track with the sunken 
 road, a light machine gun has made a stout resistance.
 
 The Battle 141 
 
 It is thrown down now among its victims, and he that 
 served it writhes pinned to the side of the trench with 
 a bayonet, and the staff-captain coming on with the 
 next wave is glad that he carries a revolver. 
 
 And the attack goes on until it reaches the village, 
 where the German shells are now raising alternate 
 geysers of thick black smoke and red brick dust, and 
 passes through, removing more machine guns as it 
 goes, and out at the other side. Here it reaches its 
 objective in a sunken road and, the impetus that has 
 carried it on now spent, crouches there cowering and 
 quivering under the rain of shells. The men of two 
 battalions seem jammed into a single company and, 
 the other leaders gone, a captain takes command. 
 The attack is spent, has just managed to reach its line ; 
 and perhaps will have strength to cling there until 
 the arrival of night and the relief. The men are "all 
 in," after a night of waiting and the fighting of the day ; 
 strange how, once the objective gained, this is made 
 visible and manifest. And so they stay there, cling- 
 ing to the side of the sunken-road while the shells 
 whistle overhead and not always overhead. Lewis 
 guns are planted at intervals along the line, for six 
 hundred yards away at the other end of a level field 
 are the Germans with their machine guns too, and 
 perhaps a counter-attack will come. Messages go 
 back to turn our artillery on. 
 
 And so the long hours pass, the worst torture of 
 all that day, while men burrow into the bank for a few 
 inches shelter and pray for night. Every now and 
 then the Lewis guns sputter and chuckle to them- 
 selves in glee at nipping the counter-attack in the 
 bud. Always the shells fall along the road carrying 
 death and destruction to its occupants. Pass along
 
 142 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 it and you will Bee, besides all the men's backs, many 
 a white-faced figure, with clenched hands, that has 
 toppled backwards on to the road. There are no 
 marks on some to account for the look in their grey 
 ashen faces. At last the guns come and bring a relief, 
 though there is no diminution in the fierceness of 
 the enemy's shelling. 
 
 Night comes at last ; and through the fields behind, 
 reeking with the stench of powder and of carrion and 
 noisome with gas, that seems to thrust itself upwards 
 from these shell-holes and hang above and over the 
 whole battlefield like a foul cloud or vapour, which 
 one senses in some degree everywhere and in every- 
 thing, moves the relief. They will begin it all over 
 again in the morning. And the defenders of the 
 road, still shelled, go out backwards over the way 
 which they have come, and see its grim horrors now 
 some hours cold. Thus they will remember it when 
 the weary march to rest is long forgotten. 
 
 But the gate had been forced open and is now ajar, 
 and through it the water has begun to enter which is 
 to widen outwards into an all-subduing flood. Hence- 
 forth the battle will need a wider canvas and have 
 to be drawn in larger lines. Henceforth the flood 
 of victory will flow past towns, with never a ripple, 
 which would have been only half-gained before after 
 long months of mutual carnage. And in the turnip 
 fields outside their gates there will lie on their faces 
 a few burly bearded figures clad in grey, their helmets 
 pointing westwards, scarcely distinguishable from the 
 ground around them, mute witnesses to the cause that 
 has lost.
 
 ( 143 ) 
 
 XIII 
 THE LAST NIGHT 
 
 THE officer on duty at brigade headquarters, the 
 night of the lOth/llth November, 1918, sat on a 
 swivel chair at the quaintly carved old table of 
 Flemish oak in the library of the chateau at Mesvin 
 which is just outside of Mons. 
 
 A log fire burned brightly in the wide open hearth ; 
 its light flung off from the glazed surface of the old 
 Dutch tiles, to be reflected again from the pictures 
 and glass of the bookcases which covered the walls. 
 Heavy crimson curtains, on which the glow from the 
 fire played rosily, were drawn over the long windows. 
 Nothing in the room spoke of war, save the untidy 
 litter of steel helmets, gas masks, and revolvers in the 
 corner, dumped there by the brigade staff ere they 
 sought their beds in the upper regions of the house. 
 
 The field telephone on the table was for the moment 
 silent. 
 
 The officer gazed round at the unusual luxury of his 
 surroundings, and thought with a half -smile of the very 
 many quite different places in which he had been so 
 often on similar duty ; perhaps burrowing beneath 
 the ground for safety or squeezed against the side of 
 some rotten stinking trench. He could remember 
 long months and years of monotonous trench warfare, 
 varied by " shows " of ever increasing carnage. Then 
 this season of 1918, how badly it had begun in March
 
 144 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 with the great German drive on Amiens ! Last 
 August and Amiens again, our battle of Amiens this 
 time, and that dazzling first day's advance with its 
 great toll of ground gained and prisoners taken. The 
 desperate fighting which followed ; that had marked 
 the past summer as perhaps the bloodiest in all the 
 long history of war ! 
 
 He thought of the swift move northwards of the 
 corps ; marching and entraining by night ; hiding by 
 day in the empty villages, so that the Taubes might 
 not see. That midnight departure from Boves, the 
 suburb station of Amiens, and the crush in the train, 
 and the ludicrous plight of those left stranded there. 
 Then Arras and the breaking of the Drocourt-Queant 
 line, the beginning of that great battle which had led 
 them, thus far, half-way across Belgium. 
 
 In his mind's eye he could see the long stretch of the 
 Arras-Cambrai road, running like a dusty grey thread 
 through the shell-marked country. By many a ruined 
 village it runs, each one marking a day's stage in the 
 great advance ; each one the scene of combat far sur- 
 passing Waterloo. 
 
 He saw, set off a little from the road, the blood- 
 stained crest of Monchy raising its jagged fringe of 
 shattered houses around the crucifix. Monchy-le- 
 Preux it is called, and proud it should be, for these 
 battered German pill-boxes have changed hands 
 more often than did Hougomont. 
 
 Step by step the corps had fought its way along 
 both sides of that shell-swept road to Cambrai and 
 beyond. A triumphal way it is, a via sacra, but a via 
 dolorosa too, to many a Canadian mother. If the 
 stones of those that died to win it were set up along 
 its banks, instead of the tall slender trees that once
 
 The Last Night us 
 
 grew there, it would be a road of victory over death, 
 a holy way for ever. 
 
 He thought of Bourlon wood and of his friend that 
 died there at the second coming; the time we came 
 to stay. 
 
 The last fortnight had been a stirring one. Ever 
 since the capture of Cambrai semi-open warfare had 
 livened out into an affair of long marches and advanced- 
 guard actions. Companies went swinging in fours 
 down good metalled highways, as often as not of 
 recent and German construction, most unlike those 
 shell-tossed ones known now for so many years. To 
 men accustomed to slink along a road, keeping close 
 to one side, or to force their way knee deep in mud 
 through the intricacies of a half -known C.T., rarely 
 daring to raise a nose above its sides, the sense of 
 freedom and the prospect of the open country were 
 alike exhilarating in their novelty. The glorious 
 uncertainties of the early days of the war seemed to 
 have returned, though there were but few left now 
 to make comparisons. This time, moreover, we were 
 the hunters. One never knew what the next turn 
 in the road would bring. 
 
 Scouts had pressed on through villages where the 
 inhabitants turned out to greet them, the women 
 hanging flowers and favours around their helmets 
 and pressing on them cakes and ale. Stone-flagged 
 kitchens in ancient farm-houses saw again such 
 fraternizations and echoed with such laughter, as if 
 the troopers of Eugene and of Marlborough were 
 here once more, each fighting hard to understand the 
 other. Fall out your men for the ten minutes' rest 
 and, if not wise, you might have to search a dozen 
 back parlours to find them again. Yet over and
 
 146 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 above it all was a tense electric excitement saying 
 ever, " On, press on," and speeding up the whole. 
 The war had suddenly become a musical comedy, 
 unexpected in the situations ever freshly created, 
 fantastically incredible, so inconsistent was it with 
 all previous experience. This army had been bred 
 on trench warfare. A farce, moreover, in which each 
 soldier felt that he was himself in some part the hero. 
 
 For they knew that they were part of the great 
 advance ; were rolling up the retreat from Mons at 
 last. It thrilled them to march eastwards along roads 
 the sign-posts of which bore the magic legend, in 
 strange Gothic characters, " Nach Mons." There 
 was a novelty and spacious adventure about it all. 
 Each man hugged the secret feeling to himself that he 
 was at long last vindicating something, though it 
 might be only his own unpreparedness of four years 
 ago. " We always knew that you English would 
 come again," shrilled the Walloon women, and " lea 
 sales Bodies might have known it too ! " These men 
 were Canadians but that mattered less than nothing. 
 It was all in the family. 
 
 " There," said a man. " No, at that corner over 
 there, a party of your soldiers, four years ago when 
 
 the war began, fought to the last around their officer. 
 
 f t 
 
 They were Ecossais, Ecossais with jupons noirs, but 
 we knew that they would come back." 
 
 Well, the Canadian Black Watch were nearing Mons. 
 
 To one old dame, bed-ridden and feeble of intellect, 
 the years were as nought. All she knew was that 
 French's army had turned at last and that the Boches 
 were gone. 
 
 The retreating enemy fought fierce rear-guard 
 actions, mainly with machine guns, and conscienti-
 
 The Last Night 147 
 
 ously gas-shelled each village in turn after being 
 obliged to relinquish it. The inhabitants would 
 come out in the intervals of the shelling to view the 
 " battle " and encourage our men it reminded one 
 irresistibly of spectators cheering on a lot of Marathon 
 runners and at the first near-by explosion scurry 
 back to their well-known abris and shelters. It is 
 to be feared that they had often sought refuge there 
 from British bombs. 
 
 Only two days before the brigade had delivered 
 what many thought and some openly predicted 
 would be its last attack. For there was a sense of great 
 events on the move in the world behind our battles. 
 
 The fight itself, though it brought death to some, 
 was laughable in the sense of vast efforts planned to 
 overcome a resistance that, when the test came, had 
 vanished simply was not there. 
 
 Nothing could stop or keep up with the advancing 
 troops. Intelligence officers found their carefully 
 chosen observation posts of naught save a moment's 
 value in that hilly country. The panting staff were 
 left far in the rear. Headquarters were chosen on 
 the map and never occupied, being rendered im- 
 possibly useless almost immediately. The brigade 
 trailed a long string of such, left high and dry behind 
 it monuments of useless foresight. As for the 
 parties sent to occupy them, they simply waited for 
 a reasonable time and then pushed on for the next 
 likely looking spot. There, if they were lucky, they 
 might get in touch with the Brigadier ; or again they 
 might not. 
 
 The fight was like a set battle piece from a classic 
 historian ; followed the type that the experience of the 
 last few weeks had made familiar. A brigade in front
 
 148 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 was leap-frogged and a village entered, which the 
 Germans had left the night before. There were the 
 same enthusiastic people there, the same civic re- 
 ception in the midst of what after all was supposed 
 to be a battle, the same monstrous excavations blown 
 in the market-place and at the cross-roads. Only 
 the timely arrival of a shell could have put a term 
 to the impassioned eloquence of the soi-disant maire 
 and released the Brigadier from its spell, so that the 
 pursuit could go on. 
 
 The advance that night stopped when it was tired 
 and when darkness came on ; for one must still walk 
 warily and the brigade had marched far and fought 
 hard that day. Night came down on the enemy 
 fighting a fierce rear-guard action to cover Mons. 
 It was even said of some that they meant to make a 
 stand here ; had to, indeed, to get their transport 
 clear of the town. For the country around Mons 
 is undulating, full of low hills, which, crowned with 
 woods, offered every advantage to the machine-gun 
 tactics of the foe. 
 
 So the line lay that night outside of Mons, with 
 other brigades to the right and left, groping and calling 
 to each other through the darkness. Messages went 
 backwards and forwards, from brigade to brigade, 
 from brigade to division and from brigade head- 
 quarters to the two battalions in front line. The 
 figure at the desk in the library was kept busy with 
 the telephone continually in his ears and the opening 
 and shutting of the door, as " signals " brought in 
 messages received or came for others to go out. Most 
 important of all was it to maintain liaison with the 
 brigade coming on in rear, which before daybeak 
 was to " leap-frog " and continue the attack.
 
 The Last Night H9 
 
 The line in front was bent backwards, for the left 
 battalion had come under fierce machine-gun fire from 
 Bois de Haut and had not made as much ground as 
 its neighbour on the right. The village of Hyon, 
 which guards the south of Mons, was still holding 
 out and an advance was planned in the morning, even 
 before the relief, to get astride the Mons-St. Symphorien 
 road. This would mean the getting to the east of 
 Hyon, and if the brigade on the left did as much 
 Mons must fall. Useless to attack, however, before 
 morning in this country, at the cost of valuable lives. 
 
 There was no lateral communication between the 
 two front line battalions, so all night the officer on 
 duty talked to the two commanding officers, trans- 
 mitting the plans and intentions of the one to the 
 other for the morning. It was like to be a bloody 
 morn, just as the evening twilight had fallen on many 
 corpses around the foot of these low hills. 
 
 It was long past midnight now and the messages 
 kept crowding in. On the left patrols are pushing 
 into the outskirts of Mons, fighting as they go. The 
 parish priest has girded up his loins and leads the first 
 patrol through the dark streets of Hyon. A company 
 headquarters is actually in Mons. And so it goes 
 up there, while here down in their cellar the signals 
 sweat amidst the constant ticking of their instru- 
 ments, in the guttering flare of their sunken candles. 
 It looks to be a slow bitter fight with worse to come in 
 the morning. 
 
 Then, doubtfully and tentatively at first, but soon 
 with increasing boldness as more and more definite 
 patrol reports come in, the battalion C.O.'s send 
 back word that the Boche is not now where he was an 
 hour ago. Message follows message, as the fighting
 
 150 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 patrols go out, with increasing wideness. Companies 
 are pushed boldly forward to exploit the situation, 
 where before scouts had only ventured. Then sud- 
 denly the news, " We are through Hyon," and again, 
 " Our patrols have crossed the Symphorien road." 
 It is as if an iron bar, which had long held the door, 
 had suddenly given. Has it merely bent backwards, 
 or is it perchance broken never to be mended again ? 
 The brigade in rear calls agitatedly for checking and 
 confirmation of these suddenly changing reports. 
 There is nought to do save to repeat. And so the 
 night wears on. Soon it will be dawn and already 
 the advance parties of the relief are here. 
 
 Once more the telephone sounds and the officer 
 on duty takes up the receiver wearily. Little he 
 knows that it is the most dramatic moment of his life. 
 
 " Who is that ? " 
 
 " Well, take down this message : ready ? " 
 
 "Hostilities will cease at 11 a.m. A.A.A. Troops 
 will stand fast on the line reached at that hour, which 
 will be reported to these headquarters immediately. 
 A.A.A. All the usual precautions -against surprise 
 will be maintained. A.A.A. There will be no com- 
 munication of any kind whatsoever with the enemy. 
 A.A.A. Acknowledge. A.A.A." 
 
 He writes it down with his hand almost trembling 
 so it has come at last and repeats it to the sender. 
 Puts down the receiver, waits five minutes, and then 
 calls up his late informant by name at Divisional 
 Headquarters. 
 
 " Did you send the message, sir, beginning 
 * Hostilities will cease ' ? " 
 
 " All right, sir, I just wanted to be sure it was you." 
 
 So it has really come at last. He must tell the
 
 The Last Night 
 
 151 
 
 General first and then the battalions. A pleasant 
 duty this last, as he hears those at the other end 
 puffing and blowing into the receiver in their excite- 
 ment. It will have to be confirmed by wire, of course. 
 While he calls up the next unit, the one he spoke to 
 last is already on his track, questioning, imploring. 
 
 " Yes, sir, it is really O.K." 
 
 " Yes, sir, it will be confirmed by wire but you can 
 act on this." 
 
 And so it goes. Officers come in eager to talk. 
 His work at the telephone done, he goes to the window 
 and opens the shutters. It is past daybreak now and 
 the cold grey light filters into the room. The sparrows 
 are already chirping on the grass. A horse neighs 
 in the stables. Dark figures move, ghostly, on the 
 road outside. In the distance the first sun of victory 
 is rising over the roofs and houses of Mons.
 
 ( 152 ) 
 
 XIV 
 
 MONS, 1918 
 
 THAT is the vision that will remain with some of us 
 for ever, a final consummation. 
 
 You would not have thought that the greatest war 
 in history had ended a few short hours before, here 
 in the very streets which are now crowded with towns- 
 folk in their gala dress and smiling beflowered soldiers. 
 Yet so it is. 
 
 All through the night the fight went on ; patrols 
 stealing softly through the darkened streets out and 
 into the country beyond. The same day saw both 
 war and peace, the end of one and beginning of the 
 other, and this morning, when these same good 
 citizens of Mons peeped timidly from out their windows, 
 they could not have known at first whether it would 
 be German or Allied soldiers that they would see. 
 
 But now they know and are all out in the streets 
 rejoicing. The shops are crowded, the red, white 
 and blue of France and Britain, the colours of Belgium 
 on every house. It is a mystery where they got 
 or how they managed to keep these flags. On the 
 march every farm-house in each poverty-stricken 
 village had its tricolour, which appeared as if by 
 magic the moment the Huns were gone. Did they 
 keep them four long years hidden beneath the eaves 
 or under the flagstones in the cellar ? 
 
 There have been other and greater marches in the
 
 Mons, 1918 153 
 
 past six months ; King Albert has entered Brussels ; 
 the French, Strassburg ; every town in Canada has 
 had its homecoming. This was the first of them all, 
 came before the aftermath of war, so that men scarce 
 knew yet whether it was war or peace, did not realize 
 the magnitude of the victory that had come. It 
 was a symbol of empire, a paying of the debt, so far as 
 it ever can be paid, yet discharged in that currency 
 which they would have liked best, to those who had 
 given their all that we might wear the laurels of 
 victory. It was the end of a crusade. The torch has 
 passed through many hands, most of them now dead 
 and cold, has often flickered, almost gone out in the 
 rain as its bearer sank to earth yet trying ever to 
 hold it erect against the coming of his relief ; but now 
 it has passed the goal, and it is the same fire that last 
 night lit the final beacon, the flame from which grew 
 and grew until it merged with this morning's dawn 
 to become the full glory of the noonday sun. 
 
 The old-world square of Mons is crowded ; since this 
 morning all roads lead to it. People cling to the tall, 
 quaint, gabled houses like flies. They are at every 
 window, on every balcony. Flags fly everywhere, 
 and down in the square the crowd seems like a sea 
 of white faces relieved by the bright colours of the 
 Allies in every buttonhole and on every cap. Girls 
 push their way through, distributing small flags and 
 rosettes. There is a smile on the face of all. 
 
 For Mons, that ancient town which has stood so 
 many sieges in times past, has fallen again. Orange 
 and Alva in their turn have entered here. Eugene 
 chased hence, following hard upon their heels, the 
 generals of Le Roi Soleil. To-day another victor 
 comes, and it is doubtful whether ever Mons saw so
 
 154 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 many kilts within her walls, not even four years ago, 
 certainly not when Douglas of Findsland, that Jaco- 
 bite exile and soldier, wrote " Annie Laurie " in the 
 French trenches which then lay against her gates. 
 
 A trumpet sounds and a thrill goes through the 
 crowd. Already they can be seen in the distance at 
 the end of a strip of white road, which, as they wind 
 their way down and into the square, seems ever to 
 march before them in the sunlight. Is it really empty 
 or do the ghosts of all the dear dead move there 
 ahead, a fitting vanguard to our triumph ? 
 
 Surely it is so and they recalled to earth or not 
 recalled, for have they not been here through four long 
 years still carrying on to see Mons once more and 
 enter it again at last ! By each horseman rides 
 another shadowy figure ; and the wail of their pipes 
 and fifes mingles with our bands. It is their day at 
 last. 
 
 Here they come, winding down into the Grande 
 Place. A quiver goes through the crowd, not only 
 through the Belgian spectators who have so long 
 awaited this event, but the onlooking soldiers too, 
 as if they saw their comrades translated and trans- 
 figured. Two by two the horsemen ride, looking, in 
 their steel helmets, bearing in their hands long lances 
 with fluttering pennants of red and white, like Red 
 Cross knights or so many St. Georges newly come 
 from the fresh slain dragon. 
 
 The commander with his staff comes next. What 
 matter that the speeches in front of the hdtd de ville 
 are scarce heard in the open air and above the mur- 
 murs of the crowd ! All wait patiently until the 
 troops line up for the march past. Then crash the 
 bands into the " Marseillaise," and cheer after cheer
 
 Mons, 1918 155 
 
 goes up as the long lines of troops, Highlanders and 
 infantry, swing past. The square rocks with the 
 noise now where before there was reverent silence. 
 For this is no parade review, but the entry of a con- 
 queror into a city he has saved, his soldiers fresh from 
 battle and flushed in the first hour of triumph. It 
 is a sight, when one considers all the circumstances, 
 such as will not readily be seen again. 
 
 The marching soldiers pass and are gone. The 
 steel helmets, with the sun on them, hemmed in by 
 more helmets and bonnets and black hats, move 
 slowly out of the Grande Place and are swallowed 
 up in the narrow side-streets. 
 
 The last soldier has passed and the crowd breaks 
 bounds and closes in behind. But for a brief second 
 the road in rear is free. 
 
 And, as if in a vision, we see all those other roads, 
 behind the column that has passed, full of marching 
 troops. 
 
 They lie far behind, these great highways of France, 
 and reach back to the sea. We have seen them so 
 often, clear and straight and white, shaded with 
 graceful poplars on each side and so, past many a 
 whitewashed village, buried with chestnut-trees and 
 honeysuckle and roses, to Calais or Boulogne. They 
 go past other villages too, or where once they were, 
 known by the signpost now " Pozieres " or " Cource- 
 lette," and by that alone : their houses naught save 
 splintered matchwood, kneaded into a paste with 
 their lime and the rain. 
 
 By many a ruined city they run amid belts of stricken 
 country, their course half lost in shell-holes. 
 
 And all along these roads the victor dead are stir- 
 ring and falling in, and thickest here where they run
 
 156 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 through these ancient battlefields. Each wooden 
 cross, every lone shell-hole gives up its dead. And 
 there will be much laughter and many a recollection 
 and marching jest among these heavenly hosts. 
 
 The roads reach the coast, and who shall trace their 
 courses over the sea to the lands beyond ? They 
 merge with many another street in distant countries, 
 and the great national highway of France, broad and 
 spacious, breaks up into many trails. Rough country 
 tracks some of them, which have grown, rougher in 
 these last four years, ending at a lonely log-wood 
 cabin in the backwoods of Canada or by a windswept 
 hut on the Scottish moors. The trails are long and 
 distant and wind in and out of many places, but none 
 so far or dim but that at the end of it at least one 
 figure appears hastening to the call. The trail has 
 been long, too long and yet too short for many, but 
 it is ending now and all roads to-day surely lead to 
 Mons. 
 
 So they come on behind, the real victors, both 
 quick and dead, those who fell that others might win 
 through, and all these our living armies, marching, 
 marching, over the well-remembered roads. And in 
 the vision all end in Mons. 
 
 We go home too, and as we ride think of the last 
 time that Mons saw British soldiers in her streets. 
 Be sure there were many ghosts in the Grande Place 
 to-day. 
 
 And so back to the chateau where the first Gordons 
 lived in those few days before the Retreat began. 
 
 Our host and hostess have been persuaded to come 
 out of the dug-out in the garden where they have 
 dwelt for days. That night we dine with the great 
 portraits of King Albert and his Queen at the head
 
 Mons, 1918 157 
 
 of the table. For the King has come into his own 
 again. All the old tapestries and Flemish pictures 
 are gradually resurrected from the orchard. So is 
 the chateau's wine. And the chorus and speeches 
 last long into the night, though the air still seems 
 sultry and to throb from those last hours' furious 
 firing when the Hun, conscious that his time was up 
 at 11 a.m., loosed off all he'd got that had powder 
 behind it.
 
 ( 158) 
 
 XV 
 BILLETING IN BELGIUM 
 
 " Tms, I take it, is the place," said the Staff Captain, 
 and stopped the car, " let's get out and see." 
 
 We got out as was inevitable, but the Staff Captain 
 promptly got in again and shut the door. 
 
 " We came here to billet," he was speaking all tho 
 time, " and I brought you along because you talk 
 French so well " a cunning touch this " so mind 
 you get me a good billet and office, near each other of 
 course ; remember the batmen and don't forget about 
 the General. You will be all right, for the brigade 
 will probably be here in a day of so." 
 
 I murmured meekly a vital question vital to me, 
 I mean for I already foresaw my fate. 
 
 " Well, it's not my fault that you didn't bring any 
 rations with you ; you should have guessed where we 
 were going when I asked you to come for a drive with 
 me." 
 
 " Pleasure ! nothing. You don't need to try to be 
 a damn fool. Besides you'll be quite all right. These 
 hens look as if they might do you an egg, if you asked 
 them romantically enough, and I think we passed a 
 pump a mile or so up the road. There's a war on. 
 Well, good-bye, be good, and here's a piece of 
 chalk." 
 
 The car gave a mocking honk-honk, as if in derision
 
 Billeting in Belgium 159 
 
 of the solitude to which I was being abandoned, and 
 the perfidious fellow kissed his hand to me, left 
 stranded in the midst of the vast cobbled square, to 
 gaze disconsolately at the unsympathetic faces of the 
 barred and shuttered houses. 
 
 I had been through it all many times before, but 
 never in such a repulsive cold-blooded fashion as this. 
 Indeed, every move in the great game of billeting 
 among our voluble Allies was known to me ; from the 
 first interview with the maire, when all would be 
 smiles, bows, gesticulating politeness, our conversation 
 pleasantly flavoured with many a " Vive 1'Angle- 
 terre," " Vive Belgique," " Vivent les Canadiens," 
 to our mutual satisfaction, until that last when he 
 would be transformed, at least in my eyes, into a 
 mulish, disobliging peasant, careless who won the war, 
 whether it was won at all indeed, and as to where 
 the would-be saviours of his country were to sleep 
 whether they slept at all, in fact, so long as they did 
 not do it in his town. Doubtless at the same time I 
 would seem to him a brutal licentious and quite 
 unwanted condottiere, who had crossed the Atlantic 
 in a totally unnecessary manner to speak to him, the 
 maire, of martial law, common politeness, and inter- 
 national obligation. 
 
 Already I saw myself the hunted pariah of the 
 village, slinking through its streets followed by a 
 crowd of old women with their interminable chant, 
 " Pas de soldate, monsieur, settlement les officiers." 
 Only the estaminet keepers, if indeed there were any 
 left, would be my friends. 
 
 For days I should lead a comfortless, cheerless, 
 possibly oh, the horror of it ! foodless existence, 
 pursued by the scorn of all good citizens, who would
 
 160 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 probably not trouble to conceal their inmost con- 
 viction that I must be either a deserter from our own 
 armies, or else a spy in disguise left behind, for bad 
 reasons of their own, by the departing Germans. 
 The brigade would be late, possibly days late, and the 
 later they were the more would the public scorn and 
 suspicion grow. 
 
 Lucky I should be if no other unit surreptitiously 
 occupied some outlying portion of the billeting area, 
 to my eternal obloquy. For I was the forlorn hope 
 whose duty it was to hold the fort against all the 
 brass-hats in Flanders. Perhaps in time reinforce- 
 ments would arrive ; perhaps they would lose their 
 way. In any case, damn Jones, that Machiavelli and 
 all his works. 
 
 A cat, as if in sympathy with my mood, crossed the 
 square and rubbed herself against my legs. Softly 
 and gently, yet obviously with every intention of per- 
 sisting, it began to rain. 
 
 I took out my field-message book and pencil and 
 began to make calculations. Sub-staff forty ; trans- 
 port they would need lots of room say sixty ; 
 bombers, one must not forget the bombers, and so on. 
 Then I began a peregrination of the vast silent square, 
 knocking or ringing at all the doors. The cat came 
 with me in my round, as if hoping that one door at 
 least would open and permit her to take refuge inside. 
 But, knock or ring as I would, I could not raise a 
 voice from within a single one. 
 
 It was surely very strange, for the town could not 
 be deserted : there were thin wisps of smoke rising 
 from some of the chimneys and the cat herself was 
 evidence to the contrary. Poor pussy, she was wet 
 now indeed, and trying to dry her bedraggled fur by
 
 Billeting in Belgium iei 
 
 rubbing her arched back against my puttees. Then 
 suddenly the explanation struck me. It must be 
 Sunday, for at the front one remembers the date of 
 the day but never its position in the week, and all the 
 inhabitants were apparently inside the squat dumpy 
 church at the far end of the square. I should 
 have to postpone any further exploring until the 
 service was over. Yet, where was the village 
 atheist ? 
 
 At this moment the inevitable small boy appeared 
 upon the scene. Whence he came I cared not, whither 
 he went I could never afterwards discover. One 
 moment the square was empty, save for me and the 
 now thoroughly disgusted cat ; the next, he was cross- 
 ing it towards me with the air manifestly of one who 
 will view this phenomenon no longer from afar. 
 There was something detached, yet suspicious, in the 
 manner of his approach that awoke old memories. 
 
 Slowly but steadily he came towards me, sucking 
 the while at something with one hand and his mouth. 
 Anon he would discontinue this occupation in order 
 to whistle, using therefor his mouth and the other. 
 He appeared to be quite unconscious that one tide 
 of battle had so recently receded from him while 
 another was even then waiting to engulf him and bear 
 him off. When hell freezes over, a small boy will 
 be first out upon the ice. 
 
 Steadily, employing all my personal magnetism for 
 the purpose, I lured him on. Nearer and nearer he 
 fluttered towards me with upturned eyes, as if fasci- 
 nated by the dignity of my mien. He even forgot to 
 suck. 
 
 At last, in one instant as it were, he fluttered too 
 near, stumbled over the cat, and then I had him.
 
 162 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 He was a quick-witted youth, and as soon as he under- 
 stood that I was not a Boche and that his release 
 would be conditioned by his profession of ability to 
 understand my French, he rose to the occasion of 
 serving his country's Allies. 
 
 Monsieur le maire, why certainly who but he should 
 find the maire ? Which maire did I desire to see, the 
 real one or the one " les sales Boches " here he spat 
 effusively with emphasis " had wanted ? " 
 
 I replied, expressing my willingness to take a chance 
 on the one the Germans had not wanted, the name of 
 the other was elicited for future reference, and the 
 procession started in single file. The cat went first, 
 the small boy came next and I, as I usually do, brought 
 up the rear. 
 
 I followed the boy whom I regarded as my guide. 
 Whether he had similar views with respect to the cat 
 I do not know. It was only later that I learned that 
 the mairie lay in the opposite direction, and remembered 
 to think it strange that both cat and boy should have 
 made for the same door. 
 
 This belonged to an estaminet and opened upon the 
 usual scene. Some men were industriously knocking 
 the chipped balls about on an old French billiard 
 table placed in the centre of the room. Others were 
 drinking alternately at two little marble-topped bars 
 which plied in different corners. The entrance of my 
 uniform caused a commotion. 
 
 " Les Anglais ! " cried an elderly, comfortably 
 rounded dame, and with arms outstretched she gasped 
 her way towards me. 
 
 Taught by past experience I waited till the last 
 possible moment ; and then stepping aside, with what 
 I flatter myself can only be characterized as extreme
 
 Billeting in Belgium 163 
 
 dexterity, I managed to elude the lady's obvious 
 intentions. At the same moment I disclosed check 
 from the cat which, having thus done its bit, left the 
 room with what degree of dignity the circumstances 
 permitted. Henceforth enthusiasm flowed in more 
 moderated channels. 
 
 I was English ! No, I was Scotch. " Do you not 
 see the little beret with strings ? " 
 
 " Ah, I knew Monsieur was Canadian because he 
 speaks the French so well." Shades of my professor 
 of romance languages ! There was romance enough 
 and to spare. 
 
 " In any case Monsieur must have a drink where- 
 with to drink to the victory so soon to come, and then 
 we will take monsieur to the maire. He will be so 
 full of joy to see monsieur and to know that les sales 
 Bodies have gone, never to come back any more 
 oh, les sales Boches. Figure to yourself, monsieur " 
 
 General Chorus. " Oh, les sales Boches ! " 
 
 " . . . in Montreal, yes, I, and so I say vive le 
 Canada." 
 
 General Chorus now greatly augmented and 
 going strong " Vive le Canada." 
 
 "... and vive la Belgique too, Monsieur, for 
 Monsieur knows " 
 
 General Chorus, " Vive la Belgique." 
 
 Monsieur had a drink, indeed Monsieur had two by 
 way of an introduction the patriotic fervour having 
 by now somewhat abated to the personal history 
 of all the maladies, many highly complicated in their 
 affinities and various, which afflicted all the members, 
 all women, and occupying all the beds in madame'a 
 all so small establishment. 
 
 " But Madame Bompard now, most assuredly.
 
 164 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Monsieur does not know her, but she is kind, she is 
 good and of large hospitality and the large house. 
 She will doubtless be charmed to receive and entertain 
 all the army under the command of monsieur. Let 
 us to Madame Bompard." 
 
 " Well, no, to the maire first, if Monsieur so 
 prefers." 
 
 The procession forms up minus the small boy and 
 the cat this time ; some one sets off the musical box 
 and to the stirring strains of the " Marseillaise " out 
 we go. 
 
 The maire lives in a white house on the outskirts of 
 the town, and was discovered feeding his chickens in 
 the garden. After expressing his gratification at the 
 final departure of the Germans and the great joy 
 which it would give him to behold his deliverers, he 
 was brought rapidly to business by the chance of 
 actually beholding them within a few hours. The 
 prospect sobered his transports and reduced him to 
 figures. He produced his rolls and gave me a general 
 account of billeting prospects in the town. They 
 were not, it would appear, so good as they would have 
 been if we had not come quite so soon. 
 
 Finally, after interminable discussion, all was 
 settled, and he accompanied me to where his gate had 
 been. There he passed me on to a gorgeous individual 
 in a tarnished livery of blue and gold braid, who com- 
 bined in his single person the functions of town-crier, 
 parish beadle, leader of patriotic opinion in the town, 
 and deputy-mayor. Under his protection I entered 
 upon the serious business of the day. 
 
 And a most serious business it always is. For do 
 not think, poor reader, that because this was war and 
 I represented you and all you stand for in that town,
 
 Billeting in Belgium 165 
 
 had seen the maire and received from him the delega- 
 tion of his thunder, all was easy. Far from it. It is 
 not difficult to stumble between those who do not 
 wish to house a single soldier for a single night and 
 the estaminet people, who, in joy at the sudden appear- 
 ance of so much potential revenue, loudly proclaim 
 their willingness to provide standing room for a whole 
 battalion. All want officers and officers alone : in- 
 deed it would appear that the late German army 
 contained nothing but such. All watch anxiously 
 as I write in chalk on the various doors or door-posts 
 such legends as these "three officers," "four sol- 
 dats," "T.M.B.'s nth, C.I.B.," "twenty soldats." 
 There is great outcry at this last but let it pass, for 
 the rooms are large. Always when the clamour 
 breaks out too shrilly it is checked in mid-stream by 
 the dam of my companion's authority and impassioned 
 appeals to gratitude, liberty and patriotism. The 
 people, too, are sound at bottom, and who shall wonder 
 at surface grumbling from those who have suffered 
 all that this war has brought them and are but late 
 released from under the German heel ? 
 
 The humours of human nature come out strangely 
 during our progress from house to house. Opportunity 
 is seized to gratify little neighbourly predilections. 
 Those who have lost the battle themselves become 
 at once anxious to see the foe carry the war into the 
 houses of their friends and neighbours. 
 
 " Eh bien, if Monsieur will insist upon giving me, 
 who already have a husband and two sons in my so 
 small house, four soldiers as well, Madame Huesch 
 at numero neuf should have ten at least, for her house 
 is more than twice as large as mine." 
 
 The taint of Teutonism must now be avenged, and
 
 166 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 it would go hard with the pro-Germans of the 
 town. 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur, Madame Guyot was a friend of the 
 Boches. She turned her house into a casino for 
 them, the pig-dogs. Give Madame Guyot more 
 soldiers and me less. I am known to be a good 
 patriot. I have two sons with the king, and I have 
 not heard of them for years." 
 
 And so it goes on until at last, by cajoling and coax- 
 ing here, by threatening there, all are provided with 
 billets. All save the transport, that is to say. 
 
 This is the greatest problem of all, for sixty men 
 with the horses and vehicles appertaining to a brigade 
 headquarters take up a lot of room. A large building 
 with a courtyard is required. So back to the maire 
 we go. 
 
 " Ah, yes," says that worthy, " the school is what 
 you will need. You had better go to visit the 
 cure." 
 
 He speaks some words in rapid French to his deputy 
 and off we go, headed for the cure's house. 
 
 Fortunately, the cure is at home, is perhaps resting 
 after his weekly labour. He receives us with all that 
 humanity and large -mindedness which is so often 
 met with in the catholic clergy the world over. 
 
 "The school, why certainly. If monsieur le com- 
 mandant will come with me I will show him over it. 
 Who told Monsieur about my school ? Ah, mon- 
 sieur le maire. He is a good man a very good 
 man." 
 
 We seemed to be taking rather a round-about, 
 circuitous route, judged by where I thought the 
 school was. Soon we passed a large brick building 
 with an open court in front of it, possessing wide gates
 
 Billeting in Belgium 167 
 
 and everything desirable from a transport point of 
 view. 
 
 " Is not this the place, father," I said. " It is just 
 what I need." 
 
 " Ah, no, monsieur, my school is not nearly so big as 
 that. You would not confuse them if you had only 
 seen them both. Among other differences the one 
 you are to have has no courtyard with posts and sheds 
 which would do for the horses, as this school has." 
 
 " But is this a school too, father ? Why can't I 
 have this one ? I will go and speak to the maire 
 about it." 
 
 " Ah, monsieur, he will not give it to you. This is 
 the communal school. True, it stands empty most 
 of the time and has not classes in every room as mine 
 has, but " He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 Back I went to the maire and in the name of King 
 George, King Albert and General Foch not to mention 
 President Wilson demanded his school. In the end 
 I got it and the keys. 
 
 One more little act in the great drama, mediawal 
 but not yet played out, of Church v. State. Once 
 again the former had won by appealing to the bar- 
 barian stranger within her gates. It was the same 
 spirit that drew Henry to Canossa. 
 
 There but remained to find billets for the officers. 
 This did not take long, and I spent more time in 
 finding Jones a bad billet than in getting good ones 
 for all the rest. 
 
 That night my own host had prepared a little sur- 
 prise at supper. He lined up his four little children 
 who sang in unison all the verses of the national 
 anthem. I wondered how many of my brother 
 officers could have done the same. He had taught
 
 168 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 them the tune and words, he explained, under the very 
 ears of the Hun, in preparation for the day of deliver- 
 ance of which he accepted me as the symbol. Then 
 we had the " Brabanyonne " with its catching lilt. 
 
 That night I dreamed that the brigade never came 
 for a week, and did not care.
 
 ( 169) 
 
 XVI 
 
 DIARY OF A JOURNEY FROM ARRAS TO 
 COLOGNE IN THE FALL OF 1918 
 
 ARRAS looked less disturbed than Amiens had done, 
 yet the tide of battle had rolled just as near her, if 
 not nearer. Nevertheless, while the Somme city 
 appeared stricken with fright, Arras looked much 
 the same as ever, at least to one who had not seen her 
 since before Vimy. True, there was said to have been 
 an intervening period, which had boasted an officers' 
 club until a shell hit it, when tea-shops, though not 
 of the Bond Street type, had flourished; but this 
 surely must be a myth. For the city looks the same 
 as ever, is still overhung by the close imminent cloud 
 of war. It was more used to this sort of thing per- 
 haps and therefore less perturbed to see the Hun 
 helmets again on the top of Monchy hill. While 
 remembrance of Amiens, seen before, was of a proud 
 city with open shop windows and thronged streets, 
 which heightened the contrast with the deserted 
 stricken town, quite empty save for small groups of 
 soldiery, with broken roofless railway station, from 
 which one used to leave for Paris, and barred and 
 shuttered houses. 
 
 But there was little time for sentiment or reflection, 
 for the work of preparing once more to shift the 
 menace was hard-pressing : work that was to go on, 
 stage by stage, up the Arras-Cambrai road until it 
 slackened for a while perforce amidst the swamps
 
 170 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 and bogs of the Canal du Nord. There we had lain 
 in the midst of the German lines of supply. Their 
 little huts of wood, and tarred cardboard and rushes, 
 so like our own and yet so indefinably unlike, were 
 all around one. Vast dumps of supplies and of am- 
 munition were there untouched. All the little every- 
 day occurrences of the lives of men German men 
 whose lines had been cast in pleasant places, out of 
 harm's way save from the chance reach of a long- 
 distance shell, were there exposed for us to view. 
 That long low building of yet unpainted pine, standing 
 amidst reeds and rushes by the water's side, was a 
 hut wherein lay sixty German soldiers. Go inside 
 and pick up a copy of a leaflet propaganda for the 
 last German war loan ; or into this house and view the 
 library and smoke the tobacco of the Herr Zahlmeister, 
 or of the German town-major, who has lived these four 
 years past in this gaping empty town through which 
 our soldiers now tread softly. It is much more 
 pleasant than some black night entering a German 
 front line trench where the fresh killed dead lie stark 
 and grim on the parados, to go peering down the dug- 
 outs and mark the helmets thrown here and there. 
 
 It is a watery indefinite no man's land in exchange 
 for the well-known hundred yards which lay between 
 trench and trench. Through it and through the 
 woods our patrols go, blundering, groping for the foe, 
 following up old German trails " Fussweg nach 
 Arleux." They come on cities cold and silent, lifeless 
 beneath the harvest moon, with the outline of each 
 house clear and distinct in her bright light. German 
 posts hold the sylvan paths through the forest with 
 machine guns, and when they meet there follows a 
 fierce sharp fight in the midst of nature's solitude
 
 Diary of a Journey ni 
 
 as of red Indians or primeval man and the water 
 underfoot grows red and one side goes home. 
 
 Then Cambrai and the fierce fighting there, the 
 Huns' last real effort to stay the tide, the bursting of 
 his dam, and so on from city unto city. Through 
 many a town standing on French soil where yet the 
 names of the streets are German, where no Frenchman 
 has lived for years and which, now that the military 
 colonists are gone, stands empty, wounded and 
 gaping, seeming to cry out for kind hands to come 
 and remove all these notice boards, " Durchgang 
 verboten," " Nach Eisenbahn " and the rest, the taint 
 of their German shame. We lay in many a village 
 which the Hun had defiled for years with his presence ; 
 where, on leaving, he had gutted the houses inside 
 and out, ripping up the mattresses, tearing the up- 
 holstery from the chairs, and heaping everything 
 else into an indiscriminate litter. 
 
 And so the advance goes on by fits and jerks, past 
 city after city where the German dead are thick- 
 strewn in the fields outside the walls. A grim sight 
 they present, these solid lumpish bodies in grey, 
 scarce distinguishable from the ground, lying on 
 their faces w r here they fell, their rifles by their sides, 
 in turnip patch or field. 
 
 And so on through proud Valenciennes to the 
 crowning miracle of Mons. 
 
 From there, whence the retreat began, we begin the 
 great advance, as is right and fitting. We wait there 
 some days till orders come from headquarters de- 
 tailing the troops who are to proceed to the Rhine ; 
 just as four years ago they waited for the attack. 
 Then on, marching two days behind the retreating 
 German army.
 
 172 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 At first the way lies through a populous part of 
 Belgium with good billets for each night. Every 
 evening sees a " party " in chateau or in cottage. 
 The cavalry are supposed to be ahead ; but, save for 
 them, we are the first troops to pass through these 
 towns and villages. 
 
 And the tales that are told ; are poured into our 
 ears ! At one town there dwells a great nobleman, 
 Monsieur le Prince de Croye. He was ill when the 
 war began, and the Boches took possession of his 
 magnificent chateau. There, for four years, he has 
 been the unwilling host of one German general after 
 another. They have sat in his library and picture 
 gallery and drunk his wine. They have felled all the 
 trees in his noble parks and orchards. But that, after 
 all, may be the fortune of war ; even when it does not 
 take two to make a quarrel. 
 
 It is the little petty insults, the unreasoning betises 
 that, in such a case, are most hard to bear. Fines 
 everywhere, each time a child goes out without her 
 German identification card tied on to her pinafore. 
 The Germans were evidently on the make. 
 
 They tried to take a large sum, to be precise 
 10,000 pounds sterling, from the Prince the day 
 his son escaped to join the Belgian army. That or 
 death was the choice offered him by the rough general 
 of Uhlans who was his guest for the moment. The 
 Prince ignored the alternative until the last moment, 
 and then, when confronted with a cheque on one 
 hand and a firing party on the other, appealed to the 
 German Emperor through his officer. For he was 
 Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and Knight of the 
 Golden Fleece, a Grandee of Spain, holding lands in 
 Austria as well as in Flanders. He seemed a very
 
 Diary of a Journey ITS 
 
 link with the past as he talked to us in perfect English, 
 as all his tongues were doubtless perfect, of his service 
 in the army and as ambassador to half the courts of 
 Europe. His appeal to William, in the name of the 
 courts of Vienna and Madrid, was too much for 
 William's general, and nothing more was heard of 
 this particular matter. 
 
 The Prince spoke of that last day when at 11 a.m. 
 the guns on their emplacements in his park ceased 
 firing. He had not been told or had only gleaned a 
 half guess from the conversation of his " guests." 
 "It is the end, thank God," said the German colonel 
 of artillery ; and his major added, " Yes, sir, it is the 
 end for us." So the Prince knew and went out and 
 walked in his battered treeless park, where four long 
 years ago the British and German patrols had first met. 
 
 This part of the advance was made a delight by the 
 enthusiasm of the inhabitants. Each night we lay 
 among friends, whether it was in a little town, at the 
 mayor's house or that of one of the burghers, where 
 there was civilized dinner at night with women and 
 children and all the ritual anent the proper succession 
 of Burgundy and Bordeaux played out on top of a 
 white tablecloth ; or in the country where the brigade 
 headquarters was quartered at some vast old chateau 
 of which the owner, looking a perfect gentleman of 
 Spain, would be disappointed that we had not come 
 across and could not, therefore, give him news of 
 Raoul or Jan, " Mon fils, monsieur, avec le roi et son 
 arm6e et de qui je n'ai rien 6cout6 il y a plus que 
 quatres anne'es maintenant." Let us hope that so 
 much patience sometimes found its reward, and that 
 all these Baouls and Gastons were not cold and stiff 
 in the north by Dixmude and the Yser.
 
 174 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 And so on to Namur, that knot of so many wars 
 and campaigns, lying beneath its mighty fortress at 
 the juncture of the two historic rivers ; Namur, where 
 the striped black and white sentry boxes of the in- 
 vaders still are standing before the hdtel de ville, where 
 the shops are full of life and the streets of released 
 French prisoners of war, their sky-blue uniforms 
 covered with mud and dirt and eked out with strange 
 garments and patched with sacking all huddled 
 together in the rain to await supplies of bread outside 
 the cathedral where Don John of Austria sleeps and 
 dreams of wars and Spain. The estaminets in the 
 narrow dirty streets down by the Meuse are full of our 
 soldiers ; and go into one of the great caf6s opposite 
 the station and sit down at the next table to the one 
 at which there are six war-correspondents, men whose 
 names have been familiar words in all English speak- 
 ing households since the beginning of the war. 
 
 The second part of the march through " la region 
 des Walloons," was very different from the first. It 
 was a miserable poverty-stricken country that we 
 soon entered upon, in striking contrast to that of 
 towns and villages through which we had come. Now 
 two dozen thatched houses constitute a market place 
 for miles around, and such few horses and pigs as are 
 left in the country-side live under the same roof as 
 their owners. The inhabitants seemed dazed by the 
 cumulative effect of men superimposed upon their 
 original poverty. There is dirt and filth everywhere 
 in these miserable barns, only to be exceeded by the 
 horrors of such places as had been used as field hos- 
 pitals and pent-houses for their prisoners by the 
 Germans. The sight of one of these, with its litter 
 of sodden dirty straw, its broken roof placed next to
 
 Diary of a Journey 175 
 
 a door the notice on which says that those within are 
 dying from dysentery or typhoid serves to awaken 
 the hatred for the beastly Hun which might other- 
 wise have grown cool since the 1 1th of November. 
 
 The march was through the Ardennes, now staging 
 fifteen miles a day through the beautiful barren 
 country, one of Europe's main holiday resorts before 
 the war. You can go for miles without seeing a 
 house or a soul. Sometimes the road follows the 
 course of a stream that runs among the hills, or again 
 it climbs up one such and curls around its top to fling 
 itself down into the corresponding valley and then 
 to climb again. It is hard walking with no possi- 
 bility of replacing these boots which are now worn 
 through. Men march on their uppers with their 
 socks peering through their boots. There is no 
 leather in the villages to make repairs overnight. 
 
 We find Austrian coins in the scattered estaminets, 
 and one Rumanian soldier, released from a labouring 
 gang, wandering among these hills. 
 
 Everywhere there was evidence that the Boche had 
 travelled these roads before us. Here is a field gun 
 scuppered in the ditch, there a German field ambu- 
 lance one shudders to think of the sufferings of the 
 badly wounded in that vehicle with its solid tyres 
 has been dragged clear of the road and lies now amidst 
 the autumn trees. At another place the road runs 
 along the edge of a ravine, and looking down one can 
 see pile after pile of the familiar German steel helmets 
 lying at the foot. Apparently a whole battalion has 
 been seized here with a simultaneous idea and acted, 
 for the last time perhaps, as one man. 
 
 It seems impossible to obtain any reliable infor- 
 mation as to the march of the retreating enemy. Some
 
 176 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 of the " friendly inhabitants " speak of him as march- 
 ing well, behind his bands, while others say that the 
 red flag is everywhere, all discipline gone, and the 
 officers browbeaten and insulted. Soon a pleasant 
 story floats back on the breeze if not true it is certainly 
 well invented and comes supported by a mass of 
 circumstantial and corroborative detail of one of our 
 generals who, in his car scouting adventurously ahead 
 of the advanced troops, is met, greeted, we do not 
 believe that he was actually kissed but certainly 
 hailed as Kamerad and brother, and congratulated on 
 having overthrown his officer caste and joined the 
 " reds," as had these stragglers and apparently the 
 whole German army and all on the strength of the 
 red around that general's cap and his neat little 
 triangular red flag perched so jauntily on the nose of his 
 car 1 
 
 And so the march goes on, literally up hill and 
 down dale, halting at noon for dinner by one of these 
 fast-flung mountain torrents where the brown Novem- 
 ber leaves swirl down among the dixies and the 
 cold nip of winter begins to creep into the air. It is 
 exhilarating but somewhat monotonous, after the war. 
 
 At last came the morning on which we rise in the 
 " region des Walloons," as the old chronicler puts it, 
 and knew that that night we should lie in the land of 
 the " Almain." A light drizzle, was falling. The 
 march was directed on the German frontier town of 
 St. Vith. I had resolved to watch carefully for the 
 crossing of the frontier but yet was taken by surprise. 
 A straggling street, with one house apart from the 
 rest, with the white malevolent face of a woman 
 appearing as if decapitated above the sash of an 
 upper window, a man in a war correspondent's uni-
 
 Diary of a Journey 177 
 
 form who steps suddenly forward and clicks a camera 
 whence had he it ? right under my horse's nose. 
 That is all, but we have crossed the frontier. That is 
 all ; yet stay, for there, uprooted and flung dishonoured 
 among the bushes from off the roadside, lie the German 
 frontier posts with their black and white stripes and 
 black eagle near the top, looking precisely the same 
 as when last seen nine years before standing majestic 
 and impressive among the mountains of the Vosges. 
 
 St. Vith reached, proved a largish village or 
 smallish town, where the brigade installed itself amid 
 the sour faces of the inhabitants. Strange yet 
 delightful, like the yielding of a nightmare to pleasant 
 dreams at last, to sleep that night in German beds, 
 or to lie awake listening to the sound of German clocks 
 and the noise of our horses' hoofs on German cobbles. 
 
 " Kaput " with a hunch of the lumpish shoulders 
 and a scowl on the square face seems the nearest 
 that this nation, which has produced so many philoso- 
 phers, can get to the " C'est la guerre, monsieur " and 
 quick shrug that has carried France through four 
 years of hell. 
 
 Nowhere can more picturesque towns be found than 
 Blankenheim and Munsterburg, with their mediaeval 
 walls and gates and houses and churches. We march 
 very much at ease, save when we near a town and 
 then, under the arch of the gateway, the Colonel 
 raises his hand. " Give it to them, boys," and the 
 band crashes into the " Marseillaise." It is our sole 
 revenge in the name of France. And so to that tune 
 alone, with the Union-Jack, new-sent from England, 
 at the head, we march through these towns and many 
 more. 
 
 At one village the officers of the battalion take
 
 178 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 lunch in the front " parlour " of a substantial brick 
 house, commandeering nothing save, temporarily, the 
 crockery. We did not see the owner but only his 
 Frau, who was fat and appeared to wish to be sociable. 
 As we left, however, he was standing at the window, 
 a tall iron figure, in his stained uniform of Jaeger 
 green, with the iron cross of 1870 and the iron cross 
 of 1914 upon the breast of his tunic. And the sun 
 was going down in the west before him, throwing a 
 rosy light upon window and man. But for that red 
 glare, which played upon his hands, it might have been 
 pathetic. Even so must the figure of Moloch have 
 looked at evening when the lights were dead upon 
 his altars and the fires within him, fed with the living 
 flesh of his victims, were dying down, so that he 
 glowed with a dull expiring red and his courts were 
 empty and all gone save the last old priest, who knew 
 no other home save there. 
 
 There were many incidents during the march to the 
 Rhine, some comic, as when we spent a night at a Hun 
 munition factory, newly erected amidst a solitude, and 
 decked and adorned at every corner with " Einzug 
 verboten " and " Kein Einzug," and listened to the 
 amazing confession of the manager that the Kaiser 
 had lost the war for his side by being too kind and 
 friendly to the English ! 
 
 Some were less subtly comic, as when a country 
 lad riding a donkey omitted to salute the colours, and 
 the Colonel turned to the adjutant and with a lordly 
 wave of his hand bade him see to it that the republic 
 took no harm. All would have been well if the 
 adjutant had observed the ordinary gradations and 
 preliminaries of military action by calling upon the 
 sergeant-major, but he was youthful and full of zeal.
 
 Diary of a Journey i?9 
 
 So he turned his horse and went after the offender 
 himself. The German boy, seeing an officer gesti- 
 culating at him, set spurs to his donkey. The other 
 boy broke into a trot, thence to a canter and a gallop. 
 The battalion enjoyed the sight, especially when the 
 donkey rider right-wheeled, or whatever the correct 
 cavalry term is, up a blind-alley road. Run to earth 
 there, he appeared convinced that the efforts of his 
 pursuer's cane to dislodge his headgear were aimed 
 at his life. The cap, being safely lodged in the mud, 
 the adjutant rejoined his chief with the comfortable 
 feeling that the consuls had seen to it and the march 
 continued looking for fresh conquests. For the 
 future, however, the Colonel put out scouts to deal 
 with the headgear of passing traffic. 
 
 Inasmuch as during their occupation of France and 
 Belgium all male civilians had been rigorously obliged 
 to take their hats off to all German officers when they 
 passed them in street or on road, our High Command 
 had, perhaps with a sense of humour or more likely 
 at the instigation of our Allies, brought in the Germans' 
 own enactment with the implication reversed. Hence 
 grew many comic incidents like the above. It was 
 found impossible, however, to maintain this regu- 
 lation with proper dignity in cities like Cologne and 
 Bonn, so its application was subsequently limited 
 to the country districts. It was most trying alike 
 to the modesty and the sense of humour of the average 
 British officer. At first the young subaltern fresh 
 from school would blush crimson when a well-groomed 
 Hun, old enough to be his father, removed his bowler 
 or felt hat with an impressive circular sweep. 
 
 It was curious to survey the different combinations 
 of military and civilian costume worn by our lately
 
 180 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 active enemies. Speaking generally, the German 
 army appears to have demobilized itself piece by 
 piece as it went backwards, by the simple process of 
 each man falling out when he reached his home town 
 and exchanging as many different portions of his 
 uniform as he could obtain a civilian equivalent of. 
 
 In our own ranks it was curious to see how, through 
 all the history of society, given new conditions, new 
 factors of differentiation arise. But lately we had 
 been divided into those who believed in the possi- 
 bility of peace within ten years and those who held to 
 a state of eternal war ; into the believer in a coming 
 breakthrough and the supporters of the theory of 
 attrition. In another connection we were divided 
 into disciples of Blighty or foreign leave. Now our 
 moving state fell sharply into two classes, those who 
 would take coffee and omelettes with the Hun and 
 those who would not. The Scotch are usually credited 
 with always being on the qui vive to obtain something 
 for love or nothing, but I have never seen a High- 
 lander in a German kitchen. The Gael has a longer 
 memory than the Saxon. 
 
 One night's stand we stopped at a vast and oldish 
 Schloss, a typical Junker's stronghold in Rhenish 
 Prussia. The huge reception-room with the portraits 
 of the noble owner and his wife at either end, with its 
 sparse but massive furniture, and the arms and 
 quarterings of all the count's ancestors everywhere, 
 on tablecloth and worked on mantle-cover, blazoned 
 on the panels and hung in hatchments on the walls, 
 spoke of the pride of a dominant caste, proud of 
 its past, real or imaginary. They had one end of the 
 castle, we the other, and we never met ; very different 
 from billeting in Belgium.
 
 Diary of a Journey 
 
 It was raining when we reached the Rhine, and in 
 the pouring rain we marched through the streets and 
 squares of Bonn to the Rhine Brilclce, and so crossed at 
 last that river which for long had been our Jordan and 
 which we had reached at last by many devious routes 
 and wanderings circuitous, passing through so many 
 muddied streams of France and by these other waters 
 of Damascus. We scarce saw the river for the driving 
 rain that soaked us to the bone ; if we had seen it we 
 would have expected to view it red with the colour 
 of blood and hate. At the same hour others were 
 crossing also by other bridges to north and south, the 
 Highlanders and Guards at Cologne, the Americans 
 at Coblenz and the French by Frankfurt and by 
 Mainz. 
 
 The brigade crossed and settled down at Sieges- 
 burg, a busy town east of the Rhine, which clusters 
 with its houses round a sharp high hill on the top of 
 which there is a castle now a hospital. It has been 
 many times a hospital before, this castle, and a priory 
 also, and from its tower on a clear day to the north- 
 west across the river one can see afar off the twin 
 spires of Cologne. Its ancient rooms are full of sick 
 and wounded soldiers, mostly French and German, 
 looked after by monks and what of the personnel of a 
 German war hospital is still left here. To walk 
 through its low cloistered rooms and see the pale 
 forms there wasted with fever, and the helmets old 
 and new there, and the black-robed priest still tending 
 the dying soul, is to be transplanted to the middle 
 ages, or rather to see that if all the world's a stage and 
 life but a play enacted there, it is at most a tragedy 
 that is shown, the parts of which may be offered in 
 varying order, but are all based on the same old plot
 
 182 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 of love and death and fame and death and hope and 
 death. 
 
 Headquarters is in a fine house, the home of a 
 wealthy German manufacturing family. The son of 
 the house was in the war as an officer of Uhlans and 
 staff captain for a German cavalry brigade. He is a 
 graduate of Bonn and of Oxford, and on the wall of 
 the dining-room one sees a print of a man on a bicycle 
 on the towing path at Oxford coaching an eight upon 
 the river, which we saw every day so many years 
 ago it seems in a window on the High. The touch 
 of the mighty mother is here too, has been all through 
 these years of hate and strife, even in the house of the 
 enemy. 
 
 One goes back to Bonn to visit the home of Beet- 
 hoven and of Arndt, who seems to have been a com- 
 bination of Garibaldi and John Stuart Blackie. There 
 are even some students, women, working in the 
 library and the philosophy seminar of the old uni- 
 versity where Bismarck studied, and William II. and 
 Bethmann-Hollweg. There is an austerity of learning 
 about these German universities, but little of grace 
 or beauty even when, as here, the walls have been 
 touched by the mellowing hand of time. Yet outside 
 there is a broad square where Canadians and Ameri- 
 cans are playing football, and with the creeper it looks 
 like one of the more modern colleges of Oxford or of 
 Cambridge. It is amusing to go into the shops and 
 buy pictures of the Kaiser and of Hindenburg " unsere 
 Stolze," and of the hymn of hate, and lurid pictures 
 of the sinking of the British fleet. They are sold 
 readily enough, and if the seller is conscious of any 
 tragic irony here he does not show it. Yet one feels 
 that one walks the streets amidst an alien hostile
 
 Diary of a Journey 183 
 
 people. To stay long here would grow to depres- 
 sion. 
 
 Cologne, the capital of the Rhineland, is a wonder- 
 ful sight just now, with the smart Guards' sentries and 
 her streets so full of soldiers. There are Highlanders 
 everywhere, Black Watch, and Seaforths and Argyll 
 and Sutherland, visiting the cathedral and buying 
 souvenirs in the shops. Canadians and Australians 
 from far around come here, for in the Ringstrasse one 
 can buy iron crosses and the shining steel German 
 Kilrassier helmets for a few marks. The streets 
 indeed are a wonderful sight, but one does not quite 
 know what to do when in the hotel, the Grosser Kur- 
 fiirst, smart young German flying officers rise and 
 click their heels together and bow from the waist 
 when you enter. They look very spick and span in 
 their steel-grey well-cut tunics hung with crosses, and 
 are indeed the only Germans who still seem to care 
 to go in uniform. One knows that they have a repu- 
 tation for chivalry that is not common to the German 
 army, and their pictures in the shops post cards 
 with the portraits of the most famous German knights 
 of the air show many grave young faces as of public 
 school boys. It is strange to take tea at the next 
 table to a party of German women. 
 
 At Coblenz, where the Americans are, things are 
 rather different. One knows of an American colonel 
 from Virginia who goes out at night and solicits passes 
 methodically from belated Hun pedestrians. If they 
 have them not, for perhaps they are at home for- 
 gotten, the forgetful owner is kicked to the lock-up ; 
 if they have them, nevertheless, he is kicked for going 
 in the wrong direction, is turned about and started 
 off afresh with another kick. There are Americans
 
 184 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 in Ehrenbreitstein, and that night the Prince of Wales 
 is dancing at the Officers' Club. We go to the opera 
 and the house is full. Only the colossal statue of 
 William I. on horseback, on top of the Denkmal, 
 at the junction of the Rhine and Moselle, seems 
 desolate. 
 
 Back in Bonn one hears that the city fathers are 
 in commotion because one, by night, a Canadian 
 surely, has chipped off the spike from the helmet of 
 another statue of William I., the pride of Bonn, 
 presumably for a souvenir. Most reprehensible of 
 course, but the term " vandalism " which is freely 
 used seems slightly exaggerated in the ears of one 
 who has come from Ypres and Arras. 
 
 One is not altogether sorry when his time comes to 
 leave Germany, for to sojourn there is too much of an 
 anticlimax, though there is ample time to change one's 
 mind in the course of the two and a hah* days that it 
 takes the hospital train, converted into a leave train, 
 to make the journey from Cologne to Boulogne. 
 We pass the shell-skeleton of Arras and many a scene 
 of harrowing recollections which already seem 
 
 " Tales of far off unhappy things 
 And battles long ago."
 
 ( 185 ) 
 
 XVII 
 CITIES OF THE SOUL 
 
 " The poet has said ' dear city of Cecrops,' wilt not thou 
 say ' dear city of God ' t " (St . Aug. de Civ. Dei.) 
 
 IF, as Sophocles says, there is nothing so wonderful 
 in the universe as man, then, certainly, there is not 
 anything more interesting than the habitations that 
 he has made for himself therein. The cities of the 
 world are like milestones on the path of progress ; a 
 history well-nigh universal might be compiled out of 
 their records, from the baked clay tablets of Nineveh 
 and Babylon to the pages of the Chicago " Herald." 
 
 A city is far more than an expression of the wills, 
 individual or universal, of those who built it. Hero 
 in bricks or stone maybe even in wood we find 
 play given to the will of the community, with regard 
 to one of the most important things for any community 
 to think clearly on, its own immediate surroundings. 
 The city may be built where it is by chance, but more 
 often it is the concrete embodiment of the idea of its 
 builders as to the way in which best to live a reso- 
 lution of their " where " and " how." In either 
 case it possesses an historic interest. There, is a 
 running tangible commentary on the daily lives of the 
 peoples. One, indeed, that is far more permanent 
 than any ephemeral legislation. A tyrant can make 
 or unmake a constitution by a stroke of the pen, but
 
 186 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 it takes some time for even the most democratic of 
 plumbers to mend a cistern. When Schliemann 
 excavated the hill of Ilion it was like deciphering a 
 manuscript already four times a palimpsest, and the 
 ruins of Pompeii are as fruitful a commentary upon 
 the daily life of the Romans as the poems of Horace. 
 The explanation is only partly that men take more 
 trouble with their houses than with their souls. 
 
 A city, far more than a man, is the most interesting 
 and individual thing under the sun. It is a microcosm 
 of the universe, a quintessence of its exhalations, not 
 in the schoolman sense of that fifth part which gives 
 life to the whole, but rather as containing within 
 itself in miniature a copy of all there is outside its 
 walls. Generations of men have gone to the making 
 of it ; it has grown from one to another as an idea 
 that has filtered through countless experiences and, 
 in seeing it, you survey the lives of all its builders. 
 His ancestors may move as a potent factor in a man's 
 character, but we perceive them not, for we did not 
 know them when alive and their names now would 
 be less than nothing to us. His antecedents, except 
 in so far as we shared them, are meaningless ; we 
 cannot otherwise trace their effect upon the known 
 man, and probably we went to another college ! It is 
 different with an old city. Such has all its goods on 
 fair and we may view them as we walk. A turn in 
 the street will bring us to new and unsuspected 
 beauties, a gem, small perchance, but great in its 
 novelty ; such as must greet the eye of even a life- 
 long dweller in Oxford each time that he walks abroad. 
 It may be only the sun upon it, or the moonlight falling 
 athwart it, disclosing a new facet of beauty, but he has 
 never seen it thus before. To walk in such a city is like
 
 Cities of the Soul is? 
 
 unwinding the experiences of a garrulous old man. 
 At each turn we light on half forgotten traits, to 
 which their owner furnishes a copious commentary. 
 
 They say that of our senses the one of scent is most 
 linked with memory. Nothing can awaken past 
 remembrance like an old familiar smell, or conjure 
 up the recollections of a scene that we once knew well. 
 The almost lost perfume of a rose, residing, indeed, 
 more in the paper with which it is wrapped than in the 
 flower itself, reminds the girl who takes it out of the 
 drawer of last year's ball, and the roses of yesterday 
 recall the sights and senses of all the long past summers. 
 
 It follows, then, that nothing can bring more poig- 
 nant recollections than a perfume which is associated 
 with some famous or endeared spot. The conjunc- 
 tion is irresistible and the picture conjured up before 
 the eye of the soul vivid in the extreme. The smell 
 of new leather recalls days in the saddle; that of a 
 spent cartridge, out on a day's shooting, will make 
 us hear again the very guns of France. London has 
 its own peculiar odour, an insidious compound of 
 brick and tan and tar and the hot sun on rubber tires, 
 and, in whatever city of the world we may sense part 
 of this mixture, one who has once known London 
 thinks of the greatest of them all. The smell of an 
 orange peel suggests to the stay at home the streets 
 of his native town, with the sun melting the asphalt 
 of the pavements, and the ice-cream, bananas, and 
 sweets in the Greek store at the corner ; to him that 
 hath " swam in a gondola," days spent in the groves 
 of Seville or Cadiz. 
 
 For man ever looks towards the city, and the turning 
 point in the history of a community is reached when 
 the outlying settlements coalesce into a walled town ;
 
 188 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 when the pagani become villani. For the city was 
 before the State, was the State, and those nations 
 which have not fair towns within their bounds are but 
 little heard of in history. Men look towards the city 
 as the only place where they can give full expression 
 to themselves, the only place really worth living in, 
 whether they build their house in Kallipolis or Zion, 
 and it is in virtue of no poetic fancy that the state of 
 righteousness is likened unto the city of God let down 
 from out of heaven. 
 
 The history of the word pagan illuminates much. 
 Originally the word meant countryman ; and passed to 
 its present meaning when, under the emperors after 
 Constantine, the cities of the empire gradually passed 
 to the faith of Christ. But the old faiths lingered 
 longest in the country among the pagani, as the 
 fashionables said with contempt when they had them- 
 selves adopted the court religion. Lost causes do 
 not dwell in the cities, not even in Oxford. There is 
 little genuine pastoral in literature that has not been 
 strained through the sieve of the city ; Phoebes are 
 many, while Audreys are rare but uninteresting, and 
 no less than the very few was Horace a country- 
 lover. 
 
 There are many cities. Some are cities of power, 
 astonishing only by the size of them. They founded 
 and controlled vast empires, were full of stupendous 
 monuments, and in their day their wealth was fabulous. 
 Yet were they not real cities, though doubtless men 
 loved and died for them. They gleam, with strange 
 fierce light, like huge Eastern gems, from out the 
 night or early morning of the world. 
 
 A second class of cities there is, partaking of the 
 nature of the first, but adding thereto something.
 
 Cities of the Soul 189 
 
 Mighty they are and vocal, cities of power and song. 
 Such are Rome, London, Paris. 
 
 Only one class greater is there than these, and that 
 the highest ever seen of mortal eyes. They are the 
 cities which sway the minds of men throughout the 
 ages ; the cities of the thousand lovers. Athens is 
 one, and Florence and Jerusalem. Oxford and Edin- 
 burgh can claim a place beside them. Their size 
 matters not, nor whether they are now as great as they 
 have been. Their power is not temporal but eternal, 
 for their hold is on the spirit and imagination of man- 
 kind. Each has the gift of eternal youth, or rather 
 that bestowed on those of mortals who die young 
 in the full flush of their youth and beauty. Their old 
 age mellowed or troubled is remembered not. Athens 
 is always the city of song, crowned with fresh violets, 
 the bulwark and pride of Hellas, numbering the souls 
 of men as of her lovers. Each is remembered in the 
 hour of her full flower, of the bestowal of her crown ; 
 and the glories of Solomon's city must yield to that 
 which can claim Nazareth and Galilee within her 
 spiritual walls. These are the cities of the great 
 lovers ; of Thucydides as of a thousand others, of 
 him whose name is love, of Dante. Of all who have 
 loved with a love passing that of women. 
 
 For the love of a city has been an even more potent 
 factor in history than the love of a woman, and has 
 marched with greater events. We view Italy, when 
 the curtain goes up, as a welter of warring cities, until 
 she of the seven hills gradually brings down the others : 
 those fair cities of Italy, all so unique, of which Virgil 
 sang, each on its hill with its own river winding be- 
 neath the ancient walls. Then, when the Latins of 
 central Italy rose up against the dominance of Rome,
 
 190 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 their first act was to build a new city, Italica, the 
 city of Italy par excellence, which should stand to the 
 whole peninsula as a symbol of their faith. The love 
 of the Greeks for their native town is famous; and, 
 while it gave birth to an art and literature, both 
 sprung from a life which could not otherwise have 
 been, yet it furnished the main obstacle to the uniting 
 of that wandering gifted race. It was his city that 
 the youthful wrestler or runner strove for in the dust 
 at Olympia, and whether it was a rude wind-swept 
 town, issuing a semi-barbaric coinage, on the shores 
 of the Euxine, yet clinging to the commonwealth of 
 Hellas through her temples; or an unwalled village, 
 its agora little more than a grazing-ground for horses, 
 in the uplands of Thessaly, this town meant more to 
 him than the splendours of imperial Athens. It was 
 the idea for which he lived and for which he could die 
 if need be, as witness the sacred band, those golden 
 young warriors of Thebes who fell at Chaeronea. 
 
 That was a higher city-love than the lust of the 
 conqueror, which fills the city of his choice and build- 
 ing with the loot of his victims. Thus grew Nineveh 
 and Babylon, those great rulers of the East whose 
 names can still be seen through the mist of history. 
 They grew like vampires fattening on the blood of 
 others weaker than themselves. Such love as this 
 destroyed an empire by moving its capital across the 
 sea. It is akin to hate as was the vision that led 
 Alaric onward, of a Rome that was to be seen first 
 and then destroyed, and marched with his marching 
 Goths. 
 
 And the cities of Italy new awakened to their 
 ancient heritage : these of the north, each beside its 
 rushing mountain torrent and possessed of a beauty
 
 Cities of the Soul 191 
 
 matched by itself alone. The cities of Lombardy 
 that laugh with the hot sun upon their red beds of 
 flowers, even through the blood that is hotter and 
 redder than either. Bologna, Padua, Pisa, where 
 first grew learning in our times. Last and most 
 beautiful of all, Venice, smiling from both sides of her 
 fair face, westwards to France and western chivalry 
 and eastwards to that new Rome, which guards the 
 locked gates of the rich lands beyond. Yet all the 
 while are her eyes bent on her own bosom and the 
 jewels there. 
 
 Are they then the greatest cities, these Romes and 
 Florences, with their power of lording or queening it 
 over the hearts of humanity ? Nay, there are yet 
 greater than these. The city by the purple flowing 
 Arno, through which the Tuscan poet wandered, is 
 fair, but fairer still are those of which such as he have 
 sung. For men have always pictured their dreams 
 in the likeness of cities. It matters not whether 
 these exist or are but as the vision of that glittering 
 golden El Dorado of the West which the conquist- 
 adores followed through the swamps and miasma of a 
 continent. It is a necessity laid upon the soul of man. 
 
 These are the great dream cities ; the Republics and 
 Utopias of this world. They were limned by the 
 poet's clear vision piercing beneath the imper- 
 fections of all mortal and visible abiding place for 
 mankind. They were 
 
 " Built to music : therefore never built at all 
 And therefore built for ever." 
 
 These are the cities universal, transcending time and 
 existence because they are changeless. We can all 
 be dwellers in them : must, indeed, if we are to preserve 
 o
 
 192 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 our souls from death. We can all see them, if we lift 
 up our eyes, hanging mid-way between earth and 
 heaven, their towers and battlements mingling with 
 the clouds. 
 
 Every man is a citizen of at least one such city, 
 owes allegiance to it and has in fancy built his home 
 therein. It matters not whether the house be a 
 fair one, whitewashed within and without, in a clear 
 northern air, with paths which lead directly to and 
 fro ; or a marble villa set midst deep beds of flowers 
 on a promontory lapped by the blue waters of a spark- 
 ling sea. It makes no difference, provided that we 
 obey the by-laws of the town and have in our house 
 a tower, or other lofty-hanging window, from which 
 we can view the city as a whole. 
 
 That is the trouble ; for at normal times we catch 
 but a glimpse, half-seen, of the cities of our desire, so 
 dense and black are the clouds and pendulous with 
 rain. But even that half -caught vision may serve 
 to set us on our way. 
 
 Some have been great travellers in the endeavour 
 to find their city. They have glimpsed it shining 
 from afar, and have straight left friends and the 
 accustomed life behind to view it nearer. Many 
 have started and never reached it, stopping too long 
 at some tavern on the road. Others have taken 
 the last short journey for its sake and entered the city 
 only through the gate of death. 
 
 Some, after a rough hard journey up hill, seem yet 
 to have reached only the outskirts of the city of their 
 soul. And the way is still long and they are old and 
 spent and their time short. They feel that they will 
 never reach the city now, but must be content with 
 the vision of it shining afar on the top of the high
 
 Cities of the Soul 193 
 
 mountains, and others passing them on the road and 
 winning thereto. And yet who knows ; perhaps if 
 they will sit down and rest by the wayside for a while 
 the city will come to them ! 
 
 The way to the city is rough and uphill and choked 
 with thorns and overgrown with brushwood. For 
 the cities were built so long ago, that men have for- 
 gotten the paths that were used of old and can only 
 win to them by strange new routes. 
 
 The city does not always show itself the same, for 
 it has many quarters and each different. Its appear- 
 ance varies according to the light in which we view it. 
 Moreover, as it can be reached by many and diverse 
 routes, so it ever offers a different side of itself to him 
 that approaches it. Yet all must meet in the market- 
 place. 
 
 For years, in far lands, we have had our cities. At 
 times they were called Bapaume, at others, Cambrai, 
 or a village on these low Flanders hills. And they 
 have said " win this city " or " gain these heights " 
 and it will be all over and you may rest and then enter 
 upon the promised land. We have taken the cities 
 and mounted the heights, and there were ever other 
 cities and more hills, range upon range, behind ; until 
 that day when the hills were made level and the walls 
 of the cities seemed to fall down as they flew past us, 
 as suddenly and miraculously it appeared as ever 
 did those of Jericho. So we marched to the great 
 river, which guarded the cities in the land that held 
 the grail that was holy for us. For much blood of 
 those we loved had been spilt in and out of it, and we 
 were sworn to look therein. At times it had seemed 
 as if we would never see the old city of the double 
 spire holding the Roman gateway of the Rhine.
 
 194 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 There were long days and months when it looked 
 as if, so far from reaching the city, we could scarcely 
 stay us on the road that we had come. 
 
 A day in April, 1918, and for four years Titan and 
 Atlas had been tossing the ball of the world's debate 
 backwards and forwards. Which would tire the 
 first ? The ridge had stood for long guarding the city 
 behind it ; would it stand this ? A great effort must 
 be parried first before the counterstroke, and the 
 cities seemed very far away. A Highland division 
 coming into the line ; one old in fame and therefore 
 full of youth. None more than eighteen did these 
 boys look, with not a moustache to a platoon, careless 
 and whistling, an untried soldiery. Boys led by 
 youths, for they were Scotland's all ; all she had left 
 to give to fill her city. One met them at night swing- 
 ing in fours up the line, their first time in, and wondered 
 if they could stand. When the storm spent itself 
 the young division, old again in war, was standing 
 there, and the city saved. 
 
 Many sought the city for strange chance reasons 
 born of no necessity : started out light-heartedly, then 
 lost themselves in the search. Doubtless the city 
 was none the less fair for that and the inhabitants 
 did not mind, but smiled kindly upon these boyish 
 travellers who scarce knew their way about her streets. 
 For her squares and pleasant places must be full of 
 such. 
 
 " They cannot call us ' Saturday night soldiers ' 
 now, can they, sir," said a dying lad of the London 
 Scottish to his Company Commander, after that great 
 charge at Loos, which lifted the fame of the territorial 
 army of Britain out of the slough of despondency and 
 criticism in which it had long sojourned and set it en-
 
 Cities of the Soul 195 
 
 throned for ever on the twin peaks of glory and duty 
 done. The girls of London town, having the Guards 
 before them, were critical of soldiers, at least of those 
 who were so only once a week. A humble garret 
 room in the great city may have been all he sought, 
 but surely the girl angels breached the walls to let 
 him and all those others in ! 
 
 In these years the city has grown full of youth and 
 her streets crowded with laughing boys. For youth 
 fleet-footed, though starting later, has passed all 
 others on the road and reached his eager goal. For 
 us, their entrance there has requickened what we had 
 almost lost and brought us nearer home. 
 
 It has regilded the roofs of the city and set a new 
 cross upon its central dome.
 
 ( 196) 
 
 XVIII 
 A MILITARY FUNERAL 
 
 THE road to the cemetery seemed unending ; like a 
 great white snake it lay athwart the landscape, un- 
 folding coil after coil of its dusty length at each 
 successive bend. Overhead there was spring sun- 
 shine and the blue Canadian sky. In the fast -opening 
 hedges by the wayside the birds were singing merrily, 
 but underfoot there was only the road, its hardness 
 belied by the clouds of dust which arose from it and 
 hung like a pall in the wake of the trudging plodding 
 funeral-party. The fine white dust lay thick on the 
 khaki tunics of the soldiers ; it was even spread like a 
 film over the Union Jack which covered the coffin on 
 the gun-carriage. Useless to brush it off, for more to 
 settle. The whole country-side was awakening at the 
 touch of the soft finger of spring ; the air was warm 
 and balmy, and through the midst of all this new life 
 passed the slow cortege of death. 
 
 They had come a long way already. Leaving the 
 barracks the platoon had marched in fours through 
 the city to the military hospital. There they had 
 fallen out while permission had been given to the 
 more intimate friends of the deceased, or to those who 
 were curious to look upon the face of death, to go 
 inside and view the body before it was placed within 
 the coffin. Many had gone ; the remainder mean- 
 while standing in the street exchanged remarks with
 
 A Military Funeral 197 
 
 the crowd or with the blue-uniformed patients who 
 thronged the hospital windows. 
 
 At last, after the stragglers had rejoined, the coffin 
 came through the gateway, borne on the shoulders 
 of the more lusty of the dead man's friends. 
 
 Draped with the flag it was placed on the gun- 
 carriage drawn by mounted men of the Army Service 
 Corps. 
 
 The procession was reformed, regimental band in 
 front, and moved slowly off to the mournful strains 
 of the Dead March. In this manner, first the band, 
 next the gun-carriage guarded by the firing party 
 marching with arms reversed, then the platoon march- 
 ing in fours, it moved through the streets of Halifax. 
 
 The next halt was at the church. He had been a 
 Catholic, and was carried in and lay for a while within 
 the circle of lighted candles, which cast fantastic 
 shadows of the coffin upon the walls. A few, in- 
 cluding the officer in charge, went in with him, but the 
 majority stayed in the street outside. There they 
 lounged apathetically or kicked stones across the 
 road until it was over, and he came out again. 
 
 The little procession re-formed for a fresh start, 
 and went off again at the same slow gait. Soon, once 
 more in the country, the order was given to march at 
 ease. Perhaps they moved a little faster now away 
 from curious eyes in busy streets ; still it was slow 
 work. Once there was a halt. 
 
 Not many of the platoon had known the dead man 
 well. He had been with them so short a time ! How 
 he had got past the doctor in this early time of war 
 was a mystery, for even the life of training had been 
 too much for him. His soldiering had been short 
 and painful, an effort hardly to be borne, and this was
 
 198 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 the end. These others would soon go overseas to 
 die in France or Flanders. He was the first to fall, 
 ere yet the runners were set upon the mark. For the 
 moment the idea of their first casualty made them 
 thoughtful and seemed to bring the war nearer to the 
 monotonous daily round of drill and marching. This 
 was his last route-march along the familiar road ! 
 But soon he would be forgotten, and the memory of 
 this would become blurred and blend with that of 
 many other Calvaries. To-morrow they would 
 debate whether his name should stand first on the 
 battalion roll of honour or whether it would be there 
 at all. 
 
 " Yes, he was married. That was his missus with 
 the kids in church, the one in black who cried." 
 
 " Well, don't suppose he would have stood it long 
 out there." 
 
 " Lungs, no heart, the doctor said." 
 
 Arrived at the cemetery the platoon lined the 
 entrance on either side, and the body was borne down 
 and between their ranks standing at the " reverse." 
 Then it was lowered into the waiting grave and the 
 padre did his bit. A straggling volley rang out from 
 the firing party and the bugler blew the " Last Post" 
 indifferently well, and it was over. 
 
 The march home was made in quicker time and to a 
 merrier tune. They did not mean their comrades 
 there in barracks to have more than their proper 
 share of tea. 
 
 Only the woman in black stood still by the now 
 filled-in grave and wept and prayed. She blamed 
 these long route-marches from which her man had 
 come back white-faced, but still trying to smile. Per- 
 haps she blamed the M.O.
 
 A Military Funeral 199 
 
 Or perhaps she went past them to first causes and 
 her tears helped to swell the mighty tide of such 
 water, daily rising higher, which was to grow and 
 grow throughout these years, until at last it should 
 reach Olympus and bear the vessel of wrath and of 
 vengeance through the empty gates of a deserted 
 palace in Berlin.
 
 ( 200 ) 
 
 XIX 
 THE CITY OF FRIENDS 
 
 THERE is a fair city in England, set by the crossing of 
 an ancient stream, and crowned with a lovely diadem 
 of graceful spires which weave their fretwork, as of 
 angels' sighs transfixed and turned into stone, against 
 the greater dome above. 
 
 Here are sun-steeped courts, holding in their bosom, 
 like a green oasis there, the cool grass of piled velvet 
 and as smooth as the grey mediaeval setting in which 
 it lies ; here are river-reaches where the willows bend 
 to the stream that flows by low stone bridge and 
 ancient wall. It is a city of narrow winding streets 
 which seem to meet at will, each with a different 
 glory at either end, and through these channels the 
 stream of youth has flowed for centuries is pouring 
 now. There will always be the sound of running feet 
 upon these pavements, and the lilt of clear voices 
 coming in at the open windows. It is a city where, 
 in many characters and different books of stone, one 
 may read from century to century the story of the 
 island race which raised these walls and towers. 
 
 For here, so long ago that we know not when, 
 learning and piety joined together to lay somewhere 
 that first stone which was to grow and expand and 
 blossom to this miracle of stone. It may have been 
 in Alfred's time, when Saxon peasants drove their
 
 The City of Friends 201 
 
 oxen across the ford around which lay the little town 
 of wooden houses and wattled roofs, that the work 
 began, not surely with a conscious design of con- 
 tinuity of growth, but as all best things in the world 
 have come, from small beginnings and, as it almost 
 were, by chance. The city itself was old when they 
 began the new university there, which is yet the most 
 ancient of the English-speaking world ; how old it 
 matters not, for these meadows were there then as 
 now, running smooth and lush down to the river, and 
 seeming to invite the building of church and college 
 on their broad swelling bosoms. Since then she has 
 kept pace with the history of the builders. 
 
 Rude were her beginnings at first, as rude the age. 
 The mediaeval scholar, sleeping five to a bed as soon 
 as it got dark in that low-lying city when the mists 
 began to steal upwards from the river, for he had no 
 light, studying by day sitting on the straw on the floor 
 around a single manuscript while the damp air came 
 in by the unglazed windows, might indeed blow on 
 his fingers in default of a fire, but he had the heat 
 and glow of the desire for knowledge within his soul. 
 Hither came the youth of all nations as to another 
 Paris, thronging along the main trade-routes of 
 mediaeval learning, and here king and noble and great 
 ecclesiastic raised in emulation coverings for their 
 heads. 
 
 From the dim light of the early middle ages the 
 university passed into the grace of chivalry and sun- 
 shine of romance, not then abstractions, as until late 
 we viewed them, for they who were these things did 
 pass each other in her courts and streets. The Black 
 Prince was here, and Raleigh. Hall after hall arose, 
 each more stately than the other, and of many it can
 
 202 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 be said that they have listened alike to the drone of 
 the schoolmen and to the new-come youth telling 
 the latest gossip from town of Drake's last fight with 
 the Spaniard and the finding of another isle. These 
 gardens, that lie now so peaceful in the sun, a fair 
 exercise for fairer learning, have been the drill ground 
 of the youths who swore to defend their king from 
 the great Englishman. More than two centuries 
 later they awoke again to make the same defence, 
 this time in a better cause. Some have called her 
 dreamer, dreaming of her spires, but who has done so 
 much to fetch wisdom from the clouds and set her 
 daughter corporeal and visible in street and market- 
 place ? It is in her despite that eyes were blind 
 and ears deaf, until almost too late. And wisdom 
 has been justified of her children, and Rachel mourns 
 her sons. 
 
 For in every crisis through which the national 
 spirit has passed Oxford has led, not in the politician's 
 understanding of the word, troubling only to keep 
 one step ahead of the Great Beast, and to be out of 
 reach when the jaws clash together, making it their 
 success to have guessed aright down which path he 
 would turn, and to be there a pace ahead ; but in the 
 spirit which says, " This road we will take because 
 it is the straight one and, as it is rough and difficult, I 
 will go ahead and clear the way. Then, if I should 
 chance to fall, I will give a shout so that ye may either 
 press on over my body, or else betake yourselves 
 safely to a better way." That is what leading meant 
 to Hampden and to Sidney, if not to those dodderers 
 who wait and see or spin a coin to fix the choice twixt 
 cowardice and folly. 
 
 We cannot always, as now, approve the cause in
 
 The City of Friends 203 
 
 which she fought, even by living backwards to the 
 times of those decisions. Yet has she fought nobly 
 and with a high design, even if sometimes under the 
 wrong banner. Who, indeed, shall speak of " right " 
 and "wrong" in certain cases, as when the great 
 dragon standard of Wessex went down on Senlac hill, 
 before the hoofs of perjured free-booters or Norman 
 knights, it may have been better for England and the 
 Englands that were to be, but in which cause fell it 
 the just or unjust ? Who shall say ? She has often 
 lost with the seeming wrong, but never triumphed 
 with it, and by the greatness of her sacrifices distilled 
 a sweet essence from the losing side, making it to show 
 a victor. We must beware lest the adorable old 
 sophist make the worse appear the better cause by 
 finding there some rare seam of gold the like of which 
 we vainly seek in a far richer mine. She has the gift 
 divine of finding or causing beauty everywhere, of 
 eliciting whatever of nobility there may be in a poor 
 cause ; and to the victor standing over her she presents 
 a rich ruby, which she has dug from out the ground, 
 and says, " Add that to your triumph." There is a 
 loveliness in her defeat far surpassing the blowzy 
 fresh -grown triumph. There is a magic in her 
 name. 
 
 Certain it is that she has always had an irresistible 
 attraction for the doers as well as the dreamers of this 
 world. They dwell in the fascination of their remem- 
 brance of her, when May is there and the hawthorn 
 out in these gardens and by the river ; or when she 
 lies covered with a mantle of snow, man's handiwork 
 overlaid by God's, which gives a fresh grace to her 
 roofs and buildings. If they have ever wished to 
 change her it was only that she might better fulfil
 
 204 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 the hopes which she alone has the right to hold. It is 
 thus that his spirit thinks of her when he walks at 
 night on the tops of the Matoppo hills and views 
 those lands far-stretched which he won to her ideals 
 and she for his. His body lies in Africa but still 
 stands in stone above the High. But indeed the city 
 has many lovers in many lands wherever her tongue 
 has gone. Thither comes the soul at last, remembering 
 the knowledge gained here and seeking again the 
 friends that once she knew. 
 
 For it is the city of friends ; and these roofs to- 
 night house the same spirit as they have done for 
 centuries. Youth is the time for friendship, and 
 this is youth's eternal dwelling-place, where he 
 abideth for ever. Youth, naked and unashamed, 
 walks these streets still walks these same streets 
 which once we walked and knew so well. Not a day 
 passes without these little incidents, the casual greet- 
 ing, the laughter on field or river, the jest in hall, 
 which mean so little now as between friends, but in 
 the years to come will outweigh the recollection of all 
 the rest. These are the friends with whom, if we 
 could choose, we would walk through life, and, as the 
 evening shadows began to fall, we would enter the 
 shadowy valley arm in arm together, cross that darker 
 river in the same boat as one punt so often bore us 
 from side to side of Isis, and so walk through what- 
 ever of sunshine or brightness may lie amidst those 
 woods on the farther shore. Certainly we should 
 have held company together, even though at long 
 intervals, throughout our lives, visiting our city 
 perchance together, as friends bound by the same 
 chain of recollection, which may be lengthened link 
 by link, but never overlaid with any metal foreign
 
 The City of Friends 205 
 
 to itself ; or paid out across whole continents, yet 
 never broken. 
 
 But it was not to be : for a great wind was coming 
 from the East, parched and sere from gas, and reeking 
 of corruption, blown hither and thither throughout 
 the world by foul men's breaths, and when it passes 
 we shall not see most of our friends again. We heard 
 its first stirrings in our time, its first dry whisperings as 
 of dead leaves in summer, and built us, half-heartedly, 
 crazy shelters against its coming, laughed at by some, 
 who were the first to die. Even then the first mutter- 
 ings of the storm that was to come and uproot the tall 
 cedar and bending sapling was heard in these gardens, 
 sighing at the end of the long corridor, blowing through 
 the low arch, and brushing the leaves by the chapel 
 wall. It kissed the brows of those we walked with, 
 scorching their curls, for, though we knew it not, 
 they bore the brand of Cain, the mark which he set 
 upon his brother, and were to stain a drier browner 
 ground than our lawns with their blood more crimson 
 than these roses. The youth of the generation in 
 which we moved were marked and doomed to 
 slaughter. 
 
 There were three friends ; and one, coming in to hall 
 that first night, sat down at the scholars' table, though 
 far more than such, whence warned by the attendant 
 scout, his masterly inactivity awoke a responsive 
 chord and the desire to know him better which ripened 
 into friendship. Scot and hard rugby player, none 
 save those who knew him best would have suspected 
 him of sentiment ; yet he went down for good late one 
 evening without saying farewell, sneaked off like a 
 thief in the night to avoid that parting. " Should 
 take a commission," said the adjutant, but the powers
 
 206 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 at home thought otherwise. Returned from India, on 
 purpose, at the beginning of the war, he fell at Loos 
 with that Black Watch battalion for which he had 
 always longed a soldier after all. And one in a 
 far-off garrison isle opened a letter from him, seen 
 last at tennis in our city, and laying it down, picked 
 up a paper to scan the leaves idly ; to see him there 
 again among those who fell for Scotland. 
 
 And another, seen since those days indeed, but next 
 after long years again at B6thune in the Club there a 
 few months before the end. Changed he was, and 
 worn by war, but still the same. It did not last long 
 afterwards, but yet for him the Armistice came too 
 late. There were many others, fresh, shining and 
 brilliant, like a May morning or the noon of a summer's 
 day in June. Of some we did not know until we saw 
 the list on the chapel door. 
 
 It will be hard now to visit the city as of yore. 
 While the war lasted, it was not so, for the streets 
 were full of khaki as he had wished them, and death 
 then seemed glory, and so much better than not to 
 have dared at all. Moreover, one knew not chance and 
 fortune; so perhaps that band, fast growing on the 
 other side, would soon welcome you among its ranks, 
 converting loss to gain. There were no ghosts there 
 then ; all those fresh spirits were surely overseas 
 among their friends still " carrying on." Nor were 
 there many before that August day but jolly eman- 
 ations of corporeal presences, pillars of Church and 
 State, dwelling in the country, in India or in other 
 cities. The very contrast between Jones of Trinity 
 and the Right Reverend Mitre-aspirant which is 
 Jones now, would lay all such, the contrast was so 
 great.
 
 The City of Friends 207 
 
 It is too great to-day, and we must either not go at 
 all or else walk carefully, as men do who fear at every 
 corner to run into some ghost. For now, with victory, 
 they have all come back to the place which they loved 
 best of all, and her streets bear a greater throng than 
 meets the eye. They hurry, running or walking fast, 
 but these others linger and loiter round each well- 
 known spot. Well-remembered faces seem to peer 
 from the old windows as in the past, and the figures 
 that pass and repass each other in the quad seem 
 other forms and to answer to different names than 
 those they bear. 
 
 " Was it a hand then clapped thy shoulder 1 
 Only the wind by the chapel wall " 
 
 and the creeper will redden and fall in many an 
 autumn ere they come again to the city that they 
 loved. 
 
 This has been the world's great tragedy, this holo- 
 caust of youth, only felt chiefly here where youth 
 was centred. " Greater love hath no man than this, 
 that he lay down his life for his friend," and greater 
 shame hath no man than this that he prove unworthy 
 of the sacrifice. Those who are left can only live so 
 as to realize all that those others died for that it may 
 never happen again, or, at least, if there is something 
 so eternally bestial in the nature of man that all this 
 blood and anguish and misery and destruction may 
 come again, that right may again triumph, this time 
 at lesser cost. Then perhaps we shall see our friends 
 again, when we too have crossed that western stream, 
 and if we have kept faith, look them in the face and 
 smile and talk over those old battles.
 
 208 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 In the meantime : 
 
 " God rest you, merry Gentlemen, 
 That laid your good lives down, 
 That took the khaki and the gun 
 Instead of cap and gown. 
 God bring you to a fairer place 
 Than even Oxford town ! " 
 
 And in the meantime this our city on earth will 
 grow in the image of that laid up in heaven, until 
 her spires reach and pierce these skies. Then on a 
 May morning, when we greet the sun, we shall hear 
 those other boyish voices answer us from over there, 
 and say" All's well." 
 
 In the meantime we can still view her spires from 
 the top of Headington Hill, even as for long years past 
 we have seen those other spires of Douai, set in a 
 broad plain, from the top of a different ridge. There 
 was remembrance then at all times of rain and snow 
 and sunshine but chiefly of rain. For the spires 
 stand for remembrance as half-way between heaven, 
 where these are, and the earth from which they grew.
 
 ( 209 ) 
 
 XX 
 
 OF NEWSPAPER BOYS 
 
 Somewhere Else in France, 
 
 1st April, 1917. 
 DEAR GEORGE, 
 
 It is with great pleasure that I comply with 
 your unexpected request to send you a letter con- 
 taining some bright newsy chit-chat about the doings of 
 Joffre and Haig and others of my friends at the Front, 
 for insertion in the pages of the Parish Magazine. 
 Not forgetting myself I trust, not forgetting myself ! 
 
 The fact is, however, dear boy, that I have not seen 
 any of the old bunch to talk to for quite a while, 
 though they have by no means been latent of late. 
 Still I will do the best I can for you. 
 
 Have just re-read your letter ! George, do you 
 really mean it ? Am I actually henceforward to 
 consider myself the War Correspondent and Special 
 Representative at the Front of the Witting Workers' 
 Magazine of Mudtown-on-Slush ? Let me see, Little 
 Dumpshire, is it not ? Of course ! This will set me 
 up, you know, and give me something to do with my 
 leisure time six days in, you know, George, and 
 then six days out resting at working parties. It is 
 good of you to think of me, it really is. 
 
 But, George, does your Vicar know of the arrange- 
 ment, and does he approve ? Somehow I don't think 
 he quite liked me when I was home on leave. Re-
 
 210 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 member I am a Canadian, though you will remember 
 this, won't you, George ? not a Rhodes scholar. 
 He, if I mistake not, is a Tab. But, of course, you 
 would not have asked me unless he had been an 
 accessory to the act. One gets such groundless 
 alarms out here at times. 
 
 I cannot, however, write to you about the front, as 
 the Vicar and you desire. It would not be right you 
 know, George; would, in fact, be acting a lie, which 
 would never do for the class of periodical that we all 
 three have in mind. The front is always changing ; for 
 instance it has changed quite a lot down Bapaume 
 way since I was nearly there last. So you see that if 
 you were to publish my letter, the front might have 
 changed BO much in the meantime as to be quite 
 unrecognizable to anyone save Major Moraht. So 
 that you would be telling the Willing Workers what 
 was not true, George ! Think how bad that would 
 be for the childish mind, and how it would destroy 
 their bright young faith in the curate ! No, George, 
 no ! 
 
 Besides we don't get the papers out here regularly 
 enough to know what is really doing at the Front. 
 
 I'll tell you what I can do, however. I shall write 
 you a letter all about the funny things that have 
 happened to me when my platoon has been resting 
 in billets behind the line, " beyond the behind," as 
 Stephen Leacock puts it. One thing I can safely 
 promise both you and the Vicar, I will never write 
 a word that could make the Censor blush. 
 
 For instance, I can talk to you of newspaper boys. 
 All about newspaper boys I have met. " Why news- 
 paper boys ? " you ask ! Well, why not ? Other 
 people collect china and postage stamps or mummies.
 
 Of Newspaper Boys 211 
 
 I collect newspaper boys. What is the difference ? 
 I am afraid, George, that you are sadly lacking in 
 imagination. I suspect that to you a newspaper 
 boy is nothing more than a boy who sells newspapers. 
 You have no idea of the infinite diversity of species 
 that exists within the genus. Lots of books have 
 been written about newspapers, so why not a few 
 lines in praise of the kindly beings that proffer them 
 in the street ? 
 
 The labourer is worthy of his hire, George, as the 
 dear Vicar would say. 
 
 Number one in my collection is a wee Highland 
 laddie in a kilt and bare legs. He sold me my first 
 newspaper. It was a halfpenny one and I gave him 
 a penny. Needless to say this was before the war. 
 He, of course, said he had no change, but being a 
 Scotch newspaper boy he was comparatively honest, 
 and though he would not surrender my halfpenny 
 he gave me two papers. One of these, on my way 
 home, I gave to a working man. Now tell me, George, 
 which of us two, me I mean I or the boy was it 
 who did this good to the working man ? There is a 
 problem for your Jesuitical mind. 
 
 But say, George, I must really tell you about our 
 Canadian newspaper boys at home. They are some 
 youths, believe me, kid. So delightfully free and easy 
 and independent and democratic. Why, they don't 
 sell you a newspaper ! You have to run across the car 
 tracks from one side-walk to the other and tear it 
 away from them. Then they get quite annoyed with 
 you for interrupting their private reading. Some 
 hustlers well, I guess not ! 
 
 When I am at home, in Montreal, I usually go out 
 on Sunday morning to buy a newspaper in order to
 
 212 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 find out which side won the hockey match that I 
 witnessed the night before at the Arena, and whether 
 the police did really rescue the referee who gave that 
 off-side decision against the home team, and, if so, 
 how much. On these occasions it is a match between 
 me and the newspaper boy. Of course, true to the 
 traditions of his profession, he has no change. Neither 
 have I, as it is Sunday. So I give a quarter for a five 
 cent paper. A quarter, you know, George, is just a 
 nickel, or half a bit, more than two bits, and in Canada 
 they do up five cents in an elegant little silver coin, 
 which gets lost just as easily as a three-penny piece. 
 
 The move is now up to the boy who starts to give 
 me my change. In this my opponent is obviously 
 playing for time. First he unbuttons his overcoat, 
 then he unbuttons his jacket, then he unbuttons hip 
 breeches pocket. All this takes time, and if the 
 thermometer is anywhere in the vicinity of Zero you 
 kind of get tired waiting. By now he is shovelling 
 out the change, one copper cent at a time, into my 
 expectant palm. There are, I know, twenty of these 
 coming to me, if I wait long enough, in as many 
 separate instalments. I usually fail to last. The 
 odds are all in favour of my opponent who probably 
 wins by eight up and twelve to come, or thereabouts. 
 Once, however, I had my fur cap and overcoat on 
 and I froze him out. 
 
 In London they are quite different. There the 
 newsvendors hunt in packs and charge the pedestrians 
 in extended order, like so many bombers rushing a 
 machine gun, so that if one does not get him another 
 does. It is impossible to escape them all. 
 
 My collection includes some rare exotic growths. 
 You will perhaps remember, George, that early in
 
 Of Newspaper Boys 213 
 
 the war I accompanied my regiment to Bermuda 
 at the special and united request of Lord Kitchener 
 and the Admiralty, in order to defend the coral crop 
 against German raiders. How well I did my job is 
 not for me to say. Suffice it that the Bermudas are 
 still afloat, and not a coral the worse. It is not, how- 
 ever, of these high problems of Imperial strategy 
 that I wish to talk, but of the Bermudan newspaper 
 boys. George, they are black and wonderful they 
 make so much of nothing ! 
 
 In Hamilton they publish two newspapers, one 
 green, the other white. One appears in the morning, 
 the other at any old time. The purpose of the latter 
 is apparently to tone down, rarely to substantiate, 
 the highly improbable statements of its matutinal 
 predecessor. In other words, it contains the same 
 items of news, with sometimes the addition of a 
 question mark. Both papers are highly condensed. 
 Epoch-making events to which the " Times " would 
 devote columns and an editorial are given in a few 
 lines, without any comment, in the very words of the 
 cable. These are the wares which the boys hawk 
 in the streets and the other places with remarkable 
 success. One wakes up in the morning to the prospect 
 of one's quarters full of sunshine, oleander leaves, 
 black beetles, and black newspaper boys. Before 
 one is half awake one has accepted a paper, the vendor 
 receiving in exchange a watch or pair of gold sleeve 
 links, or some little trifle of that sort. Strange to say 
 he rarely comes again. 
 
 I went out to France with lively anticipations of 
 adding some unique specimens to my collection. In 
 particular I had heard of a fair newspaper girl who was 
 said to haunt the trenches and the deserted streets of
 
 214 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Arras. I have been to Arras but saw no she there, 
 only she-lls, George, only she-lls. 
 
 After the Somme, however, I found that I had 
 considerable leisure to spend on my researches. Then 
 during my temporary residence in hospital at Doullens 
 I devoted considerable study to the Gallic news- 
 paper boy and girl. No, I was not wounded, nor yet 
 was I suffering from some merely civil complaint, 
 such as I might have received in London. Perhaps, 
 " suffering from injuries inflicted by nature in the 
 presence of the enemy," best describes my condition. 
 At Doullens, George, the boys run through the streets 
 with shouts of "Dee-ly Mail," "Dee-ly Mail." Do 
 you remember, old thing, the cry of " Star-ry View," 
 " Starry View," in the Corn of Saturday nights ? 
 
 It was only, though, when up the line once more 
 that I met the prince of newsboys. His name is Jean, 
 and there are many boys, but only one Jean. In him 
 the spirit of the Paris gamin Victor Hugo's Gavroche 
 seemed to live again in a smaller edition. With no 
 fixed abode, and apparently no parents, he earned 
 all the living he cared about selling newspapers up 
 and down the line^ His habits were nomadic, and 
 one was quite likely to meet him one day at Aubigny 
 and the next at B6thune, supposing oneself so lucky 
 as to get a day off at the latter place. It was at neither 
 of these places that I first saw him ! 
 
 My eyes were first attracted to him by the singu- 
 larity of his dress. It was a bitterly cold day, yet 
 he wore no coat. He had velvet corduroy breeches 
 fastened round his waist with a red cotton handker- 
 chief. The rest of his costume testified to his belief 
 in the indissolubility of the Franco-British entente. 
 He wore puttees of a peculiarly offensive yellow shade
 
 Of Newspaper Boys 215 
 
 of khaki, while on his head there was perched, jauntily, 
 a sky-blue French forage-cap. This bore the cap 
 badge of the Royal Canadian Regiment which, as you 
 know, George, was my regiment. Probably it still is, 
 but I have been so bandied about recently that I am 
 not quite sure. Ask him not where he got it, George, 
 as a free though forbidden gift in answer to his appeal- 
 ing cry for " souvenir," or whether it was seques- 
 trated during its owner's temporary absence in an 
 estaminet cementing the entente. 
 
 Ostensibly, and as an excuse for his comings and 
 goings, Jean sold English newspapers at an altogether 
 exorbitant profit. I buy one when I meet him, or I 
 used to. On these occasions I usually speak French 
 of a quality altogether superior to the ordinary B. E. F. 
 brand of that long suffering language. Jean, poor 
 boy, uses as an intermediary the few words that he does 
 not know of what he probably takes to be English. 
 I had always understood that Jean's respect for my 
 linguistic attainments could be taken for granted. 
 Imagine then one day the shock that I experienced 
 when on asking for my usual " Times " I received 
 this reply, delivered in a most casual manner, " Onlee 
 zee Matin and P'tit Parisien thees morning, zare, no 
 bong fir you zare at all." Horrid little boy, I feel 
 sure that the cap badge was stolen ! 
 
 I have not seen Jean since, but to-day, in spite of 
 his impertinence, I can say with true Christian charity 
 mark that, George, in capitals that I forgive him 
 and hope he is still alive. This, I am sure, he is 
 not, unless he managed to cure his propensity for being 
 wherever the next shell might be expected, in the 
 hunt for souvenirs. 
 
 Well, George, I feel that I have done you and the
 
 216 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 parish proud. You know all about my innocent 
 recreations at the Front, with not a touch of rum. 
 I feel sure that the Vicar will approve of all that I 
 have written. So, as the last letter that I censored 
 said, "here's hoping that this finds you in the pink, 
 dear, as it leaves me, dearest." Yes, George, he was 
 writing to his wife. How I anticipate your every 
 want ! 
 
 Well, I shall say adieu, old man, and not au revoir, 
 as I hope soon to see you all again. 
 
 Your affectionate cousin by marriage, 
 
 (Yours, not his), 
 
 Archie .
 
 XXI 
 
 " KIT INSPECTION " 
 
 (An immediately pre-war farce of the old Army.) 
 CHARACTERS. 
 
 PTE. KNOW ALL, a boy of the old brigade. 
 
 PTE. SNOOKS, a good recruit. 
 
 PTE. BIFFIN, a bad recruit. 
 
 L/CPL. DRINKDOWN, an old timer left over from the 
 
 Boer War. 
 
 SERGEANT-MAJOR STICKIT. 
 PROVO. -SERGEANT CATCHEM. 
 LIEUT. BOBBY SETON, a blushing subaltern. 
 CAPTAIN DUKES, his Company Commander. 
 MAJOR KEMP. 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL CUTOFF, K.C.B. 
 Other soldiers, good, bad, but mostly indifferent. 
 SCENE. Any Old Barracks. 
 TIME. The summer of 1913. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 (The interior of the barrack-room of which DRINKDOWN 
 is in charge. According to K.R. and 0. he is there as 
 an example and restraint to the other occupants. In 
 reality he owes his position solely to alcoholic, presumably 
 constitutional, inability to keep more than one stripe at 
 a time on the upper portion of his right arm. The room
 
 218 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 is bare, no carpet, but neat there is nothing to get out of 
 place and scrupulously clean. Down each side, are 
 ranged ten little iron bedsteads (bedsteads, barrack, soldiers, 
 for the use of, as the Q.M. calls them). Under each is a 
 small box containing all the owner's worldly possessions ; 
 his name is on the card at the head of the bed. On the 
 top of nearly all reclines the owner himself, for it is 
 afternoon and the British soldier is, as the snores show, 
 exercising his inalienable right to pursue therein his 
 favourite form of recreation. Enter DRINKDOWN, a 
 still martial figure, though somewhat overgrown in parts, 
 with a red nose and a red ribbon above his stomach.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, boys, I've a good bit of news 
 fur yez all to-day ; nice and spicy it is. Don't say 
 that I never brings yez nothing ! (Complete lack of 
 response from the beds ; continues in an aggrieved manner 
 and higher key.) Do ye not 'ear me, boys, or must I 
 make myself 'card ? It's news I'm bringing yez ; 
 mind I'm telling ye all, so don't say as yez wasn't 
 warned. It's not my fault if ye won't listen to me. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER (on nearest bed, uncocking one eye). 
 Well, you damned old tub of guts, what are you 
 standing there for making all that blasted row ? 
 Can't a gentleman sleep sometimes, even in the 
 harmy ! 
 
 DRINKDOWN (turning on him). You blasted fool, 
 
 you , you poor civvy, here you've been all asleep. 
 
 Well, there will be a war on soon, so don't say as you 
 wasn't warned. (Makes to go out.) 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Ere, 'arf a mo, Drinky ! What's 
 all the fuss about anyway ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Ain't I a tellin' yez. You'll know 
 soon enough, oh yes, you'll know. Only don't say I
 
 u 
 
 Kit Inspection " 219 
 
 didn't tell yez of it, like what you did last time. Lazy 
 lubbers don't even know there's a war on ! 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. 'As Bloodthirsty an' 'is Bulgars 
 won another bleedin' battle, Drinky ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. No, me lad, it's a real war this 
 time ; worse than that at any rate. Oh, it is rich, 
 rare news ! 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Well, for Gawd's sake shut up 
 and tell us about it and then get out. 
 
 DRINKDOWN (taking a deep breath and puffing out 
 his chest, as one who has at last secured his audience). 
 Well, fellow-soldiers, brave canteen fighters, know ye 
 by my being 'ere that I 'ave just been conversating 
 with our 'ighly respectable and honoured Colonel, who 
 sez to me ye know his style, short and sharp, that's 
 'im, and what friends we is " Corporal Drinkdown," 
 sez 'e, "I would'st that thou would'st go and hinform 
 thy trusty comrades, my brave soldiers, that the 
 Lord 'Igh ' Aught iness 'is Himperial Stoutness the 
 Fortress Commander, damn 'is buttons, will hinspect 
 these 'ere barracks at four pip emma precisely. So 
 go thou and tell the boys, particularly them 'as is in 
 room B., wot is a blooming lazy lot of swine, to prepare 
 and get ready." 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. . 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. . 
 
 DRINKDOWN. It's no use, boys ; I feels that way 
 myself and so I tell's 'im. But it's no use ; for sure 
 there's a war on I'm thinkin.' 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. It's not true, Fatty, is it ? 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Oh, sergeant dear, I prithee 
 say that it be not true. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. It's true right enough ; am I not 
 saying that I 'ad it from the Old Man 'imself ?
 
 220 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER. And what for would the Ould 
 Man be talking to the likes of you fur, Corporal 
 Drinkdown ? Tell me that, ye spalpeen ? 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Oh, Fatty, you're a bloody liar ! 
 
 FOURTH SOLDIER. Ye're a domned lear I'm 
 thinking, corporal. 
 
 DRINKDOWN (with futurist reminiscence of an- 
 other great man). Well, all I say is, wait and see. 
 You'll see all right, and be damned to yez all. (Goes 
 to his bed and begins slowly to get out his kit, arranging 
 it for the inspection. The others watch him for a 
 moment and then, as if realizing the full import of 
 his proceeding, get off their beds, each in his own fashion, 
 and proceed to imitate him. PTE. SNOOKS is first. 
 Some, however, remain asleep. Others are wakened 
 in various fashions by their resentful comrades. They 
 work busily for a while.} 
 
 PTE. SNOOKS. Corporal. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well ! 
 
 SNOOKS. Corporal, I am not very sure about 
 arranging these things, I 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well find out, my lad, find out, 
 only don't bother me. 
 
 SNOOKS But, corporal 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, again ! 
 
 SNOOKS. I really am not sure ; you might just 
 show me. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Look 'e 'ere, my lad, I've told you 
 once, don't bother your superior officer. It's not 
 'ealthy in the harmy. 
 
 SNOOKS. But, corporal, the Captain said that 
 when I joined I was to go to you in any difficulty. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, go, lad, go ! Only mind I am
 
 " Kit Inspection " 221 
 
 your superior orficer, that's me ; you are in the 
 army, that's you ; so don't you worrit me, that's us 
 both 
 
 SNOOKS (appealing to the room in general). 
 Will some one kindly tell me whether my socks 
 go on the right or the left of my under-wear ? 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. That depends on whether you wear 
 them on the right or left foot, sonny. 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Bill, 'elp the young lidy with 
 'er lingerie. 
 
 PTE. KNOWALL. Well, now I'll tell you, my lad, 
 it all depends on who is going to do the inspecting. 
 If it is the Captain, he likes 'em on the left and I would 
 put them there. But, mind you, I don't know what 
 the Colonel likes. Probably he has marked pre- 
 ferences one way or the other, and will give emphatic 
 emphasis to them if you do not respect his convictions 
 in the matter of your socks. Young Seton now, he 
 generally likes 'em on the right, and if he is coming 
 we puts 'em there. Then the Captain comes and 
 changes 'em again, and there is 'ell while young Seton 
 'e looks down 'is bloody nose and smiles sickly like 
 with his ruddy mouth. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. 'Oo cares for the bloody loot, 
 anyway ? 
 
 KNOWALL Oh, he's all right. The General will 
 go by the Colonel and the Colonel will watch the 
 Adjutant, who will pretend he really knows. Yes, 
 decidedly the Adjutant is the man. I should go and 
 ask him if I were you. Don't go to the sergeant- 
 major, he is too shy, or perhaps you had better see 
 him first and ask for an interview with the Adjutant 
 on the subject. That would be the safest way. Oh, 
 yes, decidedly, so.
 
 222 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 SNOOKS. Thanks, I will, since none of you can 
 help. (Turns to the door.) 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Here, kid, come back, they're 
 making game of you. Look at the plate and put 
 your darned old socks the way shown there. One on 
 each side of your little pants it is. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. There ain't no plate. Hi, Drinky, 
 where's your plate, it ain't on its 'ook ? 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Drinky pawned it at the canteen. 
 Shocking, I calls it. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Blast it. I forgot to get the com- 
 pany orfice to indent for another. The Captain 
 spoke about its habsence last time too. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Yes, and you'll get 'ell if it ain't 
 'ere to-day. 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. You'll be for orfice, Drinky ; 
 petty larceny '11 be the charge. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Too bad, Corporal Drinkdown, 
 too bad ! Boom B. still deficient of its plate. Where 
 am I to look to for these things if not to you, 
 corporal?" 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Yes, you'll 'ave to show 'im a 
 plate to-day, Drinky, for the credit of the room. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, I'll borrow one from another 
 room. (Exit.) 
 
 KNOWALL. Here, look here, you put these there, 
 and this 'ere here. No, the soap goes in its box oh, 
 lay it on the blanket then. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER (strolling over to SNOOKS'S bed). 
 Got your socks dressed by the right yet, kid ? That's 
 right then. Quite a wit I am, I don't think. Hi, 
 Bill, come and look at the display of fancy-work 
 and undies in this ere window. Indecent I calls it 
 (Re-enter DRINKDOWN.) Well, 'ave you got another
 
 " Kit Inspection " 223 
 
 pretty picture to take the place of the one wot you 
 swiped for beer, as is now 'ung in the canteen ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. No, blast it, I couldn't borrow one 
 anywhere. They was all in. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Well, I'm not worrying it's your 
 funeral, old thing. 
 
 PTB. BIFFIN (entering). Who says there's a ruddy 
 kit-inspection on to-day ? That's what I want to 
 know. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Ho yes, there is. 
 
 BIFFIN. Well, I don't know as I've got much in 
 the old kitty. (Goes to his box and opens it.) As I 
 thought. Deficient, tins blacking, soldiers, for use 
 of, one ; hold-all, one ; housewife, well I'm a bachelor, 
 so let it pass ; boot polish, crdme de la cr&ne, alias 
 blacking, tins, one, nothing doing. Say, Drinky, 
 its hardly seems worth while to hold an inspection 
 to-day, does it ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. That don't make no difference, go 
 on with you. 
 
 BIFFIN. Here, Snooks, lend us a pair of socks. 
 
 SNOOKS. I really must protest. These are my 
 only spare pair. 
 
 BIFFIN. Well, what's the odds ? What's a pair 
 of socks anyway to this outfit ? I'm going sick. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. No you don't, not if I knows it. 
 
 BIFFIN. Oh, corporal, I am so ill, so very ill. 
 Fetch the M.O., corporal, please do, there's a good man. 
 
 DRINKDOWN (in an official voice). Are you report- 
 ing sick, Private Biffin ? 
 
 BIFFIN. You fat, old wheezer ! Ain't I reporting 
 sick as hard as I know how ? Do you want me to 
 die to convince you that I'm not well ? Oh, I have 
 such a pain in my tummy. 
 Q
 
 224 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, if you ain't really got no kit 
 perhaps it's the best thing. Who's the orderly cor- 
 poral ? Hi, you, Jones, take 'im down, and hand 
 'im over to the M.O.'s horderly, will you ? (Exit 
 JONES with BIFFIN.) 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 (The same) but even cleaner and tidier. All are 
 discovered putting the finishing touches to their kits, now 
 displayed on the beds.} 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Spoiling a man's afternoon rest 
 like this ! I shaU write to " John Bull," I shall ! 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, is we all ready now ; young 
 Twinkle- Star '11 be here soon ? 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. All ready but the plate, Drinky. 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Come on, Field-Marshal, give 
 us a look over. I ain't got no blacking, so let's 'ave 
 a tin wot you've complicated from the Q.M.S. 
 
 DRINKDOWN (ignoring the insinuation goes solemnly 
 round the room and inspects the kits while the men 
 stand in attitudes of mock attention and respect). Well, 
 thet'll do, boys ! 
 
 (All throw up their hands and sink down wearily 
 on the beds as if exhausted by their labours. 
 
 A knock is heard and simultaneously the door is 
 thrown open, and LIEUTENANT BOBBY SETON preceded 
 by the company orderly sergeant, enters.} 
 
 DRINKDOWN (in a voice that shakes the dust and 
 flies from the windows}. Room, 'shun ! 
 
 LIEUT. SETON (a mild-faced youth with rosy cheeks 
 and a flaxpod of a moustache}. All-right, corporal, 
 as you were. Carry on, men. I want to have a 
 look at the kits of the half company, Drinkdown, 
 before Captain Dukes goes round. Are you all ready ?
 
 u 
 
 Kit Inspection " 225 
 
 DRINKDOWN (paternally, yet heartily). Pretty near, 
 sir ! 
 
 SETON (pacing slowly round the room and gazing 
 fixedly at each bed in turn as if he were an old do' man 
 come to appraise and depreciate wares before investing). 
 Ah, yes. Quite so. Where are your gloves, Jones ? 
 Oh, yes, I see. Two shirts here, Simpson ? Well, 
 what have you got on ? Oh, well, it is warm, as you 
 say. Good, good. (Comes to a halt suddenly before 
 SNOOK'S bed.) Put your socks right, you what is 
 this man's name, corporal ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN (promptly). Snooks, sir, one of the 
 recruits. 
 
 SETON. Well, put your socks on the left of your 
 drawers, Snooks. Where's this man, corporal ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Private Biffin, another recruit, sir ; 
 gone sick, sir. 
 
 SETON. What's the matter with him ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. No kit I mean severe gastric 
 ulcer, sir. 
 
 SETON. Well, the room's all right, corporal, but 
 see that they all have their socks on the left of their 
 drawers. It's that way on the plate, is it not ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Yes, sir, oh, certainly, on the left. 
 I was looking at the plate myself, only this morning. 
 
 SETON. Well, see that they all have it right, cor- 
 poral. Captain Dukes will be round immediately, 
 I expect. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Right it is, sir. (Exit SETON.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Now boys, get all them socks over 
 on the left. Look sharp now and get them right. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. It's not right by the plate, corporal. 
 
 DRINKDOWN (witheringly). Ho yus, a fat lot you 
 knows about it.
 
 226 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 (Door is again thrown open as if by a hurricane. 
 Enter in the same manner CAPTAIN DUKES, a tall, 
 dark thin man sporting a monocle, which he screws 
 impartially into either eye.) 
 
 DEINKDOWN (in a voice that shakes the dust and 
 flies from the windows and ceiling). Room, 'shun ! 
 
 CAPTAIN DUKES Stand easy, men ! Come round 
 with me, corporal, please. 
 
 (He goes round the room and screwing his eye-glass 
 firmly into his eye appears to be trying to burn a hole 
 in the articles which he surveys. DBINKDOWN accom- 
 panies him.) 
 
 CAPTAIN DUKES (his peregrination finished). 
 Quite good, corporal, but why have all the men got 
 their socks on the left instead of the right ? That's 
 not right, is it ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN (promptly, in tones of intense con- 
 viction). No, sir ; not at all, sir. 
 
 DUKES. Well, see to it, man ; see to it. The 
 General will be round soon. (Goes towards the door 
 but suddenly halts and turns round.) Where's the 
 plate, corporal ? 
 
 DBINKDOWN. Plates, sir ; they're all down in the 
 mess-room, sir. 
 
 DUKES. No ; plate, man, plate. The kit-plate, I mean. 
 
 DBINKDOWN. Oh, that, sir ! 
 
 DUKES. Yes, where is it ? 
 
 DBINKDOWN (scandalized). Where is it, sir ! 
 
 DUKES. Yes, where is it ? 
 
 DBINKDOWN. Stolen by Don Company. 
 
 DUKES Well, find it at once. Get it, man ; it's 
 the first thing the Colonel will notice. 
 
 DBINKDOWN. We'll get one all right, sir, from 
 friends.
 
 u 
 
 Kit Inspection v 227 
 
 DTTKES. Well, mind you do. (Exit DUKES.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN (rapidly, in the manner of a General 
 issuing final instructions berfore battle). Now, 
 listen to me, all you, Snooks, what are you gaping 
 like an oyster for ? the next'll be the Colonel either 
 with or without the hadjutant. If the Ole Man come 
 by 'imself 'e likes 'is socks on the left, so put 'em there. 
 If 'e brings the hadjutant along with 'im 'e'll want 
 'em the other way, on the right. Now 'ere's where 
 strategy comes in ; I wasn't in South Africa chasm' 
 the Wily Burger for nothin', me sons. You, Bill, 
 goes outside and loiters inconspicuous and casual 
 like in the passage. As soon as you see 'em coming 
 give us a whistle and then nip in and stand beside 
 your bed. If the Ole Man is by 'isself whistle " God 
 Save the King ! " If the hadjutant is with 'im 
 " Soldiers of the King." Understand ? Know both 
 them tunes ? Right ' I'll look after your socks 
 myself. Now all the rest take your socks in 
 yer 'ands and then wait for 'is whistle. If 'e whistles 
 the " King " put 'em on the left, if 'is " Soldiers " 
 on the right. Quite simple, ain't it, if you can think? 
 All right, go on, Bill. 
 
 (Exit KNOWALL. DRINKDOWN follows him to the 
 door. The others take up their socks and sit down 
 again on the beds.) 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Silly, I calls it. 
 
 SNOOKS. Yes, surely there must be one way that 
 is right, and I should have thought that the corporal 
 with all his service would have known it ! 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. A fat lot you knows about it. 
 This is the army, son, and will be the harmy when you 
 are dead and gone. Hi, Drinky, what about the 
 plate ?
 
 228 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 DRINKDOWN (turning from the door). Damn it 
 all, I was forgetting it. Let me think again. 'Ere, 
 Joe, go along to the end of the passage and wait behind 
 the door. After they have been into the first room 
 nip in and borrow the kit-plate from Corporal Jenkins. 
 Say it is for me. Then put it under your jacket, 
 double along the passage, and there we are ! (Exit, 
 THIRD SOLDIER.) 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Well, I calls that real smart 
 corporal. Smuggling ain't hi it with you ! 
 
 DRINKDOWN (complacently). Ah ! I allus had a 
 big head ; lots of room for my brains to grow when 
 I was a kid ! 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. Fat head, you mean ! 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Well, why haven't they ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Haven't what ? 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Grown ! 
 
 SECOND SOLDIER. There's still lots of room, ain't 
 there ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Now 'oos got a musical ear to listen 
 to Bill a' whistlin' ; I doubts if I would recergnize 
 them tunes myself leastways not the way 'e'll do 
 'em. 
 
 (A confused noise of many footsteps, and made up 
 of the banging of doors and of words of command 
 spoken in either throaty or rich and fruity tones, comes 
 from down the passage. Evidently the inspection has 
 begun.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN (going to the door and peeping cau- 
 tiously out). They've started. (Disgustedly.) I can't 
 see no one ! 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Where's Bill ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Oh, yes, there 'e is. 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Why don't 'e whistle ?
 
 " Kit Inspection " 229 
 
 DRINKDOWN (crossly). Because 'es a' talking to 
 the horderly corporal, thet's why. 
 
 Enter THIRD SOLDIER (unbuttoning himself as he 
 comes). I've got the plate, corporal, darlint. 
 
 DRINKDOWN (impassively). 'Ang it on the 'ook. 
 'Oos taking the hinspection, Joey ? 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER. I couldn't see. 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Didn't yer ask ? (Witheringly.) 
 Hand yer calls yerself a Scout ; one of the Battalion 
 Intelligence Section ; I don't think. Why, you ain't 
 fit to be in the blooming Band. 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER. But sure that's Bill Kno wall's 
 job! 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Ho, is it ? Ho ! Mark my words, 
 my lad, this specialishun of functions will be the ruin 
 of the 'ole blooming harmy. 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER. I thought 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Yer wot ! Ain't yer drawin' a bob 
 a day for not thinking ! The harmy is plumb full of 
 traditions, but I can't remember as I ever 'eard as 'ow 
 thinkin' was one of 'em. Why, where would we be 
 to-day if we 'ad thought ? I asks you ! Ain't you 
 in the harmy so wot's the use of thinkin' you you 
 bloody 'Ouse of Commons ? 
 
 THIRD SOLDIER. Well, what is Knowall doing ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN (unappeased). Ain't wot's good 
 enought for the War Horfice good enough for you, 
 eh ! Wot do you want to think for, eh ! Breaking 
 down the traditions of the harmy like that, and 
 breakin' up wot the Furrin Orfice is founded on. 
 You're no patriot, but a low-down rad, that's wot 
 you are, and no mistake. 
 
 (A confused noise of whistling is heard. The tune 
 finally resolves itself into " God Save the King.")
 
 230 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 DRINKDOWN. On the left with your socks, boys. 
 Thank Gawd the Old Man 'asn't brought 'im with 'im. 
 (They all put their socks on the left of the beds. The 
 whistling changes to a rather free version but still 
 recognizable as " Soldiers of the King.") By Gawd, 'e 
 'as. Change them socks to the right, boys ; look slippy 
 now. (The unseen musician carries on with two bars 
 of " Hail, hail, the Gangs all here," but breaks off 
 suddenly in the middle. ) 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Now wot in 'ell does that mean ? 
 That ain't either of them tunes, is it ? (All stand 
 irresolute. Feet are heard approaching the door of 
 the barrack-room.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN (in an agitated whisper). Put them 
 on the right, put them on the right, quick. All 
 except you, Snooks, you put them on the left. That 
 will give 'im a safety-valve, and if 'e leaves the had- 
 jutant houtside you will be an hexample to us all. Go 
 on, take a chance, man ! 
 
 (The door is burst open as if fleeing before an Asiatic 
 typhoon. In reality it is only SERGEANT-MAJOR 
 STICKIT'S voice, upraised in the well-known formula 
 that has frightened it. The sergeant-major stands 
 framed in the vacant door-way, a man of leather, 
 with a blue jowl and a ram-rod for a back. 
 
 Behind him he holds back an imposing cortege in 
 which MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JEREMIAH CUTOFF, K.C.B. 
 (very military), Fortress Commander, is evidently 
 intended to be the most striking figure.) 
 
 SERGEANT-MAJOR STIOKIT (in case there should be 
 any doubts as to his not having been heard the first time, 
 and resolved to be plainly audible this, in a voice that 
 almost shuts the door again). Room, 'shun ! 
 
 (For a moment DRINKDOWN looks as if he were
 
 " Kit Inspection" 231 
 
 about to repeat but restrains himself from entering 
 the unequal contest, and under the protective barrage 
 formed by the final reverberations of the sergeant-major's 
 voice, SIR JEREMIAH and his satellites advance into 
 the room preceded by MAJOR KEMP.) 
 
 GENERAL CUTOFF (a short fat little man in blue, 
 with a, little, bottle scarred red face, with fierce bristling 
 grey moustache, and liberally splashed with red as 
 to various outlying portions of his person). I am 
 sorry the Colonel is indisposed, Major Kemp. Per- 
 haps these socks have put him off. Ha ! Let me 
 see ; let me see now ! 
 
 (GENERAL CUTOFF'S manner of inspection differs 
 from that of lesser men. Standing in the centre of the 
 room he slowly revolves on his own axis and gazes 
 fixedly with a blood-shot but martial eye upon each 
 bed in turn and upon its owner standing at attention 
 beside it. This method combines the maximum of 
 effect that is compatible with the minimum of effort, and 
 is therefore eminently suited to a Staff -Officer.} 
 
 GENERAL CUTOFF (having finished his orbit round 
 himself). Ha ! Let me see now ; let me see ! 
 (Apparently satisfied that no one intends to interfere 
 with this necessary process of illumination he goes 
 on, transfixing MAJOR KEMP with his eye.) Very 
 creditable, I am sure, Major ; very creditable indeed. 
 Let me see, this is the last room, is it not ? Ha I 
 Hum ! I have inspected the battalion, as you know 
 yesterday on parade, and the day before in field 
 exercises. Very creditable indeed, I am sure. You 
 have a very fine lot of men too ; well set up fellows, 
 if I may say so. Yes, I am sure they are ; a credit to 
 their commanding officer, to their profession and to 
 themselves. Ha ! Hum ! But the socks, Major
 
 232 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 Kemp, are deplorable, deplorable, sir. It is ex- 
 cessively painful that so many of your men should be 
 remiss on this most vital point. There's no excuse 
 for it, sir, none whatever. Have you not got a plate 
 in each room ? (Transfixes plate with his eye.) Ha ! 
 Hum ! Of course I know that the plate is wrong, 
 but still it shows you one way to avoid. I am glad 
 that so many have successfully avoided it, but 
 regret that they have had apparently no better 
 guidance. Let me show them now, eh ! 
 
 ( With a coquettish air the GENERAL looks round and 
 selects PTE. SNOOKS as his victim. With his own, 
 podgy fingers he arranges SNOOK'S socks to his satis- 
 f action, and steps backwards to admire his handiwork. ) 
 
 Now, that is the way I like to see them. Neat 
 effect, eh ! Is it not ? That's the way I always 
 had 'em in the old Fat Guts when I commanded them. 
 Fine battalion, sir, but no finer than this, save for 
 their socks. They were sound on that point before I 
 left 'em, sir ! 
 
 You, my man, what is your name Tooks ? Well, 
 Tooks, you appear to be able to think for yourself ; 
 always a good thing in the army. Cultivate it, my 
 man, cultivate it. It's brains that tells now ha ! 
 hum ! Yes, brains. 
 
 You know, Major, I always say what is it wins a 
 war ? The infantry, of course. And what helps the 
 infantry to win a war. Why, the feet with which 
 they march ; and those feet march in their socks, eh ! 
 So it's socks that win. Neat, isn't it ? Must put 
 it in the new edition of Lord Wolseley's Pocket 
 Book ! " 
 
 Well, Major, I expect to see the socks right next 
 time.
 
 " Kit Inspection " 233 
 
 (The procession stumps out in reverse order.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN. Well, I did think as 'ow the Ole Man 
 would have come round fust by 'imself . 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. Didn't you serve under Ole Jerry 
 Cutty in Africa, Drinky ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. I did, and he used to give us socks, 
 me lad. Only I remembers one field inspection when 
 we 'adn't got none. Then 'e didn't like the looks of 
 our feet, and said so. Told me to wrap mine up in 
 a copy of the " Daily News," and me a Conservative 
 too. 
 
 COMPANY ORDERLY CORPORAL (putting his head 
 in at the door). You're for office to-morrow, Drink- 
 down. Socks ! (Vanishes.) 
 
 DRINKDOWN. That comes of representing the 
 room ! 
 
 FIRST SOLDIER. I don't like being misrepresented 
 by you, Drinky, even in the orderly-room. 
 
 SCENE III 
 
 (The outside of the battalion orderly-room, a low 
 unpretentious building of pine boards painted black. 
 Immediately opposite is the guard-room, and between 
 the two the gate. As any intending recruit must neces- 
 sarily enter by the latter he cannot fail to see, at the very 
 outset of his military career, in the other two a symbol 
 of how speedily judgment and execution follow upon 
 wrong-doing in his chosen profession. Those also 
 who come home late and merry on Saturday nights 
 need not trouble to walk far. A line of officers is stand- 
 ing beside, or leaning against, the outside of the building. 
 Some are there as witnesses or because they are the 
 company officers of the accused; the youngest looking
 
 234 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 probably for purposes of edification and instruction. 
 Enter MAJOR KEMP. All spring to attention and salute.) 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. Good morning, gentlemen. 
 
 GENERAL CHORTTS. Good morning, sir. 
 
 (MAJOR KEMP proceeds on his may, passing in the, 
 entrance to the orderly-room the queue of company 
 orderly sergeants, marshalled under the watchful eye 
 of SERGEANT-MAJOR STICKIT, and each with his book of 
 conduct sheets under his arm. He passes through 
 the orderly-room, where the ADJUTANT rises from a 
 table littered with papers and salutes, and enters the 
 sanctum sanctorum the little C.O.'s office behind. 
 This is a small room, containing no furniture save a 
 single table and chair. On the walls there is a map 
 and a printed copy of the Scale of Fines for Drunken- 
 ness ! A glass case, containing sealed patterns of the 
 regimental buttons and badges, stands on the mantel- 
 piece. There is no fire.) 
 
 MAJOR TCrcMp (after a few minutes). Ready, 
 Anderson. 
 
 (Mars has now laid aside his armour, and definitely 
 assuming the attributes of Themis prepares to measure 
 out justice ; sometimes with a heavy hand, though 
 often with one that is curiously light. 
 
 The company commander of the accused stands 
 on his right ; the adjutant on the left. One by one 
 the accused are marched in and told off by their C.O., 
 the procedure never varying. It does not usually take 
 long. 
 
 DRINKDOWN is the last on the list.) 
 
 SERGEANT-MAJOR STICKIT (by way of introduction, 
 paying no attention to stops or punctuation, and getting 
 it all out in one breath, as if he were a candidate for 
 the comic stage at ancient Athens). Accused and hescort
 
 " Kit Inspection " 235 
 
 shun take off 'is cap right turn left wheel quick march 
 right wheel 'alt left turn right dress Lance-Corporal 
 Drinkdown, sir ! 
 
 ADJUTANT (reading). " Charge against No. 879153 
 L/Cpl. J. Drinkdown, Wellington Barracks, August 
 3rd, Untidy Kit. Witnesses, Lieut. Seton, Company 
 Orderly Sergeant Catchem." 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. Mr. Seton. 
 
 CAPTAIN DUKES. Mr. Seton is ill, sir. I may 
 mention that all the men in L/Cpl. Drinkdown's 
 room had their socks displayed wrongly, and that it 
 was I who gave the order to bring him up. 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. Sergeant Catchem. 
 
 (Sergeant Catchem, a short bandy-legged little man 
 with red hair and a big blackthorn as badge of office, 
 takes the Bible which is pressed upon him.) 
 
 THE ADJUTANT (speaking with the ease of long 
 practice but without conviction). You swear that 
 the evidence which you are about to give take off 
 your caps, gentlemen will be the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. 
 Amen. Kiss the book, Sergeant Catchem. 
 
 SERGEANT CATCHEM (who has remained waiting 
 throughout this caution, recognises the executive word 
 of command and imprints a hearty smack upon the 
 Bible with his lips ; he speaks with a rich Irish brogue). 
 Sor, at the toime and place in question at Welling- 
 ton Barracks at or about 5 p.m. on the 27th of August, 
 Captain Dukes spoke to me. Oi looked at the socks 
 in room in charge of the accused. They were wrong, 
 sor. 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. That was after the inspection, was 
 it not ? 
 
 SERGEANT CATCHEM. It was, sor.
 
 236 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. What have you to say, Drinkdown ? 
 
 DRINKDOWN. The socks was wrong, sir, but it 
 was not my fault, sir. I did my best to 'ave 'em right 
 hand to give saisfaction to all. 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. Rest of room all right, I suppose ? 
 
 CAPTAIN DUKES. Yes, sir. You will remember 
 that you told me to bring this case before you. 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. Ah, yes. What is accused's 
 character, Captain Dukes ? 
 
 CAPTAIN DUKES (showing sheet). His sheet, sir. 
 
 MAJOR KEMP (looking at sheet which is liberally 
 splashed with red). Ha ! Hum ! He appears to 
 have a good many drunks. 
 
 CAPTAIN DUKES. A good man, but cannot keep 
 away from the drink, sir. 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. Well, we must all try to pull up 
 our socks. Oh ! Admonished, admonished ! 
 
 SERGEANT-MAJOR STICKIT (speaking his parabasis 
 on the march). Accused hand hescort shun left turn 
 quick march left wheel right wheel 'alt give 'im 'is 
 cap fall out ! 
 
 MAJOR KEMP. All right, Dukes, thanks ! We must 
 all pull up our socks next time.
 
 ( 237 ) 
 
 XXII 
 ROSES OF PICARDY 
 
 THE road ran, a grey seam, through the pleasant 
 green country. Birds were singing among the bushes 
 in the fields by its side, where the lambs were frisking 
 gaily. All around lay the rolling pastures of Picardy, 
 and in the middle -distance perched half-way up the 
 gentle slope of a low hill was a town which, surrounded 
 by its battle mented walls, with the slender stem of a 
 tower terminating in a thicker ring of masonry at the 
 top, and the squatter mass of the church rising above 
 them, looked like a city from out a toy-box. Over 
 it was all the sun of a Picard spring. 
 
 Down the road came the minstrel riding on his mule . 
 Many a league had he passed thus through the pleas- 
 ant poplar land with his company of jongleurs trudg- 
 ing dustily afoot behind him. That which rose from 
 their passage settled lightly on the leaves of the fring- 
 ing poplars and turned them grey too. When the 
 moon came out doubtless it would be all silver. 
 
 The marchers talked and laughed among them- 
 selves. Sometimes one or another would break into 
 a short song or a stanza from a longer poem. One 
 black -haired youth bore a vielle slung across his 
 shoulder, on which he played from time to time as his 
 companions sang. With their bright though some- 
 what tawdry garments they formed, with the spring
 
 238 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 flowers, one more oasis of colour amidst the prevailing 
 greens and browns. 
 
 But he at the head of the little troupe did not laugh 
 or sing. Rather he rode with his head carried for- 
 ward so that his beard, plentifully silvered, reached 
 to his belt. On his brow was the frown of a man 
 in doubt, but his followers gave no mark to these 
 hunched shoulders, which swayed slightly above the 
 rump of the mule, for he had been thus since they 
 had started in the early morning. 
 
 They knew what he was thinking, had been think- 
 ing of all day, for there were still two left who had 
 been with him ever since he had begun these annual 
 pilgrimages from his native Limousin up the Rhone 
 to the Loire and thence half -right to the eastern 
 marches. For years he had been their leader in a 
 triumphal progress from castle to castle and often 
 from court to court. He wrote the songs they sang 
 sometimes, when they had failed to please, sang them 
 himself. He was their leader and they had never known 
 him to fail until last night. Was he then growing 
 old and should they leave him even though reluctantly ? 
 
 Perhaps he guessed what they were saying in their 
 hearts, each man to himself, but gave it no thought, 
 too full of his own memories, which yet did not seem 
 able to reach back two days. This had happened 
 to others, he knew that ; but that it should happen 
 to him was past believing ! Always his mind made a 
 fresh start, when last night, it seemed ages ago, they 
 had marched proudly with trumpet blowing over 
 the lowered drawbridge into that castle. Yet it was 
 not very far away ; almost if he tumed round he could 
 see it. But he did not want to see it again ever, or 
 his companions now.
 
 Roses of Picardy 239 
 
 The rest had all been of a familiar piece, one which 
 he knew well. The lady of the castle seated beneath 
 the tree in the courtyard, with her retainers and 
 servitors grouped round her. Here and there was a 
 knight ; her husband was at the wars, she had said. 
 There were always wars ; how he hated them and 
 having to sing of them ! Perhaps she would not 
 expect it, but then there were the knights, now lying 
 at her feet ; and the others certainly would ! 
 
 What had gone wrong ? He hardly knew. Per- 
 haps Pierre had not sung so well as usual to his vielle, 
 but that was no reason why the men should have 
 grown restive. He remembered that he had caught 
 cold that night they lay in the fields, so to save the 
 boy's face had taken up the refrain himself, and she 
 had yawned. 
 
 " A love -song is not best sung by a child with a 
 cold in its head nor yet by an old man, Sir Minstrel," 
 she had said, and the others laughed. 
 
 He had half thought to try her with his new song, 
 but, no, she was not worthy to hear it first, and while 
 he hesitated a fat knight spoke up : 
 
 " Give us a song of war, old man, of Messire Ber- 
 tran de Born. He is dead long ago, but at least he 
 wrote of something that is always living and is still 
 with us." 
 
 She had pouted at that, but, perhaps because of it, 
 he had begun " The Joys of War." Half-way through 
 it his voice cracked, and became thin and weak, but 
 he recovered himself and went on. Yet at the end 
 there was some applause, and the knight spoke again : 
 
 "With that song, old minstrel, not quite spoiled, 
 you have earned supper and bed for the lot of you," 
 and threw him a piece of gold.
 
 240 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 " It grows cold,'* she had said, " and we were best 
 indoors, unless the old man knows some tricks to 
 show us or any of his young colts can use their legs 
 better than their lips." 
 
 He had remained silent, with rage at his heart ; and 
 so they went inside. 
 
 The seneschal had come up and led them off and 
 fed them, and after supper some one, he knew not 
 which, had sung again. They had housed them in a 
 barn amongst the hay but he had felt suffocated 
 there, though there were many holes and windows, 
 and so had chosen the fields. They had left before 
 the castle was astir, and broken their fast on the 
 road. Well, he must try his new song now. 
 
 They were passing through the outskirts of a small 
 village, a mere collection of farm-houses set far apart 
 from each other. A wandering friar met them and 
 gave a scowl in exchange for a wholly irreverent 
 greeting. In church or at confession it might be 
 different, but here on the open country road they 
 were rival traders in the fears and joys of society. 
 No longer was the road set and accompanied by the 
 tall slender poplars on either side. 
 
 A rose-bush was growing part over and part 
 through a rough stone wall which fenced a compound. 
 Red were the flowers and one of surpassing depth. 
 The old man snatched and missed. 
 
 " Pierre," he called, turning in his saddle, " pluck 
 me yon rose, the one dark crimson," and as the boy 
 came alongside he kept him there with one hand 
 rested lightly on the shoulder, a while in silence. 
 
 " Pierre," he said, sniffing, " in this country all the 
 roses are red, for it is the colour of blood. There 
 are few white ones large and blowzy, as in Provence
 
 Roses of Picardy 24i 
 
 but rather are they small and tight -folded, as this one, 
 like unto a spear -head, hard and of an exceeding 
 redness. Hast thou not noticed ? " 
 " Or like Dan Cupid's arrows, Master." 
 " Which again draw blood too often, boy, and are 
 not playthings as with us. It is all red and war in 
 this country. What care I for war ? I wish to sing 
 in praise of love and they make me sing war always 
 war. It has ever been thus since first, so long ago, 
 they went out to the Holy Land ; war and the church 
 their only themes." 
 
 " Is it time to try the new song, Master ? " 
 " Yes, lad, the time has come. Oh, we will show 
 them, you and I together if the others go. It was not 
 for nothing that we lay up last winter in Bethune 
 and I wrote words and notes, which you learned to 
 sing and play. Oh, it is a song which Messire Quesnes 
 himself would be proud to have made, if he were not 
 dead. I will speak, boy, and you will sing and play, 
 and alternately we will ravish their ears by turns." 
 " It is a great song, Master." 
 
 " The best I have ever made or shall. We will 
 show them with their everlasting war a young 
 knight better than the best of them, who would only 
 fight because he loved ; who shall flout their church- 
 man's paradise to hell. Did you see the look in that 
 friar's eyes ? " 
 
 " And Nicolette, Master, I liked her better." 
 " So will they all, the men at least, and, for the 
 others, we will show them one set far apart from their 
 golden feathers and fine gowns, which yet trail in the 
 dust. Ay, she will live, that one, and her lover with 
 her. I have thought out more of it. We will show 
 them a girl against whose fair ankles the whitest
 
 242 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 flowers will be shadows as she steals across the 
 grass." 
 
 " To-morrow ? " 
 
 " To-morrow and every to-morrow of our lives ; 
 for having once sung it we will sing it every day until 
 this red rose turns white. It will be immortal, that 
 tale, in spite of friars and churchmen. ' Old villain/ 
 he called me, that grey slug ! Well, not all of them 
 together will be able to prevent the old villain singing 
 from out his grave." 
 
 And so they passed on down the road ever between 
 the poplars on either side. 
 
 Down the same road a few centuries later rode 
 another minstrel and saw the same view, save that 
 in places the old town had now straggled beyond 
 its walls. But it was the same road and still the 
 poplars grew on either side. 
 
 Past the village there were bees droning among the 
 flowers, yet scarcely heard in the louder sounds that 
 came from eastwards. Perhaps it was sprung from 
 the same root, the rose-tree which grew among and 
 over the few remaining stones of an old wall. 
 
 Behind the minstrel came his troupe, musicians 
 culled from all the units in the division, marching on 
 each side of the small limber that held the fittings 
 of their stage. They whistled and smoked as they 
 marched, and the dust trailed behind their shoulders 
 down the road. The " Tom-Tits " were shifting 
 camp. 
 
 He who rode in front was thinking of the land 
 through which they went, this Picardy whose soil 
 has been drenched red with the blood of so many
 
 Roses of Picardy 243 
 
 wars. Here epic was re-born and the great love- 
 song written, and so many tales of many wars. Yet 
 it was now no place to sing of war but rather of love 
 in various forms. " Land of Hope and Glory " had 
 been a frost at their last stand at Warloy in this 
 country, whence all hoped to get, leaving the glory to 
 him who cared to dig it from out the mud. Even that 
 tense ditty " Holding down the Old Front Line " 
 had been sung without conviction. A change of 
 tactics was implied, which would probably involve 
 the sacrifice of the new song which he had written 
 on his last leave and was longing to try out. He 
 sighed. 
 
 " Jones," he called. And the slim black-haired 
 private who played principal girl ranged alongside. 
 " We must do more ' sob stuff ' next time. I am 
 afraid we'll have to bar things about the war. Do 
 you know any good new ones ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, I can do that " Roses of Picardy " 
 which they're doing in London now. It ought to go 
 all right, if I sing it in costume with roses like that 
 one there in my hair. They're all sick of war here. 
 By the same token I'll bring these roses along with 
 me ; they may come in handy." 
 
 And so until yesterday they were passing down 
 this and other roads between the tall poplar-trees and 
 the roses red as the soil from which they sprang.
 
 ( 244 ) 
 
 XXIII 
 
 THE Lieutenant-General sat in his gilt chair, the one 
 with the arms, at the Louis Quinze escritoire in the 
 Versailles salon of the chateau that had been selected 
 as his headquarters. So sumptuous it was that 
 its ornateness moved him to frequent outbursts of 
 fervent admiration before the staff, even though his 
 eye missed the finer lines beneath ; crammed, more- 
 over, with objects of art that appealed to his strong 
 albeit somewhat indiscriminate passion for collect- 
 ing, one that had been growing daily for some time 
 with the opportunities afforded for its indulgence. 
 
 The chateau lay very far behind the men who were 
 merely fighting, because he was a very great soldier 
 indeed so far behind that to its inmates the war for 
 long had been only viewed on maps, across which they 
 drew coloured lines and into which, daily, they stuck 
 pins. These were their battles. They were well 
 satisfied with the chateau, where no intruding objects 
 ever came to disturb the intellectual work which, 
 they were all agreed, was so much more important for 
 winning campaigns than that other work up there. 
 
 The great stately room was in good order, save for 
 the maps that littered all its tables and half its chairs. 
 Maps were pinned to the walls too, and figures flitted 
 from one to another like grey moths in the glare of 
 the electrics. There were no signs of revelry or in-
 
 The Gas Attack 245 
 
 discriminate looting, because the one simply does not 
 happen at well-ordered headquarters on the eve of a 
 great offensive ; while, as for the other, everything 
 that was of any value had been already inventoried in 
 the name and under the personal supervision of the 
 Lieutenant-General himself. It was all yet in situ, 
 but only awaiting an opportunity of transport to be 
 gone. 
 
 The past few weeks had been decidedly anxious 
 even for a man who had risen so steadily in his pro- 
 fession that he had not heard the crack of a rifle, save 
 of one which his late servant had let off by accident 
 in the chateau before last, since he had been a young 
 officer in 1870. There had been so much to do, so 
 much to conceal too, now that the enemy had almost 
 as many eyes in the air. It had been simple at the 
 start, this war which was now rapidly growing ex- 
 tremely complex ! Moreover, the General, in spite 
 of the fact that he had led or handled or pushed on so 
 many victorious offensives that his portrait had 
 once a year ago adorned the front page of a promi- 
 nent Berlin daily with the legend underneath " The 
 man who has really won the war," had never yet 
 commanded so many men as now. Why in a sense 
 it was really his offensive ! Buist had never had so 
 big a command, and a pretty mess he would have 
 made of it if he had ! No, decidedly this was no 
 war for men who, in spite of the reputation which they 
 appeared to have somehow acquired for a time were, 
 as some people had known all along, nothing but old 
 women ! 
 
 But it was over now, the final order issued. To 
 all practical intents and purposes the battle was already 
 won. And he had done it ! He knew that he would
 
 246 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 get the credit of it, just as he would have been ruth- 
 lessly eliminated to a second-class job if he had failed. 
 Failed ! he would show them ! Who was it who had 
 said at the War College in 1890 no '91 that Germany 
 would have to wait another century for a new Moltke ? 
 If only that old fool Martzdorf did not get them to 
 make him send reinforcements, if only he did not 
 narrow his front and then howl for some one else to 
 fill the gaps for him, he would show them this time ! 
 After all they deserved it, since at last they had given 
 him a free hand. 
 
 So he lay back in his seat, sitting limply, if one so 
 imposing can ever be thus described, with his arms 
 along those of the chair. Underneath the table his 
 neat spurred field-boots were crossed. His collar was 
 open to give the bull neck free play, and with the 
 regular heavy breathing the medals and crosses on 
 the breast of his tunic tinkled melodiously and much 
 more tunefully than those other rows of creaking 
 swaying crosses up there. 
 
 He was well satisfied, for was not success on the 
 morrow assured ! Nay, rather say that it is already 
 here, and not waiting until the hands of the clock 
 reached that fatal and zero-like conjunction which 
 would set long lines of men in motion towards their 
 death. Nothing could prevent it now save an order 
 to cancel the operations, and that he had the best 
 reasons for knowing would not come. Even if it did, 
 his scheme would remain an unfulfilled monument 
 of genius ; and henceforth, in the hour of victory or 
 defeat, men would murmur with bated breath of 
 what would assuredly have happened if von Hutten 
 had been given a free hand. He felt the necessity 
 of demonstrating that he was human like other men !
 
 The Gas Attack 247 
 
 " Kurt ! " he called. 
 
 One of his aides-de-camp, a tall fair-headed young 
 Bavarian, was at his chair, rigid as a poker, in a moment. 
 
 " Excellenz" 
 
 The General turned his face towards the boy, a 
 look of jovial condescension playing over the fleshy 
 austerity of his features. He slapped his hand down 
 on a pile of papers before him. 
 
 " You see those, Kurt ? " he said. 
 
 " Jawohl, Excellenz." 
 
 " Well, to-morrow, my boy, or rather early oh 
 so early in the morning of the next day they will 
 have won the war with me behind them. Kolossal, 
 is it not, Kurt ? " 
 
 " Yes, Excellenz:' 
 
 " So you will soon be back riding in the Tiergarten 
 with the girls again, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, Excellenz" 
 
 " And that is all it means to you, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes no, of course not, Excellenz." 
 
 " Well, it means the end at last, Kurt. Kolossal, 
 is it not ? " 
 
 " Kolossal, as you say, Excellenz." 
 
 " And you are privileged to be here with me 
 with us just now ! " 
 
 " Highly privileged, Excellenz." 
 
 " Remember nothing can stop it, Kurt. It is as 
 certain as as we are. Their front is not too strongly 
 held here. Going over without a barrage will sur- 
 prise them and we will simply stroll across. Theirs 
 will be too late, and from all accounts they have not 
 many guns. Our men will be packed into the front 
 system of trenches, but they will be out before the 
 English begin to fire. They have practically no
 
 248 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 reserves. It means Amiens at last, boy. I cannot 
 see how I we can fail. Do you ? " 
 
 " No, of course not, Excellenz unless " and he 
 
 left off. 
 
 " Unless what ? " 
 
 " I was going to say but of course it is not prob- 
 able unless they got to know that we were coming 
 and put then* barrage down before we got off. With 
 all these men " 
 
 The General leaned back in his chair with a laugh, 
 and raised his finger and shook it in the air. Con- 
 descension and expensive Parisian hair-oil oozed from 
 hjm, 
 
 " You are right, Kurt, that is the danger ; or would 
 be if it existed. I am taking no chances with all these 
 men. No, I am too old a dog for that. I have 
 reports from the dug-out of the British general himself 
 that they think it quite safe and a quiet part of the 
 line. We have held the air supremacy for a long 
 time now. Why " and he laughed suddenly 
 " they are even sending raw new troops into the line 
 to-night, into this quiet sector where we are, Kurt ! 
 in order to break them in gently to a winter of 
 trench warfare. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " Ha ! Ha ! Excellenz." 
 
 " There will be no question of gas this time, Kurt. 
 I don't like gas. They have none, and we won't use 
 it. No, there will be no question of gas. If I could, 
 I would have advanced the attack twenty-four hours 
 and caught them making the relief. But perhaps it 
 is better as it is. In any case it is certain. We have 
 them, Kurt. Nothing can save them. Nothing 
 under God, at any rate, and He won't as He is on 
 our side."
 
 The Gas Attack 249 
 
 The General waved his hand with languid benignity 
 in the air and the young man seemed to slide away. 
 
 He lay back in his chair thinking and revelling in 
 what he thought. It was all so simple and complete. 
 Still chuckling he rose and made for bed, where his 
 last thought was again : " We have them, nothing 
 can save them." 
 
 The General had never heard of Captain Browne. 
 God he felt he knew. He was on the same side as the 
 Kaiser. But God's fool was a new conception to this 
 country-man of Luther. He had never heard of 
 Captain Browne. 
 
 John Todington Browne, who is the hero of this 
 story though he made his entry into it so late, had not 
 joined the army because he wanted to, but because 
 his sister had told him that he ought. Looking back 
 he seemed to have been doing things that he did not 
 want to do all his life because other people, who were 
 in no danger of being called upon to essay them, had 
 told him that he ought. He felt vaguely resentful, 
 as in this case if he had wanted to be a soldier he would 
 have joined the army class at school and gone to Sand- 
 hurst instead of to a stockbroker's office. Still, if 
 he must go, he had probably joined up at the right 
 time ; not too soon, he had seen to that ; not too late, 
 thanks to his sister. 
 
 John Todington Browne looked forward to many 
 months' preliminary training in a pleasant rural 
 district of England before being called upon to take 
 the plunge. He was in complete agreement with the 
 authorities as to how much he needed that. Perhaps 
 it would not be so unpleasant. Meantime he bought
 
 250 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 kit, principally patent field cooking stoves and camp 
 beds. 
 
 Thus it was with deep disgust nay more with the 
 first active resentment that he had felt for a long 
 time that he learned that Second-Lieutenant John 
 Todington Browne along with many others must 
 proceed abroad almost immediately. This was not, 
 as the G.O.C. Training Area was careful to explain, 
 at his instigation, or the desire of the War Office, but 
 due solely to the importunate efforts which the enemy 
 had chosen to make, unfortunately at that moment, 
 to win the war. 
 
 John Todington Browne felt that it displayed very 
 bad generalship somewhere to allow the Germans to 
 run the English training camps as well as other places. 
 
 So he went to France, feeling remarkably ill-pre- 
 pared therefor. He rarely hit the bull's-eye at 
 musketry owing to his glasses, and the remark of the 
 sergeant-instructor that he would find it easier to hit 
 a man at ten yards with the knowledge that if he did 
 not the man would hit him, left him cold and uncon- 
 vinced. The thought of sticking his bayonet into 
 anyone made him feel sick. 
 
 In one direction alone did John progress greatly 
 in his military studies. In the direction of gas. On 
 his first joining, the battalion had been allotted one 
 place for one second-lieutenant for a course at a 
 neighbouring gas school, and as all the other subalterns 
 were wanted by their company commanders, John 
 Todington Browne, who as yet had none, was sent. 
 
 He became obsessed with gas. He worked fever- 
 ishly at gas in a kind of desperate haste. He read 
 all the little gas publications which the War Office 
 issued from time to time, and became well acquainted
 
 The Gas Attack 251 
 
 on paper with different kinds of gas red, white, and 
 green and their various methods of approach. It 
 would not be his fault if he did not know gas when 
 he saw it out there. Frankly he was nervous of gas, 
 first for his " professional reputation," secondly for 
 his men, and lastly for his own safety. His brother 
 subalterns in time called him the " Gas Man." 
 
 Arrived in France, he had been sent to another 
 gas course, apparently for the reason that having 
 already had one he might be expected to do his 
 battalion credit there. 
 
 This did not lessen his gas obsession any more 
 than did his promotion to the rank of acting captain 
 when at the School on account of the heavy casualties, 
 largely from gas, suffered by his battalion in their 
 first engagement. Among these was his best friend. 
 
 So it fell out by decree of the fates that the Company 
 commanded by Acting-Captain John Todington 
 Browne occupied a conspicuous position in the line 
 on the night on which General von Hutten designed 
 to make it his own. 
 
 Captain Browne had never heard of General von 
 Hutten. He knew nothing of his intention to attack 
 without gas, or indeed to attack at all. If he had 
 known, his feelings would have been a strange com- 
 pound of relief and dismay. He had just read the 
 British Intelligence Summary, which spoke of this 
 sector of the front with contempt as quiet and un- 
 interesting; whereas, as Captain Browne thought, 
 hell was continually loose here, presenting daily an 
 infinite variety of diabolical sights and sounds. 
 
 Captain Browne's sentries always had extra-special 
 instructions to be on the look out for gas. So far, 
 few of them had seen it.
 
 252 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 This night, however, one of them did or thought 
 he did, which was strange, considering the declared 
 intentions of General von Hutten. He summoned 
 his section commander and shortly after Captain 
 Browne was beside him. 
 
 The two men stood on the fire-step and gazed 
 steadily at the oncoming cloud of Flanders' mist, 
 white and opaque, which was rolling from the trenches 
 opposite with a steady resistless progress familiar to 
 one of them in his dreams. Another man might 
 have doubted and guessed the truth and waited. 
 Given this one, that which followed was inevitable. 
 
 The fateful word " gas " went back. Men wearing 
 gas helmets lined the parapet and opened rapid fire 
 at nothing. Shortly after, with an ever increasing 
 infernal crescendo of hurricane fire, the British 
 artillery opened on the streets and houses across the 
 way. The alarm was taken up on both flanks, up 
 and down the line, where more gasping men in gas 
 masks, the lines of them stretching for miles, stood 
 on the fire-steps of innumerable fire bays and with 
 rifle and Lewis gun opened rapid fire at nothing. 
 The whole of Hutten's destined objective awoke 
 of its own volition to life, a bare quarter of an hour 
 too soon. 
 
 But that quarter of an hour was all-important. 
 In a sense it won the war ; for henceforth its effects 
 were felt to the end of all. Jammed in their trenches 
 so that they could hardly move, packing slip and 
 communication trenches, the men who were to have 
 been victorious in another twenty minutes could do 
 nothing save be killed. The attack was strangled at 
 birth, and all its thousands of dead bodies whirled 
 and tossed up and down, here and there, around
 
 The Gas Attack 253 
 
 corners and across trenches, blocking the retreat for 
 those few who might have escaped, in a hideous 
 burlesque of life. 
 
 Only here and there did the Germans spill out into 
 no man's land, and their bodies were not there in the 
 morning. 
 
 It was the end for Hutten. He had sinned against 
 God who must ever be victorious. Moved to the 
 eastern front, he found equal personal security there 
 but far less glory. He never heard of Captain Browne, 
 but did contrive to read the enemy intelligence sum- 
 mary for that particular twenty-four hours. There 
 he saw his supreme and colossal offensive not ignored 
 because unknown. A reference to a false gas alarm 
 along our front on the last night of his independent 
 command was all he read. He could not curse his 
 Emperor's ally and he did not wish to die. 
 
 It was the end also for Captain Browne as a fighting 
 man. He could not stand up against the blood- 
 thirsty demands of an enraged C.R.A. who had shot 
 off all his ammunition " for " as he explained 
 " and at nothing." 
 
 His fate led him down the line henceforth to live 
 in peace at a small school of instruction at the base 
 as Gas Instructor. He felt happier there about gas, 
 because no one could let it off anywhere without his 
 permission ; so he always knew when it was coming. 
 
 No one on either side ever knew that he had really 
 won the crucial battle of the war ; and, as his name 
 was not really Browne, no one knows now.
 
 ( 254 ) 
 
 XXIV 
 
 TO THE UNKNOWN DEAD 
 
 These are they who fell in the War in Cyprus, in Egypt, 
 in Palestine, on the Coasts and Islands, and on the Western 
 front of battle. (Adaptation of stele of the Erectheid tribe, 
 458 B.C.) 
 
 THERE are many cenotaphs to-day in the country 
 which is no longer the " Merry England," the " Anglia 
 plena jocis " of the old chronicler, but a land sore 
 and proud of heart for the sons she has lost, whose 
 dust in mingled inextricably with that of so many 
 lands. They stand in town or village, in church or 
 nailed to the chapel door, mute witnesses to the in- 
 tention of those who placed them there never to forget 
 those others who have died for liberty. Their bodies 
 they could not always save, so for better they have 
 erected them a shrine unto their spirits. A national 
 monument stands already, soon to be converted into 
 stone. There only remains, of what we can do, the 
 greatest and most difficult thing of all. 
 
 That is for an orator to arise and utter words which 
 may stand with the two great speeches of history, 
 both spoken of those fallen in battle. Pericles, in 
 the cemetery of the Cerameicus suburb of Athens, 
 Lincoln, on the platform at Gettysburg, spoke so as to 
 throw a shadow over all other oratory. Yet have we 
 not a greater subject and more cause to be eloquent ?
 
 To the Unknown Dead 255 
 
 Pericles, speaking in remembrance of the young 
 Athenians who fell in the first few months of the war, 
 and ignorant of the long years of misery ahead, 
 uttered words and phrases which break through the 
 rhetoric of the historian as the sun through clouds. 
 He sets before us the highest ideal which humanity 
 can pursue, provided that it starts from a broader base 
 than that afforded by the city state. Many of his 
 sentences must have been constantly in the minds, 
 even of those who did not recognize them, during the 
 last few years. He speaks of " setting one's teeth," 
 of " grinning and bearing it," of " going through with 
 it " ; for he at least had no illusions as to the length 
 of the way to be traversed ; only he did not live to 
 see that day when the Lacedaemonians and their allies 
 to the sound of flutes broke down the long walls of 
 the city and of PiraBus. Turning to the soldiers 
 among his audience, for all Athens was not yet in khaki, 
 though that was to come, he bade them, in words that 
 are older than St. Paul's : " Quit ye like men." 
 
 And then in his peroration, turning to the wives 
 and mothers and fathers and sisters and lovers of these 
 young Athenian hoplites who had given their lives 
 for the State whom they remembered seeing so well 
 last when they marched down from the Parthenon 
 on their way to the front he bade them bethink them 
 that though no more could they behold their loved 
 ones again, whose bodies lay on the borders of Attica, 
 in the Megarid and among the islands, yet it was in 
 reality no empty shrine that they were consecrating 
 that day ; nor were these really graveless, for they had 
 died for their country and of such famous men the 
 whole earth is the sepulchre. 
 
 So the red-eyed mother went home comforted, for 
 
 8
 
 256 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 she knew that her son had achieved immortality 
 through death and was henceforth numbered by his 
 country among her heroes, with Theseus and with 
 Harmodius, with Aristides and with Cimon ; " for," 
 she thought, " all these did not really die in battle ! " 
 And the young wife saw a new glory in him she had 
 no sooner won but lost, and felt that though she 
 might marry again for the sake of Athens, yet she 
 would never forget that first soldier-love of hers ! 
 
 We have fought on a scale undreamed of by Brasidas 
 and Thucydides, and have lost the spring, not of one, 
 but of many years some, of their whole lives ! 
 
 Lincoln could speak but for half a people, and not so 
 whole-heartedly, in his task of binding up a rupture, 
 as to leave a sting with those who had lost so well. 
 Yet into a few words he has packed the very quintes- 
 sence of oratory. It was a good thing for these others 
 on the platform, great speakers though they were, 
 that he was the President and so spoke last. Gone 
 was the man, who by his attempts at strategy, almost 
 lost the war for his side, as some more than whispered 
 Pericles had done for Athens, merged into the great 
 healer who bade his countrymen consecrate not alone 
 that battle-field, but far more themselves and all 
 their lives, to the cause for which these others died. 
 
 We have charity for all who have not trodden her 
 underfoot and malice is far removed from our hearts. 
 We, too, have stood on the razor edge of chance as did 
 the blue legions on these slopes that he sees now, 
 up which Longstreet's Virginians might have gone. 
 
 Our orator must speak for many nations, even if 
 only for those within the empire. It is this very 
 immensity of the task which delays his coming. 
 
 Yet come he will. It may not be at the imperial
 
 To the Unknown Dead 257 
 
 rite in London that he will appear, but rather in some 
 outlying parish of the empire when met to dedicate 
 itself to its dead. No otherwise appointed laureate, 
 but in the college chapel after the reading of the roll 
 of honour he may speak, or as chaplain of a battalion 
 on foreign service. He will be heard when he comes, 
 for the world is waiting for him. 
 
 And in the fore-front let him place commemoration 
 of the " unknown dead." Not of these whose bodies 
 known rest in graves that are lost, but where the grave 
 is unknown because the man was nameless. Poor 
 battered wrecks of battle, features gone, limbs melting 
 into the mud, which the dirty khaki so much resembles, 
 they were buried so often where they lay. In the list 
 of those who lie here scrawled under shell-fire by the 
 officer in charge of the burial party, they figure as A. 
 N. OTHER ; for identity disc, pay book, badges ; all 
 are gone or unrecognizable. 
 
 Did he play up weU for his side, this A. N. OTHER, 
 in the great game of war ? Yes ! he must have, or 
 else died trying, for the evidence is here. He got no 
 decoration, qualified for only one cross, and is men- 
 tioned in but a single list. Yet who can say ; perhaps 
 before he lost his name he did some deed of which we 
 know not, that turned the wavering tide of battle so 
 that all those others live ! 
 
 Therefore, as the Athenians built an altar to the 
 "unknown god" not in questioning or on the off 
 chance of there being really a God somewhere, but 
 because they felt that He was, even if unknown so 
 let us have a shrine to our " unknown dead " for all 
 the wonders that they did. 
 
 Cromwell died and was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey. A few years later the baser sort of his foes
 
 258 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 dug up and scattered to the four winds of heaven the 
 remains of one of the greatest of Englishmen ; whom 
 they had never dared to face, or at least to stand long 
 against, in the field ; who had flung their vaunted 
 horse before him in charge after desperate charge, and 
 winnowed their infantry from the field as the farmer 
 winnows corn. 
 
 Of these, at least, their bodies lie beyond the malice 
 of a beaten foe, while their memories live enshrined 
 with that of the greatest and noblest of our race.
 
 ( 259 ) 
 
 XXV 
 
 RETROSPECT OF WAR 
 
 THE war seems to have ended long ago, even to those 
 who were there at the finish, and to those others who 
 started with its beginning the final act seems already 
 far past a page of ancient history. 
 
 The end came suddenly, even in a night, and the 
 strangeness of its coming is with us now, will be, 
 indeed, for ever. That does not yet seem old, but 
 only the noise of war. For a unique event is always 
 close-present to the recollection, a measuring-rule 
 of wonderful adventure which we keep in our waist- 
 coat pocket, as it were at the end of our watch-chain, 
 wherewith to check the appearance of the passing hour ; 
 while a state of life to which we had grown used for 
 years, being gone, we think of as a past existence. 
 Yet it is strange to be at peace again, just as it was 
 novel to be in uniform and at war. We awake to this 
 strangeness at odd times, with the conscious effort 
 that is needed to put on a waistcoat, for example, but 
 that does not bring the past years nearer, for the first 
 thought is " this is peace," and the memory does not 
 go further back than the day on which we first got out 
 of uniform. Even that day is not thought of as im- 
 portant in itself, but as a symbol to be associated in a 
 mystical sense with the llth of November, 1918. 
 For that day, the pre-eminence of which we did not 
 grasp at the time, seems to project itself forward and
 
 260 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 to mingle with the other ; is seen to be part of the same 
 divine event. The possibility of all that we have done 
 since was present, but latent and only dimly perceived, 
 in that autumn morning. 
 
 For that was the end of the war, though, it would 
 now appear, only the beginning of peace. But what 
 cared we for such nice distinctions ! Old Mars re- 
 ceived his death wound that morning at precisely 
 eleven o'clock. What matter that he is not quite 
 dead yet ; he has sunk to his knee now, he has been 
 beaten to the ground. These cheers from the gallery 
 are not really premature but, in strict logical sequence, 
 well bestowed at the proper time, the climax of the 
 play. The critics are right, for only one other scene, 
 that in the second act where the Lusitania is sunk, 
 can compare with this as necessary to the action and 
 denouement of the plot. Indeed, the two are closely 
 connected, the one leading up to the other. 
 
 So Mars is dead ! Come away ; ring down the cur- 
 tain and let us be off as quickly as we may. We have 
 done our bit, and perhaps can slip off the stage by the 
 eaves and join the outgoing spectators. It sounds 
 loud in the fast emptying theatre, but really it is only 
 the echoes of the clash that his armour made when he 
 went down, or perhaps, if he is not really dead, he is 
 yet beating his arms and the flat of his sword on the 
 boards. The manager will see to the rest and the 
 emptying of the stage. Come away. 
 
 Now that we are outside it all seems like a vision. 
 Have we really sat there so long, all through the action 
 which moved so quickly sometimes and at others 
 dragged so wearily ? They have played the same 
 piece in many houses all over the world, and we, per- 
 haps, have only been in one and know not with what
 
 Retrospect of War 261 
 
 variety of scene and setting it could be viewed else- 
 where. Or, again, we do, having been moved swiftly 
 from one theatre to another when our call was on ; 
 for we have been actors too, and can remember long 
 months of waiting, lined up in the aisles or behind the 
 scenes, ready to leap upon the stage at the word of 
 command and there briefly play our little part as best 
 we may. 
 
 We were playing that night when the news came, 
 and for a time were left suspended in our action, frozen 
 stiff, as it were, in the attitude of attack or defence, 
 with swords charmed in our hands. They turned the 
 lights low to save expenses, and gave no more free 
 passes to the stalls. Even now we are scarcely re- 
 covered from the wonderment of it. 
 
 Have we really been dressed like this for four long 
 years? Has there all that time been so much sunshine 
 in the streets outside ? Yet, on second thoughts, they 
 looked like this when we saw them last on leave. 
 It is, of course, nonsense, the world can never be the 
 same again ; but is it possible that there are parts of 
 it that have scarcely changed at all, and people who 
 lived as if there had been no play enacting around 
 the corner from their well-fenced houses ? 
 
 It has been a grim tragedy of blood and battles ; 
 full of sudden exits and appearances ; bound by no 
 unities of time and place. Not many an actor who took 
 the boards when the curtain first went up is left there 
 now to join the epilogue. Some have come and gone, 
 and come and gone again ; others were no sooner on 
 than off for ever. More and more crowds of supers 
 have been required as time went by ; and, even of the 
 principals, there are those grown hoarse from shouting 
 and obliged to leave to the substitutes their stage.
 
 262 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 The piece has been put on with various settings in 
 diverse climes. It has played in town and country, 
 in great city and virgin forest. Sometimes the scene 
 was laid in a city like to ours, of school and market, 
 factory and church, until that day thought of assured 
 progress in the future as in the past ; or, again, midst 
 eastern palms by hideous temples and slow-moving 
 streams, sluggish with the unstirred filth of centuries > 
 where the very moon shines strange at night. An- 
 cient cities have seen it and remembered the theme as 
 an old one seen by them oft of yore ; yet has their 
 part in it been no greater than that of many a humble 
 village, never heard of otherwise. 
 
 It has been long a-playing : thank God, it is over 
 now. 
 
 And we who are come safely off the stage, what do 
 we feel in retrospect of war ? We have seen the play 
 through, trembled at its storm of tragedy and mingled 
 with the comedy that was ever there. For this, too? 
 it has had as appertaining also to Common Humanity, 
 its hero, who could not perchance have survived if 
 not for this relief, so insistent otherwise would have 
 been death and terror. The laughter in the billet 
 may have been only an interlude, but it made possible 
 the continuance of the main action and will perhaps 
 be last forgot. 
 
 And we have seen Romance, as we dreamed of her 
 of old. Not an adventure book of childhood which, 
 has not come to life for us. We have seen and acted 
 all that we read before, as children with trust and 
 hope that these things were really so ; that steel-clad 
 knights might still ride the streets of other cities than 
 our own, that there swords yet waited for us, that there 
 were left islands of the Spanish main, the shores
 
 Retrospect of War 263 
 
 impressed of keel since the long black pirate barque 
 put in for the last time to bury the ill- won treasure ; 
 and then put by with maturer years, half wistfully 
 perhaps, in the fancied knowledge that these things 
 were not for us and that adventure had perished from 
 off the earth with the world we used to know. 
 
 We know better now, though later still. For there 
 was not an incident or a situation in the early books 
 which we have not ourselves glimpsed in these last 
 four years, if not acted for ourselves. Not a fear nor 
 a hope which filled the heart of the favourite Henty 
 hero, which he so often felt for us, that we have not 
 now been forced to feel again of ourselves. Romance 
 still lives and we may have touched the fringe of her 
 fair garment ; or wrested it completely from her, yet 
 found her fairer still. 
 
 Previously those who were children, the elect of 
 the earth because nearer to her bosom, might still 
 have seen, if they had kept the clearer vision, Romance 
 bringing up the 9.15. We have done more, for we 
 have boarded the engine and gone for a ride with him. 
 The lands we have fought in have been full of old 
 shadows from out of former wars. We have soldiered 
 with d'Artagnan and trembled on night patrol almost 
 as did Parolles, but with better cause. We have lain 
 outside the gates of Arras and seen the sun rise over her 
 battered walls with Cyrano and Carbon de Castel 
 Jaloux and their Cadets de Gascogne. The Cornet of 
 Horse followed Marlborough over that same Flanders 
 through which we, in our humble way, have tried to 
 keep up with Foch. 
 
 Henceforth, indeed, we must beware lest all our 
 life remaining be not merely a remembrance of the 
 speed with which then we travelled, lest it appear as
 
 264 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 an anti-climax to what has gone before. We feel 
 perhaps that we have passed the top of the hill, 
 whether it be in the morning, in the full glare of the 
 noonday sun, or when the trees are beginning to 
 lengthen their shadows on the grass, and that hence- 
 forth there is nothing but a gentle downhill journey, 
 be it long or short, over rich swelling downs to the 
 burn that flows brown and golden at the foot. We may 
 recall with regret, heightened by the contrast, these 
 rough days of toil and striving on the other side, ere 
 we topped the crest. But the sun is in front of us, and 
 therefore the shadow of the ridge and the way we have 
 come should not lie too heavy on the future save by 
 rights in memory. 
 
 Henceforth we shall look with fresher eyes on litera- 
 ture, finding new beauties there along paths of which 
 the entrance we never knew before. What was old 
 and dull will take on fresh meaning to eyes reopened 
 by increased contact with humanity. Experiences 
 which the greatest names but constructed from their 
 own souls have been lived by us. Now we can under- 
 stand them. Past history will put on new meaning 
 to those concerned in the making of the present and 
 future fashioning. Like the writers and readers of 
 the days of Elizabeth, we shall have lived as well ; 
 have fought in Flanders as did " rare Ben Jonson " 
 and the rest. 
 
 Above all, we have looked on man and, like his 
 Maker, found him good and always greater than his 
 instruments. We have seen the victor spirit which 
 lies beneath our common humanity, as the poor human 
 soul, stripped bare by terror, quivered and cowered 
 under the iron hail and yet went marching forward, 
 the true hero of the war. The great goodness there is
 
 Retrospect of War 265 
 
 in every common clay has been made visible and mani- 
 fest to all. Henceforth there should be no doubts. 
 
 There have been moments nay, seconds rather 
 when the whole of one's past existence went flashing 
 by with a speed excelling that of any cinema on 
 earth, since for what it knew its show-time was but 
 short. Then we have vowed to see more in life, if 
 spared to live it more. There have been many hun- 
 dred yards in France, desperate spaces of death, which 
 we entered upon without ever expecting to win through. 
 The world seemed fair and now, having thus unex- 
 pectedly regained it, we shall look again in a new light 
 and eyes born fresh to wonder. 
 
 And Death too, we have often see him, and though 
 the flesh may quail yet will the spirit welcome him as 
 an old remembered friend when he comes at last. We 
 have often met him striding visible over these fields. 
 Some he has shaken hands with as he went, at others 
 merely nodded and passed by. These will know him 
 when they meet again and hail him as an old acquain- 
 tance come to take them to their friends. 
 
 Until then, for each of us, there will be many vacant 
 places in mess and street, somewheres that we can 
 scarce bear to enter. Perchance, awakening from a 
 dream, we may see the old familiar figures still sitting 
 in these club chairs which once seemed their preroga- 
 tives. And as we look they fade and dislimn from out 
 our sight. 
 
 It is a goodly company that has gathered through- 
 out these years in the bright western courts. At sun- 
 set standing by the sea we may see their shadows in 
 the clouds, and hear the oft remembered voices in the 
 soft dying of the day's winds as they sink to sleep upon 
 the waves, hushing them into calm. And the down-
 
 266 Silhouettes of Mars 
 
 going sun lays a narrow golden path of glory westwards 
 over the seas, until it mingles with his splendour and 
 is gone. 
 
 We knew them well out there, but often could scarce 
 bear to look upon their faces ; so brightly shone these 
 young eyes, beneath the steel helmets, amidst the 
 surrounding darkness of the world. Say not that 
 their light is quenched, but rather that with the 
 lifting of the cloud it has mingled with the brightness 
 of the sun, brought back once more by them. 
 
 We shall never forget them, but shall hear their foot- 
 steps always, growing fainter perhaps down the corri- 
 dors of time, but never lost, the myriad footsteps of 
 the mightiest and the most gallant armies that have 
 ever moved through history. 
 
 THE END
 
 THE ROAD TO EN-DOR 
 
 By E. H. JONES, Lt., I.A.R.O. 
 
 With Illustration* by C. W. HILL, Lt, R.A.F. 
 Sixth Edition, 8. 6d. net 
 
 This book, besides telling an extraordinary story, 
 will appeal to everyone who is interested in Spiritual- 
 ism. The book reads like a wild romance, but it is 
 authenticated in every detail by fellow-officers and 
 official documents. 
 
 Morning Post. " It is easily the most surprising story of the 
 escape of prisoners of war which has yet appeared. ... No 
 more effective exposure of the methods of the medium has 
 ever been written. . . . This hook is indeed an invaluable 
 reduction to absurdity of claims of the spiritualist coteries." 
 
 Timti. "Astounding ... of great value." 
 
 Daily Graphic. "The most amazing story of the war." 
 
 Dundee Advertiser. " The most amazing hoax of the war." 
 
 Daily Telegraph. " This is one of the most realistic, 
 grimmest, and at the same time most entertaining, books 
 ever given to the public. ... The Road to En -dor ' is a 
 book with a thrill on every page, is full of genuine adventure. 
 . . . Everybody should read it." 
 
 Birmingham Post. " The story of surely the most colossal 
 1 fake ' of modern times." 
 
 Evening News. " The tale of the two lieutenants is perhaps 
 the noblest example of the game and fine art of spoof that the 
 world has ever seen, or ever will see ... their wonderful and 
 almost monstrous elaboration ... an amazing story." 
 
 Glasgow Evening News. " An absolutely fresh, unexpected, 
 and inimitable true story of what we fancy is the greatest 
 spoof of the Great War." 
 
 Everyman. " One of the most amazing tales that we have 
 ever read. The gradual augmentation of the spook's power is 
 one of the most preposterous, the most laughable histories in 
 the whole literature of spoofing. Lieut. Jones has given us 
 a wonderful book even a great book." 
 
 JOHN LANE, The Bodley Head, Yigo Street, W. 1
 
 W. J. LOCKE'S NEW NOVEL 
 
 The House of Baltazar 
 
 Second Large Edition, 7s. net. 
 
 Daily Telegraph. " An entertaining story, very ingeniously 
 contrived. ... In John Baltazar there is real and original 
 character-drawing. His abrupt changes of front, his glowing 
 energy, his eager, impetuous heart, and his superb capacity for 
 work make him a truly lovable figure." 
 
 Morning Post. " The light touch ia perhaps the most 
 fortunate asset of a novelist, and Mr. Locke has it pre-eminent. 
 It enables him to fashion a story which we read with pleasure. 
 . . . Mr. Locke as a story-teller is both happy and lucky." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. " Mr. Locke scores with ' The House of 
 Baltazar ' by giving us the full piquancy of the improbable 
 and yet holding us deeply engrossed in the personalities of those 
 who are involved in it. ... Handled with fine discrimination." 
 
 Truth. " ' The House of Baltazar ' has all the old charms 
 which has won for Mr. Locke such popularity. It may be 
 assured of the warmest of welcomes." 
 
 Tatl&r. " Very Locke-ish. There is a charm about the 
 story which is very endearing." 
 
 Liverpool Courier. " ' The House of Baltazar ' ia a fine 
 novel. . . . John Baltazar will pass into the glorious company 
 of Marcus and Simon and Septimus and Paragot. We are glad, 
 for Mr. Locke's picturesque heroes are among the few precious 
 things left in modern English fiction." 
 
 Yorkshire Post. " Most original in both its plot and its 
 characters. John Baltazar is a very human personality . . . 
 intensely lovable ... a very delightful story." 
 
 Scotsman. " The reader will retain the most enjoyable 
 recollections." 
 
 JOHN LANE, The Bodley Head, Yigo Street, W. 1

 
 UCSB LIBRARY