CHAPTER XXIV

FLIGHT

The first part of the meal over, the hostess picked up a nut and threw it deftly at a door leading into the lean-to-kitchen.

"Our table bell," she explained to me. And, true enough, a moment later the orderly appeared and carried out the plates.

Then we had dessert, which was fruit and candy, and coffee.

And all the time the guns were firing, and every opening of the door into the corridor brought a gale of wind into the room.

Suddenly it struck me that hardly a foot of the plaster interior of that room was whole. The ceiling was riddled. So were the walls.

"Shrapnel," said the major, following my gaze. "It gets worse every day."

"I think the ceiling is going to fall," said one of the hostesses.

True enough, there was a great bulge in the centre. But it held for that night. It may be holding now.

Everybody took a hand at clearing the table. The lamp was burning low, and they filled it without putting it out. One of the things that I have always been taught is never to fill a lighted lamp. I explained this to them carefully. But they were quite calm. It seems at the front one does a great many extraordinary things. It is part and parcel of that utter indifference to danger that comes with war.

Now appeared the chauffeur, who brought the information that the car had been dragged out of the mud and towed as far as the house.

"Towed?" I said blankly.

"Towed, madame. There is no more petrol."

The major suggested that we kill him at once. But he was a perfectly good chauffeur and young. Also it developed that he had not sat on my hat. So we let him live.

"Never mind," said Miss C——; "we can give you the chauffeur's bed and he can go somewhere else."

But after a time I decided that I would rather walk back than stay overnight in that house. For the major explained that at eleven o'clock the batteries behind the town would bombard the German trenches and the road behind them, along which they had information that an ammunition train would pass.

"Another night in the cellar!" said some one. "That means no one will need any beds, for there will be a return fire, of course."

"Is there no petrol to be had?" I inquired anxiously.

"None whatever."

None, of course. There had been shops in the town, and presumably petrol and other things. But now there was nothing but ruined walls and piles of brick and mortar. However, there was a cellar.

My feet were swollen and painful, for the walk had been one long agony. I was chilled, too, from my wetting, in spite of the fire. I sat by the tiny stove and tried to forget the prospect of a night in the cellar, tried to ignore the pieces of shell and shrapnel cases lined up on the mantelpiece, shells and shrapnel that had entered the house and destroyed it.

The men smoked and talked. An officer came up from the trenches to smoke his after-dinner pipe, a bearded individual, who apologised for his muddy condition. He and the major played a duet. They made a great fuss about their preparation for it. The stool must be so, the top of the cracked piano raised. They turned and bowed to us profoundly. Then sat down and played—CHOP STICKS!

But that was only the beginning. For both of them were accomplished musicians. The major played divinely. He played a Rhapsodie Hongroise, the Moonlight Sonata, one of the movements of the Sonata Appassionata. He played without notes, a bulldog pipe gripped firmly in his teeth, blue clouds encircling his fair hair. Gone was the reckless soldier who would have taken his life in his hands for the whim of bringing in a German sentry. Instead there was a Belgian whose ruined country lay behind him, whose people lay dead in thousands of hideous graves, whose heart was torn and aching with the things that it knew and buried. We sat silent. His pipe died in his mouth; his eyes, fixed on the shell-riddled wall, grew sombre. When the music ceased his hands still lay lingeringly on the keys. And, beyond the foot of the street, the ominous guns of the army that had ruined his country crashed steadily.

We were rather subdued when the music died away. But he evidently regretted having put a weight on the spirits of the party. He rose and brought me a charming little water-colour sketch he had made of the bit of No Man's Land in front of his trench, with the German line beyond it.

"By the way," he said in his exact English, "I went to art school in Dresden with an American named Reinhart. Afterward he became a great painter—Charles Stanley Reinhart. Is he by any chance a relative?"

"Charles Stanley Reinhart is dead," I said. "He was a Pittsburgher, too, but the two families are connected only by marriage."

"Dead! So he is dead too! Everybody is dead. He—he was a very nice boy."

Suddenly he stood up and stretched his long arms.

"It was a long time ago," he said. "Now I go for the sentry."

They caught him at the door, however, and brought him back.

"But it is so simple," he protested. "No one is hurt. And the American lady—"

The American lady protested.

"I don't want a German sentry," I said. "I shouldn't know what to do with a German sentry if I had one."

So he sat down and explained his method to me. I wish I could tell his method here. It sounded so easy. Evidently it was a safety-valve, during that long wait of the deadlock, for his impetuous temperament. One could picture him sitting in his trench day after day among the soldiers who adored him, making little water-colour sketches and smoking his bulldog pipe, and then suddenly, as now, rising and stretching his long arms and saying:

"Well, boys, I guess I'll go out and bring one in."

And doing it.

I was taken for a tour of the house—up a broken staircase that hung suspended, apparently from nothing, to what had been the upper story.

It was quite open to the sky and the rain was coming in. On the side toward the German line there was no wall. There were no partitions, no windows, only a few broken sticks of what had been furniture. And in one corner, partly filled with rain water, a child's cradle that had miraculously escaped destruction.

Downstairs to the left of the corridor was equal destruction. There was one room here that, except for a great shell-hole and for a ceiling that was sagging and almost ready to fall, was intact. Here on a stand were surgical supplies, and there was a cot in the corner. A soldier had just left the cot. He had come up late in the afternoon with a nosebleed, and had now recovered.

"It has been a light day," said my guide. "Sometimes we hardly know which way to turn—when there is much going on, you know. Probably to-night we shall be extremely busy."

We went back into the living room and I consulted my watch. It was half past ten o'clock. At eleven the bombardment was to begin!

The conversation in the room had turned to spies. Always, everywhere, I found this talk of spies. It appeared that at night a handful of the former inhabitants of the town crept back from the fields to sleep in the cellars of what had been their homes, and some of them were under suspicion.

"Every morning," said Miss C——, "before the German bombardment begins, three small shells are sent over in quick succession. Then there is about fifteen minutes' wait before the real shelling. I am convinced that it is a signal to some one to get out."

The officers pooh-poohed the idea. But Miss C—— stuck to her point.

"They are getting information somehow," she said. "You may laugh if you like. I am sure I am right."

Later on an officer explained to me something about the secret service of the war.

"It is a war of spies," he said. "That is one reason for the deadlock. Every movement is reported to the other side and checkmated almost before it begins. In the eastern field of war the system is still inadequate; that accounts for the great movements that have taken place there."

Perhaps he is right. It sounds reasonable. I do not know with what authority he spoke. But certainly everywhere I found this talk of spies. One of the officers that night told of a recent experience of his.

"I was in a church tower at ——," he said. "There were three of us. We had been looking over toward the German lines. Suddenly I looked down into the street below. Some one with an electric flash was signalling across. It was quite distinct. All of us saw it. There was an answer from the German trenches immediately. While one of us kept watch on the tower the others rushed down into the street. There was no one there. But it is certain that that sort of thing goes on all the time."

A quarter to eleven!

Suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible—that the noise at the foot of the street was really guns; that I should be there; that these two young women should live there day and night in the midst of such horrors. For the whole town is a graveyard. Bodies in numbers have been buried in shell-holes and hastily covered, or float in the stagnant water of the canal. Every heavy rain uncovers shallow graves in the fields, allowing a dead arm, part of a rotting trunk, to show.

And now, after this lapse of time, it still seems incredible. Are they still there? Report has it that the Germans captured this town and held it for a time, only to lose it later. What happened to the little "sick and sorry" house during those fearful days? Did the German officers sit about that pine table and throw a nut to summon an orderly? Did they fill the lamp while it was lighted, and play on the cracked piano, and pick up shrapnel cases as they landed on the doorstep and set them on the mantel?

Ten minutes to eleven!

The chauffeur came to the door and stuck his head in.

"I have found petrol in a can in an empty shed," he explained. "It is now possible to go."

We went. We lost no time on the order of our going. The rain was over, but the fog had descended again. We lighted our lamps, and were curtly ordered by a sentry to put them out. In the moment that they remained alight, carefully turned away from the trenches, it was possible to see the hopeless condition of the street.

At last we reached a compromise. One lamp we might have, but covered with heavy paper. It was very little. The car bumped ominously, sagged into shell-holes.

I turned and looked back at the house. Faint rays of light shone through its boarded windows. A wounded soldier had been brought up the street and stood, leaning heavily on his companion, at the doorstep. The door opened, and he was taken in.

Good-bye, little "sick and sorry" house, with your laughter and tears, your friendly hands, your open door! Good-bye!

Five minutes later, as we reached the top of the Street, the bombardment began.



CHAPTER XXV

VOLUNTEERS AND PATRIOTS

I hold a strong brief for the English: For the English at home, restrained, earnest, determined and unassuming; for the English in the field, equally all of these things.

The British Army has borne attacks at La Bassee and Ypres, positions so strategically difficult to hold that the Germans have concentrated their assaults at these points. It has borne the horrors of the retreat from Mons, when what the Kaiser called "General French's contemptible little army" was forced back by oncoming hosts of many times its number. It has fought, as the English will always fight, with unequalled heroism but without heroics.

To-day, after many months of war, the British Army in the field is as smart, in a military sense, as tidy—if it will forgive me the word—as well ordered, as efficiently cared for, as the German Army was in the beginning. Partly this is due to its splendid equipment. Mostly it is due to that fetish of the British soldier wherever he may be—personal neatness.

Behind the lines he is jaunty, cheerful, smart beyond belief. He hates the trenches—not because they are dangerous or monotonous but because it is difficult to take a bath in them. He is four days in the trenches and four days out. On his days out he drills and marches, to get back into condition after the forced inaction of the trenches. And he gets his hair trimmed.

There is something about the appearance of the British soldier in the field that got me by the throat. Perhaps because they are, in a sense, my own people, speaking my tongue, looking at things from a view-point that I could understand. That partly. But it was more than that.

These men and boys are volunteers, the very flower of England. They march along the roads, heads well up, eyes ahead, thousands of them. What a tragedy for the country that gives them up! Who will take their places?—these splendid Scots with their picturesque kilts, their bare, muscular knees, their great shoulders; the cheery Irish, swaggering a bit and with a twinkle in their blue eyes; these tall young English boys, showing race in every line; these dashing Canadians, so impressive that their every appearance on a London street was certain to set the crowds to cheering.

I saw them in London, and later on I saw them at the front. Still later I saw them again, prostrate on the ground, in hospital trains, on hospital ships. I saw mounds, too, marked with wooden crosses.

Volunteers and patriots! A race incapable of a mean thing, incapable of a cruelty. A race of sportsmen, playing this horrible game of war fairly, almost too honestly. A race, not of diplomats, but of gentlemen.

"You will always be fools," said a captured German naval officer to his English captors, "and we shall never be gentlemen!"

But they are not fools. It is that attitude toward the English that may defeat Germany in the end.

Every man in the British Army to-day has counted the cost. He is there because he elected to be there. He is going to stay by until the thing is done, or he is. He says very little about it. He is uncomfortable if any one else says anything about it. He is rather matter of fact, indeed, and nonchalant as long as things are being done fairly. But there is nothing calm about his attitude when his opponent hits below the belt. It was a sense of fair play, as well as humanity, that made England rise to the call of Belgium. It is England's sense of fair play that makes her soldiers and sailors go white with fury at the drowning of women and children and noncombatants; at the unprincipled employment of such trickery in war as the use of asphyxiating gases, or at the insulting and ill-treating of those of their army who have been captured by the Germans. It is at the English, not at the French or the Belgians, that Germany is striking in this war. Her whole attitude shows it. British statesmen knew this from the beginning, but the people were slow to believe it. But escaped prisoners have told that they were discriminated against. I have talked with a British officer who made a sensational escape from a German prison camp. German soldiers have called across to the French trenches that it was the English they were after.

In his official order to his troops to advance, the German Emperor voiced the general sentiment.

"It is my Royal and Imperial Command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French's contemptible little army.

"Headquarters,

"Aix-la-Chapelle, August 19th, 1914."

In the name of the dignity of great nations, compare that order with Lord Kitchener's instructions to his troops, given at the same time.

"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience. Remember that the honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this struggle.

"The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourselves in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.

"Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be trusted; your conduct will justify that welcome and that trust. Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.

"Do your duty bravely,

"Fear God,

"Honour the King.

"(Signed), KITCHENER, Field Marshal,"



CHAPTER XXVI

A LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS

The same high-crowned roads, with pitfalls of mud at each side; the same lines of trees; the same coating of ooze, over which the car slid dangerously. But a new element—khaki.

Khaki everywhere—uniforms, tents, transports, all of the same hue. Skins, too, where one happens on the Indian troops. It is difficult to tell where their faces end and their yellow turbans begin.

Except for the slightly rolling landscape and the khaki one might have been behind the Belgian or French Army. There were as usual aeroplanes overhead, clouds of shrapnel smoke, and not far away the thunder of cannonading. After a time even that ceased, for I was on my way to British General Headquarters, well back from the front.

I carried letters from England to Field Marshal Sir John French, to Colonel Brinsley Fitzgerald, aid-de-camp to the "Chief," as he is called, and to General Huguet, the liaison between the French and English Armies. His official title is something entirely different, but the French word is apt. He is the connecting link between the English and French Armies.

I sent these letters to headquarters, and waited in the small hotel for developments. The British antipathy to correspondents was well known. True, there were indications that a certain relaxation was about to take place. Frederick Palmer in London had been notified that before long he would be sent across, and I had heard that some of the London newspapers, the Times and a few others, were to be allowed a day at the lines.

But at the time my machine drew into that little French town and deposited me in front of a wretched inn, no correspondent had been to the British lines. It was terra incognita. Even London knew very little. It was rumoured that such part of the Canadian contingent as had left England up to that time had been sent to the eastern field, to Egypt or the Dardanelles. With the exception of Sir John French's reports and the "Somewhere in France" notes of "Eyewitness," a British officer at the front, England was taking her army on faith.

And now I was there, and there frankly as a writer. Also I was a woman. I knew how the chivalrous English mind recoiled at the idea of a woman near the front. Their nurses were kept many miles in the rear. They had raised loud protests when three English women were permitted to stay at the front with the Belgian Army.

My knees were a bit weak as I went up the steps and into the hotel. They would hardly arrest me. My letters were from very important persons indeed. But they could send me away with expedition and dispatch. I had run the Channel blockade to get there, and I did not wish to be sent away with expedition and dispatch.

The hotel was cold and bare. Curious eyed officers came in, stared at me and went out. A French gentleman in a military cape walked round the bare room, spoke to the canaries in a great cage in the corner, and came back to where I sat with my fur coat, lap-robe fashion, over my knees.

"Pardon!" he said. "Are you the Duchess of Sutherland?"

I regretted that I was not the Duchess of Sutherland.

"You came just now in a large car?"

"I did."

"You intend to stay here for some time?"

"I have not decided."

"Where did you come from?"

"I think," I said after a rather stunned pause, "that I shall not tell you."

"Madame is very cautious!"

I felt convinced that he spoke with the authority of the army, or of the town gendarmerie, behind him. But I was irritated. Besides, I had been cautioned so much about telling where I had been, except in general terms, that I was even afraid to talk in my sleep.

"I think," I said, "that it does not really matter where I came from, where I am going, or what I am doing here."

I expected to see him throw back his cape and exhibit a sheriff's badge, or whatever its French equivalent. But he only smiled.

"In that case," he said cheerfully, "I shall wish you a good morning."

"Good-bye," I said coldly. And he took himself off.

I have never solved the mystery of that encounter. Was he merely curious? Or scraping acquaintance with the only woman he had seen in months? Or was he as imposing a person as he looked, and did he go away for a warrant or whatever was necessary, and return to find me safe in the lap of the British Army?

The canary birds sang, and a porter with a leather apron, having overcome a national inability to light a fire in the middle of the day, came to take me to my room. There was an odour of stewing onions in the air, and soapsuds, and a dog sniffed at me and barked because I addressed him in English.

And then General Huguet came, friendly and smiling, and speaking English. And all was well.

Afterward I learned how that same diplomacy which made me comfortable and at home with him at once has made smooth the relations between the English and French Armies. It was Chesterfield, wasn't it, who spoke of "Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re"? That is General Huguet. A tall man, dark, keen and of most soldierly bearing; beside the genial downrightness of the British officers he was urbane, suave, but full of decision. His post requires diplomacy but not concession.

Sir John French, he regretted to say, was at the front and would not return until late in the evening. But Colonel Fitzgerald hoped that I would come to luncheon at headquarters, so that we might talk over what was best to be done. He would, if the arrangement suited me, return at one o'clock for me.

It was half past twelve. I made such concessions to the occasion as my travelling bag permitted, and, prompt to the minute, General Huguet's car drew up at the inn door. It was a wonderful car. I used it all that afternoon and the next day, and I can testify both to its comfort and to its speed. I had travelled fast in cars belonging to the Belgian and French staffs, but never have I gone as I did in that marvel of a car. Somewhere among my papers I have a sketch that I made of the interior of the limousine body, with the two soldier-chauffeurs outside in front, the two carbines strapped to the speedometer between the vis-a-vis seats inside the car, and the speedometer registering ninety kilometres and going up.

We went at once to British Headquarters, with its sentries and its flag; a large house, which had belonged to a notary, its grim and forbidding exterior gave little promise of the comfort within. A passage led to a square centre hall from which opened various rooms—a library, with a wood fire, the latest possible London and Paris papers, a flat-topped desk and a large map; a very large drawing-room, which is Sir John French's private office, with white walls panelled with rose brocade, a marble mantel, and a great centre table, covered, like the library desk, with papers; a dining room, wainscoted and comfortable. There were other rooms, which I did not see. In the square hall an orderly sat all day, waiting for orders of various sorts.

Colonel Fitzgerald greeted me amiably. He regretted that Sir John French was absent, and was curious as to how I had penetrated to the fastnesses of British Headquarters without trouble. Now and then, glancing at him unexpectedly during the excellent luncheon that followed, I found his eyes fixed on me thoughtfully, intently. It was not at all an unfriendly gaze. Rather it was the look of a man who is painstakingly readjusting his mental processes to meet a new situation.

He made a delightful host. I sat at his right. At the other end of the table was General Huguet, and across from me a young English nobleman, attached to the field marshal's staff, came in, a few minutes late, and took his place. The Prince of Wales, who lives there, had gone to the trenches the day before.

Two soldier-servants served the meal. There was red wine, but none of the officers touched it. The conversation was general and animated. We spoke of public opinion in America, of the resources of Germany and her starvation cry, of the probable length of the war. On this opinions varied. One of the officers prophesied a quick ending when the Allies were finally ready to take the offensive. The others were not so optimistic. But neither here, nor in any of the conversations I have heard at the headquarters of the Allies, was there a doubt expressed as to ultimate victory. They had a quiet confidence that was contagious. There was no bluster, no assertion; victory was simply accepted as a fact; the only two opinions might be as to when it would occur, and whether the end would be sudden or a slow withdrawal of the German forces.

The French Algerian troops and the Indian forces of Great Britain came up for discussion, their bravery, their dislike for trench fighting and intense longing to charge, the inroads the bad weather had made on them during the winter.

One of the officers considered the American press rather pro-German. The recent American note to Sir Edward Grey and his reply, with the press comments on both, led to this statement. The possibility of Germany's intentionally antagonising America was discussed, but not at length.

From the press to the censorship was but a step. I objected to the English method as having lost us our perspective on the war.

"You allow anything to go through the censor's office that is not considered dangerous or too explicit," I said. "False reports go through on an equality with true ones. How can America know what to believe?"

It was suggested by some one that the only way to make the censorship more elastic, while retaining its usefulness in protecting military secrets and movements, was to establish such a censorship at the front, where it is easier to know what news would be harmful to give out and what may be printed with safety.

I mentioned what a high official of the admiralty had said to me about the censorship—that it was "an infernal nuisance, but necessary."

"But it is not true that messages are misleadingly changed in transmission," said one of the officers at the table.

I had seen the head of the press-censorship bureau, and was able to repeat what he had said—that where the cutting out of certain phrases endangered the sense of a message, the words "and" or "the" were occasionally added, that the sense might be kept clear, but that no other additions or changes of meaning were ever made.

Luncheon was over. We went into the library, and there, consulting the map, Colonel Fitzgerald and General Huguet discussed where I might go that afternoon. The mist of the morning had turned to rain, and the roads at the front would be very bad. Besides, it was felt that the "Chief" should give me permission to go to the front, and he had not yet returned.

"How about seeing the Indians?" asked Colonel Fitzgerald, turning from the map.

"I should like it very much."

The young officer was turned to, and agreed, like a British patriot and gentleman, to show me the Indian villages. General Huguet offered his car. The officer got his sheepskin-lined coat, for the weather was cold.

"Thirty shillings," he said, "and nothing goes through it!"

I examined that coat. It was smart, substantial, lined throughout with pure white fur, and it had cost seven dollars and a half.

There is a very popular English word just making its place in America. The word is "swank." It is both noun and verb. One swanks when one swaggers. One puts on swank when one puts on side. And because I hold a brief for the English, and because I was fortunate enough to meet all sorts of English people, I want to say that there is very little swank among them. The example of simplicity and genuineness has been set by the King and Queen. I met many different circles of people. From the highest to the lowest, there was a total absence of that arrogance which the American mind has so long associated with the English. For fear of being thought to swagger, an Englishman will understate his case. And so with the various English officers I met at the front. There was no swank. They were downright, unassuming, extremely efficient-looking men, quick to speak of German courage, ready to give the benefit of the doubt where unproved outrages were in question, but rousing, as I have said, to pale fury where their troops were being unfairly attacked.

While the car was being brought to the door General Huguet pointed out to me on the map where I was going. As we stood there his pencil drew a light semicircle round the town of Ypres.

"A great battle," he said, and described it. Colonel Fitzgerald took up the narrative. So it happened that, in the three different staff headquarters, Belgian, French and English, executive officers of the three armies in the western field described to me that great battle—the frightful slaughter of the English, their re-enforcement at a critical time by General Foch's French Army of the North, and the final holding of the line.

The official figures of casualties were given me again: English forty-five thousand out of a hundred and twenty thousand engaged; the French seventy thousand, and the German over two hundred thousand.

Turning to the table, Colonel Fitzgerald picked up a sheet of paper covered with figures.

"It is interesting," he said, "to compare the disease and battle mortality percentages of this war with the percentages in other wars; to see, considering the frightful weather and the trenches, how little disease there has been among our troops. Compare the figures with the Boer War, for instance. And even then our percentage has been somewhat brought up by the Indian troops."

"Have many of them been ill?"

"They have felt the weather," he replied; "not the cold so much as the steady rain. And those regiments of English that have been serving in India have felt the change. They particularly have suffered from frostbitten feet."

I knew that. More than once I had seen men being taken back from the British lines, their faces twisted with pain, their feet great masses of cotton and bandages which they guarded tenderly, lest a chance blow add to their agony. Even the English system of allowing the men to rub themselves with lard and oil from the waist down before going into flooded trenches has not prevented the tortures of frostbite.

It was time to go and the motor was waiting. We set off in a driving sleet that covered the windows of the car and made motoring even more than ordinarily precarious. But the roads here were better than those nearer the coast; wider, too, and not so crowded. To Ham, where the Indian regiment I was to visit had been retired for rest, was almost twenty miles. "Ham!" I said. "What a place to send Mohammedans to!"

In his long dispatch of February seventeenth Sir John French said of the Indian troops:

"The Indian troops have fought with the utmost steadfastness and gallantry whenever they have been called upon."

This is the answer to many varying statements as to the efficacy of the assistance furnished by her Indian subjects to the British Empire at this time. For Sir John French is a soldier, not a diplomat. No question of the union of the Empire influences his reports. The Indians have been valuable, or he would not say so. He is chary of praise, is the Field Marshal of the British Army.

But there is another answer—that everywhere along the British front one sees the Ghurkas, slant-eyed and Mongolian, with their broad-brimmed, khaki-coloured hats, filling posts of responsibility. They are little men, smaller than the Sikhs, rather reminiscent of the Japanese in build and alertness.

When I was at the English front some of the Sikhs had been retired to rest. But even in the small villages on billet, relaxed and resting, they were a fine and soldierly looking body of men, showing race and their ancient civilisation.

It has been claimed that England called on her Indian troops, not because she expected much assistance from them but to show the essential unity of the British Empire. The plain truth is, however, that she needed the troops, needed men at once, needed experienced soldiers to eke out her small and purely defensive army of regulars. Volunteers had to be equipped and drilled—a matter of months.

To say that she called to her aid barbarians is absurd. The Ghurkas are fierce fighters, but carefully disciplined. Compare the lances of the Indian cavalry regiments and the kukri, the Ghurka knife, with the petrol squirts, hand grenades, aeroplane darts and asphyxiating bombs of Germany, and call one barbarian to the advantage of the other! The truth is, of course, that war itself is barbarous.



CHAPTER XXVII

A STRANGE PARTY

The road to Ham turned off the main highway south of Aire. It was a narrow clay road in unspeakable condition. The car wallowed along. Once we took a wrong turning and were obliged to go back and start again.

It was still raining. Indian horsemen beat their way stolidly along the road. We passed through hamlets where cavalry horses in ruined stables were scantily protected, where the familiar omnibuses of London were parked in what appeared to be hundreds. The cocoa and other advertisements had been taken off and they had been hastily painted a yellowish grey. Here and there we met one on the road, filled and overflowing with troops, and looking curiously like the "rubber-neck wagons" of New York.

Aside from the transports and a few small Indian ammunition carts, with open bodies made of slats, and drawn by two mules, with an impassive turbaned driver calling strange words to his team, there was no sign of war. No bombarding disturbed the heavy atmosphere; no aeroplanes were overhead. There was no barbed wire, no trenches. Only muddy sugarbeet fields on each side of the narrow road, a few winter trees, and the beat of the rain on the windows.

At last, with an extra lurch, the car drew up in the village of Ham. At a gate in a brick wall a Scotch soldier in kilts, carrying a rifle, came forward. Our errand was explained and he went off to find Makand Singh, a major in the Lahore Lancers and in charge of the post.

It was a curious picture that I surveyed through the opened door of the car. We were in the centre of the village, and at the intersection of a crossroads was a tall cross with a life-size Christ. Underneath the cross, in varying attitudes of dampness and curiosity, were a dozen Indians, Mohammedans by faith. Some of them held horses which, in spite of the rain, they had been exercising. One or two wore long capes to the knees, with pointed hoods which fitted up over their great turbans. Bearded men with straight, sensitive noses and oval faces, even the absurdity of the cape and pointed hood failed to lessen their dignity. They were tall, erect, soldierly looking, and they gazed at me with the bland gravity of the East.

Makand Singh came hastily forward, a splendid figure of a man, six foot two or thereabout, and appearing even taller by reason of his turban. He spoke excellent English.

"It is very muddy for a lady to alight," he said, and instructed one of the men to bring bags of sacking, which were laid in the road.

"You are seeing us under very unfavourable conditions," he said as he helped me to alight. "But there is a fire if you are cold."

I was cold. So Makand Singh led the way to his living quarters. To go to them it was necessary to pass through a long shed, which was now a stable for perhaps a dozen horses. At a word of command the Indian grooms threw themselves against the horses' heads and pushed them back. By stepping over the ground pegs to which they were tethered I got through the shed somehow and into a small yard.

Makand Singh turned to the right, and, throwing open the low door of a peasant's house, stood aside to allow me to enter. "It is not very comfortable," he explained, "but it is the best we have."

He was so tall that he was obliged to stoop as he entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peasant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and in a doorway just beyond an elderly peasant woman watching us curiously.

"Perhaps," said Makand Singh, "you will have coffee?"

I was glad to accept, and the young officer, who had followed, accepted also. We sat down while the kettle was placed on the stove and the fire replenished. I glanced at the Indian major's tall figure. Even sitting, he was majestic. When he took the cape off he was discovered clothed in the khaki uniform of his rank in the British Army. Except for the olive colour of his skin, his turban, and the fact that his beard—the soft beard of one who has never shaved—was drawn up into a black net so that it formed a perfect crescent around the angle of his jaw, he might have been a gallant and interested English officer.

For the situation assuredly interested him. His eyes were alert and keen. When he smiled he showed rows of beautiful teeth, small and white. And although his face in repose was grave, he smiled often. He superintended the making of the coffee by the peasant woman and instructed her to prepare the table.

She obeyed pleasantly. Indeed, it was odd to see that between this elderly Frenchwoman and her strange guests—people of whose existence on the earth I dare say she had never heard until this war—there was the utmost good will. Perhaps the Indians are neater than other troops. Certainly personal cleanliness is a part of their religion. Anyhow, whatever the reason, I saw no evidence of sulkiness toward the Indians, although I have seen surly glances directed toward many of the billeted troops of other nationalities.

Conversation was rather difficult. We had no common ground to meet on, and the ordinary currency of polite society seemed inadequate, out of place.

"The weather must be terrible after India," I ventured.

"We do not mind the cold. We come from the north of India, where it is often cold. But the mud is bad. We cannot use our horses."

"You are a cavalry regiment?" I asked, out of my abysmal ignorance.

"We are Lancers. Yes. And horses are not useful in this sort of fighting."

From a room beyond there was a movement, followed by the entrance of a young Frenchman in a British uniform. Makand Singh presented him and he joined the circle that waited for coffee.

The newcomer presented an enigma—a Frenchman in a British uniform quartered with the Indian troops! It developed that he was a pupil from the Sorbonne, in Paris, and was an interpreter. Everywhere afterward I found these interpreters with the British Army—Frenchmen who for various reasons are disqualified from entering the French Army in active service and who are anxious to do what they can. They wear the British uniform, with the exception that instead of the stiff crown of the British cap theirs is soft, They are attached to every battalion, for Tommy Atkins is in a strange land these days, a land that knows no more English than he knows French,

True, he carries little books of French and English which tell him how to say "Porter, get my luggage and take it to a cab," or "Please bring me a laundry list," or "Give my kind regards to your parents," Imagine him trying to find the French for "Look out, they're coming!" to call to a French neighbour, in the inevitable mix-up of the line during a melee, and finding only "These trousers do not fit well," or "I would like an ice and then a small piece of cheese."

It was a curious group that sat in a semicircle around that peasant woman's stove, waiting for the kettle to boil—the tall Indian major with his aristocratic face and long, quiet hands, the young English officer in his Headquarters Staff uniform, the French interpreter, and I. Just inside the door the major's Indian servant, tall, impassive and turbaned, stood with folded arms, looking over our heads. And at the table the placid faced peasant woman cut slices of yellow bread, made with eggs and milk, and poured our coffee.

It was very good coffee, served black. The woman brought a small decanter and placed it near me.

"It is rum," said the major, "and very good in coffee."

I declined the rum. The interpreter took a little. The major shook his head.

"Although they say that a Sikh never refuses rum!" he said, smiling.

Coffee over, we walked about the village. Hardly a village—a cluster of houses along unpaved lanes which were almost impassable. There were tumbling stables full of horses, groups of Indians standing under dripping eaves for shelter, sentries, here and there a peasant. The houses were replicas of the one where Makand Singh had his quarters.

Although it was still raining, a dozen Indian Lancers were exercising their horses. They dismounted and stood back to let us pass. Behind them, as they stood, was the great Cross.

That was the final picture I had of the village of Ham and the Second Lahore Lancers—the turbaned Indians with their dripping horses, the grave bow of Makand Singh as he closed the door of the car, and behind him a Scotch corporal in kilt and cap, with a cigarette tucked behind his ear.

We went on. I looked back, Makand Singh was making his careful way through the mud; the horses were being led to a stable. The Cross stood alone.



CHAPTER XXVIII

SIR JOHN FRENCH

The next day I was taken along the English front, between the first and the second line of trenches, from Bethune, the southern extremity of the line, the English right flank, to the northern end of the line just below Ypres. In a direct line the British front at that time extended along some twenty-seven miles. But the line was irregular, and I believe was really well over thirty.

I have never been in an English trench. I have been close enough to the advance trenches to be shown where they lay, and to see the slight break they make in the flat country. I was never in a dangerous position at the English front, if one excepts the fact that all of that portion of the country between the two lines of trenches is exposed to shell fire.

No shells burst near me. Bethune was being intermittently shelled, but as far as I know not a shell fell in the town while I was there. I lunched on a hill surrounded by batteries, with the now celebrated towns of Messines and Wytschaete just across a valley, so that one could watch shells bursting over them. And still nothing threatened my peace of mind or my physical well-being. And yet it was one of the most interesting days of a not uneventful period.

In the morning I was taken, still in General Huguet's car, to British Headquarters again, to meet Sir John French.

I confess to a thrill of excitement when the door into his private office was opened and I was ushered in. The Field Marshal of the British Army was standing by his table. He came forward at once and shook hands. In his khaki uniform, with the scarlet straps of his rank on collar and sleeves, he presented a most soldierly and impressive appearance.

A man of middle height, squarely and compactly built, he moves easily. He is very erect, and his tanned face and grey hair are in strong contrast. A square and determined jaw, very keen blue eyes and a humorous mouth—that is my impression of Sir John French.

"We are sending you along the lines," he said when I was seated. "But not into danger. I hope you do not want to go into danger."

I wish I might tell of the conversation that followed. It is impossible. Not that it dealt with vital matters; but it was understood that Sir John was not being interviewed. He was taking a little time from a day that must have been crowded, to receive with beautiful courtesy a visitor from overseas. That was all.

There can be no objection, I think, to my mentioning one or two things he spoke of—of his admiration for General Foch, whom I had just seen, of the tribute he paid to the courage of the Indian troops, and of the marvellous spirit all the British troops had shown under the adverse weather conditions prevailing. All or most of these things he has said in his official dispatches.

Other things were touched on—the possible duration of the war, the new problems of what is virtually a new warfare, the possibility of a pestilence when warm weather came, owing to inadequately buried bodies. The Canadian troops had not arrived at the front at that time, although later in the day I saw their transports on the way, or I am sure he would have spoken of them. I should like to hear what he has to say about them after their recent gallant fighting. I should like to see his fine blue eyes sparkle.

The car was at the door, and the same young officer who had taken me about on the previous day entered the room.

"I am putting you in his care," said Sir John, indicating the new arrival, "because he has a charmed life. Nothing will happen if you are with him." He eyed the tall young officer affectionately. "He has been fighting since the beginning," he said, "handling a machine gun in all sorts of terrible places. And nothing ever touches him."

A discussion followed as to where I was to be taken. There was a culm heap near the Givenchy brickyards which was rather favoured as a lookout spot. In spite of my protests, that was ruled out as being under fire at the time. Bethune was being shelled, but not severely. I would be taken to Bethune and along the road behind the trenches. But nothing was to happen to me. Sir John French knitted his grey brows, and suggested a visit to a wood where the soldiers had built wooden walks and put up signs, naming them Piccadilly, Regent Street, and so on.

"I should like to see something," I put in feebly.

I appreciated their kindly solicitude, but after all I was there to see things; to take risks, if necessary, but to see.

"Then," said Sir John with decision, "we will send you to a hill from which you can see."

The trip was arranged while I waited. Then he went with me to the door and there we shook hands. He hoped I would have a comfortable trip, and bowed me out most courteously. But in the doorway he thought of something.

"Have you a camera with you?"

I had, and said so; a very good camera.

"I hope you do not mind if I ask you not to use it."

I did not mind. I promised at once to take no pictures, and indeed at the end of the afternoon I found my unfortunate camera on the floor, much buffeted and kicked about and entirely ignored.

The interview with Sir John French had given me an entirely unexpected impression of the Field Marshal of the British Army. I had read his reports fully, and from those unemotional reports of battles, of movements and countermovements, I had formed a picture of a great soldier without imagination, to whom a battle was an issue, not a great human struggle—an austere man.

I had found a man with a fighting jaw and a sensitive mouth; and a man greatly beloved by the men closest to him. A human man; a soldier, not a writer.

And after seeing and talking with Sir John French I am convinced that it is not his policy that dictates the silence of the army at the front. He is proud of his men, proud of each heroic regiment, of every brave deed. He would like, I am sure, to shout to the world the names of the heroes of the British Army, to publish great rolls of honour. But silence, or comparative silence, has been the decree.

There must be long hours of suspense when the Field Marshal of the British Army paces the floor of that grey and rose brocade drawing-room; hours when the orders he has given are being translated into terms of action, of death, of wounds, but sometimes—thank God!—into terms of victory. Long hours, when the wires and the dispatch riders bring in news, valiant names, gains, losses; names that are not to be told; brave deeds that, lacking chroniclers, must go unrecorded.

Read this, from the report Sir John French sent out only a day or so before I saw him:

"The troops composing the Army of France have been subjected to as severe a trial as it is possible to impose upon any body of men. The desperate fighting described in my last dispatch had hardly been brought to a conclusion when they were called upon to face the rigours and hardships of a winter campaign. Frost and snow have alternated with periods of continuous rain."

"The men have been called upon to stand for many hours together almost up to their waists in bitterly cold water, separated by only one or two hundred yards from a most vigilant enemy."

"Although every measure which science and medical knowledge could suggest to mitigate these hardships was employed, the sufferings of the men have been very great."

"In spite of all this they present a most soldier like, splendid, though somewhat war-worn appearance. Their spirit remains high and confident; their general health is excellent, and their condition most satisfactory."

"I regard it as most unfortunate that circumstances have prevented any account of many splendid instances of courage and endurance, in the face of almost unparalleled hardship and fatigue in war, coming regularly to the knowledge of the public."

So it is clearly not the fault of Sir John French that England does not know the names of her heroes, or that their families are denied the comfort of knowing that their sons fought bravely and died nobly. It is not the fault of the British people, waiting eagerly for news that does not come. Surely, in these inhuman times, some concession should be made to the humanities. War is not moving pawns in a game; it is a struggle of quivering flesh and agonised nerves, of men fighting and dying for ideals. Heroism is much more than duty. It is idealism. No leader is truly great who discounts this quality.

America has known more of the great human interest of this war than England. English people get the news from great American dailies. It is an unprecedented situation, and so far the English people have borne it almost in silence. But as the months go on and only bare official dispatches reach them, there is a growing tendency to protest. They want the truth, a picture of conditions. They want to know what their army is doing; what their sons are doing. And they have a right to know. They are making tremendous sacrifices, and they have a right to know to what end.

The greatest agent in the world for moulding public opinion is the press. The Germans know this, and have used their journals skilfully. To underestimate the power of the press, to fail to trust to its good will and discretion, is to refuse to wield the mightiest instrument in the world for influencing national thought and national action. At times of great crisis the press has always shown itself sane, conservative, safe, eminently to be trusted.

The English know the power of the great modern newspaper, not only to reflect but to form public opinion. They have watched the American press because they know to what extent it influences American policy.

There is talk of conscription in England to-day. Why? Ask the British people. Ask the London Times. Ask rural England where, away from the tramp of soldiers in the streets, the roll of drums, the visual evidence of a great struggle, patriotism is asked to feed on the ashes of war.

Self-depreciation in a nation is as great an error as over-complacency. Lack of full knowledge is the cause of much of the present British discontent.

Let the British people be told what their army is doing. Let Lord Kitchener announce its deeds, its courage, its vast unselfishness. Let him put the torch of publicity to the national pride and see it turn to a white flame of patriotism. Then it will be possible to tear the recruiting posters from the walls of London, and the remotest roads of England will echo to the tramp of marching men.



CHAPTER XXIX

ALONG THE GREAT BETHUNE ROAD

Again and again through these chapters I have felt apologetic for the luxurious manner in which I frequently saw the war. And so now I hesitate to mention the comfort of that trip along the British lines; the substantial and essentially British foresight and kindness that had stocked the car with sandwiches wrapped in white paper; the good roads; the sense of general well-being that spread like a contagion from a well-fed and well-cared-for army. There is something about the British Army that inspires one with confidence. It is a pity that those people who sit at home in Great Britain and shrug their shoulders over the daily papers cannot see their army at the front.

It is not a roast beef stolidity. It is rather the steadiness of calm eyes and good nerves, of physically fit bodies and clean minds. I felt it when I saw Kitchener's army of clear-eyed boys drilling in Hyde Park. I got it from the quiet young officer, still in his twenties, who sat beside me in the car, and who, having been in the war from the beginning, handling a machine gun all through the battle of Ypres, when his regiment, the Grenadier Guards, suffered so horribly, was willing to talk about everything but what he had done.

We went first to Bethune. The roads as we approached the front were crowded, but there was no disorder. There were motor bicycles and side-cars carrying dispatch riders and scouts, travelling kitchens, great lorries, small light cars for supplies needed in a hurry—cars which make greater speed than the motor vans—omnibuses full of troops, and steam tractors or caterpillar engines for hauling heavy guns.

The day was sunny and cold. The rain of the day before had turned to snow in the night, and the fields were dazzling.

"In the east," said the officer with me, "where there is always snow in the winter, the Germans have sent out to their troops white helmet covers and white smocks to cover the uniforms. But snow is comparatively rare here, and it has not been considered necessary."

At a small bridge ten miles from Bethune he pointed out a house as marking the farthest advance of the German Army, reached about the eleventh of October. There was no evidence of the hard fighting that had gone on along this road. It was a peaceful scene, the black branches of the overarching trees lightly powdered with snow. But the snowy fields were full of unmarked mounds. Another year, and the mounds will have sunk to the level of the ground. Another year, and only history will tell the story of that October of 1914 along the great Bethune road.

An English aeroplane was overhead. There were armoured cars on the road, going toward the front; top-heavy machines that made surprisingly little noise, considering their weight. Some had a sort of conning tower at the top. They looked sombre, menacing. The driving of these cars over slippery roads must be difficult. Like the vans, they keep as near the centre of the road as possible, allowing lighter traffic to turn out to pass them. A van had broken down and was being repaired at one of the wayside repair shops maintained everywhere along the roads for this war of machinery. Men in khaki with leather aprons were working about it, while the driver stood by, smoking a pipe.

As we went on we encountered the Indian troops again. The weather was better, and they thronged the roads, driving their tiny carts, cleaning arms and accoutrements in sunny doorways, proud and haughty in appearence even when attending to the most menial duties. From the little ammunition carts, like toy wagons, they gazed gravely at the car, and at the unheard of spectacle of a woman inside. Side by side with the Indians were Scots in kilts, making up with cheerful impudence for the Indians' lack of curiosity.

There were more Ghurkas, carrying rifles and walking lightly beside forage carts driven by British Tommies. There were hundreds of these carts taking hay to the cavalry divisions. The Ghurkas looked more Japanese than ever in the clear light. Their broad-brimmed khaki hats have a strap that goes under the chin. The strap or their black slanting eyes or perhaps their rather flattened noses and pointed chins give them a look of cruelty that the other Indian troops do not have. They are hard and relentless fighters, I believe; and they look it.

The conversation in the car turned to the feeding of the army.

"The British Army is exceedingly well fed," said the young officer.

"In the trenches also?"

"Always. The men are four days in the trenches and four out. When the weather is too bad for anything but sniping, the inactivity of the trench life and the abundant ration gets them out of condition. On their four days in reserve it is necessary to drill them hard to keep them in condition."

This proved to be the explanation of the battalions we met everywhere, marching briskly along the roads. I do not recall the British ration now, but it includes, in addition to meat and vegetables, tea, cheese, jam and bacon—probably not all at once, but giving that variety of diet so lacking to the unfortunate Belgian Army. Food is one of the principal munitions of war. No man fights well with an empty stomach. Food sinks into the background only when it is assured and plentiful. Deprived of it, its need becomes insistent, an obsession that drives away every other thought.

So the wise British Army feeds its men well, and lets them think of other things, such as war and fighting and love of country and brave deeds.

But food has not always been plentiful in the British Army. There were times last fall when, what with German artillery bombardment and shifting lines, it was difficult to supply the men.

"My servant," said the officer, "found a hare somewhere, and in a deserted garden a handful of carrots. Word came to the trench where I was stationed that at dark that night he would bring out a stew. We were very hungry and we waited eagerly. But just as it was cooked and ready a German shell came down the chimney of the house where he was working and blew up stove and stew and everything. It was one of the greatest disappointments I ever remember."

We were in Bethune at last—a crowded town, larger than any I had seen since I left Dunkirk. So congested were its narrow streets with soldiers, mounted and on foot, and with all the ghastly machinery of war, that a traffic squad had taken charge and was directing things. On some streets it was possible to go only in one direction. I looked about for the signs of destruction that had grown so familiar to me, but I saw none. Evidently the bombardment of Bethune has not yet done much damage.

A squad of artillerymen marched by in perfect step; their faces were keen, bronzed. They were fine-looking, well-set-up men, as smart as English artillerymen always are. I watched them as long as I could see them.

We had lost our way, owing to the regulations of the traffic squad. It was necessary to stop and inquire. Then at last we crossed a small bridge over the canal, and were on our way along the front, behind the advanced trenches and just in front of the second line.

For a few miles the country was very level. The firing was on our right, the second line of trenches on our left. The congestion of Bethune had given way to the extreme peace in daylight of the region just behind the trenches. There were few wagons, few soldiers. Nothing could be seen except an occasional cloud where shrapnel had burst. The British Army was keeping me safe, as it had promised!

There were, however, barbed-wire entanglements everywhere, built, I thought, rather higher than the French. Roads to the right led to the advanced trenches, empty roads which at night are thronged with men going to the front or coming back.

Here and there one saw a sentry, and behind him a tent of curious mottled shades of red, brown and green.

"They look as though they were painted," I said, rather bewildered.

"They are," the officer replied promptly. "From an aeroplane these tents are absolutely impossible to locate. They merge into the colors of the fields."

Now and then at a crossroads it was necessary to inquire our way. I had no wish to run into danger, but I was conscious of a wild longing to have the car take the wrong turning and land abruptly at the advance trenches. Nothing of the sort happened, however.

We passed small buildings converted into field hospitals and flying the white flag with a red cross.

"There are no nurses in these hospitals," explained the officer. "Only one surgeon and a few helpers. The men are brought here from the trenches, and then taken back at night in ambulances to the railroad or to base hospitals."

"Are there no nurses at all along the British front?"

"None whatever. There are no women here in any capacity. That is why the men are so surprised to see you."

Here and there, behind the protection of groves and small thickets, were temporary camps, sometimes tents, sometimes tent-shaped shelters of wood. There were batteries on the right everywhere, great guns concealed in farmyards or, like the guns I had seen on the French front, in artificial hedges. Some of them were firing; but the firing of a battery amounts to nothing but a great noise in these days of long ranges. Somewhere across the valley the shells would burst, we knew that; that was all.

The conversation turned to the Prince of Wales, and to the responsibility it was to the various officers to have him in the trenches. Strenuous efforts had been made to persuade him to be satisfied with the work at headquarters, where he is attached to Sir John French's staff. But evidently the young heir to the throne of England is a man in spite of his youth. He wanted to go out and fight, and he had at last secured permission.

"He has had rather remarkable training," said the young officer, who was also his friend. "First he was in Calais with the transport service. Then he came to headquarters, and has seen how things are done there. And now he is at the front."

Quite unexpectedly round a turn in the road we came on a great line of Canadian transports—American-built lorries with khaki canvas tops. Canadians were driving them, Canadians were guarding them. It gave me a homesick thrill at once to see these other Americans, of types so familiar to me, there in Northern France.

Their faces were eager as they pushed ahead. Some of the tent-shaped wooden buildings were to be temporary barracks for them. In one place the transports had stopped and the men were cooking a meal beside the road. Some one had brought a newspaper and a crowd of men had gathered round it. I wondered if it was an American paper. I would like to have stood on the running board of the machine, as we went past, and called out that I, too, was an American, and God bless them!

But I fancy the young officer with me would have been greatly disconcerted at such an action. The English are not given to such demonstrations. But the Canadians would have understood, I know.

Since that time the reports have brought great news of these Canadian troops, of their courage, of the loss of almost all their officers in the fighting at Neuve Chapelle. But that sunny morning, when I saw them in the north of France, they were untouched by battle or sudden death. Their faces were eager, intent, earnest. They had come a long distance and now they had arrived. And what next?

Into this scene of war unexpectedly obtruded itself a bit of peace. A great cart came down a side road, drawn by two white oxen with heavy wooden yokes. Piled high in the cart were sugar beets. Some thrifty peasant was salvaging what was left of his crop. The sight of the oxen reminded me that I had seen very few horses.

"They are farther back," said the officer, "Of course, as you know, for the last two or three months it has been impossible to use the cavalry at all."

Then he told me a curious thing. He said that during the long winter wait the cavalry horses got much out of condition. The side roads were thick with mud and the main roads were being reserved for transports. Adequate exercises for the cavalry seemed impossible. One detachment discovered what it considered a bright solution, and sent to England for beagle hounds. Morning after morning the men rode after the hounds over the flat fields of France. It was a welcome distraction and it kept the horses in working trim.

But the French objected. They said their country was at war, was being devastated by an alien army. They considered riding to hounds, no matter for What purpose, an indecorous, almost an inhuman, thing to do under the circumstances. So the hounds were sent back to England, and the cavalry horses are now exercised in dejected strings along side roads.

As we went north the firing increased in intensity. More English batteries were at work; the German response was insistent.

We were approaching Ypres, this time from the English side, and the great artillery duel of late February was in progress.

The country was slightly rolling. Its unevenness permitted more activity along our road. Batteries were drawn up at rest in the fields here and there. In one place a dozen food kitchens in the road were cooking the midday meal, the khaki-clad cooks frequently smoking as they worked.

Ahead of this loomed two hills. They rose abruptly, treeless and precipitous. On the one nearest to the German lines was a ruined tower.

"The tower," said the officer, "would have been a charming place for luncheon. But the hill has been shelled steadily for several days. I have no idea why the Germans are shelling it. There is nobody there."



CHAPTER XXX

THE MILITARY SECRET

The second hill was our destination. At the foot of it the car stopped and we got out. A steep path with here and there a wooden step led to the summit. At the foot of the path was a sentry and behind him one of the multicoloured tents.

"Are you a good climber?" asked the officer.

I said I was and we set out. The path extended only a part of the way, to a place perhaps two hundred feet beyond the road, where what we would call a cyclone cellar in America had been dug out of the hillside. Like the others of the sort I had seen, it was muddy and uninviting, practically a cave with a roof of turf.

The path ceased, and it was necessary to go diagonally up the steep hillside through the snow. From numberless guns at the base of the hill came steady reports, and as we ascended it was explained to me that I was about to visit the headquarters of Major General H——, commanding an army division.

"The last person I brought here," said the young officer, smiling, "was the Prince of Wales."

We reached the top at last. There was a tiny farmhouse, a low stable with a thatched roof, and, towering over all, the arms of a great windmill. Chickens cackled round my feet, a pig grunted in a corner, and apparently from directly underneath came the ear-splitting reports of a battery as it fired.

"Perhaps I would better go ahead and tell them you are coming," said the officer. "These people have probably not seen a woman in months, and the shock would be too severe. We must break it gently."

So he went ahead, and I stood on the crest of that wind-swept hill and looked across the valley to Messines, to Wytschaete and Ypres.

The battlefield lay spread out like a map. As I looked, clouds of smoke over Messines told of the bursting of shells.

Major General H—— came hurrying out. His quarters occupy the only high ground, with the exception of the near-by hill with its ruined tower, in the neighbourhood of Ypres. Here, a week or so before, had come the King of Belgium, to look with tragic eyes at all that remained to him of his country. Here had come visiting Russian princes from the eastern field, the King of England, the Prince of Wales. No obscurities—except myself—had ever penetrated so far into the fastness of the British lines.

Later on in the day I wrote my name in a visitors' book the officers have established there, wrote under sprawling royal signatures, under the boyish hand of the Prince of Wales, the irregular chirography of Albert of Belgium, the blunt and soldierly name of General Joffre.

There are six officers stationed in the farmhouse, composing General H——'s staff. And, as things turned out, we did not require the white-paper sandwiches, for we were at once invited to luncheon.

"Not a very elaborate luncheon," said General H——, "but it will give us a great deal of pleasure to share it."

While the extra places were being laid we went to the brow of the hill. Across the valley at the foot of a wooded ridge were the British trenches. The ground rose in front of them, thickly covered with trees, to the German position on the ridge.

"It looks from here like a very uncomfortable position," I said. "The German position is better, isn't it?"

"It is," said General H—— grimly. "But we shall take that hill before long."

I am not sure, and my many maps do not say, but there is little doubt in my mind that the hill in question is the now celebrated Hill 60, of which so much has been published.

As we looked across shells were bursting round the church tower of Messines, and the batteries beneath were sending out ear-splitting crashes of noise. Ypres, less than three miles away, but partly hidden in mist, was echoing the bombardment. And to complete the pandemonium of sound, as we turned, a mitrailleuse in the windmill opened fire behind us.

"Practice!" said General H—— as I started. "It is noisy here, I'm afraid."

We went through the muddy farmyard back to the house. The staff was waiting and we sat down at once to luncheon at a tiny pine table drawn up before a window. It was not a good luncheon. The French wine was like vinegar, the food the ordinary food of the peasant whose house it was. But it was a cheerful meal in spite of the food, and in spite of a boil on General H——'s neck. The marvel of a woman being there seemed to grow, not diminish, as the meal went on.

"Next week," said General H——, "we are to have two parties of correspondents here. The penny papers come first, and later on the ha'pennies!"

That brought the conversation, as usual, to the feeling about the war in America. Like all the other officers I had met, these men were anxious to have things correctly reported in America, being satisfied that the true story of the war would undoubtedly influence any wavering of public opinion in favour of the Allies.

One of the officers was a Canadian, and for his benefit somebody told the following story, possibly by now familiar to America.

Some of the Canadian troops took with them to England a bit of the dash and impatience of discipline of the great Northwest. The story in question is of a group of soldiers at night passing a sentry, who challenges them:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Black Watch."

"Advance, Black Watch, and all's well."

The next group is similarly challenged:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Cameronians."

"Advance, Cameronians."

The third group comes on.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"What the devil is that to you?"

"Advance, Canadians!"

In the burst of mirth that followed the Canadian officer joined. Then he told an anecdote also:

"British recruits, practising passing a whispered order from one end of a trench to the other, received this message to pass along: 'Enemy advancing on right flank. Send re-enforcements.' When the message reached the other end of the trench," he said, "it was: 'Enemy advancing with ham shank. Send three and fourpence!'"

It was a gay little meal, the only breaks in the conversation when the great guns drowned out our voices. I wonder how many of those round that table are living to-day. Not all, it is almost certain. The German Army almost broke through the English line at that very point in the late spring. The brave Canadians have lost almost all their officers in the field and a sickening percentage of their men. That little valley must have run deep with blood since I saw it that day in the sunlight.

Luncheon was over. I wrote my name in the visitors' book, to the tune of such a bombardment as almost forbade speech, and accompanied by General H—— we made our way down the steep hillside to the car.

"Some time to-night I shall be in England," I said as I settled myself for the return trip.

The smile died on the general's face. It was as if, in speaking of home, I had touched the hidden chord of gravity and responsibility that underlay the cheerfulness of that cheery visit.

"England!" he said. That was all.

I looked back as the car started on. A battery was moving up along the road behind the hill. The sentry stood by his low painted tent. The general was watching the car, his hand shading his eyes against the glare of the winter sun. Behind him rose his lonely hill, white with snow, with the little path leading, by devious ways, up its steep and shining side.

It was not considered advisable to return by the road behind the trenches. The late afternoon artillery duel was going on. So we turned off a few miles south of the hill and left war behind us.

Not altogether, of course. There were still transports and troops. And at an intersection of three roads we were abruptly halted. A line of military cars was standing there, all peremptorily held up by a handful of soldiers.

The young officer got out and inquired. There was little time to spare, for I was to get to Calais that evening, and to run the Channel blockade some time in the night.

The officer came back soon, smiling.

"A military secret!" he said. "We shall have to wait a little. The road is closed."

So I sat in the car and the military secret went by. I cannot tell about it except that it was thrillingly interesting. My hands itched to get out my camera and photograph it, just as they itch now to write about it. But the mystery of what I saw on the highroad back of the British lines is not mine to tell. It must die with me!

My visit to the British lines was over.

As I look back I find that the one thing that stands out with distinctness above everything else is the quality of the men that constitute the British Army in the field. I had seen thousands in that one day. But I had seen them also north of Ypres, at Dunkirk, at Boulogne and Calais, on the Channel boats. I have said before that they show race. But it is much more than a matter of physique. It is a thing of steady eyes, of high-held heads, of a clean thrust of jaw.

The English are not demonstrative. London, compared with Paris, is normal. British officers at the front and at headquarters treat the war as a part of the day's work, a thing not to talk about but to do. But my frequent meetings with British soldiers, naval men, members of the flying contingent and the army medical service, revealed under the surface of each man's quiet manner a grimness, a red heat of patriotism, a determination to fight fair but to fight to the death.

They concede to the Germans, with the British sense of fairness, courage, science, infinite resource and patriotism. Two things they deny them, civilisation and humanity—civilisation in its spiritual, not its material, side; humanity of the sort that is the Englishman's creed and his religion—the safeguarding of noncombatants, the keeping of the national word and the national honour.

My visit to the English lines was over. I had seen no valiant charges, no hand-to-hand fighting. But in a way I had had a larger picture. I had seen the efficiency of the methods behind the lines, the abundance of supplies, the spirit that glowed in the eyes of every fighting man. I had seen the colonial children of England in the field, volunteers who had risen to the call of the mother country. I had seen and talked with the commander-in-chief of the British forces, and had come away convinced that the mother country had placed her honour in fine and capable hands. And I had seen, between the first and second lines of trenches, an army of volunteers and patriots—and gentlemen.



CHAPTER XXXI

QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND

The great European war affects profoundly all the women of each nation involved. It affects doubly the royal women. The Queen of England, the Czarina of Russia, the Queen of the Belgians, the Empress of Germany, each carries in these momentous days a frightful burden. The young Prince of Wales is at the front; the King of the Belgians has been twice wounded; the Empress of Germany has her sons as well as her husband in the field.

In addition to these cares these women of exalted rank have the responsibility that comes always to the very great. To see a world crisis approaching, to know every detail by which it has been furthered or retarded, to realise at last its inevitability—to see, in a word, every movement of the great drama and to be unable to check its denouement—that has been a part of their burden. And when the denouement came, to sink their private anxieties in the public welfare, to assume, not a double immunity but a double responsibility to their people, has been the other part.

It has required heroism of a high order. It is, to a certain extent, a new heroism, almost a demonstration of the new faith whose foundation is responsibility—responsibility of a nation to its sons, of rulers to their people, of a man to his neighbour.

It has been my privilege to meet and speak with two of these royal women, with the Queen of England and with the Queen of the Belgians. In each instance I carried away with me an ineradicable impression of this quality—of a grave and wearing responsibility borne quietly and simply, of a quiet courage that buries its own griefs and asks only to help.

From the beginning of the war I had felt a keen interest in the Queen of England. Here was a great queen who had chosen to be, first of all, a wife and mother; a queen with courage and a conscience. And into her reign had come the tragedy of a war that affected every nation of the world, many of them directly, all of them indirectly. The war had come unsought, unexpected, unprepared for. Peaceful England had become a camp. The very palace in which the royal children were housed was open to an attack from a brutal enemy, which added to the new warfare of this century the ethics of barbarism.

What did she think of it all? What did she feel when that terrible Roll of Honour came in, week by week, that Roll of Honour with its photographs of splendid types of young manhood that no Anglo-Saxon can look at without a clutch at his throat? What did she think when, one by one, the friends of her girlhood put on the black of bereavement and went uncomplainingly about the good works in which hers was the guiding hand? What thoughts were hers during those anxious days before the Prince of Wales went to the front, when, like any other mother, she took every possible moment to be with him, walking about arm-in-arm with her boy, talking of everything but the moment of parting?

And when at last I was permitted to see the Queen of England, I understood a part at least of what she was suffering. I had been to the front. I had seen the English army in the field. I had been quite close to the very trenches where the boyish Prince of Wales was facing the enemies of his country and doing it with high courage. And I had heard the rumble of the great German guns, as Queen Mary of England must hear them in her sleep.

Even with no son in the field the Queen of England would be working for the soldiers. It is a part of the tradition of her house. But a good mother is a mother to all the world. When Queen Mary is supervising the great work of the Needlework Guild one feels sure that into each word of direction has gone a little additional tenderness, because of this boy of hers at the front.

It is because of Her Majesty's interest in the material well-being of the soldiers at the front, and because of her most genuine gratitude for America's part in this well-being, that I took such pleasure in meeting the Queen of England.

It was characteristic of Her Majesty that she put an American woman—a very nervous American woman—at her ease at once, that she showed that American woman the various departments of her Needlework Guild under way, and that she conveyed, in every word she said, a deep feeling of friendship for America and her assistance to Belgium in this crisis.

Although our ambassadors are still accredited to the Court of St. James's, the old palace has ceased to be the royal residence. The King still holds there his levees, to which only gentlemen are admitted. But the formal Drawing Rooms are held at Buckingham Palace. To those who have seen St. James's during a levee, or to those London tourists who have watched the Scots Guards, or the Coldstream or the Grenadiers, preceded by a splendid band, swinging into the old Friary Court to perform the impressive ceremony of changing guard, the change in these days of war is most amazing. Friary Court is guarded by London policemen, and filled with great vans piled high with garments and supplies for the front—that front where the Coldstream and the Grenadiers and the others, shorn of their magnificence, are waiting grimly in muddy trenches or leading charges to victory—or the Roll of Honour. Under the winter sky of London the crenelated towers and brick walls of the old palace give little indication of the former grandeur of this most historic of England's palaces, built on the site of an old leper hospital and still retaining the name of the saint to whom that hospital was dedicated.

There had been a shower just before I arrived; and, although it was February, there was already a hint of spring in the air. The sun came out, drying the roads in the park close by, and shining brightly on the lovely English grass, green even then with the green of June at home. Riders, caught in the shower and standing by the sheltered sides of trees for protection, took again to the bridle paths. The hollows of Friary Court were pools where birds were splashing. As I got out of my car a Boy Scout emerged from the palace and carried a large parcel to a waiting van.

"Do you want the Q.M.N.G.?" said a tall policeman.

This, being interpreted, I was given to understand was Queen Mary's Needlework Guild.

Later on, when I was taken to Buckingham Palace to write my name in the Queen's book, which is etiquette after a presentation, there was all the formality the visit to St. James's had lacked—the drive into the inclosure, where the guard was changing, the stately footmen, the great book with its pages containing the dignitaries and great people of all the earth.

But the Boy Scout and the policeman had restored my failing courage that day at St. James's Palace. Except for a tendency to breathe at twice my normal rate as the Queen entered the room I felt almost calm.

As she advanced toward us, stopping to speak cordially to the various ladies who are carrying on the work of the Guild for her, I had an opportunity to see this royal woman who has suffered so grossly from the camera.

It will be a surprise to many Americans to learn that the Queen of England is very lovely to look at. So much emphasis has always been placed on her virtues, and so little has been written of her charm, that this tribute is only fair to Her Majesty. She is tall, perhaps five feet eight inches, with deep-blue eyes and beautiful colouring. She has a rather wide, humorous mouth. There is not a trace of austerity in her face or in any single feature. The whole impression was of sincerity and kindliness, with more than a trace of humour.

I could quite believe, after I saw Her Majesty, the delightful story that I had heard from a member of her own circle, that now and then, when during some court solemnity an absurdity occurred, it was positively dangerous to catch the Queen's eye!

Queen Mary came up the long room. As she paused and held out her hand, each lady took it and curtsied at the same time. The Queen talked, smiling as she spoke. There was no formality. Near at hand the lady-in-waiting who was in attendance stood, sometimes listening, sometimes joining in the conversation. The talk was all of supplies, for these days in England one thinks in terms of war. Certain things had come in; other things had gone or were going. For the Queen of England is to-day at the head of a great business, one that in a few months has already collected and distributed over a million garments, all new, all practical, all of excellent quality.

The Queen came toward me and paused. There was an agonised moment while the lady-in-waiting presented me. Her Majesty held out her hand. I took it and bowed. The next instant she was speaking.

She spoke at once of America, of what had already been done by Americans for the Belgians both in England and in their desolated country. And she hastened to add her gratitude for the support they have given her Guild.

"The response has been more than generous," said Her Majesty. "We are very grateful. We are glad to find that the sympathy of America is with us,"

She expressed a desire also to have America know fully just what was being done with the supplies that are being constantly sent over, both from Canada and from the United States.