XXIX

Wherever God erects a house of prayerThe devil always builds a chapel there.

Wherever God erects a house of prayer

The devil always builds a chapel there.

I have never had the courage to solve my uncertainties by buttonholing a Frenchman and asking him what is the truth of the matter. I am sure Anatole France could supply me with any number of whimsical explanations, all of them suggestive, and not one of them true.

But, except for this sauciness, Cassel is a demure and pleasant place.

Bailleul is mean in comparison, though it has a notable church tower in which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither, perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and thechâtelaineof which answers your lame and halting French in nimble English. On the road to Locre it has those Baths and Wash-houses which have become so justly famous, and whence hosts of British soldiers come forth like Naaman white as snow, but infinitely more companionable. Almost any day you may see a bathing-towel unit marching thither or thence in column of route, their towels held at the slope or the trail as it pleases their fancy. And in afield outside Bailleul I have seen open-air smithies and the glow of hot coals, the air resounding with the clink of hammers upon the anvil—a cheering spectacle on a wet and inclement winter's day. But Bailleul has few amenities and no charms. It is, however, occasionally visited by that amazing troupe of variety artistes, known as the Army Pierrots, who provide the men in billets with a most delectable entertainment for 50 centimes, the proceeds being a "deodand," and appropriated to charitable uses. For all that, Bailleul stinks in the nostrils of fatigue-parties.

Bethune is like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land, for it is the rendezvous of the British Army, and men tramp miles to warm their hands at its fires of social life. Itspâtisseriehas the choicest cakes, and its hairdresser's the most soothing unguents of any town in our occupation. It has a great market-place, where the peasants do a thriving business every Saturday, producing astonished rabbits by the ears from large sacks, like a conjuror, and holding out live and plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a spectacle as melancholy as it is rare, andof which the less said the better. It has a church with some lurid glass of indifferent quality, and (if I remember rightly) a curious dovecote of a tower. The transepts are hemmed in by shops and warehouses. To the mediaevalist there is nothing strange in such neighbourliness of the world and the Church. The great French churches of the Middle Ages—witness Nôtre Dame d'Amiens with its inviting ambulatory—were places of municipal debate, and their sculpture was, to borrow the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political "liberty of speech" at a time when the chisel of the sculptor might say what the pen of the scrivener dared not, for fear of the common hangman, express. Bethune is not the only place where I have seen shops coddling churches, and the conjunction was originally less impertinent than it now seems. It was not that the Church was profaned, but that the world was consecrated; honest burgesses trading under the very shadow of the flying buttresses were reminded that usury was a sin, and that to charge a "just price" was the beginning of justification by works. But I have not observed that the shopkeepers of Bethune now entertain any very mediaeval compunction about charging the British soldier an unjust price.

Armentières is on the high road to Lille, but at present there is no thoroughfare. It's a dispiritingtown, given over to industrial pursuits, and approached by rows of mean little cottages such as you may see on the slopes of the mining valleys of South Wales. Two things stand out in my memory—one, the spectacle of a corporal being tried for his life in the Town Hall by a court-martial—there had been a quarrel over a girl in billets and he had shot his comrade; the other the sight of a regiment of Canadians ("Princess Pat's," I believe), drawn up in the square for parade one winter afternoon before they went into the trenches for the first time. And a very gallant and hefty body of men they were.

Poperinghe is a dismal place, and to be avoided.

Hazebrouck is not without some pretentiousness. It has the largestplaceof any of them, with a town-hall of imposing appearance, but something of a whited sepulchre for all that. I remember calling on a civilian dignitary there—I forget what he was; he sat in a long narrow corridor-like room, all the windows were hermetically sealed, a gas-stove burnt pungently, some fifty people smoked cigarettes, and at intervals the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffled his foot over the spot as a concession to public hygiene. Therefore I did not tarry. The precincts of the railway-station are often crowded by batches of German prisoners, villainous-lookingrascals, and usually of the earth earthy. I watched some of them entraining one day; with them was a surly German officer who looked at his fellow-prisoners with contempt, the crowd of inhabitants with dislike, and (so it seemed to me) his guards with hatred. No one spoke to him, and he stood apart in melancholy insolence. Perhaps he was the German officer of whom the story is told that, being conducted to the Base in a third-class carriage in the company of some of his own men, and under the escort of some British soldiers, he declaimed all the way down against being condemned to such low society, until one of his guards, getting rather "fed up" with it all, bluntly cut him short with the admonition: "Stow it, governor, we'd have hired a blooming Pullman if we'd known we was going to have the pleasure of your society. Yus, and we'd have had Sir John French 'ere to meet you. But yer'll have to put up with us low fellows for a bit instead, which if yer don't like it, yer can lump it, and if yer won't lump it, where will yer have it?" and he tapped his bayonet invitingly. Needless to say, the speaker's pleasantry was impracticable. But the officer did not know that; he only knew the way they have in Germany. Wherefore the officer relapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Hazebrouck has a witty and pleasantprocureurde la République, who once confided to me that the English were "irresistible." "In war?" I asked. "Vraiment," he replied, "but I meant in love."

But the towns occupied by our Army are monotonously lacking in distinction. To tell the truth they wear an impoverished look, and are singularly unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small châteaux built on grassy mounds surrounded by moats, and the timbered farm-houses with their red-tiled roofs and barns big enough to billet a whole company at a pinch. The country is one vast bivouac, and every cottage, farm, and mansion is a billet. Near the edge of the Front you may see men who have just come out of action; I remember once meeting a group of Royal Irish, only forty-seven left out of a Company, who had been in the attack by the 8th Division at Fleurbaix, and I gazed at them with something of the respectful consternation with which the Babylonians must have regarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego after their ordeal in the fiery furnace. Yet nothing of their demeanour betrayed the brazen fury they had gone through; they sat by the hedge cleaning their accoutrements with the utmost nonchalance. They reminded me of the North Staffords, one of whose officers, whom I know very well, when I asked him what were his impressions of a battle, replied, after some reflection: "Ihaven't got any; all I can remember of a hot corner we were in near Oultersteen was that my men, while waiting to advance, were picking blackberries." It was a man of the North Staffords who, according to the same unimpeachable authority, was heard shouting out when half the trench was blown in by a shell, and he had extricated himself with difficulty: "'Ere, where's my pipe? Some one's pinched my pipe!"

But it isn't always quite as comforting as that. The servant of a friend of mine, a young subaltern in the Black Watch, whom, alas! like so many other friends, I shall never see again, in describing the church parade held after the battle of Loos, in which his master was killed by a shell, wrote that when the chaplain gave out the hymn "Rock of Ages" the men burst into tears, their voices failed them, and they broke down utterly. And I remember that on one occasion when some four-fifths of the officers of a certain battalion had gone down in the advance, and the shaken remnant fell back upon their trenches, deafened and distraught, one of the officers—he had been a master in a great public school before the war—took out of his pocket a copy of theFaerie Queene, and began in a slow, even voice to read the measured cadences of one of its cantos, and, having read, handed it to asubaltern and asked him to follow suit. The others listened, half in wonder, half in fear, thinking he had lost his senses, but there was method in his madness and a true inspiration. The musical rhythm of the words distracted their terrible memories, and soon acted like a charm upon their disordered nerves.

And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,And dead (as living) ever him adored:Upon his shield the like was also scored,For sovereign hope, which in his help he had:Right faithful true he was in deed and word;But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad:Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

And on his breast a bloody cross he bore,

The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore,

And dead (as living) ever him adored:

Upon his shield the like was also scored,

For sovereign hope, which in his help he had:

Right faithful true he was in deed and word;

But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad:

Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-march to keep them fit; Indian cavalry jogging along on the footpath with lances in rest; herds of tethered horses in rest-camps; a string of motor-buses painted a khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling workshop) with its dynamo humming like a top and the mechanics busy upon the lathe; an Army Postal van coming along, like a friend in need, to tow my car, stranded in the mud, with a long cable; sappers, like Zaccheus, up a tree (but not metaphorically); despatch-riders whizzing past at sixty miles an hour—these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they lend a variety to the monotonous countryside withoutwhich it would be dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight lines—straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our occupation, as you leave G.H.Q. for the Base, you exchange these plains of sticky clay and stagnant dykes for a pleasant country of undulating downs and noble beech woods, and one seems to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency.

It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. It is merely a heap of stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are not more desolate.

A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear. All men would emphasise the boredom, and most men would admit the fear. The only soldiers I ever met who affected to know nothing of the fear were Afridis, and the Afridi is notoriously a ravisher of truth. But the predominant feeling—in the winter months at any rate—was the boredom. There was a time when some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only relieved once every three weeks, and time hung heavy on their hands. Under these circumstances they began to take something more than a professional interest in their neighbours opposite. The curiosity was reciprocated. Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse. Curious conventions grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of thenight, there was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour of 8 to 9a.m.was regarded as consecrated to "private business," and certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of bounds by the snipers on both sides. On many occasions working parties toiled with pick and shovel within talking distance of one another, and, although it was, of course, never safe to presume upon immunity, they usually forbore to interfere with one another. The Bedfords and the South Staffords worked in broad daylight with their bodies half exposed above the trenches, raising the parapet as the water rose. About 200 yards away the Germans were doing the same. Neither side interfered with the navvy-work of the other, and for the simplest of all reasons: both were engaged in fighting a common foe—the underground springs. When two parties are both in danger of being drowned they haven't time to fight. To speak of drowning is no hyperbole; the mud of Flanders in winter is in some places like a quicksand, and men have been sucked under beyond redemption. A common misery begat a mutual forbearance.

It was under such circumstances that the following exchange of pleasantries took place. The men of a certain British regiment heard at intervals a monologue going on in the trenches opposite, and every time the speaker stopped hisdiscourse shouts of guttural laughter arose, accompanied by cries of "Bravo, Müller!" "Sehr komisch!" "Noch einmal, Müller!" Our men listened intently, and an acquaintance with German, so imperfect as to be almost negligible, could not long disguise from them the fact that their Saxon neighbours possessed a funny man whose name was Müller. Their interest in Müller, always audible but never visible, grew almost painful. At last they could restrain it no longer. At a given signal they began chanting, like the gallery in a London theatre, except that their voices came from the pit:

We—want—Müller! We—want—Müller! We—want—Müller!

The refrain grew more and more insistent. At last a head appeared above the German parapet. It rose gradually, as though the owner were being hoisted by unseen hands. He rose, as the principal character in a Punch and Judy show rises, with jerky articulations of his members from the ventriloquial depths below. The body followed, until a three-quarter posture was attained. The owner, with his hand upon his heart, bowed gracefully three times and then disappeared. It was Müller!

It is some months since I was in the British trenches,[28]and I often wonder how our men haveaccommodated themselves to the ever-increasing multiplication of the apparatus of war. The fire trenches I visited were about wide enough to allow two men to pass one another—and that was all. Obviously the wider your trench the greater your exposure to the effects of shell-fire, and if we go on introducing trench-mortars, and gas-pumps, and gas-extinguishers, to say nothing of a great store of bombs, as pleasing in variety and as startling in their effects as Christmas crackers, our trenches will soon be as full of furniture as a Welsh miner's parlour. But doubtless the sappers have arranged all that. Some of these improvements are viewed by company officers without enthusiasm. The trench-mortar, for example, is distinctly unpopular, for it draws the enemy's fire, besides being an uncanny thing to handle, although the handling is done not by the company but by a "battery" of R.G.A. men, who come down and select a "pitch." I have seen a trench-mortar in action—it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and, incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I know nothingexcept by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in the chemical corps of the sappers, and your corporal is, in nine cases out of ten, a man whose position in the scientific world at home is one of considerable distinction. He is usually a lecturer or Assistant-Professor in Chemistry at one of our University Colleges who has left his test-tubes and quantitative analysis for the more exciting allurements of the trenches. I sometimes wonder what name the fertile brain of the British soldier has found for him—probably "the squid." He has three gases in his repertoire, each more deadly than the other. One of them is comparatively innocuous—it disables without debilitating; and its effect passes off in about twenty minutes. The truth is that we do not take very kindly to the use of this kind of thing. Still, our men know their business, and our gas, whichever variety it was, played a very effective part in the capture of the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

For the greater part of the winter months the "Front" was, to all appearances above ground, as deserted as the Sahara and almost as silent. Everybody who had to be there was, for obvious reasons, invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who found himself between the lines was in a wilderness whose intimidating silence was occasionally interrupted by the sound of projectiles coming he knew notwhence and going he knew not whither. The effect was inexpressibly depressing. But a mile or two behind our lines all was animation, for here were Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked up by a network of field telephones, which in turn communicated with Divisional Headquarters farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under the care of a pigeon fancier, who figures in the Army List as a captain in the R.E., are kept at these places for use in sudden emergency when the wires get destroyed by shell-fire. The sappers must, I think, belong to the order of Arachnidae; they appear to be able to spin telephone wires out of their entrails at the shortest notice. Moreover, they possess an uncanny adhesiveness, and a Signal Company man will leg up a tree with a coil of wire on his arm and hang glutinously, suspended by his finger-tips, while he enjoys the view. These acrobatic performances are sometimes exchanged for equestrian feats. He has been known to lay cable for two miles across country at a gallop with the cable-drum paying out lengths of wire. The sapper is the "handy man" of the Army.

The location of these Headquarters on our side of the line is a constant object of solicitude to the enemy on the other. Very few officers even on our side know where they all are. I had confided to me, for the purpose of my official duties, a completelist of such Headquarters, and the first thing I did, in pursuance of my instructions, was to commit it to memory and then burn it. To find out the enemy's H.Q.—with a view to making them as unhealthy as possible—is almost entirely the work of aeroplane reconnaissance. To discover the number and composition of the units whose H.Q. they are is the work of our "Intelligence." Of our Intelligence work the less said the better—by which I intend no aspersion but quite the contrary. The work is extraordinarily effective, but half its effectiveness lies in its secrecy. It is all done by an elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate to say that the "I" officers discover the location of the H.Q. of captured Germans by a geological analysis of the mud on the soles of their boots, in the classical manner of Sherlock Holmes; but I should be equally indisposed to deny it. There is nothing too trivial or insignificant to engage the detective faculties of an "I" man. He has to allow a wide margin for the probability of error in his calculations; shoulder-straps, for example, are no longer conclusive data as to the composition of the enemy's units, for the intelligent Hun has taken of late to forging shoulder-straps with the same facility as he forges diplomatic documents. Oral examination of prisoners has to be used with caution. But there are other resources of whichI shall say nothing. It is not too much to say, however, that we have now a pretty complete comprehension of the strength, composition, and location of most German brigades on the Western front. Possibly the Germans have of ours. One thing is certain. Any one who has seen the way in which an Intelligence staff builds up its data will not be inclined to criticise our military authorities for what may seem to an untutored mind a mere affectation of mystery about small things. In war it is never safe to sayDe minimis non curatur.

If "I" stands for the Criminal Investigation Department (and the study of the Hun may be legitimately regarded as a department of criminology) the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be described as a kind of Metropolitan Police. The P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are theCensores Morumof the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are theAediles. It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visitestaminets, keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his particular district daily, I had never once beenstopped or questioned by his police. "No," he said quietly, "they reported you the first day two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions; we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff, and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite a lively time at X——," which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q. itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to get into that town—or out of it. As for the "Society ladies," of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to assist you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for tracesof Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the fifth rib—at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle, and by that masonic sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the conversation.

Still, holders of authorised passes sometimes lose them, and unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and "convert" them to their own unlawful uses. The career of these adventurers is usually as brief as it is inglorious; when apprehended they are handed over to the French authorities, and the place that knew them knows them no more. They are shot into some mysteriousoubliette. The rest is silence, or, as a mediaeval chronicler would say, "Let him have a priest."

We have taught the inhabitants of Flanders and Artois three things: one, to sing "Tipperary"; two, to control their street traffic; and three, to flush their drains. The spectacle of the military police on point duty agitatedly waving little flags like a semaphore in the middle of narrow and congested street corners was at first a source of great entertainment to the inhabitants, who appeared to think it was a kind of performance thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delectation. Their applause was quite disconcerting. Itall so affected the mind of one good lady at H—— that she used to rush out into the street every time she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth gestures with her arms and legs, to the no small embarrassment of the supply columns, the confusion of the military police, and the unconcealed delight of our soldiers, who regard the latter as their natural enemy. Gentle remonstrances against such gratuitous assistance were of no avail, and eventually she was handed over to the French authorities for an inquiry into the state of her mind.

Drains are looked after by the Camp Commandant, assisted by the sanitary section of the R.A.M.C. It is an unlovely duty. I am not sure that the men in the trenches are not better off in this respect than the unfortunate members of the Staff who are supposed to live on the fat of the land in billets. In the trenches there are easy methods of disposing of "waste products"; along some portion of the French front, where the lines are very close together, the favourite method, so I have been told, is to hurl the buckets at the enemy, accompanied by extremely uncomplimentary remarks. In the towns where we are billeted public hygiene is a neglected study, and the unfortunate Camp Commandants have to get sewage pumps from England and vast quantities of chloride of lime. Fatigue parties do the rest.

The C.C. has, however, many other things to do.

Finding my office unprovided with a fire shovel, I wrote a "chit" to the C.C.:

Mr. M. presents his compliments to the Camp Commandant, and would be greatly obliged if he would kindly direct that a shovel be issued to his office.

A laconic message came back by my servant:

The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply desks and tables—the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them out at the shortest notice—and he could produce stationery, but he drew the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings.

The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as "transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a field-dressing to a toothbrush,and from an overcoat to a cake of soap. And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one—the transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are alive or dead.

It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a château used as the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the curtilage of farms,and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of the Front is one vast cemetery—a "God's Acre" hallowed by prayers if unconsecrated by the rites of the Church. The French Government has shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of every grave with a view to its preservation.

The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his representatives with the Armies are legal advisers to the Staff in the proceedings of courts-martial. The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches the Court in everything, from the etiquette of taking off your cap when you are taking the oath to the duty of rejecting "hearsay." He never prosecutes—that is always the task of some officer specially assigned for the purpose—but he may "sum up." Officers are not usually familiar with the mysteries of the Red Book,[29]however much they may know of the King's Regulations; and a Court requires careful watching. One Judge-Advocate whom I knew, who was as zealous as he was conscientious, instituted a series of Extension lectures for officers on the subject of Military Law, and used to discourse calmly on the admissibility and inadmissibility of evidence in the most "unhealthy" places. Speaking with someknowledge of such matters, I should say that court-martial proceedings are studiously fair to the accused, and, all things considered, their sentences do not err on the side of severity. Even the enemy is given the benefit of the doubt. There was a curious instance of this. A wounded Highlander, finding himself, on arrival at one of the hospitals, cheek by jowl with a Prussian, leapt from his bed and "went for" the latter, declaring his intention to "do him in," as he had, he alleged, seen him killing a wounded British soldier in the field. There was a huge commotion, the two were separated, and the Judge-Advocate was fetched to take the soldier's evidence. The evidence of identification was, however, not absolutely conclusive—one Prussian guardsman is strangely like another. The Prussian therefore got the benefit of the doubt.

The prisoner gets all the assistance he may require from a "prisoner's friend" if he asks for one, and the prosecutor never presses a charge—he merely unfolds it. Moreover, officers are pretty good judges of character, and if the accused meets the charge fairly and squarely, justice will be tempered with mercy. I remember the case of a young subaltern at the Base who was charged with drunkenness. His defence was as straightforward as it was brief:

I had just been ordered up to the Front. So I stood my friends a dinner; I had a bottle of Burgundy, two liqueurs, and a brandy and soda, and—I am just nineteen.

This ingenuous plea in confession and avoidance pleased the Court. He got off with a reprimand.

Theliaisonofficers deserve a chapter to themselves. Their name alone is so endearing. Their mission is not, as might be supposed, to promotemariages de convenancebetween English Staff officers and French ladies, but to transmit billets-doux between the two Armies and, generally, to promote the amenities of military intercourse. As a rule they are charming fellows, chosen with a very proper eye to their personal qualities as well as their proficiency in the English language. Among them I met a Count belonging to one of the oldest families in France, an Oriental scholar of European reputation, and a Professor of English literature. The younger ones studied our peculiarities with the most ingratiating zeal, and one of them, in particular, played and sang "Tipperary" with masterly technique at an uproarious tea-party in apâtisserieat Bethune. Also they smoothed over little misunderstandings aboutdélits de chasse, gently forbore to smile at our French, and assisted in the issue of thelaisser-passer. Doubtless they performed many much more weighty and mysterious duties, but I only speak of whatI know. To me they were more than kind; they gave me introductions to their families when I went on official visits to Paris and to the French lines; zealously assisted me to hunt down evidence, and sometimes accompanied me on my tour of investigation. Among the many agreeable memories I cherish of thecamaraderieat G.H.Q. the recollection of their constant kindness and courtesy is not the least.

One word before I leave the subject of the Staff. There has been of late a good deal of pestilential gossip by luxurious gentlemen at home about the Staff and its work. It is, they say, very bad—mostly beer and skittles. I have already referred to these charges elsewhere; here I will only add one word. A Staff is known by its chief. He it is who sets the pace. During the time I was attached to it, the G.H.Q. Staff had two chiefs in succession. The first was a brilliant soldier of high intellectual gifts, now chief of the Imperial Staff at home, who, although embarrassed by indifferent health, worked at great pressure night and day. His successor at G.H.Q. is a man of stupendous energy, commanding ability, and great force of character, who has risen from the ranks to the great position he now holds. By their chiefs ye shall know them. Under such as these there was and is no room for the "slacker"at G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were very few of that undesirable species at G.H.Q., and as soon as they were discovered they were sent home. I sometimes wonder whether one could not trace, if it were worth while (which it isn't), these ignoble slanders to their origin in the querulous lamentations of these deported gentlemen, whence they have percolated into Parliamentary channels. But it really isn't worth while. The public has, I believe, taken the thing at its true valuation. In plain speech it is "all rot."

Note.—The last paragraph was written before the recent changes at G.H.Q. and at the War Office, but the reader will not need any assistance in the identification of the two distinguished Chiefs of Staff here referred to.—J.H.M.

FOOTNOTES:[28]The writer's experience of the trenches is described in some detail in Chapter VIII.[29]The Manual of Military Law.

[28]The writer's experience of the trenches is described in some detail in Chapter VIII.

[29]The Manual of Military Law.

Sykes had finished packing my kit and had succeeded with some difficulty in re-establishing the truth of the axiom that a whole is greater than its parts. When I contemplated my valise and its original constituents, it seemed to me that the parts would prove greater than the whole, and I had in despair abandoned the problem to Sykes. He succeeded, as he always did. One of the first things that an officer's servant learns is that, as regards the regulation Field Service allowance of luggage, nothing succeeds like excess.

Sykes had not only stowed away my original impedimenta but had also managed to find room for various articles ofvertuwhich had enriched my private collection, to wit:

(1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel.(2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-looking brass heads.(3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets villainously reversed.(4) A copper loving-cup—i.e., an empty shell-case presented to me with a florid speech by Major S—— on behalf of the ——th Battery of the R.F.A.(5) An autograph copy ofThe Green Curvebestowed on me by my friend "Ole Luk-Oie" (to whom long life and princely royalties).(6) The sodden Field Note-book of a dead Hun given me by Major C—— of the Intelligence, with a graceful note expressing the hope that, as a man of letters, I would accept this gift ofbelles-lettres.(7) A duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of Ammonal[30](original very scarce, and believed to be in the muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of the Red Cross Fund).(8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on English political philosophers presented to me by the author, one of theliaisonofficers, who in the prehistoric times of peace was a University professor at Avignon.(9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest Britannia metal, bestowed on me with much ceremony by a Field Ambulance at Bethune, and prized beyond rubies and fine gold.(10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne.[31]

(1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel.

(2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-looking brass heads.

(3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets villainously reversed.

(4) A copper loving-cup—i.e., an empty shell-case presented to me with a florid speech by Major S—— on behalf of the ——th Battery of the R.F.A.

(5) An autograph copy ofThe Green Curvebestowed on me by my friend "Ole Luk-Oie" (to whom long life and princely royalties).

(6) The sodden Field Note-book of a dead Hun given me by Major C—— of the Intelligence, with a graceful note expressing the hope that, as a man of letters, I would accept this gift ofbelles-lettres.

(7) A duplicate of a certain priceless "chit" about the uses of Ammonal[30](original very scarce, and believed to be in the muniment-room of the C.-in-C., who is said to contemplate putting it up to auction at Sotheby's for the benefit of the Red Cross Fund).

(8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on English political philosophers presented to me by the author, one of theliaisonofficers, who in the prehistoric times of peace was a University professor at Avignon.

(9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest Britannia metal, bestowed on me with much ceremony by a Field Ambulance at Bethune, and prized beyond rubies and fine gold.

(10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne.[31]

To these Madame[32]had added her visiting-card—it was nearly as big as the illuminated address presented to me by the electors of a Scottish constituency which I once wooed and never won—wherewith she reminded me that my billet at No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson would always be waiting for me, the night-light burning as for a prodigal son, and steam up in the hot-water bottle.

I had said my farewells the night before to the senior officers on the Staff, in particular that distinguished soldier and gallant gentleman the A.G., to whose staff I had been attached (in more senses than one), and who had treated me with a kindness and hospitality I can never forget. The senior officers had done me the honour of expressing a hope that I should soon return; their juniors had expressed the same sentiments less formally and more vociferously by an uproarious song at their mess overnight.

The latter had also, with an appearance of great seriousness, laden me with messages for His Majesty the King, the Prime Minister, Lord Kitchener, the two Houses of Parliament, and the ministers and clergy of all denominations: all of which I promised faithfully to remember and to deliver in person. Sykes, with more modesty, had asked me if I would send a photograph, when the film was developed of the snapshot I had taken of him, to his wife and the twins at Norwich.

My car, upon whose carburettor an operation for appendicitis had been successfully performed by the handy men up at the H.Q. of the Troop Supply Column, stood at the door. I held out my hand to Sykes, who was in the act of saluting; he took it with some hesitation, and then gave me a grip that paralysed it for about a quarter of an hour.

"If you be coming back again, will you ask for me to be de-tailed to you, sir? My number is ——. Sergeant Pope at the Infantry Barracks sees to them things, sir."

I nodded.

"Bon voyage, monsieur," cried Madame in a shrill voice.

"Bon voyage," echoed Jeanne.

I waved my hand, and the next moment I had seen the last of two noble women who had never looked upon me except with kindness, and who, from my rising up till my lying down, had ministered to me with unfailing solicitude.

At the Base I boarded the leave-boat. Several officers were already on board, their boots still bearing the mud of Flanders upon them. It was squally weather, and as we headed for the open sea I saw a dark object gambolling upon the waves with the fluency of a porpoise. A sailor stopped near me and passed the time of day.

"Had any trouble with German submarines?" I asked.

"Only once, sir. A torpedo missed us by 'bout a hund-erd yards."

"Only once! How's that?"

For answer the sailor removed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other by a surprisingly alert act of stowage and nodded in the direction of the dark object whose outlines were now plain and salient. It was riding the sea like a cork.

"Them," he said briefly. It was a t.b.d.

At the port of our arrival the sheep were segregated from the goats. The unofficial people formed a long queue to go through the smoking-room, where two quiet men awaited them, one of whom, I believe, always says, "Take your hat off," looks into the pupil of your eyes, and lingers lovingly over your pulse; the other, as though anxious to oblige you, says, "Any letters to post?" But his inquiries are not so disinterested as they would seem.

The rest of us, being highly favoured persons, got off without ceremony, and made for the Pullman. As the train drew out of the station and gathered speed I looked out upon the countryside as it raced past us. England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with itsspinneys of beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked down the length of the saloon, and everywhere I saw the blithe and eager faces of England's gallant sons who had fought, and would fight again, to preserve this heritage from the fire and sword of bloody sacrilege. Fairer than the cedars of Lebanon were these russet beeches, nobler than the rivers of Damascus these amber streams; and the France of our new affections was not more dear.

Twilight was falling as the guard came round and adjured us to shut out the prospect by drawing the blinds. As we glided over the Thames I drew the blind an inch or two aside and caught a vision of the mighty city steeped in shadows, and the river gleaming dully under the stars like a wet oilskin. At a word from the attendant I released the blind and shut out the unfamiliar nocturne. Men rose to their feet, and there was a chorus of farewells.

"So long, old chap, see you again at battalion headquarters."

"Good-bye, old thing, we meet next week at H.Q."

"To-morrow night at the Savoy—rather! You must meet my sister."

As I alighted on the platform I saw a crowd of waiting women. "Hullo, Mother!" "Oh, darling!" I turned away. I was thinking of that platform next week when these brief days, snatched from the very jaws of death, would have run their all too brief career and the greetings of joy would be exchanged for heart-searching farewells.

I was dining at my club with two friends, one of them a young Dutch attaché, the other a barrister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well, and took our cigars into the smoking-room, which was crowded. Some men in a corner were playing chess; the club bore, decent enough in peace but positively lethal in war, was demonstrating to a group of impatient listeners that the Staff work at G.H.Q. was all wrong, when, catching sight of me, he came up and said, "Hullo, old man, back from the Front? When will the war end?" I returned the same answer as a certain D.A.A.G. used to provide for similar otiose questions: "Never!"

"Never! Hullo, what's that?"

Every one in the room suddenly rose to their feet, the chess players rising so suddenly that theyoverturned the board. "Damn it, and it was my move, I could have taken your queen," said one of them. Outside there was a noise like the roaring of the lion-house at the Zoo; your anti-aircraft gun has a growl of its own. "They're here," said some one, and we all made for the terrace.

I looked up and saw in the dim altitudes a long silvery object among the stars. As the searchlights played upon it, it seemed almost diaphanous, and the body appeared to undulate like a trout seen in a clear stream. Jupiter shone hard and bright in the southern hemisphere, and suddenly a number of new planets appeared in the firmament as though certain stars shot madly from their spheres. Round and about the monster came and went these exploding satellites. Then another appeared close under her, and like a frightened fish she swerved sharply and was lost to view among the Pleiades.

"Let's go and see what's happened," said one of my friends. "I hear she's dropped a lot of bombs down——."

As we went down the street I saw that for about two hundred yards ahead it was sparkling as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of our boots "scrunched" something underfoot. I looked down. The ground was covered with splinters of glass. As we drew nearer we caught sight of a cordon of police, and behind them a great firespringing infernally from the earth, and behind the fire a group of soldiers, whose figures were silhouetted against the background. Our way was impeded by curious crowds, among whom one heard the familiar chant of "Pass along, please!"

We stopped. Close to us two men were stooping with heads almost knocking together and searching the ground, while one of them husbanded a lighted match against the wind.

"Blimey, Bill," said one to the other, "I've found 'un!"

"What have you found?" we asked of him.

"A souvenir, sir!"

Truly, they know not the stomach of this people.

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