BATTLE    IN    THE    MUD	393
been heard of before in England, fell amid national jubilations
and at the cost of nearly 400,000 casualties—a loss equal to the entire
population of Bristol. On the German side another 250,000 fell.
For each of these casualties, somebody in some town or village
far from the fighting line suffered anxiety, heart-ache inde-
scribable, or irretrievable loss. It was a time when women all
over the world wore set faces, knowing that their dear ones*
were in danger in a noble cause in defence of which no sacrifice
"could be too great.
When nearly half a million men had fallen, the battle was
called off. For the time being there were no snore men to send
to the 'slaughter, and there was nothing for it for those who
remained but to dig themselves into the mud and wait until
the still undrained man-power of the new world beyond the
Atlantic should arise to redress the exhaustion of the old. Then
"the bovine and brutal game of attrition could begin again***
Amid the stench of thousands of unburied corpses the victorious
survivors consolidated their watery gains. These unfortunately
were nearly all lost in the next German offensive*
Yet there was no surrender, for on both sides of the line con-
gregated all that was most heroic and constant in the manlfcxxl
of the most virile nations of the old world. These fighters*
hidden from one another in the slime, subjected day and night
to a ceaseless tornado of screeching death out of the darkened
sky, tortured by every foul breath and sight that can appal the
sensitive mind, were in that place and hour because they had
chosen to be there. There were many roads out of the
battle-line; they were necessary since none but the strong
could stand the test. No unit wished to keep the weak. Behind
the lines were all those fulfilling a thousand lesser tasks, who
could or would not fight it out. The stalwarts remained. Along
either rim of the rat-haunted, corpse-strewn limbo of no-man's
land the philosopher seeking virtue in 1917 would have found
the elect of the earth.
The men who formed the rank and file of the army of Britain
did not only retain their courage. Under a cloak of ironical and
often blasphemous jargon they preserved their native good
humour. Even cheerfulness was constantly breaking through—
in a world of thunder and screeching, mangled bodies, foul
miasmas and ceaseless terror they laughed and joked. Bruce
Bairnsfather's cartoon of the old veteran with his grim, ugly,
e.s,	u