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LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

LEAVES

FIELD

FROM A

NOTE-BOOK

BY
j. H. MORGAN
LAT HOMI OFFIC COMMISSION'R WITH THF BRITiSH EXpIDITIONARY FORCI

"And my delights were with the sons of men."

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
96

TO
LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR C, F. N. MACREADY, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.
ADJUTAIT- GEIERAL
TO THE
BRITISH EXPEDITIOIARY FORCE

PPEFACE

THIS book is an unoflïcial outcome of the writer's
exleriences during the rive months he was attached
to the General Headquarters Staff as Home Ofiïce
Commissioner with the British Expeditionary Force.
His official duties during that period involved
daily visits fo the headquarters of almost every
Corps, Division, and Brigade in the Field, and took
him on one or two occasions to the batteries and
into the trenches. They necessarily involved a
familiar and domestic acquaintance with the work
of two of the great departments of the Staff at
G.H.Q. So much of these experiences of the work
of the Staff and of the lire of the Army in the
field as it appears discreet to record is here set
down. The writer desires to express his acknow-
ledgments to his friends, Major E. A. Wallinger,
Major F. C. T. Ewald, D.S.O., and Captain
W. A. Wallinger, for their ldndness in reading the
proofs of some one or more of the chapters in this
book. b:or would his acknowledgments be complete

viii LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
without some word of thanks fo that brilliant
soldier, Colonel E. D. Swinton, D.S.O., with whom
he was closely associated during the discharge of
the oncial duties at G.H.Q. of which this book is
the unocial outcome. Most of these chapters
originally appeared in the pages of the Nineteesth
Centu'y and After, under the title fo which the
book owes ifs name, and the writer desires fo
express his obligations fo the Editor, Mr. Wray
Sldlbeck, for his kind permission to republish
them. Similar acknowledgments are due fo the
Editor of Blackwood's Magazine for permission fo
reprint the short story, " Stokes's Act," and to the
Editor of the Westminster Gazette in whose hospit-
able pages some of the shorter sketches appeared
--sometimes anonymously.
The reader will observe that many of these
sketches appear in the form of what, fo borrow a
French terre, is ca]led the conte. The writer bas
adopted that form of literary expression as the
most efficacious way of suppressing his own per-
sonality; the obtrusion of which, in the form of
" Reminiscences," would, he feels, be altogether
disproportionate and impertinent in view of the
magnitude and poignancy of the great events amid
which it was his privilege to live and move. More-
over, his own duties were neither spirited nor
glorious. But the characters pourtrayed and the

PREFACE ix
events narrated in these pages are true in sub-
stance and in fact. The writer has hOt had the
will, even if he had had the power, fo " improve "
the occasions ; the reality was too poignant for that.
" Stokes's Act" and " The Coming of the ttun"
are therefore "true " storiesJusing truth in the
sense of veracity hOt valueJand the facts came
within the writer's own investigation. The in-
vestiture of fiction has been here adopted for the
obvious reason that neither of the principal char-
acters in these two stories would desire his name to
be known. So, too, in the other sketches, although
the characters are " real "--I can only hope that
they will be hall as real fo the reader as they were
and are fo me--the names are assumed.
If is my privilege to inscribe this little book to
Lieut.-General Sir C. F. N. Macready, K.C.B.,
K.C.M.G., fo whose staf I was attached and to
whose friendship, encouragement, and hospitality
I owe a debt which no words can discharge.

J.H.

January 1916.

CONTENTS

I
THE BASE
I. ]OBS ]AADUR
IL kT THE ]ASE DEPT
III. THE rlLTSHIRES.
Iv. THE BA
V. CUNCIL OF INDIA
ri. THE TROOP TRAIN

PAGE
ll
45

II
THE FRONT
vII. THE Two RICHEBOURGS .
VIII. IDOLS OF THE CAVE
IX. STOKESS .ACT
X. THE FRONT
XI. fi_T G.H.Q.
XII. ORT POUR LA PATRIE
XIII. IIEAUX AND SOME ]RIGANDS
XIV. THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS

59
65
73
92
103
119
128
134

xii LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

III
UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES
XV. A u CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE
XVI. 1DETE R
XVII. THREE TRAVELLERS
XVIIL ]ARBARA.
XIX. As ARIY COUNCIL
XX. THE FUGITIVES
XXI. A DUG-OUT »
xxH. CHRSTMAS EVE, 1914

pAGE
143
154
166
173
178
189
195
202

IV
THE FRONT AGAIN
XXlll. THE COMING OF THE -ISN
XXlV. TaE HILL
XXV. THE DAY'S %VORK
XXVI. FIAT JUSTITLk
XXVII. HIGHER EDUCATIO
XXVIII. THE LITTLE TOWS OF FLDERS AND ARTOIS .
XXIX. THE « FROT ONCE MORE
XXX. HOME AGAIN

209
226
232
244
252
59
270
0.88

THE BASE

1 B

BOBS BAI[ADUR

IT had gone eight bells on the s.s. G-- The
decks had been washed down with the hosepipe
and the men paraded for the morning's inspection.
The O.C. had scanned them with a roving eye, till
catching sight of an orderly two files from the left
he had begged him, almost as a personal favour, to
get his hair cut. To an untutored mind the orderly's
hair was about one-eighth of an inch in length, but
the O.C. was inflexible. He was a colonel in that
smartest of all medical services, the I.M.S., whose
members combine the extensive knowledge of the
general practitioner with the peculiar secrets of the
Army surgeon, and he was fastidious. Then he
said " Dismiss," and they went their appointed
ways. The Indian cooks were boiling dhal and
rice in the galley; the bakers were squatting on
their haunches on the lower deck, making chupattis
--they were screened against the inclemency of
3

4 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-B00K

the weather by a tarpaulin--and they iatted the
leathery cakes with persuasive slaps as a dairymaid
pars butter. Low-caste sweepers glided like
shadows fo and fro. Suddenly some one crossed
the gangway and the sentry stiffened and presented
arms. The O.C. looked down from the upper
decl and saw a lithe, sinewy little figure 4th
white moustaches and "imperial '.'; the eyes were
of a piercing steel-blue. The figure was clad in a
general's field-service mfiform, and on his shoulder-
straps were the insignia of a field-marshal. The
colonel stared for a moment, then tan hastily down
the ladder and saluted.

Together they passed down the companion-
ladder. At the foot of if they encountered a
Bengali orderly, who made a profound obeisance.
" Shiva Lal," said the O.C., " I ordered the port-
holes tobe kept unfastened and the doors in the
bulkheads left open. This morning I round them
shut. Why was this ? "
" Sahib, at eight o'clock I round them open."
" It was at eight o'dock," sa]d the colonel
sternly, "that I round them shut."
The Bengali spread out his hands in deprecation.
" If the sahib says soit must be so," he pleaded,
adding with truly Oriental irrelevancy, "I ara a
poor man and bave many children." If is as useless

BOBS BAHADUR 5
t argue with an Indian orderly as itis to try con-
clusions with a woman.
" Let if not occur again," said the colonel
shortly, and with an apology to his guest they
passed on.
They paused in front of a cabin. Over the door
was the legend " Pathans, No. 1." The door was
shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened
the door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic
features and bearded like the pard, stood up and
saluted. The colonel nade a mental note of the
closed door ; he looked at the porthole--it was also
closed. The Pathan loves a good "fug," especially
in a European winter, and the colonel hd had
trouble with his patients bout ventilation. A kind
of guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausi-
bility and perfect politeness, had been going on for
some days between him and the Pathans. The
Pathans complained of the cold, the colonel of the
atmosphere. At last he had met them lmlfway,
or, tobe precise, he had met them with a concession
of three inches. He had ordered the ship's car-
penter to fixa three-inch hook to the jamb and a
staple to the door, the terres of the truce being
that the door should be kept three inches aiar.
And now it was shut. " Why is this ? " he ex-
postulated. For answer they pointed to the hook.
" Sahib, the hook will not fasten ! "

6 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
The colonel examined it; it was upside down.
The contumacious Pathans had quietly reversed
the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was
now useless without being ornamental. With
b]and ingenuous faces they stared sadly at the
hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent craftsman-
ship. The Field-Marshal smiled--he knew the
Pathan of old; the colonel mentally registered
a black mark against the delinquents.
"' Whe,me corne you ? " said the Field-Marshal.
" From Tirah, Sahib."
" Ah! we have had some litt]e trouble with
your foll at Tirah. But all that is now past.
Serve the Emperor faithfully and it shall be wel]
with you."
" Ah! Sahib, but I ara sorely troubled in my
mind."
" And wherefore ? "
"My aged father writes that a pig of a
thief hath taken out cattle and abducted out
women-folk. I would fain have leave to go
on furlough and lie in a nullah at Tirah with
my rifle and wait for him. Then would I return
fo France."
" Patience ! That can wait. How lile you the
War ? "
" Burra Achta Tamasha, Sahib. But we lile
' A jolly fine show.

BOBS BAHADUR 7
not their big guns. We would fain corne at them
with the bayonet. Why are we kept back in the
trenches, Sahib ? "
" Peace ! It shall corne in good time."
They passed into another cabin reserved for
native officers. A tall Sikh rose to a half-sitting
posture and saluted.
" What is your naine ? "
" H-- Sing, Salfib."
" There was a H-- Sing with me in '78,"
said the Field-Marshal meditatively. " With the
Kuram Field Force. He was my orderly. He
served me afterwards in Burmah and was promoted
to subadar."
The aqtfiline leatures of the Sikh relaxed, his
eyes ol lustrous iet gleamed. " Even so, Sahib, he
was my father."
"Good! he was man. Be worthy of him.
And you too are a subadar ? "
" Yea, Sahib, I have eaten the King's salt these
twelve years."
" That is well. Have you children ? "
" Yea, Sahib, God bas been very good."
" And your lady mother, is she a]ive ? "
" The Lord be praised, she liveth."
" And how is your ' fami]y ' "
" She is well, Sahib."
" And how like you this War ? "

8 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
" Greatly, Sahib. The Goora-log 1 and out-
selves fight like brothers side by side. But we
would fain see the fine weather. Then there will
be some muzza « in it."
The Field-Marshal snfiled and passed on.
They entered the geat ward in the main hold
of the ship. Here were avenues of svinging cors,
in double tiers, the enamelled iron white as SHOW,
and on the pillow of each cot lay a dark head, save
where some were sitting up--the Sikhs binding
their hair as they fingered the kangha gnd the
chakar, the comb and the quoit-shaped hair-ring,
which are of the rive symbols of their freemasonry.
The Field-Marshal stopped to talk to a big sowar.
As he did so the men in their cors raised their heads
and a sudden whisper tan round the ward. Dogras,
Rajputs, Jats, Baluchis, Garhwalis clutched at the
little pulleys over their cots, pulled themselves up
with painful efforts, and saluted. In a distant
corner a Mahratta from the aboriginal plains of
the Deccan, Iris features dark almost to blackness,
looked on uncomprehendingly ; Ghurkhas stared in
silence, their broad Mongolian faces betraying little
of the agitation that held them in its spell. From
the test there arose such a conflict of tongues as
bas hot been heard since the Day of Pentecost.
From bed to bed passed the magic words, " It is
The English soldiers. 8pice.

BOBS BAHADUR .9
he." Every man uttered a benediction. Many
wept tears of j oy. A single thought seemed to
animate them, and they voiced it in many tongues.
" Ah, now we shall snùte the German-log ex-
ceedingly. We shall fight even as tigers, for Jarj
Panjam. 1 The great Sahib bas corne to lead us in
the field. Praised be his exalted naine."
The Field-Marshal's eyes shone.
" No, no," he said, " my rime is fifished. I ara
too old."
" Nay, Sahib," said the sowar as he hung on
painfully to his pulley, " the body may be old but
the brain is young."
The Field-Marshal strove to reply but could not.
He suddenly turned on his heel and rushed up the
companion-ladder. When halfway up he remem-
bered the O.C. and retraced his steps. The tears
were streaming down his face.
" Sir," he said, in a voice the deliberate stern-
ness of which but iii concealed an overmastering
emotion, " your hospital arrangements are excellent.
I bave seen none better. I congratulate you.
Good-day." The next moment he was gone.

Five days later the colonel was standing on the
upper deck; he gripped the handrail tightly and
looked across the harbour basin. Overhead the

King George the Fifth.

10 LEAVES FROM A FIELI) NOTE-BOOK
Red Cross ensign was af half-mast, and ai ha.If-toast
hung the Union Jack af ¢he stern. And so if was
with every ship in port. A great silence lay upon
the harbour ; even the hydraulic cranes were still,
and the winches of the trawlers had ceased their
screaming. Not a sound was fo be heard save the
shrill poignant cry of the gulls and the hissing of
an exhaust pipe. As the colonel looked across the
still waters of the harbour basin he saw a bier,
covered with a Union Jack, being slowly carried
across the gangway of he leave-boat; a little
gn'oup of oificers followed if. In a few moments
the leave-boat, after a premonitory blast from the
siren which woke ¢he sleeping echoes among the
cliffs, cast off ber moorings and slowly gathered
way. Soon she had cleared the harbour mouth
and was out upon ¢he open sea. The colonel
watched ber wi¢h straining eyes till she sank beneath
the horizon. Then he ¢urned and wen¢ below. 1
The writer can vouch for the truth of this narrative. He owes
his knowledge of what passed to the hospitality on board of his friend
the O.C. the Indian hospital ship in question.

AT THE BASE DEP()T

Any enunciation by officers responsible for training of prin-
ciples other than those contained in this Manual or any practice
of methods not based on those principles is forbidden.--IoEantry
Training Manual.

TI-IE officers in charge of details at No. 19 Infantry
Base Depôt had ruade their morning inspections
of the lines. They had seen that blankets were
folded and tent files rolled up, had glalced at rifles,
and had inspected the men's kits with the pensive
air of an intending purchaser. Having done
which, they proceeded fo take an unsympathetic
farewell of the orderly officer whom they found in
the orderly room engaged in reading character by
handwriting with the aid of the office stamp.
" I never knew there was so much individuality
in the British Army," the orderly officer dolefully
exclaimed as he contemplated a pile of letters
waiting to be franked and betraying marked
originality in their penmanship.
11

I LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
" You're too fond of opening other people's
letters," the subaltern remarked pleasantly. " It's
a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go
home you'll never be able fo resist if. You'll
be unfit for decent society."
" Go away, War Baby," retorted the orderly
oflficer, as he turned aside from the subaltern, who
has a beautiful pink and white complexion, and
was af Rugby rather less than a year ago.
The War Baby smiled wearily. " Let's go and
see the nlen af drill," he remarked. " We've got
a corporal here who's AI af instruction." As we
passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly
across the small of the butt of his rifle, and, seeing
the Major behind us, brought the rifle to the present.
We came out on a field sprinkled with ]ittle
groups of men in charge of their N.C.O.'s. They
were the " details." These were drafts for the
Front, and every regiment of the Division had sent
a deputation. Two or three hundred yards away
a platoon was marching with a short quick trot,
carrying their rifles at the trail, and I knew them
for Light Infantry, for such are their prerogatives.
Concerning Light Infantry much might be written
that is hot fo be round in the regimental records.
As, for example, the reason why the whole Army
shouts " H.L.I." whenever the ball is kicked into
touch; also why the Oxford L.I. always put out

AT THE BASE DEPT 13

their tongues when they meet the Durhams.
Some day some one will write the legendary history
of the British Army, its myth, custom, and folklore,
and will explain how the WeIsh Fusiliers got their
black " flash " (with a digression on the natural
history of antimacassars), why the 7th Hussars
are called the " White Shirts," why the old 95th
will despitefully use you if you cry, " Who stole
the grog ? " and what happens on Albuera day in
the mess of the 1)le Hards. But that is by the way.
The drafts at No. 19, having done a route march
the day before, had been turned out this morning
to do a ]ittle musl(etry drill by way of keeping them
fit. A platoon lay fiat on their stomachs in the
long grass, the burnished nails on t.he so]es of their
boots twinkling in the sun like nfiniature heliographs.
From all quarters of the field sharp words of com-
mand rang out like pistol shots. " Three hundred.
Five rotmds. Fire." As the men obeyed the
sergeant's word of command, the air resounded with
the cliclng of bolts like a chorus oï grasshoppers.
We pursued a section of the Royal Fusiliers in
command of a corporal until he halted his men for
bayonet exercise. He drew them up in two ranks
facing each other, and began very deliberately
with an allocution on the art of the bayonet.
" There ain't much drfll about the bayonet,"
he said encouragingly. " What you've got to do

14 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-B00K

is to get the other fellow, and I don't care how you
get 'ira as long as you knock 'im out of rime.
On guard ! "
The men in each rank brought the butts of their
rifles on fo their right hips and pointed with their
left feet forward af the breasts of the men opposite.
" Rest!" The rifles were brought to earth be-
tween twelve pairs of feet. " Point ! Withdraw !
On guard!" They pointed, withdrew, and were
on guard again with the precision of piston-rods.
" Now watch me, for your lire may depend upon
it," and the corporal proceeded fo give them the
low parry which is useful when you are taking
trenches and fmd a chevaux-de-frise of the enemy's
bayonets confronting you. Each tank knocked
an imaginary bayonet aside and pointed at in-
visible feet. The high parry followed. So far the
men had been merely nodding af each other across
a space of some twelve yards, and if was hot work
and tedious. The sweat ran down their faces, which
glistened in the sun. " Now I'm going fo give you
the butt exercises " ; they brightened visibly.
" I am pointing--so !--and 'ave been parried.
I bring the butt round on 'is shoulder, using my
weight on if. I bring my left leg behind 'is let
leg. I throw 'ira over. Then I give the beggar
what for. So !" The words were hardly out of his
mouth beIore he had thrown himself upon the

AT THE BASE DEPÔT 15

nearest l)rivate and laid him l)rostrate. The others
smiled faint]y as No. 98678 l)icked himse]f ul) and
nonchalantly returned to his o]d l)osition as if this
were a banal compliment. " Now then. First
butt exercise." One tank advanced ul)on the other,
and the two ranks were locked in a close embrace.
They remained thus with muscles strung like bow-
strings, immobile as a groul) of statuary.
" That'l] do. Now l'll give you the second
butt exercise. You bring the butt 'ound o 'is
jaw--so !--and then kick 'ira in the guts with
your knee." Perhal)s the section, which stood
like a wall of masonry, looked surprised; more
l)robab]y the surprise was lnine. But the co'poral
explained. " Don't think you're Tottenham Hot-
spur in the Cu l) Final. Never mind giving 'ira a
fou]. You've got to 'urt 'im or 'e'll 'urt you.
Kick 'ira anywhere with your knees or your feet.
Your ammunition boots will make 'ira feel it.
No !"---he turned to a young l)rivate whose left
hand was g'asping his rifle high up between the fore-
sight and the indicator--" You mustn't do that.
A]ways get your 'and between the back-sight and
the bech. So! The back-sigh.t will l)rotect
your fingers from being cut by the other fellow.
Now the third butt exercise."
As we turned away the Major thoughtfully re-
marked to me, " Thee isn't much of that in the

16 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

Infantry Manual. But the colporal knows his
job. When you're in a scrap you haven't time to
think about the rules of the game ; the automatic
lnovements corne ail right, but in a clinch you've
got to fight like a car with tooth and claw, use your
boots, your knee, or anything that cornes handy.
Perhaps that's why your lithe ]ittle Cockney is
such a useful man with the bayonet. Now the
Hun is a hefty beggar, and he isn't hampered by
any ideas of playing the gaine, but he's as mechanical
as a voeuum brake, and he's no good in a scrap."
We returned to the orderly room. The orderly
officer had a pile of letters on his right impressed
with a red triangle, and contemplated the com-
pletion of his labours with gloomy satisfaction.
" But it's very interesting--such a reve]ation of the
emotions of battle and all that," I incautiously
remarked. " Oh yes, very revealing," he yawned.
" Look at that " ; and he held out a letter. It ran -

DEAI MOTEI--I'm reported fit for duty and ara
going back to the Front with the new drafts. I forgot
to tell you we were in a bit of a scrap belote I came
here. We outed a lot of Huns. How is old Alf?--
Your loving son, [IM.

The " bit of a scrap " was the battle of Neuve
Chapelle. The British soldier is an artist with the
bayonet. But he is no great man with the pen.
Which is as it should be.

III

THE WILTSHIRES

" You talk to kim, sir. He zeed a lot though he
be kind o' mazed like now ; he be mortal bad, I do
thilk." But such a cheerful chap he be. I mind
he used to say to us in the trenches : ' It bain't no
use grousing. What mun be, mun be.' Terrible
strong he were, too. One of out oflàcers wur kit
in front of the parapet and we coulden get 'n in
nohow--'twere too hot; and Hunt, he unrolled
his puttees and ruade a girt tope of 'em and threw
'em over the parapet and draw'd en in. Ah ! that
a did."
It was in one of the surgical tents of " No. 6
General " at the base. The nfiddle of the ward was
illuminated by an oil-lamp, shaped like an hour-
glass, wkich shed a circle of yellow radiance upon
the faces of the nurse and the orderly officer, as they
stood examining a case- sheet by the light of its
rays. Beyond the penumbra were rows of wkite
beds, and in the farthest corner lay the subject of
17 C

18 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

our discourse. " Can I talk to him ? " I said to
the nurse. " Yes, if you don't stay too long," she
replied briskly, "and don't question him too much.
He's in a bad way, lais wounds are very septic."
He nodded to me as I approached. At the head
of the bed hung a case-sheet and temperature-chart,
and I saw at a glance the superscription--

Hunt, George, Private, No. 1578936 B Co. -- Wiltshires.

I noticed that the temperature-line ran sharply
upwards on the chart.
" So you're a Wiltshireman ? " I said. " So
ara I." And I held out my hand. He drew lais
own from beneath the bedclothes and held mine in
an iron grip.
" What might be your parts, sir ? "
" W B--"
" Why, zur,
I be

His eyes lighted up with pleasure.
it be nex' parish; I corne from B--
main pleased to zee ye, zut.'"
" The pleasure is mine," I said.
you j oin ? "

" When did

" I jined in July last year, zur. I be a resarvist."
" You bave been out a long rime, then ? "
" Yes, though it do seem but yesterday, and I
han't seen B-- since. I mind how parson, 'e
came to me and axed, ' What! bist gwine to fight
for King and Country, Jarge ?' And I zed, 'Yes,

THE WILTSHIRES 19
sur, that I be--for King and Country and ould
Wiltshire. I guess we Wiltshiremen be worth two
Gloster men any day though they do call us Moon-
rakers.' Not but what the Glosters an't very
good fellers,' he added indulgently. " Parson, he
be mortal good to I; "e gied I his blessing and
'e write nd give I all the news o[ the prish. He
warnt much of precher though did say' Derly
beloved ' in church in very ta.l(ing wy s though
he were -courting."
" What was I -doin', zut ? Oh, I wur with
Vrmer Tvine, head labr'er I was. Strong ?
Oh yes, zut, pretty fait. ] mind I could throw a
zack o' vlour ower my shoulder when I wur a boy
o' vourteen. Why ! I wur stronger then than ] be
now. 'Twas India that done me."
" Is it a large farm ? " I asked, seeking to beguile
him with homely thoughts.
" Six 'undred yackers. Oh yes, I'd plenty to
do, and I could turn me hands to most things,
though I do say it. There weren't a man in the
parish as could beat I at mowing or putting a
hackle on a rick, though I do say it. And I could
drive a straight furrow too. Heavy work it were.
The soil be stif clay, as ye knows, zut. This
Vlemish clay be very loike it. Lord, what a mint
o' diggin' we 'ave done in they trenches to be sure.
And bullets vlying like wopses zumtimes."

20 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
" Are your parents alive ? " I asked.
" No, zur, they be both gone to Kingdom corne.
Poor old feyther," he said after a pause. " I mind
'un now in Iris white smock all plaited in vront and
mother in ber cotton bonnet--you never zee 'em
in Wiltshire now. They brought us all up on nine
shillin' a week--ten on us we was."
" I suppose you sometimes wish you were back
in Wiltshire now ? " I said.
" Zumtimes, sir," he said wistfully. " It'll be
about over with larnbing season, now," he added
reflectively. " Many's the tiddling lamb l've
a-brought up wi' my own hands. Aye, and the
may'll soon be out in blossom. And the childern
makin' daisy-chains."
" Yes," I said. " And think of the woods--
the bluebells and anemones ! You remember Folly
Wood ? "
He smiled. " Ah, that I do" I mind digging
out a.n old vixen up there, when 'er 'ad gone to earth,
and the 'ounds with their tails up a-hollering like
music. The Badminton was out that day. I were
allus very fond o' thuck wood. My brother be
squire's keeper there. Many a toime we childern
went moochin' in thuck wood--nutting and bird-
nesting. Though I never did hold wi' taking
more'n one egg out of a nest, and I allus did wet
my vinger avore I touched the moss on a wren's

THE WILTSHIRES 21
nest. They do say as the little bird 'ull never go
back if ye doant."
His mind went roaming among childhood's
memories and his eyes took on a dreaming look.
" Mother, she were a good woman--no better
woman in the parish, parson did say. She taught
us to say every night, 'Our Father, which art in
heaven '--I often used to think on it at night in the
trenches. Them nights--they do make you think
a lot. If be mortal queer up there--you veels as
if you were on the edge of the world. I used to
look up at the sky and mind me o' them words in
the Bible, ' When I conzider the heavens, the work
o' Thy vingers and the stars which Thou hast nmde,
what is man that Thou art mind{ul of him ?'
One do feel oncommon small in them trenches at
,fight."
" I suppose you've had a hot rime up there ? "
" Ah that I have..And I zeed some bad things."
" Bad ? "
" Cruel, sir, mortal cruel, I be maning. 'Twur
dree weeks corne Monday. 1 We vur in an advance
near Wypers--'bout as far as 'ris from out village
fo Wootton Bassett. My platoon had to take a
house. We knowed 'twould be hot work, and Jacob
Scaplehorn and I did shake hands. 'Jarge,' 'e
This story i hero given s nerly possible in the exact words
of the nrrtor.--J. H. M.

22 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

zed, 'if I be took write fo my wife and tell 'er if
be the Lard's will and she be hot fo grieve.' And
I zed, 'So be, Jacob, and you'll do the saine for I.'
Out Officer, Capt'n S T , d'you know 'en,
sir? No? 'E coin from Devizes way, he wur a
grand man, never thinking of hisself but only of
us humble chaps--he said, ' Now for if, lads,' and
we advances in 'stended order. We wur several
yards apart, just loike we was when a section of us
recruits wur put through platoon drill, when I fust
jined the Army an' sergeant nmde us drill with
skipping-ropes a-stretched out so as fo get the
spaces. And there wur a machine-gun in that
there house--you know how they sputters. If cut
down us poor chaps loike a reaper. Jacob Scaple-
horn wur nex' ne and I 'eerd 'un say '0 Christ
Jesus ' as 'e went over like a rabbit and 'enever said
no more. 'E wur a good man, wur Scaplehorn "
--he added musingly--" and 'e did good things.
And some chaps wur down and dragging their legs
as if they did'n b'long fo 'em. I sort o' saw all
that wi'out seeing if, in a nmnner o' spaking;
'twere only arterwards if did corne back to me.
There warn't no rime fo think. And by the toime
we got fo thic bouse there were oxly 'bout vifteen
on us left. We had fo scrouge out way in through
the buttry winder and we 'eerd a girt caddle inside,
sort o' scufiiing; 'twere the Germans makin' for

THE WILTSHIRES 23
the cellar. And out Capt'n posted some on us at
top of cellar steps and led the test on us up the
stairs to a l(ind o' taller where thuck machim-gun
was. And what d'ye think we found, sir ? " he
said, raising himself on his elbow.
" What ? "
" There was a poor girl there--half daft she wur
--wi' nothing on but a man's overcoat. And she
rushed out avore us on the landing and began
hammering with her hands against a bedroom door
and it wur |ocked. We smashed 'en in wi' out
rifle-butts, and God's mercy! we Iound a poor
woman there, her mother seemingly, with her breast
all bloody an' her clothes torn. I could'n malé'
out what 'er wur saying but Capt'n 'e told us as
the Germans 'ad ravished her. We used out field-
dressings and tried to make the poor sou] coin-
fortable and Capt'n "e sent a volunteer back for
stretcher-bearers."
" And what about the Germans ? " I asked.
" Ah, I be coming to that, zur. Capt'n says,
' Now, men, we're going to reckon with those devils
dowa below.' Aud we went downstairs and he
stood st top of cellar-steps, "twere mortal darl¢,
an' says, 'Corne on up out o' that there.' And
they never answered a word, but we could 'ear 'em
breathing hard. We did'l know how many there
were and the cellar steps were main narrow, as

24 LEAVES FROM A FIELD bOTE-BOOK

narrov as th' opening in that tent over there.
So Capt'n 'e says,' Fetch me sorne straw, Hunt.'
'Twere a kind o' farrnhouse and I went out into the
backside and vetched sorne. And Capt'n and us l»ut
a lot of it at top of steps and pushed a lot more
vrther down, using our rifles like pitchforks and
then 'e blew on his tinder and set it alight. ' Stand
back, men,' he says, 'and be ready for 'ern with
the bay'net.' 'Tweren't no rnanner o' use shooting ;
'twere too close in there and our bullets might ha'
ricochayed. We soon 'eerd 'ern a-coughing. There
wur a terrible deal o' smoke, and there nmr we
a-waiting af top of thern stairs for 'em to corne up
]ike rats out of a hole. And two on 'ern ruade a
rush for if and we caught 'ern just like's we was
terriers by an oat-rick ; we had to be main quick.
"Twere like pitching hay. And then three more,
aD.d then rnore. And none on us uttered a word.
" An' when it wur done and we had claned out
bay'nets in the straw, Capt'n 'e said, ' Men, you ha'
done your work as you ought to ha' done.' "
He paused for a rnoment. " They be bad
fellows," he rnused. "0 Christ! they be rotten
bad. Twoads they be! I never reckon no good
'uil corne to rnen what abuses wimrnen and childern.
tht I'm afeard thcy be nation strong--there be so
many on
His tale had the simplicity of an epic. But the

THE WILTSHIRES 25

telling of it had been too much for him. Beads of
perspiration glistened on his brow. I felt it was
rime for me to go. I sought first to draw his mind
away from the contemplation of these tragic things.
"Are you married? " I asked. The eyes
brightened in the flushed face. " Yes, that I be,
and I 'ave a little boy, he be a sprack little chap."
" Ard what are you going fo make of him ? "
" I'm gwilm to bring m up to be a so]djer,"
he said solemnly. " To fight them Gcrmans,"
he added. He saw the great War in aa endless
perspective of rime ; for him if had no end. " You
will soon be home in Wiltshire again," I said
encouragingly. He mused. " Reckon the Sweet
Williams 'ull be out in the garden now; they do
smell oncommon sweet. And mother-o'-thousands
on the wall. Oh-h-h?' A spasm of pain contracted
his face. The nurse was hovering near and I saw
my rime was up. " My dear fellow," I said lamely,
" I fear you are in great pain."
" Ah ! " he said, " but it wur worth it."

The next day I called fo bave news of him. The
bed was empty. He was dead.

THE BASE

IF G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as
certainly ifs heart. For hence all the arteries of
that organism draw their life, and on the systole
and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and
dilatations of ifs auricles and ventricles, the Army
depends for ifs circulation. To and from the
Base corne and go in endless tributaries men,
horses, supplies, and ordnance.
The Base feeds the Army, binds up ifs wolmds,
and repairs its wastage. If you would get a
gliml0se of the feverish activities of the Base and
understand what if means fo the Army, you shofid
take up your position on the bridge by the sluices
that break the fall of the river into fhe harbour,
close fo the quay, where the trawlers are nudging
each other at their moorings and the fishermen
are shouting in the patois of the littoral amid the
creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and
the shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the
26

THE BASE 27

Military Police are on point duty and you will see
a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a trick]e
of base details, a string of invalided horses in
charge of an A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted
motor-bus crowded with d'afts for the Front.
Big ocean ]iners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their
moorings, and lofty e]ectric cranes gyrate noise-
]essly over supp]y ships unloading their stores,
whi]e animated swarms of dockers in lhaki pile
up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a
passionless concentration that seems like the
workings of b]ind instinct. Ad here are ware-
bouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr.
Thrale's brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the
four spices dear to the delicate palates of the
Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a
parlç of ammunition guarded like a harem. In
the rai]way sidings are duplicate supply trains,
steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. ofcer on
board ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four
hours' supplies. Beyond Che maze of " points "
is moored the strangest of all ro]]ing-stock, the
grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron
walls are domesticated two amphibious petty
ofcers darning their socks.
In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding
Army Service Corps ofcers are docketing stupend-
ous files of way-bills, loading-tables, and indents,

28 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
what rime the Railway Transport Oficer is making
up Ms train of trucks for the corresponding supplies.
The A.S.C. uses up more stationery than all the
departments in Whitehall, and its motto is litera
scripta manet--which has been explained by an
A.S.C. sergeant, instructing a class of potential
off%ets, as meaning " Never do anything without
a written order, but, whatever you do, never write
one." For an A.S.C. court of inquiry has as
impassioned a preference for written over oral
evidence as the old Court of Chancery. So that
if your way-bill testifies :
Truck No. Contents
19414 Jam 36 x 50
and from the thirty-six cases of fifty pots one pot
of iam is missing on arrival at rail-head, then,
though truck 19414 arrived sealed and your labels
undefaced, it will go hard with you as Train Oficer
unless you can produce that pot.
For the feeding of the Army is a delicate busi-
ness and complicated. It is not enough to secure
that there be sufficient " caloric units " in the
nmn's rations; there are questions of taste. The
Brahmin will not touch beef; the Mahomedan
turns up his nose at pork; the Jain is a vege-
tarian; the Ghurkha loves the flesh of the
goat. And every Indian must bave his ginger,
garlic, red chilli, and turnmric, and his chupattis

THE BASE 29
of unleavened bread. One such warchouse we
entered and beheld with stupefactiot mountainous
boxes of ghee and hogsheads of goor, 'ice, dricd
apricots, date-palms, and sult, anas. Storekeepers
in turbans stood round us, who, bei)g asked
whethcr it was well with the Indian and his i'ood,
answered us with a great shout, like the Ephesians,
" Yea, the exalted Government bath done great
things and praised be its nanm." To which we
replicd " Victory to the Ho]y Ganges water."
Their lustrous eyes beamed at the salutation.
Great, indeed, is the Q.M.G. He supplies
manna in thc wildcrness, ald like the manna of
the Israelites it bas never been known to fail. ]t
is of him that the soldier in the trenches says, in
the words of the prophet, " He bath filled my
bclly with Iris delicates." And his caravans cover
the face of the earth. ¥ou meet them everywhere,
each Supply Column a self-contained unit like a
fleet. It bas its O.C., its cooks, its seventy-two
motor lorries, with three men to each, and its
" mobiles " or travelling workshops vith dynamo,
lathe, drilling machine, and a crew of skilled
artificers, ready to tackle any motor-lorry that is
put out of action. I take off my bat to those
handy-men ; many rimes bave they helped me out
of tight place and performed delicate operations
on the internal organs of my nfilitary car in the

30 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
inhospitable night. It is a brave sight and forti-
fying to see a Supply Column winding in and out
between the poplars on the perilously arched pavé
of the long sinuous roads, each wagon keeping its
distance, ]ike battleships in line, and every one
of them boasting a good Christian naine chalked
up on the tail-bourd. For what his horses are to
a driver and his eighteen-pounder to a gmner,
such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detai]ed
to it. ]t is his caravan. Many a rime, on long
and lonely journeys from the Base to the Front,
bave I been cheered to find a Supply Column
drawn up on the roadside in a wooded valley, on
a bare undulating down, or in a chalk quarry,
while the men were making teu over a blue wood
tire. If you love a gipsy lire join the A.S.C.
Within this one-mile radius of the A.S.C. head-
quarters ut the Base are some twenty nfilitary
hospitals improvised out of hotels, gaming-houses,
und milway waiting-rooms, ior the Base is the
great Cleuring House for the sick and wounded,
und its register of putients is u kind of barometer
of the state of uffairs at the Front. When that
register sinks very low, it means that the atmo-
spheric conditions at the Front are getting stormy,
and that an order has corne down to evacuate und
prepare four thousand beds. Then you watch the
newspapers, for you know something is going to

THE BASE 31
happen u hee. And in hose saine hospials
men are worling night and day; he bacerio-
logiss studying " smears" under microscopes,
while the surgeons are classifying, operaing,
" dressing," mar-king temperature - chars, and
annoaing case-sheets. And in every hospial
here is a fain myserious incense, compounded
no disagreeably of chloride of sodium and iodised
cat, gu, which intensifies he dim religious at.mo-
sphere of he shaded wards. If G.H.Q is he
greaest of miliary academies, he Base hospials
are i ndubiably the wisest of medical schools.
Never bave the sciences of bacteriology and surgery
been sudied wih such devoion as under hese
urgen clinical impulses. Here are men of Euro-
pean repuaion who bave left their laboraories
und consulting-rooms a home fo wage a never-
ending scienific contes wih deah and corruption.
They bave slain " frostbie " wih lanoline, tur-
pentine, and a change of socks ; they bave fought
septic wounds with chloride of sodium and he
minisries of unlinfied oxygen ; hey bave defied
" shock " after amputation by " bloclng " he
nerves of he limb by spinal injection, as a
signalman blocks traic. They bave called in
Nature o he aid of science and bave summoned
the oxygen of he air and the lymph of he body
fo the self-help of wounds.

32 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK

High up on the downs is the Convalescent Camp.
Here the O.C. bas turned what was a swamp last
December into a Garden City, draining, planting,
bdlding, installing drying-rooms of asbestos, dis-
infectors, laundries, and shower-baths, constructing
turf incinerators and laying down pavements of
brick and slag. Borders have been planted, grass
sown, and shrubs and trees put up--a.ll this with
the labour of the convalescents. There is a foot-
. ball ground, of which recreation is not the only
purpose, for the O.C. bas original ideas about
distinguishing between " shock," or neurasthenia,
and malingering by other methods than testing a
man's reflexes. He iust walks abstractedly round
that football ground of an afternoon and studies
the form of the players. In this self-contained
commmfity is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library,
a theatre. In two neighbouring paddocks are the
isolation camps for scarlet fever and cerebro-menin-
gitis, and as soon as a man complains of headache
and temperat.ure he is segregat.ed there, preparatory
'fo being sent down fo No. 14 Stationary to bave his
spinal fluid examined by the bacteriologists. Here,
in fact, the man and his -kit, instead of being thrown
on the scrap-heap, are renewed and ruade whole,
restored in mind, body, and estate, his clothes
disinfected and mended, the " slfipers " treated to
a hot iron, and his razor and tooth-brush replaced.

THE BASE 33
For true if is that af the Base they study loving-
kindness, and chaplains and doctors and nurses
are busy with delicate ministries seeking fo cure,
fo assuage, and fo console. Alas ! on what tragic
errands do so many corne and go; parents like
Joseph and Mary seeking their child, and wives
their husbands, in hope, in fear, in ]oy, in anguish,
too often finding that the bright spirit bas returned
to God Who gave t, and that nothing is left but
fo follow him behind the ber draped with the
Union Jack fo the little cemetery on the bill ....
But for one that is buried here a thousand lie
where they fell. Those stricken fields of Flanders !
nevermore will they be for us the scene of an idle
holiday ; they wll be a place of pilgrmage and a
shrine of prayer. I well remember--I can never
forget--a i ourney I ruade in the company of a
French staf[ officer over the country that lies
between Paris and the river Aisne. We came out
on a wide rolling plain, and in the waning light of
a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble
and between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could
reach, thousands of little tricolour flags fluttering
in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden cross.
By each cross was a soldier's képi, and sometimes
a coat, bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively
we bared our heads, and as we walked from one
grave fo another I could hear the orderly behind

34 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

us muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory
was the battlefield of the Marne. Seasons will
corne and go, man will plough and sow, the earth
will yield ber increase, but those graves will never
be disturbed by share or siclde. They are holy
ground.
So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those
fields out gallant dead lie where they fell, and
where they lie the earth is dedicated to them for
ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that
landed in France in August 1914 perhaps hot
l0 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose
ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon
on the field of Wagram, they haunt the plains of
lrance. But their voices are the voices of ex-
hortation, and their breath and finer spirit bave
passed into the drafts that bave taken their place.
Their successors greet Death like a friend and go
into battle as to a festival, counting no price--
youth, health, life--too high to pay for the country
of their birth and their devotion. The nation that
can nurture men such as these can calmly meet
ber enemy in the gare. Verily she shall hot pass
away.
The moon was at the full as I climbed the down
where the shepherd was guarding his flock behind
the hurdles on the short turf and creeping cinque-

THE BASE 35

foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch
the altercation of the pebbles on the beach under
the importunities of the ride, I saw an oily sea
heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely
beacon was winking across the waste of waters,
strange signals were flashing from the pier, and
merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively
protesting their neutrality with such a garish
display of coloured lights as fo suggest a midnight
regatta of ail the neutral nations. A troop train
was speeding north and a hospital train crawling
south, their coming and going betrayed only to
the ear, for they showed no lights. The one was
freighted with youth, health, life; the other with
pain, wounds, death. It was the systole and
diastole of the Base.

A COUNCIL OF INDIA

"A I said, ' Nay, I who have eaten the King's
salt cannot do this thing.' And the German-log
said to me, ' But we will give you both money and
land.' And I said, 'Wherefore should I do this
thing, and bring sorrow and shame upon my
people ? '"
If was a Sepoy in the 9th who spake, and his
words were exceeding clear as Holy Writ.
" And what did they do then ? "
" They took my clupattis, sahib, and offered
me of their bread in return. But I said, 'Nay, I
ara a Brahmin, and cannot touch it.' And they
said thrice unto me, ' We will give you money and
land.' And I thrice said, ' Nay.' Then said they,
' Thou art a fool. Go fo, but if thou comest against
us again we will kill thee.' And I got back to my
colnrades."
" Yea, to me also they said these things." It
was a emindar of the 129th who spoke. " Yes,
36

A COUNCIL OF INDIA 37
a German sahib called to me in Hindustani, ' Haro
dost ]ein--Hamari pas ao--Ham tutu Ko Na]n
Ma'enge.' " Which being translated is, " We are
friends, corne to us, we won't kill you."
" And you, Mula Sing, what think you of this
war 2. 7,
The Woordie-Maior replied : " Sahib, never was
there a war like this war, since the world began.
No, not even the Mahabharata when Kouro fought
1)andu. ''
Then spoke up a subadar of the Pioneers, a tall
Sikh with his beard curled like the ancient Assyrians.
He had shown me the rive symbols of the Sikh
freemasonry--nay, he had taken the kag]a out
of his hair and shown me the two little knives, also
the hair-ring and the bracelet, and had unwound
the spirals of his unshaven locks. Therefore we
were friends. " All wars are but s]ikka" to this
war, sahib." "Shikkar 2." " Yea, even as a
tiger-hunt. But this, this is an exceeding great
,,
" Nay, this is a fine war--a hell of a fine war."
The speaker was au Afridi from Tirah, whose
strongly marked aquiline features renfinded me of
nothing so much as a Jewish pawnbroker in White-
chapel. He lacks every virtue except courage,
and his one regret is that he has missed the family
blood-feud. There have been great doings in his

38 LEAYES IROM A IIELD OTE-BOOK
family on the frontier in his absence--two abduc-
tions and one homicide. " If I hd not corne home,"
his brother bas written reprooehfully to him from
Tirah, "things had gone ill with us. But never
mind about all this now. Do your duty well."
And even so bas he done.
" And how like you this war ? "
" Sahib, it is a fine war, a hell of fine war, but
for the great guns."
" And wherefore ? "
" Because we cannot come nigh unto them.
But I, I bave slain may men."
" And wht is your village ? " asks my friend,
Maior D, of the I.M.S.
" çhorah."
" Why, I was there in the Tirah cmpign."
" Even so, sahib."
The Ghurkhas looked on in silence at out sym-
posium, their broad Mongolia faces inscrutable.
But Shiva Lal, Brahmin surgeon, who all this
wh]le hs been eager to spek, for he is a pundit,
and loves the souad of his own voice, here thrust
forward his quint countennce, whose wlrus-like
moustache concels a row of teeth proiectiag like
the spokes of a wicker-basket. Softly he rubs
haads and thus he speks in English" " Sahib, I
had charge of German sahib--wounded. And
I said tmto him, 'How is it tht you, who are

A COUIqC]L OF IlqDIA 39
Christians, treat the Tommies so ? We' (Maior
D ]ooks at me with the hint of a twink]e in
his eye--for bas he not told me at mess of that
surprising change in the Indian vernacu]ar whereby
their speech is no longer of " Goora-log" and
" Sahib-log" but of" We," which fraternal pronoun
is sign]ficant of much)--' we shave you and feed
you, we wash you and dress your wounds, even as
one of ourselves, and you kill our wouuded Tommies,
yea, and do these things and worse even unto
women. Are you not Christians ? We' (there is
a return to o]d habits of speech)--' we are on]y
Indians, but I bave read in your Bible that if one
smite on the one cheek ' "--here Shiva La], who bas
now what he loves most in the world, an audience,
and is easily histrion]c, smites his face mightily
on the right side--" ' one should turn to him the
other.' Why is this ? '"
" Ad what said the German oflïcer, Shiva
Lal ? "
" lqay, sahib, he said nothing." We also say
nothing. For Shiva La] needs but litt]e encourage-
ment to talk from stmset to cock-crow. 1)erhaps
the unfortunate German ofiïcer divined as much.
But the spe]l of Shiva La]'s eloquence is rudely
broken by Major D--, who takes me by the arm
to go elsewhere. And the little groul squatting
on their haunches at their mid-day meal cease

40 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
listening and dip their chupattis in the aromatic
dhal, in that slow, ruminant, ritualistic way in
which the Indian always eats his food.
" Rare, Rare ! Tumtd kottun allé ?" said my
friend Smith, turning aside to a lonely figure on my
right. A cry of joy escapes a dark-featured Mahratta
who bas been looldng mottrnfully on from his bed
of pain, comprehending nothing of these dialogues.
We bave, indeed, been talldng in every language
except Mahrathi. And he, poor soul, bas lost both
feet--they were frostbitten--and will never answer
the music of the charge again. But at the sound
of his own tongue he raises his body by the
pulley hanging at the head of his cot, and gravely
salures the sahib. Like Ruth amid the alien corn,
Iris heart is sad with thoughts of home, and he
bas been dreaming between these iron walls of
the wide, sunlit spaces of the Deccan. As his
feverish brain counts and re-counts the rivets on
the ship-plates, ever and anon they part before
his wistful eyes, and he sees again the little village
with its grove of mangoes and its sacred banyan
on the inviolable otla; he hears once again the
animated chatter of the wayfarers in the chowdi.
"Where is thy home ? "
" Sahib, it is at Pirgaon."
"I know it--is hot Turkaran Patal the head-

A COUNCIL OF INDIA 41
The dark face gleams with pleasure. " Even so,
sahib."
" Shall I write to thy people ? "
" The sahib is very kind."
" So will I do, and, perhaps, prepare thy people
for thy homecoming. I will tell them that thou
hast lost thy feet with the frostbite, but art other-
wise well."
" Nay, sahib, tell them everything but that, for
if my people hear that they will neither eat nor
drink--nay, nor sleep, for sorrow."
" Then will I not. But I will tell them that
thou art a brave man."
The Mahratta snfiles mournfully.
" And bave you heard from your foll: af home ? "
I ask oi the others, leaving Snfith and the Mahratta
together.
" Yea, sahib, the exalted Government is very
good to us. We get letters often." It is a sepoy
in the 107th who speaks. " My brother writes
even thus," and he reads with tears in his eyes:
"'We miss you terribly, but such is the will of
God. I have been daily fo Haji Baba Ziarat'
(if is a famous shrine in India), ' and day and night
I pray ior you, and ara very distressed. I ara
writing fo tell you fo bave no anxiety about us at
home, but do your duty cheerfully and say your
prayers. Repeat the beginning with the word

42 LEAVES FROM A FIELD lXTOTE-BOOK
" Kor" and breathe forty rimes on your body.
Your father is well, but is very anxious for you,
and weeps day and night.' "
"I also bave received aletter." The speaker
is a Bengali, and, though a surgeon and non-coin-
batant, must bave his say. "My brother writes
that I am to enlight the names of my ancestors, who
were tiger-like warriors, and were called Bahadurs,
by performing my duties to utmost satisfaction."
This is truly Babu English.
" And you will do the saine ? "
" Yea, I must do likewise. My brother writes
to me, ' If you want to face this side again, face as
Bahadur.' And he saith, ' Long live King George,
and may he rule on the whole world.' And so say
we all, sahib."
"And you?" This to a Shia Mahomedan
whose right hand is bandaged.
" Ah, sahib, my people can write to me, but write
to them I cannot. Will the honourable sahib send
a word for me who am thus crippled ? "
" Yea, gladly ; what shall the words be ? "
"Say, then, oh sahib, these words : ' Your
servant is well and happy here. You should pray
the God of Mercy that the victory may be to out
King, Jar i Paniam. And to my lady mother and
my lady the sister of my father, and to my brother,
and to my dear ones the greetings of peace and

A COUNCIL 01 INDIA 43

prayer. And the sure of fifty rupees which I
arranged for my family ' (his wife) ' will be paid to
you every month.' The sahib is very kind."
" The sahib would like to hear a story ? " The
speaker is a jemadar of the 59th. "So be it.
Know then, sahib, that I and twelve men of my
company were cut off by the German-log, and I,
even I only, am left. It was in tlfis wise. My
comrades advanced too far beyond the trenches,
and we lost our way. And the German-log make
signs to us to surrender, but it is not our way and
we still advance. And they open tire with a
machine-gun--so!" The speaker makes sounds
as a man who stutters. " And we are all hit--
ldlled and wounded, and fall like ripe corn to the
sic]de. And I ara wounded in the leg and I fall.
And the German offacer, he corne up and hitted me
in the buttock to see if I were dead. But I lay
exceeding still and hold my breath. And they
pull me by the leg" (can it be that the jemadar is
pulling mine ?), " a long way they pull me but still
I am as one dead. And so I escaped." He looks
round for approval.
" That was well done, jemadar." His lustrous
eyes flash with pleasure. " And how is it with your
food ? "
" Good " (" Bahout accha "), cornes a chorus of
voices. " The exalted Government bas done great

44 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
things. We bave g]ee "--a clarified butter made
of buffalo or cow's milk--" and goor "--unrefined
sugar. "And we have spices for our dlal--ginger
and gaflic and chilli and turmeric. Yea, and fi'uits
also--apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What
more can man want ? "
"It is well." But it is rime for me to go.
Smith is still talking to the Mahratta, whose eyes
never leave his face. " Corne on, old man," I say,
"it is rime to go." Smith turns reluctantly away.
As I looked over my shoulder the Mahratta was
weeping softly.

THE TROOP TRAIN

WE were standing in the lounge of the Hotel M-
at the Base. " l'll introduce you to young C--
of the Guards when he cornes in," the Maior was
saying to me. "He is going up to the Front
with me to-night by the troop train. You don't
mind if I rag a bit, do you, old cha i ? You see
he's on]y iust gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere
infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the blues, I fancy,
af having to say good-bye fo his mother. He's
her only child, and she's a widow. The father
was an old friend of mine. Hulloa, C--, my
boy. Allow me to introduce you."
A youth with the milk and roses complexion of
a girl, blue eyes, and fair hair, well-built, but
somewhat under the middle height--such was
C--, and he was good to look upon.
Introductions being ruade, we filed into the
salle à manger.
" Chambertin, Julie, s'il vous plaît," said the
45

6 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
Maior. " There's nothing like a good burgundy
to warm the cockles of your heart." He had the
radiant eye of an Irishman, and smiled on Julie
as he gave the order.
" So you're leaving your hospital to go up and
ioin a Field Ambulance ? " I said.
" That's so, old man. There was a chance of
my being ruade A.D.M.S. at the Base some day if
I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front,
and l've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too
fond of playing Bo-peep with my pals in the
R.A.M.C. Beastly iob, always worrying the O.C.'s.
Talking about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the
story of how I pulled the ]eg of old Macassey in
South Africa ? "
" No," I said, although B had a way of
telling the saine stories twice over occasionally.
The one story he never told, not even once, was
how he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had
heard it often enough from other men in the
service, and could never hear it too often. Aud
let me tell you that to know B and bave the
privilege of his friendship, is to be admitted to
the largest freemasonry of officers in the British
Army.
"Well, it was like this," continued B "The
A.D.M.S. was a thorn in the side of every O.C. at
the Base, walking up and down like the very devil,

THE TROOP TRAIN 47

seeking whose reputation he nfight devour, and
ordering every O.C. to turn his hospital upside
down. He took a positive delight in breaking
men. You know the type, the kind of man who
breaks his wife's heart not because he's bad,
but because he's querulous. The nagging type.
Nothing could please him. So one day he came
to Simpson's show, where I was second in com-
mand. " How many patients bave you got ac-
commodation for here ? " he asked me, Simpson
being laid up with a recurrence of his malaria.
" Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. " Very
good, bave accommodation for a thousand
to-morrow night," said Macassey with a cock of
his eye that I knew only too well. We were not
full up, as it was, although pretty hard-worked,
being short-handed and with a devil of a lot of
enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood
of any more patients arriving, as they were switch-
ing them off to Durban. However, it was no use
grousing, that only made old Macassey more wicked
than ever, but I thought I'd bave it in black and
white ; so I saluted and said, " Bad memory, sir,
my old womd in India, d'you mind writing the
order down ? ' "
" My dear B ," I interrupted, " you know
you've the memory of a Recording Angel."
"' So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew

48 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
that Macassey's memory, like that of most fussy
men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought
I'd catch him out sooner or later. He and I went
round the camp, and, after about half-an-hour of
the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught
sight of some double-roofed Indian tents that
Simpson had got together with great difficulty for
the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin buts,
and in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah,
I see,' said Macassey wickedly. 'I see you bave
some good double-roofed tents here; let me bave
eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That
left us with four, and how we were to shift the
patients was a problem. ' Very good, sir,' I said,
'but I may forget the number. D'you mind ?'
And I held out my Field Note-book, having turned
over the page." (There are hot many people
who can say ' No' to B--.) " He didn't mind,
So he wrote it down. Naturally I took care of
those pages. Next day old Macassey must have
remembered that he had issued two contradictory
orders in the saine day. Ordered me to expand
and contract at the saine time, like the third
ventricle. And he knew that I had first-class
documentary evidence, and that I guarded Iris
autographs as though I were going to put 'emup
for sale at Sotheby's. He never troubled us any
more."

THE TR00P TRAIN 49

:' That was unkind of you, Major," I said
insincerely.
" Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been
worrying old Simpson, and he wasn'ç fiç to undo
the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! bave you
never heard the story of Simpson and the giddy
goat ? "
" The goat ? " said the sub.
" Yes, the goat. Useful animal the goat, if
a trifle capricious. It was like this. Old Simpson,
who's got a head on his shoulders big enough
to do all the thinking for the Royal College of
Physicians, and ditto of Surgeons, with a good
few ideas left over for the R.A.M.C., determined
to get fo the bottom of Mediterranean Fever--a
nasty complaint, which had vorried the Malta
garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do
when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say
in the children's picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find
the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to suspect
the goat. Why ? Well, because he'd noticed
that goat's milk was drunk in Malta and Egypt.
So he began to study the geographical distribution
of the goat with the zeal of an anthropologist
localising dolicocephalic and brachycephalic races.
He Iound eventually that wherever you cottld
' place ' a goat you wottld find the lever. Where-
fore he took some goat's nfilk and cultivated it
E

50 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
assiduously in an alluring medium of Glucose-
nutrose-peptone-litmus."
" Dot and carry one. Please repeat," I inter-
jected.
" Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus," repeated the
Major.
" Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor
man, beggar-man, thîef," soliloquised the subaltern,
who was brightening up.
" Quite so," said the Major with a benignant
glance. " Well, he then got a culture."
" A what ? "
" Culture. Poisonous growth ; hence German
' Kultur,' " said the Major etymologically. " To
proceed. He then inoculated some guinea-pigs.
No! I don't mean directors in the City, though
he might bave done worse. And lo ! and behold !
he found the lever. You know the four canons
of the bacteriologist ? 0ne, ' get' ; two, ' culti-
vate' ; three, ' inoculate ' ; four, ' recover.' "
" Well done, Simpson," I said.
" You may say that, my friend. And now
there's old Simpson dom af the Base in charge
of No. 12 General saving lives by hundreds and
thousands. You kaow while the bullet slew ifs
thousands, septicaemia bas slain ifs tens of
thousands. How did he stop it ? Why, by doing
the obvious, which, you may bave observed, no

THE TROOP TRAIN 51
one ever does till a wise man cornes along. He
got wounds to heal themselves. He 10romoted a
lyml0hatic flow from the rest of the body by putting
sul010ositories of chloride of sodium inside drainage-
tubes in the wound. The heat of the body melts
them, you see. There are three geat medical
heroes of this warwAlmroth Wright, Martin-Leake,
and Simpson."
I cou]d bave named a fourth, but I held my
tongue.
" Time to get on our hind legs," the Mior now
said monitorily. " Julie, l'«ddition s'il vous plaît."
" Bien, monsieur," sid Julie, who had been
watching the Mior admiringly without coml0re-
hending a word of what he said. Women bave a
way of falling in love with the Maior at first sight.
We stumbled a]ong between the rai]s and over
the sleepers, led by the Maior, who carried a
hurricane laml0, and by the hell0 of its fitful rays
we leal0t across the 10ools of water left in every
hollow. We 10assed some cattle-trucks. The Maior
held up the lalnl0 and scrutinised a legend in white
letters--
Hommes 40. Chevaux 12.
" Reminds me of the Rttle of Three," said the
Maior meditatively. " If one Frenchman is equal
to three and one-third horses, how many Huns are
equal to one British soldier ? "

52 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

" They are never equal to him," said the
subaltern brightly. " If if wasn't for machinery
we'd bave crumpled them up long ago."
" True, my son," said the Major, " and well
spoken."
The men were grouped rotmd the cattle-truc -ks,
each man with his kit and 120 rounds of ammuni-
tion. They had just been through a kit inspection,
and the O.C. in charge of details had audited and
found if correct by entering up a memorandum to
that effect in each man's pay-book. Though how
the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft,
and certifies that nothing from a housewife to thirty
pairs of laces per man is missing, is one of those
things that no one bas ever been able to understand.
Perhaps he bas radiographic eyes, and sees through
the opaque integument of a ground-sheet af one
glance. Also the Medical Oflàcer af the Base Depôt
had endorsed the " Marching Out States," after
scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's
naked body, with the nid of a tallow candle stuck
in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of
three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark
shed is a weird and bashful spectacle. An N.C.O.
was supervising the entraining ai each truck;
the escort was marching up and down the per-
manent way on the off-side. The R.T.O. handed
the movement orders fo the senior officer in coin-

THE TROOP TRAIN 53

mnd of drafts, and I saw that they were going
to get a move on very soon.
We were now opposite a first-class compartment,
and a slim figure loomed up out of the darkness.
" Halloa ! is that you, C I thought you
were gone on ahead of us, my boy."
" So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing,
and I'm sending a corporal to hunt them up.
We're off in a few minutes. I met young T
iust now. l've been trying to cheer him up," he
added. It was evident that the subaltern was
now understudying the Major in his star part of
cheering other fellows up. " He's feeling rather
blue," he continued. " Depressed at saying good-
bye to his fiends, you know."
" Oh, that's no good. Tell him l've got a plum-
pudding and a bottle of whisky among my kit.
Yes, and a topping tiqueur."
I looked at B--'s compartment. His servant,
a sapper, was stowîng the kit in the roeks and under
the seat, with the help of a portable acetylene lamp
which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness,
a darkness which you could almost feel with your
hand.
"I say, B---," I asked as I contemplated hy-
stoek of things, " what's the regu]ation llowance
for an oificer's luggage ? I forget."
" One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may

54 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
laugh, old chap, but I got round the R.T. officer.
Christmas ! you know. And I can stow it in my
billet. Cheers the other fellows up, you know."
B's kit weighed, at a moderate computation,
about a quarter of a ton, and included many things
not to be round ia the field-service regu]ations.
But it would never surprise me if I round a per-
forming elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy
Bears in his baggage. He would gravely explain
that it cheered the fellows ul, you know.
" Major," I said, " you are a ' carrier'
" Carter Paterson ? " said the Maior, with a
glauce ai his luggage.
"o, I didn't mean that. You are hot as
quick in the uætake as usual, eslecially considering
your medical qualifications. What I meant was
that you remind me, only rather differently, of the
æeoæle who get tyæhoid and recover, but continue
to æroæagate the germs long after they become
immune from them themselves. You're diffusing
a gaiety which you no longer feel."
It was a bold shot, and if we hadn't been lretty
old friends it would bave been an impertinence.
The Major put his arm in mine and took me asde,
so that the subaltern should hot hear. " You've
hit the bull's-eye, old chaæ," he said, in a low voice.
"But don't give me away. Corne into the
carriage."

THE TROOP TRAIN 55

He was strangely silent as we sat facing each
other in the compartment, each of us conscious of
a hundred things to say, and saying none of them.
The train might start at any moment, and such
things as we did say were trivial irrelevancies.
Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and showed
me a photograph.
"My wife and Pat--you've never seen Pat, I
think ? We christened ber Patricia, you know ? "
It was the photograph of a laughing child, with
an aureole of curls, aged, I should say, about two.
" Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing
a large woollen comforter. She had sent it for
Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the
Field Ambulance. I haaded back the photograph,
and B-- studied it intently for some minutes
belote replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly
he leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way.
" I say, old chap, write to my wife !"
dear fellow, l've never met her
She must bave quite forgotten who

"But, my
except once.
I ara."
" I know.

But write and tell ber you saw me
off, and that I was at the top of my form. Merry
and bright, you know."
We looked at each other for a moment; and
I promised.
There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch

56 LEAYES IROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK
of the couplings, as C sprang in. I grasped
B----'s hand, and iumped on to the footboard of
the moving train.
" Good-bye, old chap."
" Good-bye, old man."
B had gone to the front. I never saw him
again.
Three weeks later I was sitting at déjeuner in
the Metropole, when a ragamuffm came in with
the London papers, which had iust arived by the
leave-boat. I took up the Times and looked, as
one always looks nowadays, ai the obituary colunm.
I looked again. In the saine column, one succeed-
ing the other, I read the following :
Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur
IIamilton C of the -- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child
of the late Arthur C. and of Mrs. (. of the Red IIouse, Little
Twickenham, aged 19.
Behold ! I take way the desire of thine eyes with a stroke.
Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded
soldier under tire, Major Ronald B--, D.S.O., of the Royal
Army Medical Corps, aged 42.
Greater love hth no man thon this.

THE FRONT

VII

THE TWO RICHEBOURGS

WE had business with the maire of the commune of
Richebourg St. Vaast. Any one who looks at a staff
map of lorth-West France will see that there are
two Richebourgs ; there is Richebourg St. Vaast,
but there is also Richebourg l'Avoué, and although
those two communes are separated by a bare three
or four kilometres there was in point of climate a
considerable difference between the two. In those
days we had not yet taken leuve Chapelle, and
Richebourg l'Avoué, which was in front of out
lines, was considered " unhealthy." Richebourg
St. Vaast, on the other hand, was well bekind out
lines and was considered by out billeting officers
quite a good residential neighbourhood.
We had left G.H.Q., and after a iourney of
two hours or so passed through Laventie, wkich
had been rather badly mauled by shell-fire, and
began to thread out way through the skein of roads
and by-roads that enmeshes the two Richebourgs.
59

60 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

The natural features of the country were inscrutable,
and landmarks there were none. The countryside
grew absolutely deserted and the solitary farms
were roofless and untenanted. Eventually we
round out road blocked by a barricade of fallen
masonry in front of a village which was as in-
hospitable as the Cities of the Plain.
A vast silence brooded over the landscape, broken
now and again by a noise like the crackling of thorns
under a pot. As we took cover behind a wall of
ruined houses we heard a sinister Mss, but whence
it came or what invisible trajectory it traced through
the leaden skies overhead neither of us could tell.
Silence again fell like a mist upon the land ; not a
bird sang, not a twig moved. The winter sun was
sinking in the west behind a pall of purple cloud in
a lacquered sky--the one touch of colour in the
sombre greyness. The land was fiat as the palm
of one's hand, its monotony relieved only by lines
of pollarded willows on which some sappers had
strung a field telephone. Raindrops hung on the
copper wire like a string of pearls, and the heavy
clay of the fields was scooped and moulded by the
rain into little saucer-like depressions as if by a
potter's thumb. Behind us lay the reserve trenches,
their clay walls shored up with wickerwork, and
their outskirts fringed with barbed wire whose
intricate and volatile coils looked like thistledown.

THE TWO RICHEBOURGS 61
The village belfind whose walls we now sheltsred lay
in a Ho Man's Land between the enemy's lines and
out own, and the sodden fields were hot more
desolate.
A tornado of artillery tire had swept over if,
and of the bouses nothing was left but indecencies,
shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath which
were choked heaps of household furniture, broken
beds, battered lamps, and a wicker-chair over-
turned as in a drunken brawl. What had once
been the street was now a quarry of broken bricks,
with here and there vast circular cratsrs as though
a gigantic oak-tree had been torn out of the earth
by the roots. And now the weird silence was broken
by sounds as of some one playing a lonely tattoo
with Iris fingers upon a hollow wooden board, but
the player was invisible, and as we looked af each
other the sound ceased as suddenly as if began.
Our practised ear told us that somewhere near us
a machine-gun was concealed, but these furtive
sounds were so homeless, so impersonal, that they
eluded us like an echo.
If was this complets absence of visible human
agency that impressed us most disagreeably, as
with a sense of being utterly forlorn amid a play
of the elements, like Lear upon the heath. There
came into my mind, as our eyes groped for some
human sign in the brooding landscape, the thought

62 LEAVES FROM A FIELD OTE-BOOK

of the prophet upon the mount amid the wind and
the earthquake and the tire seeking the presence
of his God and finding it hot. And here too all
these assaults upon out senses were fugitive and
ghostly, and we felt ourselves encompassed about
as by some great conspiracy. We walked curiously
up the little street until we reached the last bouse
in the village, and came out beyond the screen of
ifs wall. Af the same instant something sang past
my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my foot
caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My
companion, lagging behind and hot yet clear of the
friendly wall, stopped dead and cried fo me not to
stand up. I crawled bacl among the rubbish to
the cover of the bouse. We took counsel together.
To retreat were perilous, but to advance might be
fatal. We lowered our voices as, cowering behind
walls, and picking our way delicately among the
débris, we crept back to our car behind the entrance
to the village. The driver started the engine and
we moved forlornly along the narrow causeway,
skirting the unfathomable mud that lay on either
side, until we spied a ruined farmhouse where a
company ]md ruade its billet and mud-coloured
knots of soldiers stood round braziers of glowing
coals. We had some parley with the company
commander, who was of the earth earthy. His
words were few and discouraging. As we crawled

THE TWO RICHEBOURGS 63

on, darkness enveloped us, but we dared not light
our head-lamps. Suddenly the car slipped on the
greasy road, staggered, and lurched over into the
morass, hurling us violently upon our sides. We
clambered out and contemplated it solemnly as
we saw our right wheels over the axles in mud.
No friendly billet was now in sight, and as we stood
profanely considering our plight the darkness be-
hind us was split by a long shaft of greenish light,
and the whole landscape was illuminated with a
pallid glow, as the German star-shells discharged
themselves over the fan-like tops of the elms
silhouetted against the sky. The jack was useless
in the sort mud, it sank like a stone, and as we
shoved and cursed we awaited each fresh discharge
of the star-shells with increasing alirehension ,
foi we presented an obvious target to the enemy's
snipers. On the seat of the car was my despatch-
box, and in that box was a little dossier of papers
marked " O.tt.M.S. German Atrocities. Secret
and Confidential." " If the Germans catch us
there'll be one atrocity the more," remarked my
Staff Officer grimly, " but they'll spare us the
labour of recording it."
Our futile efforts were interrupted by the sound
of feet upon the causeway as a column of reliefs
loomed up out of the darkness. A hurried alterca-
tion in low tones, a subdued word of command,

64 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
and a dozen men, their rifles and entrenching tools
slung over their shoulders, applied themselves to
the back of out car, and slowly it slithered out of the
mud. The column brolçe into file to allow us to
pass, my companion went on ahead with a tiny
electric torch to show the way, and th infinite
caution we nudged slowly along the tank, the faint
light of the torch bringing face after face out of the
darkness into chiaroscuro, faces young and fresh
and ruddy. Not a word was spoken save a whis-
pered command carried down the tank, mouth to
ear, " No smoking, no talking "--" No smoking,
no talking "--" No talking, no smoking." Mules,
carrying sections of machine-guns and packs of
straw, loomed up out of the darkness as we passed,
until the last of the column was reached and the
frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the
nîght. We drew a long breath, for we knew now
from the colonel of the battalion whose men had
deliveied us from that Slough of Despond that we
had been within 150 yards of the German lines.
We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoué for Riche-
bourg St. Vaast.

VIII

IDOLS OF THE CAVE

IIKE the Cyclopes they dwelt in hollow caves, and
each Colonel uttered the law to his children and
recked not of the others except when the Brigadier
came round. True there were two and a half
battalions in their line of 2700 yards, but all they
knew was that the next battalion to their own was
the Highlanders ; it was only when the rive days
were up and they were marched back to billets
that they were able to cultivate that somewhat
exclusive society. Their trenches were like the
suburbs, they were faintly conscious that people
lived in the next street, but they never saw them.
Their neighbours were as self-contained and silent
as themselves, except when their look-ours or
machine-guns became loquacious. Then they too
became eloquent, and the whole line talked freely
at the Germans 200 yards away. By day the men
slept heavily on straw in hollows under the parapet,
supported with crates and sprinkled with chloride
65 F

66 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

of lime; by night they were out at the listening
posts, in the sap-heads, or behind the parapet, with
their eyes glued to the field of yellow mustard in
front of us. They had watched that field for three
months. They knew every blade of grass therein.
No experimental agriculturist ever studied his
lucerne and sainfoin as they bave studied the
grasses of that field. They bave watched it from
winter to spring ; they bave seen the lesser celandine
give way to pink clover and sorrel, and the grass
shoot up from an inch to a foot. They have,
indeed, been studying not botany but ethnology,
searching for traces of that species of primitive
man knowa to anthropologists as the Htm. They
bave never round him except once, when one of out
look-ours saw something crawling across that field
about midnight and promptly emptied his magazine.
In the morning they saw a grey figure lying out in
the open ; the days passed and the long grass sprang
up and concealed it till nothing was left to attest
its obscene presence except a little cloud of black
files. Their horizon is bounded by rows of sand-
bags, and their interest in those sand-bags is only
equalled by their interest in the fie]d in front of
them. Occasionally one of our men finds them
more than usually interesting. There is a loud
report, the click of a bolt, and the pungent smell of
burnt cordite. Then all is stil] again.

IDOLS OF THE CAVE 67

The tangent-sight on the standard of their
machine-gun is always at 200, and they have not
altered the range for three months. Occasionally
at night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles,
and with his thumb on the button slowly sweeps
that range of sand-bags, till the feed-block sucks
up the cartridge-belt like a chaff-cutter and the
empty cartridge-cases lie as thick round the tripod
as acoras under aa oak. The Huns reply by
takilg a flashlight photograph of us with a calcium
tiare, and then all is still again. In such excursions
and alarms do they lass the long night.
Though five-sixths of them slept stertorously in
their holes by day, by night they were as wakeful
as owls, and hot less predatory. Lire in the trenches
is one long struggle for existence, and in the course
of it they developed those acquired characteristics
whereby the birds of the air and the beasts of the
field maintain themselves in a world of carnage.
They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their
feet as silently as hares, to see in the dark like
foxes, fo wriggle like the creeping things of the
field, to lower their voices with the direction of the
wid, fo select a background with the moonlight,
and to stand motionless on patrol with muscles
rigid like a pointer when the star-shells dissolved
the security of the night. They studied to dis-
semble with their lips and to imitate the vocabulary

68 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

of nature. They grew more and more chary of
human speech, and listening posts talked with the
trenches by pulls on a fishing-reel. They never
sheathed their claws, and working-parties wore
their equipment as though it were the integument
of nature. Bayonets were never unfixed un]ess the
moon were very bright. At night they scraped
out their earths like a badger, and, ]ike the badger's,
those earths were exceeding clean. The men were
numbered off by threes from the flank, and one in
three watched for two hours whi]e the other two
worked, repairing parapets, strengthening entangle-
ments, and fi]ling sand-bags. Every hall-bout
the N.C.O. on duty crept round to report, or to
post and relieve, while now and again a patrol went
out to observe. All this was done stealthily and
with an amazing economy of speech. Night was
also the time of their foraging, when the company's
rations were brought up the communication trench
and handed over by the C.Q.M.S. to each platoon
sergeant, who passed them on to the section com-
mander, and he in turn distributed them among
his men in such silence and with such little traific
that if seemed like the provision of manna in the
wilderness. Af dawn pick-axe and spade were
laid aside, the rum ration was served out, and ail
men stood to, for dawn was the hour of their appre-
hension.

IDOLS OF THE CAVE 69

Two toiles behind them is a battery of our field
guns, and they bave with them an observing officer
who talks intimately fo his battery on the field
telephone in that laconic language of which gunners
are so fond, such as " Olle hundred. Twenty
minutes fo the left." Then the shells sing over
their heads with a pretty low trajectory, and the
Huns, beginning fo get annoyed, reply with their
heavy guns. There is a low whistle up aloft, a
noise like the fluttering of invisible wings, and the
next moment a cloud of black smoke rises over the
village of X-- ¥- , behiad the trenches. The
Smoke Prevention Society ought to turn their
attention to " Jack Johnsons "; their habits are
positively filthy.
These ttfings, however, disturbed them but little
and bored them a great deal. So they set fo work
fo make their particular rabbit-warren into a
Garden City. They held if on a repairing lease,
and were constantly filling sand-bags, but that was
merely fo prevent depreciation, and didn't count.
They first of all paved their trenches with bricks ;
there was no difficulty about the supply, as the
"Jack Johnsons" obligingly acted as house-
breakers in the village behind out lines, and bricks
could be had for the fetching. Then the orderly
transplanted some pansies and forger-me-hors from
the garden of a ruined bouse, and ruade a border

70 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

in front of the company commander's dug-out.
The communication trench had been carried across
a stream with some planks, and one day a man with
a gift for caræentry fixed up a balustrade out of the
arms of an apple-tree, which had been lopped off
by shell, and we had a rustic bridge. When May
came, water anemones opened their star-like petals
on the surface of the clear amber stream, the orchard
through which the communication trench had been
cut burst into blossom, the sticky clay walls of the
trench became hard as masonry in the sun, and
one morning a board appeared with the legend
" Hyde Park. Keep off the grass."
With these amenities their manners grew more
and more refined. I bave read somewhere, in one
of those dull collections of sweeping generalisations
that are called sociology, that each species of the
genus omo bas fo go through a normal sequence
of stages from barbarism fo civilisation, and that
we were once what the South Sea Islanders are now.
Which may be very true, but as regards that
particular primitive community I can testify that
their social evolution bas in three months gone
through ail the stages that occupy other com-
munities three thousand years. They began as
cave-dwellers and they end by occupying suburban
villas--the captain's dug-out bas a roof of corru-
gated iron, a window, a book-shelf, a table, and

IDOLS OF THE CAVE 71

even chairs, and his table manners have vastly
improved. They hve progressed from candles
stuck in bully-beef tins to electric reading-lamps.
Three months ago they were hairy men whose
beards did grow beneath their shoulders, and their
puttees were cemented with wet clay ; to-day they
are clean-shaven and their Burberrys might be
worn in Piccadilly. They slept with nothing
between them and the earth but a ground sheet
what rime they were hot, lil<e the elephant, sleeping
on their feet and propped against a trench wall.
Now they sleep on a bed with a wooden frame. I
have read somewhere that for a thousand years
Europe was unwashed. It may be so, but I know
that this particular tribal community progressed
rapidly through all such stages, from a bucket to a
shower-bath in billets, in about six weeks, and you
can see their men any day washing themselves to
the waist near the support trenches--men who
month or two ago had forgotten how to take their
clothes off. They are, in fact, a highly civilised
community. Some traces of their aboriginal state
they still retain, and they cherish their torero,
which is a bundle of black ribbons, rather like the
flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to the
back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe.
Also at night some of them develop the most
primitive of all instincts and crawl out on their

72 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

stomachs with a hand-grenade fo get as near as
may be to the enemy's listening posts and taste the
joy of killing. But by day they are as demure and
sleepy as the tortoiseshell car which has taken up
its quarters in the dug-out.
Such is their lire. But they are quietly preparing
fo get a move on. Some R.G.A. men have arrived
with four pretty toys from Vickers's, and one fine
monfing they are going to disturb those sand-bags
opposite them vith a battery of trench nortars ;
out field guns will draw a curtain of shrapnel in
front of the German support trenches, and then
they will satisfy their curiosity as to what is behind
those inscrutable sand-bags.

STOKES'S ACT

An offender when in rrest is not to ber arms excep by order
of his C.O. or in an emergency.--The King's Regulations.

I
TttE President of the Court and the Judge-Advocate
stood in private colloquy in one of the deep
traverse-like windows of the Hôtel de Ville over-
looking the Place. A heavy tain was falling from
a sullen sky, and the deserted square was a dancing
sea of agitation as the raindrops smote the little
pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a
multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind
swel)t across, and the rain rattled against the
windows. On the opposite side of the square one
of the bouses gaped curiously, with bedroom and
parlour exposed to view, as though some one had
snatched away the walls and laid the scene for one
of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters
pursue a complicated domestic intrigue on two
floors at once. That bouse, with its bed exposed to
73

74 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
the rain dripping from the open rafters, was indeed
both farcical and indecent ; it stood among its un-
scathed neighbours like a pariah. The rain was loud
and insistent, but not so loud as fo dull the distant
thunder of the guns. The intermittent gusts of wind
now and again interrupted its monotonous theme,
but the intervals were as brief as they were violent,
and in this polyphonic composition of rain, wind, and
guns, the hissing of the raindrops came and went as
in a fugue and with an inexpressible mournfulness.
Inside the room was a table covered with green
baize, on which were methodically arranged in
extended order a Bible, an inkstand, a sheaf of
paper, and a copy of the Manual of Military Law.
Behind the table were seven chairs, and to the right
and left of them stood two others. The seven
chairs were for the members of the court; the
chair on the extreme right was for the " prisoner's
friend," that on the left awaited the Judge-Advocate.
About rive yards in front of the table, in the centre
of an empty space, stood two more chairs turned
towards it. Otherwise the room was as bare as a
guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it
a certain dignity of its own as of a lace where
nothing was allowed to distract the mind from the
serious business in hand. At the door stood an
orderly with a red armlet bearing the imprint of
the letters " M.P." in black.

STOKES'S ACT 75

"I have read the summary pretty carefully,"
the Judge-Advocate was saying, " and it seems to
me a clear case. The charge is fully made out.
And yet the curious thing is, the fellow bas an
excellent record, I believe."
"That proves nothing," said the Colonel;
" l've had a fellow in my battalion round sleeping
at his post on sentry-go, a fellow I could bave
sworn by. And you know what the punishment
for that is. It's these night attacks; the men
must not sleep by night and some of them cannot
sleep by day, and there are limits to human nature.
We've no reserves to speak of as yet, and the men
are only relieved once in three weeks. Their feet
are always wet, and their circulation goes all wrong.
It's the puttees perhaps. And if your circulation
goes wrong you can't sleep when you want to, till
at last you sleep when you don't want to. Or else
your nerves go wrong, l've seen a man jump
like a rabbit when l've corne up behind him."
" Yes," mused the Judge-Advocate, "I know.
But hard cases make bad law."
" Yes, and bad law makes hard cases. Be-
tween you and me, out military law is a bit pre-
historic. You're a lawyer and know more about
it than I do. But isn't there something for civilians
called a First Offenders Act ? Bind 'em over to
corne up for judgment if called on--that kind of

76
thing. Gives a man another chance.
the soldier too ? "
" Yes," replied the Judge-Advocate,

LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
Why not

" there is.

I believe the War Office have been talldng about
adopting it for years. But this is not the rime of
day to nmke changes of that ldnd. Everybody's
worked off his head."
Eight officers had entered the room af intervals,
the subalterns a little ahead of their seniors in
point of rime, as is the first duty of a subaltern
whether on parade or af a "general," and, having
saluted the President in the window, they stood
conversing in low tones.
The Colonel suddenly glanced at Iris left wrist,
walked to the middle chair behind the table, and
taking his seat said, " Now, gentlemen, carry on,
please!" As they took their places the Colonel,
as President of the Court, ordered the prisoner to
be brought in. There was a shuffle of feet outside,
and a soldier without cap or belt or arms, and with
a sergeant's stripes upon his sleeve, was marched in
under a sergeant's escort. His face vas not un-
pleasing--the eyes well apart and direct in their
gaze, the forehead square, and the contours of the
mouth firm and well-cut. The two took their
places in front of the chair, and stood to attention.
The prisoner gazed fixedly af the letters " R.F.,"
which flanked the arms of the Republic on the

STOKES'S ACT 77

wall above the President's head, and stood as
motionless as on parade. A close observer, how-
ever, would bave noticed that his thumb and
forefinger plucked nervously af the seam of
trousers, and that his hands, though held at atten-
tion, were never quite still. The escort kept his
head covered.
Af the President's order fo " bring in the
evidence," the soldier on duty af the door vanished
fo retcrn with a squad of seven soldiers in charge
of a sergeant, who formed them up in two ranks
behind the prisoner and his escort. And they also
stood exceeding still.
The President read the order convcning the
court, and, as he recited each ofiïcer's naine and
regiment, the owner acknowledged if with " Here,
sir." When he came fo the prisoner's naine he
looked up and said, " Is that your naine and
number ? " The escort nudged the prisoner, who
recalled his attention from the wall with an im-
mense effort and said " Yes, sir."
" Captain Herbert appears as prosecutor and
takes his place." As the ritual prescribed by
the Red Book was religiously gone through, the
prisoner continued to stare at the wall above the
President's head, and the rain rattled against the
window-panes with intermittent violence. Having
finished his recital, the President rose, and with

78 LEAVES FROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK

him ail the members of the court rose also. He
took a Bible in his hand and faced the Judge-
Advocate, who exhorted him that he should " well
and truly try the accused before the court according
to the evidence," and that he would duly administer
justice according to the Army Act now in force,
without partiality, favour, or affection.. " So
help you God." As the colonel raised the book to
his lips he chanted the antiphon " So help me
God." And the Judge-Advocate proceeded to
svear the other members of the court, individually
or collectively, three subalterns who were jointly
and severally sworn holding the book together
with a quaint solemnity, as though they were
singing hymns at church out of a common hymn-
book. Then the Judge-Advocate was in turn
sworn by the President with his own peculiar oath
of office, and did faithfully and with great earnest-
ness promise that he would neither divulge the
sentence, nor disclose nor discover any votes or
opinions as to the saine. Which being done, and
the President having ordered the military police-
man to match out the evidence, the sergeant in
charge cried " Left turn. Quick march. Left
wheel," and the little cloud of witnesses vanished
through the doorway.
The President proceeded fo read the charge-
sheet :--

STOKES'S ACT 79
" T]e accused, No. , Sergeant Joln
Stokes, 2nd Battalion Downshire Regiment, is
c]targed with Misbehaving belote the enemy in
suc]t a manner as to show cowardice, in that he
at , on October 3rd, 1914, when on patrol,
and when under the enemy's tire, did run away."
All thîs rime the prisoncr had been studying
the wall, hîs eyes travelling from the right to the
left of the Irieze, and then from the left to the
right again. It was noticeab]e that his lips moved
s]ightly at each stage of this laborious visual
journey. " Forty-seven." " Forty-nine." " Forty-
eight." Stokes was immensely interested in that
compelling frieze. He counted and recounted the
number of figures in the Greek fret with painful
iteration. Apparently he was satisfied at last,
and then his eyes began to study the inkstand in
front of the President. The President seemed
an enormous distance away, but the inkstand very
near and very large, and he round himself wonder-
ing why it was round, why it wasn't square, or
hexagonal, or elliptic. Then he speculated whether
the ink was blue or black, or red, and why people
never used green or yellow. His brain had gone
through all the colours of the spectrum when a
pull af his sleeve by the escort attracted his atten-
tion. Apparently the Colonel was saying some-
thing to hîm.

80 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

" Do you plead guilty or not guilty ? "
The prisoner stared, but said nothing. The
escort again pulled lais sleeve as the Colonel re-
peated the question.
Stokes cleared his throat, and looking his inter-
locutor straight in the face, said, " Guilty, sir."
The members of the court ]ooked at each other, the
Colonel whispered to the Judge-Advocate, the
Judge-Advocate to the Prosecutor. The Judge-
Advocate turned to the prisoner, " Do you realise,"
he asked, hot unkind|y, "that if you plead ' Guilty '
you will hOt be able to call any evidence as
to extenuating circumstances ? " The prisoner
pondered for a moment; it seemed to him that
the Judge-Advocate's voice was alnmst persuasive.
" Well, l'll say ' hOt guilty,' sir."
He now saw the President quite close to him;
that monstrous înkstand had diminished to its
natural size. Nothing was to be heard beyond the
hissing of the rain but the scratching of the Judge-
Advocate's quill, as he slowly dictated to tdnmelf
the words " The--prisoner--pleads--' hOt guilty.' "
But why they had asked him a question which
could only adroit of one answer and then persuaded
him to give the wrong one, was a thing that both
puzzled and distressed John Stokes. Why all this
solemn ritual, he speculated painfully; he was
surely as good as dead already. He found himself

STOKES'S ACT 81

wondering whether the sentence of the Court would
be carried out in the presence of only the firing
party, or whether the whole of his battalion would
be paraded. And he Iell to wonderîng whether
he would be reported in the casualty lists as " killed
in action," or would it be " missng" And
would they send his wife his idcntity-disc, as they
did with those who had fallen honourably on the
field ? All these questions both interested and
perplexed him, but the proceedings of the Court
he regarded little, or not at all.
Meanwhile the 1)rosecutor was unfolding the
charge in a clear, even volte, neither extenuating
nor setting dowa aught in malice. In a court-
martial no 1)rosecutor ever "presses " the charge ;
he may even alleviate if. Which shows that
Assizes and Sessions bave something to learn from
courts-martial. The case was simple. 1)risoner
had gone out on the night of the 3rd with a patrol
commanded by a subaltern. An alarm was raised,
und he and the geater part of the patrol had run
back fo the treaches, leaving the oificer to stand
his ground aad to return later with his left arm
shattered by a German bullet.
Ail this Stokes remembered but too well, though
it seemed to hve happened an immense time ago.
He remembered how the subaltern had warned him
that the only thing to do when a Germaa tiare lit
G

82 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
up the night was to stand quite still. And he had
not stood still, for one of the most difflcult things
for a man to be]ieve is that to see suddenly is hot
the saine thing as being seen ; he had ducked, and
as he moved something seared his right cheek like
red-hot iron, and then--but why recall that shame-
ful moment ? A paradoxical psychologist in a
learned essay on "the Expression of Emotion "
bas argued gravely that the " expression " precedes
the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is
afraid but is afraid because he nns. Sergeant
Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to this
day he believes that it was his first start that was
his undoing. He hd begun to run without know-
ing why, until he knew why he ran--he was afraid.
Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army verna-
cular, " cold feet." But why he ran in the first
instance he did not know. It was true he hadn't
slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as
N.C.O. to go round every hall-bout during the
night to watch the men and stare at that itscrutable
field, and to post and relieve, had ruade him very
jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in
his arms the day belote that fatal night--he could
see the grey film glistening on his face like a clouded
glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But
what had that fo do with the charge ? Nothing
at all.

STOKES'S ACT 83

And while the prisoner pondered on these things
he was recalled by the voice of the President.
Did he wish to ask the witness any questions ?
His company commander had been giving evidence.
No; he had no questions to ask. And as each
witness was called, and sworn, and gave evidence,
all of which the Judge-Advocate repeated ]ike a
litany and" duly wrote down with his own hand--
the prisoner always returned the saine answer.
Now the prisoner's friend, a young ofiïcer who
had never played that rS/e before, and who was
both nervous and conscientious, had been studying
Rule 40 in the Red Book with furtive concentration.
What was he to do with a prisoner who elected
neither to make a statement nor to put questions
to witnesses, and who never gave him any lead ?
But he had there read something about calling
witnesses as to character, and, reading, recollected
that the company commander had glanced at the
prisoner with genuine commiseration. And so he
persuaded Stokes, after some par]ey, to call the
captain to give evidence as fo character. The
captain's words were few and weighty. The
prisoner, he testified, was one of the best N.C.O.'s
in his company, and, with the latitude which is
characteristic of court-martial proceedings, the
captain went on to tell of the testimony borne by
the dead subaltern to the excellent character of

84 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
John Stokes, and how the said John Stokes had
been greatly affected by the death of the subaltern.
And for the first rime John Stokes hung his head.
But beyond that and thc quivering of his eyelashes
he ruade no sign.
And it being a c]ear case the Judge-Advocate,
as a Judge-Advocate may do, elected hOt to sum
up, and the prisoner was taken to the place from
whence he came. And the Court proceeded to
consider their finding and sentence, which finding
and sentence, being signed by the President and
the Judge-Advocate, duly went its appointed way
to the Confirming Authority and there remained.
For the General in C"nief cornmand in the field was
hard pressed with other and weightier nmtters,
having reason to believe that he would have to
meet an attack of three Army Corps on a front of
eight mlles with only one Division. Which be]ief
turned out tobe true, and had for Sergeant John
Stokes momentous consequences, as you shall hear.

When John Stokes round lfimself once more in
charge of a platoon he was greatly puzzled. He
had been suddenly given back his arms and his
belt, which no prisoner, whether in close or open
arrest, is supposed to wear, and his guard had gone

STOKES'S ACT 85

with him. He knew nothing about Paragraph 482
of the King's Regulations, which contemplates
" emergencies "; still less did he know that an
emergency had arisen--such an emergency as will
cast lustre upon British arms fo the end of rime.
But that strange things were happening ahead he
knew full well, for his new unit was as oddly ruade
up as Ialstaff's army" gunners, cooks, and A.S.C.
drivers were all lumped togcther to make a com-
pany. Some carried their riflcs at the slope and
some at the trail, some had bayonets and some had
not, certain details from the Rifle Brigade marched
with their own quick trot, and some wore spurs.
Of one thing he was thankful his old battalion,
wherever they were, were not there. And the
company commander coming along and perceiving
the stripes on his sleeve, had, without further in-
quiry, put him in charge of a platoon, and there-
after he lost sight of his guard altogether.
He knew nothing of wheÆe he was. Few soldiers
at the Front ever do" they will be billeted in a
village for a week and not know so much as the
naine of it. But, that big business was afoot was
evident to him, for they were marching in column
of route almost at the double, under a faint moon
and in absolute silence--the word having gone
forth that there was tobe no smoking or talking
in the ranks.

86 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
Not a sound was fo be heard, excel)t the whisl)er
of the l)ol)lars and the traml) of the men's feet
ul)on the pavé. The road was so greasy with mud
that it might bave been beeswaxed, and Stokes's
boots, the nai]s of which had been worn down,
kel)t slil)l)ing as on a l)arquet floor. As they l)assed
through the mean little vi]lages hot a ]ight was to
be seen; even the estaminets were shut, but now
and again a dog barked mournful]y at its chain.
Once a whisl)ered command was given at the head
of the column, which halted so suddenly that the
men behind ahnost fell ul)on the men in front, and
then backed hastily; and these movements were
automatically communicated all down the column,
so that the sections of fours lurched like the trucks
of a train which is suddenly l)u]led up. At that
moment something flashed af the head of the
column, and Stokes suddenly caught a gliml)se of
the faces of the cal)tain and the subaltern in an
aureole of light lit by the needle-like rays of an
electric torch as they studied a ma l) and coml)ass.
But in no long rime their ears to]d them they
were nearing th.eir destination, even as a traveller
learns that he is nearing the sea. For t.hey heard
the crackle of musketry following ul)on the alterca-
tion of guns. All this l)assed as in a dream, and it
seemed little more than a few minutes belote
Sergeant Stokes, having l)assed through a culoEain

STOKES'S ACT 87

o[ shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some
shallow support trenches to which the remnants of
the regiment whom they were called upon to
stiffen had fallen back. It was a critical moment :
our first trenches were in the hands of the enemy,
and the whole line was sagging under the impact
of the German bordes. Somehow that trench had
tobe recaptured--to be recaptured before the
Germans had converted the parados into an in-
vulnerable parapet and had constructed a nest of
machine-guns to sweep with a crossfire the right
and left flanks, where our line curved in like a
gigantic horse-shoe. Of all this Sergeant Stokes
knew as litt]e as is usually given to one p]atoon to
know on a front of eight mlles.
As dawn broke and the stars paled, the word
came down the line, and, in a series of short rushes,
stooping somewhat in the attitude of a man who
is climbing a very steep hill, they moved forward
in extended order about eight or ten paces apart
carrying their rifles with bayonets fixed. A hail-
storm of lead greeted them, and all around him
Sergeant Stokes saw men falling, and as they fell
lying in strange attitudes and uncouth--some
stumbling (he had seen a hare shot in the back
dragging its legs in iust that way), others lying on
their faces and clutching the earth convulsively
as they drummed with their feet, and some very

88 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
still. Overhead there was a sobbing and whimper-
ing in the air. A little ahead to the left of him
a machine-gun was tap-tapping like a telegraph
instrument, and as it traversed the fie]d of thei1
advance the men wcnt down in swathes.
If only he could get to that gun ! On the right
a low hedge ran at right angles fo the German
trench, and making for it he took such little cover
as it afforded, and ran forward as he had never run
belote, hot even on that night of baneful menory.
His heart was thumping violently, there was a
prodigious "stitch" in his side; and something
warm was trickling down his forehead into his
eyes and hall blinding him, while in his ears the
bullets buzzed like a swarm of infuriated bees.
The next moment he was up against a little knot
of grey-coated figures with toy-]ike hehnets, he
heard a word that sounded like " Himmel," and he
had emptied his magazine and was savagely point-
ing with his bayonet, withdrawing, parrying, using
the butt, his knees, lfis feet. He suddenly felt very
faint ....
That is all that John Stokes remembers of the
first battle of Ypres. For the next thing he knew
was that a voice coming from an immense distance
--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist
when he was coming to after a spell of gas--was
saying something to him as he seemed to be rising,

STOKES'S ACT 89

rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable
depths, and then out of a nfist of darkness a window,
first opaque and then translucent, framed itself
before his eyes, and he was staring at the sun.
The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent
thing in woman--was saying, " Take this, sonny,"
and the air around him was impregnated with a
faint odour of iodoform. T]mn he knew--he was

in hospital.

III

" Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the
other as he sat in a certain room at Headquarters,
staring abstractedly at the list of Field Ambulances
and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A
very curious case. It reminds me of something
Smith said to me about bad law making hard cases.
It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were
held up all that time. If the C.-in-C. had con-
firmed them and the sentence had been promul-
gated, Stokes would now be doing rive years at
Woking. Whereas, there he is back with his old
battalion, hokling a D.C.M., and not reduced by
one stripe."
" Not so curious as you think, my friend,"
replied the other. " Why, I saw forty men under
a-rest marching through H.Q. the other day singing

90 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
--singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who
sings. Of course, field punishment doesn't matter
much; if is only a marrer of a few days and a
spell of fatigue duty. Though, nfind you, I don't
say that cleaning out latrines is't pretty hard
labour. But when it cornes to breaking a man
with a clean record because he bas fallen asleep out
of sheer weariness--well, what's the good of throw-
ing men like that on the scrap-heap ? Of course,
you must try them, and you must sentence them,
but you can give them another chance. You
know Stokes's case fairly ruade us sit up, and we
havcn't let the grass grow under out feet. Look.
ai that."
The Judge-Advocate read the blue document
that was pushed across the table: " An Act to
suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-
martial." He studied the sections and sub-sections
with the critical eye of a Parliamentary draughts-
man. " Yes," he said, after some pertinent emenda-
tions, "it'll do. But the title is too long for
common use at G.H.Q."
" Why ! " said the other with a certain paternal
sensitiveness, " what do you suggest ? "
"I suggest," said the Judge-Advocate pen-
sively,--" I suggest we call it Stokes's Act."
Now this story bas one merit--if it bas no other.

STOKES'S ACT 91

It is true. And as for the rest of the Act and its
preamble, and its sections and its sub-sections, are
they hot written in the Stature Book ? In the
Temple they call if 5 & 6 Geo. V. cap. 23. But
out there they call it " Stokes's Act."

THE FRONT

PEISONS of a rheumatic habit are said to apprehend
the approach of damp weather by certain presenti-
ments in their bones. So people of a nervous
temperament--like the writer--have premonitions
of the approach to " the Front" by a feeling of cold
feet. These are usually induced by the spectacle of
large and untimely cavities in the road, but they
may be accentuated, as hot infrequently happened,
by seeing the process of excavation itself--and
hearing it. The effect on the auditory nerves is
known as " k-r-rump," which is, phonetically
speaking, a fairly literal translation. The best
thing to do on such occasions is to obey the nursery
rhylne, and" open your mouth and shut your eyes."
The intake of air will relieve the pressure on your
ear-drums. I bave been told by one of our gunners
that the gentle German bas for years been experi-
menting in order to produce as " frightful" and
intimidating a sound by the explosion of his shells
92

THE FRONT 93
as possible. He has succeeded. Cases have been
known of men without a scratch laughing and crying
simultaneously after a too-close acquaintance with
the German hymnology of hate. The results are,
however, sometimes disappointing from the Gel"man
point of view, as in the case of the soldier who,
being spattered with dirt but otherwise untouched,
picked himself up, and remarked with profound
contempt, " The dirty swine ! "
The immediate approach to the trenches is
usually marked by what sailors call a " dodger,"
which is to say, a series of canvas s«'eens. These
do not conceal your legs, and if you are exception-
ally tall, they may hot conceal your head. Your
feet don't marrer, but if you are wise you ducl; your
head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate
plde in walking upright, and will laugh at you
most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in the com-
munication trench you are fairly sale from snipers,
but hot, of course, f'om shrapnel or tfigh-angle fi'e.
A communication trench which I visited, when
paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide
enough to admit a pony and cart, and, as it bas to
serve to bring up ration-pa'ties and stretcher-
bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as wide as is
consistent with its main purpose, wtfich is to protect
the approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire
as much as possible, the latter object being effected

94 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IqOTE-BOOK

by frequent "traversing." To reach the tire-
trenches is easy enough ; the difficulty is fo find
your way out of them. The main line of tire-
trenches bas a kind of looi-line behind if with
innumerable junctions and small depôts in the
shape of dug-outs, and at first sight the subaltern's
plan of the estate was as bewildering as a signalman's
map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is
complicated by frequent traverses--something after
the pattern of a Greek fret, whereas such French
trenches as I bave seen appeared fo prefer the
Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey
of these things makes it easy to understand the
important part played by the bomb and the hand-
grenade in trench warfare, for when you bave
" taken" part of a trench you never know whether
you are an occupier or merely a lodger until you
bave fully explored what is behnd the traverses
fo the right and left of you. The delivery of a
bomb serves as a very effective notice of ejectment.
The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of
earth commonly known as a parados. My servant,
whose vocabulary was limited, called if a paradox,
and was not very wide of the mark.
Somewhere behind the trenches at varying
distances are the batteries. The gunners affect
orchards and copses as affording good cover for
their guns, and if none are fo be found theyimprovise

THE FROIT 95

them. Hop-poles trailed with hops or cut saplings
will do very well. Usually there is a delectable
garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men.
Turf emplacements are constructed for the six
guns, and turfed dug-outs bouse the telephone-
operator and the gunners. The battery officers are
billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farm-
bouse, whose chief decorative feature is a midden-
heap ; in England it would promptly be the subiect
of a closing order by any Public Health authority.
There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun.
As a ship answers ber helm or an aeroplane its
controls, so does an eighteen-pounder respond to
every turn of ber elevating and traversing gear.
Watch a gunner laying his gun on a target he
cannot see; observe him switch the gun round
from the aiming point to the target ; remark the
way in which the sight clinometer registers the
angle of sight and the drum registers the range;
and then ask yourself whether the smartest ship
that ever sailed the high seas could be more docile
to a turn of the wheel. With perfect simplicity
did a man in the R.F.A. once say to me," We feel
towards our gun as a mother feels to ber child ;
we'd sooner lose ottr lives than our gun." In
that confession of faith you have the whole of the
gunner's creed.
The heavy guns are generally to be found in

96 LEAVES FROM A FIELD OTE-BOOK

splendid isolation; one such I visited and I mar-
velled at its appearance ; it resembled nothing so
mueh as the mottled trunk of a deeayed plane-tree
exeept for its girth. " luturist art," explained the
major depreeatingly as I stared at its daubed sur-
face; "it makes it unreeognisable." It eertainly
did. Close by were what looked at a distance like
a bed of copper cueumbers. " More gardening ? "
I asked. " Yes, market gardening," reilied the
major; " if we lay the shells like that with sand-
bags between them we prevent their igniting one
another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver
the goods."
A mlle or two from the battery headquarters
af X---- Y-- was the observing station. The
battery-maior and myself were accompanied thither
by a huge mastif[ who in civil lire was a dairyman
by profession and turned a churn, but had long
since attached himself to the mai or as orderly.
We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point
the mastif[ stopped dead and declined to corne any
further. I thought this churlish, and told him so,
but he merely wagged his rail. When we entered
the farmyard I understood. If was pitted with
shell-holes, and they were obviously of very recent
excavation. As a matter of fact the Huns sus-
pected that farm, and with good reason, and treated
it to intermittent " Hate." The mastiff therefore

THE FRONT 97
always waited for the battery-maior at what it
j udged, quite erroneously, to be a sale distance.
We clambered up into a loft by means of unre-
liable ladders. In the roof of the loft some tiles
had been removed, and leaning our arms on the
rafters we looked out. " You see that row of six
poplars over there ? " said the Major, pointing to
a place behind the German trenches. I recognised
them, for the saine six poplars I had seen through a
periscope in the trenches the day belote. "Well,
you see the roof of a bouse between the second and
third tree from the right ? Good!" He turned
to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft.
" Lay No. 2 on the register ! Report when ready ! "
The operator repeated the words confidentially
to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the
receiver answered " Ready ! " " Fire ! " I had
my eyes glued to the bouse, yet nothing seemed to
happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously
with my pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed ?
Even as I speculated there was a puf of smoke and
a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between
the poplars. We had delivered the goods.
If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a
battery mess the chances are that it will shelter a
field ambulance or else a company in billets. Field
ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migra-
tory in their habits, and change their positions

98 LEAVES FROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK
according as they are wanted. But a field ambu-
lance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a
unit of the R.A.M.C., with a major or a colonel in
charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S. of a division bas
three field ambulances under him, and when an
attack in force is projected he mobilises these three
units af forward dressing stations in the rear of the
trenches. They are a link between the aid-posts
in front and the collecting stations behind. From
the collecting stations the wounded are sent on fo
the clearing hospitals and thence fo the base. It
sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The most
eloquent compliment to its perfection was the
dreamy reminiscence of a soldier I met af the base :
" I got hit up af Wipers, sir ; something hit me in
the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard
somebody saying ' Drifl this,' and I round myself
in bed af Boulogne." Every field ambulance bas
an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he
usually is. Is the soldier sick, he visits him;
penitent, he shrives him ; dying, he comforts him.
One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two,
and a mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was
often longing for a shot af the Huns, and as often
imposing penances upon himself for such un-
ghostly desires. He round consolation in con-
fessing the Irishmen before they went into the
trenches : " The bhoys fight all the better for it,"

THE FRONT 99
he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his
flock ; the only doubts he had were about his own.
We all loved him.
There is one great difference between lire in
billets and life in the trenches. In billets the
soldier " gr0uses " often, in trenches never. This
may be partly due to a very proper sense of pro-
portion; it may also be due to the fact that, the
necessity for vigilance being relaxed and the
occasions for industry few, life in billets is apt to
become a great bore. The small Flenfish and
French towns offer few amenities ; in our mess we
found out principal recreation in reunions with
other fraternities at the pâtisserie or in an occasiinal
mount. Of pâtisseries that at Bethune is the best ;
that at Poperinghe the worst. Besicles, the former
bas a piano and a most pleasing Mademoiselle. In
the earlier stages of out occupation some of the
oicers at G.H.Q. did a little coursing and shooting,
but there was trouble about délits de c]tasse, and
now you are allowed to shoot nothing but big
gamenamely, Germans--although I bave heard
of an irresponsible Irishman in the trenches who
vaulted the parapet to bag a hare and, what is more
remarkable, returned with it. eedless to say,
his neighbours were Saxons. As for the men, their
opportunities of relaxation are more circumscribed.
Much depends on the bouse in which they are

100 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

billeted. If there is a baby, you can take the part
of mother's help ; one of the most engaging sights
I saw was a troop of our cavalrymen (they may
bave been the A.V.C.) riding through Armentières,
leading a string of remounts, each remount with a
laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can
wash. If you are hot fortunate enough to be
billeted at Bailleul, which bas the latest thing in
baths, enabling men to be baptized, like Charle-
magne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can
always find a pump. The spectacle of our men
stripped to the waist sousing each other with water
under the pump is a source of standing wonder to
the inhabitants. I am not sure whether they think
it indecent, or merely eccentric; perhaps both.
But then, as Anatole France bas gravely remarked,
a profound disinclination to wash is no proof of
chastity. Besides, as one of the D.M.S.'s encyclicals
bas reminded us, cleanliness of body is next to
orderliness of kit. If you take carbolic baths you
may, with God's grace, escape one or nmre of the
seven plagues of Flanders. These seven are lice,
flies, rats, rain, mud, smells, and " souvenirs."
The greatest of these is lice, for lice may mean
cerebro-meningitis. Owing to their unsportsman-
like and irritating habits they are usually called
" snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not en-
tifled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits

THE FRONT 10l

partake too much of espionage), and when captured
they receive a short shrift from an impassive man
with a hot iron in the asbestos drying-room.
But if may well happen that in spire of babies,
and baths, and brass bands, and footba]ls, and
boxing-gloves, and playing marb]es (the General
in command of one of out divisions told me he had
seen six Argyll and Sutherland sergeants p]aying
marbles with shrapnel bullets in some support
trenches), the men get bored. They are oftcn very
crowded, and crowding may develop fastidious
animosities. A man may tolerate shrapnel in the
trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his
neighbÇuç's table-manners in billets positively
intolerab]e. MeR may become " stale " or get
on each other's nerves. When a company com-
mander sees signs of this, he bas one very potent
prescription; he prescribes a good stiff route
match. It bas never been known fo rail. Many a
rime in the winter months, when out visiting
Divisional Headquarters, did I, in the shameful
luxury of my car, corne across a battalion slogging
along ruddy and cheerful in the mud, and singing
with a]most reproachful unction :

Last night I s-s-aw you, I s-saw you, you naughty boy !

Some one ought fo make an anthology (for private
circulation only) of the songs most affected by out

102 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
men, and also of the topographical Linlericks with
which they beguile the long hours in the trenches.
And if the English soldier is addicted to versifying
it may be pleaded in his behalf that, as Mommsen
apologetically remarks of Caesar, "they were weak
verses." Not always, however, I bave seen so,ne
unpublished verses by a young officer on the staff
of the late General Hubert Hamilton, a man
beloved by all who knew him, describing the burial
of lfis dead chier at night behind the filng-line,
which in their sombre and elegiac beauty are not
unworthy to tank with the classical lines on the
burial of Sir John Moore. And there is that magni-
ficent Hymn belote Battle by Captain Julian Grenfell,
surely one of the most moving things of its kind.
With such diversions do out men begtfile the
interminable hours. After ail it is the small
things that men resent in lire, not the big ones.
I once asked a French soldier over a game of
cards--in civil lire he was a plumber, whom we
shall meet again 1--whether he could get any
sleep in the trenches amid the infernal din of the
guns. " Oh, I slept pretty well on the whole,"
he explained nonchalantly, " mais mon voisin,
celui-là "---he pointed reproachfully to a comrade
who was imperturbably shuffling the pack--" il
fo,fflait si fort qu'il finissait par me dégoûter."
x Sec Chapter XV.

AT G.H.Q.

]3illet; de Logement..
Mme. Bonnrd, 131 rue Robert; le Frisson, loger les sous-dits,
savoir : un olïleior, ua zcu: ccic:, c'ax cmo. ; fournira le lit,,
pleo au feu et h 1 ehandello, eonformément; h loi du 3 juillet;, 1877.
Délivré h la bIirio,
le 31 m« jnvier, 1915.
Le bIiro --

THE Camp Commandant, who is a keeper of lodging-
bouses and an Inspector of Nuisances, had given
me a slip of paper on which vas inscribed the
address No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson and a
printed injunction fo the occupier fo know that
by these presents she was enjoined to provide me
with bed, tire, and lights. Armed vit, h this
billeting-paper and accompanied by my servant,
a private in the Suffolks, who was carrying my kit,
I knocked af the door of No. 131, affecting an
indifference to my reception which I did hot feel.
It seemed fo me that a rate-collector, presenting
The town described in this skctch is described hOt as if is, but s
it ws some months ago, and nothing is fo be inferred from the title
s to its present significmce.
103

104 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
a demand note, could have boasted a more graceful
errand. The door opened and an old lady in a
black sill gown inquired, " Qu'est-ce que vous
voulez, M'sieu' ? " I presented my billeting-paper
with a bow. Her waist was girt with a kind of
bombard]er's girdle from which hung a small
armoury of steel implements and leather scabbards :
scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a button-
hook, and other more or less intimidating things.
" Jeanne," she called in a quavering voice, and as
the bonne appeared, tying ber apron-strings, they
read the billeting-paper together, the one looldng
over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading
the words as a child reads, and as though she were
spealing fo herself. The paper shook in ber
tremulous hands, and I could see that she was
very old. If was obvious that my appearance in
that quiet household was as agitating as if was
unexpected. " Et votre ordonnance ? " she asled,
with a glance af my servant. " Non, il dort dans
la caserne." " Bien!" she sa.id, and with a smile
ruade me welcome.
If was soon evident that, my credentials being
once established, I was to be regarded as a
member of the household, and nothing would
satisfy Madame but that I should be a.ssured of
this. Having shown me my bedroom, with its
pompous bed draped with a tent of curtains, she

AT G.H.Q. 105
took me on a tour of ber ménage. I was conducted
into the kitchen, bright with copper pans and the
mai'mite--if was as sweet and clean as a dairy ;
the resources of the still-room were displayed to
me, and the confitures and spices were not more
remarkable thun the domestic pharmacy in which
the herbs of the field had been distilled by Madame's
own hands to yield their peculiur virtues, rue for
liver, culamint for cholera, plantain for the kidneys,
fennel for indigestion, elderberry for sore throt,
and dandelion for affections of the blood. Then
I was shown the oak presses full of linen white as
snow and laid up in lavender. This inventory
being concluded, I was presented with a key of the
front door to mark my admission into the freedom
of the bouse, and invited to tuke u glass of Bur-
gundy while Sykes was unpacking my kit upstairs.
Madame, it seemed, was a widow of eighty-five
years of age, without issue, and if ber eyes were dira
and ber natural force abated, ber teeth, a she
proudly told me, were ber own. She obviously
belonged to that 'entie" class who spend the even-
ing of their days in the quiet town which serves
as G.H.Q.--a town which bas a kind of faded
genti]ity, and which, behind its inscrutable bouse-
fronts, conceals a good deal of quiet opulence in
the marrer of old china, sflver, and oak. In ber
youth Madame had kept a Tension and had had

106 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
English demoisel|es among ber charges. She had
never been to England but she had heard of " Hyde
Park." Did I know it ? She received my assur-
aime with obvious gratificatioa as though it estab-
]ished a personal intimacy between us. " Avez-
vous tué des Al|emands ? " My negative answer
left ber disappointed but hopeful.
" La guerre, quand finira-t-elle ? " interjected
the bonne, who, I afterwards round, had a husband
at the war. Those interrogatories were to become
very fami|iar to me. Every evening, when I
returned from my visits to Divisional and Brigade
Headquarters, nfistress and servant always put me
through the saine catechism :
" Avez-vous tué des Allemands ? "
" La guerre, quand finira-t-elle ? "
The immense seriousness, not to say solicitude,
with which these inquiries were addressed to me
eventually led me into the most enterprising
mendacities. I killed a German every day, greatly
to Madame's satisfaction, and my total bag whea
I came away was sufficiently remarkable to be
worth a place in an oificial communiqué. I think it
gave Madame a feeling of security, and I hoped
Jeanne might consider that it appreciably acceler-
ated the end of the war. But " Guillaume," as
she always called him, was the principal obiect of
Madame's aversion, and she never mentioned the

AT G.H.Q. 107
naine of the All-Highest without a lethal gesture
as she drew ber tremulous hand across ber throat
and uttered the menacing words: " Couper la
gorge." She often uttered these maIedictions to
Sykes in the kitchen, as she watched him making
the toast for my breakfast, and I bave no doubt
that the " Oui, Madame," with which he invariabIy
assented, gave ber great satisfaction. Doubtless
it ruade ber feel that the heart of the British Army
was sound. Syles used to study furtive]y a sma]l
bool calIed F'ench, and ]ow to speak, it, but he
was very chary of speaking it, and seemed to
prefer a deaf-and-dumb language of his own. But
he was naturaIly a man of few words, and lhleg -
matic. He described the first battle of Ylres, in
which he had been " wownded," ia exactly tventy-
four words, and I could never get any more out of
him, though he became comlaratve]y volub]e on
the subiect of his wife at Norwich and the twins.
He was an East Ang]ian, and ruade four vowels
do duty for rive, his e's being always pronounced
as a's; he had done his seven years' " sarvice "
wth the colours, and was a reservist ; he was an
adnfirable servant--steady, cool, and honest. I
imagine he had never acted as servant to ny of
his regimental oificers, for on the first occasion
when he brought up my breakfast I was nota little
amused to observe that the top of the egg had been

108 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
carefully removed, the rolls sliced and buttered,
and the bread and butter cut into slender " fmgers,"
presumably for me to dip into the ochreous interior
of the egg; it reminded me of my nursery days.
Perhaps he was in the habit of doing it for the
twins. I gently weaned him from this tender
habit. He performed all his duties, such as making
my bed, or handing me a letter, with quick auto-
matic movements as though he were presenting
arms. Also his face, which was usually expression-
less as though his nfind were " at ease," had a way
of suddenly confing to " attention " when you
spoke to him. He had a curious and recondite
knowledge o[ the folk-lore of the British Army,
and entertained me at rimes with stories of
" Kruger's Own," " The White Shirts," " The
Dirty Twelfth," " The Holy Boys," " The Saucy
Seventh," having names for the regiments which
you will never fmd in the Army List. In short, he
was a survival and in a way a tragic survival. For
how many of the old Army are left ? I fear very
few, and many traditions may have perished with
them.
In his solicitude for me Sykes had jealous rivals
in Madame and Jeanne. Madame reserved to
herself as ber peculiar prerogative the deposit of
a hot-water " bottle " in my bed every night, such
a hot-water bottle as I bave never seen elsewhere.

AT G.H.Q. 109
It reminded me of nothing so much as the barrel
of one of the newer machine-guns, being a long
fluted cylinder of black steel. This was always
borne by Madame every night in ritualistic pro-
cession, Jeanne following with a silver candlcstick
and a night-light. The ceremony concluded with
a bow and " good-night," two words of which
Madame was inordinately loroud. She never at-
tained " good-morning," but she more than SUplo]ied
the deficiency of English SlOeech by the grace of
her French manners, always entring my room at
8 A.M. as I lay in bed, with the greeting, " Bon
matin, M'sieu', avez-vous bien dormi ? " t)erhalos
I looked, as I felt, embarrassed on the first occasion,
for she quickly added in French, " I ara old enough
to be your mother "--as indeed she was. She had
at once the resignation in repose and the agitation
in action of extreme old age. I bave seen ber
dozing in her chair in the salon, as I passed through
the hall, with her glarled hands extended on her
knees in iust that attitude of quiet waiting which
one associates with the well-knovn engraving in
which Death is figured as the coming of a friend.
But when she was on her feet she moved about
with a kind of aimless activity, Oloening drawers
and shutting them and Uoloening them and sloeak-
ing to herse]f the while, until Jeanne, catching
my luzzled expression, would whisler loudly in my

110 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
ear with a tolerant, smile, "Elle est très VIEILLE."
Jeanne had acquired a habit, of raising ber voice,
owing to Madame's deafness, which resulted in
whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those
stage asides which, by a curious convention, while
audible at the very back of the dress cicle, are
quite inaudible to the other characters on the
stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these
auricular confidences I know hot. If she did, I
doubt if she regarded them, for she was under the
illu.ion, common to very old people who live in
the society of a younger generation and were
mature adults when their compamons were merely
adolescent, that Jeanne, who had entered ber
serviie as a chi|d, had never grown up. If Madame
seemcd " très vieille " to Jeanne, it was indis-
iutable that Jeanne continued " très ieune " to
Madame. She was, indeed, firmly convinced that
she was looking after Jeanne, whereas in truth it
was Jeanne who looked after ber. :For Jeanne was
at leat thirty-five, with a husband at the war, in
virtue of whom she enioyed a separation allowance
of one franc a day, and a boy for whom she received
ton sous. Her husband, a pom:per, got nothing.
It lever occurred to ber to regard this provision as
inadequate. And she was as capable as she was
contented, ald sang at ber work.
It was often difficult to believe that this quiet

AT G.H.Q. lll
backwater was within an hour or two of the trenches.
G.H.Q. was indeed situated well back behind "the
Front," which, however precise the maps in the
newspapers may affect to make it, is, like the
Equator of our school-books, a more or less
" imaginary line drawn across the earth's surface."
Imaginary becase if a line be, as we were taught
with painful reiteration, length without breadth,
then "the Front " is nota line at all, much ]ess a
straight line in the sense of the shortest distance
between two points. It is not straight, for it
curves and sags and bas its salients and re-entrant
angles ; and itis hot a line, for it has breadth as wel]
as length. Broadly speaking, the Front extends
back to the H.Q. of the armies (to say nothing of
the H.Q. of corps, divisions, and brigadcs), and
thence to G.H.Q. itse]f, which may be regarded as
beiug "the Back of the Front," to vary a c]assical
expression of Putsch. The Front is, indeed, to be
visualised hot as a straight line but as a fully
opened fan. the periphery of which is the tire-
trenches, the ribs the lines of communication, and
the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters.
When we extend out Front southwards and take
over the French trenches we just expand out fan a
little more. When we come fo make a general
advance all a]ong he periphery, the whole fan will
be thrust forward, and the knuckle with it, for the

112 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
relative distances of General Headquarters, and
minor Headquartes, from this peçiphery and from
one another ae a more or less constant quantity,
being determined by such fixed considerations as
the range of modern guns and the mobility of
transport.
From G.H.Q., the brain of the Army, the
volitional centre of the whole organism, radiate
the sensory and motor nerves by which impressions
af the Front are registered and plans for action
transmitted. It is the home of the Staff, not of
the Armies, and contains more " brass bats " than
all the other Headquarters put together. Beyond
the " details " in the barracks it contains few of
the tank and file, and ifs big square betrays ]ittle
of tire crowded animation of the towns nearer the
fighting line, with their great parks of armoured
cars, motor lorries, and ammmition waggons, their
filter-cars, and their little clusters and eddies of
men resting in billets. The Military Police on
ioint-duty bave a comparatively quiet rime,
although despatch-riders are, of course, for ever
whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the
Front. If is as full of departmental offices as
Whitehall itself--some 153 of them to be exact--
each one indicated by a combination of initial
letters, for staff ofiîcers are men of few words
and cogent, and it saves time fo say " O."

AT G.H.Q. 3
when you mean Operations, " I." for Intelligence,
"A.G." for Adjutant-General; a fashion which
is faithfully followed at the other H.Q., for
D.A.A.Q.M.G. saves an enormous number of
polysyllables.
Hence te proxinfit of hostlites bas left but little outward and visible sign upon the ancient twn. The tadesmen bave, if is tue, ruade some
concessions f out presence, and one remarks the
inviting legends " Top-hole Tea" in the windows
of a pâtisserie and " High ]ife" over the shop of a
tailor. Four of us ruade a private arrangement wiçh a boExom housewife, whereby, in return for
four francs per head a day and te pooling of out
rations, she tmdertook to provide us with hmch
and dinner, tereby establishing a " Mess" of out
own. Many such fraternities tere were in the
absence of a regular regimentl mess. Butthese
arrangements were more private than military,
te only obligaton on the ordinary househo]der
being te furnishing of billets. Occasionally the
cobbled street became te scene of an lmwonted
animaton when young French recruit celebratd
their call to te colours by marching down the
streets arn»in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad
of sullen German prisoners were marched up them
on their way f the prison, within which they
vanished amid te imprecations of the crowd.

114 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

One such squad I saw arriving in a motor lorry,
from the tailboard of which they jumped down fo
enter the gares, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of
about thirteen stones, ]anded heavily in his an»
munition boots from a height of about rive feet on
the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter
winced and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond
that gave no sign; I wondered whether, had the
positions been reversed and t.he scene laid across
the Rhine, a German guard would bave exhibited
a silràlar to]erance. I doubt it.
The town itself seemed to be living on its past,
for indubitably it had seen better days. An ancient
fotmdation of the Jesuits now converted into the
Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a
church whose huge nave had been secularised to
the uses of motor transport, a museum which served
to incarcerate the German prisoners, ail testified
to the vanished greatness, as did also the private
mansions, which preserved a kind of mystery
behind their high-walled gardens and massive
double doors. There was one such which I never
passed at night without thinking of the Sieur de
Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tor-
tuous, and secretive, with many blind alleys and
dark closes, and it required no great effort of the
imagination--especially at night when hot a light
showed--to call to mind the ambuscades and

AT G.H.Q. ll5
adventures with the watch which they must have
witnessed some centuries belote. The very names
of the streets--such as the Rue d'Arbalte--held in
them something of romance, To find one's billet
af night was like a gaine of blind man's buff, and
one felt rather than saw one's way. Nota soul
was fo be seen, for the whole town was under droit
de siège, and the civi]ian inhabitants had to be
within doors by nine o'clock, while all the entrances
and exits to and from the town were guarded by
double sentries night and day. Certain dark
doorways also secreted a so]itary sentry, and my
own office boasted a corporal's guard--presumably
because the Field-Cashier had Iris rooms on the
first floor. The sanitation was tru]y medieval;
on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters
formed an open sewer into which housewives
emptied their slop-pails every morning, while
mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the
precincts were hOt without a certain beauty, and
every side of the town was approached through an
avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the
sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these
roads presenting just that aspect of a cuivrent of
slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to the
lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that
little classic of De Vigny's lown to literature as
Laurette.

116 LEAVES FROM A FIELD bOTE-BOOK
Such was the country and such the town in
which we were billeted. Now upon a morning in
February it happened that I was smoking a cigar-
ette in the litt, le garden, bordered by hedges of
box, while waiting for my car, and as I waited I
watched Jeanne, with ber sleeves rolled up to ber
elbows and a clothes-peg in her mouth, busy over
the wash-tub. "Vous êtes une blanchisseuse,
auiourd'hui ? " I remarked. She corrected me.
" Non, m'sieu', une lessiveuse." " Une lessi-
yeuse ? " For answer Jeanne pointed fo a linen-
bag wlfich was steeping in the tub. The linen-bag
contained the ashes of the beech-tree ; if is a way
of wshing that they bave in some parts of France,
and very cleansing. To specialise thus is lessiver.
As we talked in this desultory fashion I let fall a
word concerning a iourney I was about fo under-
take to the French lines, a journey that would take
me over the battlefield of the Marne. " La Marne !
Hélas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped
ber eyes with the corner of her apron. " But it
was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes,
but Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the
battle of the Marne. She pulled out of her bosom
a frayed lette, bleoehed, stained, and perforated
with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed
it to me. I could make nothing of it. She handed
me another letter. " Son camarade," she ex-

AT G.H.Q. 117

plained, and no longer attempted to hide ber tears.
And this wus what I 1»ad :
Le 10 sept., 1914.
CgÈRE MA)AE---Comme i'étais très bon camarade avec
votre frère Paul Duval et que le malheur vient de lui arriveri
le tient £ vous le faire savoir, car peut-être vous serai dans
l'inquiétude de pas recevoir de ces nouvelles et de ne pas
savoir où il est. Je vous dirai que ]e vient de lui donner du
papier £ lettre et une enveloppe pour vous écrire et aussit6t
la lettre finit il l'a mis dans son képi pour vous l'envoyé le plus
vite possible et malheureusement un obus est arriver, et il £
etait tué. Heureusement nous étions trois près de l'un l'autre
et il n'y a eut de lui de touché. Je vous envoi la petite lettre
qu'il venait de vous faire, et en même tant vous verrez les
trous que les éclats d'obus l'on attrapper. Recevez de moi
chère madame mes sincères salutations.
JULES CoPPÉE.
Tambour au 151 Régiment d'Inf.,
2 e Cie 426 Division, Secteur postale 56.
Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had
a certain noble simplicity. " Très gentil," I re-
marked us I returned it to Jeanne, and thought the
matter af an end. But Jeanne had hot done, and,
with much circumlocution and many hesitations,
she at last preferred a simple request. I was
going fo visit the battlefield of the Marne--yes .
I assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur
would visit Paul's grave, and perhaps if he round
it he would take a photograph. " Why, certain]y,"
I said, little knowing what I promised. But the
request was to bave a strange sequel, as you shall
hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the door.
As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell,

ll8 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

Madame and Jeanne stood on the doorstep fo
wish me bon voyage. " J'espère que vous tuerez
plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering
vome. " Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried
Jeanne wistfully. I waved my hand, and had
soon left rue Robert le Frisson far behind me.

XII

MORT POUR LA PATRIE

Two days later a French staff-officer greeted me in
the vestibule of the HStel de Crillon at Paris. If
was the Comte de G-- ; he had been deputed by
the Ministry of War to act as my escort on my tour
of the French lines. He proved tobe a charming
companion. He was a magnificent figure of a man
six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of
dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard,
embroidered in gold with a design of forked
lightning, which is the prerogative of the staff.
A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy
furs awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde.
It was a sumptuous car, upholstered in green corded
silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying on its
panels the motto Quand même, and the monogram
of a famous actress. It had been requisitioned.
The air was cold--there had been frost overnight
--but the sun was brilliant. As we threaded our
way through Paris and its suburbs, a Paris chastened
119

1.'20 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK

and resolute, I caught a glimpse of the barges upon
the Seine with the women standing on the convex
hatches hanging out clothes to dry--and I thought
of Daudet and La Belle Nivernaise. As more and
yet more men are called up to the colours women
take their place, until the bouses of business are
like nunneries--with a few aged Fathers Superior.
Having had business the day before at the Société
Générale, I had had occasion to reflect on these
things as I stood in the counting-house watching
some fifty girl typists at work, the room resounding
with the tap-tap of their machines, as though fifty
thrushes were breaking snails upon a stone. A
wizened little clerk, verging upon superannuation,
had beguiled my rime of waiting with talk of the
war: how his wife from Picardy had lost fifteen
of ber parents, while of four painters and paper-
hangers who had started doing up his fiat on the
2nd of July only onedisabled--had returned to
finish the iob; the test were dead. Musing on
these things as we drove through the Bois de
Vincennes I understood the resolution of our.
Allies and the significance of the things my com-
panion pointed out to me as we drove : here a row
of trees felled to provide a field of tire, there a gun
emplacement, and reserve trenches all the way
from Paris to Soissons. They are leaving nothing
fo chance.

MORT POUR LA PATRIE 121
Out iourney was uneventful until we reached
Coulommiers, where we had certain inquiries to
make which bave nothing to do with this narrative.
We interviewed the maire in his parlour at the
Hôtel de Vi|le, a little man, and spirited, who had
hung on at his post during the German occupation,
and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen
against the lust and rapine of the Huns. Under
such circumstances the office of municipal magis-
trate is no sinecure. Itis, in fact, a position of
deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punish-
ment, peculiar to the German stars, an innocent
man is held liable with his lire for the aults of his
fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the
enemy also. Doubtless it appeals to their sinister
sense of humour, when two of their own men get
drunk and shoot atone another, to execute a French
citizen by way of punishment. It happened that
during the German occupation of Coulommiers the
gas supply gave out. The maire was inormed by
a choleric commandant that unless gas were forth-
coming in twenty-four hours he would be shot.
The little man replied quietly: " Mëteindre, ce
n'est pas allumer le gaz." This i|luminating re-
mark appears to bave penetrated the dark places
of the commandant's mind, and although the gas-
iets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were
all called up to the colours) the maire was hOt

122 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
molested. It was here that we heard a shameful
story (for the truth of which I will hot vouch) of
a certain straggler from out army, a ttighlander,
who tarried in amorous dalliance and was betrayed
by his enchantress fo the Huns, who, having de-
prived him of everything but his kilt, led him
mounted upon a horse in Bacchanalian procession
round the town. As to what became of him after-
wards nothing was known, but the worst was sus-
pected. The Huns bave a short way and bloody
with British stragglers and despatch-riders and
patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his
weakness with a cruel death.
Af Coulommiers we turned northwards on the
road fo La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little
town on the banks of the Marne, approached by an
avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are
visible for many mi]es. Here we had lunch at the
inn--a dish of perch caught that morning in the
waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-iheese, for
which La Ferté is justly famous, and a light wine of
amber hue and excellent vintage. The landlord's
wife waited on us with ber own hands, and as she
waited talked briskly of the German occupation
of the town. The Huns, it appeared, had been too
husfled by the Allies to do much frightfulness
beyond the usual looting, but they had imflicted
enormous losses on the pigs of La Ferté. It re-

MORT POUR LA PATRIE 123
minded me of the satirical headline in a Paris
newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great
slaughter of pigs in Germany owing fo the shortage
of rnaize--" Les Bosches s'entregorgent ! " Madame
told us with much spirit how she had saved ber own
pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a
far more succulent pig was fo be found higher up
the street, and while the Bosches went looking for
their victim she had hidden ber own in the cellar.
Her pig is now a local celebrity. Peop|e corne frorn
afar fo see the pig which escaped the Bosches.
For the pigs whorn the Bosches love are apt fo die
young. But what had irnpressed ber most was the
treatrnent rneted out by a Gerrnan ofiïcer, a certain
von Biilow, who was quartered af the inn, fo one
of his rnen. The soldier had been ordered to stick
up a lantern outside the oflïcer's quarters, and
had been either slow or forgetful. Von Biilow
knocked hirn down, and then, as he lay prostrate,
jurnped upon hirn, kicked hirn, and beat hirn
about the head and face with sabre and riding-
whip. The soldier lay still and uttered hot a
cry. Madame shuddered af the recollection,
" Épouvantable ! "
We crossed the place and called on a prominent
burgess. He received us hospitably. In the hall
of his bouse was a Uh]an's lance with drooping
pennon which excited out curiosity. How had it

124 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
corne here ? He was only too pleased to explain.
He had taken it from a marauding Uhlan with whom
he had engaged in single combat, strangling him
with his own hands--so !
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him, thus!
He held out a pair of large fat hands of the
consistency of clay ; he was of a full habit and there
were pouches under his eyes. In England he would
have been a small tradesman, with strong views
on total abstinence, accustomed fo a diet of high
tea, and honoured as the lire-long superintendent
of a Sunday school. I was more astonished than
sceptical, but perhaps, as the Comte suggested in
a whisper, the Uhlan was drunk. Here, too, we
heard tales of loot, especially among ladies' ward-
robes. It is a curious lact that there is nothing
the Hun loves so much as women's undercloth-
ing. As fo what happens when he gets hold of
the lingerie many scandalous stories are told,
and none more scandalous than the one which
appeared in the whimsical pages of La Vie
Parisienne. But that is, most emphatical]y,
quite another story.
From La Ferté we drove on fo Lizy, where the
gendarme, wiping his mouth as he came hurriedly
from the inn, told us a harrowing tale, and then to
Barcy, where the naire, though busy with a pitch-

MORT POUR LA PATRIE
fork upon a manure heap, received us with municipal
gravity. We were now nearing the battlefield of
the Marne, and here and there along the roadside
the trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe,
were shivered as though by lightning. Yet nothing
could have been more peaceful than the pastoral
beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons
full of roots, drawn by a team of white oxen under
the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing machine
was being fed by a knot of old men and young
women from an oat-rick. The only hints of the
cloud on the horizon were the occasional passage of
a convoy and the notable absence of young men.
As we raced along, the furrows, running af right
angles to the road, seemed tobe eddying away
from us in pleats and curves, and this illusion of
a stationary car in a whirling landscape was fortified
by the contours of the countryside, which were
those of a great plain, great as any sea, stretching
away fo a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly
the car slowed down af a signal from my con»
panion and stopped. We got out. qot a sound
was fo be heard except the mournful hum of the
distant threshing machine, but a peculiar clicking,
like the halliard of a flagstaff in a breeze, suddenly
caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I
looked around me I saw innumerable little tricolour
flags fluttering against small wooden staves. It

126 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

was the battlefield of the Marne, the scene of that
immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted
the sons of France to conquer or die where they
stood. As he had commanded, so had they done.
With an emotion too deep for words we each con-
templated these plaintive memorials of the heroes
who lay where they fell. Our orderly wept and
ruade no effort to hide his tears. I thought of
Jeanne's wistful petition, but my heart sank, for
these graves were tobe numbered not by hundreds
but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible ! "
said the Comte, to whom I had communicated my
quest. A sudden cry from the orderly, who was
moving from grave to grave in a close scrutiny of
the inscriptions, arrested us. He was standing by
a wooden cross, hall draped by a tattered blue
coat and covered with wreaths of withered myrtle.
A képi pierced vith holes lay upon the grave.
And sure enough, by some miracle of coincidence,
On a wooden slab we read these

he had round it.
words :

AUL DUVAL,
151 e Rég. d'Inf.
6 sept. 1914
MORT POUR LA PATRIE.

The sun was fast declining over the chalk hills
and it grew bitter cold. I unfolded my camera,
stepped back eight paces, and pressed the trigger.
We clambered back into the car and resumed the

MORT POUR LA PATRIE 127

road to Meux. As I looked over my shoulder the
lst things I saw in the enfolding twilight were
those little flags still fluttering vistfully in the
wind.

XIII

MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS

WE lay the night at Meaux. It was a town which
breathed the enchantments of the Middle Ages and
had for me the intimacy of a personal reminiscence.
Sixteen years earlier, when reading for a prize essay
at Oxford, I had studied the troubled rimes of
Étienne Marcel in the treasures of the Bibliothèque
de l'Ecole des Chartes, and I knew every kilometre
of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux,
Compiègne, Senlis--they called to my mind dreamy
hours in the dira religious light of muniment-rooms
and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart.
Little did I think when I read those belligerent
chronicles in the sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian
and the Bibliothèque Nationale, tracing out the
warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the
Dauphin and the Provost of the Merchants, that
the day would corne when I would be traversing
these very fields engaged in detective enterprises
upon the footprints of contemporary armies. To
128

MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS 129

compare the variae lectiones of two manuscripts
concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish is good,
it bas all the excitement of the chase; but tobe
collating the field note-book of u living Hun with
the dossier of a contemporary Justice de Paix, this
is better. It has all the contact of reality and the
breathless ioy of the hue and cry. And, after all,
were things so very different ? Generations corne
and go, dynasties rise and fall, but the earth en-
dureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and
valleys that bave witnessed the devastation of the
Hun have also seen the ravages of the mercenaries
and free companies of the Middle Age. As I lay
in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the
pages of my pocket volume of M. Zeller's Histoire
de France racontée par les contemporains, and hit
on the " Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marchès,"
ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of
widows' bouses. And as I read, it seemed as though
I were back in the department du Contentieux of
the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages
of a German ocer's field note-book. For thus
speaks Aimerigot Marchès in the delectable pages
of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern
French :

There is no rime, diversion, nor glory in this world like that
of the profession of arms and making war in the way we have.
tow blithe weïe we when we rode forth at hazard and hit on

130 LEAVES FROM A FIELD lqOTE-BOOK

a rich abbé, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules
from Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne
laden with the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of
Lendit, or spices from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and
Alexandria ! Ail was ours or was to ransom at out sweet will.
Every day we had more money. The peasants of Auvergne
and Limousin provisioned us and brought to out camp corn
and meal, and baked bread, hay for the horses and straw for
their litter, good wines, oxen, and fine fat sheep, chicken,
and poultry. We carried ourselves like kings and were
caparisoned as they, and when we rode forth the whole country
trembled belote us. Par ma foi, cette vie était bonne et belle.
Is hOt that your very Hun ? He is a true re-
version to type. Only, whereas among the French
he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans
he is a product of the kultured present. And to
turn froln the field note-book of the German soldier
with ifs swaggering tale of loot, lust, and maudlin
cups, its memoranda of stolen toys for Felix and of
ravished lingerie for Bertha, ail viewed in the rosy
light of the writer's egotism as a laudable enter-
prise, to the plain depositions of the Justice de
Paix, and see the reverse side of the picture with ifs
tale of ruined bornes and untilled fields, was just
such an experience as it had been to turn from the
glittering pages of Froissart to the sombre story of
Jean de Venette, 1 a monk of Compiègne, Little
Brother of the Poor and chronicler of his rimes, as
he pondered on these things in the scriptorium :

leputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume
de angis. See M. Lacabane in the yBiblioIhè9ue de l'cole des Cltrtes
(1 e série), t. iii.

MEAUX AND SOME BRIGADS 131
In this year 1358, the vines, source of that beneficent liquor
whicb $laddens the heurt of man, were no longer cultivated ;
the fields were nether tilled nor sown; the oxen and he
sheep went no longer fo the pasture. The churches "nd
bouses, falling into decay, presented everywhere traces of
devouring flames or sombre ruins and smotfldering. The eye
was no longer gladdened as before with the sigh of green
meadows and yellowing harvests, but rather affiicted by the
spect of briers nd thistles, which clustered everywhere.
The church bells no longer rang ioyously to call the faithful
to the divine offices, but only to give the alarm to the peasants
at the approach of the enemy and the signal for flight.
As it was in the days of Jean de Venette, soit
is now. I thought of that mournful passage as I
wandered next day a.mong the ruins of Choisy-au-
Bac, a village not twenty toiles from the place
where Jean de Venette was born, and saw old
women cowering among the ruins of their burnt-out
homes.
If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century
returned to Meaux to-day he would bave little
difficulty in finding his way about the city, for
though she must bave aged perceptibly she can
bave changed but little. The timbered mills on
wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of
the river like so many ships, just as they stood in
the twelfth century, and the cathedral with its
Gothic portals and great rose-window--though it
bas grown in stature and added here and there a
touch of the flamboyant in its tracery, even as a
man will break out into insurgent adventures when

132 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
he feels the first chill of age--is stamped with the
characters of the fourteenth century. And I think
Jean de Venette would find a congenial spirit in
my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for like
Jean he is a loyer of the lOOr. If was Monsignor
Marbot who went in lrocession fo the battle-
field of the Marne with crucifix and banner and
whit, e-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of
singular beauty consecrated those stricken fields
with the last rites of. the Church. And if was
Monsignor Marbot who remained at ]ris post all
through the German occupation to protect his flock
wlfile the Hun roamed over his diocese like a beast
of lrey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of
shooting a nai'e, and bas been known to murder
many an obscure village lriest, he fights shy of
killing a bishol ; there might be trouble af the
Holy See. Many a moving tale did the good
bishol tell me as we sat in his little house--surely
the most meagre and ascetic of eliSColal palaces,
in wlfich there was nothing more SUmltUOUS than
his cherry and scarlet soutane and lfis biretta.
We lay the night at an inn that must bave been
at one rime a seigneurial mansion, for it had a
noble courtyard. I was shown fo a room, and,
having unlacked my valise, I turned on the taps,
but no water issued; I alllied a match fo the
gas-iet, but no flame alleared ; I tried fo open the

MEAUX AND SOME BRIGANDS 133

window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell ; that
at least responded. A maid appeared; I pointed
to the taps and ruade demonstrations with the gas-
jet. To all of which she replied quite simply,
" Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard
that answer belote. With such a plea of confession
and avoidance had the boots at the Hôtel de la
Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call
me in the morning, and thus also had the aged
waiter at the Metropole disposed of a flagrant error
in my bill. But this rime it was convincing enough ;
gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters
were all at the war, and in the town of Meaux water
was carried in pitchers and light was purchased at
the chandler's. In France you get used to these
things and imitate with a good grace the calm
stoicism of your Allies. For, after all, the enemy
was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I
could hear the thunder of their guns.

XIV

THE CONCIERGE AT SEKLIS

WE rose early the next day, and, having paid out
reckoning, were away betimes, for we were to visit
the French lines and wished also to pay a flying
visit to Senlis. As we left Crépy-en-Valois we
entered the Forest of Compiègue, a forest of noble
beeches which rose tall and straight and grey like
the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting
overhead in an intricate vaulting through which
we saw the winter sun in a sapphire sky. We met
two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs
and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-
bands. They were like figures out of a canvas of
Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when men
went into action with all the pomp and circum-
stance of war, drums beating, colours flying,
plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the
silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past ; to-day
no bugle sounds the charge, and even the company
commander's whistle bas given way fo certain
134

THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS 135
sort words for which the German mocking-bird
will seek in vain in out Infantry Manual. As for
cuirass and helmet, the range of modern guns and
rifles has ruade them a little too ingenuous. And,
sure enough, as we drove into Compiègne we fotmd
a squadron of dragoons as sombre as out own, in
their mouse-coloured couvre-casques and cavalry
cloaks, though their lances glinted in the sm.
Here all was animation. Informal conventicles of
Staff oflïcers, with whom we exchanged greetings,
stood about the square in front of the exquisite
Hôtel de Ville, with its high-pitched roof pierced
with dormer-windows and crowned with many
pinnacles. qorth and east of Compiègne lie the
zones of the respective armies, all linked up by
telephone, and here we had to exchange our passes,
for even a Staff oflïcer may not enter one zone
with a pass appropriate to another. But our first
obiective was Senlis, which lay to the south of us
between Compiègne and Paris.
The sua was high in the heavens as we turned
south-west, and, keeping to the left bank of the
river, skirted the forest. Faint premon]tious of
spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon
the hazels, primroses ruade patches of sulphur in
the woods, and one almost expected to see the
blaclthorn in blossom. Sitver birches gleamed
against the purple haze of the more distant wood-

136 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

lands. The road tan straight as an arrow. As we
neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence
of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts
came and went, neither did any wayfarer appeal
lot a wisp of smoke arose from the chinmeys above
the screen of trees. We passed up a double avenue
of elms--iust such an avenue as that along which
M. Bcrgeret discussed metaphysics and theology
with the Abbé Lantaigne--yet not a sou] was to
be seen upon the t'ottoi'. A brooding silence
hung over the little town, a silence so deep as fo
be almost menacing. As we entered the main
street I encountered a spectacle which froze my
heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminish-
ing perspective of the road were burnt-out bornes,
bouses which once were gay with clematis and
wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the
rose. And now all that remained were trampled
flower-beds, tangled creepers, blackened walls,
calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen
masonry. And this was Senlis! Senlis which
had been fo the department of the Oise as the
apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautifu]
as porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as
sweet. As I looked upon these desecrated bornes
it seemed fo me that the very stones cried out.
In all this desolation we looked in vain for any
signs of life. If was hot until we sought out the

THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS 137
bouse of a captaàn of dragoons, a friend of my
companion the Comte, that we round a httman
being in these solitudes. The bouse was, indeed,
a melancholy ruin, but by the gare was a lodge,
and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man
and middle-aged, and as he spoke he trembled
with a continual agitation of body as though he
were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little
bouse, the walls of which were blackened as with
tire and pierced in many places with the impact
of bullets. And this was his tale.
One afternoon early in September--it was the
second day of the month, he remembered if becanse
there had been an tmtimely frost over night--he
heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of
the town, and a column of grey-coated men suddenly
appeared in the street. An officer blew a whistle,
and, as some of them broke through the gares of
the mansion, the concierge fled across the lawn
with bullets buzzing about his ears and shouts of
laughte pursuing him as he ran. In and out
among the elms he doubled like a frightened hare,
the bullets zip-zipping against the tree-trunks, ti]l
he crawled into a disused culver and lay there
panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he
heard the crash of furniture, more shots, and the
loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. And then a
crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And

138 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

after that silence. At dusk he crawled forth from
his culvert, trembling, his hands and face all
mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with
thistles ; he fou_ad his master's bouse a smouldeing
ruin, and a thick pall of smoke lay over çhe town
of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked
and then was still. About the hour of nine in the
evening the concierge heard voices in disputation
outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid himself
among the shrubberies more men entered, and,
being dissatisfied with their work, threw hand-
grenades into the masion and applied a lighted
torch to the concierge's humble dwe]ling. They
were very merry and sang lustily--the concierge
thought they had bee drinking ; they sang thus,
"comme ça]" and the concierge mournfully
hummed a ttme, a ttme he had never heard before,
but which he would remember all his life. I
recognised it. It was Luther's hymn"

Ein' leste Burg ist unser Gott.

Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile çhe
maire, M. Odent, a good man and greatly beloved,
had been arrested at the Hôtel de Ville. His
secretary proposed to call his deputies. " No,
no," replied the maire tranquilly, " one victim is
enough." He was dragged along the streets to
the suburb of Chammont, the headquarters of von

THE CONCIERGE AT SEI'qLIS 139

Kluck, and his guards buffeted him and spat upon
him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned
fo death. He took his companions in captivity
by the hand, embraced them--" très alignement,"
the concierge had been to]d--handed them his
papers, and bade them adieu. Two minutes later
he was shot, and his body thrown into a shallow
trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge
had seen if the next day ; the feet were protruding.
Ail tlfis the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic
voice, and always as he told Iris body twitched and
the muscles of his face worked. And he spoke
like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not
there. He seemed fo be looldng at something
which we could not see. As we bade him adieu he
stared af us as though he saw us hOt, neither did
he return our salutation. We clambered back
into out car and turned ber head round towards
Compiègne. I shall never see Senlis again.

HI
UNOFFICIAL INTEILUDES

141

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE"

Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la guerre.
Manier des armes, revëtir l'uniforme, monter à cheval ou marcher
au commandement, être redoutable sans cesser d'être aimable, dépasser
le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grâce s'il se peut, défier l'ennemi,
connaitre l'aventure, jouer ce qui a peu duré, ce qui est encore illusion,
rêve, ambition, ce qui est encore une beauté, ô jeunesse, voilà ce que
vous aimez ! Vous n'êtes pas liée, vous n'etes pas fanée, vous pouvez
courir le monde.--REfi BAzxr¢, Récits du temps de la guerre.

Oul little town was like the 13001 of Bethesda--
never had I seen such a mtfltitude of impotent folk.
The lame, the halt, and the blind congregated here
as if awaiting some miracle. I met them every-
where--Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the
line, in every stage of infirmity. Our town was in-
deed but one vast hospital--orderly, subdued, and
tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to
visitors and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying
on ifs portals the register of wounded like a roll-
call. The streets at night, with their lights ex-
tinguished, were subterranean in their darkness,
and the single café, faintly illuminated, looked
143

144 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

like some mysterious grotto within which the rows
of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like
veins of quartz and felspar. We were, indeed,
a race of troglodytes, and we were all either very
young or very old. Out adolescence was all
called up to the colours. There was never any
news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from the
Mairie at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which,
posted up at street-corners, we read in groups by
the light of a guttering candle, held up against the
wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old
woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks
like a withered apple and hands like old oak. We
were not very near the zone of war, yet hot so far
as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two
belote an armoured motor-car, with German officers
disguised in French uniforms, paid us a stealthy
visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply
to their insistent challenge, ended its temerarious
career one dark night by rushing headlong over
the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm beneath.
After that the rigour of our existence was, if any-
thing, accentuated; much was " défendu," and
many things which were still lawful wel"e not ex-
pedient. Every one talked in subdued tones--it
was ofly the wounded who were gay, gay with an
amazing insouciance. True, there were the picture
postcal"ds in the shops--I had forgotten them--

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 145

nothing more characteristically macabre bave I ever
seen. One such I bought one morning--a lively
sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden
horse behind him, and saluting his officer with,
" Captain, here is the horse--I bave slain the
horseman" (" Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai duWle cavalier,
foilà le cheval "). It was labelled " Un Héros."

If was at this little town, on a memorable
afternoon early in the war, that I was first admitted
to the freedom of the soldiers of irance. The ward
was flooded with the sort lambent light of September
sunshine, and it sheltered, I should say, some
twenty-three men. Four were playing cards af the
bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier
had answered on triiiing feet to the cry of
" Garçon!" in a big Paris hotel, and was now a
sous-ojïcier in 321st Regiment, recovering from
wounds received in the thick of the fighting round
Mtilhausen. He was enjoying his convalescence.
For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he
confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup,
a peculiarly satisfying experience. Charles Lamb
would bave agreed with him. Has he hot written
that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing
your own j ob--particularly if he does it badly ?
The sous-ojïcier nearly wept with i oy when, a
L

146 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK

moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With
him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in
that leisurely manner which appears to be one of
the principal charms of the plumber's vocation. A
paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a profes-
sional eye while he appropriated his cards. An
Alsatian completed the party. In a distant corner
a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat
with his chin on his knees amid an improvised
bivouac of bed-clothes and looked on uncompre-
hendingly. The test smoked cigarettes and
toyed with the voluptuous pages of La Vie
Parisienne.
The sous-o.ïcier, being an artiste in his way,
had been giving me a histrionic exhibition of shell-
tire. With a long intake and a discharge of the
breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the pro-
i ectiles and followed if up with a duck of his head
over the counterpane. He extended his arms in a
wide sweep to show the crater they make and
indicated the height of the leaping earth.
" Quinze mètres--comme ça, monsieur! Les
.411emands ? .4h ! cocltons ! And they shoot
execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (sur
l'épaule)--so! They shoot under the arm (sous le
bras)--so ! And they like to i°in hands like clfildren
--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of
the wood crouching like dogs--one behind the

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 147
other. They are a bad lot--canaille. They bide
guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on
church-towers. There was one of out sappers--
diable! they tied him to a telegraph-pole and lit
a tire under him."
" But you make them pay for that ? "
He smiled grimly. " Mais oui ! When they
see us they throw everything away and run. If
we catch them, they put up their hands and say,
'Pas de mal, Alsatien.' But we're used fo that
trick. We just go through them like butter and
say, 'Pour vous !' A little étrenne, you know,
monsieur, what you call ' Christmas-box' !" He
laughed af some grim recollection.
"Deutschen Hunde ! Stink-preussen ! Ja !" If
was the Alsatian who was speaking.
"Sie sprechen Deutsch ! " I exclaimed in
astonishment.
"Ja, ch lçnn nicht ande's--'t«m so meh"
schade !" he replied mournfully. He was an
Alsatian " volunteer," he explained, having
deserted for the French side t an opportune
moment. If was odd to hear him deçlaiming
against the Germons in their own language. It
is a way the Alsatians hve. Treitschke once
lamented the fact. " But," I interpolted, " it
t Germn swine ! Stinking lrussins !
You speak German!
a Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

148 LEAVES IROM A FIELD IqOTE-BOOK
must be very painful for those of you who cannot
get away like yourself."
" Very painful, monsieur ; I have two brothers
even now in the German army. They watch us--
and they put Prussan sous-qîciers over us to spy.
So when we see the sous-ocier sneaking about,
we raise our voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly
lrench, we'll give if them.' But when we are alone
--well, then we say what we think."
And this led us on to talk of German spies and
their nasty habits--how they had mapped out
France, ifs bridges, its culverts, its smithies, like an
ordnance-survey, and how predatory German com-
manders betray the knowledge of an Income-tax
Commissioner as to the income and resotrces of
every inhabitant who bas the misfortune fo find
himself in occupied territory. Also how the
German guns get the range at once. And other
such things. All of which the paperhanger listened
fo in thoughtful silence and then told a tale.
" An off%er in the uniform of your Army, mon-
sieur, strolled up to my company one day. He
was very pleasant, and his French was so good--
hOt too good, j ust the kind of lrench tht you
English messieurs "--he bowed apologetically fo
me--" usually speak. Oh! he was very clever.
And he talked with out captain about the battle
for long rime. And then our captain noticed

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 149
something--two things, lirst, monsieur, the
English ofScer was very troubled with his eyes--he
was always applying a large white handkerchief
to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that
the English ofiicers do not carry white handkerchiefs
but' khaki.' What was the marrer with the officer's
eye ? It could not be a fly--the weather was too
cold; it had been raining. It could not be the
dust; the ground was too we. And the German
shells--they begin to fall righ in the midst of us
--they had been so wide before. So the captain
was very clncerned formonsieur l'ofiicier's eyes,
and he takes him aside very politely and says he
had better see the doctor. A sous-offcier and two
men shall take him to the doctor. Vtfich they
do. Only the ' doctor' was the liaison ofiicer with
out brigade--an English of Scer. And he finds that
the ofScer is a spy--a Bosche. He have no more
trouble with his eyes," added the paperhanger
laconically. It was too good a story to spoil by
cross-examination, so I left it at that.
"You like the bayonet ? " I asked.
"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a bon
enfant," said the sous-oïcier. " And they can't
fence (escrime), the Boschesthey are too louïds.
I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Out
men fought like tiger-catsso quick, so agile. And
you know, monsieur, no one sad a word. Nor a

150 LEAYES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK

sound except the clash of steel." His eyes flashed
at the recollection. " They make a funny noise
when you go through them--they grunt, comme un
coclon." Perhaps I shuddered slightly. " Ah,
yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks
(ruses honteuses). Of course they cry out in French,
and put uIo their banals after they bave shot down
out comrades under their white flags." He gave
a short of contempt.
" What do they cry ? "
" Oh, ail kinds of things. 'I bave a wife and
eight children.' The German pig bas a big litter."
He looked, and no doubt felt himself fo be, a minister
of justice. And after ail, I reflect, the Belgians
once had wives and children too. Many of them
bave neither wife nor child any longer. And so
perish ail Germans !
The lolumber, who had been studying his "hand,"
looked up from the cards. " We bave killed a
great number of the Bosches," he said dispassion-
ately. " Yes, a great number. It was in a beet-
root field, and there were as many dead Germans
as beetroots, lear by was a corn-field; the
flames were leaping up the shocks of yellow corn
and the bodies caught fire--such a stench! And
the faces of the dead ! Especially after they bave
been ldlled with the bayonet--they are quite black.
I suioioose it's the grease."

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 151
" The grease ? "
" Yes, we always grease out bayonets, you know.
To prevent them getting rusty."
He was a man of few words, but in three sen-
tences he had given me a battle-picture as clearly
visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The
reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paper-
hanger to luncher recollections, more particularly
the stunning effects of the French shell-fire. He had
round four dead Germans--they had been surpsed
by a shell while playing cards in a billet. " They
still had the cards in their hands, monsieur, iust as
you see us--and they hadn't got a scratch. They
were like the statues in the Louvre."
" Yes," said the sous-oîcier, " I bave seen them
like that. I remember I round a big Bosche--six
feet four he must bave been--sitting dead in a
house wlfich we had shelled. His face was just
like wax, and he sat there like a wooden doll with
Iris long arms hanging down stiff--yes ! comme une
poupée. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not
one ! And do you know what he had on--a woman's
chemise! JÉcoutez ! " he added suddenly, and he
held up a monitory hand.
Echoing down the corridor outside there came
nearer and nearer the beat of a drum and with i
the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the measure
--who can ever forget it ! It stirs the blood like a

152 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
trumpet. The door was kicked open and two
convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing a festive
cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christ-
mas " crackers." He was playing a file, and the
drummer was close upon his heels.
Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice
Allons I enfants de la Patrie!
A strange electricity ran through us all. The
card-players had thrown down their cards just as
the plumber was about fo trump an ace. The
others had tossed aside their papers and laid down
their cigarettes. The Turco--" Muley Hafid " he
was called, because those were the ofly words of his
any one cotùd understand--who had been deploying
imaginary troops, with the aid of matches, upon the
cotmterpane, as though he were a sick child playing
with leiden ioldiers, recognised the tune, and in
default of words began fo beat rime with a soup
spoon. Up and down the passage way between
the beds marched the file and drum; louder beat
the drum, more piercing grew the fife. Vrhat
delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant cries of
angttish, bas not that immortal music both stirred
and soothed! To what supremacy of effort bas
if not incited ? If bas succoured dying men with
ifs viaticum. If bas brought tire fo glazing eyes.
If bas exalted mena little higher than the angels,
it bas won the angels fo the side of men"

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE" 153

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux
Contre vous tout prêts £ se ba.ttre.
Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons :
Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillon
As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole
out into the corridor on tip-toe, I heard again the
martial chorus swelling into a tumult of ioy:
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
If was the note of the conqueror.

XVI

PETER

MY friend T and myself were smoking a pipe
after dinner in his sitting-room at the Base. He
was a staff-captain who had donc lais terre as a
" Political" in India, and had now taken on an
Army job of a highly confidential nature. He was
one of those men who, when they make up their
minds to give you their friendship, give it hand-
somely and without reserve, and in a few veeks
we had got on to the plane of friends of many years.
As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many
feet on the cobbles of the street below, a street
which ran up the side of the bill like a gully--be-
tween tall houses standing so close together that
one might almost have shaken hands with the
inmates of the houses opposite. The rhythm of
that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spire of the occasional
slipping of one or another man's boots upon the
greasy and precipitous stones, was unmistakable.
" New drafts I" said T Instinctively we
154

PETER 155

both moved fo the window. We knew that the
Army authorities were rushing troops across the
Channel every night as fast as the transports could
take theln, and often in the silence of the sleep-
tilne we had heard them marching up the bill from
the harbour go the camps on the downs. As we
opened our own window, we heard another window
thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down
and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the
light from our room, the upturned faces of the men.
" Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully,
delighted go air on French soil the colloquialisms
they had picked up from that vade mecum (price
one penny) of the British soldier : E«encl., and how
to speak it. If was night, not day, but that didn't
marrer.
" Good-night," came a piping treble voice from
the floor above us.
" Good - night "--" Good - night, old chap "--
" Good-night, my son "--the men shouted back
as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of
them gravely saluted.
" It's Peter," said T ; " he'll be frightfully
bucked up."
" Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended
the dark staircase--the rest of the household were
plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the
bedroom door, and could itst make out in the

156 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IqOTE-BOOK

darkness a little figure in pyjamas, leaning pre-
cipitously out of the window.
" Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he
struck a match. The light illuminated a round,
chubby face which glanced over its owner's shoulder
from the window.
" All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfu]ly,
" did you see ? They saluted me ! Did you see ? "
he said, turning fo me.
"I did, Major Peter."
" You're kidding !"
" Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely.
" They've given you commissioned rank, and, the
Army having spoken, I intend in the future to
address you as a field-officer. Of course your
father will bave to salure you too, now."
This was quite another aspect of the marrer, and
commended itself to Peter. " Right oh ! " he said.
And from that rime forward I always addressed
him as Maior Peter. So did his father, except when
he was ordering him to bed. At such times--there
was a nightly contest on the matter--the paternal
authority could not afford to concede any pre-
rogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from
the Army, only fo be reinstated without a stain on
his character the next morning.
" Corne up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow,
will you ? " said Peter. "I know lots of officers

PETER 157
ulo there, l'll introduce you," he added loatronis-
ingly. Peter had beea a bare fortnight at the
Base it being holiday at his loreloaratory school
at Beckeaham, and he had already become familiar
and domestic with every one in authoity from the
Base Commandant downwards. " Thaak you,"
I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed
af a word from his father. By the side of the bed
was a small library. It coasisted of T]e Memoirs
of Sherlocl Holmes, The Cocl-House at Fellsgarth,
and Newbolt's Pages from Froissa't. Peter was
rather eclectic in his tastes, but they were thoroughly
sound. On the tble were the coateats of Peter's
pockets, turaed out nightly by the express orders
of his father, for this is war-tme, and the wear and
tear of schoolboys' j ackets is a lorodigious item of
exloenditure. I made a rapid mental inventory of
them :
(1} A button of the Welsh Fusiliers.
(2) Some dozen cartridge-cases fi'om a Lewis machine-gun
requisitioned by 1)eter from the Flying-Ground.
(3) A miniature aeroplane--the wings rather crumpled as
though the aviator had been forced fo make a hurried
descent.
(4) A knife.
(5) Several pieces of string.
{6) A colom'ed " alley."
(7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord
Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-
Dorrien.
(8) A top.
(9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops.

158 LEAVES FROM A FIELD lqOTE-BOOK
For the kit of an officer of field tank in His
Majesty's Army it was certainly a pecu]iar collec-
tion, few or none of these articles being included
in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more
peculiar than some of the things with which
solicitous friends and relatives encumber otficers
a the Front.
The next morning we ascended the downs above
the harbour, and Peter piloted me to the Flying-
Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in
which were docked hall a dozen aeroplanes, ]ight
as a Canadian canoe and graceful as a dragon-fly.
Peter calm]y climbed up into one of them and
proceeded fo move levers and adjust controls,
explaining the whole business to me with the
professional confidence of a fully certificated
airman.
" Hulloa, that you, Peter ? " sid a voice from
the other side of the aeroplane. The owaer wore
the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.
" It's me, Captain S---," said Peter. " Allow
me to introduce my friend" he added, look-
ing down over the side of the aeroplane. " He's
attached to the staf[ at G.H.Q.," he added im-
pressively. For the first rime I realised, with great
gratification, that Peter hought me rather a
personage.
The Captain and I discussed the merits of the

PETER 159

new Lewis machine-gun, while Peter went off to
give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and
monoplanes.
" Th.at kid knows a thing or two," I heard one
of them say to the other in an undertone. " Jolly
little chai)." Peter has an undoubted gift for
Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form
toaster bas prophesied a Mathematical Scholar-
ship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other
views. He bas deternlined to join the Army at
the ear]iest opportunity. He is now ten years of
age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the
prospect of the war hot lasting another seven years.
When I told him that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q.
had, in a saturnine moment, answered my question
as to when the war would end with a gloomy
" Never," he was mightily pleased. That was a
bit of all right, he remarked.
Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one
of those Indian dynasties which go on, from one
generation fo another, contributing mel to the
public service--the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest
Service, the Indian Police. Wherever there's a
bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or Pathans,
wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying
up, whether it's plague, or famine, or emthquale,
there you will find one of Peter's family in the
midst of it. One of his tmcles, who is a Maior

160 LEAVES IROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

in the R.F.A., saved a bat.tery at X Y-
Another is the chier of the most mysterious of out
public services--a man who speaks little and listens
a great deal, who never commits anything to writing,
and who changes his address about once every
three months. For if you bave a price on your
head you have to be careful to cover up your
tracks. He neither drinks nor smokes, and he will
never marry, for his woÆk demands an almost
sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little
about this uncle, except that, as he remarked to
me, " Uncle Dick's got eyes like gimlets." But
Peter bas seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in
public Uncle Dick, whom I haiien to know as well
as one can ever hope to know such a bird of passage,
always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored
expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does hot
know it, is the cotmsellor of Secretaries of State,
and one of the trusted advisers of the G.H.Q. Staff.
Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him mos,
although I knew him least. Some day, if and
when I bave the honour to know him better, I shall
write a book about him, and I shall call it Tlte Man
behind the Scenes.
Such was Peter's family. If may help you to
understand Peter, who, if he feared God, certainly
regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain
had promised Peter that he would let him see the

PETER 161
new Lewis machine-gun. If is a type of gun
specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the bore,
worked by a trigger-handle, and if makes a noise
like the back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-
power. If plays no great part in this story, except
thati t was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse
of leter's private correspondence. For, after the
Captain had discharged his gun af a hedge and
,nade a large rabbit-burrow in if, leter proceeded
fo pick up the cartridge-cases, which ]ay thick as
catkins. This interested me, as leter already had
a pocketful.
" What do you want all those for, Ma ior leter ? "
I asked.
" Wel], you see," said leter, " the kids ai
school "--leter now calls other boys of the saine
age as himself " kids," on the same principle that a
West African negro who is rising in the world refers
fo his fellows as " niggers "--" keep on bothering
me Vo send them things, and a fellow must send
them something."
He pulled a crumpled letter, fo which some
chocolate was adhering with the tenacity of sealing-
wax, out of his pocket. " That's from Jackson
minor," he said. " Cheek, isn't if ? "
I began reading the ]etter aloud.
DEAl OL PAN--You must be having a ripping rime. I
see your letter is heded " The :Front" . . .
M

162 LEAYES IROM A IIELD OTE-BOOK

I looked at :peter. He was blushing uncom-
fortably.
. . so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole sehool's
fritefully bueked up about you, and we're one up on
lenner's ....

" What's l%nner's ? " I said to :peter.
" Oh, that's another school st Beckenham.
They're stinkers. :Put on no end of side because
some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham ]ast
terre. But we beat them ai footer."

We met them af footer the other day, and I told that little
bounder Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said,
" Rot ! " So I showed him the envelope of your letter with
" Passed by the Censor " on if, and one of those eartridge-
cases you sent me, and I said, " That's proof," and he dried up.
He did look sick. I hope you'll get the V.C. or something--
the Head'll be sure to give us a half-holiday. Young Smith,
who pretends to read the IIead's newspaper when he leaves if
lying about--you know how he swanks about it--said the
Preeedent or General Jof[re had given a Freneh kid who was
only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of Huns, till
they round him out and sent him baek fo school, a legion of
honours or something. Smith said it was a medal ; I said that
wms rot, and that if meant they'd given him a lot of other ehaps
to command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a
legion of devils, and I got hold of a erib to Caesar and proved
to him that legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So,
Pan, old man, mind you get the rench to let you bring us
other fellows out, or if you can't bring it off, then corne home
with a medal or something.

" Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his
back on me and was pretending to be absorbed in
distant sleck in the sky.

PETER 163
" Major Peter," I said ingratiatiagly, with a
salure. Peter turned romd. He was very
"I dida't mean you to read all that rot," he
said. " I meant what he says at the end."
I read on--this rime in silence "
I say, bave you killed any Huns yet ? Very decent of the
Head to tell your governor you could bave an extra week. We
miss you ai center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't
get torpeedod--we hope they'll just miss you. If would be
rotten luck if you never saw one. We've given up German
this erm--beastly language ; it's just like a Hun fo keep the
verb till the end, so
Theu followed a sentence heavily undcrlined
By the way l'll let you bave that ]cnife you wanteel me to swop
last tevm if you'll bving me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some
blood on it, German blood I mean.--Yours to a cinder,
ARTHUR JACKSON.
I handed this priceless nfissive bacl to Peter.
" Cheek, isn't it ? " said Peter rather hurriedly.
" His old knife for a bayonet ! "
" But if you put ' the Front' af the top of your
letters, Major Peter, you can't be surprised at his
asking for one, you know."
Peter blushed.
" Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the
Front, and the fellows wouldn't think anything
of me if I hadn't been near the Front," he said,
apologetical]y. " Hullo, they're going up ! "
_tre aeroplane was skimming along the ground
as a moor-hea scuppers across the water, the

164 LEAVES FROM A FIELD hTOTE-BOOK
mechanics having assisted her initial progress by
pushing the lower stays and then ducking lmder
the planes, as she gathered way, and just missing
decapitation. It's a way they bave. She took a
rm for if, ber engine humming like a top, and then
rose, and gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed
af ber wistfully. " And he promised to take me
up some day," he said sadly.
" Yes, some day, Peter," I said encouragingly.
" But it's rime we were getting back. You know
you've got fo catch the leave-boat af four o'clock
this afternoon."
Peter's father and I stood on the quay, having
taken farewell of Peter. There was an eminent
Staff Oflïcer going hoirie on leave--a very great
man af G.H.Q., a lieutenant-general, who inspired
no less fear than respect among us all. He knew
Peter's father in his distant way, and had hot only
returned his salure, but had even condescended fo
ask, in his laconic style, " Who is the boy ? "--
whereupon Peter's father had, with some nervous-
ness, introduced him. All the other oflïcers going
home on leave, from a Brigadier down fo the sub-
alterns, stood af a respectful distance, glancing
furtively af the hawk-like profile of the great man,
and lowering their voices. It was a tribute hOt
only to tank but fo power. As the ship gathered

IETER 165
wy nd moved slowly out of the hrbour I pulled
the sleeve of leter's fther. " Look!" I sid.
The Lieutennt-Genem| nd leter were engged
in n nimted conversation on the deck, nd the
gret mn, usully s silent as the sphinx nd hOt
less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some
wrmth nd gret interest, s though hrd put to
keep his end up, some point of debte propounded
to him by leter.
" T , old chp," I sid, " leter'll be gret
mn some
leter's fther sid nothng, but his eyes grew
misty, lerhps he ws thinking of tht lonely
grve in the distant p]ins of the Deccn where
leter's mother sleeps.

XVII

THREE TRAVELLERS

( October 1914)

MY train left Paris at 1.52 in the afternoon. It
was due at Calais at eight o'clock the same evening.
But it soon became apparent that something was
amiss with out iourney--we crawled along at a
pace which barely exceeded six mlles an hour.
At every culvert, guarded by its solitary sentry,
we seemed to pause to take breath. As we ap-
proached Amiens, barely halfway on out iourney,
somewhere about 9.30 P.M., we passed on the
opposite line of rails a Red Cross train, stationary,
and throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the
candid moonlight. One glimpse of an open horse-
box revealed to me in a flash the secret of out
languor. It was a cold, keen night ; the full moon
rode high in a starless sky, and there must bave
been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left
far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hovering
166

THREE TRAVELLERS 167

above river banks, out of which the poplars stood
argent and fragile, as though the landscape were a
Japanese print. Through the open door of the
horse-box I saw a soldier stretched upon his straw,
with a red gaping wound in his half-naked body.
Over him stooped a nurse, improvising with delicate
ministries a hasty dressing. In the next carriage
the black face of a wounded Senegalese looked
out, unearthly in the moonlight. Ahead of us an
interminable line of trains (some seventy of them
I was told) had passed, conveying fresh troops.
Then I knew. The Germans, hovering like a dark
cloud some twenty mlles away, had been rein-
forced, and a tierce battle was in progress. The
news of if had travelled by some mysterious
telepathy fo every village along the line, and at
every crossing groups of pale-faced women, silent
and intent, kept a restless vigil. They looked like
ghosts in the moonlight ; no cheer escaped them
as we passed, no hand waved an exuberant greeting.
In the twilight we had already seen red-trousered
soldiers, vivid as poppies against the grass, digging
trenches along the line, and at one point a group
of sappers improvising a wire footbridge across the
river. The contagion of suspense was in the air,--
you seemed to catch it in the faint susurrus of the
poplars.
" Shall we get to Calais ? " I asked.

168 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
" Bon Dieu! I know hOt," was the reply of
the harassed guard.
We pursued our stealthy journey, reached Abbe-
ville somewhere about midnight, and Boulogne in
the small hours. 4 A.M. Calais af last! I joy-
fully exclaimed. But between Calais Ville and
Calais Maritime a group of officers boarded our
train and, for some mysterious reason, we were
headed off fo Dunldrk. It grew colder and more
cold, and I had had no food since noon of yesterday.
But my thoughts were with our men, the men whom
I had lately corne fo know, now lying out on the
bare earth in the moonlit trenches, keeping their
everlasting vigil and blowing on their fingers
numbed with cold. We reached Dunldrk af 6 A.M.
lo explanation why the train had played truant
at Calais was vouchsafed me, nor was any hope
held out of a return. In those days I was travelling
as a private person, and was not yet endowed with
the prerogatives by which, in the naine of a Secretary
of State, I could requisition cars and impress men
fo do my bidding.
Ata hopeless moment I had the good fortune
to fall in with a King's Messenger, carrying des-
patches, who was in the next carriage. He pro-
duced his special passports, and the prestige of
" Courrier du Roi," Knight of the Order of the
Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every one

THREE TRAVELLERS 169

was at our service. We were escorted to the
military heudquarters of Dunkirk--through streets
already echoing with the march of French infantry,
each carrying a big baton of bread and munching
as he kept step, to an oifice in which the courteous
commandant was iust completing his toilet. The
Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of
the English oificers was rung up, and thither we
went through an ambuscade of motor-cars in the
courtyard.
A lieutenant of the Nawl Flying Squadron was
ready for us with his iowerful Rolls-Royce, and we
were soon on the high road ti Calais. Everywhere
were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of
barbed-wire entanglements in the distant fields,
deep trenches, earthworks six feet thick masking
rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mlle or so
we were stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze,
thrown across the road, in the shape of high walls
of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the
steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby
putting us at the mercy of the sentry who stood
beside his but of straw and hurdles, and presented
Iris bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing
to receive cavalry. The corporal came up, and
with him a little group of French soldiers, their
cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sulk in
deep black hollows by their eternal vigil. " Officier

170 LEAVES IROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK
Anglais ! " " Courrier du Roi ! " we exclaimed,
and were sped on our way with a weary smile and
" Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men
were already toiling in the fields, stooping like the
figures in Millet's " Gleaners," as we raced through
an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed
inns, past depopulated farms, past wooden wind-
mills, perched high upon wooden platforms like
gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre
word was exchanged about Antwerp--again that
strange telepathy of peril. Calais at last! and a
great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger.
He was a London wine-merchant of repute,
who had got here at last from Rheims, whither he
had gone to pay his yearly inspection of the cham-
pagne vintage, only to find the red vdne-press of
war. Three weeks he had lived like primitive
man in the wine-cellars of Rheims, with the shells
screaming overheadAscieam]ng, he says, iust like
the long-drawn sobbing whistle of an express train
as it leaves a tunnel. Never has he lved such
days before; never, he fervently prays, will he
live them again, lrom his narrative I1 got a
glimpse of a subterranean existence, as tenebrous
and fearful as the deepest circle of Dante's Infe'no,
with a river of teaçs falling always in the darkness
of the vaults. A great wine-cellar--there are ten

THREE TRAVELLERS 171
toiles of them at Rheims--crowded with four
thousand people, lighted only by candles, and
swarming with huge rats; the blanched faces of
women, the crying of children, the wail of babies
at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling
masonry--the men had armed themselves with
big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the
vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one
long threnody of anguish. Outside, the conscious
stone of the great monument of mediaeval aspira-
tion was being battered to pieces, and the glorious
company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of
the martyrs, suffered another and a less resurgent
martyrdom. After days of this crepuscular exist-
ence he emerged to find the cathedral less dis-
figured than he had feared. One masterpiece of
the mediaeval craftsmen's chisel is, however, irre-
mediably destroyed--the figure of the devil. We
hope it is a portent.
The King's Messenger had posted from a distant
country, and his way through Diion had been truly
a Via Dolorosa. Thirty-six people standing in
the corridor, and in his own crowded compartment
--he had surrendered his royal prerogative of
exclusion--was a woman on the verge of hysteria,
finding relief not in tears but in an endless recital
of ber sorrow. She and ber husband had a son--

172 LEAYES FROM A FIELD 1WOTE-BOOK

the only son of his mother--gone to the front,
reported badly wounded, and for days, like Joseph
and Mary, the anxious parents had sought him,
only to flnd him on the threshold of death,
with a bullet in his liver. Again and again she
beguiled ber anguish by chronicles of his nfiraculous
childhood--his precocious intelligence at rive, his
prescience af six, his unfathomable wisdom af
seven. The silent company of wayfarers listened
in patience fo the twice-told tale. No one could
say ber nay as she repeated ber litany of pain.
She was, indeed, the only passenger in that com-
partment whose eyes were dry. Stabat Mater
Dolorosa.

XVIII

BARBARA

IT was the Duchess of X.'s Hospital ata certain
plage on the coast. I had motored thither through
undulating country dotted with round beehive
ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls,
looking in the distance like a bed of white crocuses,
were settled in platoons. As we neared the coast
the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale iand,
fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass.
Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occa-
sional tir, maintained a desperate existence against
the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches
held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting
the intolerable architrave of the sky. The bare
needle-like branches of the broom and tir stood
out blacldy against the biscuit-coloured sand with
the sharp outlines of an etching.
I had taken a hospitable cup of tea with the
Duchess in the Matron's room. She was clothed
in fine linen but without ber purple; she wore
173

174 LEAVES FROM A FIELD bIOTE-BOOK
the ordinary and servîceable slate-coloured dress
of a nurse. It was here I had the honour of being
introduced fo Barbara. She was nursing a doll
with great tenderness, and had been asking the
Duchess why she did hot wear ber " cowonet."
" This is Barbara--our little Egyptian," said
the marron.
Barbara repudiated the description hotly.
" She was born in Egypt," explained the marron.
" Ah," I said, " that wasn't your fault, Barbara,
was it ? But if was Egypt's good fortune."
Barbara ignored the compliment with the
simplicity of childhgod, and proceeded to explain
with great seriousness: " You see, Mummy was
travelling, and she comed to Egypt. She didn't
know I was going fo happen," she added as if fo
clear Mummy of any imputation of thoughtless-
ness.
" And your birthday, Barbara ? "
Barbara and I discovered that both of us bave
birthdays in March--only six days apart. This
put us af once on a footing of intimacy--we must
bave been born under the same star. Barbara
proceeded fo inform me that she rather liked
birthdays--except the one which happened in
Egypt. I had half a mind fo execute a deed of
conveyance on the spot, assigning fo ber all my
own birthdays as an estate pour autre vie, with all

BARBARA 175
p'ofits à pren&'e and presents arising therefrom,
for I am thirty-eight and bave no further use for
them.
"I am afraid there are more than six years
between us, Barbara," I said iensively.
Barbara regarded me closely with large round
eyes.
" About ten, I fink. I'm seven, you know."
" How nice of you to say that, Barbara. Then
I'm only seventeen."
Barbara regarded me still more closely.
" A little more, p'waps--ten monfs."
" Thank you, Barbara. l'Il remind you of that
some day." After ail, ten years is no obstacle
to the course of true love. " But what is the
marrer with the doll ? " Despite a rosy flush the
doll bas a field-dressing round ber auburn locks,
and one leg is immensely stout owing to a tourniquet.
Barbara looked at me rather less favourably
than belote. It was evident that she now thought
poorly of my intelligence, and that I had ruade a
fax pas.
" I'ma nurse," Barbara explained, loftily,
showing an armlet bearing the ensign of the Red
Cross. I was about to remind ber of 1 & 2 Geo. V.
cap. 20, which threatens the penalties of a mis-
demeanour against aIl who wear the Red Cross
without, the authority of Army Council, but I

176 LEAVES IROM A IIELD lgOTE-BOOK

thought better of it. Instead of anything so
foolish, I exhibit a delicate solicitude about the
health of the patient. I put myself right by
referring toit as " he." A less intelligent observer
might pronounce it to be decidedly of the femme
sex. Still, I reflected, women bave enlisted in the
Army before now. I proceeded to inspect the
injured limb with professional gravity. "A com-
pound fracture, I think, Barbara. He will require
careful nursing."
Barbara liked this--no one in the matron's
room had ever exhibited such a clinical interest
in the case before, and she thinks " fwacture "
rather imposing.
" Let me feel his pulse," I said. I held a waxen
arm between my thumb and forefinger, and looked
at my wrist-watch for some seconds, Barbara
gazing at me intently.
"Hum! hum! I think we had better take
lais temperature," I said, as I held a clinical ther-
mometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the
rosebud lips of the patient. " 103, I think."
"Will you wite a pwescwiption ? " asked
Barbara anxiously.
" Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara.
Let me see, will this do, do you think ?" I scribbled
on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and
handed it to Barbara.

BARBARA 177

Brom. 1)otass. . . 3 s.
Hydrochl. 5 quarts.
Quin. Sulph. 1 pt.

She scrutinised if closely. If puzzled ber,
though ber bewilderment was nothing fo the

astonishment which that prescription wottld bave
excited in a member of the medical profession.
" Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less
pleased than puzzled, and who tried fo look as if
she quite understood. Her httle face, with ifs halo
of golden curls, was turned up fo mine, and she
now regarded me with a respect for my professional
attainments which was truly gratifying.
I was transcribing a temperature-chart for
Barbara's patient when a tactless messenger came
fo say that my car was af the door. Barbara hung
on my arm. " Will you corne again, and take his
tempewature--Pwomise ? "
I promised.

XIX

AN ARMY COUNCIL

( October 1914)

AL the morning I had travelled through the
pleasant valleys of Normandy between chalk-hills
crowned with russet beeches. The country had
the delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the
skies were of that unforgettable blue which is the
secret ol France. The end of my j ourney round
me af No. -- General Hospital. The chaplain, an
old C.F. attached to the Base Hospitals, who had
rei oined on the outbreak of the war, and myself
were the centre of a group of convalescents. They
wore the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue
flannels, resembling a fitter's overalls in everything
except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with red
ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their
caps alone betrayed their regîments. There were
" details " from almost every regiment in the
British Army, and one could hear every dialect
178

AN ARMY COUNCIL 179
from John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk
was of the great retreat.
" Hell it was--fire and brimstone," said a
R.F.A. man. " We limbered up, out battery did,
and got the guns of[ in column of route, but we
were more like a blooming ambulance than a
battery. We had our limbers and waggons chock
full o' details--fellers who'd been wounded or
crocked up. And reservists wi' sore feet--out o'
training, I reckon," he added magisterially.
" lever you mind about resarvists, my son,"
interjected a man in the Suiolks. " We resarvists
carried some of the recroots on our backs for mlles.
We ain't no chickens."
" lo, that we bain't," said a West-countryman.
" I reckon we can teach them young fellers zummat.
Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish 1 when they
was unde foire the fust time. Though they
were middlin' steady, arterwards," he added in-
dulgently as though iealous of the honour of his
regiment.
" 'Twere all a duddering 2 mix-up. I niver a
zeed anything loike it afore. Wimmen an' childer
a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry ; we
could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried
some o' the little 'uns. And girt rires a-burnin'
at night loike ricks--a terrible blissey on the hills.
1 Pale. Confusing. 8 Blaze.

180 LEAVES IROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK
And 'twere that dusty and hot oi did get mortal
drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my
water-bottle ; I'd gied it all to the childer."
" What about rations ? " said the chaplain.
" Oh I were bit leery 1 i' my innerds at toimes,
but oi had my emargency ration, and them A.S.C.
cha.ps were pretty sprack; they kep up wi' us
most times. 'Twere just loike a circus procession
--lorries and guns and we soldiers all a-mixed up.
And some of the harses went cruel lame and had
fo be left behind."
" That they did," said a small man in the
19th Hussars who was obviously a Londoner.
He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the
deliberate gait of the cavalryman on his feet.
" Me 'orse got the blooming 'ump with corns."
"Ah ! and what do you think of the Uhlans ? "
He sniffed. " Rotten, sir! They never gives
us a chawnce. They ain't no good except for
lootin'. Regular 'ooligans. We charged 'em up
near Mons, our orficer goin' ahead 'bout eight yards,
and when we got up fo 'em 'e drops back into out
line. We charges in a single line, you know, knee
fo knee, as close together as us can get, riding low
so as to present as small a target as we can."
"And you got home with the Uhlans ? " I
asked.
1 Empty. Smart.

AN ARMY COUNCIL 181
" Once. Their lances ain't much good excel3t
for lightin' street-laml3s."
" Street-laml3s ? " said the chaplain literally.
" Yuss. They're too long. The blighters 'are
no gril3 on them. We i ust 13arry and then thrust
with the 13oint; we've giv' ul3 cutting exercises.
If the thrust misses, you uses the 13ommel--so !"
He executed an intimidating gesture with his
stick.
" Well, ah've had ma bit o' fun," interjected a
small H.L.I. man irrelevantly, feeling, apparently,
it was his turn in the symposium, as he thrust a
red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones
into the group. " Ah ken verra weel ah got 'ira.
It was at a railway stashon where we surprised 'em.
Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer--I thocht he
were drunk--and he fired three rimes aht me with
a ree-vol-ver. But ah got 'ira. Yes, ah've had
ma bit o' fun," he said complacently as he cherished
an arm in a sling.
With him was a comrade belonging to the
" Lilywhites," the old 82nd, now known as the
first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the
H.L.I. have an ancient friendship. The South
Lancs hure also their antipathies--the King's
Liverpools among them--but that is neither here
nor there.
" It were j ust like a cool3-tie crowd was the

182 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
retreat," he drawled in the broad Lancashire
dialect. "A fait mix-up, it were."
" What do you think of the Germans ? "
There was a chorus of voices. " Not much "--
" Blighters "--" Swine."
" Their 'coal-boxes' don't corne of[ hall the
time," said the R.F.A. man professionally. " And
their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours bas.
Ours is a treat--like sugar-loaf." The German
gunnery has become deadly enough since then.
" Their coal-boxes do stink though," said a
Hoxton man in the Royal Fusiliers. " Reminds
me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War ; they
used to let of[ a lot of stuf[ that turned yellow.
l've seen Boers--hairy men, you know, sir--with
their beards turned all yellow by them. Regular
hair-restorers, they was."
"I remember up on the Aisne," continued the
Hoxton man, who had an ingenuous countenance,
" one of out chaps shouted ' Waiter,' and about
fifty on 'em stuck their heads up above the trenches
and said, ' Coming, sir.' "
There was a shout of laughter. The chaplain
looked incredulous. " Don't mind him, he's pull-
ing your leg, sir," said his neighbour. It is a
pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately
fond.
" They can't shoot for nuts, that's a fact," said

AN ARMY COUhCIL 183
a Rifleman. " They couldn't hit a bouse if they
was in if. We can give them rive rounds rapid
while they're getting ready fo tire one. Fire from
the hips, they do. I never seen the likes of if."
If was the professional criticism of the most per-
fectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and
we listened with respect. " But they've got some
tidy snipers," he added candidly.
" They was singing like an Eisteddfod," said a
man in the South Wales Borderers, "when they
advanced. Yess, they was singing splendid.
Like a cymanfa ganu, 1 if wass. Fair play."
"And what do you boys do ?" asked the
chaplain. " Do you sing too ? "
"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters,
"I used every naine but a saint's name." The
speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was
Church of England, or he might bave been less
candid.
" There was a mon in oor company," said the
red-headed one, feeling it was his turn again,
" that killed seven Jerrmans--he shot six and
baynitted anither. And he wttr fait fou 2 after-
wards. He grat like a bairn."
" Aye, mon," said ruddy man of the Yorks
L.I., " ah knaw'd ah felt mysen daffiin 3 when
ah saw me pal knocked over. He comed frs oor
Welsh for singing meeting. 2 Mad. Imbece.

184 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
toon, and he tellt me ldssen the neet afore ' Jock,'
'e said, 'tha'll write to me wife, woan't tha ?'
And ah said, ' Doan't be a fule, Ben, tha'll be all
right.' 'loa, Jock,' he tellt me, 'ah knaw'd
afore ah left heeam ah should be killt. Ah saw
a mouldiwarp 1 dead afore oor door; me wife fait
dithered 2 when she saw't.' "
The chaplain and myself looked puzzled. " It's
a ldnd o' sign among the fouk in our parts, sir,"
he proceeded, enlightening our ignorance. " And
'e asked me to take his brass for the wife. But ah
thowt nowt of it. And we lost oor connectin' files
and were nobbut two platoons, and we got it
somethin' cruel; the shells were a-sldrling like
peewits ower our heids. And Ben were knocked
over and 'e never said a ward. And then ah got
fait daft."
There was silence for a moment.
" I found this," suddenly interrupted a despatch-
lder. He was a fair-spoken youth, obviously of
some education. He explained, in reply to our in-
terrogatories, that he was a despatch-rider attached
to a Signal Company of the R.E. He produced
a cap, apparently from nowhere, by mere sleight of
hand. It was greasy, weather-stained, and in no
respect different from a thousand such Army caps.
It bore the badge and superscription of the R.E.
I A mole. Trembled. 3 Screming.

AN ARMY COUNCIL

We looked at it indifferently as he held it out
with an eleemosynary gesture.
"A collection will now be taken," said the
Hoxton man with a grin.
But the despatch-rider did not laugh. " I found
this cap," he said gravely," on Monday, September
7th, in a bouse near La Ferré. We stopped there
for four hours while the artillery were in action.
We saw a broken motor bicycle outside a bouse
to which the people pointed. We went in. We
found one of out despatch-riders with an officer's
sword sticking in him. Out section officer asked
the people about it, and they told him that the
despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost
his way and knocked at the door of the house.
There were German officers billeted there. They
let him in, and then they stuck him up against a
wall and cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts,"
he added quietly.
No one laughed any more. We all crowded
round to look at that tragic cap. " The number
looks like one--nought---seven--something," said
the chaplain, adiusting his glasses, " but I can't
make out the test." " 1)oor lad," he added softly.
No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of
the men around me that boded ill for the Hun
when they should be reported fit for duty.
The English soldier hides his feelings as though

186 LEAVES IROM A FIELD qOTE-BOOK
he were ashamed of them. The sombre silence
became almost oppressive in the autumnal twilight,
and I sought to disperse it.
"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here ? "
I said, for the camp seemed to leave nothing tobe
desired.
But this was to open the sluices of criticism.
The British soldier begins to "grouse" the
moment he becomes comfortable--and not belote.
He will bear without repining everything but
luxury.
" One and six a day we gets," cried one of them,
" and what's this about this qew Army getting
four bob ? "
"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the
chaplain gently.
" Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army
cooks they calls themselves, speshully 'listed for
the war, and they gets six bob. And those shuv-
vers--they're like fighting cocks."
" Well, there seems nothing to complain of in
the marrer of supplies," I said. They had been
having a kind of high tea on tables laid across
trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his
knife as a bricklayer uses his trowel, was luxurious]y
spreading a layer of apple and plum jam upon a
stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a
bed-rock of bread and butter, the whole repre-

AN ARMY COUNCIL 187

senting a most interesting geological formation
and producing a startling chromatic effect.
" Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a
thocht it was a braw pic-fic," said the red-headed
one. " You wud think we were growin' fat oot
in the trench.es. Dae ah look like it ? "
My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took
the Highlander affectionately by the second button
of his tunic and gave it a pull. " Not much sæace
here, eh ? I think you're pretty well fed, my son ! "
A bugle-call rang out over the camp. " Bed-
rime," said a Guardsman, " rime to go bye-bye.
Parade--hype ! Dis-miss! The orderly officer '11
be round soon. Scoot, my sons."
They scooted.
The silvery notes of the bugle died away over
the woods. Night was falling, and the sky faded
slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray.
We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at
the retreating figures, his face seemed suddenly
shrunken, and I could see that he was very old.
He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I
bave been in the Army for the best part of my
lire," he said simply, " and I had retired on a
pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly,
" that it bas pleased Him to extend my days long
enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I
know the British soldier and--to know him is to

188 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

love him. Do you understand ? " he added, as
he nodded in the direction the men had gone.
As I looked a him, there came into my mind
the haunting lines of Tennyson's " Ulysses."
" Yes," I said, "I understand."

THE FUGITIVES

"But pray that your fligh$ be nos in the winter."

SOSIE four or rive mlles north of Bailleul, where the
douane posts mark the marches of the Franco-
Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre. Here the
clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of
low hills, through which the road drives a deep
cutting, laying bare the age of the earth in a
chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond
the ridge lies another plain, and there it was that
on a clammy winter's day I came upon two lonely
wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy
with moisture which dripped from every bent and
twig. The hedges were full of the dead wood of
the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper
hung a few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The
only touch of colour in the landscape was the
vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves
of priver from which rose spikes of berries black as
crape. qot a living thing appeared, and the secret
189

190 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
promises of siring were so remote as to seem
incredible.

The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant
class ; the man, gnarled like an old oak, the purple
clots in the veins of Iris wrists betraying the senility
of his arteries ; the woman, withered as though al]
the sap had gone out of ber blood. She had a tope
round ber waist, fo the other end of which a small
cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed fo
the axle, two dogs panted painfully with their
tongues out ; behind the cart the man pushed. If
contained a disorderly freight : a large feather-bed,
a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock
curiously carved, a spinning-wheel with a distaff
impoverished of flax, and some kitchen utensils,
which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched,
clanked together.
As out car drew up, they stopped, the woman
holding ber hands fo ber side as though fo recover
breath.
"Who are you ? Where do you corne from ? "
said my compan]on, a French officer.
They stared uncomprehendingly.
He spoke again, this rime in Flemish :
" Van waa" komt gy ? Waa" gaat gy heen ? "
The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the
direction of the Menin ridge.

THE FUGITIVES 191
There followed a conversation of which I could
make but little. But I noticed that they answered
my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as though
our questions concerned no one so little as them-
selves.
" They're fugitives," he repeaied fo me. " Been
burnt out of their farm by the Bosches near the
Menin ridge."
" Are they all alone ? " I asked.
He put some further questions. " Yes,

only son was shot by
billeted there."
"Why ? "
" They don't know.

the Germans when

their
they

had and drove the live-stock away. These few
sticks are all they bave left. Curious, isn't it," he
added meditatively, "that you never see any
Flemish fugitives without their feather-beds ? "
I had often noticed if. Also I had noticed the
curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though
in trying fo save everything they succeeded in
saving nothing that was of any consequence.
1)erhaps if is that, as some one has remarked, ail
things suddenly become equally dear when you
have fo leave them.
" But where are they going ? "
The man stared af my companion as he put
my question; the woman gazed vacantly af the

The Bosches took all they

192 LEAVES IROM A IIELD IOTE-BOOK
lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The
canary in ifs little prison of wire-work piped
i oyfully, as a gleam of sunshine lit up the watery
landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull
thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of ber
skirt between thumb and forefinger, plucking and
unplucking with immense care and concentra-
tion. The man was suddenly shaken with a fit
of asthma, and clutched af the cart as though
seeking support.
We waited for some reply, and af length the
man answered between the spasms of his malady.
" He says he doesn't know," my companion
translated. " He's never been outside his parish
belote. But he thinks he'll go fo Brussels and see
the King of the Belgi,ns. He doesn't know the
Germans are in Brussels. And anyhow he's on
the wrong road."
" But surely," I hazarded, " the mai'e or the
curé could bave told him better."
" He says the Germans shot the curé and carried
of[ the maire. It's a way they've got, you
]now. '
If was now clear fo us that this tragic couple
were out on an uncharted sea. Their little world
was in ruins. The bells that had called them to
the divine offices were silent ; the little church in
which they had knelt af mass was in ruins ; the

THE FUGITIVES 193
parish registers which chronicled the great land-
marks in their lives had been devoured by the
flames ; their hearth was cold and their habitation
desolate. They had watched the heavens but they
might not sow ; they had turned their back on the
fields which they would never rea i. There was an
end fo all their husbandry, and they had no one
left fo speak with their enemies in the gare. This
was the secret of their heavy lethargy.
My companion and I took counsel together. It
were better, we agreed, fo maintain them on the
road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though
Bailleul had been stripped bare by the German
hussars belote they evacuated if, the French, out
of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out
of the fulness of their supplies, would succour this
forlorn couple. Many a rime had I known the
British soldier pass round the bat fo relieve the
refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and
his fellows ; not seldom bas he risked a stoppage
of pay or a spell of field-punishment by parting
with an overcoat, for whose absence af kit inspec-
tion he would supply every excuse but the true
one. And, therefore, fo Bailleul we directed them
fo go.
But as I looked back I saw those bent and
dwindling figures still standing in the mud. The
woman continued to pluck at her dress ; the man
O

194 LEAVES FROM A FIELD :NOTE-BOOK

gazed af the horizon with the same dull vacancy.
They had the weary humility of the figures in
Millet's " Angelus," without their inspiration, and
in their eyes was a dumb despair.

XXI

A " DUG-OUT " "

DRIVER GEORGE HAWKINS, Of the --th Battery (K),
was engaged in drying one of the leaders of the gun
team. The leader, who answered, when he felt so
inclined, to the naine of " Tommy," had been
exercised that morning in a driving rain, and Driver
Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy should develop
colic with all its acute internal inconveniences.
He performed his ministrations with a wisp of
straw, and seemed to derive great moral support
in the process from the production of a phthisical
expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth,
resulting in a sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic
practices this habit has a utilitarian origin: it
serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering
the lungs. But in process of rime it has acquired
a touch of mysticism, and is supposed to soothe
the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not
been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's
* Ou leave in England.
195

196 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
fetlocks he would bave observed that his charge
had suddenly laid his ears back. But being some-
thing of a chiropodist he was studying the way
Tomny put his foot fo the ground, for he suspected
corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins round
himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite
side of the stable. Tommy had suddenly lashed
out, and landed him one on the left shoulder.
D14ver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved
than hurt. He looked at Tommy with pained
surprise.
" I Ieeds yer," he said reproachfully, " I waters
yer, I grooms yer, I stays from my dinner to dry
yer, and what do I get for it ? low I ask yer ? "
Tommy was Iooking round at him with eyes of
guileless innocence.
"What do I get for it ? " he repeated argu-
mentatively. "I gets a blooming kick."
" Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective
Hawkins actually used was, as a marrer of fact,
closely associated with the exercise of the reproduc-
rive Iunctions, and cannot be set down here.
" Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as
he caught sight of the Ma]or and myself who had
entered the stable at that moment. The Major
was trying hard fo repress a smile. " Go on with
your catechism, Hawkins," he said. If was evident
that Hawkins belonged fo the Moral Education

A "DUG-OUT" 197
League, and believed in suasion rather than
punishment for the repression of vice.
"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Haw-
kins . " I said unguardedly. But no R.F.A.
driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's
reply was disconcerting. " I 'ates 'em, sir," he
whispered to me as the Major turned his back;
" I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They
gives me 'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache
something cruel."
" He doesn't, though," said the Maior, who had
overheard this auricular confidence. We had ]eft
the stable. " Our drivers are mighty fond of their
horses -- and proud of them too. It's quite an
infatuation in its way. But corne and see the
O.T.C. We've got them down here for the week-
end, by way of showing them the evolutions of a
battery. They've got their instructor, an N.C.O.
who's been dug out for the job, and l've Dent
two of the guns to put them through their paces.
He's quite priceless--a regular chip of the old
Army block."
" Now, si1"," the sergeant was saying, " get
them into single file." They were to change from
Battery Column to Column of Route.
" Battery . . . !" began the cadet in a piping
voice.
"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mi|d

198 LEAVES 'ROM A 'IELD NOTE-BOOK

expostulation. " You've got to get it off your
chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So ! " And he gave
a stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and

surprising performance, for he was fat and scant of
breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at
the Club, after twenty-one years' service in
the Army, had produced a fatty degeneration which
no studious arrangement of an Army belt could
altogether conceal.
" Battery !" began the cadet, as he threw his
head back and took a deep breath. " Advance in
single file from the right. The rest mark time."
" Rest ! " said the sergeant reproachfully.
" There ain't no rest in the British Army. Rear,
say, ' Rear,' sir."
" Rear, mark rime ! " said the cadet uncomfort-
ably.
" Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows,
" double them back, sir."
" Battery, run ! " said the cadet brightly.
" As y' wee ! How could yer, Mr. " said
the sergeant grievously. " The British Army never
runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed af
he aspersion upon the reputation of the British
Azmy into which he had been betrayed.
" Double--march !"
They doubled.
The sergeant now turned his attention to a pay

A " DUG-OUT " 199
at gun drill. It was a sub-section, which means
a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment
was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd
numbers in front, evel numbers behind.
" Sectiol tell off!"
" One," from the frot row. " Two," from the
back. " Three," from the front. The tale was
duly told in voices which tan up and down the scale,
tenor alternating with baritone.
" Without drag-ropes--prepare to advance ! "
shouted the sergeant. The odd numbers shifted to
the right of the gun, the evens to the left, but
numbers "4" and" 6," being apparently under the
impression that it was a game of "musical chairs,"
found themselves on the right instead of the left.
"Too may odds," shouted the sergeant.
" The British Army be used to 'eavy hodds, but
not that sort. Nos. 4 and 6 get over to the near
side."
"Halt ! Action front !" They unlimbered, and
swung the gun round to point in the direction of an
imaginary enemy.
The detachment were now grouped round the
gun, and I drew near to have a look at it. No
neater adaptation of means to end could be devised
than your eighteen-pounder. She is as docile as a
child, and ber " bubble " is as sensitive to a touch
as mercury in a barometer.

200 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
" No. 1 add one hundred. Two-nought minutes
more ]eft !" shouted the sergeant, who, with the
versatility of a variety artiste, was now playing
another part from his extensive repertoire. He was
forward observing officer.
One of his pupils turned the ranging gear until
the range-drum registered a further hundred yards,
while another traversed the gun until it pointed
twenty minutes more left.
As we turned away they were performing
another delicate and complicated operation which
was hot carried through without some plaintive
expostu]ation from the N.C.O.
" It reminds me," remarked the Maior colloqui-
ally, as we strolled away, " of Fa|staff drilling
his recruits. So does the texture of the khaki
they serve out to the O.T.C. 'Dowlas, filthy
dowlas!' But you've no idea how soon he'll
lick them into shape. These 'dug-outs' are
as primitive as cave-dwellers in their way but
they know their job. And what is more, they
like it."
As we passed the stables I heard ecstatic sounds
--a whinny of equine delight and the blandish-
ments of a human voice. Through the open door
I caught a glimpse of Driver Hawkins with his
back turned towards us. I-Ils left arm was round
Tommy's neck and the left side of his face rested

A « DUG-OUT" 01

upon Tommy's hed ; the fingers of lais ight hnd
were delictely stroking Tommy's nose.
"I forgives yer," I herd him sy with rre
mgnnimity, " yus, I forgives yer, old boy. But
if yer does it gin, yer'll give me the blooming
UIrlp.
I pssed hurriedly on. It ws not for stmnger
to intrude on nything so intinmte.

XXII

CHRISTMAS EVE
(94)

" HALT ! Stop, I mean."
The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel
faced with cotton wool looked at their conductor,
a sergeant in the Glosters, vith intense and pain-
ful concentration. They were rehearsing carols in
the annexe of a Base hospital on Christmas Eve,
and the sergeant was as hard to please as if they
were recruits doing their first squad drill. They
were a scratch lot, recruited by a well-meaning
chaplain to the Forces, from Base " details " and
convalescents. Their voices were lusty, but their
rime erratic, and one ardent spirit was a bar ahead
and gaining audibly with each lap despite the
desperate spurts of the rest.
" Opened out Iris throttle--'e bas," whispered
an Army driver profession ally to Iris neighbour;
" 'e's a fair cop for exceedin' the speed linfit."
The sergeant glanced magisterially at the
202

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914 203
offender, a young Dorset, who a year ago was
hedging and ditching in the Vale of Blckmore,
but who bas lately done enough digging for a
whole parish.
" You've lost your connecting files, me lad," he
exclaimed reproach[ully ; "you ain't out on patrol,
yer l:now. 'Shun ! Now again! ' Christians ' "
Christians, awake! Salure the happy morn,
Whereon . . .
The familiar melody was shut behind me as I
closed the door. Those West-country voices awoke
in me haunting memories of my childhood, and, in
a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a
frosty night, illuminated by the candle in a shep-
herd's horn lant.ern, their breath a luminous vapour
in the sti]l air, and my mother holding me up af
the window of out Wiltshire bouse, as I looked out
from the casernent of the nursey upon the
turned fces of the choristers below and wondered
mazily whether they hl brought lather Christmas
with them.
A low cry of pain reched my ears as I opened
the door of Surgical Ward A.I. A nurse was
removing a field-dressing from a soldier just brought
down from the Front. The surgeon stood over him
ready to spray the wound with leroxide. " Buck
up, old chap," cried the patients la the neighbour-
ing beds who looked oa encouragingly af these

204 LEAVES IROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
ministries. Another moan escaped him as the
discoloured bandage, with its faint odour of per-
chloride, was stripped from the raw and inflamed
flesh.
" Next gramophone record, please!" chanted
his neighbours. The patient smiled faintly at the
exhortation and set his teeth.
" That's better, somy," whispered the nurse
with benign approval.
" It won't hurt you, old chap, I'm only going
to drain of[ the septic matter," interjected the
surgeon in holland overlls, with sleeves tucked up
to the elbow. "Here, give me that tube." The
dresser handed him nickel reed from the sterilising
basin.
With a few light quick movements the wound
was sprayed, dressed, cleansed, and anointed, and
the surgeon, like the good Samaritan, passed on to
the next case. Only last night the patient was in
the trenches, moaning with pain, as the stretcher-
bearel carried him to the aid-post, and from the
aid-post to the forward dressing station, whence
by an uneasy ]ourney (there were no sumptuous
hospital-trains in those days) he had corne hither.
But what of the others who were hit outside the
trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas
Eve, in that dreadful No Mn's Land swept by the
enemy's tire, whither no stretcher-bearer can go--

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914 205
lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping
forms, some quivering in the barbed wire, where
dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping only for a
clean]y death from a bullet before their wounds
lester and poison the blood in their veins.
Whereon--the Saviour--of mankind--was---born.
The measured cadence fell on my ear as I ]eft
the ward and passed beyond the annexe. The
sergeant had now got his section well in hand.
I tumed up the long winding road towards my
quarters. It was a co]d moon]ight night, and
every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined
as in a black-and-white drawing. Overhead each
st.r was hard and bright, as though a lapicIary had
been at work in the heavens, and never had the
Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright
and legible--or so it seemed to me--as Mars in ail
that starry heraldry.
" Bon soir, monsieur!" It was the voice of
the sentry, and came from behind a barricade of
hurdles, thatched with straw, on the crest of the
road over the clowns. His bayonet gleamed like
a silver needle in the moonlight, and he was alone
in Iris vigil. No shepherds watched their flocks
by night, neither did angels sing peace on earth
and goodwill towards men. Only the cold austerity
of the stars kept him company. Perhaps the first
Christmas Eve was just such a starry night as this ;

206 LEAVES ROM A IELD NOTE-BOOK

the saine stars may have looked down upon a
manger in Bethlehem. But on the brow of the bill
was one of those wayside shrines which symbolise
the anguish of the Cross, and these very stars may
have looked down upon the hill of Calvary.

THE FRObT AGAIN

207

XXIII

THE COMING OF THE HUN

TItE maire sat in his parlour at the Hôtel de Ville
dictating to his secretary. He was a stout little
man with a firm mouth, an indonfitable chin, and
quizzical eyes. His face would at any rime have
been remarkable; for a French provincial it was
notable in being clean-shaven. Most Frenchmen
of the middle class wear beards of an Assyrian
luxuriance, which to a casual glance suggest stage
properties rather than the work of Nature. The
maire was leaning back in his chair, his elbows
resting upon its arms and his hands extended in
front of him, the thumb and finger-tips of one hand
poised to meet those of the other as though he were
contemplating the fifth proposition in Euclid. It
was a characteristic attitude; an observer would
have said it indicated a temperament at once
patient and precise. He was dictating a note to
the commissaire de police, warning the inhabitants
to conduct themselves " paisiblement " in the
209 P

210 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
event of a German occupation, an event wlfich was
hourly expected. Much might depend upon that
proclamation; a word too little or too much and
Heaven alone knew what innuendo a German
Commandant might discover in it. Perhaps the
naire was also not indifferent to the ques'tion of
style; he prided himself on his French; he had
in his youth won a prize at the Lycée for com-
position, and he contributed occasional papers to
the iottrnal of the Société de l'Histoire de France
on the antiquities of his department. Most French-
men are born purists in style, and the maire lingered
over his words.
" Continuez, Henri," he said with a glance at
the clerk. " Le Maire, assisté de son adjoint et de ses
conseillers municipaux et de délégués de quartier, sera
en permanence à l'Htel de Ville pou« assurer--"
There was a kick at the door and a tall loutish
man in the uniform of a German ofiïcer entered,
followed by two grey-coated soldiers. The ofiïcer
neither bowed nor saluted, but merely glared with
an intimidating frown. The maire's clerk sat in
an atrophy of fear, unable to move a muscle. The
ofiïcer advanced to the desk, pulled out lfis revolver
from its leather pouch, and laid it with a lethal
gesture on the naire's desk. The maire examined
it curiously. " Ah, yes, M. le Capitaine, thank
you; I will examine it in a moment, but I bave

THE COMING OF THE HUN 211

seen better ones--our new service pattern, for
example. Ja! Ich verstehe ganz gut," he con-
tinued, answering the otlicer's reckless French in
perfect German. " Consider yourself under af-
test," declaimed the officer, with incieasing violence.
" We are in occupation of your town; you will
provide us within the next twenty-four hours with
ten thousand kilos of bread, thirty thousand kilos
of hay, forty thousand kilos of oats, rive thousand
bottles of wine, one hundred boxes of cigars."
(" Mon Dieu ! it is an inventory," said the maire
to himself.) " If these are hot forthcoming by
twelve noon to-morrow you will be shot," added the
officer in a sudden inspiration of iris own.
The maire was facing the officer, who towered
above tfim. " Ah, yes, Monsieur le Capitaine, you
will not take a seat ? No ? And your requisi-
tion--you bave your commandant's written order
and signature, no doubt ? " The officer blustered.
" No, no, Monsieur le Capitaine, I am the head
of the civil government in this town; I take no
orders except from the head of the military author-
ity. You bave doubtless forgotten Hague Regula-
tion, Article 52; your Government signed it, you
will recollect." The officer hesitated. The maire
looked out on the place ; it was Iull of armed men,
but he did not flinch. " You see, monsieur," he
went on suavely, " there are such things as receipts,

212 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
and they bave fo be authenticated." The oficer
turned his back on him, took out his field note-
book, scribbled something on a page, and, having
torn it out, handed it fo one of his men with a curt
instruction.
The maire resumed his dictation fo the hypno-
tised clerk, while the officer sat astride a chair and
executed an impatient pas seul with his heels upon
the pa'quet floor. Once or twice he spat demon-
stratively, but the maire took no notice. In a few
minutes the soldier returned with a written order,
which the oficer threw upon the desk without a
V¢Ord.
The maire scrutinised it carefully. "Ten
thousand kilos of bread! Monsieur, we provide
rive thousand a day for the refugees, and this will
fax us fo the uttermost. The bakers of the town
are nearly all sous les drapeaux. Very well, mon-
sieur," he added in reply fo an impatient exclama-
tion from the oficer, " we shall do out best. But
many a poor soul in this town will go hungry to-
night. And the receipts ? " " The requisitioning
oficer will go with you and give receipts," retorted
the oficer, who had apparently forgotten that he
had placed the maire under arrest.
Subdued lights twinkled like glow-worms in the
streets as the maire returned across the square fo

THE COMING OF THE HUN 213
the Hôtel de Ville. Ite threaded his way through
groups of infantry, narrowly escaped a collision
with three drunken soldiers, who were singing "Die
Wacht ara Rhein" with laborious unction, slçirted
the parlç of ammunition waggons, and reached the
main entrance. Ite had been on his feet for hours
visiting the boulange'ies, the pâtisseries, the hay
and corn merchants, persuading, expostulating,
beseeching, until at last he had wrung from their
exiguous stores the apportionment of the stupend-
ous tribute. It was a heavy task, nor were
importunities ruade appreciably easier by the
receipt-forms tendered, readily enough, by the
requisitioning oiïicer who accompanied him, for
the inhabitants seemed to view with terror the
possession of these German documents, suspecting
they knew not what. But the task was done, and
the maire wearily mounted the stairs.
The oiïicer greeted him curtly. The maire now
had leisure to study his appearance more closely.
Ite had high cheek-bones, protruding eyes, and a
large underhung mouth which, when he was pleased,
looked sensual, and, when he was annoyed, merely
cruel. The base Of Iris forehead was square, but
it rapidly receded with a convex conformation of
head, very closely shaven as though vith a curry-
comb, and his ears stood out almost at right angles
to his skull. The ferocity that was his by nature

P,14 LEAYES IROM A IIELD bOTE-BOOK
he seemed to bave assiduously cultivated by art,
and the points of his moustaches, upturned in the
shape of a cow's horns, accentuated the truculence
of his appearance. In short, he was a typical
Prussian officer. In peace he would bave been
merely comic. In war he was terrible, for there
was nothing to restrain
Meanwhile the officer called for a corporal's
guard to place the maire under arrest. "But you
will first sign the following aîche--by the General's
orders," he exclaimed roughly.
Le aire informe ses concitoyens que le commandant en
chef des troupes allemandes a ordonné que le maire et deux
notables soient pris comme otages pour la raison que des civils
aient tiré sur des patrouilles allemandes. Si un coup de fusil
était tiré à nouveau par des civils, les trois otages seraient
fusillés et la ville serait incendiée immédiatement.
Si des troupes alliées rentraient le maire rappelle à la popu-
lation que tout civil ne doit pas prendre part à la guerre et que
si l'un d'eux venait à y participer le commandant des troupes
allemandes ferait fusiller également les otages.
" One moment," said the maire as he took up
a pen, " ' les civils' ! I ordered the civil population
to deposit their arms at the mairie two days ago,
and the commissaire de police and the gendarmes
bave searched every bouse. We bave no armed
civilians here."
" Es macht nichts," said the officer ; " we shall
add ' ou peut-être des militaires en civil.' "
The maire shrugged his shoulders at the dis-

THE COMIbG OF THE HUh 215
ingenuous parenthesis. It was, he knew, useless
to protest. For all he knew he might be signing
his own death-warrant. He studied the style
a little more attentively. " Mon Dieu, what
French ! " he said to himself ; " ' était,' ' seraient,'
' venait' ! What moods ! What tenses ! Mon-
sieur le Capitaine," he continued aloud, "if I had
used such French in my exercises at the Lycée my
instituteur would bave said I deserved to be sliot.
lray allow me to make it a little more graceful."
But the lrussian's ignorance of French syntax
was only equalled by his suspicion of it. The
mai'e's irony merely irritated him and his coolness
iuzzled him. " I give you thirty seconds to sign,"
he said, as he took out his watch and the inevitable
revolver. The maire took up a needle-like pen,
dipped it in the ink, and with a sigh wrote in fragile
but firm characters " X--¥--" The oflïcer
called a corporal's guard, and the maire, who had
fasted since noon, was marched out of the room
and thrust into a small closet upon the door of
which were the letters " Cabinet." This, he re-
flected grimly, was certainly what in military lan-
guage is called "close confinement." The soldiers
accompanied him. There was just room for him
to stretch his weary body upon the stone floor;
one soldier remained standing over him with fL<ed
bayonet, the others took up their position outside.

9,16 LEAVES FROM A FIELD lqOTE-BOOK
Meanwhile a company of Landwehr had bi-
vouacked in the square, four machine-guns had
been placed so as to command the four avenues
of approach, patrols had been sent out, sentries
posted, all lights extinguished, and all doors
ordered tobe left open by the householders.
Billeting ofiïcers had gone from bouse to house,
chalking upon the doors such legends as " Drei
Miinner," "60jziere--Eingag verboten," and, on
rare occasions " Gute Lettre hier." The trembling
inhabitants had been forced to wait on their un-
invited guests as they clamoured noisily for wine
and liqueurs. All the civilians of military age,
and many beyond it, had been rounded up and
taken under guard to the church ; their wives and
daughters alone remained, and were the subiect of
menacing pleasantries. So much the aire knew
before he had returned from his errand. As he
lay in his dark cell he speculated painfully as to
what might be happening in the bornes of his
fellow-townsmen. He sat up once or twice to
listen, until the toe of the sentry's boot in his
back reminded Mm of his irregularity. Now and
again a woman's cry broke the silence of the night,
but otherwise all was still. He composed himself
fo sleep on the floor, reflecting that he must husband
Ms strength and his nerves for what might lie
ahead of him. He was very tired and slept heavily

THE COMING OF THE HUN 217
in spite of his cold stone bed. At the hour of one
in the morn]ng he was awakened by a kick, aad he
round himself staring at an electric torch which
was being held to his face by a tall figure shrouded
in darkness. It was the captain. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes.
"'Fusillé'! Bien! so Iam to be shot! and
wherefore, Monsieur le Capitaine ? "
" Some one bas fired upon us," said the ofiicer,
" one of your dirty fellows ; you must pay for it."
" And the order ? " asked the maire sleepily ;
"you have the Commandant's order ? "
" Never nfind about the order," said the ofiicer
reassuringly, " the order will be forthcoming at
eight o'clock. Oh yes, we shall shoot you most
authoritatlvely--never fear."
The officer knew that nothing could be doae
until eight o'clock, for he dared not wake the Com-
mandant, but he did not see why he should deny
himself the plesure of waldng up this pig of a
naire to see how he would take it. The maire
divined his thoughts, and without a word turned
over on his side and pretended to go to sleep again.
From under his drooping eyelids he sw the ofiicer
gazing at him with a look in which dislike, dis-
appointment, and plesurable expectation seemed
to be struggling for mstery. Then with a click
he extinguished his torch and withdrew.

218 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
Ai eight o'clock the maiïe awoke to learn with
mild surprise that he was hot tobe shot. Beyond
that Iris guard would tell him nothing. It was on]y
afterwards he learnt that one of the drunken
revellers had been prowling the streets, and, having
given thë sentries a bad fright by letting off his
rifle ata lamp-post, had expiated his adventure at
the hands of a firing party in the cemetery outside
he town.
For two days the mai'e was unmolested. He
was allowed to see his adjoint, 1 who came to him
with a troubled face.
" The babies are crying for milk," he said,
" the troops bave taken it all. I begged one of
the officers to leave a little for the inhabitants,
but he said the men did hot like their coffee with-
out plenty of hot milk." The mai'e reflected for
a moment, and then dictated an avis to the
inhabitants enioining upon them tobe as sparing
in their consumption of milk as possible for the
sake of the " mères de famille " and " les petits
enfants."
" Tell the commissaice de police to have that
posted up immediately," he added. "We can do
,,
no more.
" They bave taken the bread out of out mouths,"
resumed the adjoint, " and now they are despoiling
I Deputy.

THE COMING OF THE HUN 219

us of our goods. They are like a swarm of bailiffs
let loose upon out homes. Everywhere they levy
a distress upon out chattels. There is an ammuni-
tion waggon outside my bouse ; they bave put all
the furniture of my salon upon it."
" You should make a protest to the Com-
mandant," said the maire, but not very hope-
fully.
" It is no use," replied the adjoint despondingly.
"I have. He simply shrugged his shoulders and
said, 'C'est la guerre.' It is always so. They
bave shot Jules Bonnard."
" Et pourquoi ? " asked the maire.
" I know not," said the adjoint. " They round
four market-gardeners returning from the fields
last night and shot them too--they ruade them dig
their own graves, and tied their hands behind their
backs with their own scarves. I protested to a
Staff officer; he said it was 'verboten' to dig
potatoes. I said they did not know; how could
they ? He said they ought to know. Then he
abused me, and said if I ruade any more complaints
he would shoot me too. They bave made the civils
dig trenches."
"Ah," said the maire. He knew it was a
flagrant violation of the Hague Regulations, but
it was not the tithe of mint and cummin of the
law that troubled him. It was the reflection that

220 LEAVES IROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK

the civil who is forced to dig trenches is already as
good as dead. He knows too much.
" And the women," continued the adjoint, in a
tone of stupefied horror, " they are crying, many
of them, and will hOt look one in the face. Some
of them bave black eyes. And the young girls !"
The maire brooded in impotent horror. His
meditations were interrupted by the entrance of
the captain. " The Commandant wishes to see
you tout de suite," he exclaimed. " Match !" He
was conducted by a corporal's guard, preceded by
the captain, into the presence of the General, who
had taken up his quarters in the principal mansion
looking out upon the square. The General was a
stout, square-headed man, with grey moustaches
and steel-blue eyes, and the maire divined at a
glance that here was no swashbuckler, but a man
who had himself under control. " I bave imposed
a fine of 300,000 francs upon your town ; you will
collect it in twenty-four hours ; if it is not forth-
coming to the last franc I shall be regretfully com-
pelled to burn this town to the ground."
" And why ? " exclaimed the maire, whom
nothing could now surprise, though much might
perplex.
The General seemed unprepared for the question.
He paused for a moment and said, " Some one bas
been giving information to the enemy." " No ! "

THE COMING OF THE HUN
--he held up his hand, not impolitely but finally,
as the maire began to expostulate--"I bave
spoken."
" But," said the maire desperately, " we shall
be ruined. We have not got it. And all out
goods bave been taken already."
" You bave out receipts," said the General.
" They are as good as gold. German credit is very
high; the Imperial Government bas just floated
a loan of several milliards. And you bave out
stamped Quittungen." He became at once voluble
and persuasive in his cupidity, and forgot some-
thing of his habitual caution. " You surely do
not doubt the word of the German Government ? "
he said. The maire doubted if very much, but he
discreetly held his tongue. " And out requisition-
ing offlcers bave not been niggardly," continued
the General; " they bave put a substantial price
on the goods we bave taken." This was true. If
had hot escaped the maire that the receipt-forms
had been lavish.
" I will do my best," said the maire simply.
He was now released from arrest, and he retired
fo his bouse to think out the new problem that had
presented itself. The threat to burn down the
town might or might not be anything but bluff;
he himself doubted whether the German Com-
mandant would burn the roofs over his men's

2 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
heads, as long as the occupation lasted. The
military disadvantages were too obvious, though
what the enemy might do when they left the town
was another matter. They might shoot him, of
course ; that was more than probable.
But how to find the money was an anxious
problem and urgent. The municipal caisse was
empty: the managers of the banks had closed
their doors and carried their deposits of[ to Paris
before the Germans had entered the town ; of the
wealthier bourgeoisie some had fled, many were
ruined, and the test were inadequate. The maire
pondered long upon these things, leaning back in
his chair with knitted brows in that pensive attitude
which was characteristic. Suddenly he caught
sight of a blue paper with German characters lying
upon a walnut table at his elbow. He took it up,
scrutinised it, and studied the signature :
Empfangschein.
Werth 500 fr. erhalten.
tterr ttuptmnn von Koepenick.
Then he smiled. He iot ui, iut on his overcoat,
took up his hat and cane, and went forth into the
drizzling tain.
Two hours later he was at the headquarters
of the Staf[ and asked to see the Commandant.
He was shown into his presence without delay.

THE COMING OF THE HUN 223
" Well ? " said the Commandant. " Monsieur
le Général, I bave collected the fine," said the
maire. The General's face relaxed its habitual
sternness; he grew at once pleasant and polite.
" Good," he said. The maire opened a fat leather
wallet and placed upon the table under the General's
predatory nose a large pile of blue documents,
some (but not all) stamped with the violet stamp
of the German A.Q.M.G. " If the Itocltgcerter
General will count them," said the maire, " he will
see they corne to 325,000 francs. It is rather
more than the fine," he explained, " but I bave
ruade allowance for the fact that they are not im-
media, tely redeemable. They are mostly stamped,
and--they are as good as gold."
For three minutes there was absolute silence in
the room. The gilt clock in its glass seiulchre on
the manteliiece ticked of[ the seconds as loudly
as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the
night. The maire speculated with more curiosity
than fear as to how many more of these seconds
he had to live. Never had the intervals seemed
so long nor their registration so insistent. The
ashes fell with a soit susurrus in the grate. The
Commandant looked at the maire; the maire
looked at the Commandant. Then the Coin-
mandant smiled. It was an inscrutable stalle; a
smile in which the eyes participated hot at all.

224 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
There was merely a muscular relaxation of the lips
disclosing the teeth; to the maire there seemed
something almost canine in it. At last the General
spoke. " Gut!" he said gutturally ; " you may
gO."
" You astofish me," I said to the maire, as he
concluded his narrative. We were sitting in his
parlour, smoking a cigar together one day in
February in a town not a thousand mlles from the
German lines. " You know, Monsieur le Maire,
they bave shot many a mmficipal magistrate for
less. I wonder they didn't make up their minds
to shoot you." The maire smiled. " They did,"
he sid quietly. He carefully flicked the ash off his
cigar, as he laid it down upon his desk, and opened
the drawer of his escritoire. He took out a piece
of paper and handed it to me. It was an order in
German to shoot the maire on the evacuation of
the town.
" You see, monsieur," he exclaimed, " your
brave soldiers were a little too quick for them.
You ruade a surprise attack in force early one
monfing and drove the enemy out. So surprising
was it that the Staff officers billeted in my bouse
left a box hall full of cigars on my sideboard !
You are smoking one of them now--a very good
cigar, is it not?" It was. "And they left a

THE COMING 01 THE HUIq 225
good many official papers behind--what you call
'chits,' is it not ?--and this one among them.
1)lease nfind your cigar-ash, monsieur! You see
I rather value my own death-warrant."
Moved by an irresistible impulse I rose from my
chair and held out my hand. The maire took it
in mild surprise. " Monsieur," I said frankly, if
crudely, " you are a brave man. And you bave
endured much."
" Yes, monsieur," said the maire gravely, as he
glanced at a proclamation on the wall which he
has added to his private collection of antiquities,
" that is true. I bave often been trèsfâc]é to think
that I who won the Michelet prize at the Lycée
should bave put my name to that thing over there." 1
1 This narrative follows with some fidelity the course of events as
related to the writer by the maire of the town in questio But for
the most obvious of reasons the writer has deemed if his duty to
suppmss names, disguise events, and give the narrative something of
the investiture of fiction. It is, however, true "in substance and in
fact."--J. H. M.

XXIV

THE HILL

IT was one of those I)erfect st)ring dys when the
whole earth seems to bare ber bosom to the caresses
of the sm. The sky was without a cloud and
in the vault overhead, blue as a I)iece of Delft, a
lark was ascending in transi)orts of exultant song.
The bill on which we stood was covered with young
birch sai)lings bursting into leaf, and the sky itself
was hot more blue than the wild hyacinths at out
feet. Here and there in the undergrooEh g]eamed
the I)allid anemone. A coi)i)er wire tan from I)ole
to I)ole down the sloi)e of the bill and g]ittered in
the sun like a thread of gold. A little to out right
two circular mirrors, glancing obliquely at each
other, stood on a trii)od , and a graduated sequence
of flashes came and went, under the hands of the
signallers, with the velocity of light itself. A few
yaÆds behind us on the crest of the bill stood a
windnfill, its great sails motionless as though it
were a brig becalmed and waiting for a wind, and
226

THE HILL 227

astride one arm, like a sailor on a yard, a carpenter
was busy, with his mouth full of nails. The tapping
of Iris hammer and the song of the lark were the
only sounds that broke the warm stil]ness of the
April day. A great plain stretched away at our
feet, aad in the fields below women were stooping
forward over their hoes.
The white towers of Ypres gleamed ghostlike in
the distaat haze. The city had the wistfu! fragility
of some beautiful mirage, and looking at it across
the pleasant landscape I thought of the Pilgrim's
vision of the Golden City shining in the sun beyond
the Land of Beulah. Two or three mlles away on
out right the ground rose gently to a range of low
wooded hills, and on their bare green slopes brown
furrows showed up like a cicatrice. They were the
German trenches. On the crest of the ridge a white
bouse peeped out between the trees. That bouse
seemed an object of peculiar interest to the battery-
major at my side. He was stooping behind the
" Dimctor" with his eye to the sights as though
he was focussing the distant object for a photo-
graph. He fixed the outer clamp, unscrewed the
inner clamp, and having got his sights on the bouse,
he reversed the process and swung round the sights
to bear on a little copse to out left. " One hundred
and rive," he said meditatively as he round the
angle. The N.C.O. took up the range-fmder and

228 LEAVES FROM A FIELD bOTE-BOOK
measured the distances first to the bouse, then to
the COl)Se. The major took up an adjustable
triangle, and with a movement of thumb and
forefinge converted it into the figure of an irregular
" X." As he read off the battery angle on the
" Plotter " the N.C.O. communicated it and the
elevation to the telephone operator, who in tun
communicated it to the battery in the COl)Se.
" Battery angle seventy. Range four thousand."
Gunners are a laconic people, and their language is
as economical of words as a proposition in Euclid ;
their sentences resemble those Oriental languages
in which the veb is regarded as a superfluous
impertinence. Language is fo them a visual and
symboIical thing in which angles and distances are
predicated of churches, tees, and four-storied
bouses. Now in the COl)Se on out left six field-guns
were cunningly concealed, and even as the telephone
operator spoke the dial-sights of those six guns were
being screwed round and the elevating gear ad-
iusted till they and the range-drum recorded the
results of the maior's meditations upon the bill.
Then the guns in the COl)Se spoke, and the air was
sibilant with their speech. A little cloud no bigger
than a man's hand arose above the roof of the white
bouse on the ridge. Ou battey had round its
mark.
Somewhere behind that idge were the enemy's

THE HILL 229

batteries and they were yet to find. But even as
we searched the landscape with out field-glasses
an aeroplane rose from behind out own position
and ruade for the distant ridge, its diaphanous
wings displaying red, white, and blue concentric
circles to out glasses like the scales of some huge
magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke
made faint pencillings in the sky behind it. As it
hovered above the ridge seven or eight little white
clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared
from nowhere just below it. They were German
shrapnel. But the aeroplane passed imperturbably
on, leaving the little feathers to float in the sky
until in rime they faded away and disappeared.
In no long rime the aeroplane was retracing its
flight, and certain little coloured discs were speaking
luminously to the battery, telling it of what the
observer had seen beyond the ridge. Between the
aeroplane, the observer, the telephone, and the
guns, there seemed to be some mysterious free-
masonry. And this impression of secret and
collusive agencies was heightened by the vibration
of the air above us, in which the shells from the
batteries ruade furrows that were audible without
being visible, as though the whole firmament were
popttlated with disembodied spirits. The passivity
of the toilers in the field below us, who, absorbed
in their husbandry, regarded hot the air above

230 LEAVES FIOM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK

them, and the dreaming beauty of the distant city
almost persuaded us that we were the victims of a
gigantic illusion. But even as we gazed the city
accluired a desperate and tragic reality. ¥oices
of thtmder awoke behind the ridge, the air was
rent like a garment, and first oae cloud and then
another and another rose above the city of Ypres,
till the white towers were blotted out of sight.
A black pall floated over the doomed city, and from
that moment the air was never still, as a rhythm of
German shells rained upon it. The storm spread
until other villages were involved, and a tierce red
glow appeared above the roofs of Vlamertinge.
Yet the clouds and flame that rose above the
white towers had at that distance a flagrant beauty
of their own, and it was hard to believe that they
stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men.
Beyond the voluminous smoke and darting tongues
of tire, our field-glasses could show us nothing.
But we knew--for we had seea but yesterday--
that behind that haze there was being perpetrated
a destructio as mournful and capricious as that
which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives over-
took Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one
was even now being taken and the other left; he
who was upon the housetop would not corne down
to take anything out of his bouse, neither would he
who was in the field return to take away his clothes.

THE HILL 23l
The great cathedral was crumbling to dust, and
saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled
from their niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing
tmscathed upon ber pedestal cotemplating the
ruin and tribttlatioa around ber. And we knew
that vhile we gazed the roads from the dooned
city to Locre and Poperinghe were choked with a
terror-stricken stream of fugitives, aacient nmn
hobbling upon sticks, aged wonmn clutch]ng copper
pans, and stumbling mlder the weight of feather-
beds, while whimpering children fumbled among
their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies
ech of the shells, whose traiectory ve heard ever
and anon in the sles overhead, were makiag in that
living stream were to us a subiect of poignant
speculation.
But as I looked inmeCh.'ately around me I round
it ever more difficult to believe that such things were
being done upoa the earth. The carpenter went
on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade
his eyes with his hand and gaze out over the plain,
the peasants in the field continued to hoe, a wonmn
came out of a cottage with a child clinging to ber
slrts, and said, " La guerre, quand finira-t-elle,
M'sieu' ? " From far above us the song of the lark,
now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated dovn
upon the drowsy air.

XXV

THE DAY'S WORK

IT was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some
dozen of us all told--the Camp Commandant, the
Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General, the Assistant-
1)rovost-Marshal, the Assistant-Director of Medical
Services, the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective
bas nothing to do with his personal habits), the
Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a
padre, and myself. Most of us were known by our
initiais--out official initiais--for the use of them
saves time and avoids pomposity. Our duties were
both extensive and peculiar, as will presently
appear, for we were in the habit of talking shop.
There was, indeed, little else to talk about. When
you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with
no amusements and few amenities--neither theatres,
nor sport, nor books--and with little pÆospect of
getting a move on, you can but chronicle the small
beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be
engaging enough at rimes.
232

THE DAY'S WORK 233
As we sat down to the stew whîch our orderly
had compounded with the assistance of the in-
genious Mr. Maconochîe, the Camp Commandant
sighed heavily. "I ara a ldnd of receptacle
for the waste products of everybody's mind,"
he exclaimed petulantly. " This morning I was
rung up on the telephone and asled if I would
bury a dead horse for the Canadian Division; I
told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't
be done. Then two nuns called and asked me to
find a discreet soldiern soldat discret--to escort
them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my
servant, who is a married man with rive children.
Then an old lady sent round to ask me to corne and
drown ber cat's kittens ; I said it was impossible,
as she hadn't complied with the Notification of
Births Act."
The Mess listened to thîs plaintive recital in
unsympathetic silence. Perhaps they reflected that
as the Camp Commandant is one of those to whom
much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given,
from hm much may legitimately be expected.
" Well, you may think yourself lucky you haven't
my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-
General at length. " I'm getting rather fed up
with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm like
the man who boasted that his chîef literary recrea-
tion was reading Bradshaw, except that I don't

234 LEAVES FROM A FIELD OTE-BOOK
boast of it and it isn't a recreation--it's damned
hard work. I have to read the Army List for about
ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials
wrong there's the devil to pay. And I spent hall
an hour between the telephone and the Army List
to-day trying to find out who ' Teddy' was. The
102nd Welsh sent him in with their returns of
officers' casualties as h,ving died of heart failure
on the 22nd inst."
" Well, but who is ' Teddy,' anyhow ? " asked
the Camp Commandant.
'" He is the regimental goat," replied the
D.A.A.G. "I suppose they thought it amusing.
When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade Head-
quarters on the telephone that I quite understood
their making him a member of their mess, as they
belonged to the saine species."
" Wait tmtil you've had to track down a case of
typhoid in billets," said the R.A.M.C. man who
looks after infectious diseases. " l've been on the
trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where
a company of the Downslfires are bi]leted, and it
made me sad. They had their filters with them
and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of im-
pure water, and that they treasured out regulations
like the book of Leviticus. And yet the trail of
that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the
thing was spreading like one of the seven plagues

THE DAY'S WORK 235
of Egypt. At last I tracked it down to an Army
cook ; the rotter had had typhoid about rive years
ago and simply poisoned everything he touched.
He was what we call a carrier."
"What did you do with him ?" said the
A.D.M.S.
" He won't do any more cooking; l've sent
him home. The fellow's a perfect leper, and
ought to be interned like an alien enemy."
" Well, I'd rather bave your iob than mine even
if prevention is more honourable thau cure," said
he whom we know as " Smells," and who has a
nose like a fox-terrier's. "I ara the avant-gag'de
of the Staff, and you fellows can thauk me that you
are so merry and bright. If I didn't make my
sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime
and fatigue parties, where wofld you all be ? "
" We should all be home on sick-leave and very
pleased to get if," said the A.P.M. ungratefully.
" The maire thinks I'm mad, of course," con-
inued' Smells,' " and I can't make him under-
stand that cesspools and open sewers in the street
are hot conducive to health."
" I expect they think we're rather too fond of
spreading broad out phylacteries," said the Assist-
ant Provost Marshal. "Iqow I'm a sort of licens-
ing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this
commune, and the estaminet proprietors think I'm

236 LEAVES IROM A IIELD bOTE-BOOK

a Temperance fanatic," he said, as he put forth his
hand for the whisky bottle. " One of them told
me the other day he preferred a German occupation
to a British one, because the Huns let him sell as
much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet
I'm sure the little finger of a French provost-
marshal is thicker than my loins any day."
" Yes," said the Camp Commandant, " it's out
melancholy duty to be impertinent. I'm supposed
to read al] you fellows' letters before I stamp them.
I'd be rather glad if they were fiable to be censored
again at the Base or somewhere else en route; it
would relieve me of any compunction about the
first reading, the text and preamble of the envelope
would be good enough for me. You fellows write
abominably."
" I'm something of a handwriting expert my-
self," said the A.P.M., ignoring the aspersion.
" They have changed the colour of the passes
again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh
study of the A.G.'s signature ; I believe he changes
his style of handwriting dth the colour of the
pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s
bank balance," he murmured dreamily ; " I believe
I could now forge his signature very artistically."
"I wish some one wou]d start a school of
handwriting at G.H.Q.," said the A.D.M.S. "I
believe I receive more chits than any man on the

THE DAY'S WORK 237

staff." " Chits," it should be explained, are the
billets-doux of the Army wherein officers send tender
messages to one another and make assignations.
" Did you hear about that chit the Camp Com-
mandant at the Headquarters of the --th Corps
sent to the A.Q.M.G. ? " asked the A.P.M. " No ?
Well, the A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to
Ferrers asking if they had ruade use of any Am-
monal and, if so, whether the results were satis-
factory. Ferrers sent if on fo the Camp Com-
mandant for report and the Camp Commandant
wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is hot
understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used
--is ita drug or an explosive ? ' Ferrers told him
to ask the Medical Officer attached to Corps head-
quarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back
another chit to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had
informed him that ' Ammonal' was a compolmd
drug extensive]y used in America in cases of abnor-
mal neurotic excitement, and that, so far as he knew,
it was nota medical issue to Corps H.Q. He there-
fore regretted that he was unable fo report results,
but promised that if occasion should arise to ad-
minister it to any of the Corps H.Q. personnel he
would faithfully observe the effects and report the
same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he
betrayed a quite abnormal degree of neurotic
excitement ; in fact, he was quite nasty about it."

238 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
" What the devil did he mean ? " asked the
A.D.M.S.
" Well, that points the moral of your remarks
about haadwriting," said the A.I.M. encouragingly.
" The Camp Commaadant had written what looked
like an' o' in place of an ' a.' Ammono] ]s a drug ;
ammoaal is aa explosive."
" Well, I wish some oae would teach the Huns
how to write decently." The speaker was Sum-
mersby of the Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence
are a corps of detectives and have to estimate the
strength, the location, and the composition of the
enemy's forces. Everything is grist that comes to
their mill and they will perform surprising feats of
inductioa. They can reconstruct a German Army
Corps out of a Laadwehr man's bootlace, his diary,
his underclothing, or his shoulder-strap--but the
greatest of these is his diary. " l've been studying
the diaries of prisoners uatil I feel a Hun myself.
They remind me of the diary I used to keep at school,
they are all about eating and drinking. The Hun
is a glutton and a wine-bibber. But I fotmd some-
thing to-day--' Keine Gefangene' in an officer's
fie]d note-book."
"Translate, my Hunnsh friend," said the A.I.M.
" No prisoners," replied Summersby shortly.
"I hope you handed the swine over to the
P.M.," said the Camp Commandant.

THE DAY'S WORK 239
" Well, no," said Summersby. " You see he
had a plausible explanation--by the way, what
perfect English those German officers talk ; l'Il ber
that man bas eaten our bread and sait some rime.
He said it was a Brigade order to the men not to
make the taking of prisoners a pretext for going
back to the rear in large parties but to leave them
fo the supports when they came up. The curious
thing is that that officer belongs to the 112th and
we've our eye on the 112th. One of their men, a
fellow named Schmidt, who surrendered on the
19th of last month, said they'd had an order fo take
no prisoners but ldll them all. His regiment was
the ll2th," he added darlçly.
" The filthy swine ! " we cried in a chorus, and
our talk grew sombre as we exchanged reminis-
cences.
" What pleases me about you fellows," said
lonsonby, who had been listening with a languid
air, and who was formerly in the F.O. where he com-
posed florid speeches in elegant French for Hague
Flenipotentiaries, " is your habits of speech. In
diplomacy we contrive to talk a lot without saying
anything, whereas Army men manage fo talk little
and say a great deal. You've got four words in
the Army which seenl fo be a mighty present help
in trouble at H.Q. Their sustaining properties
are remarkable and they seem fo ride over very

40 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

anxious moments. When you are in a hole you
say 'Damn all,' and when you are asked for in-
structions you cry ' Carry on.' I suppose it's by
sitting tight and using those words with dîscrimina-
tion that you fellows arrive at greatness and attain
Brigadier tank. That seems fo be the first thing a
third-grade staff-officer learns."
" The first thing a third-grade staff-oflïcer learns
is fo speak respectfully of his superiors," said the
A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion af Ponsonby, who
caught if with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible
and, in spire of his supercilious civilian airs, much
is forgiven Mm. He turned fo the D.A.A.G.
and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten fo say grace.
For what we bave hOt received "--he added,
with a meaning glance af a Stilton cheese which
the A.A.G.'s wife bas sent out from home and
which remained on the sideboard--" the Lord make
us truly thankfitl." This was an allusion fo the
D.A.A.G.'s sacerdotal functions. For the Adjutant-
General and his staff, who know the numbers
of all the Field Ambulances, can lay hands--but
not in the aiostolic sense--upon every chaplain
attached thereto ; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of
them all and can admonish, deprive, and suspend.
The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction.
"I thinl< we've fixed if up with those Red Cross
drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s depart-

THE DAY'S WORK 241

ment had been wrestling with the disciplinary
problem presented by these birds of passage on
the lines of communication. " We've decided that
they are Army followers under section 176, sub-
section 10, o[ the Army Act, and that you ' follow '
the British Army from the moment you accept
a pass to H.Q. My chier called some of them
together yesterday, and being in a benevolent
humour told them that they were now under
military law and might be sentenced to anything
from seven days' field-punishment to the punish-
ment of death. This was pour encourager les autres.
They looked quite thoughtful."
" That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby
pensively. " Should an Army follower be hanged
or is he entitled to be shot ? I put it to you,"
he added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I
want counsel's opinion."
"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the
man of law. " But the safest course would be to
bang him first and shoot him afterwards."
" Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel,"
said 1)onsonby. " l'll put you another problem.
Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower ? Because
Slingsby never bas any appetite for dinner"
(this was notoriously tmtrue), " and I have a
strong suspicion that he converts--that's a legal
expression for fraud, isn't it ?--his carrier-pigeons

242 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

into pigeon-pie. What is the penalty for fraudu-
lent conversion of an Army follower ? " Slingsby,
who in virtue of his aquiline features is known
as ,4quila vulgaris, bas charge of the carrier-
pigeons and takes large baskets of them out to the
Front every day; he is supposed to be traifing
them by an intimate use of pigeon- English hot
to settle when the shells explode. Unfortunately
his pigeons are usually posted as " missing," and
go to some bourne from which no pigeon bas ever
been known to return. Ponsonby glances suspi-
ciously at Slingsby's portly figure.
But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to
study a dossier of " proceedings," and his departure
was the signal for a general dispersion. " Corne
and bave a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I "
man. " Can't, you slacker," was the reply. " l've
got to go and make up an ' I ' summary. ' Notes
of an Air Reconnaissance. Distribution of the
enemy's forces. Copy of a German Divisional
Circular. Notes on the German system of signalling
from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of
thing. Just now we're trying to discover how many
guns they've got in the batteries of their new
formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm.
projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we
suspect that two guns bave been withdrawn. But
it may be only a blind."

THE DAY'S WORK 243

As we turned out into the drkened street to
make our way to our respective offices a supply
column rumbled over the pavé, each of the seventy-
two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships
of a fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white
armlets whizzed past on their motor-bicycles, and
high overhead was the loud drolfing hum of the
aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of
guns was clearly audible from the north-east.
The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, " Ws Hill 60
again. My old regiment's up there. And to-
morrow the casualty returns will come in. Good
God ! will if never end ? "

XXVI

FIAT JUSTITIA

PARQUET
du
Tribunal de I '° Instance
d'Ypres

AT last I had round if. I had spent a mournful
morning af Ypres seeking out the procureur du roi,
and I had sought in vain. I-Ie was nowhere fo be
round. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in
a winding-sheet of mortar, fine as dust, which rose
in clouds as the Germau shells winnowed among
the ruins. The German guns had been threshing
the ancient city like flails, beating ber out of all
recognition, beating ber into shapes strange, un-
couth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little
more than a deserted cloister of ruined arches, and
the cathedral presented a spectacle ai once tragic
and whimsical--the brass lectern still stood upright
in the nave confronting a congregation of over-
turned chairs as with a gesture of reproof. The
sight of those scrambling chairs all huddled together
244

FIAT JUSTITIA 245

and fallen headloag upon one another had some-
thing oddly human about it ; it suggested a panic
of ghosts. Ypres is an uncanny place.
We returned to Poperinghe, out way choked by
a columI1 of French troops, pale, hollow-eyed, their
blue tmiforms bleached by sun and tain tmtil ail
the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before
resuming out hunt for the procureur du roi--who,
we now round, had removed from Ypres to Pope-
ringhe--we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was
crowded with Frcnch officers, with whom a full-
bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl exchanged
uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird
and uncomely boy, who regarded A--, the Staff
officer accompanying me, with a hypnotic stare.
He peered at him from under drooping eyelids,
flanking a nose without a bridge, and my com-
panion dida't like it. " He is admiring you," I
remarked by way of consolation, as indeed he was.
" What do you call it ? " said A-- petulantly
fo a R.A.M.C. oflîcer who was lunching with us.
The latter looked at the boy with a clinical eye.
"Necrosis--syphilitic," he said dispassionately.
" And he's handing us the cakes!" A-- ex-
claimed with holzor. " Fetch me an otmce of
civet." We declined the cakes, and, having paid
out addition, hastily departed fo resume out quest
of the procureur.

246 LEAVES IOM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
Eventually we round the legend set out above.
It was a placard stuck on the door of a private
bouse. We entered and fomd ourselves in a
kitchen with a stone floor; japanned tin boxes,
calf-botmd volumes, and fat registers, all stamped
with the arms of Belgium, were grouped on the
shelves of the dresser. A coulous gentleman,
well-groomed and debonair, with waxed moustaches,
greeted us. It was the procureur du roi. With
him was another civilian--the juge d'instruction.
They politely requested us to take a seat and to
excuse a judicial preoccupation. The juge d'in-
struction was interrogating an inhabitant of
Poperinghe. The procureur explained to me that
the prévenu (the accused), who was not present
but was within the precincts, was charged with
calomnie 1 mlder Section 444 of the Code Pénal.
" But," I exclaimed in astonishment, " are you
still administering justice ? " " Pourquoi non ? "
he asked in mild surprise. It was true, he ad-
nfitted, that lais office at Ypres had been destroyed
by shell-fiie, the maison d'arrét--in plain English,
the prison--was open to the four winds of heaven,
and warders and gendarmes had been called up
to the colours. But justice must be doue and the
maiesty of the King of the Belgians upheld. The
King's writ still raa, even though its currency
x Defamation. It is a misdomoanour according to Belgian law.

FIAT JUSTITIA 247
nfight be linfited to the few square mlles which
were all that remained of Belgian territory in
Belgian hands. All this he explained to me with
such gravity that I felt fltrther questions would be
futile, if hot impertinent. I therefore held my
tongue and determined to follow the proceedings
closely, being hot a little curious to observe how
the judgment would be enforced.
The witness took the oath to say the truth and
notbing but the truth (" rien que la vérité "),
concluding with the solemn invocation, " Ainsi
m'aide Dieu." The parties had elected fo have
the proceedings taken in French.
" Your naine ? " said the judge, as he studied
the procès-verbal prepared by the procureur.
" Jules F---"
"Age ? "
" Cinquante-cinq."
" Profession ? "
" Cordonnier."
" Résidence ? "
" Rue d'Ypres 32."
This preliminary catechism being completed,
the prosecutor unfolded his tale. He had been
drinking the health of His Majesty the King of
the Belgians and conftrion to his enemies in an
estaminet at the crowded hour of 7 P.M. The
accused had entered, and in the presence of many

248 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
of his neighbours had said to him, " Vous êtes un
Bosche." " Un Bosche!" repeated the witness
indignantly. " Itis a gross defamation." With
difi5culty had he been restrained from the shedding
of blood. But, being a law-abiding, peaceful man
and the Iather of a family, he volubly explained,
he had laid this information (" dénonciation ")
belote the procureur du roi.
The iudge looked grave. But he duly noted
down the testimony, after some perfunctory cross-
examination, and, it being read over to the witness,
the judge added " Lecture faite," and the per-
sisting witness signed the deposition with his own
hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other
witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty,
came forward and testified to the saine effect.
And they also signed their depositions and with-
flrew.
The magistrate ordered the usher to bring in
the accused, who had been summoned to appear
by a mandat d'amener. He was a stout, dark,
convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, hot
altogether convinced of the enormity of his delict,
and inclined at first to deprecate these proceedings.
But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon
tied him into knots, and reduced him to a state of
extreme penitence.
" Where were you on the 3rd of Alril at 7 1.. ? "'

FIAT JUSTITIA 249
began the magistrate, making what gunners call a
ranging shot. The accused appeared to bave been
everywhere in 1)Oleringhe except at the estaminet.
He had been to the butcher's, the balçer's, and
the candlestick-maker's.
" At what hour did you enter the Café à l'Har-
monie ? "
The accused tried to look as if he now heard of
the Café "À l'Harmonie" for the first rime, but
tmder the searching eye of the magistrate he failed.
He might, he conceded, bave looked in there for a
thirsty moment.
" Do you low Jules F-- " the magistrate
persisted. The accused grudgingly admitted the
existence of such a lerson. " Is he a German ? "
asked the magistrate pointedly. The accused
londered. " Wou]d you call him a Bosche ? "
persisted the magistrate. "I never meant to call
him 'a Bosche,' " the accused said in an un-
guarded moment. The magistrate pounced on
him. He had round the range. After that the
result was a foregone conclusion. The duel ended
in the accused tearfully admitting he thought he
nust bave been drunk, and throwing himself on
the mercy of the magistrate.
" Itis a grave offence," said the magistrate
severely, as he contemllated the lachrymose de-
linquent. "An estaminet is a public place within

250 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
the meaning of Section 444 of the Code Pénal.
Vous avez méchamment imputé £ une personne
un fait précis qui est de nature à porter atteinte à
son honneur." " And calculated to provoke a
breach of the peace," he added. " It is ptmishable
with a terre of imprisonment hot exceeding one
year." The face oï the accused grew long. " Or
a fine of 200 francs," he pursued. The lips of the
accused quivered. " You may bave to go to a
utison de correction," continued the magistrate
pitilessly. The accused wept.
I grew more and more interested. If this was
a " correctional " offence, the magistrate must in
the ordinary course of things comnfit the prisoner
to a chambre de conseil, thereafter to take his trial
before a Tribunal Correctionnel. But chamber and
tribunal were scattered to the four corners of the
earth.
Here, I felt sure, the whole proceedings must
collapse and the magistrate be sdly compelled
to adroit his impotence. The magistrate, however,
appeared in nowise perturbed, nor did he for a
moment relax his authoritative expression. He was
tming over the pages of the Code d'Instruction
Criminelle, glancing occasionally at a now whollv
penitent prisoner trembling belote the majesty of
the law. At last he spoke. "I will deal with you,"
he said with an air of indulgence, " under Chapter

FIAT JUSTITIA 251

VIII. of the Code. You will be bound over to
corne up for iudgment at the end of the war if
called upon. You will deposit a cautioneent
of twenty francs. And now, gentlemen, we are
at your service."
" Fiat ustitia ruat coelum," whispered A
to me, as the prisoner, deeply impmssed, opened a
leather purse and counted out four greasy rive-
franc notes.

XXVII

HIGtlER EDUCATION

BRITIStt Headquarters must, I think, be the biggest
MiIitary Academy in the world. If bas ifs Sand-
hurst and its Woolwich and even its Camberley.
It ought long ago fo bave been incorporated by
Order in Council as a University with Sir John
French as Chancellor. If bas more schools in the
Art of War than I can remember, and every School
has an Instructor who deserves fo tank as a full-
rime Professor. To graduate in one of those
schools you must get a fortnight's leave from your
trenches or your battery, af the end of which rime
you return to do a litfle post-graduate work of a
very practical ldnd with the aid of a machine-gun
or a trench-mortar. At the begirming of the war
higher education at G.H.Q. was somewhat neglected,
and the company otficer who desired fo improve
himself in the lethal arts had tobe content with
private study. Company officers went in for
applied chemistry by making flares out of a test-
252

HIGHER EDUCATION 253
tube full of water, delicately balanced in a bully-
beef tin containing sodium. The tins were tied
to the barbed-wire entanglements in front of our
trenches, and vhen the stealthy Hun, creeping
on his stomach, bumped against the wre the
test-tube overflowed into the tin and a lurid patch
of greenish flame revealed the clumsy visitor to our
look-outs. That was before we were supplied with
calcium flares. Then, too, the sappers went in for
experimental research by making trench-mortars
out of old stove-pipes.
To-day all that is changed. A chemical corps
bas corne out to ]oin the sappers, and the gunners
bave received some highly finished trench-mortars
from Vickers's. A trench mortar is a kind of toy
howitzer and very useful when you want to try
conclusions with a neighbouring trench at short
range. The mortars are not exactly things to play
with, and so two " schools" of mortars bave been
instituted to teach R.G.A. men how to handle
them. Every morning at nine o'clock two young
subalterns meet their class of fifty pupils in a
château, and explain with the aid of a diagram on
a blackboard the internal economy of the mortar
and its 50-lb. bomb, the adjustment of angles of
elevation to ranges, and the respective oices of
fuse, charge, and detonator. %hen the class bave
had enough of this they go off to a neighbom'ing

254 LEAVES FROM A FIELD OTE-BOOK
field to simulate trench warfare and hold a demon-
stration. This is real sport. They bave dug a
sector of trenches, duly traversed, and af some two
or three hundred yards distance bave dug another
sector and decorated if realistically with barbed-
wire entanglements. Thither one afternoon we
conveyed the mortar fo the first trenches on an
improvised carriage, placed if behind one of the
traverses, and duly clamped if down. The sub-
altern toolç up a periscole and got the thread-line
on the target---you find the range without instru-
ments and by your own intuitions. " Three
hundred, I think," he remarked pensively. A
pupil adjusted the range indicator af 71.30 to get
the elevation, and his assistant took up what looked
like a huge jar of preserved ginger. If was the
bomb. Having put the rail fo if he inserted the
detonator. " Fuse af 27." He set the indicator
with as much care as if he were setting the hands
of Iris watch. The man took the fuse delicately,
put in the test-tube and attached the lanyard.
These operations had been closely followed by the
class, who ruade a circle round the bomb like a
football " scrum." If was now rime fo line the
trenches, for the " rail" of the bomb is apt fo kick
viciously when the thing is fired. As they spread
out, the man removed the two safety-pins in the
top of the fuse and pulled the lanyard. There was

HIGHER EDUCATION 255
a voi ce of thunder and a sheet of flame, followed
by what seemed an internfinable l)ause. We
scanned the brown furrows in front of us and
suddenly the earth shot skywards in a fan; a
cloud of dirty-black smoke floated over our target.
The whole class leapt the parapet and streamed
away across the furrows like a pack of hounds in
full cry, until they suddenly disal)peared below the
surface of the earth. We followed and round
them standing in a huge crater whose sides were
hollowed out as neatly as those of a CUl). " Done
it again," said the subaltern complacently, " we've
never had a blind."
At the Machine-gun School they do things on a
larger scale, and Wren's could teach them nothing
in the art of cramming. The Instructor reckons
to put Ms class of 200 officers and men through a
six months' course in a fortnight. There is need
for it. The Germans started this war with eleven
machine-guns (it is now anything from twenty to
forty) to a battalion. We started with two. For
years they have enlisted, trained, and paid a special
class of men to man them. Consequently we had
a great deal of leeway to make up. We are maldng
it up, hand over fist, thanks to the Instructor, one
of the most brilliant and devoted officers I know,
and a man who spends Ms nights in inventing or
perfecting improvements. He has got a pocket

256 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

edition of a machine-gun made of tempered steel
and weighing only 27 lb., as against out old one,
which is of gun-metal and weighs 58 Ib.--a material
difference when if is a question of an advance.
The new one, he explains somewhat illogically,
with paternal pride, can be carried into action
" like a baby." Having decided fo give if a trial
we carried if tenderly fo a quarry and proceeded
fo " feed " if with a belt of cartridges. The In-
structor set up a small stick against the bank of a
gravel quarry and returned and adjusted the
tangent-sight at 100 on the standard. He got the
fore-sight and back-sight in a line on the stick,
seized the traversing-handles, released the safety-
catch, and pressed the button with iris right thumb
with the persistency of a man who canno make
the waiter answer the electric bell. " Tap--tap--
tap." There was a series of explosions as though
the sparking plug of a motor-bicycle was playing
tricks. The target danced like a thing possessed.
I hopped and skipped and curtsied under that
deadly stream of bullets. Then he slowly swept
tha gravel bank with the traversing handles till
the pebbles jumped like hailstones. "I t]fink
she'll do," he remarked appreciatively as he folded
up the tfipod.
The R.E. is the Army's school of technology.
To do a survey or make a bridge or lay a telephone

HIGHER EDUCATION 257
is all in the day's work. But your sapper is a man
of ideas, and is for ever seelcing out new inventions.
So he bas turned Ms attention to chemistry, and
" R.E." bas a chemical corps which bas put aside
the blow-pipe and the test-tube at home to corne
out and study the applied chenfistry of war. Just
now they are engaged in discovering the most
effective method of laying noxious gases. Copper
vessels of ammonia in a trench to disperse the gas
when it gets there are all very well, but by that
time you may bave more pressing attentions of
the enemy to engage you ; the thing is to prevent
the gas getting there, tIence ingenious minds are
considering how to proiect with a spray something
upon the advancing fog which will bring it to earth
in the form of an innocuous compound. Spray
that something over the parapet, and if you can
spray it far enough and wide enough you may
precipitate the deadly green and brown mists into
chlorides or bromides which will be as harmless
as bleaching-powder and hot less salubrious.
Others bave turned their attention to automatic
flares. You can get a startling illunfinant if you
suspend a test-tube containing sulphuric acid in a
vessel of chlorate of potash, and it will be all the
better if you add a little common sugar and salt.
You balance your test-tube in the hollow of a
bamboo stick and fill the top knot of the stick with
S

258 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK

the chlorate of potash ; then you plant your sticks,
not too securely, outside your barbed-wire en-
tanglements, and string them together with a
trip-wire. As for the patrolling Hun who bumps
against that trip-wire, it were better for him that
a millstone were hung round his neck.
This is Higher Education and post-graduate
research. But elementary education is hot
neglected. At the H.Q. of the --th Corps is an
O.T.C. where privates in the H.A.C. and the Artists
practise the precepts of the Infantry Manual and
study lfight operations in the meadows within
sound of the guns.
Truly itis, in the words of the stout Puritan, a
nation hot slow and dull but of a quick, ingenious
and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and
sinevy, hot beneath the reach of any point the
highest that human capacity can soar to.

XXVIII

THE LITTLE TOWNS OF FLA_NDERS
AND ARTOIS

THE little towns of Flanders and Artois are Aire,
Hazebrouck, Bethune, Armentières, Bailleul, Po-
peringhe, and Cassel. They are known in the
Army vernacular as Air, Hazybrook, Betoon,
Arm-in-tears, Ballyhool (occasionally Belial),
Poperingy, and Kassel. The fairest of these is
Cassel. For Cassel is set upon a bill which rises
from the interminable plain, salient and alluring
as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to the
fretfifl wayfarer, " Corne unto Me all ye that are
weary, and I will give you test." For upon the
bill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, the slopes
are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers,
as the wind plays among the birches and the
poplars, and over all there is a great peace. The
motor-lorries avoid the dechvities of Cassel, and
the horsemen pass by on the other side. Some
twenty windmills--no less and perhaps more--are
259

260 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
perched like dovecots on the bill, lifting their sails
to the blue sky. Some day I will seek out a
notary at Cassel and will get him to execute a deed
of conveyance assigning to me, with no restrictive
covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for
I bave coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to
the enchantments of Lettres de mon modin. True,
Flanders is hot 1)rovence, and the croaking of the
frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the
willows in the plains below is a poor exchange for
the chant of the cigale. But these mills look out
over a landscape that is now dearer to me than
Abana and 1)harpar, for many a gallant friend of
nfine lies beneath its sod.
Cassel is approached by a winding road that
turns and returns upon itself like a corkscrew, and
is bordered by an avenue of trees. It bas a band-
stand--what town in Flanders and Artois bas
not ?--and a church. Cheek by jowl with the
church is a place of convenience, which seems to
me profane in more senses than one. I bave never
been able to make up my mind whether such
secularisation of a church wall is the expression
of anti-clerical ntipathies, or of a clerical common-
sense peculiarly French in ifs practical and un-
blushing acceptance of the elementary facts of
lire. But about Cassel I ara hot so sure. The
sight of that shameless annexe is too familiar in

TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 261
France to please out fastidious English tastes--it
seems to express a truculent nonconformity, if is
too like a dissenting chapel-of-ease.
Wherever God erects bouse of prayer
The devil Mways builds a chapel ther
I bave never had the courage to solve my
uncertainties by buttonholing a Frenchman and
asking him what is the truth of the marrer. 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 bas
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 whieh is the trysting-plaee of all
the officers in billets, and the châtelaine of which
answers your lame and halting French in nimble
English. On the road to Locre it bas those Baths
and Wash-houses whieh have become so justly
famous, and whenee hosts of British soldiers corne
forth like Naaman white as snow, but infinitely
more companionable. Almost any day you may
see a bathing-towel unit marching thither or thence
in column of route, their towels held at the slope
or the trail as it pleases their fancy. And in a

262 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
field outside Bailleul I bave seen open-air snthies
and the glow of hot coMs, the air resounding with
the clink of hammers upon the anvil--a cheering
spectacle on a wet and inclement winter's day.
But Bailleul bas few amenities and no charms.
It is, however, occasionMly 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 cliaritable 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 mlles to warm their hands
at its rires of social lire. Its patisse'ie bas the
choicest cakes, and its hairdresser's the most
soothng unguents of any town in our occupation.
It bas a great market-ælace, where the peasants
do a thriving business every Saturday, producing
astonished rabbits by the ears from large sacks,
like a conjuror, and holding out lire and plaintive
fowls for sensual exanùnation by pensive house-
wives. Also it bas 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 oflàcer and a gentle-
man--a spectacle as melancholy as it is rare, and

TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 263
of which the less said the better. It bas 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'Anfiens
with its inviting ambulatory--were places of muni-
cipal debate, and their sculpture was, to borrow
the bold metaphor of Viollet-le-Duc, a political
" liberty of speech "oat a rime 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 con-
junction 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 iustification by works. But I bave
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 dispiriting

264 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

town, given over to industrial pursuits, and ap-
proached 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 lire in the Town Hall by a court-
nmrtial--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 rime. And a very gallant and
hefty body of men they were.
Poperinghe is a dismal place, and to be avoided.
Hazebrouek is hot without some pretentious-
ness. If bas the largest place of any of them,
with a town-hall of imposing appearance, but
something of a whited sepulehre for all that. I
remember ealling on a eivilian dignitary there--
I forger what he was; he sat in a long narrow
eorridor-like room, all the windows were hermetie-
ally sealed, a gas-stove burnt pungently, some
fifty people smoked cigarettes, and af intervals
the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffied
his foot over the spot as a concession fo publîc
hygiene. Therefore I did hot tan T. The pre-
cincts of the rilway-station are often crowded
by batches of German prisoners, villainous-looking

TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 265

rascals, and usually of the earth earthy. I
watched some o[ them entraining one day; with
them was a surly Gel'man officer who looked af
his fellow-prisoners with contemi)t , the crowd of
inhabitants with dislike, and (so if seemed fo me)
his guards with hatred. No one spoke to him,
and he stood apart in melancholy insolence.
Perhaps he was the Gel'man 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 bave hired a blooming Pullman
if we'd known we was going to bave the pleasure of
your society. Yus, and we'd bave 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 bave in Germany. Wherefore the oiIicer
relapsed into a thoughtful silence.
Hazebrouck has a witty and pleasant procureur

266 LEAVES FROM A FIELD lXOTE-BOOK

de 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 mono-
tonously lacking in distinction. To tell the truth
they wear an impoverished look, and are singtflarly
unprepossessing. I prefer the villages, the small
chteaux 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 bave j ust corne out of action; I re-
member 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 sometlfing of the re-
spectftfl consternation with which the Babylonians
must bave regarded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-
nego 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 ut-
most nonchalance. They reminded me of the North
Staffords, one of whose officers, whom I know very
well, when I asked him what were lais impressions
of a bttle, replied, after some reflection: "I

TOWlS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 267
haven't got any; all I can remember of a hot
corner we were in near Oultersteen was that my
men, while waiting to advance, were picking
blackberries." It was a man of the North Stafords
who, according to the same unimpeachable author-
ity, was heard shouting out when hall 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 cluite 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 toaster
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
oificers 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 oificers--he had been a master in a great
public school before the war--took out of his
pocket a copy of the Fae'ie Queene, and began in a
slow, even voice to read the measured cadences of
one of its cantos, and, having read, handed it to a

268 LEAVES IROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
subaltern and asked him to follow suit. The
others listened, hall in wonder, hall in fear, think-
ing he had lost his senses, but there was method in
Iris 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 wis 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 notlfing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-
match to keep them fit; Indian cavalry jogging
along on the footpath with lances in test; herds of
tethered horses in rest-camps ; a string of motor-
buses painted a khald-tint ; a " mobile " (a travel-
ling 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 toiles an hour--these are fanfiliar sights
of t, he lines of communication, and they lend a
vafiety to the monotonous countryside without

TOWNS OF FLANDERS AND ARTOIS 269

which if would be dull indeed. For if is a country-
side of interminable straight lines--straight roads,
straight hop-poles, and poplars hOt less straight,
reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's
landscapes without their colouring. But to the
south of the zone of out 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 fo shake off a nightmare of
damp despondency.
If may be remarked that I have said nothing
of Ypres. The explanation is painfully simple.
Ypres has ceased fo exist. If is merely a heap of
stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are
hot more desolate.

XXIX

THE FRONT ONCE MORE

A WITT¥ subaltern once described the present war
as a period of long boredom punctuated by moments
of intense fear. All men would emphasise the bore-
dom, and most men would adroit the fear. The
only soldiers I ever met who affected to know
notlfing of the fear were Afridis, and the Afridi is
notoriously a ravisher of truth. But the ire -
dominant feeling--in the winter months af any
rate--was the boredom. There was a rime when
some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only
relieved once every three weeks, and rime hung
heavy on their hands. Under these circumstances
they began to take something more than a pro-
fessional 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 inter-
course. Curious conventions grew up, and at
certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the
270

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 271
night, there was a kind of informal armistice. In
one section the hour of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded
as consecrated to " private business," and certain
places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of
bounds by the snipers on both sides. On rnany
occasions worldng parties toiled with pick and shovel
within talking distance of one another, and, although
it was, of course, never sale to presume upon im-
munity, they usually forbore to interfere with one
another. The BedIords and the South Staffords
worked in broad daylight with their bodies hall
exposed above the trenches, raising the parapet as
the water rose. About 200 yards away the
Gernmns were doing the saine. Neither side inter-
fered 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 rime to fight. To speak of
drowning is no hyperbole ; the mud of Flanders in
winter is in some places like a quicksand, and men
bave 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 rime the speaker stopped his

272 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
discourse shouts of guttural laughter arose, accom-
panied by cries of " Bravo, Miiller!" " Sehr
komisch !" " Noch einmal, Miiller !" Out mon
listened intently, and an acquaintance with German,
so imperfect as fo be almost negligible, could not
long disguise from them the fact that their Saxon
neighbours possessed a funny man whose name was
Millier. Their interest in Mtiller, always audible
but never visible, grew almost painful. At last
they could restrain if no longer. Af a given signal
they began chanting, like the gallery in a London
theatre, except that their voices came from the pif :
We--want,--Miiller ! We--want,--Miiller ! We--want--
Miiller !
The refrain grew more and more insistent. Af last
a head appeared above the German parapet.
rose gradually, as though the owner were being
hoisted by unseen hands. Ho rose, as the principal
character in a Punch and Judy show rises, with
jerky articulations of his members from the ventri-
loquial depths below. The body followed, until
three-quarter posture was attained. The owner,
with his hand upon his heart, bowed gracefully
three rimes and thon disappeared. If was Mtfller
If is some months since I was in the British
tronches, 1 and I often wonder how out mon have
1 The writor's experience of the tronches is described in some
detail in Chapter VIII.

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 273
accommodated themselves fo the ever-increasing
multiplication of the apparatus of war. The tire
trenches I visited were about wide enough fo 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, out 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 tire, besides being an un-
canny thing to handle, although the handling is
done not by the company but by a " battery " of
R.G.A. men, who corne down and select a " pitch."
I have seen a trench-mortar in action--it is like a
baby howitzer, and makes a prodigious noise. Out
own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It
is an invidiius thing. The gas-extinguisheç is less
çbjectionable, and, incidentally, less exacting in
the marrer of accommodation. If is a large copper
vessel resembling nothing so much as the tire-
extinguishing cylinders one sees in public buildings
af home. About our gas-pumps I know nothing
T

274 LEAVES IROM A IIELD NOTE-BOOK
except by hearsay. They are in charge of
" corporals " in the chemical corps of the sappers,
and your corporal is, in nine cases out of ten, a man
whose position in the scientific world at home is
one of considerable distinction. He is usually a
lecturer or Assistant-Professor in Chenfistry at one
of our University Colleges who bas left his test-
tubes and qu,ntitative analysis for the more
exciting allurements of the trenches. I sometimes
wonder wh,t naine the fertile brain of the British
soldier bas round for him--probably " the squid."
He bas three gases in his repertoire, each more
de,dly than the other. One of them is compar,-
tively 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. Every-
body who had to be there was, for obvious reasons,
invisible, and the misguided wayfarer who round
himself between the lines was in a wilderness whose
intimid,ting silence was occasionally interrupted
by the sound of projectiles coming he knew hot

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 275

whence and going he knew not whither. The effect
was inexpressibly depressing. But a mlle or two
behind out lines all was animation, for here were
Buttalion and Brigade Headquarters, all linked
up by a network of field telephones, which in
turl communicated with Divisional Headquarters
farther back. Baskets of carrier-pigeons under
the care of a pigeon lancier, who figures in the
Army List as a captain in the R.E., are lept 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 Aruchnidae;
they appear fo be able fo spin telephone wires out
of their entrai]s af 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 Iris arm and bang glutinously, suspended by his
finger-tips, while he enjoys the view. These acro-
batic performances are sometimes exchanged for
equestrian feats. He bas been known fo lay cable for
two nfiles across country af 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 fo the
enemy on the other. Very few oicers even on out
side lnow where they all ure. I had confided fo
me, lor the purpose of my oificial duties, a complete

276 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
list of such Headquarters, and the first thing I did,
in pursuance of my instructions, was fo commit if
fo memory and then burn if. To find out the
enemy's H.Q.--wth a view fo making them as un-
healthy as possible--is almost entirely the work
of aeropIane reconnaissance. To discover the
number and composition of the units whose H.Q.
they are is the work of out " Intelligence." Of
our Intelligence work the less said the bettermby
which I intend no aspersion but quite the contrary.
The worl is extraordinarily effective, but hall ifs
effectiveness lies in ifs secrecy. If is all done by
an elaborate process of induction. I should hesitate
fo 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 Sheflock Holmes; but I
should be equally îndisposed fo deny if. There is
nothing too trivial or insignificant fo engage the
detective faculties of an " I " man. He has to
allow a wide margin for the probability of error in
his calculations ; shouldeÆ-straps, for example,, are
no longer conclusive data as to the composition of
the enemy's units, for the intelligent Hun bas taken
of late to forging shottlder-strais with the saine
facility as he forges diplomatic documents. Oral
examination of prisoners bas fo be used with
caution. But there are other resources of which

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 277
I shall say nothing. It is not too much to say,
however, that we have now a pretty complete com-
prehension of the strength, composition, and loca-
tion of most German brigades on the Western front.
Possibly the Germans bave of ours. One thing is
certain. Any one who bas seen the way in which
an Intelligence staff builds up ifs 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
itis never sale fo say De minimis non cu,ratur.
If "I " stands for the Criminal Investigation
Department (and the study of the Hun may be
legitimately regarded as a department of crimino-
logy) the Provost-Marshal and his staff may be
described as a lnd of Metropolitan Police. The
P.M. and his A.P.M.'s are the Censares Mo,r«m of
the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants
are the Aediles. It is the duty of an A.P.M. fo
round up stragglers, visit estaminets, keep a cold
eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the
sentences of courts-martial, and contro] street
traffic. aich means that he is more feared than
loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always
there. I remarked once when lunching with a
certain A.P.M. that although I had already been
three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his
particular district daily, I had never once been

278 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

stopped or questioned by his police. " No," he
said quietly, " they reported you the first day two
minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked
for instructions; we telephoned to G.tt.Q. and
round you were attached to the A.G.'s staff, and
they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you
might bave had quite a lively rime 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 disgfised, and
none of us knew anything of them. A conversa-
tional lesson in French or English may be had
gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchma.n who
tries to get into G.H.Q. ; as he approaches the
town he will find a French sentry on the left and an
English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet
like a needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-
knife, and each of them takes an immense personal
interest in you and is most anxious to assist you
in perfecting your idiom. They are students of
phonetics, too, in their way, and study your
gutturals with almost pedantic affection for traces

THE FROIT ObCE MORE 279
of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not
getting on with your education he takes you aside
like Joab, and smites you under the fifth rib--at
least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings
his right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle,
and by that lnasonic sign you know that you will do.
But it is a nfistake to continue the conversation.
Stil], holders of authoriscd passes sometimes
lose theln, and unauthorised persons sonmtimes
get hold of them and " convet " them to their
own unlawful uses. The carecr of these adven-
turers 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 solne mystcrious
oubliette. The rest is silence, or, as a mediaeval
chronicler would say, " Let him have a priest."
We have taught the inhabitants of F]anders and
Artois three things : one, to sing " Tipperary" ;
two, to control their street traffic ; and three, to
flush their drains. The spectacle of the nfi]itary
police on point duty agitatedly waving little flags
like a semaphore in the nfiddle of narrow and
congested steet corners was at first a source of
great entertainment to the inhabitants, who
peared to think it was a kind of performance
thoughtfully provided by the Staff for their delecta-
tion. Their applause was quit disconcerting. It

280 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
all so affected the mind of one good lady at H
that she used to rush out into the street every rime
she saw a motor-lorry coming and make uncouth
gestures with her arms and legs, to the no small
embarrassment of the supply co]umns, the con-
fusion of the military police, and the unconcealed
delight of out soldiers, who regard the latter as
their natural enemy. Gentle remonstrances against
such gratltitous assistance were of no avail, and
eventual|y she was handed over to the French
authorities for an inqltiry into the state of her mind.
Drains are looked after by the Camp Command-
ant, assisted by the sanitary section of the R.A.M.C.
It is an unlovely duty. I ara hot sure that the
men in the trenches are hot better oi in this respect
than the unfortunate members of the Stai who are
supposed to live on the fat of the land in billets.
In the trenches there are esy methods of dis-
posing 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, accom-
panied 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 aad vast quantities of chloride of lime.
Fatigue iarties do the test.

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 281

The C.C. has, however, many other things fo
do.
Finding my office mlprovided with a tire 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 issucd fo his ofice.

A laconic message came back by my servant:
I%. 105671A. The Camp Commandant presents his com-
pliments to Mr. M., and begs to inform him
2 that he is hot an ironmonger. The correct
procedure is for Mr. M. to direct his servant to purchase a
shovel and to send in the account to the C.C., by whom it will
be discharged.

The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised
to me afterwards for his reply, explaining mourn-
fully 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
sappels are amazingly efficient af turning them
out at the sholest notice--and he could pro-

duce stationery, but he drew the line at iron-
mongery. 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 " trans-
pOloES of delight," and they can supply you with
anything from a field-dressing to a toothbrush,

282 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
and from an overcoat to a cake of soap. And as
the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is
preoccupmd 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 casua]ty lists. It is expedi-
tiously donc; each night's ca,ualty list contains
the names of all casualties among officers up till
noon of the day on which it is ruade out. (The
lists of the men, which are, of course, a much
bigger affair, are ruade up at the Base.) The task
is no light one--the transposition of an initial or
the attribution of a casualty to a vrong 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 hot 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 fie]d ratk
in charge of it. Those graves lie everywhere ; I
have seen them in the flower-bed of a chàteau
nsed as the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S. ; they are to be
round by the roadside, in the curti]age of fatras,

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 283
and on the outskirts of villages. The whole of
the Frot is one vast cemetery--a " God's Acre "
hallowed by prayers if unconsecrated by the rites
of the Church. The French Government bas
shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the
bereaved, and a till has been submitted to the
Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of every
grave with a view to ifs preservation.
The Deputy Judge-Advocate-General and his
representatives with the Armies are legal advisers
to the Staff in the proceedings of cous-martial.
The Judge-Advocate attends every trial and coaches
the Court in everything, from the etiquette of
taling off your cap when you are taking the oath
to the duty of reiecting "hearsay." He never
prosecutes--that is always the tasl of some oiïicer
specially assigned for the purpose--but he may
" sure up." Oiïicers are hot usually familiar with
the mysteries of the Red took, 1 however nmch
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 oiïicers on the subiect of lgilitary
Law, and used to discourse calmly on the ad-
missibility and inadmissibility of evidence in the
most " unhealthy" places. Speaking with some
The llanal of llilitary Law.

284 LEAVES FROM A FIELD IOTE-BOOK
knowledge of such matters, I should say that
cou-martial proceedings are studious]y fait fo
the accused, and, all things considered, their
sentences do hot 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 High-
lander, finding himself, on arrival atone of the
hospitals, cheek by iowl 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, hot ab-
solutely conclusive---one Prussian guardsman is
strangely like another. The Prussian therefore
got the benefit of the doubt.
The prisoner gets all the assist.ance he may
oequire from a " 10risoner's ffiend " if he asks for
one, and the prosecutor never presses a charge--
he merely mfolds it. Moreover, oIficers 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 straight-
forward as it was brief

THE FRONT ONCE MORE 85

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 ara just nineteen.

This ingenuous plea in confession and avoidance
pleased the Court. He got of[ with a reprimand.
The liaison officers deserve a chapter to them-
selves. Their name alone is so endearing. Their
mission is hot, as might be supposed, to promote
mariages de convenance between English Staf[
officers ald French ladies, but to transmit biJlets-
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 familles in France, an Oriental scholar
of European reputation, and a Professor of English
literature. The youngcr ones studied out peculiar-
ities with the nmst ingratiating zeal, and one of
them, in paoEicular, played and sang "Tipperary"
with masterly technique at an uproarious tea-
party in a pâtisserie at Bethune. Also they
smoothed over little misunderstandings about délits
de chasse, gently forbore to smile at out French,
and assisted in the issue of the laisser-passer.
Doubtless they performed many much more weighty
and mysterious duties, but I only speak of what

286 LEAVES FROM A FIELD.NOTE-BOOK
I know. To me they were more than kind ; they
gave me introductions to their familles when I
went on oflàcial visits fo Paris and fo the French
lines ; zealously assisted me to hunt down evidence,
and sometimes accompanied me on my tour of
investigation. Among the many agreeable memo-
ries I cherish of the camaraderie at G.H.Q. the
recollection of their constant kindness and courtesy
îs not the least.
0ne word belote I leave the subiect 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 chier.
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 chier of the
Imperial Staff at home, who, although embaTassed
by indifferent helth, 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 bas 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 " sloeker"

THE FRObT ONCE MORE 287

af G.H.Q. He got short shrift. There were very
few of that undesirable species af G.H.Q., and as
soon as they were discovered they were sent home.
I sometimes wonder whether one could net trace,
if if were worth while (which if isn't), these ignoble
slanders te their origin in the querulous lamenta-
tions of these deported gentlemen, whence they
have percolated into Parlianmntary channels. But
if really isn't worth while. The public bas, I
believe, taken the thing af its true valuation. In
plain speech if is " all rot."

NoTE.--The last paragraph was written bcfore the recent
changes at G.H.Q. and at thc War Office, but the tender will net
necd any assistance in the identification of the two distinguished
Chicfs of Staff here referrcd to.---J. H. M.

XXX

HOME AGAIN

SYKES had finished packing my kit and had suc-
ceeded with some difficulty in re-establishing the
truth of the axiom that a whole is greatcr 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 regttlation Field Service allowance of
luggage, nothing succeeds like excess.
Sykes had hot only stowed away my original
impedimenta but had also managed to fmd room
for various articles of vertu which had enriched my
private collection, to wit :
(1) One Bavarian bayonet of Solingen steel.
(2) Two German time-fuses with fetishistic-
looking brass heads.
(3) A clip of German cartridges with the bullets
villainously reversed.
288

HOME AGAIN 289
(4) A copper loving-cup--/.e., an empty shell-
case presented to me with a florid speech by Maior
S on behalf of the --th Battery of the R.F.A.
(5) An autograph copy of The G'een Cul've
bestowed on me by my friend " Ole Luk-Oie " (to
whom long lire and princely royalties).
(6) The sodden lield Note-book of a dead Hun
given me by Maior C of the Intelligence, with
a graceful note expressing the hope that, as a man
of letters, I would accept this gift of belles-lettres.
(7) A duplicate of a certain priceless " chit"
about the uses of Ammonal 1 (original very scarce,
and believed to be in the mtmiment-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 lund).
(8) An autograph copy of a learned Essay on
English political philosophers presented to me by
the author, one of the liaison officers, who in the
prehistoric rimes of peace was a University pro-
fessor a$ Avignon.
(9) A cigarette-case (Army pattern), of the finest
Britannia metal, bestowed on me with much cere-
mony by a lield AmbtOance at Bethtme, and
prized beyond rubies and fine gold.
(10) A pair of socks knitted by Jeanne. 2
To these Madame 8 had added ber visiting-card
1 See Chapter XXV. -" See Chapter XI. a Ibid.
U

290 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK

--it was nearly as big as the illuminated address
presented to me by the electors of a Scottish con-
stituency 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 dis-
tinguished 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 ne¢er forget. The senior
ofiicers had done me the honour of expressing a
hope that I should soon return ; their jufiors had
exl)ressed 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 Maiesty
the King, the Prime Minister, Lord Kitchener, the
two Houses of Parliament, and the nfinistes 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.

HOME AGAII 291
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 confing back again, wi]l you ask for
nm 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 ti]l 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 rime of day.

292 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
" 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 cluid of tobacco
from onc cheek to the other bv a surprisingly alert
act of stowage and nodded in the direction of the
dark obiect whose out]ines 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 out arrival the sheep were segre-
gated from the goats. The unofficial people formed
a long clueue to go through the smoking-room,
where two quiet men awaited them, one of whom,
I believe, always says, " Take yonr bat of[," looks
into the pupil of your eyes, and ]ingers lovngly
over your pulse ; the other, as though anxious to
oblige you, says, " Any letters to post ? " But
his incluiries are hot so dsinterested as they would
seem.
The test of us, being highly favoured persons,
got of[ without ceremony, and ruade for the lnll -
man. As the train drew out of the station and
gathered speed I looked out upon the countryside
as it raced past us. England! last weald and
down, past field and hedgerow, croft and orchard,
cottage and masion, now over the chalk with its

HOME AGAIN 293
spinaeys of beech and tir, now over the cly with
ifs forests of oak and elm. The friends of one's
childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flx,
seemed to nod their heads in welcome ; and the
hedgerows were festive with glands of bryony
and Old Man's Beard. The blnching willows
ripp]ed in the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered
with every wnd. I looked dowa the length of the
saloon, and everywhere I sw the blthe and eager
fces of England's gllant sons who had fought,
and wou]d fight agin, to preserve tbis heitage
from the tire and swod of bloody sacrilege. airer
than the cedrs of Lebanon wee these usset
beeches, nobler thon the ivers o[ Damascus these
amber streams ; and the France of out new affec-
tions was not more dea.
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 bliad 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 wet
oilskin. Ata word from the attendant I re]eased
the blind and shut out the unfmiliar nocturne.
Men rose to their feet, and there was a chorus of
farewells.
" So long, old chap, see you again at battalion
hedcluarters."

294 LEAVES FROM A IIELD lgOTE-BOOK

" Good-bye, old thing, we mee¢ 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, dar-
ling!" I turned away. I was thinldng of that
platform next week when these brief days, snatched
from the very jaws of death, would bave run their
all too brief career and the greetings of ioy would
be exchanged for heart-searching farewe]ls.

I was dining at lny club with two friends, one
of them a young Dutch attaché, the other a bar-
rister of my Inn. We did ourselves pretty well,
and took out cigars into the smoldng-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 ail wrong, when, catching sight of me,
he came up and said, " Hullo, old man, back from
the Front? When will the war end?" I re-
turned the same answer as a certain D.A.A.G. used
to provide for similar otiose questions : " Never ! "
" Never ! Hullo, what's that ? "
Every one in the room suddenly rose to their
feet, the chess players rising so suddenly that they

HOME AGAIN 295
overturned the board. " Damu if, and it was my
move, I cou]d bave taken your queen," said one
of them. Outside there was a noise like the roaring
of the lion-bouse ai the Zoo ; your anti-aircraft gun
bas a growl of its own. " They're hem," said
some one, and we a|l ruade for the terrace.
] looked up and saw in the dira altitudes a long
silvery object umong 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 ad bright in
the southern hemisphere, and suddenly a number
of new planers appeared in the firmament as though
certain stars shot rnadly from their spheres. Rotmd
and about the monster came and went these ex-
ploding satellites. Then another appeared close
under ber, and like a frightened fish she swerved
sharply and was lost to view among the Pleiades.
" Let's go ad see what's happened," said one
of my flends. "I hear she's dropped a lot of
borabs down "
As we wen down the street I saw that for
about two hundred yards ahead it was sparkling
as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of out

boots"
dovn o
glass.
cordon

scrunched" something underfoot. I looked
The ground was covered with splinters of
As we drew nearer we caught sight of a
of police, and behind them a great tire

296 LEAVES FROM A FIELD NOTE-BOOK
springing infernally from the earth, and behind
the tire 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 a|most knocking together and searching
the ground, while one of them husbanded a lighted
match against the wind.
" B]imey, Bill," said one to the other, " l've
round 'un !"
" What bave you round ? " we asked of him.
" A souvenir, sir!" "
Truly, they know hot the stomach of this people.

THE END

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