Chapter II: Part 2

We had not gone far when I heard a sound like a boy cracking a toy whip. "A bullet striking near us," explained an officer ahead of me.

I found it almost impossible to tell the difference between the report of the French guns and the explosions of German shells. An officer told me that their time-table nickname for French gun reports was "départs" (departures), while that for the German shell explosions was "arrivées" (arrivals).

Of course if either gun or shell explosion or both is very near to you you can easily tell the difference, if there is enough of you left to tell anything.

We walked on with the toy whip cracking at every other step and "départs" and "arrivées" inviting guesswork as to which was which. We passed soldiers in shirt-sleeves, deepening and widening a communication trench. It was rather difficult to squeeze past them, but this very definitely emphasized the wonderful terms of discipline, yet the democratic friendliness, existing between the French officers and the men. The officers talked to the men intimately and placed their hands on the men's shoulders affectionately in squeezing by. The men answered the officers easily, without restraint, but all stood at attention and smartly gave the salute, which they regarded as a dignity and not a degradation--a marvellous combination of discipline and democracy.

We finally climbed out of the trench at the first house of the little village, or rather of what had been a little village, for it was, on close view, nothing more than the aftermath of an earthquake. In actual fact it reminded me vividly of the walk I had taken through the remains of Messina after the last great earthquake.

Before entering the village I stood in the road looking through my field-glasses at a German war-balloon to my left. "Come along, come along," shouted one of the officers. "If you stand there you'll start the Germans shelling. You're in plain sight of them." Needless to say I came along.

We walked through the shattered village, which the Germans shelled religiously every day, until we came to the remains of a church. Climbing in over the ruins we saw that there was one corner where miraculously enough a few yards of floor and a few yards of roof had escaped being shelled to pieces. There the altar had been set with about ten chairs crowded in front of it. There mass is still held every Sunday for the benefit of the sixteen inhabitants who still persisted in staying in the village.

"THERE MASS IS STILL HELD EVERY SUNDAY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE SIXTEEN INHABITANTS WHO STILL PERSISTED IN STAYING IN THE VILLAGE"]

These must indeed be solemn little services, for the Germans are far from being Sabbatarians when it comes to shelling this particular church.

Going on, we stopped in front of what was a house for one story and a skeleton from there up. It looked as if nothing less than a squirrel could get up to its rooftree, and nothing larger than a cat could conceal itself behind any of the shreds and tatters of its roof. Nevertheless, up there was the observation-post which I was about to visit. We entered and found some soldiers cooking meat and potatoes on a smokeless stove. One of them was amusing himself prancing around the place on a pair of child's stilts.

Following instructions, I climbed up a long ladder, which led to two rafters--the sole survivors of the second floor. A few planks had been stretched between these. From them another ladder ran up to a small patch of attic floor which, marvellously intact, nestled around three sides of a brick chimney under the fragment of the roof. Arrived there, I carefully lifted a little leather curtain, hung over a hole in the roof, and squinted cautiously down upon the German lines.

The French trenches were practically hidden by the houses of the little village, so that the first thing I saw was a belt of barbed wire, and an unostentatious little white line, which marked the advanced German position. Look as closely as one could, it was impossible to detect the slightest movement, yet it was from this innocent-looking little line that the bullets were imitating toy whips. I wedged myself into the chimney to get a view of another side and then climbed down.

We now left the village and walked into the open advanced trenches. The most remarkable thing was their utter desolation. We walked for a hundred yards at a time, past scores and scores of rifle-slits, without seeing a man. An officer explained that troops are not permitted in the open trenches during the daytime, to save them needless loss from the shells, which each side all day long, in a desultory way, threw into the open trenches of the other.

The men stayed down in the shell-proof shelters all the day and manned the trenches at night, when attacks are most feared.

It seemed as if the Germans could easily rush these trenches before the men could be called out to meet them, but along the sides of every trench ran one or two telephone wires. Apparently one quick order would have these front trenches lined with men. We came to one of the points nearest the German lines, from where the German trenches seemed a mere stone's-throw. From there French soldiers used to crawl out and fraternize with the Germans, between the lines, but that is now forbidden.

We next came through a covered trench to a covered grenade section. Here a table stood against the outer wall. It had three lines of sockets in it, one ahead of the other. The soldiers fastened grenades to the muzzles of their rifles, shoved the muzzles up through the protected slit in the roof, rested the butts in one of the three sockets, which gave three different ranges, and pulled the trigger. If there is a premature explosion they are saved from its effects by the muzzle being above the roof.

We continued on into a long section of the covered front trench, where the rifle-slits have wires stretched across them about three inches from the bottom. The soldiers must stick their rifles out under the wire, which prevents their overshooting in the night. These covered trenches are roofed with logs and covered with two or three feet of earth. They are proof against ordinary shells, but not against heavy artillery.

When that starts bombarding, the men climb down into excavations, fifteen feet below the level of the trenches, and wait there until the storm is over.

Soon we came to a black little underground chamber. An officer gave an order and a brilliant ray of light shot in through an aperture in the wall, near the low roof. This aperture was some three feet from one side to the other, and only about six or eight inches from top to bottom. It had been opened by dropping a hinged steel shutter which was worked by a wire running over a pulley. The aperture was just above the surface of the ground outside. In the little room stood a machine-gun with its wicked-looking muzzle just flush with the opening. The gunner showed us how, by swinging the gun from side to side, he could play a stream of bullets through the wire entanglements, a foot or two from the ground.

THE AUTHOR IN A FRONT TRENCH NEAR RHEIMS. (THE GERMANS ARE ABOUT THREE HUNDRED YARDS BEYOND THE WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS)]

At regular intervals we passed watchers, some standing in the covered trenches gazing through the slits, some lying out above the open trenches behind steel shields, and some using periscopes--all depending on the location of the trench.

Looking into such a periscope one would swear that he was looking straight out through a loophole. There is not the slightest sign of looking at a reflection in a mirror. We walked bent double through an extremely long pitch-black tunnel in an advanced position where some of the officers themselves had never been, and then started back through the open trenches.

At one point a lot of Germans had been buried. Sometimes a shell explosion does a ghastly bit of disinterment, but I saw nothing unpleasant on this occasion. At another point above the heads of each side of the trench stood two shattered ammunition-carts. The Germans shelled this place pertinaciously, believing that the carts were guns.

At another point we walked under a framework of wood, covered with barb wire resting on two transverse timbers stretching across the top of the trench. A rope hung down from one of the transverses. If the enemy broke into the trench the defenders, by pulling this rope, could drop the barb-wire contrivance into the trench, thus blocking it.

Finally we got back to the village. I had asked how the sixteen inhabitants made a living. An officer replied that they sold eggs and milk to the troops. I asked out of what they produced the milk and he replied, "Very certainly out of a cow." As an answer to my polite scepticism I was taken to see the cow. We walked down a little street where I was told that the Germans were directing most of their shells. They fortunately were napping while we walked through. We suddenly turned into a gateway, and there in the middle of this wreck of a village was a barnyard with chickens clucking, a horse tied to the wall, and three cows.

And on a stool by one of the cows sat an aged woman making the milk hiss down into a tin pail. There she sat, shells sailing to and fro over her head, with the "départs" starting and the "arrivées" bursting. There she sat and rocked with hearty laughter at the story of my scepticism, and went on effectively proving her existence by her cow by the extraction of that very milk which was sold to the soldiers. We left the old lady surrounded by what seemed to her to be all the comforts of home, and a few steps further were introduced to the Mayor of X----.

It was a smiling, bland old man who greeted us most genially. Apparently he had not a care in the world as he stood courteously making conversation. It seemed to me that the humble old woman milking her cow, and the Mayor entertaining visitors to what was no longer his village, were further symbols of the spirit of a nation which was not easily destined to decadence and downfall. Leaving the Mayor, we entered the cemetery. There we were looking at the graves of two German officers, two French officers and seventy French soldiers when an "arrivée" burst with a louder report than we had as yet heard, followed by a deep noise.

"What's that?" I asked.

An officer replied, "That's the metal fuse which at the moment of explosion flies off through the air. You can only hear that when the explosion is pretty close. You can certainly say now that you have been under shell fire."

We went back to the end of the village furthest from the Germans and entered the headquarters in one of the few houses still in fair preservation. There the officers in command of the village opened a bottle of champagne in our honor and we stood around drinking each other's health. At that precise moment an unusually loud salvo of French artillery went off by way of a salute to the toast.

On the way back through the communicating trenches, we saw an attempt by the German guns to bring down a French aviator, who was flying above us. The latest development of fire regulation by aviation is that the Captain of the battery himself goes up in an aeroplane and sends his corrections on aim down to his battery by wireless. This Captain had his four "seventy-fives" hidden near our communication trench. Every time they went off their report was so violent that I could not help jumping.

The battery Captain was sailing around overhead and the German gunner was letting drive at him with what looked to us to be pretty bad shots. I could see the aeroplane wheeling in the air and hear the distant reports of the "départs," wait an appreciable time and then see the burst of white flame high up in the sky, followed by little puffs of smoke.

"That's a wretched shot," said I, as one shell burst over our heads, far behind the aeroplane.

"Yes, a bad shot for an aeroplane, but a good shot for us," Captain F---- replied.

I was standing with my head away back, looking straight overhead. "Come, move on, move on, or you'll catch some of that on your face," warned Captain d'A----. I obediently moved on and, sure enough, a couple of seconds later he picked up a strictly fresh shrapnel ball which had just fallen into our trench out of the sky. In the mean time the Captain up in the air had corrected his guns, so that they were hitting whatever they were shooting at, and he sailed away to the rear, while his battery became really enthusiastic and went off with a series of tearing crashes, which kept me jumping all the way to the end of the communicating trench.

There I climbed out with my ears full of the "seventy-fives'" violent reports, the distant explosion of their shells, the distant reports of the enemy's guns, the "crack, crack, crack" of the rifle bullets and the occasional sharp whistling of one overhead.

But my mind was full of the soldier watching and waiting, of the peasants harvesting between the smoke puffs, the laughing old woman milking the cow, of the genial Mayor extending his ruined hospitality, and of what little things like these should bring to pass in the future of France.

IV

A TYPICAL DAY'S TOUR

The morning after our trip to the front at Rheims we got up at seven o'clock after a good night's sleep in the comfortable hotel, and by shortly after eight were ready to start.

But here came a hitch in the smoothly running mechanism.

The evening before, on our run back to Epernay, Eyre and I had noticed the exhilarating abandon with which our soldier chauffeur slung his car along. We supposed that was the traditional method in which military cars were run. We christened our driver "Barney Oldfield" and commented jocosely on his various close squeaks. We noticed that Captain d'A----, who in the front trenches had been absolutely imperturbable, did not seem wholly at ease, but kept on leaning forward and muttering, "Mais doucement! doucement!" through the front window. We thought, however, that this was mere consideration on his part for our inexperienced nervous systems.

On this following morning he declared to us that our chauffeur was evidently a veritable maniac besides being an execrable driver, and that nothing would induce him to ride behind "Barney Oldfield" again. Shells and bullets were all in the day's work, but he'd be switched if he would have his neck quite superfluously broken by an imbecile like that.

He therefore, with our cordial approval, had sent round to the auto-repair department for a sedater driver. But it was apparently against the regulations to keep the same car if we changed chauffeurs, and it was as hard to get another car in this headquarters of cars as it is to get fresh milk on a cattle-ranch.

So we fretted politely for the best part of an hour before the new chauffeur drove up. This delay haunted us for the rest of the day.

We motored over the same road we had covered the day before till we got near Rheims again. There, at about ten o'clock, we met Captain F----, who had been cooling his heels for an hour. I transferred myself into his motor and we started off to inspect some batteries.

First, of course, we had to present ourselves to the General in Command of the next Army Corps which we were to visit. We reached his headquarters after half an hour's run and found him an interesting and agreeable man of the world. He was much upset by the death the day before of a Lieutenant of engineers. It appears that this Lieutenant had been in command of a sap that was being run under the German trenches in order to explode a mine. The Germans had counter-sapped, broken into his tunnel, and exploded a mine there. He had recklessly crawled down his sap and had not returned. Then his Colonel crawled down the little tunnel after him, first taking the precaution to have a rope tied on to himself. The soldiers at the French end of the tunnel paid out the rope till it suddenly stopped. Then, as there was no more movement, they became alarmed and, hauling in the rope, dragged the Colonel back in a senseless condition. The Lieutenant had reached the neighborhood of the exploded mine and had been overcome and killed by the unescaped gases of the explosion. The Colonel in his turn had been overcome, but had been hauled out in time to be revived.

It was strange to see how this loss was taken to heart by a General who must in the past months have had to receive reports of deaths by the thousand.

We motored on and about eleven o'clock were ushered into the headquarters of the General of Division whose batteries we wanted to see.

The other Generals had greeted us in the luxurious _salons_ of châteaus, sitting near writing-desks holding a few papers, but without any token of the military work on which they were engaged. This General was housed with his staff in an old shooting-box. The room in which he welcomed us had large-scale maps on its walls, and engineering plans on its tables. The General himself was a splendid type of French officer, remarkably young, wiry, snappy, keen as mustard. When the war began he had been a Lieutenant-Colonel and had gone up the ladder by leaps and bounds.

He said he would begin by himself taking us to an observation-point at the top of a high hill, whence we could follow the whole sweep of front from about the point where it had yesterday run out of our sight, on for many miles to the Aisne and well beyond it.

Up the hill we went at about as fast a walk as I have ever used on a stiff up-grade. Beside me, setting the pace, went the General in his baggy red riding-breeches, his tight-fitting black tunic, his well-polished black-leather puttees and shapely boots. As we climbed at top speed he talked a steady and most interesting stream. I began to listen for any symptoms of the pace affecting his breath. But not a bit of it; on he walked and on he talked. It was a hot day and the sweat began to drip off of me in spite of my cool khaki clothes. But the General in his black-cloth tunic and red breeches remained as cool as a cucumber. By the time we legged it over the crest of the hill I would have been willing to back him in a walking contest against any one of the twenty thousand men in his division.

Now we walked along a level path through woods till we came to an open space on the hillside.

The General stopped abruptly. "Don't go further here," he snapped out, "the Germans might see us through their glasses. They've got them constantly trained on this hill to try to locate my observation-post. They have not struck it yet, though the other day they happened to drop a shell not far from it which killed two of my officers."

So we retraced our steps a short distance and took another path which avoided the open place on the hillside.

Finally we reached the observation-post, carefully screened by an artificial bower of pine boughs. Maps were tacked on a rude table, while a big telescope stuck its muzzle surreptitiously out between the boughs.

The young General pointed out the two white trench lines pursuing each other league on league across the face of the summer landscape below us, now abruptly approaching, now coyly withdrawing from each other in their deadly courtship. He ran swiftly over the various features of interest: That white scar on the slope down yonder was where the French had recently exploded a great mine under the Germans. Particularly bloody fighting had been going on at that point. Those roofs in the hollow the other side of that little hill were the village of Bery-au-Bac, which so frequently appeared in the official communiques as the scene of desperate attacks. Over there beyond the canal in that angle between it and the Aisne for perhaps half a kilometre there was a complete gap in the trench lines which were popularly supposed to run uninterruptedly from the North Sea to the Alps. Still further over yonder the hostile trenches approached each other so closely that one of those houses had one end occupied by the French and the other by the Germans.

"Over there," said the General with a sweep of his hand and a shake of his head, "occurred one of the great misfortunes of the battle of the Marne. Our troops there had hurled the Germans back across the Aisne and clear back over those hills. But the French troops over here more to the left had had their advance checked by the retreating Germans. Now those troops to the right were so far ahead that they had lost touch with the ones to the left. Had they been veteran troops they could easily have manoeuvred the backward troops up into line with themselves, and had they done this, with the Germans forced back beyond that line of natural defense, the Craonne plateau positions would have been turned and there is no knowing how far the German retreat might have been compelled to continue. But alas! they were green troops, and when they had waited and found that the troops to their left were not linking up with them they fell back from their precious territory to form a line with their fellows. And that is why we are here to-day."

The General then led the way some little distance to another underground observation-post to be used in case of a bombardment.

A flight of steps led down into it. It had a good many feet of solid earth above it, and consisted of two rooms with two bunks covered with pine boughs in one, and two camp cots in the other for the General himself and his artillery aide. It was well stored with water and provisions, and here the General, in case of a sustained bombardment, could remain in relative security for days on end, observing the effect of his own artillery fire or of any infantry attacks he might direct, and sending his orders out by telephone. It will probably be asked how he could do much observing from a cellar several metres under ground. The answer is that the second of the two rooms had a sort of window about a foot high and running the whole length of the wall, which opened out through the side of the hill. It was covered by a heavy steel shutter which could be partly or entirely swung up by a pulley arrangement, and through this crack in the hillside the whole sector lay in perfect view.

Climbing out again, we ventured a hint or two as to how interested we were in batteries. But the General himself was intensely interested in an intricate system of subterranean passages which his Chief of Engineers was building to connect up the observation-post with other points, and he took the very human view that the technical explanations of the Engineer which were so absorbing to him must necessarily be equally enthralling to us.

Finally we started back across the hilltop toward where my imagination conjured up serried arrays of great guns frowning at the enemy.

On the way we stopped to inspect the telephone central which connected up the observation-posts with all the batteries behind and the trenches in front, and for that matter, with Paris or any other part of France.

In a low log hut, its roof and walls protected by several feet of sand-bags, a soldier sat at a large switchboard with a telephone receiver strapped to his head. As we stood for a moment watching him a bell tinkled. He stuck the small peg into one of the multitudinous little holes.

"Allo! This is Number 15," he said in a low voice, then listened intently to some message.

"All right," he said at its conclusion. Then turning half round on his stool he saluted and reported:

"Mon General, Number 19 reports that a Boche aeroplane has passed them and is coming over us."

"Telephone our guns to fire at him, and warn Numbers 11 and 12 to prepare for his coming," ordered the General, and as the soldier stuck his pegs in and gave his telephone messages we hustled out to see the excitement. Sure enough, we had hardly got out when we heard a distant whirring, and high up in the air saw an aeroplane floating our way.

"WE WERE COMPLETELY ABSORBED IN WATCHING THE SOFT LITTLE CLOUDS PLAYFULLY DANCING ALONG AHEAD OF THE LAZILY DRIFTING AEROPLANE"]

"Keep under the tree! Keep under the tree!" warned the General sharply. "If he sees us all standing here, and gets away, he will report this as an important point and it will rain 'marmites' for days to come."

So he, his staff-officers, Eyre and I grouped ourselves under a big tree and stared up at the approaching aeroplane through the gaps in its branches.

"Whang!" A "soixante-quinze" exploded violently in the woods close by, and I jumped equally violently.

"Whang! Whang! Whang!" came three more shots in extremely close succession.

"You've got a whole battery shooting, haven't you?" I remarked.

"Oh, no! There is only one gun located just there. It does not waste time in firing, does it?" smiled the General. "Our 'soixante-quinze' field-guns can shoot twenty-five shots a minute."

Other guns in the immediate neighborhood took up the chorus, and, looking through our glasses, we could see little soft white cloudlets puff into being all around the aeroplane.

But he kept sailing calmly on.

A little further off in the woods came a staccato rat! tat! tat! tat! tat! like a boy drawing a stick along a picket fence.

"There goes one of our mitrailleuses at work on him."

We were completely absorbed in watching the soft little clouds playfully dancing along ahead of the lazily drifting aeroplane, when the General's voice brought us back to earth.

"Come! Come! We must hurry or we shall be late for lunch. I did not realize how late it was."

I looked at him in horror. What! Forsake the sensations of this moment for such a thing as a lunch! Any one of those gentle little white puffs might transform the aeroplane into a hurtling mass of flame. Lunch!

But the General was entirely sincere and very positive. From his point of view Boche aeroplanes could be shot at any hour of the day, but lunch was an event which took place only once in the twenty-four hours. Lunch was the recognized symbol of hospitality; aeroplane shellings decidedly were not.

As we reluctantly followed him through the woods he may have noticed my disappointment, for he remarked:

"It is highly improbable that you would see anything more than you already have seen. They are very difficult things to hit, you know. As a matter of fact, we were doing most of our shooting in front of him rather than at him, so as to head him back. But he evidently has his nerve with him, for he has kept right on and got away from us. Listen! Our guns have stopped, and there are the guns I telephoned to at Number 12 taking a shy at him."

As we hiked along at the General's favorite pace Captain F---- diffidently suggested:

"And the batteries, mon General, in which this gentleman was much interested. I suppose there will be no opportunity to see them?"

"Oh, there is really nothing interesting about them, as they are not firing to-day. The pieces are scattered all over the hillside in the woods, and the crews are having their lunch. But as a matter of fact our route home takes us right by one 120-millimetre gun and we can have a look at that."

Walking down the rear slope of the hill, we came upon a party of soldiers, apparently out for a picnic, eating their lunch on a rustic table, with pine branches over their heads and fragrant pine needles under their feet.

They jumped to attention.

"Show us the piece," said the General to their non-commissioned officer.

The groups of soldiers hustled over to a big object bundled up in tarpaulins, which stood a few yards off. Stripping off the coverings, they showed us a heavy field-piece standing on treadled wheels with its muzzle pointed apparently aimlessly up the green-wooded hillside at some clouds which floated in the blue sky just above the hill-crest.

"That gun," explained the General, "is aimed at the village of ----, about eight kilometres distant, behind the German lines. Their reserves have to pass through the village to reach the front; so whenever we hear that they are bringing up their reserves we start this gun shelling that little village. Usually an important village is shared by several guns, but that village is the particular property of this gun.

"AS WE HIKED ALONG AT THE GENERAL'S FAVORITE PACE"]

"A HEAVY FIELD-PIECE STANDING ON TREADLED WHEELS"]

"Show the gentlemen how it works," he ordered. The artillerymen leaped into position, swung open the breach, lifted a heavy shell, and thrust it into the chamber.

"Careful there; don't shoot it off!" exclaimed the General, and added to me, "There's no use damaging our own French villages more than is indispensable."

As tenderly as a thoroughbred is blanketed after a race the big gun was bundled up again by its crew, and, leaving them to resume their picnicking under the pine-tree, we strode away to the shooting-box and the lunch.

And a very excellent lunch it was to which the General, some eight of his staff-officers and our party of four sat down in the dingy old dining-room of the shooting-box.

"You certainly mobilized an excellent chef," laughed Captain d'A---- as we reached the entrée.

With white wine mixed with water to drink during the lunch, champagne served in the French fashion with the dessert, and cigars, coffee and liqueurs to follow, the commissariat department undoubtedly deserved congratulations.

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MENU

du 1º Août 1915

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DÉJEUNER

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Hors-d'oeuvres

Oeufs pochés à la Rossini

Tournedos grillés à la Bouchère

Pommes frites

Pigeons rotis

Haricots verts à l'anglaise

Crème au chocolat

Compote de pèches

Dessert

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The conversation was of course not for publication, but one passage I think I can repeat without fear of violating confidence.

"Why did not Von Kluck march on Paris when he had the chance?" I asked the officer who was sitting on one side of me.

"I will tell you," he replied. "In the 1913 'Kriegsspiel' [great manoeuvres] in Germany the theoretical invasion of France by the attacking armies was precisely the same advance as in actual fact they made the following year. In the maneuvers Von Kluck commanded the right wing precisely as he did in the actual invasion. In these maneuvers he came to a point in his advance where he had to choose between attacking Paris and swinging past Paris in pursuit of the enemy. He decided to attack Paris. The verdict of the board of generals who were judging the maneuvers contained the severest kind of arraignment of Von Kluck for having violated the cardinal principal of German military strategy by allowing a mere geographical point to divert him from the one paramount object of German generalship--the enemy's army. We actually possess a copy of this official reprimand, for 'tout s'achête' (there is nothing that money will not buy), you know. Now when little over one year later Von Kluck in actual warfare came face to face with precisely the same choice of alternatives, with the previous year's censure still stingingly fresh in mind, he ignored Paris and followed the enemy army."

Luncheon over, we bade the splendid young General and his staff good-bye, and motored quite a distance to visit one of the French field hospitals. The wounded, after having first aid applied in the trenches, were brought here in ambulances, where their wounds were thoroughly dressed or operations performed. When there was a great rush of wounded those capable of standing the journey were shipped on to base hospitals as quickly as possible to make room for the new cases. During the last few months, however, there had been so little hard fighting on the section of the front which this hospital served, that many of the wounded had been kept there for weeks and some for months. The big rooms on the ground floor of the large country house in which the hospital had been located, had been converted into wards for the wounded privates, while the bedrooms on the upper floor were reserved principally for officers.

It was curious to hear the deprecatory tone in which the Chief Surgeon regretted that he had no freshly wounded to bandage or operate on for our benefit. In fact from the front hospitals to the great base hospitals of Paris the surgeons are all alike. They cannot keep a professional note of regret out of their voices when explaining that very few wounded have come in of late, nor a professional note of encouragement when they understand an important action is soon to be fought which will again fill their cots with "cases." It would be an outrage to hold this attitude against these splendid men. If they had not become impregnated by their professional point of view toward the horrors of their work, they would all long ago have been in madhouses.

Our whole progress through the hospital was a strange conglomeration of pathos and farce. For the Surgeon in Command, on our being introduced to him, stated that he was the proud possessor of an orderly who spoke the English tongue "à merveille." Our staff-officers politely indicated to him that our own French, though not perhaps up to Comédie Française standards, was no mean thing, and would render his explanations entirely comprehensible to us. But these hints were of no avail. The accomplishments of his linguistic prodigy must not be wasted. So the orderly was produced and turned out to be master of the most grotesquely unintelligible English that I have ever listened to.

As we passed between the lines of cots, each with its still figure huddled under its gray blanket, as we were followed about by the wondering gaze of the many eyes which look so incredibly large in the wasted faces of the wounded, we had to listen to the explanations of the Chief Surgeon, and then lend our ears to the burblings of the orderly exterpreting them for our benefit. Even when we stood in the modest little graveyard where those who had died of their wounds were buried we were torn between tears and grins by the attentions of the excellent man whom, I am ashamed to say, Eyre and I had christened "the pest," and by the embarrassed writhings of our staff-officers who spoke such excellent English that they thoroughly realized the situation.

Having spent perhaps three-quarters of an hour in the hospital, which, judged by the somewhat unexacting French standards, seemed efficiently run, we departed for the first impromptu engagement of the day--the studies of a class in grenade-throwing, which met not very far from the hospital, and which I have elsewhere described in detail.

After an hour devoted to this exceedingly interesting experience, we were whirled away to a distant appointment with another General of an Army Corps. He led us to the flat roof of his headquarters, from which at some distance he pointed out a third installment of the trenches continuing from about the point where they had that morning run out of sight, and from that point stretching along the Craonne plateau, nearly to Soissons.

Having terminated a fifteen-minute meeting with this extremely courteous General, the next number on our programme was the inspection of an aviation "esquadrille" or squadron.

On our way, however, we stopped unexpectedly to look at a most beautiful new anti-aircraft "seventy-five," a gun numbers of which the French had just completed and were bringing to the front. As I was not allowed to photograph the gun even from a distance and was enjoined to regard its details as absolutely confidential, I can only say that, mounted on its own motor, it could travel along the roads at forty kilometres an hour; that it could be in action within one minute and a half after coming to a stop, and that the way the turning of a couple of little cranks which a child could whirl made the heavy muzzle swing, and mount, and cut figure eights in the air, was something wholly incredible.

We listened to a technical but most interesting exposition by the Artillery Captain of the most up-to-date methods of firing at aeroplanes, including the progressive and retrogressive systems, and then sped away to the aviation field some ten or fifteen kilometres distant. We found the aviation squadron on a very large field near the top of a gradually sloping bare hill, comfortably installed, the machines in their great hangars, the aviators in their small tents. The whole organization was especially adapted for mobility. In one hour, at need, the field would have left on it not a man, a stick or a shred of the encampment. Hangars and tents would be careering along some highroad, neatly folded in the big aviation lorries that stood handy, mechanics would be sitting on the box seats or have their legs dangling over the tail-boards, while pilots and observers would waft themselves more comfortably by air to their new camp site.

The Captain of the "esquadrille" showed us, with quite pardonable pride, his "avions de réglage"--planes carrying no bombs or machine-guns, but equipped with wireless, which are used to correct the fire of artillery, and his "avions de chasse" or hunting-planes equipped with bombs, a machine-gun and a Winchester carbine. Some of these had the pilot sit behind and the observer in front operating the machine gun over the bow. Others had the pilot in front and the observer behind, in which case the observer, standing up, operated the machine-gun over the head of the pilot. Finally he showed us a splendid new Caudron biplane having two independent motors and two traction screws in front, so that if either motor were put out of business the plane could continue flying on the other.

I was so enthusiastic about this machine that the Aviation Captain turned to me and asked casually, "Would you perhaps like to go up and take a 'petite promenade' in the Caudron?"

Would I? It did not take me many fractions of a second to impress on him that I certainly would. But here Captain d'A---- demurred. It was, he said, absolutely forbidden that any one should go up in army aeroplanes except aviators on military duty. Those were the strict army regulations. He was quite right and entirely justified in his attitude. But Captain F----, who was a good sport and had become quite a chum of mine, said, "Oh, let him go up. After all, the Swiss Military Attaché went up the other day. I'll take the responsibility." And as he was in immediate authority while we remained with the 5th Army, Captain d'A---- good-naturedly shrugged his shoulders and let it go at that.

So I hurried down with the Aviation Captain to his tent to put on a warm aviation suit, while the Caudron was prepared for our flight. As we approached his tent, a single-motored aeroplane took aboard its pilot and observer, its propellers whirred and roared, and it rolled casually away up the gradual slope, through a field of standing grain, till near the hilltop it took to the air as easily as a bird and spiralled up toward the low-lying dark clouds.

In the Captain's tent I struggled into a heavy suit of black fur made like a suit of combination underwear, legs and body all in one piece, put on a pair of goggles and a heavily padded helmet, and emerged to meet the disappointment of my life. Down pattered some drops of rain, down spiralled the aeroplane which had just gone up.

"Too bad," said the Aviation Captain. "I can't send a machine up in the rain."

I pleaded with my staff-officers to wait here for an hour to see whether the rain might not stop. In vain. Even that good sport Captain F---- was adamant. We could not possibly wait, because it would completely throw out a visit to a horse hospital, and an inspection of an army corps supply-train which were both unalterably fixed upon our schedule. We were very late already. We must be off.

Well, then, could we not return early to-morrow morning to get the flight?

"Malheureusement ça ne peut pas se faire." (French euphemism for "No.") To-morrow morning I was slated for a visit to a base hospital which, including motoring there and motoring back, would consume most of the morning.

But I would infinitely prefer to go for a "petite promenade" in the Caudron than to inspect the most unique base hospital in the world.

Yes, they could understand that perfectly, but unfortunately the hospital was among "the arrangements" and the "petite promenade" was not. Personally they would throw the hospital overboard in a minute, but the matter was beyond their control.

So off we went, Captain F---- full of sympathy and I full of sulks, and at about half past five visited what under other circumstances would have been an exceedingly interesting big hospital full of hundreds of sick and wounded horses. But I fear I was in no mood to appreciate the ingenuity and thoroughness with which the kilometre or more of hospital sheds had been constructed by the soldiers on a framework of poles, with wicker-work sides covered with a sort of adobe, and a sloping roof of thatched straw with little gables built here and there for the mere love of beautifying which is apparently ever present in the French race, whether at war or peace.

PART OF THE ENORMOUS ENCAMPMENT OF SUPPLY-WAGONS, WHICH CARRY THE COMPLETE SUPPLIES FOR THREE FULL DAYS FOR ONE ARMY CORPS]

On we went for another long run till we reached the enormous encampment of supply-wagons, which carry the complete supplies for three full days for one army corps. They had been there since the armies dug themselves in.

"We are not useful now," the Colonel in Command regretfully confided to me; "for almost all the supplies reach our armies by rail. But only wait till the advance begins. Then we shall show what we can do."

This great encampment which covered some square miles of countryside had begun as a bivouac and ended as a town. One walked down avenues and side streets solidly flanked by the huts which this army had built itself. They were all more or less standardized in building materials--wattled walls covered with clay, and thatched straw roofs. But there the uniformity abruptly ended. For these little houses had not been merely constructed by builders as they would have been in nearly any other country. This was France and they had been conceived by architects. And each house expressed the original conception of the soldier-architect who had designed it.

No one who has not walked through this mushroom town or the many others like it can imagine the infinite variety of architectural forms which can be wrought in one-story shacks of wattle, clay and straw. The pliable wattle and clay lent themselves to effects which could not have been possible in stone, brick or wood. Extraordinary bays and alcoves, never before dreamed of by the Ecole des Beaux Arts gave light and shadow to long walls. Bas-relief and high-relief were done with spirit and often with fine art in the clay which covered the wattled walls, the thatched straw of the roofs was erected into strange gables, dormer windows, turrets and machicolations. Eccentric, grotesque many of these experiments unquestionably were, but they meant on the part of the tired soldiers hours and days and weeks of extra and unnecessary work, lavished, not for their creature comfort, not for their physical safety, but solely for their artistic satisfaction.

It was twilight when we took our leave and night had fallen long before we rolled into Château Thiery, whither Captain d'A----'s orderly had transported our bags, and where a very late dinner and comfortable beds were awaiting us.

V

A GRENADE-THROWING SCHOOL

WITH THE 5TH FRENCH ARMY, _Aug. 9_.

I have just returned from attending a soldiers' school of bomb-throwing. The military authorities permitted my presence as an exceptional favor, informing me that this is the first time such a privilege has been accorded a foreign civilian.

This particular school holds its classes in a large green field in a peaceful little valley, within long artillery range of the firing lines. No German shells, however, have hitherto distracted the pupils from their rather gruesome lessons, and I will not endanger their continued studies by giving a more definite description of the locality.

This school is attended by privates from each regiment, who spend four days at their highly explosive studies. Toward the middle of the field, about two hundred yards from one end and about three hundred from the other, was a section of open trench about twenty yards long and some four feet deep. This trench was about the usual three feet in width except in its centre, where for about five feet it was recessed back to a width of some six feet. This was where the French instructor stood and whirled his arms to throw the bombs. A couple of feet to the left of this recess was another recess, covered with a bomb-proof roof of logs and earth.

Into this the instructor and his pupil sought refuge from the effects of the bomb explosion. As the explosion really is surprisingly violent and takes place at the longest only five seconds from the time the mechanism of the bomb is started, and at a maximum distance of thirty yards, the instructor and any one in the trench with him have got to be exceedingly spry in running under the bomb-proof in order to beat the bomb. There is, too, the danger of a premature explosion.

To make me feel more entirely at my ease, they told me that only a few days ago an officer of explosives brought a Colonel to see one of these demonstrations in another school, behind a different part of the line. As they came to the entrance of the trench the officer politely made way for the Colonel to enter the trench first. As the Colonel did so, the bomb exploded prematurely and killed the Colonel outright.

About twenty yards in front of the trench was dug a shallow dummy trench to represent a German target. Some 150 yards further distant was set up a section of wire entanglements.

We found the 128 soldiers ranged in line a few yards behind the trench. At its edge I took my place with the Captain of explosives and three or four other officers. The infantrymen lined up two deep behind us.

In the open recess in the trench stood the non-commissioned officer of engineers, facing backward toward us. He was the instructor. At the order of the Captain he placed an innocent-looking satchel on the trench edge at his right elbow, plunged a hand into it and briskly plucked out, one after the other, eight different varieties of bombs. Picking them up, one at a time, he gave a terse lecture on the construction and method of operation of each.

The bombs were all fully loaded, and the explosion of any one of them would have sent a great many of us well on the way to the cemetery. I noticed in some of the officers, and undoubtedly in myself, a certain tenseness as the engineer nonchalantly illustrated within an inch or two of actuality how a percussion bomb would explode if brought in contact with the ground.

In demonstrating the first grenade he adjusted around his wrist a loop with about eight inches of cord hanging from it. A heavy two-inch metal pin was attached to the end of the cord. Picking up a black spherical bomb slightly bigger than a baseball, he stuck the pin lightly into a hole in its side. The bomb was to be thrown with full force. In flying out of the hand it pulled itself free from the pin, causing a friction which ignited the five-second fuse. The pin of course remained behind, hanging to the cord, and was promptly stuck into another bomb. This bomb, being particularly heavy, could be thrown only fifteen metres by an average thrower and twenty as a maximum.

The second bomb was black and pear-shaped. It had a spring which looked like a nickel shoe-horn folded back tight against it. The pressure of the palm against the shoe-horn in throwing it released the spring and started the fuse, which, like all the rest, was set at five seconds.

The third bomb was a can of white tin attached by two wires to a white deal handle. A nail was stuck into a hole in the can. The nail was hammered in by a sharp rap against the ground. ("If you try to knock it in against the palm of your hand it would hurt," explained our instructor.) The nail, driven in, started the fuse.

In the demonstration of this particular bomb our mentor was quite peculiarly realistic, bringing it violently down to within what seemed like the fraction of an inch of the ground.

The fourth bomb was black and round and was started by scratching the tip of a stiffly projecting bit of ignitible fuse against a black band of raspy material worn round the thumb of the left hand. The fifth bomb was lighted in a very similar manner against the side of an ordinary safety-match box. These five were regular grenades.

The sixth and seventh were incendiary grenades to set fire to wooden obstructions, etc. The one, in exploding, scattered the burning liquid to a distance of a few yards, the other set fire only to the spot where it burst. These were both large spherical bombs. Before being thrown kerosene was poured into them through a little bunghole, which was then stopped up.

The eighth was an asphyxiating bomb. I cannot, however, be too careful in emphasizing the fact that this so-called "asphyxiating" bomb was not poisonous, like the German asphyxiating gases, but merely irritated the eyes, nostrils and throat, so that when thrown into a German bomb-proof it would force out the occupants. It left no ill after-effects.

Besides these there were two aerial torpedoes. One was shot out of an old-fashioned little mortar propelled by black powder. The other was bigger and more powerful, had a fin tail to keep its flight accurate and was fired out of a complicated little gun. As both this torpedo and its gun are new inventions, I am not permitted to give any closer details concerning them.

The Sergeant of engineers having completed his little lecture, with himself and his class still in this world, the soldiers and officers all withdrew to the end of the field, some 200 yards behind the trench, and there lay down on their stomachs. I got into the trench with the engineer, placing myself to his left in front of the entrance to the bomb-proof, and the demonstration in the gentle art of grenade-throwing began. He took bomb number one, stuck the pin at the end of the cord firmly into the hole, swung his arm back and let fly.

Having seen the departure of the bomb, I ungracefully tumbled into the bomb-proof, with the engineer a close second. Once there, there was an appreciable pause. Then came an explosion, the violence of which really astonished me. I could distinctly feel the ground shake.

After giving the fragments which had been hurled our way plenty of time to come down on the roof, we stepped out into the trench again. The engineer next picked up bomb number three with the deal handle, hammered the nail home with one sharp rap against the edge of the trench and sent the grenade hurtling through the air.

The mechanism of the first bomb had not been put in operation until the bomb started on its flight. But the fuse of this third bomb started burning the instant he hammered the nail in, and was burning while he was whirling his arm preparatory to letting it fly. As it thus got a running start on us, we had only barely time to get under cover before the explosion took place.