ry. But the French infantry
called the big shells marmites (saucepans), and made a joke of them
and the death they spread as they tore up the fields in clouds of
earth.

Ah, it took more than artillery to beat back the best troops of France in
a country like this--a country of rolling hills and fenceless fields cut by
many streams and set among thick woods, where infantry on a bank
or at a forest's edge with rifles and rapid-firers and guns kept their
barrels cool until the charge developed in the open. Some of these
forests are only a few acres in extent; others are hundreds of acres.
In the dark depths of one a frozen lake was seen glistening from our
viewpoint on the Plateau d'Amance.

"Indescribable that scene which we witnessed from here," said an
officer who had been on the plateau throughout the fighting. "All the
splendid majesty of war was set on a stage before you. It was
intoxication. We could see the lines of troops in their retreat and
advance, batteries and charges shrouded in shrapnel smoke. What
hosts of guns the Germans had! They seemed to be sowing the
whole face of the earth with shells. The roar of the thing was like that
of chaos itself. It was the exhilaration of the spectacle that kept us
from dropping from fatigue. Two weeks of this business! Two weeks
with every unit of artillery and infantry always ready, if not actually
engaged!"

The general in command was directing not one but many battles,
each with a general of its own; manoeuvring troops across streams
and open places, seeking the cover of forests, with the aeroplanes
unable to learn how many of the enemy were hidden in the forests on
his front, while he tried to keep his men out of angles and make his
movements correspond with those of the divisions on his right and
left. Skill this required; skill equivalent to German skill; the skill
which you cannot command in a month after calling for a million
volunteers, but which grows through years of organization.

Shall I call the general in chief command General X? This is
according to the custom of anonymity. A great modern army like the
French is a machine; any man, high or low, only a unit of the
machine. In this case the real name of X is Castelnau. If it lacks the
fame which seems its due, that may be because he was too busy to
take the Press into his confidence. Fame is not the business of
French generals nowadays. It is war. What counted for France was
that he never let the German