y. Another dip
into another valley and the thir-r-r of a rapid-firer and the muffled
firing of a line of infantry were audible. Yes, we were getting up
with the army, with one tiny section of it operating along the road on
which we were. Multiply this by a thousand and you have the whole.

Ahead was the army's larder on wheels; a procession of big motor
transport trucks keeping their intervals of distance with the precision
of a battleship fleet at sea. We should have known that they belonged
to the army by the deafness of the drivers to appeals to let us pass.
All army transports are like that. What the deuced right has anybody
to pass? They are the transport, and only fighting men belong in front
of them. Our car in trying to go by to one side got stuck in a rut that
an American car, built for bad roads, would have made nothing of;
which proves again how closely European armies are tied to their fine
highways. We got out, and here again was our statesman putting his
shoulder to the wheel. That is the way of the French in war.
Everybody tries to help. By this time the transport chauffeurs
remembered that they also were Frenchmen; and as Frenchmen are
polite even in time of war, they let us by.

A motor-cyclist approached with his hand up.

"Stop here!" he called.

Those transport chauffeurs who were deaf to ex-premiers heard
instantly and obeyed. In front of them was a line of single horse-
drawn carts, with an extra horse in the rear. They could take paths
that the motor trucks could not. Archaic they seemed, yet friendly, as
a relic of how armies were fed in other days. For the first time I was
realizing what the motor truck means to war. It brings the army
impedimenta close up to the army's rear; it means a reduction of road
space occupied by transport by three-quarters; ease in keeping pace
with food with the advance, speed in falling back in case of retreat.

All that day I did not see a single piece of French army transport
broken down. And this army had been fighting for weeks; it had been
an army on the road. The valuable part of our experience was exactly
in this: a glimpse of an army in action after it had been through all the
vicissitudes that an army may have in marching and counter-
marching and attack. Order one expected afterwards, behind the
siege line of trenches, when there had been time to establish a
routine; organization and smooth organization you had here at the
climax of a month's strain.