rtain battalion had gone down in the advance, and
the shaken remnant fell back upon their trenches, deafened and
distraught, one of the officers--he had been a master in a great public
school before the war--took out of his pocket a copy of the _Faerie
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 subaltern and
asked him to follow suit. The others listened, half in wonder, half in
fear, thinking he had lost his senses, but there was method in his
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 was 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 nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.

Clusters of men in billets; men doing a route-march to keep them fit;
Indian cavalry jogging along on the footpath with lances in rest; herds
of tethered horses in rest-camps; a string of motor-buses painted a
khaki-tint; a "mobile" (a travelling 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 miles an
hour--these are familiar sights of the lines of communication, and they
lend a variety to the monotonous countryside without which it would be
dull indeed. For it is a countryside of interminable straight
lines--straight roads, straight hop-poles, and poplars not less
straight, reminding one in winter of one of Hobbema's landscapes without
their colouring. But to the south of the zone of our 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 to shake off a nightmare of damp despondency.

It may be remarked that I have said nothing of Ypres. The explanation is
painfully simple. Ypres has ceased to exist. It is merely a heap of
stones,