well. You will find him full also of
invincible courage and resolution."

And all that he had said, I found. I found the French soldiers smiling
and cheerful and ruddy in the most wretched of billets. I found them
firing at the enemy, still cheerful, but with a coolness of courage
that made my own shaking nerves steady themselves.

Today, when that very part of the line I visited is, as was expected
when I was there, bearing the brunt of the German attack in the most
furious fighting of the war, I wonder, of those French soldiers who
crowded round to see the first woman they had beheld for months, how
many are lying on that muddy battlefield? What has happened on that
road, guarded by buried quick-firers, that stretched to the German
trenches beyond the poplar trees? Did the "rabbit trap" do its work?
Only for a time, I think, for was it not there that the Germans broke
through? Did the Germans find and silence that concealed battery of
seventy-five-millimetre guns under its imitation hedge? Who was in the
tree lookout as the enemy swarmed across, and did he get away?

Except for the constant road repairing there was little to see during
the first part of the journey. Here in a flat field, well beyond the
danger zone, some of the new British Army was digging practice
trenches in the mud. Their tidy uniforms were caked with dirt, their
faces earnest and flushed. At last the long training at Salisbury
Plain was over, and here they were, if not at the front, within
hearing distance of the guns. Any day now a bit of luck would move
them forward, and there would be something doing.

By now, no doubt, they have been moved up and there has been something
doing. Poor lads! I watched them until even their khaki-coloured tents
had faded into the haze. The tall, blonde, young officer, Lieutenant
Puaux, pointed out to me a detachment of Belgian soldiers mending
roads. As our car passed they leaned on their spades and looked after
us.

"Belgian carabineers," he said. "They did some of the most heroic work
of the war last summer and autumn. They were decorated by the King.
Now they are worn out and they mend roads!"

For--and this I had to learn--a man may not fight always, even
although he escapes actual injury. It is the greatest problem of
commanding generals that they must be always moving forward fresh
troops. The human element counts for much in any army. Nerves go after
a time. The constant noise of the guns has sent m