ent of the
Japanese in build and alertness.

When I was at the English front some of the Sikhs had been retired to
rest. But even in the small villages on billet, relaxed and resting,
they were a fine and soldierly looking body of men, showing race and
their ancient civilisation.

It has been claimed that England called on her Indian troops, not
because she expected much assistance from them but to show the
essential unity of the British Empire. The plain truth is, however,
that she needed the troops, needed men at once, needed experienced
soldiers to eke out her small and purely defensive army of regulars.
Volunteers had to be equipped and drilled--a matter of months.

To say that she called to her aid barbarians is absurd. The Ghurkas
are fierce fighters, but carefully disciplined. Compare the lances of
the Indian cavalry regiments and the _kukri_, the Ghurka knife, with
the petrol squirts, hand grenades, aeroplane darts and asphyxiating
bombs of Germany, and call one barbarian to the advantage of the
other! The truth is, of course, that war itself is barbarous.

CHAPTER XXVII

A STRANGE PARTY

The road to Ham turned off the main highway south of Aire. It was a
narrow clay road in unspeakable condition. The car wallowed along.
Once we took a wrong turning and were obliged to go back and start
again.

It was still raining. Indian horsemen beat their way stolidly along
the road. We passed through hamlets where cavalry horses in ruined
stables were scantily protected, where the familiar omnibuses of
London were parked in what appeared to be hundreds. The cocoa and
other advertisements had been taken off and they had been hastily
painted a yellowish grey. Here and there we met one on the road,
filled and overflowing with troops, and looking curiously like the
"rubber-neck wagons" of New York.

Aside from the transports and a few small Indian ammunition carts,
with open bodies made of slats, and drawn by two mules, with an
impassive turbaned driver calling strange words to his team, there was
no sign of war. No bombarding disturbed the heavy atmosphere; no
aeroplanes were overhead. There was no barbed wire, no trenches. Only
muddy sugarbeet fields on each side of the narrow road, a few winter
trees, and the beat of the rain on the windows.

At last, with an extra lurch, the car drew up in the village of Ham.
At a gate in a brick wall a Scotch soldier in kilts, carrying a rifle,
came forward. Our errand