"

I had, and said so; a very good camera.

"I hope you do not mind if I ask you not to use it."

I did not mind. I promised at once to take no pictures, and indeed at
the end of the afternoon I found my unfortunate camera on the floor,
much buffeted and kicked about and entirely ignored.

The interview with Sir John French had given me an entirely unexpected
impression of the Field Marshal of the British Army. I had read his
reports fully, and from those unemotional reports of battles, of
movements and countermovements, I had formed a picture of a great
soldier without imagination, to whom a battle was an issue, not a
great human struggle--an austere man.

I had found a man with a fighting jaw and a sensitive mouth; and a man
greatly beloved by the men closest to him. A human man; a soldier, not
a writer.

And after seeing and talking with Sir John French I am convinced that
it is not his policy that dictates the silence of the army at the
front. He is proud of his men, proud of each heroic regiment, of every
brave deed. He would like, I am sure, to shout to the world the names
of the heroes of the British Army, to publish great rolls of honour.
But silence, or comparative silence, has been the decree.

There must be long hours of suspense when the Field Marshal of the
British Army paces the floor of that grey and rose brocade
drawing-room; hours when the orders he has given are being translated
into terms of action, of death, of wounds, but sometimes--thank
God!--into terms of victory. Long hours, when the wires and the
dispatch riders bring in news, valiant names, gains, losses; names
that are not to be told; brave deeds that, lacking chroniclers, must
go unrecorded.

Read this, from the report Sir John French sent out only a day or so
before I saw him:

"The troops composing the Army of France have been subjected to as
severe a trial as it is possible to impose upon any body of men. The
desperate fighting described in my last dispatch had hardly been
brought to a conclusion when they were called upon to face the
rigours and hardships of a winter campaign. Frost and snow have
alternated with periods of continuous rain."

"The men have been called upon to stand for many hours together
almost up to their waists in bitterly cold water, separated by only
one or two hundred yards from a most vigilant enemy."

"Although every measure which science and medical knowledge