Not altogether, of course. There were still transports and troops. And
at an intersection of three roads we were abruptly halted. A line of
military cars was standing there, all peremptorily held up by a
handful of soldiers.

The young officer got out and inquired. There was little time to
spare, for I was to get to Calais that evening, and to run the Channel
blockade some time in the night.

The officer came back soon, smiling.

"A military secret!" he said. "We shall have to wait a little. The
road is closed."

So I sat in the car and the military secret went by. I cannot tell
about it except that it was thrillingly interesting. My hands itched
to get out my camera and photograph it, just as they itch now to write
about it. But the mystery of what I saw on the highroad back of the
British lines is not mine to tell. It must die with me!

My visit to the British lines was over.

As I look back I find that the one thing that stands out with
distinctness above everything else is the quality of the men that
constitute the British Army in the field. I had seen thousands in that
one day. But I had seen them also north of Ypres, at Dunkirk, at
Boulogne and Calais, on the Channel boats. I have said before that
they show race. But it is much more than a matter of physique. It is a
thing of steady eyes, of high-held heads, of a clean thrust of jaw.

The English are not demonstrative. London, compared with Paris, is
normal. British officers at the front and at headquarters treat the
war as a part of the day's work, a thing not to talk about but to do.
But my frequent meetings with British soldiers, naval men, members of
the flying contingent and the army medical service, revealed under the
surface of each man's quiet manner a grimness, a red heat of
patriotism, a determination to fight fair but to fight to the death.

They concede to the Germans, with the British sense of fairness,
courage, science, infinite resource and patriotism. Two things they
deny them, civilisation and humanity--civilisation in its spiritual,
not its material, side; humanity of the sort that is the Englishman's
creed and his religion--the safeguarding of noncombatants, the keeping
of the national word and the national honour.

My visit to the English lines was over. I had seen no valiant charges,
no hand-to-hand fighting. But in a way I had had a larger picture. I
had seen the efficiency of the methods behind the lines, the abundance
of suppl