. So I said good-by to
my boy again, for a little space.

Our road was by way of Poizieres, and this part of our journey took
us through an area of fearful desolation. It was the country that was
most bitterly fought over in the summer long battle of the Somme in
1916, when the new armies of Britain had their baptism of fire and
sounded the knell of doom for the Hun. It was then he learned that
Britain had had time, after all, to train troops who, man for man,
outmatched his best.

Here war had passed like a consuming flame, leaving no living thing
in its path. The trees were mown down, clean to the ground. The very
earth was blasted out of all semblance to its normal kindly look. The
scene was like a picture of Hell from Dante's Inferno; there is nothing
upon this earth that may be compared with it. Death and pain and agony
had ruled this whole countryside, once so smiling and fair to see.

After we had driven for a space we came to something that lay by the
roadside that was a fitting occupant of such a spot. It was like the
skeleton of some giant creature of a prehistoric age, incredibly
savage even in its stark, unlovely death. It might have been the
frame of some vast, metallic tumble bug, that, crawling ominously
along this road of death, had come into the path of a Colossus, and
been stepped upon, and then kicked aside from the road to die.

"That's what's left of one of our first tanks," said Godfrey. "We
used them first in this battle of the Somme, you remember. And that
must have been one of the very earliest ones. They've been improved
and perfected since that time."

"How came it like this?" I asked, gazing at it, curiously.

"A direct hit from a big German shell--a lucky hit, of course. That's
about the only thing that could put even one of the first tanks out
of action that way. Ordinary shells from field pieces, machine-gun
fire, that sort of thing, made no impression on the tanks. But, of
course----"

I could see for myself. The in'ards of the monster had been pretty
thoroughly knocked out. Well, that tank had done its bit, I have no
doubt. And, since its heyday, the brain of Mars has spawned so many
new ideas that this vast creature would have been obsolete, and ready
for the scrap heap, even had the Hun not put it there before its
time.

At the Butte de Marlincourt, one of the most bitterly contested bits
of the battlefield, we passed a huge mine crater, and I made an
inspection of it. It wa