my..."

The song stopped, there was a word of command, and the little squad
started away. The women clung to their men and cried aloud. The
children hanging to their skirts began to wail, too. There was
something creepy and horrible, like the cries of tortured animals, in
that uncontrolled crying there in the bright morning sunshine. The
schoolmaster spoke to them bluntly, told them to go back to their homes
and their work, and obedient, and a little quieter now, they drifted
away, with aprons to their faces and their little children clinging to
their skirts--back to their cottages and the winter ahead.

This picture did not fit in very well with our rollicking military
panorama, but we were soon over the hills, and half an hour later were
breakfasting on pate-de-foie-gras sandwiches and champagne, with a
charming old corps commandant, at a round table set outdoors in a circle
of trees that must have been planted for that very purpose. Cheered and
stiffened by many bows and heel clickings and warming hospitality, we
hurried off to an artillery position near the village of Olszanica.

Just under the brow of a hill we were stopped and told that it was
dangerous to go farther, and we skirted off to the right under cover, to
the observation station itself. More little Swiss chalets, more
hospitable officers, and out in front, across a mile of open country,
the Russian trenches. Through a periscope one could see Russians
exercising their horses by riding them round the circle--as silent and
remote and of another world as a picture on a biograph screen.

"You see that clump of trees," said the young officer, "one of their
batteries is just behind there. Those aren't real trees, they were put
there by the Russians." I swung the glass to the left, picked up a
company of men marching. "Hello, hello," he whispered, then after a
moment's scrutiny: "No--they're our men." After all, war isn't always so
different from the old days, when men had a time for fighting and a time
for going in to powder their wigs! The division commander, standing a
little behind us, remarked: "We shall fire from the right-hand battery
over behind the hill and then from the left--the one you passed near the
road." Then turning to an officer at the field telephone he said; "You
may fire now."

There was a moment's pause, from over the woods behind us came a
"Whr-r-rong !" and out over the sunny fields a shell went milling away
to send back a f