ounded
as speedily back again.

It was a triumph for the machine, and yet the machine, in the end, gave
place to the hand to hand death grip of primitive man.

As Kipling wrote:--

"What I ha' seen since ocean steam began
Leaves me no doot for the machine; what, what about the man?"

The Great War answered that question.

There was a doubt about the man--he dropped off the veneer of the human
and became the animal once again.

When foe came face to face with foe the world dropped back ten thousand
years.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIX.

The Revolution.

And now the war was over--bar the shouting.

I remember the soldiers had strange emotions at the sudden ending to
fifteen months' activity. At times they would be excited, and at others
disappointed. It seemed like the feeling of the London 'busman who left
off work for a week's holiday, but found himself on a 'bus next day
asking the driver to "let him hold the ribbons for a bit."

The war fever had got into our blood, and the camps, instead of being
orderly in arrangement, became moving masses of wandering soldiers.
Discipline snapped as the news of Peace passed through the ranks. Some
soldiers would cheer--they had loved ones awaiting their return. Others
took it as a matter of little concern--they, no doubt, had cut all ties
in enlisting, and, perhaps, wondered if their old places had been kept
open for them.

Troops still poured in from the south, adding to the demoralisation.

I remember that the commandant of my air corps rose with me in the
'plane and surveyed the wonderful scene.

Around Liege troops were moving in a wonderful mass, not unlike the
mixed crowd that one sees in a city street after a procession has passed
along, but with the crowd increased a thousandfold.

Yet it was not a disorderly crowd. It seemed a crowd of good fellowship.
The German soldiers in the west had fought against the British and found
them brave enemies. The revulsion of feeling made them friends. The
tension of hate snapped.

It has ever been thus. With a quarrel over, the greatest haters become
the warmest friends.

For two days the armies at the Meuse fraternised.

Our soldiers learnt much from their former enemies. They found, through
some papers that had slipped the eyes of the censors, that the
Socialists of Germany were in revolt.

I could then understand the excitement of my religious friend, Brother
Wilbrid, on the Rhine road, and his anxie