, "Beware of aeroplanes ascending and
descending across roads." For a time the possibility of charging into a
biplane gives zest to our progress, as we fly along the road which cuts
the aerodrome; but, alack! there are none visible and we begin to drop
towards Amiens.

Then, outside the town, sentinels stop us, French and British; our
passes are examined; and, under their friendly looks--betraying a little
surprise!--we drive on into the old streets. I was in Amiens two years
before the war, between trains, that I might refresh a somewhat faded
memory of the cathedral. But not such a crowded, such a busy Amiens as
this! The streets are so full that we have to turn out of the main
street, directed by a French military policeman, and find our way by a
detour to the cathedral.

As we pass through Amiens arrangements are going on for the "taking
over" of another large section of the French line, south of Albert; as
far, it is rumoured, as Roye and Lagny. At last, with our new armies, we
can relieve more of the French divisions, who have borne so gallantly
and for so many months the burden of their long line. It is true that
the bulk of the German forces are massed against the British lines, and
that in some parts of the centre and the east, owing to the nature of
the ground, they are but thinly strung along the French front, which
accounts partly for the disproportion in the number of kilometres
covered by each Ally. But, also, we had to make our Army; the French,
God be thanked, had theirs ready, and gloriously have they stood the
brunt, as the defenders of civilisation, till we could take our
full share.

And now we, who began with 45 kilometres of the battle-line, have
gradually become responsible for 185, so that "at last," says a French
friend to me in Paris, "our men can have a rest, some of them for the
first time! And, by Heaven, they've earned it!"

Yet, in this "taking over" there are many feelings concerned. For the
French _poilu_ and our Tommy it is mostly the occasion for as much
fraternisation as their fragmentary knowledge of each other's speech
allows; the Frenchman is proud to show his line, the Britisher is proud
to take it over; there are laughter and eager good will; on the whole,
it is a red-letter day. But sometimes there strikes in a note "too deep
for tears." Here is a fragment from an account of a "taking over,"
written by an eye-witness:

Trains of a prodigious length are crawling up a French