Then I stumbled into a dug-out. A candle burnt there, and a French
officer was taking up his things. He nodded and smiled. "I go," he said.
"I am not sorry, and yet----" He shrugged his shoulders. I understood.
One is never sorry to go, but these trenches--these bits of France,
where Frenchmen had died--would no longer be guarded by Frenchmen. Then
he waved his hand round the little dug-out. "We give a little more of
France into your keeping." His gesture was extravagant and light, but
his face was grave as he said it. He turned and went out. I followed. He
walked along the communication trench after his men, and I along the
line of my silent sentries. I spoke to one or two, and then stood on the
fire-step, looking out into the night. I had the Frenchman's words in my
head: "We give a little more of France into your keeping!" It was not
these trenches only, where I stood, but all that lay out there in the
darkness, which had been given into our keeping. Its dangers were ours
now. There were villages away there in the heart of the night, still
unknown to all but the experts at home, whose names--like Thiepval and
Bazentin--would soon be English names, familiar to every man in Britain
as the streets of his own town. All this France had entrusted to our
care this night.

Such were the scenes that were quietly going on, not much noticed by the
public at home during the weeks of February and March, and such were the
thoughts in men's minds. How plainly one catches through the words of
the last speaker an eager prescience of events to come!--the sweep of
General Gough on Warlencourt and Bapaume--the French reoccupation
of Peronne.

One word for the cathedral of Amiens before we leave the bustling
streets of the old Picard capital. This is so far untouched and
unharmed, though exposed, like everything else behind the front, to the
bombs of German aeroplanes. The great west front has disappeared behind
a mountain of sandbags; the side portals are protected in the same way,
and inside, the superb carvings of the choir are buried out of sight.
But at the back of the choir the famous weeping cherub sits weeping as
before, peacefully querulous. There is something irritating in his
placid and too artistic grief. Not so is "Rachel weeping for her
children" in this war-ravaged country. Sterner images of Sorrow are
wanted here--looking out through burning eyes for the Expiation to come.

* * * * *