e word of concurrence, was a type who might have stopped a traveler
in Louis XIV.'s time. All the farmers sleeping in the villages who would
be up at dawn at their work, all the people in Amiens, knew that the
hour was near. The fact was in the air no less than in men's minds.
Nobody mentioned that the greatest struggle of the war was about to
begin. We all knew that it was in hearts, souls, fiber.

There were moments when imagination gave to that army in its integrity
of organization only one heart in one body. Again, it was a million
hearts in a million bodies, deaf except to the voice of command. Most
amazing was the absence of fuss whether with the French or the British.
Everybody seemed to be doing what he was told to do and to know how to
do it. With much to be left to improvisation after the attack began,
nothing might be neglected in the course of preparation.

In other days where infantry on the march deployed and brought up
suddenly against the enemy in open conflict the anticipatory suspense
was not long and was forgotten in the brief space of conflict. Here this
suspense really had been cumulative for months. It built itself up,
little by little, as the material and preparations increased, as the
battalions assembled, until sometimes, despite the roar of the
artillery, there seemed a great silence while you waited for a string,
drawn taut, to crack.

On the night of June 30th the word was passed behind a closed door in
the hotel that seven-thirty the next morning was the hour and the
spectators should be called at five--which seemed the final word in
staff prevision.

V

THE BLOW

Plans at headquarters--A battle by inches--In the observation
post--The debris of a ruined village--"Softening" by shell fire--A
slice out of the front--The task of the infantryman--The dawn before
the attack--Five minutes more--A wave of men twenty-five miles
long--Mist and shell-smoke--Duty of the war-correspondent.

I was glad to have had glimpses of every aspect of the preparation from
battalion headquarters in the front line trenches to General
Headquarters, which had now been moved to a smaller town near the
battlefield where the intelligence branch occupied part of a
schoolhouse. In place of exercises in geography and lithographs of
natural history objects, on the schoolroom walls hung charts of the
German Order of Battle, as built up through many sources of information,
which the British had