the enemy, or was likely to cause
them--surprises which would lead to a massacre of their men. He warmed
to the glory of the courage of the troops who were carrying out his
plans.

"It depends on these fellows," he would say. "I am setting them a
difficult job. If they can do it, as I hope and believe, it will be
a fine achievement. They have been very much tried, poor fellows, but
their spirit is still high, as I know from their commanding officers."

One of his ambitions was to break down the prejudice between the
fighting units and the Staff. "We want them to know that we are all
working together, for the same purpose and with the same zeal. They
cannot do without us, as we cannot do without them, and I want them to
feel that the work done here is to help them to do theirs more easily,
with lighter losses, in better physical conditions, with organization
behind them at every stage."

Many times the Second Army would not order an attack or decide the time
of it before consulting the divisional generals and brigadiers, and
obtaining their consensus of opinion. The officers and men in the Second
Army did actually come to acknowledge the value of the staff-work behind
them, and felt a confidence in its devotion to their interests which was
rare on the western front.

At the end of one of his expositions Sir John Harington would rise and
gather up his maps and papers, and say:

"Well, there you are, gentlemen. You know as much as I do about the
plans for to-morrow's battle. At the end of the day you will be able to
see the result of all our work and tell me things I do not know."

Those conferences took place in the Second Army headquarters on Cassel
Hill, in a big building which was a casino before the war, with a
far-reaching view across Flanders, so that one could see in the distance
the whole sweep of the Ypres salient, and southward the country below
Notre Dame de Lorette, with Merville and Hazebrouck in the foreground.
Often we assembled in a glass house, furnished with trestle tables on
which maps were spread, and, thinking back to these scenes, I remember
now, as I write, the noise of rain beating on that glass roof, and the
clammy touch of fog on the window-panes stealing through the cracks and
creeping into the room. The meteorologist of the Second Army was often
a gloomy prophet, and his prophecies were right. How it rained on nights
when hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were waiting in their
tr