is."

The irony of the words made some of the onlookers laugh. A French
interpreter spoke to some English officers with a thrill of joy in
his voice. Had they heard the last news from Champagne? The French had
broken through the enemy's line. The Germans were in full retreat.. .
It was utterly untrue, because after the desperate valor of heroic youth
and horrible casualties, the French attack had broken down. But the
spirit of hope came down the cold wind and went with the men whom I saw
marching to the fields of fate in the slanting rain, as the darkness and
the mist came to end another day of battle.

Outside the headquarters of a British army corps stood another line of
captured field-guns and several machine-guns, of which one had a strange
history of adventure. It was a Russian machine-gun, taken by the Germans
on the eastern front and retaken by us on the western front.

In General Rawlinson's headquarters I saw a queer piece of booty. It
was a big bronze bell used by the Germans in their trenches to signal a
British gas-attack.

General Rawlinson was taking tea in his chateau when I called on him,
and was having an animated argument with Lord Cavan, commanding the
Guards, as to the disposal of the captured artillery and other trophies.
Lord Cavan claimed some for his own, with some violence of speech. But
General Rawlinson was bright and breezy as usual. Our losses were not
worrying him. As a great general he did not allow losses to worry him.
He ate his tea with a hearty appetite, and chaffed his staff-officers.
They were anticipating the real German counter-attack--a big affair.
Away up the line there would be more dead piled up, more filth and
stench of human slaughter, but the smell of it would not reach back to
headquarters.

XIII

In a despatch by Sir John French, dated October 15, 1915, and issued
by the War Office on November 1st of that year, the Commander-in-Chief
stated that: "In view of the great length of line along which the
British troops were operating it was necessary to keep a strong reserve
in my own hand. The 11th Corps, consisting of the Guards, the 21st and
the 24th Divisions, were detailed for this purpose. This reserve was
the more necessary owing to the fact that the Tenth French Army had to
postpone its attack until one o'clock in the day; and further, that the
corps operating on the French left had to be directed in a more or
less southeasterly direction, involving, in ca