unprintable. They desired his blood
and bones. They raised their hands to heaven to send down wrath upon
all skunks dwelling behind the lines in luxury and denying any kind of
comfort to fighting-men. They included the P.M. in their rage, and all
staff-officers from Cassel to Boulogne, and away back to Whitehall.

To cheer up the war correspondents' mess when we assembled at night
after miserable days, and when in the darkness gusts of wind and rain
clouted the window-panes and distant gun-fire rumbled, or bombs were
falling in near villages, telling of peasant girls killed in their beds
and soldiers mangled in wayside burns, we had the company sometimes
of an officer (a black-eyed fellow) who told merry little tales of
executions and prison happenings at which he assisted in the course of
his duty.

I remember one about a young officer sentenced to death for cowardice
(there were quite a number of lads like that). He was blindfolded by a
gas-mask fixed on the wrong way round, and pinioned, and tied to a post.
The firing--party lost their nerve and their shots were wild. The boy
was only wounded, and screamed in his mask, and the A.P.M. had to shoot
him twice with his revolver before he died.

That was only one of many little anecdotes told by a gentleman who
seemed to like his job and to enjoy these reminiscences.

The battles of Flanders ended with the capture of Passchendaele by the
Canadians, and that year's fighting on the western front cost us 800,000
casualties, and though we had dealt the enemy heavy blows from which he
reeled back, the drain upon our man-power was too great for what was to
happen next year, and our men were too sorely tried. For the first time
the British army lost its spirit of optimism, and there was a sense of
deadly depression among many officers and men with whom I came in touch.
They saw no ending of the war, and nothing except continuous slaughter,
such as that in Flanders.

Our men were not mythical heroes exalted by the gods above the
limitations of nature. They were human beings, with wives and children,
or mothers and sisters, whom they desired to see again. They hated this
war. Death had no allurement for them, except now and then as an escape
from intolerable life under fire. They would have been superhuman if
they had not revolted in spirit, though still faithful to discipline,
against the foul conditions of warfare in the swamps, where, in spite
of all they had, in that fou