losses of that year, our armies on the western front were threatened by
the greatest menace that had ever drawn near to them, and the British
Empire was in jeopardy.

VIII

In the autumn of 1917 the Italian disaster of Caporetto had happened,
and Sir Herbert Plumer, with his chief of staff, Sir John Harington, and
many staff-officers of the Second Army, had, as I have told, been sent
to Italy with some of our best divisions, so weakening Sir Douglas
Haig's command. At that very time, also, after the bloody losses in
Flanders, the French government and General Headquarters brought severe
pressure upon the British War Council to take over a greater length of
line in France, in order to release some of the older classes of the
French army who had been under arms since 1914. We yielded to that
pressure and Sir Douglas Haig extended his lines north and south of
St.-Quentin, where the Fifth Army, under General Gough, was intrusted
with the defense.

I went over all that new ground of ours, out from Noyon to Chaulny and
Barisis and the floods of the Oise by La Fere; out from Ham to Holmon
Forest and Francilly and the Epine de Dullon, and the Fort de Liez
by St.-Quentin; and from Peronne to Hargicourt and Jeancourt and La
Verguier. It was a pleasant country, with living trees and green fields
not annihilated by shell-fire, though with the naked eye I could see
the scarred walls of St.-Quentin cathedral, and the villages near the
frontlines had been damaged in the usual way. It was dead quiet there
for miles, except for short bursts of harassing fire now and then, and
odd shells here and there, and bursts of black shrapnel in the blue sky
of mild days.

"Paradise, after Flanders!" said our men, but I knew that there was a
great movement of troops westward from Russia, and wondered how long
this paradise would last.

I looked about for trench systems, support lines, and did not see them,
and wondered what our defense would be if the enemy attacked here in
great strength. Our army seemed wonderfully thinned out. There were few
men to be seen in our outpost line or in reserve. It was all strangely
quiet. Alarmingly quiet.

Yet, pleasant for the time being. I had a brother commanding a battery
along the railway line south of St.-Quentin. I went to see him, and we
had a picnic meal on a little hill staring straight toward St.-Quentin
cathedral. One of his junior officers set the gramophone going. The
colonel of the