a kind of sickness, more agonized than afterwards when
I saw more frightful things. It came as a queer, silly shock to me then
to realize that in this secret war for which I was searching men were
really being smashed and killed, and that out of the mystery of it, out
of the distant terror from which great multitudes were fleeing, out of
the black shadow creeping across the sunlit hills of France, where the
enemy, whom no fugitives had seen, was advancing like a moving
tide, there should come these English boys, crippled and broken,
from an unknown battle. I was able to speak to one of them, wounded
only in the hand, but there was no time for more than a question or
two and an answer which hardly gave me definite knowledge.

"We got it in the neck!" said the sergeant of the R.F.A. He repeated
the words as if they held all truth. "We got it in the neck!" "Where?" I
asked.

He waved his wounded hand northwards, and said: "Mons."

"Do you mean we were beaten? In retreat?" He shrugged his
shoulders.

"We gave 'em what for. Oh, yes, they had to pay right enough. But
they were too much for us. Came on like lice... swarming... Couldn't
kill enough... Then we got it in the neck... Lost a good few men...
Gord, I've never seen such work! South Africa? No more than child's
play to this 'ere game!"

He gave a queer kind of grin, with no mirth in his eyes, and went
away with the other wounded men.

Mons? It was the first I had heard of a battle there And our men were
having a hard time. The enemy were too much for us. Was it a
retreat? Perhaps a rout?

18

The Philosopher answered these unspoken questions.

"You always get the gloomy view from wounded men. I dare say it's
not an easy thing to stop those blighters, but I've faith in the justice of
God. The Great Power ain't going to let Prussian militarism win out.
It's going to be smashed because of its essential rottenness. It's all
right, laddie!"

The Strategist was studying his map, and working out military
possibilities.

"Mons. I expect our next line of defence will be Le Cateau and
Cambrai. If we're hard pressed we shall hear something about St.
Quentin, too. It's quite on the cards we shall have to fall back, but I
hope to Heaven in good order and with sound lines of communication."

"It's frightful!" I said. "We are seeing nothing of all this. Nothing!
If only we could get near it!"

19

It was some time before we heard the guns, but not long be