"What was it—a 75?" I asked.
"Seventy-five nothing," he replied; "that was a 150 millimetre, and it exploded within thirty metres of your head. There—see for yourself. If we had not been in the trench that would have caught us nicely!"
I peeped over the edge of the trench and there, sure enough, was a big cloud of sooty black smoke wallowing up from behind some broken masonry not more than thirty yards off.
"Filons!" ("Let us beat it!") said the Commandant tersely, and we did.
VIII
LESSONS
The great lesson that a visit to England, France and what remains of Belgium to-day will teach any one who is willing to be taught by hard facts and not by wistful visions is that peace in the near future is quite impossible. For the only peace, in the conviction of the Allies, that will end this war is a peace neither of conciliation nor of compromise, but a peace whose terms are arbitrarily imposed by one side and of necessity submitted to by the other.
That is the end to which the Allies are determined to fight, whether that end is achieved by the more merciful method of decisive military victory or must be gained by the more terrible pressure of complete financial, industrial and economic prostration.
Any attempt to abort this object by mediatory proposals, whether Pontifical or Presidential, the Allies frankly declare they would consider an inopportune impertinence.