The Project Gutenberg eBook, Over the Front in an Aeroplane and Scenes Inside the French and Flemish Trenches, by Ralph Pulitzer

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OVER THE FRONT IN AN AEROPLANE

[See page 2

"A FEW SECONDS LATER THE TWO GREAT PROPELLERS

BEGAN TO FLASH ROUND"

[ OVER THE FRONT
IN AN AEROPLANE
]

AND SCENES

INSIDE THE FRENCH

AND FLEMISH TRENCHES

BY
Ralph Pulitzer

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Over the Front in an Aeroplane

Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America

TO
MY WIFE

[CONTENTS]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

OVER THE FRONT IN AN AEROPLANE

I
A FLIGHT TO THE FIRING LINE

Paris, August 13th (Friday).

I have just returned from a unique visit to the front. This afternoon I flew in an army aeroplane from Paris to the fighting lines, skirted these lines for a few kilometres, and flew back to Paris.

We made the round trip without a break.

I am indebted to the quite exceptional kindness of the French Foreign Office and of the French War Office for this flight. No other civilian has been allowed to ascend in a French army aeroplane at all, and as for visiting the front in one, it has apparently been undreamed of. Poor Needham went up in a British military aeroplane, but what he saw and felt were buried with him.

I received definite word yesterday evening that at four-thirty this afternoon I would find a military motor at the door of my hotel; that it would take me to the great aviation station in the suburbs of Paris, and that at five-thirty o'clock a double-cylindered battle-plane would set flight with me.

Everything ran like clockwork. At five o'clock I was shaking hands with the Captain of this most important aviation station, and he was explaining to me just how, day and night, his aeroplanes guarded Paris from German air attacks.

At five-thirty o'clock I was struggling into a heavy leather suit which I put on over my regular clothes and a heavy padded helmet which was carefully fastened under my chin by a buttoned flap and also an elastic band.

A few minutes later I was climbing sinuously into my seat in the front of the aeroplane while my pilot wormed his way into his seat a few feet behind me. A few seconds later the two great propellers (or rather tractors) began to flash around. With a snap and a roar the battle-plane started slowly forward, gained in speed till we were running along the big field like a racing automobile, then suddenly the people standing around dropped away from us as if on a gigantic express elevator leaving one standing on the upper floor of a skyscraper, and in a moment more the earth had become a strange and placid panorama with which we had no connection or concern.

On and up, on and up, we flew, headed straight as an arrow for the closest portion of the battle-front, ninety kilometres (about fifty-four miles) away.

As the vast crazy-quilt of numberless shades of green and brown rolled slowly below us I had time to pay more attention to my immediate surroundings. I sat in the front, or observer's seat, of a great new French biplane which the English call a battle-plane, and the French call an "avion de chasse," or "hunting aeroplane." They call their smaller single-motored machines their "avions de réglage," or "regulating aeroplanes." But these great biplanes they fondly call their hunting aeroplanes, for with them they hunt the Taubes and the Aviatiks of the enemy, and they tell me that their enemy usually gives them a wide berth.

I found myself sitting in a little cockpit strapped to a comfortable seat. A few inches in front of my nose was the breach of a heavy machine-gun whose muzzle projected over the bow of the fuselage. At each side of my seat, under my elbows, were coiled long belts of cartridges for the machine-gun. In the floor of the little cockpit, right in front of my feet, was a little glass window through which I could watch the ground passing directly (though some thousand feet) underneath. Just behind this window, in the floor under my feet, was a little metal trap-door. By straddling my feet I could open this, for the purpose either of taking vertical photographs or of dropping bombs. Only the three long, shell-like bombs which generally hang in straps to the left of the observer had been removed, as had also the Winchester rifle which hangs to his right.

I could get an uninterrupted view of the scenery across a space of about four feet right ahead. Further to right and left the view flickered curiously through the lightning-swift twirling of the propeller-blades. "Don't stretch your head out in front to either side," had cautioned the aviation Captain before I left the earth, "or you would certainly get guillotined." I craned my neck gingerly round to look beyond me. In another little cockpit about four feet aft sat the pilot. I could see his face peering over the edge through a low windshield. Past his head on each side I got a view of the country we were leaving behind.

This happened to be a farewell glimpse of Paris. It stretched vaguely away, bathed in the late afternoon sun and yet shrouded in heavy haze and smoke, a sort of bird's-eye Whistler.

Now feeling the air becoming distinctly colder, I looked ahead again. For a time we had been flying at 1,000 metres. Now we gradually climbed to 2,000 metres. The outrunners of the clouds began to drift by in wisps of what seemed like mist. Below, the earth looked like the display of a carpet-merchant's dreams. Square carpets, oblong carpets, long strips of carpets, carpets of light green, of dark green, of every intermediate shade of green; carpets of fawn color and of brown, thin carpets and carpets of wonderfully thick pile, plain carpets and carpets with symmetrical designs in light brown dots (several thousand feet nearer those dots would have resolved themselves into homely haycocks).

Now the carpets stopped as we sailed over a forest of dense dark green with little mirrors stuck in it, which, when looked at through my field-glasses, proved to be not the tops of greenhouses, as I had at first imagined, but big lakes.

And now the wisps of mist became banks of fog. As we still climbed on upward through these white banks the earth could only be seen in isolated dark patches. Higher and higher we climbed, till finally the earth was entirely veiled by the clouds below us. At a height of 3,000 metres, or 9,900 feet, we straightened our angle and on an even keel headed away toward the front. It was a magnificent sight. We were flying along in a clear belt between the lower and the upper clouds. Below us stretched an unbroken white ocean of these lower clouds. The sun was just high enough to shed its slanting beams along the surface of this snow-white sea. Above us were the lowering masses of the higher clouds.

Page 6

"BELOW US STRETCHED AN UNBROKEN WHITE OCEAN OF

THESE LOWER CLOUDS"

In this lonely world of our own we flew forward at 130 kilometres (80 miles approximately) an hour. The air was very thin and cold, but for some reason there was no rush of wind against my face. If I moved my head to right or left I could feel the wind from either propeller, but in the middle it was relatively calm. The air felt very thin to breathe and I had to swallow constantly to keep clearing my ears and the tubes back of my nose.

On and on we flew, until finally I felt, instead of hearing, a violent rapping. Turning my head, I saw the pilot hammering with his right fist on the deck between our cockpits to attract my attention. He grinned amicably and opened his mouth wide. I could see he was shouting at me, but could not hear the faintest sound over the roar of the propellers. He pointed to the whiteness below us a little to the right. Then he wrote an imaginary word with his forefinger on the deck between us. I could not read it upside down. I opened my leather coat, and with the cold instantly biting into my chest, hauled out my notebook and pencil and stretched them out to him. He shook his head and indicated that he could not take both hands away from steering. So I buttoned up my coat again in some perplexity.

Then, without abruptness, with a certain sickening majesty, the aeroplane stood on its head and swooped down onto the surface of the white sea below us. As it swallowed us we began to spiral rapidly around as though we were tobogganing down a giant corkscrew. As we went on down through this white nothingness I became very dizzy. The propellers had slowed 'way down and I thought the engines had failed, and that we were either falling 10,000 feet or making a forced descent. But the pilot sat still back above me, so I did likewise.

Suddenly we spiralled violently down through the bottom of the cloud into sight of the earth again. Instantaneously the engines broke into their old roar and the aeroplane stopped pointing straight down and assumed a steep slant. If any one ever heaved a sigh of relief I did it then.

I felt the rapping behind me. Looking round, I saw the pilot pointing down at the earth, ahead and to our right. I shook my head. Then, as we careened downward, he stopped his motors for a fraction of a second, and in the sudden deafening silence he shouted out, "The front!"

Here, if my hopes had materialized, I should be able to give a most striking picture of a battle as seen from an aeroplane. But honesty compels me to say that any one who wants to get a good clear view of the front had much better go there on the surface of the earth, and not through the air.

In the first place, it takes quite a little time and trouble to discern the lines of opposing trenches even when you stand on a quiet observation post with a General painstakingly pointing and explaining, by the help of landmarks, just where they run. Here, though we were now only 1,000 metres (about 3,300 feet) up, we were racing along the front at 80 miles an hour, and all my friend the pilot could do was to point here and there frantically. So among the maze of white lines I saw running below me through the hazy atmosphere, some which I took for trenches were undoubtedly roads; some which I took for roads were equally undoubtedly trenches, while only a few, by their zigzagging, could I unhesitatingly have guaranteed to have been trenches.

In the next place the roar of the engines totally drowned out all the reports of the guns which were going off below us, and the explosions of the shells, which are such a striking feature of the front.

To make matters still more undramatic there was no battle going on at the precise moment when we shot downward out of the clouds, but only a rather languid artillery exchange. Even a regulating aeroplane which was sailing around directly below us and about half-way down between us and the earth, correcting the fire of some batteries, was having an exceptionally peaceful time of it. We could look down and see plainly the red, white and blue circles of France painted on the tops of its planes, but there were none of the customary woolly little white clouds of German shrapnel bursting round it during the few seconds that it remained in sight.

Furthermore, the guns right below it and us were so cleverly concealed that they were quite invisible. The only signs of its being a front at all were the bursting shells from the French batteries. These little puffs of smoke in the hazy distance the pilot spotted unerringly, but he had a discouraging time pointing them out to my unaccustomed eyes as we raced along.

So this, I fear, is all that any one visiting the front by aeroplane would have seen this afternoon. Possibly had we hung around longer we might have seen more, but the pilot and I both had important dinner engagements in Paris, and the sun was getting very low. We therefore reluctantly swept around and, leaving the silver band of the Aisne behind us, started for home.

We kept low, not over 1,000 metres, so that the landscape was very clear and interesting. First we passed over the city of Compiègne, where I had lunched with Dr. Carrel only three days before to the accompaniment of an artillery obligato. Then right over the big, dark green Forest of Compiègne where I tried but failed to locate a château I had visited with Mme. Carrel. Then on and on over a further entrancing exhibit of parti-colored carpet fitting together at the edges as snugly as any completed picture-puzzle.

Before long we reached Senlis, where I had stopped on my way to Compiègne the other day to take snap-shots of the streets of houses gutted by the Germans during their brief occupation before the battle of the Marne. Passing over Senlis, we dropped lower, so that I could get a clear bird's-eye view of the havoc. Then on and on, without incident, till the smoke of Paris came in sight, and on and on again, till I looked down through a thousand yards or so of space on the aviation field from which I had started just one hour and twenty-five minutes earlier.

Suddenly the motors stopped, the aeroplane keeled over onto the tip of its left wing and, pivoting round on it, we began our dizzy spiral descent. First on one wing-tip, and then on the other, we corkscrewed dizzily down. First the whole surface of the earth would swiftly fly up, revolving as it came, and slap me on the left side of the face, then, a fraction of a second later, the same revolving surface would heave swiftly up to slap me on the right side of my face. This double spiral descent is certainly by all odds the dizziest proceeding that was ever devised by man.

Finally, with a swoop which I made sure would carry away most of the chimney-pots of the suburb, we made a beautiful glide and alighted on the grass of the aviation field as smoothly as a canoe launched from a beach into a quiet lake.

Here one would think our day had ended, but there was one very vivid thrill left.

As the aeroplane came to a stop a mechanic came running up, carrying a pneumatic wheel. He spoke a few sharp words to the pilot, and the latter asked me to get out quickly, saying that he would return and explain some of the details of our flight a little later. So I scrambled out, the machinist scrambled into my place, carrying the pneumatic wheel, and with a rattle and a roar the aeroplane rolled across the field and leaped into the air again.

I joined some aviation officers and asked what was the matter. They pointed to a machine a few thousand feet above us, and explained that in leaving the ground that machine had lost one of its pneumatic wheels. The aviator was ignorant of this, and, unless warned in time, would, on trying to make his landing, turn turtle and get killed. My pilot had gone up to meet him in the upper air and by waving the wheel at him indicate his predicament, so that he could land on the left wheel and tail of his machine.

"Unless he understands before he lands he is a dead man," said the officer. This really was a dramatic spectacle—the one aviator soaring on guard high in the sky in complete unconsciousness of the death that awaited him; the other, climbing nearer and nearer, then circling round and round in narrowing circles. Finally, the first machine started down.

"He understands," said some one.

"No, he doesn't," said others.

"Get the ambulance ready," ordered the aviation Captain, and the engine of the motor-ambulance began to chug with a most sinister effect.

We all stood perfectly powerless and watched the machine spiral down. As he made his glide, men stood in the field waving spare wheels at him to insure his understanding. But no. Instead of landing tilted to the left on his sound wheel and tail, he made his landing leaning over a little to the right where the wheel was missing. As it touched the earth the great machine buried its nose in the ground, its tail rose and rose till it stood perpendicular, and then fell forward in a somersault, so that the plane was lying on its back.

"He's finished. Get the ambulance," ordered the Captain.

We all started at a run across the field toward the motionless aeroplane, the motor-ambulance following close on our heels. As we got to the wreck a figure crawled out and began to swear fluently at not having been warned in a way that a sane man could understand. How the aviator escaped will always remain a complete mystery. But his escape made a happy climax to the thrilling ending of an unforgettable afternoon.

II
HOW THE FRONT IS VISITED

When the average newspaper-reader reads the average war correspondent's excellent stories from the firing-line, his ideas are probably vague indeed as to how the correspondent reached that very elastic zone known as "the front."

He probably pictures the military authorities extending to the writer a magnificently sweeping invitation to witness and immortalize their armies in battle. In his mind's eye he sees the journalist equipping himself with automobile, shelter-tent, sleeping-bag, canned food, medicine-chest and revolver—with everything, in fact, necessary for the hardships and emergencies of campaigning. This visionary correspondent then sallies forth from the luxury and security of Paris (let us say), sitting by his chauffeur, military map in hand, directing the course of his high-powered car to that section of the front where the General Staff has informed him that a critical battle is to take place. Arrived there, he watches an infantry charge capture the enemy's trenches; then, leaping into his waiting motor, speeds away to another portion of the line, which he reaches according to his schedule, just in time to observe a particularly interesting bombardment of the enemy's lines by a battery of heavy artillery. He is called away after a time by the necessity of covering several miles more in order to watch the defenders of a front trench repel an enemy attack. He may lunch with a General, if he happens to drop in at headquarters just as lunch is served, or he may have to share a soldier's frugal meal in the darkness of a bomb-proof. After attending an aeroplane duel, having a chat with the Generalissimo of the armies, inspecting the consolidation of a few hundred yards of trenches just taken from the enemy, watching the explosion of a mine, interviewing a fresh batch of German prisoners, with whom a punctured tire almost causes him to miss his appointment, and observing the methods employed by the Red Cross in collecting the wounded under fire, he is overtaken by night after a busy day, and sleeps in his shelter-tent before making up his mind which particular army he will visit the following day.

It is a thrilling and romantic picture. But how sadly distant from the truth.

The war correspondent does not buy himself a motor, because if he did he would not be allowed to use it. All he buys himself is a railway ticket. When it comes to motoring, he is packed with an assortment of fellow-correspondents into military autos specially assigned by the army authorities.

He does not buy a shelter-tent or a sleeping-bag, because at a certain scheduled hour every evening the staff-officer who has him and his colleagues in tow will lead him into an excellent hotel in some large town or other and assign him to a comfortable bedroom engaged ahead. He does not buy canned provisions, because before going to bed the officer buys him an appetizing dinner, follows it up with a good breakfast the next morning, and at lunch-time introduces him to a courteous General, or, at a pinch, to another hotel-keeper, by one or the other of whom he is supplied with a prearranged and excellent lunch.

He does not buy himself a medicine-chest, because he is always within shouting distance of enough medical talent to treat a whole city.

He does not buy a revolver, because it would be gently but firmly taken away from him if he did.

If he is sensible, he does not even buy himself binoculars, for the officers by whom he will find himself uninterruptedly accompanied will be glad to let him use theirs, and though he may not look so picturesque without them, he will be much more comfortable if he has any hands-and-knees work to do.

Finally, he will not have a word to say as to where he wants to go or what he wants to see, for that has all been settled in advance.

It is true that different Generals vary greatly in the risks that they will allow correspondents to run with their respective armies. Some feel that if a correspondent wants to take chances that is his own affair so long as he does not unduly endanger the life of a valuable staff-officer along with his own. Others feel personally responsible for the safeguarding of visitors, whether the visitor is willing to take chances or not.

But these variations merely affect the more or less dangerous details of the trip, not the programme as a whole, which is quite rigid.

In the beginning of the war a few men, like Alexander Powell in Flanders, and Robert Dunn in the retreat from Mons, were actual knights-errant of the pen and wandered or whirled where they pleased, and saw what happened to come their way.

But on the western front, at least, that is all dead and gone.

The activities of war correspondents have been thoroughly regulated, systematized, standardized. Just what the correspondent is to be permitted to see at the front is deliberately considered and arranged in advance. The authorities decide what fights are fit for him to see just as painstakingly as chaperons used to decide what plays were fit for débutantes to see. He, together with the six or eight other journalists who are to make up the party, is placed in the hands of a military duenna who guards his every move from the time the admirably organized tour starts, until he is again safely delivered back in Paris. The precise duration of the trip, the precise route to be taken, the precise place at which each meal is to be eaten, the precise room in the precise hotel in which each night is to be spent, the precise General to be met and trench to be visited, are all inexorably fixed in the schedule of the trip.

The only phenomena which the general staffs cannot predetermine are the activities of the aviators and the course of the enemy's shells and bullets. Hence, the only spontaneous adventures in store for correspondents, which may come unexpectedly, at any moment, are the whirring of aeroplanes overhead, their shelling and their duels and the sudden passing or arrival of enemy projectiles, from tiny bullets up to enormous "Jack Johnsons."

Even this element of surprise can be avoided in the case of a small minority of visitors who I understand prefer to limit their researches at "the front" to the hospitals, supply-trains, motor-repair organizations, encampments of reserves, and similar objects of interest, which lie some twenty kilometres behind the trenches and yet really are sufficiently a part of the front to be known as its rear.

The front has a second category of visitors besides the war correspondents of whom I have been writing—"the distinguished strangers." These do not come to the front for the purpose of writing about what they see, and are for this reason, as well as because of the courtesy which it is desired to show them, allowed considerably more latitude, although they, too, are kept religiously away from any part of the lines where real trouble is expected.

I myself was fortunate enough to be invited to visit the French and Belgian fronts in a sort of dual capacity. Having pledged myself not to go on to Germany, and to write nothing about anything that was shown me in confidence, I was given a special trip, instead of going with one of the regular "journalists' parties," which certainly have an unromantic resemblance to Cook's Tours. I was thus enabled to visit certain advanced trenches where larger parties, in the nature of things, could not go, and was shown things which had not previously been shown to correspondents. But the organization of my trip resembled that of the average correspondents' tour closely enough to enable me to describe its details.

In Paris in a rather small room on the second floor of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, at a methodically cluttered writing-table, on which one of the oddly-shaped French telephones lapses into occasional silence, sits a slender, suave, well-groomed Frenchman about forty years old. He has a glossy dark moustache, large and pensive dark eyes, a nicely deprecatory manner, and a beautifully conciliatory smile. He chats to his visitor in excellent English, if English be required, and smiles at him this almost tender smile. He is Monsieur P——, the war correspondents' Czar. He is the absolute ruler of their destinies. For it is he who picks and chooses among their waiting numbers, and decides to which to accord the privilege of a place in one of the parties which leave about every two weeks for a two- or three-day trip to the front.

When an eager newspaper man has come over all the way from California, let us say, for such a trip, has waited in Paris a month or six weeks for such a trip and has seen colleagues favored above other men start off with enthusiasm and return with hauteur from such a trip, the transcendent importance of Monsieur P—— in that craving correspondent's eyes verges on the pitiful.

When you think of this hungry horde of newspaper men collected from the ends of the earth on this one assignment, receiving curt cables and telegrams every few days from their papers asking where their stories are, all as suspicious and jealous of each other as prima-donnas, each trying to "put over a beat" on the other, and each terrified lest some other "put over a beat" on him, you can perhaps imagine that Monsieur P——'s official duties do not constitute a sinecure.

Behind the back of Monsieur P—— they grouch; before his face they grovel. They try on him all the arts and practices of their profession, from bluff, through blandishments to supplication. And Monsieur P—— sits and smiles at them with tender sympathy and gives them their trips fairly and squarely without fear or favoritism. The room echoes with their pleas and protests, the telephone buzzes with their wheedlings and reproaches; but Monsieur P—— deals out even-handed justice among them and never turns a hair. There is probably not an hour of the day or night that some war correspondent in any language from English to Japanese is not calling down very horrible curses upon this autocrat's head. And yet they all cherish for him the most sincere affection and respect.

I myself was fortunate enough to be introduced to Monsieur P—— within a couple of hours of reaching Paris, my special trip to the front having already been arranged for the following morning. Its machinery was the same as that of the regular trips. Monsieur P—— got out an official printed form of military pass for war correspondents. My photograph was pasted on its cover. I was asked to write my signature on the next page, which was devoted to this trip. There were several more pages for possible other trips. On this first page was written the name of Epernay, the city behind the front to which I was to go by train the following morning. It was specified that the trip was to last three days. The name of the staff-officer who was to accompany me was written in, and subsequently his signature was appended. The whole thing was signed, stamped by Monsieur P—— and handed over to me to carry with me on the trip, to be handed back to him immediately upon my return, and to be used again should I later make other trips.

Then the staff-officer who was to be my chaperon came in and we were introduced. In private life he happened to be a prince. In the army he was at present plain Captain d'A——. Incidentally, he proved to be a fine fellow and a very pleasant companion.

Following his instructions, I was at the railroad station the following morning at eight o'clock, together with Lincoln Eyre, whom I had been permitted to invite on the trip. I presented my military pass to the ticket-seller, who scrutinized it closely before selling me a railway ticket to Epernay. It is the rule in France that correspondents must pay for their railway tickets themselves, so that the Government cannot be accused of paying their way for propagandist purposes. After you reach the front the military authorities furnish army motors, and themselves take care of your meals and bedrooms.

On the train was one of the regular personally conducted correspondents' caravans, consisting of about eight correspondents. There were three Americans, a couple of Frenchmen, a couple of Scandinavians, and, I think, a Russian. Their cicerone was a very tall staff-officer who looked slightly worried by his cosmopolitan responsibilities. Their party was going on to Verdun.

After a comfortable two-hour trip we got out at Epernay. There we were met by Captain F——, a staff-officer belonging to the General Staff of the 5th Army, which we were to visit. Thus Captain d'A——, from the Staff of the Paris War Office, had general responsibility for the trip, while Captain F——, who also was to accompany us, was responsible for the detailed military arrangements during our stay with the 5th Army.

Captain d'A——'s orderly (who before mobilization had been the wealthy young proprietor of a steamship line to South America) having taken our bags to the hotel, where we were to return to spend the night, we immediately started off on our schedule.

The ground plan of my three-day trip was planned to give me a condensed view of all the component parts of a French army of five army corps, or about 200,000 men, from the rear up to the front trench.

We accordingly began with the Motor Transport Repair Corps, situated in Epernay, consisting of 1,000 men and 14 officers, including 3 doctors. It kept in up-to-the-minute running order the 1,500 motor vehicles of the army corps which occupied the front 20 miles before us.

The Captain who showed us around had been technical supervisor of the Rochet-Schneider Auto Company and had, together with all the other mechanical experts, been mobilized directly into the present work. He answered my surprise at the number of soldiers employed in these peaceful labors by explaining that two soldiers at work in the rear for every three soldiers fighting was the regular formula.

Epernay, being the centre of the champagne industry, most of the military repair garages had been located in the great wine storehouses. It was odd to see soldiers repainting grim wire-cutting autos rubbing elbows with peasant women busily wrapping gold-foil round the heads of fat quarts of famous vintages.

"Yes, they work together," smiled the Captain; "and it is not so incongruous as it looks. For the champagne was a good ally of ours during the battle of the Marne. It made enough casualties among the Boches to have an appreciable effect on the course of the battle. When we chased them out of here the broken bottles looked as though there were no more champagne left in the world. But as a matter of fact, so enormous are the quantities stored hereabouts that the German inroads were relatively slight."

It was remarkable how much we were able to crowd into an hour's inspection. Great meat-lorries, each carrying enough fresh carcasses to stock a city butcher-shop, secured ventilation yet guarded their contents against flies by close-meshed steel netting instead of solid sides. But to protect the meat from dust science had had to bow to nature, for to the netting in its turn were attached pine boughs which admitted air while excluding dust more efficiently than any artificial contrivance. Enormous repair-lorries were each a perambulating garage fully equipped with machinery for repairing broken parts or making new ones. Some of these lorries ran on their own power. Others were towed along by a big motor. In either case they made their own power to run their repair machinery, and their own brilliant electric light by which to work at night. They had almost hermetically sealed curtains to keep the light from leaking out, for in mobile war they are often called upon to do their work in sight and range of the enemy. But the trench warfare has rooted them to the spot for a weary time.

"But wait!" said the Captain. "When the advance begins just watch us keep up with the procession."

There were autos with a steel frame running from the radiator, overhead to the back seat, this frame having razor-edged knife-blades attached. In open warfare while scouting along strange roads these were useful in shearing through any wires which the thoughtful foe might have strung across for the decapitation of speeding visitors.

There were uninteresting-looking big gray ammunition-lorries, ambulances, post-offices on wheels and hundreds of ordinary autos for the use of officers, messengers, etc.

I was informed that the life of the average car in active service was very far from being as short as was popularly supposed. "Why," said the Captain, "we have many cars coming in which have been working hard for eleven months, and now for the first time are compelled to come in for repairs."

I noticed with what fastidious care all the cars were painted and varnished. "Yes, that is the way we apply psychology to motor-repair work," chuckled the Captain. "Experience has taught us that when a soldier is given a beautifully finished car to run he takes pride in it. And he not only keeps the outside well cleaned, which greatly postpones the date when it must come back to us for doctoring, but he also bestows much more care on his motor. So it is not only æstheticism which prompts that beautiful finish. But talk about æstheticism, here is a real example of it."

He showed me a car from whose front lamp-brackets some artist had wrought in iron two very beautiful palm fronds.

"The man sacrificed much leisure time to making those branches from sheer love of his art and of the beautiful. The French people are like that, Monsieur."

Having eaten a sample of the good bread and most excellent Irish stew which constitutes the soldiers' lunch, we returned to the hotel for our own early lunch. Then I climbed into one military motor with Captain F——, while Eyre installed himself in another with Captain d'A——, and at about 12.30 we started off for the front of "the front."

Page 32

"THERE WERE AUTOS WITH ... RAZOR-EDGED KNIFE-BLADES ATTACHED"

Page 32

CAPTAIN D'A—— AND THE AUTHOR. (STARTING FOR THE

FRONT FROM THE FRONT OF THE HOTEL AT EPERNAY)

We climbed rapidly out of Epernay, up a long very steep grade, flanked as far as the eye could reach by vineyards, in which peasant women, old men and boys were busily harvesting the raw material for future "Secs," "Extra drys," and "Bruts." Our bellowing military motor-siren drove most of the heavy two-wheeled peasant's carts hastily toward the gutter to give us passage. Every now and then some cart's fantastic creakings would drown our clamor, and then as we finally forced our way past, the soldier-chauffeur would launch some terse but terrific imprecations at the driver. At the end of the ascent we cut loose along the broad turnpike which ran through a forest across the top of a wide plateau. Sprinkled all along the highway were uniformed "territorials" working at road repair.

"It is of extreme military importance to keep all these lines of communication in first-class condition," explained Captain F——. "It is not so romantic to mend a road as to mend a trench, but it is just as necessary."

By rights we ought now to have started our routine of courtesies by calling on General Franchet d'Esperey, commanding the 5th Army, the first of whose five army corps we were about to visit. For the amenities of a trip to the front require that in theory the stranger should pay his prearranged respects to all those in command from the General of the Army, through the General of the Army Corps, down through the General of Division, to the Colonel of the Regiment he happens to be visiting. And practice in this matter sticks uncommonly close to theory. Charming though it is to meet these courteous, highly intelligent and often illustrious men, it is impossible not to feel that the amount of time devoted to such visits of ceremony is quite out of proportion to the very limited time allowed the average visitor to the front. It is not the actual ten or fifteen minutes spent in conversation with these hospitable gentlemen which eats up the time, but the fact that meetings with some of the busiest men in the world are necessarily definite appointments which must be very punctually kept. And four or five such appointments in the course of a day at places scores of miles apart necessarily tear that day to pieces.

However, General Franchet d'Esperey had suddenly been called out to an inspection of a certain part of the front, so we skipped the engagement which had been made with him, and motored on to call on the General in command of the Army Corps with which we found ourselves. In the salon of a small château we were introduced, and conversed pleasantly for a few minutes. Then he assigned one of his staff-officers to accompany us to an observation point on the edge of the plateau from which he could give us a sweeping view of many miles of the front, and point out the interesting topographical features and the course of the trenches.

I was thus simultaneously accompanied by Captain d'A——, the staff-officer from the Paris War Office, by Captain F——, the staff-officer from the 5th Army, and by the staff-officer of the Army Corps.

Having explained to us the "lay of the land" and incidentally pointed out to us the sizable crater of a shell which a few days earlier had come within twenty yards of putting a definite end to this particular observation point, the last officer bade us good-bye. We climbed back into our motors, and made the steep, winding descent from the plateau, and raced over the long, straight road so well known to motor tourists of peaceful days, which leads to where in the distance the low roofs of Rheims can be seen, like some muddy tide washing the foot of the craglike cathedral. In Rheims, which the enemy had considerately stopped shelling an hour or so before our arrival, we had to go to the headquarters of the Colonel in Command. He was out, but had left a Major with instructions to show us to X——, a village about a kilometre from the outskirts of Rheims and immediately touching on the front trenches. We left our motors near the edge of the city and walked to where down the street ran a deep narrow ditch lying open, waiting for its sewer-pipes. "Climb in," said the Major. "Here's where the communicating trench begins." In we climbed and were led by the Major along a zigzag kilometre of trench until, fifteen minutes later, we climbed out again in the main street of X——. There the Major introduced us to the Captain at the moment in command of the battalion occupying the village. He became our guide through the rest of the afternoon, which we spent in the front trenches, and which is described in the following chapter.

Thus the War Department from Paris had notified the General Staff of the 5th Army that I was to make a three-day visit to that army. That General Staff had arranged a complete programme and had notified the staffs of the various Army Corps which I was to visit. The first of these Army Corps Staffs had decided that I was to visit the front before Rheims, and had so notified the Colonel. The Colonel had decided which particular portion of the front I was to visit before Rheims and had so notified the Captain. And the Captain in turn had made up his mind which specific trenches I was to visit, and conducted me through them.

Thus far my programme had been more interesting but just as rigid as that of any of the correspondents' tours.

At the end of the afternoon in the trenches a minor example arose of the advantages which my special trip conferred.

As we returned to our motors in the outskirts of Rheims, I told d'A—— how keenly I wished to see the Rheims Cathedral.

"It is not on the programme," he answered; "but if you want to see it you certainly shall. It will get you back to Epernay pretty late, instead of at the hour arranged for, but that will not matter."

So we rolled through the streets of Rheims, where of the 110,000 original population 20,000 still live and carry on their daily life. The greater part of the city showed no signs whatever of the constantly repeated bombardments which it has sustained, save for the blocks on blocks of houses closed and with windows boarded up. But when we entered that portion lying to the east of the cathedral and toward the enemy, we passed through the fleshless skeleton of a city. The house walls generally stood intact, but through the gaping windows one could see the nothingness that lay behind, where great shells had plunged downward through the roof, sweeping the whole interior, floor by floor, down into the cellar; or where smaller shells had gutted the interior by fire. Every now and then we would see a street completely blocked by a great barrier of rubble, where a whole house had been plucked out bodily from between its neighbors by some monstrous explosion and smashed to pieces on the pavement as you would smash an egg on the ground.

Then we came out into the great square before the cathedral, and looked up at its cliff-like façade.

I heaved a sigh of relief. I seemed to be looking at the same incredible beauty that I had looked at just over a year ago, when the world was still at peace. It is true that half the great rose window was empty of glass; that here and there stood statues headless or with chipped and mutilated limbs. But in the vast profusion of carvings on the façade these were almost lost. Gradually, however, the full tragedy bore in on me.

Have you ever seen an exquisite cameo face congested by drunkenness or disease so that it remains but a blurred and subtly bloated semblance of its former loveliness? If you have, you will know what has befallen the façade at Rheims. It stood away from the German guns so that not a shell hit it. But Fate and inefficiency left it covered with scaffolding which caught fire, and the towering blaze licked and licked so furiously at every sculptured angle, line and curve that in a few hours all those keenly chiselled outlines which the centuries themselves had only faintly mellowed, became flabby, blunt and indeterminate. One used at times to gaze at the façade through half-closed lids, so that no exquisite detail should distract from the swimming, hazy glory of the whole. That glory it still possesses, but to those who knew it in its earlier unmarred splendor it seems to stand, straining aloft, in patient martyrdom. A heavy barricade, built at a distance of some twenty yards, prevented entrance or even a close approach. As we stood counting the shrapnel scars on the horse of Jeanne d'Arc, which ended the myth that this statue had come through the whole bombardment miraculously untouched, a little girl approached with a basket full of pieces of colored glass. These she offered for sale as fragments of the priceless stained glass of the cathedral. It required no expert to see that they were pitifully spurious. Thus huckstering makes pennies out of tragedy.

We departed silently, and leaving Captain F—— to return to his headquarters for the night, we were quickly speeding through the twilight on our way back to Epernay.

III
IN THE FRENCH TRENCHES

With the 5th French Army, Aug. 3 (via Paris).

On the anniversary of the last day of the world's peace, the 365th day of the war, I stood in the darkness of a very advanced front trench.

A short section where I stood was roofed and bomb-proofed. Through a row of very narrow rifle-slits came little beams of daylight that rested in flecks on the white, chalky back of the trenches and were thrown up very faintly against the logs of the trench roof.

Very dimly, I could gradually make out a narrow plank standing-platform running along below the slits. A card was tacked to the wooden frame of each opening, bearing the name of the particular soldier to whom that opening belonged. Above each slit hung (or could hang) its owner's rifle in slings from the roof.

Every few yards, set in little recesses dug out from the back of the trench, stood fat bottles. They contained chemicals with which to soak the soldiers' mouth-coverings if attacked by poisoned gas.

The trench was nearly empty of men. But at the loophole nearest me stood the rigid figure of a soldier. His legs were invisible in the darkness. His body showed up vaguely. His face was brilliantly lighted by the thin blade of light through the rifle-slit. He stood silent and motionless, his eyes intently focussed out into the sunlight.

I looked through the next slit, through a spider's web of barbed wire, between stunted black posts, across two hundred yards of green grass and wild flowers, at another tangle of posts and barbed wire with a narrow furrow of white chalky soil running along just behind it—the German trenches.

Not a living thing was in sight in the sunny loneliness. There was silence except for the crack, crack, crack of striking bullets from inaudible German rifles. I looked back at the face of the "guetteur," the watcher. His eyes, fixed on the narrow white line, were puckered with intentness, but his lips were parted in an easy, good-humored smile, brightening a face young, clean-cut, alert, calm and very patient.

He seemed to symbolize the spirit of the new France, the France of endurance, of determination, of buoyancy, of patience, the stoic France that can keep silent and motionless, the France that can stand in the darkness undismayed, watching and waiting till the moment comes to leap up and out into the light.

Early that morning, from the window of a château on the edge of a high plateau, a young staff-officer had shown me the great plain of Champagne stretching away to the low hills on the horizon. Miles away lay Rheims, made to seem squatty by the cathedral which towered in its midst.

Across the green fields of the panorama, over swelling hills, disappearing into dark woods, reappearing at the other end, I saw two tiny lines of white like the aimless tracing of a child's slate-pencil on a slate. They ran on across the landscape, now drawn boldly forward, now swerving with indecision, now zigzagging with perplexity. Sometimes the child's pencil had slipped and made short little lines at right angles. Sometimes the pencil had made three or four short starts parallel with each other before it finally got under way. Sometimes it had made a regular little maze of lines. But always the two white scratchings on the slate were drawn on and on till, wavering but always close abreast, the trenches of the two armies disappeared into the far distance.

Through powerful glasses the officer showed me little puffs of smoke floating up from the sunny, silent, peaceful landscape. They were from the exploding shells. To the right I saw a high cloud of smoke rising lazily into the air out of some woods. It was a house in the German lines fired by French shells. And, though the little puffs of smoke were only here and there on the landscape, everywhere I could see through the glasses the microscopic figures of peasants working busily in their fields, bringing in the harvest. Many were soldiers helping out, but very many were old men, boys and women. Again the scene seemed symbolical.

Behind the soldier watching in the bomb-proof were the innumerable tiny plodding figures, undaunted by the abrupt little puffs of smoke, doing their patient share toward bringing in the harvest.

In the château itself as I went down-stairs I passed a bedroom door with "Seine Koenigliche Hoheit" written across it in white chalk. The Duke of Brunswick had slept there at the high tide of the German advance. His staff had had their names chalked across various other doors, but few of them remained.

One by one they were being gradually scrubbed off. It was explained to me that these chalk marks were particularly hard to remove from wooden doors. But with patience it is being done.

The trip which I was taking to the French front had been most kindly arranged for me by the French Government as a special trip for my particular benefit. It had the advantage of enabling us to go into portions of the advanced trenches, where the larger parties could not go for fear of precipitating shelling by the Germans.

Our party consisted of a staff-officer from Paris, a staff-officer from army headquarters, Lincoln Eyre, whom the authorities had allowed me to ask along—and myself.

After leaving the château we got into two elephant-gray army motors with Remington carbines swung on their dashboards. The military chauffeurs tore along the road, which was in easy range of the German artillery, but which for some reason never was shelled.

As we whirled along we passed a variegated procession of vehicles. Now a high peasant cart carrying home the harvest; now a military motor-cyclist; now a motor-ambulance, with a pair of white feet showing through the back, and the wounded man lying on a stretcher slung from the roof by four straps to reduce jolts to a minimum; now a motor full of officers smoking cigarettes; now a cavalryman exercising an officer's mount.

Finally we stopped about a kilometre from a little village, which must be nameless. On leaving our motors we walked a little further along the road and then climbed down into a trench. This was about six feet deep and three feet wide, the bottom and sides of white, chalky soil. We pursued a serpentine course, but there was method in its meandering, for a straight vista of trench leading toward the enemy would be a splendid hunting-ground for bullets.

We had not gone far when I heard a sound like a boy cracking a toy whip. "A bullet striking near us," explained an officer ahead of me.

I found it almost impossible to tell the difference between the report of the French guns and the explosions of German shells. An officer told me that their time-table nickname for French gun reports was "départs" (departures), while that for the German shell explosions was "arrivées" (arrivals).

Of course if either gun or shell explosion or both is very near to you you can easily tell the difference, if there is enough of you left to tell anything.

We walked on with the toy whip cracking at every other step and "départs" and "arrivées" inviting guesswork as to which was which. We passed soldiers in shirt-sleeves, deepening and widening a communication trench. It was rather difficult to squeeze past them, but this very definitely emphasized the wonderful terms of discipline, yet the democratic friendliness, existing between the French officers and the men. The officers talked to the men intimately and placed their hands on the men's shoulders affectionately in squeezing by. The men answered the officers easily, without restraint, but all stood at attention and smartly gave the salute, which they regarded as a dignity and not a degradation—a marvellous combination of discipline and democracy.

We finally climbed out of the trench at the first house of the little village, or rather of what had been a little village, for it was, on close view, nothing more than the aftermath of an earthquake. In actual fact it reminded me vividly of the walk I had taken through the remains of Messina after the last great earthquake.

Before entering the village I stood in the road looking through my field-glasses at a German war-balloon to my left. "Come along, come along," shouted one of the officers. "If you stand there you'll start the Germans shelling. You're in plain sight of them." Needless to say I came along.

Page 49

"THERE MASS IS STILL HELD EVERY SUNDAY FOR THE BENEFIT

OF THE SIXTEEN INHABITANTS WHO STILL PERSISTED IN

STAYING IN THE VILLAGE"

We walked through the shattered village, which the Germans shelled religiously every day, until we came to the remains of a church. Climbing in over the ruins we saw that there was one corner where miraculously enough a few yards of floor and a few yards of roof had escaped being shelled to pieces. There the altar had been set with about ten chairs crowded in front of it. There mass is still held every Sunday for the benefit of the sixteen inhabitants who still persisted in staying in the village.

These must indeed be solemn little services, for the Germans are far from being Sabbatarians when it comes to shelling this particular church.

Going on, we stopped in front of what was a house for one story and a skeleton from there up. It looked as if nothing less than a squirrel could get up to its rooftree, and nothing larger than a cat could conceal itself behind any of the shreds and tatters of its roof. Nevertheless, up there was the observation-post which I was about to visit. We entered and found some soldiers cooking meat and potatoes on a smokeless stove. One of them was amusing himself prancing around the place on a pair of child's stilts.

Following instructions, I climbed up a long ladder, which led to two rafters—the sole survivors of the second floor. A few planks had been stretched between these. From them another ladder ran up to a small patch of attic floor which, marvellously intact, nestled around three sides of a brick chimney under the fragment of the roof. Arrived there, I carefully lifted a little leather curtain, hung over a hole in the roof, and squinted cautiously down upon the German lines.

The French trenches were practically hidden by the houses of the little village, so that the first thing I saw was a belt of barbed wire, and an unostentatious little white line, which marked the advanced German position. Look as closely as one could, it was impossible to detect the slightest movement, yet it was from this innocent-looking little line that the bullets were imitating toy whips. I wedged myself into the chimney to get a view of another side and then climbed down.

We now left the village and walked into the open advanced trenches. The most remarkable thing was their utter desolation. We walked for a hundred yards at a time, past scores and scores of rifle-slits, without seeing a man. An officer explained that troops are not permitted in the open trenches during the daytime, to save them needless loss from the shells, which each side all day long, in a desultory way, threw into the open trenches of the other.

The men stayed down in the shell-proof shelters all the day and manned the trenches at night, when attacks are most feared.

It seemed as if the Germans could easily rush these trenches before the men could be called out to meet them, but along the sides of every trench ran one or two telephone wires. Apparently one quick order would have these front trenches lined with men. We came to one of the points nearest the German lines, from where the German trenches seemed a mere stone's-throw. From there French soldiers used to crawl out and fraternize with the Germans, between the lines, but that is now forbidden.

We next came through a covered trench to a covered grenade section. Here a table stood against the outer wall. It had three lines of sockets in it, one ahead of the other. The soldiers fastened grenades to the muzzles of their rifles, shoved the muzzles up through the protected slit in the roof, rested the butts in one of the three sockets, which gave three different ranges, and pulled the trigger. If there is a premature explosion they are saved from its effects by the muzzle being above the roof.

We continued on into a long section of the covered front trench, where the rifle-slits have wires stretched across them about three inches from the bottom. The soldiers must stick their rifles out under the wire, which prevents their overshooting in the night. These covered trenches are roofed with logs and covered with two or three feet of earth. They are proof against ordinary shells, but not against heavy artillery.

When that starts bombarding, the men climb down into excavations, fifteen feet below the level of the trenches, and wait there until the storm is over.

Page 51

THE AUTHOR IN A FRONT TRENCH NEAR RHEIMS.

(THE GERMANS ARE ABOUT THREE HUNDRED YARDS

BEYOND THE WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS)

Soon we came to a black little underground chamber. An officer gave an order and a brilliant ray of light shot in through an aperture in the wall, near the low roof. This aperture was some three feet from one side to the other, and only about six or eight inches from top to bottom. It had been opened by dropping a hinged steel shutter which was worked by a wire running over a pulley. The aperture was just above the surface of the ground outside. In the little room stood a machine-gun with its wicked-looking muzzle just flush with the opening. The gunner showed us how, by swinging the gun from side to side, he could play a stream of bullets through the wire entanglements, a foot or two from the ground.

At regular intervals we passed watchers, some standing in the covered trenches gazing through the slits, some lying out above the open trenches behind steel shields, and some using periscopes—all depending on the location of the trench.

Looking into such a periscope one would swear that he was looking straight out through a loophole. There is not the slightest sign of looking at a reflection in a mirror. We walked bent double through an extremely long pitch-black tunnel in an advanced position where some of the officers themselves had never been, and then started back through the open trenches.

At one point a lot of Germans had been buried. Sometimes a shell explosion does a ghastly bit of disinterment, but I saw nothing unpleasant on this occasion. At another point above the heads of each side of the trench stood two shattered ammunition-carts. The Germans shelled this place pertinaciously, believing that the carts were guns.

At another point we walked under a framework of wood, covered with barb wire resting on two transverse timbers stretching across the top of the trench. A rope hung down from one of the transverses. If the enemy broke into the trench the defenders, by pulling this rope, could drop the barb-wire contrivance into the trench, thus blocking it.

Finally we got back to the village. I had asked how the sixteen inhabitants made a living. An officer replied that they sold eggs and milk to the troops. I asked out of what they produced the milk and he replied, "Very certainly out of a cow." As an answer to my polite scepticism I was taken to see the cow. We walked down a little street where I was told that the Germans were directing most of their shells. They fortunately were napping while we walked through. We suddenly turned into a gateway, and there in the middle of this wreck of a village was a barnyard with chickens clucking, a horse tied to the wall, and three cows.

And on a stool by one of the cows sat an aged woman making the milk hiss down into a tin pail. There she sat, shells sailing to and fro over her head, with the "départs" starting and the "arrivées" bursting. There she sat and rocked with hearty laughter at the story of my scepticism, and went on effectively proving her existence by her cow by the extraction of that very milk which was sold to the soldiers. We left the old lady surrounded by what seemed to her to be all the comforts of home, and a few steps further were introduced to the Mayor of X——.

It was a smiling, bland old man who greeted us most genially. Apparently he had not a care in the world as he stood courteously making conversation. It seemed to me that the humble old woman milking her cow, and the Mayor entertaining visitors to what was no longer his village, were further symbols of the spirit of a nation which was not easily destined to decadence and downfall. Leaving the Mayor, we entered the cemetery. There we were looking at the graves of two German officers, two French officers and seventy French soldiers when an "arrivée" burst with a louder report than we had as yet heard, followed by a deep noise.

"What's that?" I asked.

An officer replied, "That's the metal fuse which at the moment of explosion flies off through the air. You can only hear that when the explosion is pretty close. You can certainly say now that you have been under shell fire."

We went back to the end of the village furthest from the Germans and entered the headquarters in one of the few houses still in fair preservation. There the officers in command of the village opened a bottle of champagne in our honor and we stood around drinking each other's health. At that precise moment an unusually loud salvo of French artillery went off by way of a salute to the toast.

On the way back through the communicating trenches, we saw an attempt by the German guns to bring down a French aviator, who was flying above us. The latest development of fire regulation by aviation is that the Captain of the battery himself goes up in an aeroplane and sends his corrections on aim down to his battery by wireless. This Captain had his four "seventy-fives" hidden near our communication trench. Every time they went off their report was so violent that I could not help jumping.

The battery Captain was sailing around overhead and the German gunner was letting drive at him with what looked to us to be pretty bad shots. I could see the aeroplane wheeling in the air and hear the distant reports of the "départs," wait an appreciable time and then see the burst of white flame high up in the sky, followed by little puffs of smoke.

"That's a wretched shot," said I, as one shell burst over our heads, far behind the aeroplane.

"Yes, a bad shot for an aeroplane, but a good shot for us," Captain F—— replied.

I was standing with my head away back, looking straight overhead. "Come, move on, move on, or you'll catch some of that on your face," warned Captain d'A——. I obediently moved on and, sure enough, a couple of seconds later he picked up a strictly fresh shrapnel ball which had just fallen into our trench out of the sky. In the mean time the Captain up in the air had corrected his guns, so that they were hitting whatever they were shooting at, and he sailed away to the rear, while his battery became really enthusiastic and went off with a series of tearing crashes, which kept me jumping all the way to the end of the communicating trench.

There I climbed out with my ears full of the "seventy-fives'" violent reports, the distant explosion of their shells, the distant reports of the enemy's guns, the "crack, crack, crack" of the rifle bullets and the occasional sharp whistling of one overhead.

But my mind was full of the soldier watching and waiting, of the peasants harvesting between the smoke puffs, the laughing old woman milking the cow, of the genial Mayor extending his ruined hospitality, and of what little things like these should bring to pass in the future of France.

IV
A TYPICAL DAY'S TOUR

The morning after our trip to the front at Rheims we got up at seven o'clock after a good night's sleep in the comfortable hotel, and by shortly after eight were ready to start.

But here came a hitch in the smoothly running mechanism.

The evening before, on our run back to Epernay, Eyre and I had noticed the exhilarating abandon with which our soldier chauffeur slung his car along. We supposed that was the traditional method in which military cars were run. We christened our driver "Barney Oldfield" and commented jocosely on his various close squeaks. We noticed that Captain d'A——, who in the front trenches had been absolutely imperturbable, did not seem wholly at ease, but kept on leaning forward and muttering, "Mais doucement! doucement!" through the front window. We thought, however, that this was mere consideration on his part for our inexperienced nervous systems.

On this following morning he declared to us that our chauffeur was evidently a veritable maniac besides being an execrable driver, and that nothing would induce him to ride behind "Barney Oldfield" again. Shells and bullets were all in the day's work, but he'd be switched if he would have his neck quite superfluously broken by an imbecile like that.

He therefore, with our cordial approval, had sent round to the auto-repair department for a sedater driver. But it was apparently against the regulations to keep the same car if we changed chauffeurs, and it was as hard to get another car in this headquarters of cars as it is to get fresh milk on a cattle-ranch.

So we fretted politely for the best part of an hour before the new chauffeur drove up. This delay haunted us for the rest of the day.

We motored over the same road we had covered the day before till we got near Rheims again. There, at about ten o'clock, we met Captain F——, who had been cooling his heels for an hour. I transferred myself into his motor and we started off to inspect some batteries.

First, of course, we had to present ourselves to the General in Command of the next Army Corps which we were to visit. We reached his headquarters after half an hour's run and found him an interesting and agreeable man of the world. He was much upset by the death the day before of a Lieutenant of engineers. It appears that this Lieutenant had been in command of a sap that was being run under the German trenches in order to explode a mine. The Germans had counter-sapped, broken into his tunnel, and exploded a mine there. He had recklessly crawled down his sap and had not returned. Then his Colonel crawled down the little tunnel after him, first taking the precaution to have a rope tied on to himself. The soldiers at the French end of the tunnel paid out the rope till it suddenly stopped. Then, as there was no more movement, they became alarmed and, hauling in the rope, dragged the Colonel back in a senseless condition. The Lieutenant had reached the neighborhood of the exploded mine and had been overcome and killed by the unescaped gases of the explosion. The Colonel in his turn had been overcome, but had been hauled out in time to be revived.

It was strange to see how this loss was taken to heart by a General who must in the past months have had to receive reports of deaths by the thousand.

We motored on and about eleven o'clock were ushered into the headquarters of the General of Division whose batteries we wanted to see.

The other Generals had greeted us in the luxurious salons of châteaus, sitting near writing-desks holding a few papers, but without any token of the military work on which they were engaged. This General was housed with his staff in an old shooting-box. The room in which he welcomed us had large-scale maps on its walls, and engineering plans on its tables. The General himself was a splendid type of French officer, remarkably young, wiry, snappy, keen as mustard. When the war began he had been a Lieutenant-Colonel and had gone up the ladder by leaps and bounds.

He said he would begin by himself taking us to an observation-point at the top of a high hill, whence we could follow the whole sweep of front from about the point where it had yesterday run out of our sight, on for many miles to the Aisne and well beyond it.

Up the hill we went at about as fast a walk as I have ever used on a stiff up-grade. Beside me, setting the pace, went the General in his baggy red riding-breeches, his tight-fitting black tunic, his well-polished black-leather puttees and shapely boots. As we climbed at top speed he talked a steady and most interesting stream. I began to listen for any symptoms of the pace affecting his breath. But not a bit of it; on he walked and on he talked. It was a hot day and the sweat began to drip off of me in spite of my cool khaki clothes. But the General in his black-cloth tunic and red breeches remained as cool as a cucumber. By the time we legged it over the crest of the hill I would have been willing to back him in a walking contest against any one of the twenty thousand men in his division.

Now we walked along a level path through woods till we came to an open space on the hillside.

The General stopped abruptly. "Don't go further here," he snapped out, "the Germans might see us through their glasses. They've got them constantly trained on this hill to try to locate my observation-post. They have not struck it yet, though the other day they happened to drop a shell not far from it which killed two of my officers."

So we retraced our steps a short distance and took another path which avoided the open place on the hillside.

Finally we reached the observation-post, carefully screened by an artificial bower of pine boughs. Maps were tacked on a rude table, while a big telescope stuck its muzzle surreptitiously out between the boughs.

The young General pointed out the two white trench lines pursuing each other league on league across the face of the summer landscape below us, now abruptly approaching, now coyly withdrawing from each other in their deadly courtship. He ran swiftly over the various features of interest: That white scar on the slope down yonder was where the French had recently exploded a great mine under the Germans. Particularly bloody fighting had been going on at that point. Those roofs in the hollow the other side of that little hill were the village of Bery-au-Bac, which so frequently appeared in the official communiques as the scene of desperate attacks. Over there beyond the canal in that angle between it and the Aisne for perhaps half a kilometre there was a complete gap in the trench lines which were popularly supposed to run uninterruptedly from the North Sea to the Alps. Still further over yonder the hostile trenches approached each other so closely that one of those houses had one end occupied by the French and the other by the Germans.

"Over there," said the General with a sweep of his hand and a shake of his head, "occurred one of the great misfortunes of the battle of the Marne. Our troops there had hurled the Germans back across the Aisne and clear back over those hills. But the French troops over here more to the left had had their advance checked by the retreating Germans. Now those troops to the right were so far ahead that they had lost touch with the ones to the left. Had they been veteran troops they could easily have manœuvred the backward troops up into line with themselves, and had they done this, with the Germans forced back beyond that line of natural defense, the Craonne plateau positions would have been turned and there is no knowing how far the German retreat might have been compelled to continue. But alas! they were green troops, and when they had waited and found that the troops to their left were not linking up with them they fell back from their precious territory to form a line with their fellows. And that is why we are here to-day."

The General then led the way some little distance to another underground observation-post to be used in case of a bombardment.

A flight of steps led down into it. It had a good many feet of solid earth above it, and consisted of two rooms with two bunks covered with pine boughs in one, and two camp cots in the other for the General himself and his artillery aide. It was well stored with water and provisions, and here the General, in case of a sustained bombardment, could remain in relative security for days on end, observing the effect of his own artillery fire or of any infantry attacks he might direct, and sending his orders out by telephone. It will probably be asked how he could do much observing from a cellar several metres under ground. The answer is that the second of the two rooms had a sort of window about a foot high and running the whole length of the wall, which opened out through the side of the hill. It was covered by a heavy steel shutter which could be partly or entirely swung up by a pulley arrangement, and through this crack in the hillside the whole sector lay in perfect view.

Climbing out again, we ventured a hint or two as to how interested we were in batteries. But the General himself was intensely interested in an intricate system of subterranean passages which his Chief of Engineers was building to connect up the observation-post with other points, and he took the very human view that the technical explanations of the Engineer which were so absorbing to him must necessarily be equally enthralling to us.

Finally we started back across the hilltop toward where my imagination conjured up serried arrays of great guns frowning at the enemy.

On the way we stopped to inspect the telephone central which connected up the observation-posts with all the batteries behind and the trenches in front, and for that matter, with Paris or any other part of France.

In a low log hut, its roof and walls protected by several feet of sand-bags, a soldier sat at a large switchboard with a telephone receiver strapped to his head. As we stood for a moment watching him a bell tinkled. He stuck the small peg into one of the multitudinous little holes.

"Allo! This is Number 15," he said in a low voice, then listened intently to some message.

"All right," he said at its conclusion. Then turning half round on his stool he saluted and reported:

"Mon General, Number 19 reports that a Boche aeroplane has passed them and is coming over us."

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"WE WERE COMPLETELY ABSORBED IN WATCHING THE SOFT

LITTLE CLOUDS PLAYFULLY DANCING ALONG AHEAD OF

THE LAZILY DRIFTING AEROPLANE"

"Telephone our guns to fire at him, and warn Numbers 11 and 12 to prepare for his coming," ordered the General, and as the soldier stuck his pegs in and gave his telephone messages we hustled out to see the excitement. Sure enough, we had hardly got out when we heard a distant whirring, and high up in the air saw an aeroplane floating our way.

"Keep under the tree! Keep under the tree!" warned the General sharply. "If he sees us all standing here, and gets away, he will report this as an important point and it will rain 'marmites' for days to come."

So he, his staff-officers, Eyre and I grouped ourselves under a big tree and stared up at the approaching aeroplane through the gaps in its branches.

"Whang!" A "soixante-quinze" exploded violently in the woods close by, and I jumped equally violently.

"Whang! Whang! Whang!" came three more shots in extremely close succession.

"You've got a whole battery shooting, haven't you?" I remarked.

"Oh, no! There is only one gun located just there. It does not waste time in firing, does it?" smiled the General. "Our 'soixante-quinze' field-guns can shoot twenty-five shots a minute."

Other guns in the immediate neighborhood took up the chorus, and, looking through our glasses, we could see little soft white cloudlets puff into being all around the aeroplane.

But he kept sailing calmly on.

A little further off in the woods came a staccato rat! tat! tat! tat! tat! like a boy drawing a stick along a picket fence.

"There goes one of our mitrailleuses at work on him."

We were completely absorbed in watching the soft little clouds playfully dancing along ahead of the lazily drifting aeroplane, when the General's voice brought us back to earth.

"Come! Come! We must hurry or we shall be late for lunch. I did not realize how late it was."

I looked at him in horror. What! Forsake the sensations of this moment for such a thing as a lunch! Any one of those gentle little white puffs might transform the aeroplane into a hurtling mass of flame. Lunch!

But the General was entirely sincere and very positive. From his point of view Boche aeroplanes could be shot at any hour of the day, but lunch was an event which took place only once in the twenty-four hours. Lunch was the recognized symbol of hospitality; aeroplane shellings decidedly were not.

As we reluctantly followed him through the woods he may have noticed my disappointment, for he remarked:

"It is highly improbable that you would see anything more than you already have seen. They are very difficult things to hit, you know. As a matter of fact, we were doing most of our shooting in front of him rather than at him, so as to head him back. But he evidently has his nerve with him, for he has kept right on and got away from us. Listen! Our guns have stopped, and there are the guns I telephoned to at Number 12 taking a shy at him."

As we hiked along at the General's favorite pace Captain F—— diffidently suggested:

"And the batteries, mon General, in which this gentleman was much interested. I suppose there will be no opportunity to see them?"

"Oh, there is really nothing interesting about them, as they are not firing to-day. The pieces are scattered all over the hillside in the woods, and the crews are having their lunch. But as a matter of fact our route home takes us right by one 120-millimetre gun and we can have a look at that."

Walking down the rear slope of the hill, we came upon a party of soldiers, apparently out for a picnic, eating their lunch on a rustic table, with pine branches over their heads and fragrant pine needles under their feet.

They jumped to attention.

"Show us the piece," said the General to their non-commissioned officer.

The groups of soldiers hustled over to a big object bundled up in tarpaulins, which stood a few yards off. Stripping off the coverings, they showed us a heavy field-piece standing on treadled wheels with its muzzle pointed apparently aimlessly up the green-wooded hillside at some clouds which floated in the blue sky just above the hill-crest.

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