s. Each leg was a fine leg, well-clad, and superbly shod in
almost new boots with nail-protected soles. Each leg was a human
leg attached to a human body, and at the other end of the body was
presumably a face crushed in the earth. Two strokes with a pick,
and the corpses might have been excavated and decently interred.
But not one had been touched. Buried in frenzied haste by amateur,
imperilled grave-diggers with a military purpose, these dead men
decayed at leisure amid the scrap-heap, the cess-pit, the infernal
squalor which once had been a neat, clean, scientific German
earthwork, and which still earlier had been part of a fair countryside.
The French had more urgent jobs on hand than the sepulture of
these victims of a caste and an ambition. So they liquefied into
corruption in their everlasting boots, proving that there is nothing like
leather. They were a symbol. With alacrity we left them to get
forward to the alert, straining life of war.

V The British Lines

You should imagine a large plain, but not an empty plain, nor a plain
entirely without hills. There are a few hills, including at least one very
fine eminence (an agreeable old town on the top), with excellent
views of the expanse. The expanse is considerably diversified. In
the first place it is very well wooded; in the second place it is very
well cultivated; and in the third place it is by no means uninhabited.
Villages abound in it; and small market towns are not far off each
other. These places are connected by plenty of roads (often paved)
and canals, and by quite an average mileage of railways. See the
plain from above, and the chief effect is one of trees. The rounded
tops of trees everywhere obscure the view, and out of them church-
towers stick up; other architecture is only glimpsed. The general
tints are green and grey, and the sky as a rule is grey to match.
Finally, the difference between Northern France and Southern
Belgium is marked only by the language of shop and cafe signs; in
most respects the two sections of the Front resemble each other
with extraordinary exactitude.

The British occupation--which is marked of course by high and
impressive cordiality--is at once superficially striking and subtly
profound.

"What do you call your dog?" I asked a ragamuffin who was playing
with a nice little terrier in a village street where we ate an at fresco
meal of jam-sandwiches with a motor-car for a buffet.

He answered shyly, bu