,
creating a draught which bowed the fluttered wheat for many yards
behind and blew hats off. And in the middle of this pother he
continued to offer lucid and surprising explanations to deafened
ears until his superior officer, excessively smart and looking like a
cross between a cavalryman and a yachtsman, arrived on the
scene swinging a cane.

It was natural that after this we should visit some auto-cannons
expressly constructed for bringing down aeroplanes. In front of
these marvels it was suggested to us that we should neither take
photographs nor write down exact descriptions. As regards the
latter, the Staff officers had reason to be reassured. No living
journalist could have reproduced the scientific account of the
sighting arrangements given to us in an esoteric yet quite
comprehensible language by the high priest of these guns, who was
a middle-aged artillery Captain. It lasted about twenty minutes. It
was complete, final, unchallengeable. At intervals the artillery
Captain himself admitted that such-and-such a part of the device
was tres beau. It was. There was only one word of which I could not
grasp the significance in that connection. It recurred. Several times I
determined to ask the Captain what he meant us to understand by
that word; but I lacked moral courage. I doubt whether in all the
lethal apparatus that I saw in France I saw anything quite equal to
the demoniac ingenuity of these massive guns. The proof of guns is
in the shooting. These guns do not merely aim at Taubes: they hit
them.

I will not, however, derogate from the importance of the illustrious
"seventy-five." We saw one of these on an afternoon of much
marching up and down hills and among woods, gazing at horses
and hot-water douches, baths, and barbers' shops, and deep dug-
outs called "Tipperary," and guns of various calibre, including the
"seventy-five." The "seventy-five" is a very sympathetic creature, in
blue-grey with metallic glints. He is perfectly easy to see when you
approach him from behind, but get twenty yards in front of him and
he is absolutely undiscoverable. Viewed from the sky, he is part of
the forest. Viewed from behind, he is perceived to be in a wooden
hut with rafters, in which you can just stand upright. We beheld the
working of the gun, by two men, and we beheld the different sorts of
shell in their delved compartments. But this was not enough for us.
We ventured to suggest that it would be proper to try to k