anies in the trenches. (Needless to say that the regiment had
come during the night from a long spell of the trenches--but what
trenches?) Then came the gorgeous regimental colours, and every
soldier in the street saluted them, and every civilian raised his hat.

I noticed more and more that the men were exhausted, were at the
limit of their endurance. Then passed a group which was quite fresh.
A Red Cross detachment! No doubt they had had very little to do.
After them a few horses, grey and white; and then field-kitchens
and equipment-carts. And then a machine-gun on a horse's back;
others in carts; pack-mules with ammunition-boxes; several more
machine-gun sections. And then more field-kitchens. In one of these
the next meal was actually preparing, and steam rose from under a
great iron lid. On every cart was a spare wheel for emergencies;
the hub of every wheel was plaited round with straw; the harness
was partly of leather and partly of rope ending in iron hooks. Later
came a long Red Cross van, and after it another field-kitchen
encumbered with bags and raw meat and strange oddments, and
through the interstices of the pile, creeping among bags and raw
meat, steam gently mounted, for a meal was maturing in that
perambulating kitchen also. Lastly, came a cart full of stretchers and
field-hospital apparatus. The regiment, its music still faintly audible,
had gone by--self-contained, self-supporting. There was no
showiness of a review, but the normal functioning, the actual
dailiness, of a line regiment as it lives strenuously in the midst of
war.

My desire was that the young officer in a trance should find a good
bed instantly. The whole thing was fine; it was pathetic; and, above
all, it was mysterious. What was the part of that regiment in the
gigantic tactics of Joffre?

However, after a short experience at the front one realises that
though the conduct of the campaign may be mysterious, it is neither
vague nor casual. I remember penetrating through a large factory
into a small village which constituted one of the latest French
conquests. An officer who had seen the spot just after it was taken,
and before it was "organised," described to me the appearance of
the men with their sunken eyes and blackened skins on the day of
victory. They were all very cheerful when I saw them; but how alert,
how apprehensive, how watchful! I felt that I was in a place where
anything might happen at any moment. The village and t