t side of the house over to the west and
thrown them back with another explosion. Neuve Chapelle had been
literally flailed with the high explosive projectiles of the new British
artillery, which the British had to make after the war began in order to
compete with what the Germans already had; for poor, lone,
wronged, bullied Germany, quite unprepared--Austria with her fifty
millions does not count--was fighting on the defensive against wicked,
aggressive enemies who were fully prepared. This explains why she
invaded France and took possession of towns like Neuve Chapelle to
defend her poor, unready people from the French, who had been
plotting and planning "the day" when they would conquer the
Germans.

Bits of German equipment were mixed with ruins of clocks and family
pictures and household utensils. I noticed a bicycle which had been
cut in two, its parts separated by twenty feet; one wheel was twisted
into a spool of wire, the other simply smashed.

Where was the man who had kept the shop with a few letters of his
name still visible on a splintered bit of board? Where the children who
had played in the littered square in front of the church, with its
steeples and walls piles of stone that had crushed the worshippers'
benches? Refugees somewhere back of the British lines, working on
the roads if strong enough, helping France in any way they could, not
murmuring, even smiling, and praying for victory, which would let
them return to their homes and daily duties. To their homes!

XVII
With The Guns

It is a war of explosions, from bombs thrown by hand within ten yards
of the enemy to shells thrown as far as twenty miles and to mines laid
under the enemy's trenches; a war of guns, from seventeen-inch
down to three-inch and machine-guns; a war of machinery, with man
still the pre-eminent machine.

Guns mark the limit of the danger zone. Their screaming shells laugh
at the sentries at the entrances to towns and at cross-roads who
demand passes of all other travellers. Anyone who tried to keep out
of range of the guns would never get anywhere near the front. It is all
a matter of chance with long odds or short odds, according to the
neighbourhood you are in. If shells come, they come without warning
and without ceremony. Nobody is afraid of shells and everybody is--at
least, I am.

"Gawd! Wat a 'ole!" remarks Mr. Thomas Atkins casually, at sight of
an excavation in the earth made by a thousand-poun