the roadway, was a high van full of telephone
instruments. That it was moved from one place to another was shown
when, later in the day, returning by that route, we found the van had
disappeared.

It was two o'clock. The German wireless from Berlin had just come in.
At three the receiving station would hear from the Eiffel Tower in
Paris. It was curious to stand there and watch the operator, receivers
on his ears, picking up the German message. It was curious to think
that, just a little way over there, across a field or two, the German
operator was doing the same thing, and that in an hour he would be
receiving the French message.

All the batteries of the army corps are--or were--controlled from that
little station. The colonel in charge came out to greet us, and to him
Captain Boisseau gave General Foch's request to show me batteries in
action.

The colonel was very willing. He would go with us himself. I conquered
a strong desire to stand with the telephone building between me and
the German lines, now so near, and looked about. A French aeroplane
was overhead, but there was little bustle and activity along the road.
It is a curious fact in this war that the nearer one is to the front
the quieter things become. Three or four miles behind there is bustle
and movement. A mile behind, and only an occasional dispatch rider, a
few men mending roads, an officer's car, a few horses tethered in a
wood, a broken gun carriage, a horse being shod behind a wall, a
soldier on a lookout platform in a tree, thickets and hedges that on
occasion spout fire and death--that is the country round Ypres and
just behind the line, in daylight.

We were between Ypres and the Allied line, in that arc which the
Germans are, as I write, trying so hard to break through. The papers
say that they are shelling Ypres and that it is burning. They were
shelling it that day also. But now, as then, I cannot believe it is
burning. There was nothing left to burn.

While arrangements were being made to visit the batteries, Lieutenant
Puaux explained to me a method they had established at that point for
measuring the altitude of hostile aeroplanes for the guns.

"At some anti-aircfaft batteries," he explained, "they have the
telemeter for that purpose. But here there is none. So they use the
system of _visee laterale_, or side sight, literally."

He explained it all carefully to me. I understood it at the time, I
think.

I remember saying it was