rds us shouting a warning. Immediately we heard the
crackle of rifles in front, and the poor chap fell dead before he
reached us." The West Yorkshires ran to cover, and ultimately drove
the Germans out of the houses they occupied at the outskirts of the
village. Then they discovered that an ambush had been prepared into
which they would have moved to their doom but for the warning given by
the man in khaki at the cost of his life. He was a private of the
Royal Irish Regiment--2nd battalion--who was taken prisoner the day
before and confined in the farmhouse, but his identification disc had
been removed by the Germans, and there was no means of discovering his
name. "We buried him with military honours," concludes the narrator;
"and there was not a dry eye among us as we laid him to rest."

At this early period of the war, while the cavalry--not yet
transformed into infantry by the adoption of trench warfare--were
still being used as horsemen, Irish troopers were distinguishing
themselves. I have noticed in the newspapers, from time to time,
disputes as to which unit of the auxiliary forces was the first to
come under fire. The honour had been claimed by the London Scottish,
who entered the field at Neuve Eglise in the first days of November,
and allowed until it was established that the Northumberland Yeomanry
had been in action before the London Scottish left home. But the
Northumberland Hussars have in turn to yield to the South Irish Horse.
This section of the Irish Yeomanry went to France early in August,
1914. They were attached to the Guards' Brigade, and were with the
Irish and Coldstreams when they turned in the little town of
Landrecies to hold back the Germans on August 25th, the second day of
the retreat from Mons. The North Irish Horse arrived in France on
August 20th, and pushing forward at once reached the French and
Belgian frontier in time to relieve the pressure on the retreating
forces. They had their baptism of fire near Compiegne on September
1st, and fought again a few days later at Le Cateau. These little side
details or footnotes of history are not without their interest. Often,
indeed, they excite the mind even more than the big, decisive events.

During the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne both the North and the
South Irish Horse were employed rounding up parties of Uhlans in the
woods, and scouring the isolated villages and deserted farmhouses for
stragglers. The Uhlans, by all accounts, wer