and lines of policemen and cheering crowds and long accounts of it
afterwards in the newspapers. But I have never seen any demonstration
that could compare with this simple spontaneous welcome by the families
of London. It was quite unrehearsed and quite unreported. No one had
arranged it, and no one was going to write big headlines about it next
day. The people in one garden did not even know what the people in the
next garden were doing--or want to know. The servant at the upper
window did not know that the mistress was at the lower window doing
exactly as she was, and vice versa. For the first time in one's
experience one had experienced a genuine, whole-hearted, common feeling
running through all the English people--every man, woman and child,
without distinction, bound in one common interest which, for the time
being, was moving the whole nation. And I shall never forget it.

It was the most wonderful welcome--I am not exaggerating when I say that
it was one of the most wonderful and most inspiriting sights that I have
ever seen. I do not know whether the rulers of the country are aware of
it. But I do not believe for a moment that this people can go back after
the war to the attitude by which each of those families was to all the
others only so much prospective monetary gain or loss.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE NEW ENTRY

_France, November 13th._

Last week an Australian force made its attack in quite a different area
of the Somme battle.

The sky was blue in patches, with cold white clouds between. The wind
drove icily. There had been practically no rain for two days.

We were in a new corner. The New Zealanders had pushed right through to
the comparatively green country just here--and so had the British to
north and south of it. We were well over the slope of the main ridge, up
which the Somme battle raged for the first three months. Pozieres, the
highest point, where Australians first peeped over it, lay miles away to
our left rear. From the top of the ridge behind you, looking back over
your left shoulder, you could just see a few distant broken tree stumps.
I think they marked the site of that old nightmare.

We were looking down a long even slope to a long up-slope beyond. The
country around us was mostly brown-mud shell-holes. Not like the
shell-holes of that blasted hill-top of two months back--I have never
seen anything quite like that, though they say that Guillemont, which I
have not seen, is a