, and then hurried over the other pages, turned back,
and examined them carefully one by one. There were columns and columns
about a strike and other purely domestic matters at home, but not a
word about the 7th Kings Own Asterisks (Territorial), not a word about
their nine dead and thirty-six wounded--not a word; and, more than
that, barely a word about the Army, or the Front, or the War.

'There might be no bloomin' war at all to look at this paper,' said one
in disgust. 'There's plenty about speeding-up the factories (an' it's
about time they speeded up some one to make something better'n that
drain-pipe or jam-pot bomb we saw), plenty about those loafin' swine at
home, but not a bloomin' word about us 'ere. It makes me fair sick.'

'P'raps there wasn't time to get it in,' suggested one of the most
persistent optimists. 'P'raps they'll have it in to-morrow.'

'P'raps,' said the disgusted one contemptuously, 'an' p'raps not. Look
at the date of that despatch. Isn't that for the day we was in the
thick of it? An' look what it says. Don't that make you sick?'

And in truth it did make them 'sick.' For their night and day of
fighting--their defeat of an attack, their suffering under shell,
bullet, and bomb, their nine killed and their thirty-six wounded--were
all ignored and passed by.

The despatch for that day said simply: 'On the Western Front there is
nothing to report. All remains quiet.'

THE PROMISE OF SPRING

'_Only when the fields and roads are sufficiently dry will the
favourable moment have come for an advance._'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL
DESPATCH.

It is Sunday, and the regiment marching out towards the firing line and
its turn of duty in the trenches meets on the road every now and then a
peasant woman on her way to church. Some of the women are young and
pretty, some old and wrinkled and worn; they walk alone or in couples
or threes, but all alike are dressed in black, and all alike tramp
slowly, dully, without spring to their step. Over them the sun shines
in a blue sky, round them the birds sing and the trees and fields
spread green and fresh; the flush of healthy spring is on the
countryside, the promise of warm, full-blooded summer pulses in the
air. But there is no hint of spring or summer in the sad-eyed faces or
the listless, slow movements of the women. It is a full dozen miles to
the firing line, and to eye or ear, unless one knows where and how to
look and listen, there