r again, and
written in blood, in the valleys of the Somme, the Ancre, and the
Scarpe. Tens of thousands of our noblest and best lie buried in these
valleys or on the tableland of Peronne, situated between the
insignificant rivers that have within the past few months earned a
world-wide notoriety. No one can visit a modern battlefield without
realising something of the appalling waste of war. Towns and villages
have been blotted out of existence, or are marked to-day by a few
unrecognisable ruins. Thanks to the efficiency of British organisation,
excellent roads were quickly established right through the stricken
district, and it was impossible to traverse any of them without
marvelling at the obstacles overcome and the successes gained. The road,
for instance, from Albert to Bapaume, through Pozieres, Le Sars, and
Warlincourt, passing close by Contalmaison and Martincourt, was
contested almost yard by yard, and the same thing may be said of the
road that leads along the bank of the Ancre from Albert past the Leipzig
Redoubt, near Thiepval and Beaumont Hamel, through Achiet-le-Grand to
Bapaume, or the one from Peronne through Le Transloy.

[Illustration: 'GEORGE WILLIAMS HOUSE' IN THE FRONT TRENCHES]

[Illustration: A HALF-WAY HOUSE TO THE TRENCHES]

It was in December 1916 that I paid my first visit to the valley of the
Somme. The scene was dreary beyond description. Many villages known to
us by name as the scenes of desperate fighting were a name only. Hardly
a vestige of a house or cottage remained where many had been before the
war. Here and there one could see the entrance to a cellar; the charred
stump of a strafed tree; the remains of a garden; or a bit of a
cemetery. Everything else was churned up into the most appalling mud.

One day I had tea with an Army commander who has done great things since
then, and he showed me a series of photographs--the most interesting I
have ever seen, which were taken the day before my visit, by our airmen,
over the German lines. For seventeen and a half miles back, the enemy,
with infinite care and patience, had constructed trenches, 'and,' said
the Commander, 'every time we destroy his front line trench he
constructs another one in the rear.' 'But,' I cried, 'if this kind of
thing goes on, and unless the unexpected happens, the war must surely
continue indefinitely.' His only reply was, 'Is it not always the
unexpected that happens in war?' I was back again in Picardy in the