hear 'em.

"It was like the end of the world. Time for me to 'op it. I backed the
old 'bus and turned 'er, and started off--shells in front and behind and
overhead, and, thinks I, next time you're bound to get caught in this
shower. Then I found my officer. 'E was smoking a cigarette, and 'e told
me my job. 'E gave me my cargo. I just 'ad to take 'em out and dump 'em.

"'Where shall I take 'em, sir?'

"'Take 'em out of this,' says he. 'Take 'em anywhere, take 'em where you
like, Jones, take 'em to hell, but take 'em away,' says he.

"So I loaded up. Wounded Tommies, gassed Arabs, some women and children,
and a few lunatics, genuine cock-eyed loonies from the asylum. The
shells chased us out. One biffed us over on to the two rear wheels, but
we dropped back on four on the top speed. Several times I bumped over
soft things in the road and felt rather sick. We got out o' the town with
the shrapnel a bit in front all the way. Then the old 'bus jibbed for a
bit. Every time a shell burst near us the lunatics screamed and laughed
and clapped their hands, and trod on the wounded, but I got 'er goin'
again. I got 'er to Poperinghe. Two soldiers died on the way, and a
lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a baby was born in the 'bus; and me
with no conductor and no midwife.

"I met our chaplain and says he: 'Jones, you want a drink. Come with me
and have a Scotch.' That was a good drink. I 'ad the best part of 'arf a
bottle without water, and it done me no 'arm. Next morning I found I'd
put in the night on the parson's bed in me boots, and 'e was asleep on
the floor."

II. A Raid Night

SEPTEMBER 17, 1915. I had crossed from France to Fleet Street, and was
thankful at first to have about me the things I had proved, with their
suggestion of intimacy, their look of security; but I found the once
familiar editorial rooms of that daily paper a little more than
estranged. I thought them worse, if anything, than Ypres. Ypres is within
the region where, when soldiers enter it, they abandon hope, because they
have become sane at last, and their minds have a temperature a little
below normal. In Ypres, whatever may have been their heroic and exalted
dreams, they awake, see the world is mad, and surrender to the doom from
which they know a world bereft will give them no reprieve.

There was a way in which the office of that daily paper was familiar. I
had not expected it, and it came with a shock. Not only the compulsion,