he wind!" said F., pulling up his collar. "Listen to it! It's
going to play the very deuce with these broken roofs and things if it
blows hard. Going to be a beastly night, and a forty-mile drive in
front of us. Listen to that wind! Come on--let's get away!"

Very soon, buried in warm rugs, we sped across dim squares, past
wind-swept ruins, under battered arch, and the dismal city was behind
us, but, for a while, her ghosts seemed all about us still.

As we plunged on through the gathering dark, past rows of trees that
leapt at us and were gone, it seemed to me that the soul of Arras was
typified in that patient, solitary woman who sat amid desolate
ruin--waiting for the great Day; and surely her patience cannot go
unrewarded. For since science has proved that nothing can be utterly
destroyed, since I for one am convinced that the soul of man through
death is but translated into a fuller and more infinite living, so
do I think that one day the woes of Arras shall be done away, and she
shall rise again, a City greater perhaps and fairer than she was.

XI

THE BATTLEFIELDS

To all who sit immune, far removed from war and all its horrors, to
those to whom when Death comes, he comes in shape as gentle as he
may--to all such I dedicate these tales of the front.

How many stories of battlefields have been written of late, written
to be scanned hastily over the breakfast table or comfortably lounged
over in an easy-chair, stories warranted not to shock or disgust,
wherein the reader may learn of the glorious achievements of our
armies, of heroic deeds and noble self-sacrifice, so that frequently
I have heard it said that war, since it produces heroes, is a goodly
thing, a necessary thing.

Can the average reader know or even faintly imagine the other side
of the picture? Surely not, for no clean human mind can compass all
the horror, all the brutal, grotesque obscenity of a modern
battlefield. Therefore I propose to write plainly, briefly, of that
which I saw on my last visit to the British front; for since in
blood-sodden France men are dying even as I pen these lines, it seems
only just that those of us for whom they are giving their lives
should at least know something of the manner of their dying. To this
end I visited four great battlefields and I would that all such as
cry up war, its necessity, its inevitability, might have gone beside
me. Though I have sometimes written of war, yet I am one that hates