Allies, the
fixing of areas between ourselves and our Allies, and between our
own armies and the lines of communication. During operations
messages have to be sent out giving information of the situation
to the troops, to the public, and to the War Office at home.
Schemes are worked out beforehand to deal with any possible
eventuality, so that in the event of a hostile attack the movement
of troops may be carried out with the least possible delay.
Similar schemes are worked out for operations to be undertaken by
ourselves, and methods of attack are thrashed out in consultation
with the Army Commanders and Staff. The various details of this
work fill in the day very thoroughly. This office (of Operations)
rarely closes before midnight, and the principal officers are
frequently at work until the small hours of the morning. There is,
of course, an officer on duty all night.

"During the German attack in March the officer responsible here
for the movement of troops by rail did not leave the office even
for meals for a number of days on end."

So the long ascent climbs, from the humblest platoon in the field,
through company, battalion, division, corps, and Army to the General
Staff, and the British Commander-in-Chief, moving and directing the
whole; with beyond these, again, as the apex of the great
construction, the figure of the illustrious Frenchman, who for the
last six months of the war, by the common consent of the Allies, and
especially by the free will of England and her soldiers, held the
general scheme of battle in his hands. In the British Army what we
have been watching is an active hierarchy of duty, discipline,
loyalty, intelligence--the creation of a whole people, bent on victory
for a great cause. Must it, indeed, vanish with the war, like a dream
at cock-crow, or shall we yet see its marvellous training, its
developments of mind and character, gradually take other shapes and
enter into other combinations--for the saving and not the slaying of
men?

EPILOGUE

_June 1st._

I have thus brought these rapid notes--partly of things seen, partly
of things read--to an end. They might, of course, go on for ever, and
as I write I seem to see rising before me those libraries of the
future, into which will come crowding the vast throng of books dealing
in ever greater and greater detail with the events of the war and the
causes of victo