s up."

The last words were shouted, and even then they could not be heard.
Five minutes previously it would have seemed impossible that there
could have been more noise; then suddenly it seemed to double and
treble in intensity. The ground shook; and over the German trenches
there hung a choking cloud of fumes which drifted slowly across the
front with the wind. As if by clockwork, the men got out of their
trenches and walked slowly over No Man's Land behind the creeping
barrage towards the reeking caldron. A great long line of
men--thousands and thousands of men; but do not think of them as the
men of "some of our county regiments who did well, whom we are now
allowed to mention"; as some "kilted battalions and Canadians who
greatly distinguished themselves"; do not think of them in the mass,
rather think of the individual.

The farm-hand, until two years ago just a clod-hopping countryman, was
there; and the local lawyer's articled clerk. The gillie from a Scotch
stream, and the bar-tender from a Yukon saloon walked side by side; and
close to them a High Church curate in a captain's uniform grinned
pleasantly and strolled on. The sheep-rancher, the poacher, the fifth
son of an impecunious earl, and the man from the chorus were all
there--leaving their respective lives behind them, the things which
they had done, good and bad, the successes and the failures. For the
moment nothing mattered save that seething volcano in front: it might
be the end--it might not.

And some were quiet, and some were green; some were shouting, and some
were red; some laughed, and some cursed. But whatever they did,
however they took it, the leaders of whom I have spoken, each in his
own sphere, big or little as the case might be, kept 'em, held 'em,
looked after 'em, cheered 'em. Though their own stomachs were turning,
though their own throats were dry, they had a job to do: a
responsibility rested on their shoulders. And until death relieved
them of that responsibility they could not lay it down. They were the
leaders; to them much had been given; of them much was expected. . . .

But in this great advance, which has already been ably portrayed by the
powers of the journalistic world, we are only concerned with the
fortunes of two individuals. To them those flowery phrases, those
magnificent "dashes carried out in faultless style," those wonderful
"lines which went into the jaws of hell as if on parade," would have
conveye