nvey any idea of it,
nor grasp it in its entirety; but day by day the immensity of it grows on
one, and one realises how trivial beside it has been anything that British
military organisation has had to do in the past. That is the real miracle;
not the mere millions of men, nor even their bravery, but this huge
frictionless machine of which they are a part--this thing which Great
Britain has put together here in the last twenty months."

IV

But just as in March my thoughts pressed eagerly forward, from the sight
allowed me of the machine, to its uses on the battle-front, to that line
of living and fighting men for which it exists--so now.

Only, since I stood upon the hill near Poperinghe on March 2nd, that line
of men has been indefinitely strengthened; and the main scene of battle is
no longer the Ypres salient. Looking southward from the old windmill,
whose supports sheltered us on that cold spring afternoon, I knew that,
past Bailleul, and past Neuve Chapelle, I was looking straight toward
Albert and the Somme, and I knew too that it was there that the British
were taking over a new portion of the line,--so that we might be of _some_
increased support--all that was then allowed us by the Allied Command!--to
that incredible defence of Verdun, which was in all our minds and hearts.

But what I could not know was that in that misty distance was
hidden--four months away--a future movement, at which no one then guessed,
outside the higher brains of the Army. The days went on. The tide of
battle ebbed and flowed round Verdun. The Crown Prince hewed and hacked
his way, with enormous loss to Germany, to points within three and four
miles of the coveted town--fortress no longer. But there France stopped
him--like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network
it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is
still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected
moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to
crumble; just in time to bring the Italians welcome aid in the Trentino.

And still from the Somme to the Yser, the Anglo-French forces waited; and
still across the Channel poured British soldiers and British guns. In
industrial England, the Whitsuntide holidays had been given up; and there
were at any rate some people who knew that there would be no August
holidays either. Leave and letters had been stopped. But there had been
apparent sig