s what it was
during the first year of the war. _It is now_ 28 _times as much_.
Field howitzer ammunition has _almost doubled_ since last July. That of
medium guns and howitzers _has more than doubled_. That of the heaviest
guns of all (over six-inch) _is more than four times_ as great. By the
growth of ammunition we may guess what has been the increase in guns,
especially in those heavy guns we are now pushing forward after the
retreating Germans, as fast as roads and railway lines can be made to
carry them. The German Government, through one of its subordinate
spokesmen, has lately admitted their inferiority in guns; their retreat,
indeed, on the Somme before our pending attack, together with the state
of their old lines, now we are in and over them, show plainly enough
what they had to fear from the British guns and the abundance of British
ammunition.

But what are these strange figures swarming beside the road--black
tousled heads and bronze faces? Kaffir "boys," at work in some quarries,
feeling the cold, no doubt, on this bright bitter day, in spite of their
long coats. They are part of that large body of native labour, Chinese,
Kaffir, Basuto, which is now helping our own men everywhere to push on
and push up, as the new labour forces behind them release more and more
of the fighting men for that dogged pursuit which is going on
_there_--in that blue distance to our right!--where the German line
swings stubbornly back, south-east, from the Vimy Ridge.

The motor stops. This is a Headquarters, and a staff officer comes out
to greet us--a boy in looks, but a D.S.O. all the same! His small car
precedes us as a guide, and we keep up with him as best we may. These
are mining villages we are passing through, and on the horizon are some
of those pyramidal slag-heaps--the Fosses--which have seen some of the
fiercest fighting of the war. But we leave the villages behind, and are
soon climbing into a wooden upland. Suddenly, a halt. A notice-board
forbids the use of a stretch of road before us "from sun-rise to
sunset." Evidently it is under German observation. We try to find
another, parallel. But here, too, the same notice confronts us. We dash
along it, however, and my pulses run a little quicker, as I realise,
from the maps we carry, how near we are to the enemy lines which lie
hidden in the haze, eastward; and from my own eyes, how exposed is the
hillside. But we are safely through, and a little further we come to a