e, the air was pure and sweet. It was as though great Mother Nature
were defying the War God to disturb her tranquillity. Scarcely a
breath of wind stirred; bird and beast and flower were composing
themselves for their nightly sleep.

And yet to Bob the atmosphere was tense with excitement. The very calm
of the evening was unnatural. He felt as though lightnings should be
flashing, the wind roaring.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The great War God was roaring, and from his mouth death came. With
every boom of the guns men were falling, souls were going home to God.

Bob felt a shiver to the centre of his being. It seemed to him as
though the foundations of his life were shaken. He had never
experienced such a feeling before. He did not think it was fear;
rather it was awesomeness. For a moment he regarded life, his own
life, from a new standpoint. He was only a pawn on a chess-board, one
of a million of human beings, none of whom had any personality, any
will. Life and death were nothing. Each had to fill his place, and to
do what was allotted to him, regardless of consequences.

He found himself thinking of lines from "The Charge of the Light
Brigade":

"Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

Suddenly he found himself alert. The men were forming into marching
order, and almost unconsciously he was performing the duties allotted
to him.

Bob saw that a large mass of men had gathered. Other trains had
arrived before the one by which he had come, and each had brought its
quota from England.

He realised, as he had never realised before, how efficiently, quietly,
and at the same time wonderfully, the forces at home were working. He,
like others, had read several weeks before, that something like a
hundred thousand men had landed on French soil without a casualty,
without a mishap. It had come to him, as it had come to us all, as a
kind of surprise, that such a mass of humanity, with horses,
accoutrements, and provisions, could have been sent to France with so
little noise, and without the nation's knowing anything about it. Yet
so it was. While we were wondering, the work was done.

But that was not all. While the country was asleep, or while it was
pursuing its usual avocations, tens of thousands of men were leaving
our shores, taking the places of those who had fallen or adding to the
force alre