one began to suspect that the
entire German corps in front was exclusively composed of ex-waiters of
smart London hotels.

Another sign that the Germans were beginning to be thrust back more
quickly than they liked was the frequent abandonment of transport. Whole
trains of motor lorries that had been hastily burned and left by the
roadside, and all sorts of vehicles with broken wheels, were constantly
being passed. The Subaltern remembers seeing a governess cart, and
wondering what use the Germans had found for it. Perhaps a German
colonel had been driven gravely in it, at the head of his men. He
wondered whether the solemn Huns would have been capable of seeing the
humour of such a situation.

Horses, too, seemed to have been slaughtered by the score. They looked
like toy horses, nursery things of wood. Their faces were so unreal,
their expressions so glassy. They lay in such odd postures, with their
hoofs sticking so stiffly in the air. It seemed as if they were toys,
and were lying just as children had upset them. Even their dimensions
seemed absurd. Their bodies had swollen to tremendous sizes, destroying
the symmetry of life, confirming the illusion of unreality.

The sight of these carcases burning in the sun, with buzzing myriads of
flies scintillating duskily over their unshod hides, excited a pity that
was almost as deep as his pity for slain human beings. After all, men
came to the war with few illusions, and a very complete knowledge of the
price to be paid. They knew why they were there, what they were doing,
and what they might expect. They could be buoyed up by victory, downcast
by defeat. Above all, they had a Cause, something to fight for, and if
Fate should so decree, something to die for. But these horses were
different; they could neither know nor understand these things. Poor,
dumb animals, a few weeks ago they had been drawing their carts, eating
their oats, and grazing contentedly in their fields. And then suddenly
they were seized by masters they did not know, raced away to places
foreign to them, made to draw loads too great for them, tended
irregularly, or not at all, and when their strength failed, and they
could no longer do their work, a bullet through the brain ended their
misery. Their lot was almost worse than the soldiers'!

To the Subaltern it seemed an added indictment of war that these
wretched animals should be flung into that vortex of slaughter. He
pitied them intensely, the si