g their powers to the maximum. The
mist and smoke over the positions seemed to tremble with the blasts.
Near-by shells, especially German, broke brilliantly against a
background so thick that it swallowed up the flashes of more distant
shells in its garishly illumined density. Thousands of officers were
studying their wrist watches for the tick of "zero" as the minute-hands
moved on with merciless fatalism; and hundreds of thousands of men who
had come into position overnight were in line in the trenches looking to
their officers for the word.

Our little group in the beet field was restless and silent; or if we
spoke it was not of what was oppressing our minds and stilling our
heartbeats. Our glasses gave no aid; they only made the fog thicker. Had
we been in the first-line British trenches we could hardly have seen the
men who left them through this wall of smoke and mist as they entered
the German first line and the answering German "krumps" would have
driven us to the dugouts and German curtains of fire held us prisoner.

One of us called attention to a lark that had risen and was singing with
all the power in his little throat. Another mentioned a squadron of
aeroplanes against the background of a soft and domeless sky, flying
with the precision of wild geese. We knew that the German guns were
responding now, for the final blasts of British concentration had been
a sufficient signal of attack if some British prisoner taken in a trench
raid had not revealed the hour.

Seven-twenty-five! someone said, but not one of us needed any reminder.
Five minutes more and the great experiment would begin. Had Sir Douglas
Haig made an army equal to the task? What would be the answer to
skeptics who said that the London cockneys and the Manchester factory
hands and all the others without military training could not be made
into a force skilful enough to take those trenches? Was the feat of
conquering those fortifications within the bounds of human courage,
skill and resource?

Not what one saw but what one felt and knew counted. A crowd is
spellbound in watching a steeplejack at work, or an aviator doing a
"loop-the-loop," or an acrobat swinging from one bar to another above
the sawdust ring, or the "leap of death" of the movies; and here we were
in the presence of a multitude who were running a far greater risk in an
untried effort, with their inspiration not a breathless audience but
duty. For none wanted to die. All were h