lly reported my arrival
at the same time that the pilot reported delivery of his plane.

"Good-night," he said. "I'm off to catch the steamer to bring over
another 'bus to-morrow."

Waiting near by was my car and soldier chauffeur, who asked, in his
quiet English way, if I had had "a good flight, sir;" and soon I was
back in the atmosphere of the army as the car sped along the road, past
camps, villages and motor trucks, until in the moonlight, as we came
over a hill, the cathedral tower of Amiens appeared above the dark mass
of the town against the dim horizon.

XX

THE EVER MIGHTY GUNS

A thousand guns at the master's call--Schoolmaster of the guns--More
and more guns but never too many--The gunner's skill which has life
and death at stake--"Grandmother" first of the fifteen-inch
howitzers--Soldier-mechanics--War still a matter of
missiles--Improvements in gunnery--Third rail of the battlefield--The
game of guns checkmating guns--A Niagara of death--A giant tube of
steel painted in frog patches.

How reconcile that urbane gunner-general, a genius among experts you
were told, as the master of a thunderous magic which shot its deadly
lightnings over the German area! Let him move a red pin on the map and a
tractor was towing a nine-inch gun to a new position; a black pin and a
battery of eighteen pounders took the road. A thousand guns answered his
call with a hundred thousand shells when it pleased him. I stood in awe
of him, for chaos seemed to be doing his bidding at the end of a
pushbutton.

Whirlwind curtains of fire and creeping and leaping curtains were his
familiar servants, and he set the latest fashion by his improvements.
Had the French or the Germans something new? This he applied. Had he
something new? He passed on the method to the French and gave the
Germans the benefit of its results.

Observers seated in the baskets of observation balloons, aeroplanes
circling low in risk of anti-aircraft fire, men sitting in tree-tops and
others in front-line trenches spotting the fall of shells were the eyes
for the science he was working out on his map. Those nests and lines of
guns that seemed to be simply sending shells into the blue from their
hiding-places played fortissimo and pianissimo under his baton. He
correlated their efforts, gave them purpose and system in their roaring
traffic of projectiles.

Where Sir Douglas Haig was schoolmaster of the whole, he was
schoolmas