re truly a blow for France. I was to
learn to love Picardy and its people under the test of battle.

In order that we might be near the field of the Somme we were again to
move our quarters, and we had the pang of saying good-by to another
garden and another gardener. All the gardeners of our different chateaux
had been philosophers. It was Louis who said that he would like to make
all the politicians who caused wars into a salad, accompanying his
threat with appropriate gestures; Charles who thought that once the
"Boches" were properly pruned they might be acceptable second-rate
members of international society; and Leon who wanted the Kaiser put to
the plow in a coat of corduroy as the best cure for his conceit. That
afternoon, when _au revoirs_ were spoken and our cars wound in and out
over the byroads of the remote countryside, not a soldier was visible
until we came to the great main road, where we had the signal that
peaceful surroundings were finally left behind in the distant, ceaseless
roar of the guns, like some gigantic drumbeat calling the armies to
combat.

A giant with nerves of telephone wires and muscles of steel and a human
heart seemed to be snarling his defiance before he sprang into action.
We knew the meaning of the set thunders of the preliminary bombardment.
That night to the eastward the sky was an aurora borealis of flashes;
and the next day we sought the source of the lightnings.

Seamed and tracked and gashed were the slopes behind the British line
and densely peopled with busy men in khaki. Every separate scene was
familiar to us out of our experience, but every one had taken on a new
meaning. The whole exerted a majestic spell. Graded like the British
social scale were the different calibers of guns. Those with the largest
reach were set farthest back. Fifteen-inch howitzer dukes or nine-inch
howitzer earls, with their big, ugly mouths and their deliberate and
powerful fire, fought alone, each in his own lair, whether under a tree
or in the midst of the ruins of a village. The long naval guns, though
of smaller caliber, had a still greater reach and were sending their
shells five to ten miles beyond the German trenches.

The eight-inch and six-inch howitzers were more gregarious. They worked
in groups of four and sometimes a number of batteries were in line.
Beyond them were those alert commoners, the field guns, rapid of fire
with their eighteen-pound shells. These seemed more tractable