artillery brigade came jogging up on his horse and called
out, "Fine morning, and a pretty spot!" The infantry divisions were
cheerful. "Like a rest-cure!" they said. They had sports almost within
sight of the German lines. I saw a boxing-match in an Irish battalion,
and while two fellows hammered each other I glanced away from them to
winding, wavy lines of chalk on the opposite hillsides, and wondered
what was happening behind them in that quietude.

"What do you think about this German offensive?" I asked the general of
a London division (General Gorringe of the 47th) standing on a wagon
and watching a tug-of--war. From that place also we could see the German
positions.

"G.H.Q. has got the wind-up," he said. "It is all bluff."

General Hall, temporarily commanding the Irish Division, was of the
same opinion, and took some pains to explain the folly of thinking
the Germans would attack. Yet day after day, week after week, the
Intelligence reports were full of evidence of immense movements of
troops westward, of intensive training of German divisions in back
areas, of new hospitals, ammunition-dumps, airplanes, battery
positions. There was overwhelming evidence as to the enemy's intentions.
Intelligence officers took me on one side and said: "England ought to
know. The people ought to be prepared. All this is very serious. We
shall be 'up against it.'" G.H.Q. was convinced. On February 23d the war
correspondents published articles summarizing the evidence, pointing out
the gravity of the menace, and they were passed by the censorship. But
England was not scared. Dances were in full swing in London. Little
ladies laughed as usual, light-hearted. Flanders had made no difference
to national optimism, though the hospitals were crowded with blind and
maimed and shell-shocked.

"I am skeptical of the German offensive" said Mr. Bonar Law.

Nobody believed the war correspondents. Nobody ever did believe us,
though some of us wrote the truth from first to last as far as the facts
of war go apart from deeper psychology, and a naked realism of horrors
and losses, and criticism of facts, which did not come within our
liberty of the pen.

They were strange months for me. I felt that I was in possession, as
indeed I was, of a terrible secret which might lead to the ending of the
world--our world, as we knew it--with our liberties and power. For weeks
I had been pledged to say no word about it, to write not a word about
it, a