a swarm of flies, bloated, loathsome
brutes--buzzed angrily up as she passed.

"It's not fair, old girl," said Vane bending over and patting her neck;
"but I s'pose it's only in keeping with everything else these
days--it's not fairness that counts; it's just luck--fatuous idiotic
luck. It's not even a game; it's a wild-cat gamble all over the world.
And may Heaven help us all when the bottom does drop out of the market."

The grey mare ambled placidly on up the main Ypres road undisturbed by
his philosophy. The dead of her kind were already forgotten, and the
nose-bag on the saddle would be all the better for emptying. On each
side of the road were gun positions, and Vane kept a sharp look out as
he trotted on. If there was one thing he loathed above all others it
was the gunner humorist who, with malice aforethought, deliberately
waited to fire his gun until some helpless passer by was about a yard
from the muzzle. But at the moment everything seemed quiet. The
evening hate was not due yet; and Vane reached Brandhoek cross roads
without having his eardrums burst.

On the Decauville track close by stood eight trains, stacked with rows
and rows of cylinders, and he contemplated them grimly. Each train was
drawn by an ugly-looking petrol electric engine. The whole eight would
shortly run at close intervals to the nearest point to the front line.
Then Vane, with a large pushing party, could man-handle the trains into
the position decided on--a few hundred yards behind the outpost line.
And as a method of fighting it struck him as poor.

Whatever may be said about Might and Right, there is an element which
must appeal to every normal being in the triumph of strength and
hardihood over weakness. It may be wrong; it happens, however, to be
natural. But there is nothing whatever to appeal to the average man in
the ability of some professor of science, working in his laboratory
miles away, to produce a weapon which strikes down alike the strong and
the weakling with an agony which makes death a blessed relief.
Gas--just a refinement of modern war introduced by the brains of many
eminent gentlemen. And it must be in the nature of a personal triumph
for them to realise that their exhaustive experiments with guinea pigs
and rabbits have caused thousands to fear at first they were going to
die, and later to fear still more that they were not. . . .

Vane nodded to the gas officer and got on board the little tractor