sh. The graves were everywhere--mile after mile, on the slopes of
the hills and in the fields and the valleys, though still on the
battleground my friend had work to do.

I picked up bullets from shrapnels. They are scattered like peas for
fifteen miles between Betz and Mortefontaine, and thicker still along
the road to Vic. The jagged pieces of shell cut my boots. I carried one
of the German helmets for which the peasants were searching
among cabbages and turnips. And always in my ears was the deep
rumble of the guns, those great booming thunder-blows, speaking
from afar and with awful significance of the great battle, which
seemed to be deciding the destiny of our civilization and the new life
of nations which was to come perhaps out of all this death.

Chapter VI
Invasion

1

Before this year has ended England will know something of what war
means. In English country towns there will be many familiar faces
missing, many widows and orphans, and many mourning hearts.
Dimly and in a far-off way, the people who have stayed at home will
understand the misery of war and its brutalities. But in spite of all our
national effort to raise great armies, and our immense national
sacrifice in sending the best of our young manhood to foreign
battlefields, the imagination of the people as a whole will still fail to
realize the full significance of war as it is understood in France and
Belgium. They will not know the meaning of invasion.

It is a great luck to be born in an island. The girdle of sea is a
safeguard which gives a sense of security to the whole psychology of
a race, and for that reason there is a gulf of ignorance about the
terrors of war which, happily, may never be bridged by the collective
imagination of English and Scottish people. A continental nation,
divided by a few hills, a river, or a line on the map, from another race
with other instincts and ideals, is haunted throughout its history by a
sense of peril. Even in times of profound peace, the thought is there,
in the background, with a continual menace. It shapes the character
of a people and enters into all their political and educational progress.
To keep on friendly terms with a powerful next-door neighbour, or to
build defensive works high enough to make hostility a safe game, is
the lifework of its statesmen and its politicians. Great crises and
agitations shake the nation convulsively when cowardice or treachery
or laziness has allowed