n became as
pale as death, and the gunners went on plugging out shells in an
automatic way with grief-stricken faces. The telephone man put his
head out of his dugout. He stared at the broken rick. Beyond doubt
Monsieur Mascot was as dead as mutton. Suddenly, with the receiver
at his ear and transfigured, he began to shout: "Don't chuck any
more!" It was the lieutenant who had sent him the usual order. Ten
minutes later the lieutenant came back laughing gaily and, after
shaking some straw out of his muddy uniform, gave a caressing
touch to old "Bumps," who had got the enemy's range to perfection.
Then the captain embraced him.

12

The spirit of youth and the spirit of faith cannot rob war of its horrors,
nor redeem the crime in which all humanity is involved, nor check the
slaughter that goes on incessantly. But they burn with a bright light
out of the darkness, and make the killing of men less beastlike. The
soul of France has not been destroyed by this war, and no German
guns shattering the beauty of old towns and strewing the northern
fields with the bodies of beautiful young manhood could be victorious
over this nation, which, with all her faults, her incredulities and
passions, has at the core a spiritual fervour which lifts it above the
clay of life.

The soldiers of France have learnt the full range of human suffering,
so that one cannot grudge them their hours of laughter, however
coarse their mirth. There were many armies of men from Ypres to St.
Mihiel who were put to greater tasks of courage than were demanded
of the human soul in mediaeval torture chambers, and they passed
through the ordeal with a heroism which belongs to the splendid
things of history. As yet the history has been written only in brief
bulletins stating facts baldly, as when on a Saturday in March of 1915
it was stated that "In Malancourt Wood, between the Argonne and the
Meuse, the enemy sprayed one of our trenches with burning liquid so
that it had to be abandoned. The occupants were badly burnt." That
official account does not convey in any way the horror which
overwhelmed the witnesses of the new German method of attacking
trenches by drenching them with inflammatory liquid. A more detailed
narrative of this first attack by liquid fire was given by one of the
soldiers;

"It was yesterday evening, just as night fell, that it happened. The day
had been fairly calm, with the usual quantity of bursting shells
overhead, and nothi