hind those doors,
guarded by sentries, men in khaki uniforms, with just a touch of red
about the collar, were bending over maps and documents--studying
the lines of German trenches as they had been sketched out by
aviators flying above German shrapnel, writing out orders for
ammunition to be sent in a hurry to a certain point on the fighting line
where things were very "busy" in the afternoon, ordering the food-
supplies wanted by a division of hungry men whose lorries are waiting
at the rail-head for bread and meat and a new day's rations.

"Things are going very well," said one of the officers, with a glance at
a piece of flimsy paper which had just come from the Signals
Department across the street. But things would not have gone so well
unless at General Headquarters every officer had done his duty to
the last detail, whatever the fatigue of body or spirit. The place was
quiet, because the work was done behind closed doors in these
private houses of French and Flemish bourgeoisie whose family
portraits hang upon the walls. Outside I could not see the spirit of war
unless I searched for it.

It was after I had left "G.H.Q." that I saw something of the human side
of war and all its ceaseless traffic. Yet even then, as I travelled nearer
and nearer to the front, I was astounded at the silence, the
peacefulness of the scenery about me, the absence of all tragic
sights. That day, on the way to a place which was very close to the
German lines, children were playing on the roadside, and old women
in black gowns trudged down the long, straight high roads, with their
endless sentinels of trees.

In a furrowed field a peasant was sowing the seed for an autumn
harvesting, and I watched his swinging gestures from left to right
which seem symbolical of all that peace means and of all nature's life
and beauty. The seed is scattered and God does the rest, though
men may kill each other and invent new ways of death...

But the roads were encumbered and the traffic of war was surging
forward ceaselessly in a muddled, confused, aimless sort of way, as it
seemed to me, before I knew the system and saw the working of the
brain behind it all. A long train of carts without horses stood, shafts
down, on the muddy side of the road. Little blue and red flags
fluttered above them. A group of soldiers were lounging in their
neighbourhood, waiting, it seems, for something to turn up. Perhaps
that something was a distant train which came w