another, parallel. But here, too, the same notice confronts us. We dash
along it, however, and my pulses run a little quicker, as I realise,
from the maps we carry, how near we are to the enemy lines which lie
hidden in the haze, eastward; and from my own eyes, how exposed is the
hillside. But we are safely through, and a little further we come to a
wood--a charming wood, to all seeming, of small trees, which in a week
or two will be full of spring leaf and flower. But we are no sooner in
it, jolting up its main track, than we understand the grimness of what
it holds. Spring and flowers have not much to say to it! For this wood
and its neighbourhood--Ablain St. Nazaire, Carency, Neuville St.
Vaast--have seen war at its cruellest; thousands of brave lives have
been yielded here; some of the dead are still lying unburied in its
furthest thickets, and men will go softly through it in the years to
come. "Stranger, go and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here,
obedient to their will:"--the immortal words are in my ears. But how
many are the sacred spots in this land for which they speak!

We leave the motor and walk on through the wood to the bare upland
beyond. The wood is still a wood of death, actual or potential. Our own
batteries are all about us; so too are the remains of French batteries,
from the days when the French still held this portion of the line. We
watch the gunners among the trees and presently pass an encampment of
their huts. Beyond, a high and grassy plateau--fringes of wood on either
hand. But we must not go to the edge on our right so as to look down
into the valley below. Through the thin leafless trees, however, we see
plainly the ridges that stretch eastward, one behind the other,
"suffused in sunny air." There are the towers of Mont St. Eloy--ours;
the Bertonval Wood--ours; and the famous Vimy Ridge, blue in the middle
distance, of which half is ours and half German. We are very near the
line. Notre Dame de Lorette is not very far away, though too far for us