that penetrates through all talk that the tide has turned, and that,
however long it may take to come fully up, it is we whom it is floating
surely on to that fortune which is no blind hazard, but the child of
high faith and untiring labour. Of that labour the Somme battlefields we
were now to see will always remain in my mind--in spite of ruin, in
spite of desolation--as a kind of parable in action, never to be
forgotten.



No. 5

_April 26th_, 1917.

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--Amid the rushing events of these days--America
rousing herself like an eagle "with eyes intentive to bedare the sun";
the steady and victorious advance along the whole front in France, which
day by day is changing the whole aspect of the war; the Balfour Mission;
the signs of deep distress in Germany--it is sometimes difficult to
throw oneself back into the mood of even six weeks ago! History is
coming so fast off the loom! And yet six weeks ago I stood at the
pregnant beginnings of it all, when, though nature in the bitter frost
and slush of early March showed no signs of spring, the winter lull was
over, and everywhere on the British front men knew that great things
were stirring.

Before I reached G.H.Q., Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had already
reported the recapture or surrender of eleven villages on the Ancre
during February, including Serre and Gommecourt, which had defied our
efforts in the summer of 1916. That is to say, after three months of