Then we had another look at the animal in its trench--a little
nearer this time than before, and quieter on account of the
mist. Pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find
the same observation-post, table, map, observer, and
telephonist; the same always-hidden, always-ready guns; and
same vexed foreshore of trenches, smoking and shaking from
Switzerland to the sea. The handling of the war varies with
the nature of the country, but the tools are unaltered. One
looks upon them at last with the same weariness of wonder as
the eye receives from endless repetitions of Egyptian
hieroglyphics. A long, low profile, with a lump to one side,
means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a
circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a
bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the
great guns of position, coming and going on their motors,
repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue
smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or
watching and running among all these terrific symbols.

TRAGEDY OF RHEIMS

But there is no hieroglyphic for Rheims, no blunting of the
mind at the abominations committed on the cathedral there.
The thing peers upward, maimed and blinded, from out of the
utter wreckage of the Archbishop's palace on the one side and
dust-heaps of crumbled houses on the other. They shelled, as
they still shell it, with high explosives and with incendiary
shells, so that the statues and the stonework in places are
burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed;