. . . .

It happened about that time that Lord Kitchener with General
Joffre reviewed a French Army Corps.

We came on it in a vast dip of ground under grey clouds, as
one comes suddenly on water; for it lay out in misty blue
lakes of men mixed with darker patches, like osiers and
undergrowth, of guns, horses, and wagons. A straight road cut
the landscape in two along its murmuring front.

VETERANS OF THE WAR

It was as though Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth, not in
orderly furrows but broadcast, till, horrified by what arose,
he had emptied out the whole bag and fled. But these were no
new warriors. The record of their mere pitched battles would
have satiated a Napoleon. Their regiments and batteries had
learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine, and
in twelve months they had scarcely for a week lost direct
contact with death. We went down the line and looked into the
eyes of those men with the used bayonets and rifles; the packs
that could almost stow themselves on the shoulders that would
be strange without them; at the splashed guns on their
repaired wheels, and the easy-working limbers. One could feel
the strength and power of the mass as one feels the flush of
heat from off a sunbaked wall. When the Generals' cars
arrived there, there was no loud word or galloping about. The
lakes of men gathered into straight-edged battalions; the