batteries aligned a little; a squadron reined back or spurred
up; but it was all as swiftly smooth as the certainty with
which a man used to the pistol draws and levels it at the
required moment. A few peasant women saw the Generals alight.
The aeroplanes, which had been skimming low as swallows along
the front of the line (theirs must have been a superb view)
ascended leisurely, and "waited on" like hawks. Then followed
the inspection, and one saw the two figures, tall and short,
growing smaller side by side along the white road, till far
off among the cavalry they entered their cars again, and moved
along the horizon to another rise of grey-green plain.

"The army will move across where you are standing. Get to a
flank," some one said.

AN ARMY IN MOTION

We were no more than well clear of that immobile host when it
all surged forward, headed by massed bands playing a tune that
sounded like the very pulse of France.

The two Generals, with their Staff, and the French Minister
for War, were on foot near a patch of very green lucerne.
They made about twenty figures in all. The cars were little
grey blocks against the grey skyline. There was nothing else
in all that great plain except the army; no sound but the
changing notes of the aeroplanes and the blunted impression,
rather than noise, of feet of men on soft ground. They came
over a slight ridge, so that one saw the curve of it first
furred, then grassed, with the tips of bayonets, which