hell of the German cannonade fell upon them and overwhelmed them and
destroyed them. And at this very moment they saw from their trenches
that a tremendous host was moving against their lines. Five hundred of
the thousand remained, and as far as they could see the German
infantry was pressing on against them, column upon column, a grey
world of men, ten thousand of them, as it appeared afterwards.

There was no hope at all. They shook hands, some of them. One man
improvised a new version of the battlesong, "Good-bye, good-bye to
Tipperary," ending with "And we shan't get there". And they all went
on firing steadily. The officers pointed out that such an opportunity
for high-class, fancy shooting might never occur again; the Germans
dropped line after line; the Tipperary humorist asked, "What price
Sidney Street?" And the few machine guns did their best. But everybody
knew it was of no use. The dead grey bodies lay in companies and
battalions, as others came on and on and on, and they swarmed and
stirred and advanced from beyond and beyond.

"World without end. Amen," said one of the British soldiers with some
irrelevance as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered-he says
he cannot think why or wherefore--a queer vegetarian restaurant in
London where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets
made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates
in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue,
with the motto, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius_--May St. George be a
present help to the English. This soldier happened to know Latin and
other useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the grey
advancing mass--300 yards away--he uttered the pious vegetarian
motto. He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had
to clout him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out