towns grew more and more numerous, they seemed so harmoniously part of
the peaceful scene that war was as difficult to visualize as ever. Many
sat about smoking their pipes and playing with the village children,
others were in squads going to drill or exercise--something the Briton
never neglects. The amazing thing to a visitor who has seen the trenches
awash on a typical wet day, who knows that even billeting in cold farms
and barns behind the lines can scarcely be compared to the comforts of
home, is how these men keep well under the conditions. To say that they
are well is to understate the fact: the ruddy faces and clear eyes and
hard muscles--even of those who once were pale London clerks--proclaim a
triumph for the system of hygiene of their army.

Suddenly we came upon a house with a great round hole in its wall, and
then upon several in ruins beside the village street. Meanwhile, at work
under the windswept trees of the highway, were strange, dark men from the
uttermost parts of the earth, physiognomies as old as the tombs of
Pharaoh. It was, indeed, not so much the graven red profiles of priests
and soldiers that came tome at sight of these Egyptians, but the singing
fellaheen of the water-buckets of the Nile. And here, too, shovelling
the crushed rock, were East Indians oddly clad in European garb, careless
of the cold. That sense of the vastness of the British Empire, which at
times is so profound, was mingled now with a knowledge that it was
fighting for its life, marshalling all its resources for Armageddon.

Saint Eloi is named after the good bishop who ventured to advise King
Dagobert about his costume. And the church stands--what is left of it
--all alone on the greenest of terraces jutting out toward the east; and
the tower, ruggedly picturesque against the sky, resembles that of some
crumbled abbey. As a matter of fact, it has been a target for German
gunners. Dodging an army-truck and rounding one of those military