to see whether we led, or whether France or America. America went
before us, but I could not see the Union Jack in the van nor the
Tricolour either, nor the Stars and Stripes: Belgium led and then
Serbia, they that had suffered most.

And before the flags, and before the generals, I saw marching along on
foot the ghosts of the working party that were killed at X, gazing
about them in admiration as they went, at the great city and at the
palaces. And one man, wondering at the Sièges Allée, turned round to
the Lance Corporal in charge of the party: ``That is a fine road that
we made, Frank,'' he said.

An Imperial Monument

It is an early summer's morning: the dew is all over France: the train
is going eastwards. They are quite slow, those troop trains, and there
are few embankments or cuttings in those flat plains, so that you seem
to be meandering along through the very life of the people. The roads
come right down to the railways, and the sun is shining brightly over
the farms and the people going to work along the roads, so that you
can see their faces clearly as the slow train passes them by.

They are all women and boys that work on the farms; sometimes perhaps
you see a very old man, but nearly always women and boys; they are out
working early. They straighten up from their work as we go by and lift
their hands to bless us.

We pass by long rows of the tall French poplars, their branches cut
away all up the trunk, leaving only an odd round tuft at the top of
the tree; but little branches are growing all up the trunk now, and