engineers, their supplies are abundant. Even now they turn out more
shells a day than we do. That, however, excludes our supply for the
Fleet. But it is one of the miracles of the war that the French, with
their coal and iron in the hands of the enemy, have been able to equal
the production of our great industrial centres. The steel, of course,
is supplied by us. To that extent we can claim credit for the result.

And so, after the ceremony of the walking-sticks, we bid adieu to the
lines of Soissons. To-morrow we start for a longer tour to the more
formidable district of the Argonne, the neighbour of Verdun, and itself
the scene of so much that is glorious and tragic.



II.

There is a couplet of Stevenson's which haunts me, 'There fell a war in
a woody place--in a land beyond the sea.' I have just come back from
spending three wonderful dream days in that woody place. It lies with
the open, bosky country of Verdun on its immediate right, and the chalk
downs of Champagne upon its left. If one could imagine the lines being
taken right through our New Forest or the American Adirondacks it would
give some idea of the terrain, save that it is a very undulating
country of abrupt hills and dales. It is this peculiarity which has
made the war on this front different to any other, more picturesque and
more secret. In front the fighting lines are half in the clay soil,
half behind the shelter of fallen trunks. Between the two the main bulk
of the soldiers live like animals of the woodlands, burrowing on the
hillsides and among the roots of the trees. It is a war by itself, and
a very wonderful one to see. At three different points I have visited