have been a vacancy in one of the chief editorial chairs in London. The
General shouted to the driver to speed up, and we were soon safe from
the German gunners. One gets perfectly immune to noises in these
scenes, for the guns which surround you make louder crashes than any
shell which bursts about you. It is only when you actually see the
cloud over you that your thoughts come back to yourself, and that you
realise that in this wonderful drama you may be a useless super, but
none the less you are on the stage and not in the stalls.

* * * * *

Next morning we were down in the front trenches again at another
portion of the line. Far away on our right, from a spot named the
Observatory, we could see the extreme left of the Verdun position and
shells bursting on the Fille Morte. To the north of us was a broad
expanse of sunny France, nestling villages, scattered chateaux, rustic
churches, and all as inaccessible as if it were the moon. It is a
terrible thing this German bar--a thing unthinkable to Britons. To
stand on the edge of Yorkshire and look into Lancashire feeling that it
is in other hands, that our fellow-countrymen are suffering there and
waiting, waiting, for help, and that we cannot, after two years, come a
yard nearer to them--would it not break our hearts? Can I wonder that
there is no smile upon the grim faces of these Frenchmen! But when the
bar is broken, when the line sweeps forward, as most surely it will,
when French bayonets gleam on yonder uplands and French flags break
from those village spires--ah, what a day that will be! Men will die
that day from the pure, delirious joy of it. We cannot think what it
means to France, and the less so because she stands so nobly patient
waiting for her hour.