Chapter XXVI (3)

After that we rode north along the Meuse, through a beautiful country where the snow-covered hills, with their sky-lines of carefully pruned French trees, made me think of masterpieces of Japanese art. In the many little villages there was much excitement and activity with troops, artillery, and munitions being rushed through to the front, and the consequent wild rumours of great attacks and victories. Curiously enough, there were few who thought of defeat. They were all sure, even when a retreat was reported, that the French were winning, and that spirit of confidence had much to do with stopping the Germans.

At about six in the evening we reached our destination some forty miles north-east of Bar-le-Duc. The little village where we stopped had been a railroad centre until the day before, when the Germans started bombarding it. Now the town was evacuated, and the smoking station deserted. The place had ceased to exist, except for a hospital which was established on the southern edge of the town in a lovely old chateau, overlooking the Meuse. We were called up to the hospital as soon as we arrived to take such wounded as could be moved to the nearest available railhead, which was ten miles away, on the main road, and four miles south of Verdun. We started out in convoy, but with the then conditions of traffic, it was impossible to stick together, and it took some of us till five o’clock the next morning to make the trip. That was the beginning of the attack for us, and the work of ‘evacuating’ the wounded to the railway stations went steadily on until March 15. It was left to the driver to decide how many trips it was physically possible for him to make in each twenty-four hours. There were more wounded than could be carried, and no one could be certain of keeping any kind of schedule with the roads as they then were.

Sometimes we spent five or six hours waiting at a cross-road, while columns of troops and their equipment filed steadily by. Sometimes at night we could make a trip in two hours that had taken us ten in daylight. Sometimes, too, we crawled slowly to a station only to find it deserted, shells falling, and the hospital moved to some still more distant point of the line. Situations and conditions changed from day to day—almost from hour to hour. One day it was sunshine and spring, with roads six inches deep in mud, no traffic, and nothing to remind one of war, except the wounded in the car and the distant roar of the guns, which sounded like a giant beating a carpet. The next day it was winter again, with mud turned to ice, the roads blocked with troops, and the Germans turning hell loose with their heavy guns.

In such a crisis as those first days around Verdun, ammunition and fresh men are the all-essential things. The wounded are the _déchets_, the ‘has-beens’, and so must take second place. But the French are too gallant and tender-hearted not to make sacrifices. I remember one morning I was slapped off the road into a ditch with a broken axle, while passing a solitary _camion_. The driver got down, came over, and apologised for the accident, which was easily half my fault. Then we unloaded four cases of ‘seventy-five’ shells that he was carrying, and put my three wounded in on the floor of his car. He set out slowly and carefully up the ice-covered road, saying to me with a smile as he left, ‘Don’t let the Boches get my marmites while I’m gone.’ For some time I sat there alone on the road, watching the shells break on a hill some miles away to the north, and wondering when I could get word back to the ‘base’ of my mishap. Then a staff car appeared down the road making its way along slowly and with difficulty, because, being without chains, it skidded humorously with engine racing and the chauffeur trying vainly to steer. There was a captain of the _Service des Autos_ sitting on the front seat, and he was so immaculately clean and well groomed that he seemed far away from work of any kind. But when the car stopped completely about half-way up the little hill on which I was broken down, he jumped out, took off his fur coat, and using it to give the rear wheels a grip on the ice, he swung it under the car. As the wheels passed over it, he picked it up and swung it under again. So the car climbed the hill and slid down the other slope round the curve and out of sight. It was just another incident that made me realise the spirit and energy of the French Automobile Service. But the captain had not solved any of my difficulties. He had been too busy to notice me or wonder why an American ambulance was sprawled in a ditch with four cases of shells alongside.

I had been waiting there in the road about two hours when another American came by and took back word of my accident and of the parts necessary to set it right. Then about noon my friend came back in his _camion_ to take up his cases of shells and report my wounded safe at the railway station. We lunched together on the front seat of the _camion_ on bread, tinned ‘monkey meat,’ and red wine, while he told me stories about his life as a driver. He had been on his car then for more than twenty days without leaving it for food or sleep. That morning his ‘partner’ had been wounded by a shell, so he had to drive all that day alone. Usually the two men drive two hours, turn and turn about; while one is driving, the other can eat, sleep, or read the day before yesterday’s newspaper. The French _camions_ are organised in sections of twenty. Usually each section works in convoy, and has its name and mark painted on its cars. I saw some with elephants or ships, some with hearts or diamonds, clubs or spades, some with dice—in fact every imaginable symbol has been used to distinguish the thousands of sections in the service. The driver told me there were more than ten thousand trucks working between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. There is great rivalry between the men of the several sections in matters of speed and load—especially between the sections of French and those of American or Italian cars. The American product has the record for speed, which is, however, offset by its frequent need of repair.

My friend told me about trips he had made up as far as the third line trenches, and how they were using ‘seventy-fives’ like machine-guns in dug-outs, where the shells were fired at ‘zero’ so that they exploded immediately after leaving the mouth of the gun. The French, he said, would rather lose guns than men, and according to him, there were so many guns placed in the ‘live’ parts of the sector that the wheels touched, and so formed a continuous line.

As soon as we had finished lunch he left me, and I waited for another two hours until the American staff car (in other surroundings I should call it an ordinary Ford touring car with a red cross or so added), came along loaded with an extra ‘rear construction,’ and driven by the chief himself. It took us another four hours to remove my battered rear axle and put in the new parts, but my car was back in service by midnight.

That was a typical instance of the kind of accident that was happening, and there were about three ‘Ford casualties’ every day. Thanks to the simplicity of the mechanism of the Ford, and to the fact that, with the necessary spare parts, the most serious indisposition can be remedied in a few hours, our section has been at the front for a year—ten months in the Bois-le-Prêtre, and two months at Verdun—without being sent back out of service for general repairs. In the Bois-le-Prêtre we had carried the wounded from the dressing stations to the first hospital, while at Verdun we were on service from the hospital to the railheads. In this latter work of _évacuation_ the trips were much longer, thirty to ninety miles, so the strain on the cars was correspondingly greater. As our cars, being small and fast, carried only three wounded on stretchers or five seated, our relative efficiency was low in comparison with the wear and tear of the ‘running gear’ and the amount of oil and petrol used. But in the period from February 22 to March 13, twenty days, with an average of eighteen cars working, we carried 2046 wounded 18,915 miles. This would be no record on good open roads, but with the conditions I have already described I think it justified the existence of our volunteer organisation—if it needed justification. Certainly the French thought so, but they are too generous to be good judges.

Except for our experiences on the road, there was little romance in the daily routine. True, we were under shell fire, and had to sleep in our cars or in a much-inhabited hayloft, and eat in a little inn, half farmhouse and half stable, where the food was none too good and the cooking none too clean; but we all realised that the men in the trenches would have made of such conditions a luxurious paradise, so that kept us from thinking of it as anything more than a rather strenuous ‘camping out.’

During the first days of the attack, the roads were filled with refugees from the town of Verdun and the country north of it. As soon as the bombardment started, civilians were given five hours to leave, and we saw them—old men, women, and children—struggling along through the snow on their way south. It was but another of those sad migrations that occur so often in the ‘Zone des Armées.’ The journey was made difficult and often dangerous for them by the columns of skidding trucks, so the more timid took to the fields or the ditches at the roadside. They were for the most part the _petits bourgeois_ who had kept their shops open until the last minute, to make the town gay for the troops, who filed through the Promenade de la Digue in an endless queue on their way to and from the trenches. Most of them had saved nothing but the clothes on their backs, though I saw one old woman courageously trundling a barrow overflowing with laces, post cards, bonbons (doubtless the famous _Dragées Verdunoises_), and other similar things which had been part of her stock-in-trade, and with which she would establish a Verdun souvenir shop when she found her new home. There were many peasant carts loaded with every imaginable article of household goods from stoves to bird cages, but no matter what else a cart might contain, there was always a mattress with the members of the family, old and young, bouncing along on top. So ubiquitous was this mattress that I asked about it, and was told that the French peasant considers it the most important of his Lares, for it is there his babies are born and his old people die—there too, is the family bank, the hiding-place for the _bas de laine_.

All the people, no matter what their class or station, were excited. Some were resigned, some weeping, some quarrelling, but every face reflected terror and suffering, for these derelicts had been suddenly torn from the ruins of their old homes and their old lives after passing through two days of the heaviest bombardment the world has ever seen.

I did not wonder at their grief or terror when I had seen the town from which they fled. Sometimes it is quiet, with no shells and no excitement; at others it is a raging hell, a modern Pompeii in the ruining. Often I passed through the town, hearing and seeing nothing to suggest that any enemy artillery was within range. But one morning I went up to take a doctor to a near-by hospital, and had just passed under one of the lovely old twelfth-century gates, with its moat and towers, when the Germans commenced their morning hate. I counted 150 shells, ‘arrivés,’ in the first quarter of an hour.

After making my way up on the old fortifications in the north-eastern quarter, I had an excellent view of the whole city—a typical garrison town of Northern France spreading over its canals and river up to the Citadel and Cathedral on the heights. Five and six shells were shrieking overhead at the same time, and a corresponding number of houses in the centre of the town going up in dust and débris, one after another, almost as fast as I could count.

During this bedlam a military gendarme strolled up as unconcerned as if he had been looking out for a stranger in the Champs Elysées. He told me about a dug-out that was somewhere ‘around the corner.’ But we both got so interested watching the shells and their effect that we stayed where we were. The gendarme had been in the town long enough to become an authority on bombardments, and he could tell me the different shells and what they were hitting, from the coloured smoke which rose after each explosion and hung like a pall over the town in the windless spring air. When the shells fell on the Cathedral—often there were three breaking on and around it at the same time—there sprang up a white cloud, while on the red tiles and zinc roofs they exploded in brilliant pink and yellow puffs. The air was filled with the smell of the burning celluloid and coal-tar products used in the manufacture of the high explosive and incendiary shells. It was very impressive, and even my friend the gendarme said, ‘_C’est chic, n’est-ce pas?_ It’s the heaviest rain we have had for several days.’ Then he pointed to the left where a column of flame and smoke, heavier than that from the shells, was rising, and said, ‘Watch them now, and you’ll understand their system, the _cochons_. That’s a house set afire with their incendiary shells, and now they will throw shrapnel around it to keep our firemen from putting it out.’ And so they did, for I could see the white puffs of the six-inch shrapnel shells breaking in and around the column of black smoke, which grew denser all the time. Then two German Taubes, taking advantage of the smoke, came over and dropped bombs, for no other reason than to add terror to the confusion. But the eighty firemen, a brave little band brought up from Paris with their hose-carts and engine, refused to be confused or terrified. Under the shells and smoke we could see the streams of water playing on the burning house. ‘They are working from the cellars,’ said the gendarme. It was fortunate there was no wind, for that house was doomed, and but for the fact that all the buildings were stone, the fire would have spread over all that quarter of the town despite the gallantry of the firemen.

The bombardment continued steadily for about two hours and a half, until several houses were well alight and many others completely destroyed. Then about noon it stopped as suddenly as it had started. I wanted to go down and watch the firemen work, but the gendarme, who had produced an excellent bottle of no ordinary ‘_pinard_,’ said, ‘Wait awhile, my old, that is part of the system. They have only stopped to let the people come out. In a few minutes it will start again, when they will have more chance of killing somebody.’

But for once he was wrong, and after waiting with him for half an hour, I went down to the first house I had seen catch fire. The firemen were still there, working with hose and axe to prevent the fire from spreading. The four walls of the house were still standing, but inside there was nothing but a furnace which glowed and leapt into flame with every draught of air, so that the sparks flew over the neighbouring houses, and started other fires which the firemen were busy controlling. These _pompiers_ are no longer civilians. The black uniform and gay brass and leather helmet of Paris fashion have been replaced with the blue-grey of the _poilu_, with the regulation steel shrapnel casque or _bourguignotte_. The French press has had many accounts of their heroism since the beginning of the attack. Certainly if any of the town is left, it will be due to their efforts among the ruins. There are only eighty of them in the town. Half of them are men too old for ‘_active service_,’ yet they have stayed there for two months working night and day under the shells, with the strain of the bombardment added to the usual dangers from falling walls and fire. They are still as gay and eager as ever. Their spirit and motto is the same as that of every soldier and civilian who is doing hard work in these hard times. They all say, ‘It is war,’ or more often, ‘It is for France.’

I left them saving what they could of the house, and walked on over the river through the town. It is truly the Abomination of Desolation. The air was heavy and hot with the smell of explosives and the smoke from the smouldering ruins. Not a sound broke the absolute quiet and not a soul was in sight. I saw two dogs and a cat all slinking about on the search for food, and evidently so crazed with terror that they could not leave their old homes. Finally, crossing over the canal, where the theatre, now a heap of broken beams and stones, used to stand, I met an old bearded Territorial leaning over the bridge with a net in his hand to dip out fish killed by the explosion of the shells in the water. He did not worry about the danger of his position on the bridge, and, like all true fishermen, when they have had good luck, he was happy and philosophical. ‘One must live,’ said he, ‘and it’s very amiable of the Boches to keep us in fish with their marmites, _n’est-ce pas, mon vieux_?’ We chatted for a while of bombardments, falling walls, and whether the Germans would reach Verdun. He, of course, like every soldier in that region, was volubly sure they would not. Then I went on up the hill towards the Cathedral, by the old library, which was standing with doors and windows wide open, and with the well-ordered books still on the tables and in the shelves. As yet it is untouched by fire or shell, but too near the bridge to escape for long.

I continued my way through streets filled with fallen wires, broken glass, and bits of shell. Here and there were dead horses and broken waggons caught in passing to or from the lines. There is nothing but ruins left of the lovely residential quarter below the Cathedral. The remaining walls of the houses, gutted by flame and shell, stand in a wavering line along a street, blocked with débris, and with furniture and household articles that the firemen have saved. The furniture is as safe in the middle of the street as anywhere else in the town. As I passed along I could hear from time to time the crash and roar of falling walls, and see the rising clouds of white stone dust that has settled thickly everywhere.

The Cathedral, with its Bishop’s Palace and cloisters—all fine old structures of which the foundations were laid in the eleventh and twelfth centuries—must from its commanding position overlooking the town, be singled out for destruction. I watched ten shells strike the Cathedral that one morning, and some of them were the terrible ‘380’s,’ the shells of the 16-inch mortars, which make no noise as they approach and tear through to the ground before their explosion.

The interior of the Cathedral, blurred with a half-inch layer of stone dust, is in most ‘unchurchly’ disorder. Four or five shells have torn large holes through the roof of the nave, and twice as many more have played havoc with the chapels and aisles at the side. One has fallen through the gilded canopy over the high altar and broken one of the four supporting columns, which before were monoliths like those of St. Peter’s at Rome. Of course, most of the stained glass windows are scattered in fragments over the floor, and through the openings on the southern side I could see the ruins of the cloisters, with some chairs and a bed literally falling into them from a room of the Bishop’s Palace above.

This destruction of the Cathedral is typical of the purposeless barbarity of the whole proceeding. The wiping out of the town can serve no military purpose. There are no stores of munitions or railway communications to be demolished. Naturally there are no troops quartered in the town, and now all extensive movements of convoys are conducted by other roads than those leading through the town. Yet the bombardment continues day after day, and week after week. The Germans are sending in about £5,000,000 worth of shells a month. ‘It’s spite,’ a _poilu_ said to me; ‘they have made up their minds to destroy the town since they can’t capture it; but it will be very valuable as an iron mine after the war.’

_THE SPINE OF AN EMPIRE._

BY MAJOR-GEN. G. F. MACMUNN, C.B., D.S.O.

_In Agypt’s land on banks of Noile_
_King Pharaoh’s royal daughter went to bath in shtoile;_
_She had her dip and hied into the land,_
_To dry her royal pelt she ran along the sand._
_A Bulrush thripped her and at her foot she saw_
_The little Moases, in a wad of sthraw._

Fragment, _The Finding of Moses_, ANON.

Never in the cinema of all time have there been such films to record as on the stage of Egypt. Certain localities are preordained to attract the come and go of the world, and before all others the Nile delta has this property. Its strategical location in the world’s assembling has compelled the holders of power and might and majesty and dominion to crowd therein. No decay of empires can affect the significance of geographical siting. Mena and Cheops and Khefren give place to Amenemhats and Thotmes and a host of Rameses, who yield in turn to such modernities as the Ptolemies, but the Nile remains the Nile, and the Red Sea the waterway from East to West.

As Darius and Xerxes and Alexander were compelled by the call of strategical law, so came Salah-ud-Din and Napoleon and Ferdinand de Lesseps and Sir Garnet Wolseley. And here, too, would come William of Hohenzollern, boasting to break the spine of the British Empire, in the vertebræ that Chesney planned and De Lesseps made.

Between Alexander the Great and William of Hohenzollern the host of moderns has been legion, but it was for Napoleon and his dreams of Eastern Empire to bring the British into the scene to short circuit their sea routes. Since the Corsican brought his legions, his savants, and his artists to the Pyramids, the English have entered into the joint control of the Levant, and to help them have brought the armies of India. With Abercromby came David Baird and his sepoys. Sir Garnet Wolseley, in Egypt and in the Soudan, had Indian troops to help him, and now, lest William of Hohenzollern and his Ottoman allies should ‘break the British spine,’ and disturb the peace and plenty of Egypt, not only has India sent troops, but all elements of the Empire far and near. Never, even in the days of Alexander’s armies, had so many varied contingents garrisoned Egypt, as came when the Hun threatened the Canal in force.

In the late autumn of 1915, what time Serbia was broken on the wheel, the Hun determined to overrun Egypt and Sinai and Goshen, breaking thereby the British spine. But the Mistress of the Sea said No. The army of Gallipoli was conjured back from the Hellespont and the outer Empire sent its levies, and the great plans of the All-Highest were ‘postponed.’

The force gathered in Egypt was the most wonderful combination of the Empire that can be imagined. To the gathering came first and most famous a division of the old army, the army that has held the line from the Yser to the Aisne, and lies in a grave and lives in a memory for its guerdon, the world round. With them were Territorial divisions, and divisions of the new army, brigades of yeomen, divisions from Australia and New Zealand, the Maoris cheek by jowl with the white, a model in this respect to the rest of the Empire. Not only was the Indian army proper there—Gurkha, Sikh, and Pathan in due and ancient form—but the armies of the protected states, those imperial service contingents, the wisdom of their conception yearly more apparent. But the tally of Empire ended not with Gwalior, Mysore, and Bikaneer. Hospitals from Canada, Sambo from the West Indies cleaning his rifle to Moody and Sankey hymns, and the Afrikander corps of Dutch and English added to that pageant of Empire, standing four-square with the troops of the Sultan himself.

Strategically to the world’s power and commerce, the situation of Egypt is as favourable now as in the days of Alexander, and troops are as well placed there against emergency as anywhere, and as the danger to Egypt lessened were ready to be sent by those who rule the sea North, South, East, or West. Troops can come and go and be switched back quicker than foes can assemble.

The defending of the canal, a waterless tract, void of roads in its immediate vicinity, is no easy matter and a subject of much controversy, the manner of its defence depending, like that of most other localities, on the troops available and the strength of the enemy threat. The difficulties have been overcome by a herculean effort. Atkins bathes happily in its water, and watches the ships of allies and of neutrals—those lesser breeds who wait—pass us safely.

To most of the English the canal has seemed a desert track dotted with lonely _gares_, akin in their solitude to a Red Sea lighthouse. A further acquaintance with them has dispelled many imaginings. The _gares_, the friendly _chefs de gare_, and their brimming quivers have assumed a different aspect from their ancient one of milestones on the road to India.

British patrols thread the ancient course of the Nile now dry, the Pelusiac and Tanaitic channels that found the sea east of the canal and explain the delta-like lagoons that still remain. The ruins of Pelusium and the ancient channel explain how Cleopatra, defeated on the high seas, escaped by water inland to Damietta, and how the Holy Family found the road to Egypt far easier than it is now. Across Lake Menzalah from Port Said lie the ruins of Tanais, the capital of the Pharaohs in the time of Moses. El Qantara, a British post, closes the road from Palestine to Egypt that has run since time was, and that has seen in our own time the legions of Napoleon march by the bridge over the arm of the marsh for Syria. ‘_Partant pour la Syrie_’ with a vengeance, many, poor souls, to die miserably.

And no doubt over the El Qantara rode also the _savants_ in their high hats and veils, their long _directoire_ coats and their striped pantaloons—like any member of the various royal societies of to-day, but with the chill off—while the escorting _chasseurs_ chaffed them and their umbrellas.

So to-day Port Said and Suez and Ismailia and Cairo are full of the soldiery, and a wide camp is spread under the Pyramid of Ghizr, and young officers walk along the groyne at Port Said, asking ‘what is the history of that funny old green statue’ which stands a wonder of the world, like the _Phare_ in ancient Alexandria. Shades of Ferdinand de Lesseps and Rawdon Chesney! What, indeed, is the history of that ‘funny old green statue,’ and the ‘spine of the British Empire’ as the Hun has immortalised it? It is a phrase for which we may thank William of Hohenzollern.

The mass of the force in Egypt transferred from Gallipoli, rage the ‘_unterseebote_’ never so fiercely, is resting and retraining. If you’ve been six months on Gallipoli you’ll run a mile to see a nursing sister, and both Atkins and his officers are soft of heart. Graceful Cairenes in French cut skirts of black _crépe de chine_ with ever the topmost button undone, with black head-shawls of the same material, and evanescent veils that faintly cloud to distraction the face below the eyes, are strong wine for young soldiers. So attractive is the dress that the old hand will tell you that many another than Cairenes will don the dress when out for a spree—a disguise that also enhances attraction is a good find, _mesdames_!

Atkins himself and Hotspur the yeoman are nothing if not gallant. Here is a true story from Port Said. Time about 8 P.M. Attractive English lady hears two soldiers walking fast behind who come up one on either side.

FIRST SOLDIER. Beg pardon, miss, do you speak English?

ATTRACTIVE LADY. Yes.

BOTH SOLDIERS. Oh, you are English!

FIRST SOLDIER. I think we saw you waving out of the window.

ATTRACTIVE LADY. I think you are mistaking me for Mrs. Brown’s nursemaid!

SECOND SOLDIER (_severely_). You must be an ass to take this young lady for a nursemaid!

BOTH SOLDIERS. Perhaps we ought not to have spoken, but we are very lonely—may we walk with you?

ATTRACTIVE LADY. I am going this way.

FIRST SOLDIER. Would you tell us who you are, miss?

ATTRACTIVE LADY. I am the chaplain’s sister. (_Sensation and silence._)

FIRST SOLDIER (_plucking up courage_). We never saw a chaplain’s sister like you before.

SECOND SOLDIER. No, indeed, only one I knew was enough to give you the ’orrors.

ATTRACTIVE LADY (_somewhat flattered, stopping at door of a house under a street lamp_). I must say good-night now. I live here.

BOTH SOLDIERS. Now we see you we are sorry we spoke to you, for we can see you are more one for the officers than for us.

(_Exit._)

And so it runs from Putney to Port Said, and from Cambridge to Cairo. Soldiers are very susceptible gents, as the late Francis Bacon knew and so stated.

And while one big army has delved and dug and built on the canal and taken toll of Sinai, another force has chased the Senussi up and down the Western desert, and yeomen from the shires have watered their horses at the garden steps of the week-end villa at Matrush, where Antony entertained Cleopatra. This is no doubt foretold by one of the minor prophets whom Voltaire considered _capable de tout_. It is certainly a dramatic event for those who moralise on empires’ rise and wane.

Hardly less striking is the prolonged pursuit and charge of the Senussi by His Grace of Westminster at the head of the motor bandits—as the army _will_ call the armoured motor-car—in that same Western desert. The hyacinth and the iris grew for a wonder on surface free from shifting sands, and the armoured car trick was brought off in a fashion and with a dash that its promoters could hardly have hoped for in their most enthusiastic moments.

War has brought many surprises and troubles to the desert and its denizens. In Sinai, where the Bedouin lives by the date palm, there has come starvation, and why? Because the female date must be fertilised by hand, and the male dates are few and far between. The date fertiliser is a skilled professional and lives in Egypt, and Turks in Sinai have meant that date trees go unwed. The which is a parable. There is no remedy save perhaps one similar to that suggested by the American mayor to the man who complained that the ‘wather had come into me back cellar and drowned all me hins.’ ‘Young man, I should advise you to keep ducks,’ and the Bedouin might grow the hermaphrodite date. In the country of the scarabæus it might well be found as Alexander’s soldiers left it on the Indus. If war has brought harm to some, it has in Egypt brought profit to the many, and the Greek is ever ready to trade, and merchants one and all have risen to the occasion and waxed fat. In Alexandria the Greek influence is very great and sympathy with the Allies considerable. The Greek will tell you they come of a northern stock, and will quote the body worship of the _bel âge_ to illustrate affinity with the English, and that Greeks alone of all Levantine races or Latin races either have pronounced ‘_th_’ since time was like the English—which, be it true or false, all makes for good trade. The soldiery all the year are better than the Americans in the winter, and Young Australia has money to spend.

Another wonder of the ages is that Egypt from the Pyramids to Tel el Kebir should be the Aldershot of the Australians and New Zealanders, where Tommy Cornstalk learns to obey for a common cause and to let off steam in the process.

And over it all grin in the morning sun the Ethiopian lips of the Sphinx—noting one more trivial mark of chalk on granite, one more grain of sand in the hour-glass, one more struggle of the captains and the kings, one more grim grin at peoples rending themselves—perhaps the thousand-year-long grin sprang from the knowledge that it had only to endure long enough to see William of Hohenzollern show the world the way of peace, while the very sand mocked back again.

‘_SWEET LAVENDER._’

BY GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM.

Was ever a name less appropriately given? I have heard of a Paradise Court in a grimy city slum and a dilapidated whitewashed house on the edge of a Connaught bog which had somehow got itself called Monte Carlo. But these misfits of names moved me only to mirth mingled with a certain sadness. Sweet Lavender is a sheer astonishment. I hear the words and think of the edgings of old garden borders, straggling spiky little bushes with palely, unobtrusive flowers. I think of linen cupboards, of sheets and pillow-cases redolent with very delicate perfume. I think of the women who wander through such gardens, who find a pride in their store of scented house-linen, delicately nurtured ladies, very gentle, a little tinged with melancholy, innocent, sweet. My thoughts wander through memories and guesses about their ways of life. Nothing in the whole long train of thought prepares me for, or tends in any way to suggest this Sweet Lavender.

It is a building. In the language of the Army—the official language—it is a hut; but hardly more like the hut of civil life than it is like the flower from which it takes its name. The walls are of thin wood. The roof is corrugated iron. It contains two long low halls. Glaring electric lights hang from the rafters. They must glare if they are to shine at all, for the air is thick with tobacco smoke. Inside the halls are gathered hundreds of soldiers. In one, that which we enter first, the men are sitting, packed close together at small tables. They turn over the pages of illustrated papers. They drink tea, cocoa, and hot milk. They eat buns and slices of bread and butter. They write those letters home which express so little and, to those who understand, mean so much. Of the letters written home from camp, half at least are on paper which bear the stamp of the Y.M.C.A.—paper given to all who ask in this hut and a score of others. Reading, eating, drinking, writing, chatting, or playing draughts, everybody smokes. Everybody, such is the climate, reeks with damp. Everybody is hot. The last thing that the air suggests to the nose of one who enters is the smell of Sweet Lavender.

In the other, the inner hall, there are more men, still more closely packed together, smoking more persistently, and the air is even denser. Here no one is eating, no one reading. Few attempt to write. The evening’s entertainment is about to begin. On a narrow platform at one end of the hall is a piano. A pianist has taken possession of it. He has been selected by no one in authority, elected by no committee. He has occurred, emerged from the mass of men; by virtue of some energy within him has made good his position in front of the instrument. He flogs the keys and above the babel of talk sounds some rag-time melody, once popular, now forgotten or despised at home. Here or there a voice takes up the tune and sings or chants it. The audience begin to catch the spirit of the entertainment. Some one calls the name of Corporal Smith. A man struggles from his seat and leaps on to the platform. He is greeted with applauding cheers. There is a short consultation between him and the pianist. A tentative chord is struck. Corporal Smith nods approval and turns to the audience. His song begins. If it is the kind of song which has a chorus the audience shouts it, and Corporal Smith conducts the singing with wavings of his arm.

Corporal Smith is a popular favourite. We know his worth as a singer, demand and applaud him. But there are other candidates for favour. Before the applause has died away, while still acknowledgments are being bowed, another man takes his place on the platform. He is a stranger, and no one knows what he will sing. But the pianist is a man of genius. Whisper to him the name of a song, give even a hint of its nature, let him guess at the kind of voice, bass, baritone, tenor, and he will vamp an accompaniment. He has his difficulties. A singer will start at the wrong time, will for a whole verse perhaps make noises in a different key; the pianist never fails. Somehow, before very long, instrument and singer get together—more or less. There is no dearth of singers, no bashful hanging back, no waiting for polite pressure. Everyone who can sing, or thinks he can, is eager to display his talent. There is no monotony. A boisterous comic song is succeeded by one about summer roses, autumn leaves, and the kisses of a maiden at a stile. The vagaries of a drunkard are a matter for roars of laughter. A song about the beauty of the rising moon pleases us all equally well. An original genius sings a song of his own composition, rough-hewn verses set to a familiar tune, about the difficulty of obtaining leave and the longing that is in all our hearts for a return to ‘Blighty; dear old Blighty.’ Did ever men before fix such a name on the standard for which they fight? Now and again some one comes forward with a long narrative song, a kind of ballad chanted to a tune very difficult to catch. It is about as hard to keep track with the story as to pick up the tune. Words—better singers fail in the same way—are not easily distinguished, though the man does his best, clears his throat carefully between each verse and spits over the edge of the platform to improve his enunciation. No one objects to that. About manners and dress the audience is very little critical. But about the merits of the songs and the singers the men express their opinions with the utmost frankness. The applause is genuine, and the singer who wins it is under no doubt about its reality. The song which makes no appeal is simply drowned by loud talk, and the unfortunate singer will crack his voice in vain in an endeavour to regain the attention he has lost.

Encores are rare, and the men are slow to take them. There is a man towards the end of the evening who wins one, unmistakably, with an imitation of a drunkard singing ‘Alice, where art Thou?’ The pianist fails to keep in touch with the hiccoughing vagaries of this performance, and the singer, unabashed, finishes without accompaniment. The audience yells with delight and continues to yell till the singer comes forward again. This time he gives us a song about leaving home, a thing of heart-rending pathos, and we wail the chorus:

‘It’s sad to be giving the last hand-shake,
It’s sad the last long kiss to take,
It’s sad to say farewell.’

The entertainment draws to its close about 8 o’clock. Men go to bed betimes who know that a bugle will sound the réveillé at 5.30 in the morning. The end is always the same, but always comes strangely, always as a surprise. We sing a hymn, for choice a very sentimental hymn. We say a short prayer, often as rugged and unconventional as the entertainment itself. Then ‘The King.’ In these two words we announce the national anthem, and the men stand stiffly to attention while they sing. At half-past eight, by order of the supreme authorities, Sweet Lavender hut must close its doors. The end of the entertainment is planned to allow time for a final cup of tea or a last glass of Horlick’s Malted Milk before we go out to flounder through the mud to our tents. This last half-hour is a busy one for the ladies behind the counter in the outer hall. Long queues of men stand waiting to be served. Dripping cups and sticky buns are passed to them with inconceivable rapidity. The work is done at high pressure, but with the tea and the food the men receive something else, something they pay no penny for, something whose value to them is above all measuring with pennies—the friendly smile, the kindly word, of a woman. We can partly guess at what these ladies have given up at home to do this work—servile, sticky, dull work—for men who are neither kith nor kin to them. No one will ever know the amount of good they do; without praise, pay, or hope of honours, often without thanks. If ‘the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom,’ surely these deeds of love and kindness have a fragrance of surpassing sweetness. Perhaps, after all, the hut is well-named Sweet Lavender. The discerning eye sees the flowers through the mist of steaming tea. We catch the perfume while we choke in the reek of tobacco smoke, damp clothes, and heated bodies. It is not every Y.M.C.A. which is honoured with a name. Sweet Lavender stands alone here among huts distinguished only by numbers. But surely they should all be called after flowers, for in them grow the sweetest blooms of all.

_BILFRED._

BY JEFFERY E. JEFFERY.

_... Fellow creature I am, fellow-servant_
_Of God: can man fathom God’s dealings with us?..._
_Oh! man! we, at least, we enjoy, with thanksgiving,_
_God’s gifts on this earth, though we look not beyond._

_You sin and you suffer, and we, too, find sorrow_
_Perchance through your sin—yet it soon will be o’er;_
_We labour to-day and we slumber to-morrow,_
_Strong horse and bold rider! and who knoweth more?_

A. LINDSAY GORDON.

I.

In some equine Elysium where there are neither flies nor dust nor steep hills nor heavy loads; where there is luscious young grass unlimited with cool streams and shady trees; where one can roam as one pleases and rest when one is tired: there, far from the racket of gun wheels on hard roads and the thunder of opposing artillery, oblivious of all the insensate folly of this warring human world, reposes, I doubt it not, the soul of Bilfred.

His was a humble part. He was never richly caparisoned with embroidered bridle and trappings of scarlet and gold. He never swept over the desert beneath some Arab sheikh with the cry ‘Allah for all!’ ringing in his ears. He bore no general to victory, no king to his coronation. But he served his country faithfully, and in the end, when he had helped to make some history, he died for it.

It is eight years since he joined the battery—a woolly-coated, babyish remount straight from an Irish dealer’s yard. Examining him carefully we found that beneath his roughness he was not badly shaped; a trifle long in the back perhaps, and a shade too tall—but then perfection is not attainable at the government price. There was no denying that his head was plain and his face distinctly ugly. From his pink and flabby muzzle a broad streak of white ran upwards to his forehead, widening on the near side so as almost to reach his eye. The grotesquely lop-sided effect of this was enhanced by a tousled forelock which straggled down between his ears.

The question of naming him arose and some one said: ‘Except for his face, which is like nothing on earth, he’s the image of old Alfred that we cast last year.’

Now a system prevailed in the battery by which horses were called by names which began with the letter of their subsection.

‘Well,’ said some one else, ‘he’s been posted to B sub; why not call him Bilfred?’

And Bilfred he became.

Our rough-rider at the time was a patient man, enthusiastic enough over his job to take endless trouble with young horses. This was fortunate for the new-comer, who proved at first an obdurate pupil. Scientists tell us, of course, that in relative brain-power the horse ranks low in the animal scale—lower than the domestic pig, in fact. This may be so, but Bilfred was certainly an exception. It was obvious, too obvious, that he _thought_, that he definitely used his brain to question the advisability of doing any given thing. To his rebellious Celtic nature there must have been added a percentage of Scotch caution. When any new performance was demanded of him he would ask himself, ‘Is there any personal risk in this, and even if not, is there any sense in doing it?’ Unless satisfied on these points he would plead ignorance and fear and anger alternately until convinced that it would be less unpleasant to acquiesce. For instance, being driven round in a circle in the riding school at the end of a long rope struck him as a silly business; but when he discovered (after a week) that he could neither break the rope nor kick the man who was holding it, he (metaphorically) shrugged his shoulders and trotted or walked, according to orders, with a considerable show of willing intelligence. It took four men half a day to shoe him for the first time, and he was in a white lather when they had finished. But on the next and on every subsequent occasion he was as docile as any veteran.

A saddle was first placed upon him, at a moment when his attention was distracted by a handful of corn offered to him by a confederate of the rough-rider’s. He even allowed himself to be girthed up without protest. But when, suddenly and without due warning, he felt the weight of a man upon his back, his horror was apparent. For a moment he stood stock still, trembling slightly and breathing hard. Then he made a mighty bound forward and started to kick his best. To no purpose; he could not get his head down, and the more he tried, the more it hurt him. The weight meanwhile remained upon his back. Exhausted, he stood still again and gave vent to a loud snort. His face depicted his thoughts. ‘I’m done for,’ he felt, ‘this thing is here for ever.’ He was soothed and petted until his first panic had subsided; then coaxed into a good humour again with oats. At the end of a minute or so he was induced to move forward—cautiously, nervously at first, and then with more confidence. ‘Unpleasant but not dangerous’ was his verdict. In half an hour he was resigned to his burden.

Yet not entirely. Every day when first mounted he gave two or three hearty kicks. He hated the cold saddle on his back for one thing, and for another there was always a vague hope.... One day, about a fortnight afterwards, this hope fructified. A loose-seated rider, in a moment of bravado, got upon him and immediately the customary performance began. At the second plunge the man shot up into space and landed heavily on the tan. Bilfred, palpably as astonished as he was pleased, tossed his head, snorted in triumph and bolted round the school, kicking at intervals. For five thrilling minutes he enjoyed the best time he had had since he left Connemara. Then, ignominiously, he succumbed to the temptation of a proffered feed tin and was caught, discovering too late, to his chagrin, that the tin was empty. It was his first experience of the deceitfulness of man, and he did not forget it.

Six weeks later he had become a most accomplished person. He could walk and trot and even canter in a lumbering way; he answered to rein and leg, could turn and twist, go sideways and backwards; greatest miracle of all, he had been taught to lurch in ungainly fashion over two-foot-six of furze.

But he had accomplished something beyond all this. He had acquired a reputation. It had become known throughout the battery that there were certain things which could not be done to Bilfred with impunity. If you were his stable companion, for example, you could not try to steal his food without getting bitten, neither could you nibble the hairs of his tail without getting kicked. If you were a human being you could not approach him in his stall until you had spoken to him politely from outside it. You could not attempt to groom him until you had made friends with him, and even then you had to keep your eyes open. You got used to the way he gnashed his teeth and tossed his head about, but occasionally, when you were occupied with the ticklish under-part of him, he would show his dislike of the operation by catching you unawares by the slack of your breeches and throwing you out of his stall.

But there was no vice in him. He was always amenable to kindness, and prepared to accept gifts of sugar and bread with every symptom of gratitude and approval. Rumour even had it that he had once eaten the stable-man’s dinner with apparent relish. And he flourished exceedingly in his new environment. His baby roundness had disappeared and been replaced by hard muscle. He no longer moved with an awkward sprawling gait, but with confidence and precision. His dark-bay coat was sleek and smooth, his mane hogged, his heels neatly trimmed. Only his tail remained the difficulty. It was long and its hairs were coarse and curly. Moreover, he persisted in carrying it slightly inclined towards the off side, as if to draw attention to it. Frankly it was a vulgar tail. But, on the whole, Bilfred was presentable.

When the time came to complete his education by putting him in draught he surprised an expectant crowd of onlookers by going up into his collar at once and pulling as if he had done that sort of work for years. And so, as a matter of fact, he had. Irish horses are often put into the plough as two-year-olds—a fact which had been forgotten. But he would not consent to go in the wheel. He made this fact quite clear by kicking so violently that he broke two traces, cut his hocks against the foot-board and lamed himself. Since ploughs do not run downhill on to one’s heels, he saw no reason why a gun or wagon should. Persuasion was found to be useless, and for once his obstinacy triumphed. But he did not abuse his victory nor seek to extend his gains. He proved himself a willing worker in any other position, and soon, on his merits as much as on his looks, he was promoted from the wagon to the gun and definitely took his place as off leader. It was a good team; some said the show one of the battery. The wheelers were Beatrice and Belinda, who knew their job as well as did their driver, whom they justly loved. Being old and dignified they never fretted, but took life calmly and contentedly. In the centre Bruno and Binty, young, both of them, and rather excitable, needed watching or they lost condition, but both had looks. The riding leader was old Bacchus, tall and strong and honest, a good doer and a veteran of some standing. Moreover, he was a perfect match for Bilfred. All six of them were of the same mottled dark-bay colour.