began to boom over our heads, and we heard again the long-drawn scream or swish of the shells, rushing on their deadly path to search out the back of the enemy’s lines in the haze yonder, and flinging confusion on his lines of communication, his supplies and reserves.  He does not reply.  He has indeed been strangely meek of late.  The reason here cannot be that he is slipping away from our attack, as is the case farther south.  The Vimy Ridge is firmly held; it is indeed the pivot of the retreat.  Perhaps to-day he is economising.  But, of course, at any moment he might reply.  After a certain amount of hammering he must reply!  And there are some quite fresh shell-holes along our path, some of them not many hours old.  Altogether, it is with relief that as the firing grows hotter we turn back and pick up the motor in the wood again.

And yet one is loath to go!  Never again shall I stand in such a scene—­never again behold those haunted ridges, and this wood of death with the guns that hide in it!  To have shared ever so little in such a bit of human experience is for a woman a thing of awe, if one has time to think of it.  Not even groups of artillery men, chatting or completing their morning’s toilet, amid the thin trees, can dull that sense in me. They are only “strafing” Fritz or making ready to “strafe” him; they have had an excellent midday meal in the huts yonder, and they whistle and sing as they go about their work, disappearing sometimes into mysterious regions out of sight.  That is all there is in it for them.  They are “doing their job,” like the airmen, and if a German shell finds them in the wood, why, the German will have done his job, and they will bear no grudge.  It is simple as that—­for them.  But to the onlooker, they are all figures in a great design—­woven into the terrible tapestry of war, and charged with a meaning that we of this actual generation shall never more than dimly see or understand.

Again we rush along the exposed road and back into the mining region, taking a westward turn.  A stately chateau, and near it a smaller house, where a General greets us.  Lunch is over, for we are late, but it is hospitably brought back for us, and the General and I plunge into talk of the retreat, of what it means for the Germans, and what it will mean for us.  After luncheon, we go into the next room to look at the General’s big maps which show clearly how the salients run, the smaller and the larger, from which the Germans are falling back, followed closely by the troops of General Gough.  News of the condition of the enemy’s abandoned lines is coming in fast.  “Let no one make any mistake.  They have gone because they must—­because of the power of our artillery, which never stops hammering them, whether on the line or behind the line, which interferes with all their communications and supplies, and makes life intolerable.  At the same time, the retreat is being skilfully done, and will of course delay us.  That was why they did it.  We shall have to push up roads, railways, supplies; the bringing up of the heavy guns will take time, but less time than they think!  Our men are in the pink of condition!”