As we pass through Amiens arrangements are going on for the “taking over” of another large section of the French line, south of Albert; as far, it is rumoured, as Roye and Lagny.  At last, with our new armies, we can relieve more of the French divisions, who have borne so gallantly and for so many months the burden of their long line.  It is true that the bulk of the German forces are massed against the British lines, and that in some parts of the centre and the east, owing to the nature of the ground, they are but thinly strung along the French front, which accounts partly for the disproportion in the number of kilometres covered by each Ally.  But, also, we had to make our Army; the French, God be thanked, had theirs ready, and gloriously have they stood the brunt, as the defenders of civilisation, till we could take our full share.

And now we, who began with 45 kilometres of the battle-line, have gradually become responsible for 185, so that “at last,” says a French friend to me in Paris, “our men can have a rest, some of them for the first time!  And, by Heaven, they’ve earned it!”

Yet, in this “taking over” there are many feelings concerned.  For the French poilu and our Tommy it is mostly the occasion for as much fraternisation as their fragmentary knowledge of each other’s speech allows; the Frenchman is proud to show his line, the Britisher is proud to take it over; there are laughter and eager good will; on the whole, it is a red-letter day.  But sometimes there strikes in a note “too deep for tears.”  Here is a fragment from an account of a “taking over,” written by an eye-witness: 

Trains of a prodigious length are crawling up a French railway.  One follows so closely upon another that the rear truck of the first is rarely out of sight of the engine-driver of the second.  These trains are full of British soldiers.  Most of them are going to the front for the first time.  They are seated everywhere, on the trucks, on the roof—­legs dangling over the edge—­inside, and even over the buffers.  Presently they arrive at their goal.  The men clamber out on to the siding, collect their equipment and are ready for a march up country.  A few children run alongside them, shouting, “Anglais!” “Anglais!” And some of them take the soldiers’ hands and walk on with them until they are tired.

Now the trenches are reached, and the men break into single file.  But the occasion is not the usual one of taking over a few trenches. We are relieving some sixty miles of French line. There is, however, no confusion.  The right men are sent to the right places, and everything is done quietly.  It is like a great tide sweeping in, and another sweeping out.  Sixty miles of trenches are gradually changing their nationality.

The German, a few yards over the way, knows quite well what is happening.  A few extra shells whizz by; a trench mortar or two splutter a welcome; but it makes little difference to the weary German who mans the trenches over against him.  Only, the new men are fresh and untired, and the German has no Ally who can give him corresponding relief.