It was among these intricate remains of trenches and dug-outs, round the fragments of the old chateau, that such things happened.  Here, and among those ghastly fragments of shattered woods that one sees to south and east—­Mametz, Trones, Delville, High Wood—­human suffering and heroism, human daring and human terror, on one side and on the other, reached their height.  For centuries after the battle of Marathon sounds of armed men and horses were heard by night; and to pry upon that sacred rendezvous of the souls of the slain was frowned on by the gods.  Only the man who passed through innocently and ignorantly, not knowing where he was, could pass through safely.  And here also, in days to come, those who visit these spots in mere curiosity, as though they were any ordinary sight, will visit them to their hurt.

* * * * *

So let the first thoughts run which are evolved by this brown and torn devastation.  But the tension naturally passes, and one comes back, first, to the victory—­to the results of all that hard and relentless fighting, both for the British and the French forces, on this memorable battlefield north and south of the Somme.  Eighty thousand prisoners, between five and six hundred guns of different calibres, and more than a thousand machine guns, had fallen to the Allies in four months and a half.  Many square miles of French territory had been recovered.  Verdun—­glorious Verdun—­had been relieved.  Italy and Russia had been helped by the concentration of the bulk of the German forces on the Western front.  The enemy had lost at least half a million men; and the Allied loss, though great, had been substantially less.  Our new armies had gloriously proved themselves, and the legend of German invincibility was gone.

So much for the first-fruits.  The ultimate results are only now beginning to appear in the steady retreat of German forces, unable to stand another attack, on the same line, now that the protection of the winter pause is over.  “How far are we from our guns?” I ask the officer beside me.  And, as I speak, a flash to the north-east on the higher ground towards Pozieres lights up the grey distance.  My companion measures the hillside with his eyes.  “About 1,000 yards.”  Their objective now is a temporary German line in front of Bapaume.  But we shall be in Bapaume in a few days.  And then?

Death—­Victory—­Work; these are the three leading impressions that rise and take symbolic shape amid these scenes.  Let me turn now to the last.  For anyone with the common share of heart and imagination, the first thought here must be of the dead—­the next, of swarming life.  For these slopes and roads and ruins are again alive with men.  Thousands and thousands of our soldiers are here, many of them going up to or coming back from the line, while others are working—­working—­incessantly at all that is meant by “advance” and “consolidation.”