The person in authority here was a youthful and blithe lieutenant—­an Iron Cross man—­with pale, shallow blue eyes and a head of bright blond hair.  He spun one small wheel to show how his pet’s steel nose might be elevated almost straight upward; then turned another to show how the gun might be swung, as on a pivot, this way and that to command the range of the entire horizon, and he concluded the performance, with the aid of several husky lads in begrimed gray, by going through the pantomime of loading with a long yellow five-inch shell from the magazine behind him, and pretending to fire, meanwhile explaining that he could send one shot aloft every six seconds and with each shot reach a maximum altitude of between seven and eight thousand feet.  Altogether it was a very pretty sight to see and most edifying.  Likewise it took on an added interest when we learned that the blue-eyed youth and his brother of a twin balloon-cannon at the front of Laon had during the preceding three weeks brought down four of the enemy’s airmen, and were exceedingly hopeful of fattening their joint average before the present week had ended.

After that we took photographs ad lib and McCutcheon had a trip with Ingold, a great aviator, in a biplane, which the Germans call a double-decker, as distinguished from the Taube or monoplane, with its birdlike wings and curved tail rudder-piece.  Just as they came down, after a circular spin over the lines, a strange machine, presumably hostile, appeared far up and far away, but circled off to the south out of target reach before the balloon gunman could get the range of her and the aim.  On the heels of this a biplane from another aviation field somewhere down the left wing dropped in quite informally bearing two grease-stained men to pass the time of day and borrow some gasoline.  The occasion appeared to demand a drink.  We all repaired, therefore, to one of the great canvas houses where the air birds nest night-times and where the airmen sleep.  There we had noggins of white wine all round, and a pointer dog, which was chained to an officer’s trunk, begged me in plain pointer language to cast off his leash so he might go and stalk the covey of pheasants that were taking a dust-bath in the open road not fifty yards away.

The temptation was strong, but our guides said if we meant to get to the battlefront before lunch it was time, and past time, we got started.  Being thus warned we did get started.

Of a battle there is this to be said—­that the closer you get to it the less do you see of it.  Always in my experiences in Belgium and my more recent experiences in France I found this to be true.  Take, for example, the present instance.  I knew that we were approximately in the middle sworl of the twisting scroll formed by the German center, and that we were at this moment entering the very tip of the enormous inverted V made by the frontmost German defenses.  I knew that stretching away