But, even had it not been for the warning that was implied in Captain Godfrey’s order, I should soon have understood that we had come into a new region.  For a long time now the noise of the guns had been different.  Instead of being like distant thunder it was a much nearer and louder sound.  It was a steady, throbbing roar now.

And, at intervals, there came a different sound; a sound more individual, that stood out from the steady roar.  It was as if the air were being cracked apart by the blow of some giant hammer.  I knew what it was.  Aye, I knew.  You need no man to tell you what it is—­the explosion of a great shell not so far from you!

Nor was it our ears alone that told us what was going on.  Ever and anon, now, ahead of us, as we looked at the fields, we saw a cloud of dirt rise up.  That was where a shell struck.  And in the fields about us, now, we could see holes, full of water, as a rule, and mounds of dirt that did not look as if shovels and picks had raised them.

It surprised me to see that the peasants were still at work.  I spoke to Godfrey about that.

“The French peasants don’t seem to know what it is to be afraid of shell-fire,” he said.  “They go only when we make them.  It is the same on the French front.  They will cling to a farmhouse in the zone of fire until they are ordered out, no matter how heavily it may be shelled.  They are splendid folk!  The Germans can never beat a race that has such folk as that behind its battle line.”

I could well believe him.  I have seen no sight along the whole front more quietly impressive than the calm, impassive courage of those French peasants.  They know they are right!  It is no Kaiser, no war lord, who gives them courage.  It is the knowledge and the consciousness that they are suffering in a holy cause, and that, in the end, the right and the truth must prevail.  Their own fate, whatever may befall them, does not matter.  France must go on and shall, and they do their humble part to see that she does and shall.

Solemn thoughts moved me as we drove on.  Here there had been real war and fighting.  Now I saw a country blasted by shell-fire and wrecked by the contention of great armies.  And I knew that I was coming to soil watered by British blood; to rows of British graves; to soil that shall be forever sacred to the memory of the Britons, from Britain and from over the seas, who died and fought upon it to redeem it from the Hun.

I had no mind to talk, to ask questions.  For the time I was content to be with my own thoughts, that were evoked by the historic ground through which we passed.  My heart was heavy with grief and with the memories of my boy that came flooding it, but it was lightened, too, by other thoughts.

And always, as we sped on, there was the thunder of the guns.  Always there were the bursting shells, and the old bent peasants paying no heed to them.  Always there were the circling airplanes, far above us, like hawks against the deep blue of the sky.  And always we came nearer and nearer to Vimy Ridge—­that deathless name in the history of Britain.