But before I left the British lines I did manage to glimpse the British Army, the mysterious sea into which fell and were swallowed up, and from which trickled the hundreds of small runlets of wounded that converged into the mighty stream of pain at Boulogne.  I passed by a number of wooden causeways over water-logged ground, and each causeway had the name of some London street, and at last I was stopped by a complicated wall of sandbags with many curves and involutions.  To “dig in” on this particular landscape is impracticable, and hence the “trenches” are above ground and sandbags are their walls.  I looked through a periscope and saw barbed wire and the German positions.  I was told not to stand in such-and-such a place because it was exposed.  A long line of men moved about at various jobs behind the rampart of sandbags; they were cheerfully ready to shoot, but very few of them were actually in the posture of shooting.  A little further behind gay young men seemed to be preparing food.  Here and there were little reposing places.

A mere line, almost matching the sand-bags in colour!  All the tremendous organisation in the rear had been brought into being solely for the material sustenance, the direction, and the protection of this line!  The guns roared solely in its aid.  For this line existed the clearing stations and hospitals in France and in Britain.  I dare say I saw about a quarter of a mile of it.  The Major in command of what I saw accompanied me some distance along the causeways into comparative safety.  As we were parting he said: 

“Well, what do you think of our ’trenches’?”

In my preoccupied taciturnity I had failed to realise that, interesting as his “trenches” were to me, they must be far more interesting to him, and that they ought to have formed the subject of conversation.

“Fine!” I said.

And I hope my monosyllabic sincerity satisfied him.

We shook hands, and he turned silently away to the everlasting peril of his post.  His retreating figure was rather pathetic to me.  Looking at it, I understood for the first time what war in truth is.  But I soon began to wonder anxiously whether our automobile would get safely past a certain exposed spot on the high road.

VI The Unique City

When we drew near Ypres we met a civilian wagon laden with furniture of a lower middle-class house, and also with lengths of gilt picture frame-moulding.  There was quite a lot of gilt in the wagon.  A strong, warm wind was blowing, and the dust on the road and from the railway track was very unpleasant.  The noise of artillery persisted.  As a fact, the wagon was hurrying away with furniture and picture-frame mouldings under fire.  Several times we were told not to linger here and not to linger there, and the automobiles, emptied of us, received very precise instructions where to hide during our absence.  We saw a place where a shell had dropped on to waste