Not a sign of any human being could I see as I gazed over the great battlefields of France.  There was no glint of helmets, no flash of guns, no movements of regiments, no stirring of the earth.  There was a long tract of country in which no living thing moved:  utterly desolate in its abandonment.  Yet beneath the earth here, close to us as well as far away, men crouched in holes waiting to kill or to be killed, and all along the ridges, concealed in dug-outs or behind the low-lying crests, great guns were firing so that their thunder rolled across the ravines, and their smoke-clouds rested for a little while above the batteries.

The general was pointing out a spot on Hill 196 where the Germans still held a ridge.  I could not see it very clearly, or at least the general thought my eyes were wandering too much to the right.

“I will drop a shell there,” he said, and then turned to a telephone operator who was crouched in a hole in the wall, and gave an order to him.

The man touched his instrument and spoke in the mouthpiece.

“C’est la batterie?”

There was a little crackling in the telephone, like twigs under a pot, and it seemed as though a tiny voice were speaking from a great distance.

“Now!” said the general, pointing towards the crest.

I stared intently, and a second later, after a solitary thunderstroke from a heavy gun, I saw a shell burst and leave a soft white cloud at the very spot indicated by the old man at my side.  I wondered if a few Germans had been killed to prove the point for my satisfaction.  What did it matter—­a few more deaths to indicate a mark on the map?  It was just like sweeping a few crumbs off the table in an argument on strategy.

In another hole to which the general took me was the officers’ mess—­ about as large as a suburban bathroom.  At the end of the dining-table the captain was shaving himself, and laughed with embarrassment at our entry.  But he gave me two fingers of a soapy hand and said “Enchante” with fine courtesy.

Outside, at the top of the tunnel, was another group of officers, who seemed to me cheery men in spite of all the hardships of their winter in a subterranean world.  The spring had warmed their spirits, and they laughed under the blue sky.  But one of them, who stood chatting with me, had a sudden thrill in his voice as he said, “How is Paris?” He spoke the word again and said, “Paris!” as though it held all his soul.

22

There was the real spirit of old-world chivalry in a chateau of France which I visited two days ago.  This old building, with its high gables and pointed roofs, holds the memory of many great chapters in French history.  Attila the Hun came this way with his hordes, checked and broken at last, as centuries later, not far away, 100,000 Germans were checked and broken by Dumouriez and the French army of 1792 on the plain of Valmy.