For a little while our fire slackened.  It was time for our infantry attack upon the line of trenches which had sustained such a storm of shells.  Owing to the mist and the smoke we could not see our men leave the trenches, nor any sign of that great test of courage when each man depends upon the strength of his own heart, and has no cover behind which to hide any fear that may possess him.  What were those cheers?  Still the football players, or our soldiers scaling the ridge?  Was it only a freak of imagination that made us see masses of dark figures moving over that field in the mist?  The guns were firing again continuously, at longer range, to check the enemy’s supports.

So the battle went on till darkness began to creep up our hillside, when we made our way down to the valley road and took tea with some of the officers in a house quite close to the zone of fire.  Among them were the three remaining officers of a famous regiment—­all that were left out of those who had come to France in August of 1914.  They were quite cheerful in their manner and made a joke or two when there was any chance.  One of them was cutting up a birthday cake, highly emblazoned with sugar-plums and sent out by a pretty sister.  It was quite a pleasant little party in the battle zone, and there was a discussion on the subject of temperance, led by an officer who was very keen on total prohibition.  The guns did not seem to matter very much as one sat in that cosy room among those cheery men.  It was only when we were leaving that one of them took a friend of mine on one side, and said in a kind of whisper, “This war! ...  It’s pretty rough, isn’t it?  I’m one of the last men out of the original lot.  And, of course, I’m sure to get ‘pipped’ in a week or two.  On the law of averages, you know.”

A few days later I saw the wounded of Neuve Chapelle, which was a victory bought at a fearful price.  They were streaming down to Boulogne, and the hospital ships were crowded with them.  Among them were thousands of Indians who had taken a big share in that battle.

With an Oriental endurance of pain, beyond the courage of most Western men, these men made no moan.  The Sikhs, with their finely chiselled features and dreamy inscrutable eyes—­many of them bearded men who have served for twenty years in the Indian army—­ stared about them in an endless reverie as though puzzling out the meaning of this war among peoples who do not speak their tongue, for some cause they do not understand, and in a climate which makes the whole world different to them.  What a strange, bewildering mystery it must have seemed to these men, who had come here in loyalty to the great Raj in whom they had faith and for whom they were glad to die.  They seemed to be searching out the soul of the war, to find its secret.

The weeks have passed since then, and the war goes on, and the wounded still stream back, and white men as well as dark men ask God to tell them what all this means; and can find no answer to the problem of the horror which has engulfed humanity and made a jungle of Europe in which we fight like beasts.