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 to the southeast of us and to the northwest was a line some two hundred miles long, measuring it from tip to tip, where sundry millions of men in English khaki and French fustian and German shoddy- wools were fighting the biggest fight and the most prolonged fight and the most stubborn fight that historians probably will write down as having been fought in this war or any lesser war.