mous tasks go to make the perfect achievement.

The factory of death advances. Sometimes it seems to stop. It is getting its breath to clear a few more yards, from one funnel to another funnel, from one ravine to the next.

Devastation at Fricourt

The place where Fricourt stood is marked by a few strands of rusted wire, vestiges of conquered enemy trenches. Albert, which was under the German guns for twenty months, is still a city. Fricourt, which was under the British guns a little more than twenty hours, is not even a souvenir of a village. The fire has devoured the last joist. The bombardment has reduced the stones to dust. Of cities overwhelmed by Vesuvius one still finds ruins after twenty centuries. Here of the barns, of the cemetery, of the church, there remains not one slate, not one beam, not one brick. Only things made of iron have resisted. Over the sea of earth the tools of the farming village rise, charred, but recognizable. At nightfall they take on strange proportionsthe souls of the peasants who handled them in other days seem to animate them. Ghosts full of menace, they take part in the war, and one might believe them new infernal machines invented to accelerate the work of death.

We follow the direction of the moving death factory. * *-* In the direction of Guillemont the machine guns are stuttering. One-half of the effective English troops are counterattacking in order to permit the other half to lengthen the factory a few hundred paces.

"Strategic truths are eternal," remarked my guide. "If the Roman legions were so long invincible, it is because the legionaries were magnificent removers of earth. Every evening, even for a rest of one night, Caesar's soldiers erected their camp, and fortified it as if they were going to live there and defend themselves for ten years. That work with the shovel was one of the secrets

of Rome's power. Certainly today vic

tory is reserved for the army that possesses the most intrepid aviators, the heaviest guns, and the bravest infantry;

but victory already belongs to the army that shall have shoveled the most earth." In Presence of the Guns

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The manoeuvre of the earth workers had led us insensibly into the kingdom where Lizzie, Woolly Bear, and Grandmother roared. But any one who expected to see" a modern battle upon arriving even at the extreme limit of the firing line would be cruelly disillusioned. In order to understand an action, it is necessary to keep at a distance, in some army quarters, often out of the range of cannon. The clear vision of a combat is gained only at the rear, however paradoxical that may seem. In proportion as the spectator approaches the holes where the killing is going on the deeds around him take on the aspect of separate acts and the horizon contracts until it is limited by the embrasure of a battlement.

On that day the eight-inch guns into whose den I had penetrated were bombarding Combles. An important business, certainly, but for a mortar pointer the bombardment of Combles or of Strasbourg is all the same thing; for the heavy artilleryman recognizes neither meadow, nor woodland, nor citadel. It is a matter of figures, distances, ready reckoners.

It was terribly hot, and the dust that rose from the battlefield had changed the radiant morning into a dull gray afternoon. Under my eyes three "eightinchers " were turning on elevated carriages that were themselves mounted on small wheels. Seen in silhouette, there was nothing beautiful about them. The rural "75" has an elegance of its own. But war is an affair of force, not of beauty. The mortars held their muzzles in the air, as if to see what was going on in front of them.

The men who served these guns, long intent upon the monotony of the invisible battle, were laboring bareheaded, in their shirtsleeves. Their motions were like those of bakers before an oven. At each discharge the gun advanced two yards, as if it meant to follow the shell. In its movement it carried along the men. Before the carriage had resumed its normal

position the empty shell was already removed and the new projectile had taken its place. A lightning flash, a roar, a slap in the face, a noise of wings in the sky! These are asphyxiating shells, the latest model, which come at $500 apiece. It is hard to count by lightning flashes, for one must be able to look in all directions at the same time. To calculate by roars would be still more impracticable, for the roar is continuous. It is indeed the "drum fire" of which the Germans speak. The most precise method is to count the slaps; at each discharge the displacement of the air administers a formidable buffet to the face of the gun

ner.

Road Marked by Graves

To reach Hardecourt our auto had only to follow the graves that marked the stages of the British advance on the right bank of the Somme. Little crosses of wood, a name, a date, and the traditional "Killed in Action." From all corners of the world they have come to die here, the children of old England. In this bloody martyrdom all the provinces of the great island are represented. The distant dominions have offered in sacrifice the most beautiful of their sons. Irish fusiliers, whose death agony is soothed by Catholic priests; brawny Highlanders, critical Welshmen, Scottish rifles whose eyes, the pupils widened by death, still preserve their eternal dream of lake and mountain; impossible Hindus, Canadians full of French enthusiasm, New Zealanders, city street gamins, elegants from Piccadilly, cockneys from Whitehall-all the races, all religions, all the social classes.

Before one of the new graves a platoon of Australian cavalry had halted. While the horses, with loose bridle, were sniffing with astonishment at this soil where not a blade of grass grows, the men were reverently bordering the humble mound with white pebbles. Elsewhere the cherished dead rest beneath armfuls of flowers or leaves.

"The man who lies here is one of our own," said the cavalry chief; "he was a colonist, like myself, in distant Queensland." And the Sergeant told us in a few words the story of that ridiculous little mortar at Hardecourt.

On the eighth day of the allied offensive five infantrymen under the orders of an officer-the same whose grave the Australians are decorating-arrived during a grenade charge at the very heart of the village of Hardecourt. Scarcely had the British installed themselves in their new position when a counterattack was launched against them by the enemy. The Huns are a thousand. Our allies are six men, cut off from the main body of their forces. As their sole means of defense they have one little mortar, half way between a catapult and a crapouillaud in size, and poorly supplied with ammunition. Impassively the five soldiers under their officer set themselves to working the little mortar with the precision and pride of artillerymen serving a siege piece. The orders come with the same fullness as in a heavy eightinch battery. A magnificent spectacle this of six men opposing the march of a whole battalion. The Germans are only 300 yards away. Suddenly the little mortar is silent.

"First pointer!" cries the impromptu artillery officer from his post of command.

"Killed, Sir," answers a voice.

The body of the first pointer, struck by a shrapnel full in the forehead, lies across the little mortar.

"Second pointer!" orders the Lieutenant. The Huns are 200 yards away. The second pointer has drawn aside the body of his comrade, and again the little cannon thunders. Not long, for in his turn the second pointer drops at his post. "Second pointer! "Killed, Sir."

"Third pointer!"

Three more times the scene is renewed. The fourth time it is the Lieutenant himself who, all his men being dead, loads, aims, and fires the ridiculous little mortar, which, crammed with small bullets, carries terror into the enemy's ranks. The resistance of the six Britishers has been such that at the very moment when the Germans thought themselves masters of the position Australian reinforcements dashed upon the scene, occupying forever the village won by the heroic folly of the old colonist from Queensland. But the

latter had paid with his life for the magnificent exploit. While he was being carried in his agony to the first-aid post the dying man could still murmur:

"You

understand? The ridiculous little mortar-we defended it to the end. It would have been shocking to abandon our battery."

After telling me this story the Sergeant added: "We shall soon be three millions of Britishers ready to do that same thing." All the indomitable tenacity of an army fighting, first as a busi-ness, then for honor, and now for the salvation of the race itself, was revealed in the words of that simple Sergeant.

In First-Line Trenches

On a punt we crossed the Somme, with its clayey banks. When we were in the middle of the current the cannonade stopped for a space of thirty seconds, during which an agonizing silence suspended all life.

Then suddenly we found ourselves in the trenches of the first line. The piledup defenses, the posts beyond posts, each section preparing a new section, all seemed to withdraw into infinity for us the moment that our guide could at last say, as we adventured our gaze between two bags of earth: "There, in front, Péronne!" A ridge of chalky earth ran, a thousand yards away, parallel to the French works. On the right, a wood. Further to the north, in a shaded depression, the imprisoned city. It lay spread out in the elbow of the Somme, where we could see its pointed roofs, its brick fortification, its marshy environs, its roads bordered with turf pits.

A new and strange emotion thrilled us. It is true, I had already looked upon cities of France across the enemy's lines, but the houses of those villages were dead things, empty of all inhabitants. Here in Péronne, whose streets and squares we can distinguish; in Péronne, which lies within reach of the voice, almost near enough to touch it, perhaps here there is French flesh and blood. Among the blue helmets who stormed Biaches day before yesterday there are some whose dear ones—their wives, their children-are in the imprisoned city.

They have been waiting and hoping there now for two years. They hope because they know. The allotment of enemy troops that traverses Péronne, the increasing number of German wounded, the din of battle approaching-all are magnificent promises and hopes. Already our batteries have lowered their curtain of fire over the road from Bussu. When will our troops enter the first reconquered French city?

But the enemy's guns are already trained upon the roofs, the streets are mined; the Crown Prince of Bavaria is preparing to defend Péronne as he defended Carnoy, Maricourt, Curlu, Herbecourt, Fay. This time again we shall deliver only stones, and to reconquer even these we shall perhaps have to destroy them ourselves. * * *

66

*

Along the trench the Captain passes. He repeats before each man: Come, old fellow, we must go into the thick of it." He says it without a tremor in his voice, but also without inflecting the first syllable more than the last. It is as monotonous and as terrible as the tac-tac of the German machine guns on the border of the wood. "Come, old man, we must go into it." A whistle sounds, and a physical thrill runs through the troop. Once outside the magic wall, all these men have again become fierce savages of the killing factory. The wave melts into the chaotic landscape. The last soldier to come out of the trench repeats, mechanically, "Come, old man, we must go into it." Those words epitomize the whole battle, the great, implacable war, which for two years has kept ten million men oscillating between the beast and divinity.

66

OUR line of trenches had been broken through by the enemy, a few rods to our right. There was a deep depression in the line

a short distance to our left, which left the trenches occupied by our battalion almost entirely cut off from the rest of the regiment, and threatened from both sides as well as the front, by the enemy.

Though the deep depression in our lines to the left was far from being a reassuring sight, it was nothing compared with the chaos that existed to our right. Here, as I said before, the enemy had succeeded in capturing a length of our trenches, and had even pushed a little beyond them, hastily digging new ones, in which

which exhaled a sickening, heavy odordismal souvenir of past conflicts-I was obsessed with the presentiment that the night was going to be marked by events of a violent nature. So, pulling my rifle alongside of me, within easy reach of my

hand, SO as to be ready for any proposition that might present itself, I drifted off into the "land of Nod," where the greater part of my comrades had preceded me.

"Aux armes! Aux armes! Stand by to the left there, boys! Here they come! Remember, boys, aim at their bellies--at their bellies! Remember, keep cool and take your time! Now, all together-one, two, three, fire! Crackck-k! Boom! S-s-s Spat! Look out! They're sneaking up on the right there. Now! Crack! Crack! Tic-tic-tic! Boom! S-s-s Spat!"

they faced our troops, who had fallen back some hundred yards.

The result of this was that our communication with our troops to the right was interrupted, except by some "boyaux," (trenches of communication,) far in the rear. Consequently, in case of attack, we would be subjected to a galling flank fire to which it would be extremely difficult to reply, as our bullets would not only strike the foe, but would to a great extent fly past them and over into our

own ranks.

It was midnight. The darkness was so intense that it seemed to press down on us like a great, suffocating weight. As I stretched out on the damp ground,

As my sleep numbed brain grasped the situation I sprang to my feet, rushing over to where I heard my Sergeant's voice snapping out order after order in his quick, sharp, incisive manner, which resembled to a striking degree the sharp, dry snap of a lash.

As I reached his side the enemy sent a long, rolling volley of riflefire in our direction, and its rumbling "crack-ckck" indicated that he was attacking, as was his custom, in great, closely packed masses. The sinister whistling" S-s-s-s!" of the flying bullets and the ugly sound

ITALIAN ALPINI CHARGING UNDER DIFFICULTIES

An Austrian Position Just Beyond the Jagged Rocks Has Been Blown Up by a Mine, and the Agile Italian Soldiers Are Pressing Forward to Capture It.

(Pach Photo News.)