you move and live. Over and above this, you have to suffer fools gladly; and fools abound. The air about you is soured with suspicion and intrigue. Your reason tells you that all this is inevitable; your philosophy may enable you to take it with a smile, but you are glad when it is over, when the frontier is crossed, and the burden is lifted from your shoulders, as it is in a quiet pleasant land like Switzerland. Your next emotion-it comes more slowly-is one of pity for those who, unlike yourself, are out of the War. You believeas we the Allied peoples rightly believe that the War is being fought for the triumph of Right over Wrong, for Liberty and Freedom, for the rights of the small and the humble, as well as for those of the great and the mighty-for the ultimate Civilisation of the World. And then, though you are in love with the quiet and the peace of a country like this that is not at war, you are glad that you do not belong to it. The spiritual is greater than the material, and it is better to die for a good cause than to live without honour. This country knows that we are fighting for its right to exist-the ideals of Liberty and Freedom it holds in common with ourselves. It is content to let us do the fighting. We do not blame its people; it is their own affair. There is no country in the world that is less resentful than ours of the neutral attitude. believe we may claim to be the most tolerant people on the face of the earth. We are con I sidered on the Continent to have carried our honesty to the verge of the quixotic; our treatment of the Greeks, for example, to the extreme of weakness; but in our hearts we are glad, whatever the price, that this War has found us in the forefront of the battle. A great people cannot live without honour. I left for Paris. The country through which the train runs to Vallorbes is almost English in its rural peace and beauty. One is in the middle of green swelling meadows, in which the freshly-cut hay lies in swathes; of dark leafy woods with the peace of evening brooding over them. At Vallorbes there is a strict custom-house examination; and at Frasnes we go through a pen, one by one, to show our passports. Here for the first time I see the old style of French soldier in his madder trousers and long blue coat, a relic of days that are as dead as the mastodon. We are in France. The sky is starry overhead, with wisps of flying cloud; the night is cold. We have a long time to wait for the overdue train. When it comes at last, with its lights shining in the darkness, its sudden rush and swirl of movement, we are sealed within it from the outer world, and pass without incident or observation across France. But in the morning the scene outside our windows is one that is culled from the very heart of this bountiful land. The sky is radiant with light, the gently undulating plain spreads from horizon to horizon, the great rivers flow placidly through the richly tilled soil, unheeding of the War. It is France at peace, smiling, relentless in her toil. We arrive at the Gare de Lyon, and I feel that I am already half in England. Two British soldiers in khaki, with their plain solid air, are poring over a paper. In the buffet two officers are phlegmatically going through an early breakfast, one with an eyeglass, the other a son of Anak. And from time to time others come and go: now an Australian soldier with his plumed hat and bandolier, racy and warlike; now a General of the same breed, burly and fresh of hue, with an officer of his Staff, a man with the slim refined face of a naval officer. There is a French officer, too, whose breast is covered with medals, which look a little odd, like those of a professional athlete, suspended on his breast. The British ribbon is more reserved. Paris is quiet, devoid of her wonted brilliancy, her air of luxury. She is not sad, but she has become dowdy, and is given over to the commonplace. The War has robbed her of her glitter and foam, the sparkle of her rings. She is a little dull. . . . When one is far away in foreign lands the prevailing doubt, the veiled distrust, of our arms somewhat settles upon one's mind; but one's spirit rises in contact with the British soldier. One knows at once that in him there still resides the greatness of his country. In these cold, unimaginative faces, under their air of reserve, there lives a quality akin to that which made the Romans the masters of the world. We make many and grievous mistakes, and have paid a heavy price for them, but we shall win through at the end, Neither in Italy nor in France have I felt this conviction so strongly as I do now that I am again in touch with the spirit of our people. The hour, too, is full of the magnetism of impending events. It is the 30th of June. The voices of the English guns are being heard afar off in our country villages and inland towns. The world is expectant; there is a stillness in the air, like that which precedes the Sirocco; the long-hoped - for advance of the British army they say is about to begin. BACK IN BLIGHTY. I arrived in England this Some of the younger men were morning, the 1st of July. Last of superb physique. It is a night in crossing from Havre finer stock this than that of I shared a big cabin with a Italy or France; more erect, dezen other men, all British lithe, vital; and unlike our and Australian officers going friends, full of fun, boyish, over on duty or short leave. chaffy. Even the old Austra lian colonel walking about in his shirt, and without his trousers, is like a boy in his cheery enjoyment and fun. The ship's officers and stewards are so brief, helpful, matter-offact, and wholly unconcerned about tips. There are many women and children. "Slept like a top," says the Highland officer with a laugh, as though the sea was the safest place in the world. So did I. cinate the eye and seize the imagination is here lost in the swirl and movement of the City the Greatest City of the World. There is so much for one to do and think of, after a long absence, in this capital of an empire, that since coming here I have all but forgotten that we are at war. And I suppose it is because of all these things that it is impossible to seize upon any one impression Havre was full of our people, and say such was London in British and Australians-big the great days of the War. strong men at every corner of Soldiers throng her streets in the old seafaring town. Its such numbers that you might lineaments were French, but think there was no battle-line the spirit that moved in it at all; there are So many was the spirit of our race. wounded men about that you The Irish sergeant of the Scots might think you had run into Guards, who stood on duty at a convalescent hospital; the the passport wicket, was a pavements are so crowded with giant, who could have carried people, the streets so dense off a gun on his shoulders. with traffic, that you might "Ladies in fursst," was his think the life of London was chief preoccupation; very dis- completely aloof from the life turbing to the closely-packed of the world and its passion queue, yet was one secretly of conflict. So many trains proud to find the old chivalry come and go, so many motors still at work. It was the first speed along the streets, the time I had noticed it between hotels are so full, that at a Salonica and Havre. first glance you might think the war was not touching the people of this country at all. There is no lack of wealth, no visible abatement in the At Southampton all went quickly, orderly, and effectively; the calm British spirit presiding over all. And then as the train moved, the soft countryside-unmatched in the world -the open fields, the fat hedges, the noble trees and sheltered homesteads, slowly deployed before my eyes. Was it five years ago, or was it yesterday, that I was here? London is so vast and complicated; so much that in some lesser space would fas expenditure of the people. not at death-grips with each ing. Then I stepped out into other across the width of the solemn street, with its Europe. And yet the war is evident at every turn. The voices of the newsboys ring with legends of Victory; the newspaper bills are big with headlines of battles won, of strongholds forced, of feats of arms, of prisoners taken by the thousands; the Roll of Honour fills the wide columns of the journals with the names of those who have died for their country, the Roll of Sorrow some of us call it. And yet again there is no mourning in the streets. You do not find here any impression of grief or loss. Those who are stricken know what is in their hearts; but they keep the knowledge to themselves. In the thoroughfares there is laughter, and a determined enjoyment of life. Upon the great bridges that span the river, upon the fringe of the great crescent of twinkling lights that marks the flow of the City and its history from the days of the Conqueror to this year of grace, lovers abound, and the tide of life and passion flows on unheeding, like the waters whispering on their way to the sea. Yet are there times when the heart almost stops beating, and one's soul is rapt in communion with the brave. I was at a theatre to-nightthe first I have been in since I arrived; and I laughed, and cried a little, with the sentiment of the play, and lived for the moment in another world of the writer's imagin veiled lights, its mystery of people, its ghost-like fantasies, each taxi-cab or motor-bus a potential instrument of death. I suppose that Venice may have left some such impression when the veiled gondolas swept by upon their business, and the shadows were dark with intrigue. Yet there, there must always have been silence, while here there was the complex music and thunder of the great city-Vaga murmura Romæ. I walked towards Trafalgar Square, where the revolving searchlights meet and intermingle in the far-flung spaces of heaven, and the flying clouds were lit from moment to moment as they swept on upon their ardent course. It was a scene of indescribable beauty, full of a strange portent of the days to come. They were seeking, one knew, for the enemy in the sky. ... And then, as if by some instinct of consolation and assurance, they came low and bathed in their lustre, transfiguring it, the slight heroic figure of The Great Captain; and it was as though he lived again; and the spirit of Nelson was there keeping watch and ward over his England. There were not very many people in the Square, but as I turned up towards Charing Cross the crowd thickened on the pavements, and I could hear the sound of cheering. It being now well on towards midnight, I wondered idly what was the occasion, when there came towards me, down the silent, almost empty street, a motor, grey and vague in its outlines, but glowing like a heart on fire, with the red symbol of the Cross. It passed, and as it went by I saw within it a Nurse bending over the shattered forms of four brave men come home again from the Wars. And after it, through the crowd that had gathered up to the walls of the station, came ambulance after ambulance full of others such as these. Some sat up and cheered as the roses fell at their feet; others lay still and silent, too broken by pain to make any response. And the mob who threw the roses, the women as they strained forward, of what were they thinking? Of Nelson and the Empire? Of the clash and murmur of history? It seemed not. "Pore fellers," said one. "I see'd 'im," said another, laughing lightly as at a show, "through the winder." "Im" was no one to her in particular, but Curiosity, being a lady, was satisfied. "Lovey," said a New Zealander, pressing his temporary girl closer to his side. "You'se a beauty," she said ardently, looking up into his bronzed face, moved by the hidden forces of life. It all comes down to that in the end. The woman loves the brave man, as in the dawn of things; and the brave man finds his compensation in being loved. Even Nelson, you know, was like that. THE BRITISH IN FRANCE. ACROSS THE CHANNEL. It is the 23rd of September, and six o'clock in the morning. The full tide of London's traffic has not yet begun to roll upon its way; the streets are still half empty; the day has hardly yet begun. The City lies grey and mauve in the breaking light; the river is veiled in mists. High up in the heavens the first rays of sunlight are painting an opal sky. I pass into Charing Cross, and the shadow of War. The platform by which the Folkestone train is waiting is crowded with officers and soldiers going to the Front, and the P. and O. passengers, manifestly well-to-do and luxurious, are seated in the Pullman cars. Week after week they go away thus to their jobs in the East,-to waiting husbands and fathers who have not seen them for years; the Commissioner's wife, the General's daughter,-to that India which draws to itself some of the best blood and brains this land can produce. It is "Business as usual" with them - Boche or no Boche, submarine or no submarine. Weekly the tide flows Eastward, and the Empire holds. I enter a third-class carriage with nine privates of the |