"You see that white line on the hills opposite," said an officer,
opening a large-scale map.
I guessed it was a level road.
"That is the German trenches," said he. "They are five miles away.
Their gun-positions are in the woods. Our own trenches are invisible
from here."
It constituted a great moment, this first vision of the German
trenches. With the thrill came the lancinating thought: "All of France
that lies beyond that line, land just like the land on which I am
standing, inhabited by people just like the people who are talking to
me, is under the insulting tyranny of the invader." And I also thought,
as the sense of distance quickened my imagination to realise that
these trenches stretched from Ostend to Switzerland, and that the
creators of them were prosecuting similar enterprises as far north-
east as Riga, and as far southeast as the confines of Roumania:
"The brigands are mad, but they are mad in the grand manner."
We were at the front.
We had driven for twenty miles along a very busy road which was
closed to civilians, and along which even Staff officers could not
travel without murmuring the password to placate the hostile
vigilance of sentries. The civil life of the district was in abeyance,
proceeding precariously from meal to meal. Aeroplanes woke the
sleep. No letter could leave a post office without a precautionary
delay of three days.
Telegrams were suspect.
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