A Visit to Three Fronts, June 1916 | Page 7

beside us. For a moment
we have a front seat at the great world-drama, God's own problem play,
working surely to its magnificent end. One feels a sort of shame to
crouch here in comfort, a useless spectator, while brave men down
yonder are facing that pelting shower of iron.
* * * * *
There is a large field on our left rear, and the German gunners have the
idea that there is a concealed battery therein. They are systematically
searching for it. A great shell explodes in the top corner, but gets
nothing more solid than a few tons of clay. You can read the mind of
Gunner Fritz. 'Try the lower corner!' says he, and up goes the
earth-cloud once again. 'Perhaps it's hid about the middle. I'll try.' Earth
again, and nothing more. 'I believe I was right the first time after all,'
says hopeful Fritz. So another shell comes into the top corner. The field
is as full of pits as a Gruyère cheese, but Fritz gets nothing by his
perseverance. Perhaps there never was a battery there at all. One effect
he obviously did attain. He made several other British batteries
exceedingly angry. 'Stop that tickling, Fritz!' was the burden of their
cry. Where they were we could no more see than Fritz could, but their
constant work was very clear along the German line. We appeared to be
using more shrapnel and the Germans more high explosives, but that
may have been just the chance of the day. The Vimy Ridge was on our
right, and before us was the old French position, with the labyrinth of
terrible memories and the long hill of Lorette. When, last year, the
French, in a three weeks' battle, fought their way up that hill, it was an
exhibition of sustained courage which even their military annals can
seldom have beaten.
And so I turn from the British line. Another and more distant task lies
before me. I come away with the deep sense of the difficult task which
lies before the Army, but with a deeper one of the ability of these men
to do all that soldiers can ever be asked to perform. Let the guns clear
the way for the infantry, and the rest will follow. It all lies with the

guns. But the guns, in turn, depend upon our splendid workers at home,
who, men and women, are doing so grandly. Let them not be judged by
a tiny minority, who are given, perhaps, too much attention in our
journals. We have all made sacrifices in the war, but when the full story
comes to be told, perhaps the greatest sacrifice of all is that which
Labour made when, with a sigh, she laid aside that which it had taken
so many weary years to build.

A GLIMPSE OF THE ITALIAN ARMY
One meets with such extreme kindness and consideration among the
Italians that there is a real danger lest one's personal feeling of
obligation should warp one's judgment or hamper one's expression.
Making every possible allowance for this, I come away from them,
after a very wide if superficial view of all that they are doing, with a
deep feeling of admiration and a conviction that no army in the world
could have made a braver attempt to advance under conditions of
extraordinary difficulty.
First a word as to the Italian soldier. He is a type by himself which
differs from the earnest solidarity of the new French army, and from the
businesslike alertness of the Briton, and yet has a very special dash and
fire of its own, covered over by a very pleasing and unassuming
manner. London has not yet forgotten Durando of Marathon fame. He
was just such another easy smiling youth as I now see everywhere
around me. Yet there came a day when a hundred thousand Londoners
hung upon his every movement--when strong men gasped and women
wept at his invincible but unavailing spirit. When he had fallen
senseless in that historic race on the very threshold of his goal, so high
was the determination within him, that while he floundered on the track
like a broken-backed horse, with the senses gone out of him, his legs
still continued to drum upon the cinder path. Then when by pure will
power he staggered to his feet and drove his dazed body across the line,
it was an exhibition of pluck which put the little sunburned baker
straightway among London's heroes. Durando's spirit is alive to-day, I
see thousands of him all around me. A thousand such, led by a few

young gentlemen of the type who occasionally give us object lessons in
how to ride at Olympia, make no mean battalion. It has been a war of
most