VETERANS OF THE WAR
It was as though Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth, not in
orderly furrows but broadcast, till, horrified
by what arose,
he had emptied out the whole bag and fled. But these were no
new warriors. The record of their mere pitched battles would
have satiated a Napoleon. Their regiments and batteries had
learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine, and
in twelve months they had scarcely for a week lost direct
contact with death. We went down the line and looked into the
eyes of those men with the used bayonets and rifles; the packs
that could almost stow themselves on the shoulders that would
be strange without them; at the splashed guns on their
repaired wheels, and the easy-working limbers. One could feel
the strength and power of the mass as one feels the flush of
heat from off a sunbaked
wall. When the Generals' cars
arrived there, there was no loud word or galloping about. The
lakes of men gathered into straight-edged battalions; the
batteries aligned a little; a squadron reined back or spurred
up; but it was all as swiftly smooth as the certainty with
which a man used to the pistol draws and levels it at the
required moment. A few peasant women saw the Generals alight.
The aeroplanes, which had been skimming low as swallows along
the front of the line (theirs must have been a superb view)
ascended leisurely, and "waited on" like hawks. Then followed
the inspection, and one saw the two figures, tall and short,
growing smaller side by side along the white road, till far
off among the
cavalry they entered their cars again, and moved
along the horizon to another rise of grey-green plain.
"The army will move across where you are standing. Get to a
flank," some one said.
