The Glory of The Coming

e Germans did not call them aces in those days of the beginnings of things. The party to which I was attached spent t

rer of the Victoria Cross and of every other honour almost that King George bestows for valour and distinguished service, which means dangerous service. I have forgotten how m

modesty and the exceeding great competency which appear to be the outstanding characteristics of those who do their fighting-and, in a great many instances, their dying-in the air. It was almost as though the souls of these men had been made cleaner and as though their spirits had been made to burn with a whiter flame by reason of the purer element in which they carried on the bulk of their appoin

us war. I think sometimes that, more even than the abject stupidity of the enterprise, it is the entire taking-away of the drama-the colour of theatricalism, the pomp and the circumstance, the fuss and the feathers-that will make war an exceedingly unpopular institution for future generations, as it has been an exceedingly unprofitable if a highly necessary one for this present gene

ng sharps, for rule of thumb, for pick and shovel and the land surveyor's instruments. As the outward romance of it has vanished away, in the same proportion the amount of manual labour necessary to accomplish any desired object has increased until it is nearly all work and mighty little play-a combination which makes Jack a dull boy and makes war a far duller game th

far back behind in manual labours of the most exacting and exhausting forms imaginable. A night raid is a variety of sublimated burglary, better adapted to the temperament of the prowler and the poacher than to the upstanding soldier man's instincts. If th

brawn, plus powder, plus chilled steel. Trench work means setting a man to dig in the mud a hole that may become his grave, and frequently does. He spends his days in a shallow crevice in the eart

ryman sets up his pieces miles behind the line and fires at the indirect target of an invisible foe, without the poor satisfaction of being able to tell, with his eyes, whether he scored a hit or a miss. A sum in arithmetic is his guide an

ndmen have exchanged their horns for the handles of a litter, becoming stretcher bearers. The general wears no epaulets. He wears a worried look brought on by dealing o' nights with strategic problems out of a book. The modern thin red line is a thing done in bookkeeper's ink on a ruled form. So it goes. The bubbl

. He goes jousting in the blue lists of the sky, helmeted and corseleted like a crusader of old. His lance is a spitting machine gun. His steed is a twentieth-century Pegasus, with wings of fine linen and guts of tried steel. Thousands of env

of nothing homelier in outline or colour than the shelters-sometimes of planking, sometimes of corrugated iron, sometimes of earth-in which the

ergrown badger's nest, with nothing outwardly to distinguish it from a similar ro

o provide billets for the troops, however numerous. Instead of tents there are occasionally jumbles of makeshift barracks, and more often haphazard colonies of sheds serving as gara

mpment of a three-ring circus; the flappy canvas shields at the open side of the dromes, which being streaked and daubed with paint camouflage, enhance the carnival suggestion by looking, at a distance, like side-show banners; the caravans of trucks drawn up in line

of the Allied nations are shown most aptly, I think, in th

ry to which it belongs, but the bodies are the property, so to speak, of th

ous name or the name of a woman-perhaps the name of the aviator's sweetheart, or that of his mother or his sister possibly. But your average British airman is apt to christen his machine Ol

f have heard him with tears in his voice singing his songs of the home place and the Christmas tree and the Rhine maiden as he marched past a burning orphan asylum in Belgium; but his sense of humour, if ever he really owned such a thing, was long ago smoth

y marooned for the day at the press headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force because we couldn't anywhere get hold of an automobile to take us for a scouting jaunt along the American sector. All of a sudden a big biplane came sailing into sight, glittering like a silver flying fish. It landed in a meadow behi

over this way?" i

had very good beer at the French officers' club here. So we just ran over for half an hou

raps of his overcoat. His age I should have put at twenty-one or thereabou

latter being table d'h?te but good. En rout

the squadron since I was

efore last a squad started across the border to give Fritzie a taste of life. But just after we started the squadron commander decided the weather was too thicki

the pink cheeks, speaking. "So I just jogged across the jolly old Rhine until I come to a town, and

had been forced upon England and France by the continued German policy of a?rial attacks on unprotected and unarmed cities, made journeys from French

the wheel and the observer at the guardian machine gun, above the tangled skeins of friendly trenches; and a little farther on above and past the hostile lines, beset for every rod of the way, both going and coming, by peril of attack from antiaircraft gun and from speedier, more agile German flyers, since the bombing ai

rmany, whereas Bert affectionately referred to his machine as The Red Hen and called the same process laying an egg or two, there was no great distinction to be drawn between them. Both made mention of the most incredibly daring things in the most commonplace and casual way imaginable; both had the inquisitive nose and the incurious eye of their breed; both professed a tr