“. . . . The precious fluid, the hope-giving potion, the stew from the wagon lines, the last evidence of the existence on earth of any civilization or culture that the battalion will know for some days. It was to be a real stew with fresh meat, and in this case it was a triumph of the art, something to send the boys from supports into the line if not singing the merry songs of the imaginative press at least with some of the content of the gorged python. . . . .

“When the look-out saw the panting carriers coming over that greasy mixture of mud and water and desolation known as Flanders, they raised the equivalent of a cheer and hope again raised her drooping pennons. You have got to die—don’t die hungry if you can help it. To have fluked a good meal before you go is to have cheated death to the extent of having bagged a good human satisfaction under his chagrined nose. And that is so much to the good.

. . . . an article of importance in the credo of that narrow land that runs from Nieuport to the Alps—where things are as they were and things are valued as they were in the deplorable beginning of all things.”