AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL.

Yesterday I met the Prince of Wales in the lines. The Prince of Wales! What does that name not say to a Frenchman!

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. A small, soaking rain was falling over the dismal plateau where once stood so many smiling villages and fair woods, now ruined, whose names, immortalised by British valour, must live forever in history.

It was close on nightfall. Through the sticky, heavy mud troops and wagons crawled towards the firing line. The men, with naked chests that defied the bitter cold, sweated furiously under the load of their equipment. Horses with huge, hairy feet, mounted by Australians like so many cowboys, struggled, foaming, to drag the huge lorries through the deep ruts of the roadway.

Men from the pioneer battalions, directed by Engineers, worked with pick and shovel to drain away the water, to rebuild the fallen embankments, or to fill up boggy places. So while the guns roared, methodically and in silence the Army prepared the soil for Victory.

Suddenly, into this microcosm of the war, came a body of horsemen, climbing towards us up the slopes of the plateau. At their head rode a lad whose features were so refined and so delicate that I could not choose but remark him.

I have already met in the British battle lines several faces of this kind. They are almost feminine. They are like miniatures.

My eyes—may I be forgiven—dwelt upon this boy with a complete lack of respect. He looked between 18 and 20 years old at the most. He had cocked his cap a trifle over his left eye, and his fair head was cropped close as rabbit's fur.

"Did you recognise him?" someone asked me.

"Who?"

"The Prince of Wales."

The Prince of Wales had gone by.

It was only then that I noticed the British soldiers standing to attention and saluting the Prince with "eyes right" as he went along amongst them. The officers, too, saluted him with more ceremony than is usual. And he, as he rode slowly past, very charmingly acknowledged the salutes.

I have learned only this morning that a little farther on, at the highest part of the plateau, the Prince left his horse and—this is a thing that he is very fond of doing—joined a relieving party for a piece of its journey. He returned in the evening to the simple quarters which are his.

A Staff Captain at twenty-three, the Prince, heir to the Crown of the British Empire, is a pattern of the best soldierly qualities. He can only live happily among the soldiers, with whom he is prodigiously popular.

It is said that he would have liked to do still more.

One day he asked permission of Lord Kitchener, who was then Secretary of State for War, to perform the ordinary duties of an officer with his regiment, the Grenadier Guards. He proposed to lead his men in an advance.

But Kitchener refused absolutely, and we can imagine the valiant argument which ensued between Prince and Sirdar—the one all youth and pluck, the other concerned alone with the welfare of the Empire.

The Prince ultimately was obliged to yield to reasons of State. It was a soldier's first victory—over himself.