THE CHARNEL-HOUSE.

19th November. Evening.

On this November Sabbath the belfries of Contay, Warloy, Senlis and a dozen other villages of Picardy are sending forth through the fog their regular summons to vespers. It is very cold, and the snow which fell the other night has become foul mud, in which men, beasts and wagons flounder and splash.

The Tommies in their quarters have made a rather more careful toilet than usual, and are now gathered, in some neighbouring field or under some shed out of which a church has been improvised, to listen to the words of their chaplains. Peace, it would seem, reigns everywhere.

Only, alas! in appearance. For overpowering the voices of priests and sound of bells the guns begin their booming out a few paces away. Peace has not dwelt, this many a day, either in Englebelmer or in Mesnil, which offer to the eyes of the passer-by the spectacle of their desolated ruins, their silent belfries, their indescribable sadness. Nor does Peace dwell, assuredly, on this battlefield where you see these quagmires, these dead, bare fields that, one would say, have been trampled by generations of men; these deserted trenches that have fallen in here and there; these networks of barbed wire, to-day, happily, no longer of any service; these shattered wagons, these rusting weapons; these gun shelters which dart lightning; these parks of munitions and materials; these strayed horses; these lines of muddy, brooding men—in a word, all this wretchedness—and, over all, covering everything as with a veil, this sky that seems heavy with threats, with hostility.

Yet, before the war, few of the countrysides of France can have breathed a more sweet and perfect spirit of peace. A soldier who was here last spring, before ever men had come hither to destroy one another, told me of the delight which he took in this pleasant corner of Picardy. "It was," he said, "a landscape by Claude Lorraine."

We were halted at the head of a small valley which runs easily downwards, near Mesine, towards the Ancre, and we were looking out across the country. At our feet the river, coming from the East, turned in a gentle curve towards the South, and was lost to sight in the direction of Avelun and Albert. The stream, considerably swollen by the recent rains, wound slowly between marshes and flooded fields.

The tall poplars of the valley, stripped of their leaves as much by the bullets as by the rough weather, moved gently in the breeze. Yesterday a dozen villages saw themselves reflected in the Ancre, and clothed the neighbourhood of the river with a share of their own prosperity. They were, among others, Mesnil, Hamel, Beaumont and Miraumont on the North bank. Thiepval, Saint Pierre-Divion and Grandcourt on the South. But the same devices of man that have massacred the trees of the valley and stripped Thiepval of its forest, have levelled these fortress-villages with the ground, and it is in vain that to-day we may hope to distinguish them from the rest of this dismal country. Even as we looked, the shells of the opposing artilleries blotted out the last traces of Grandcourt. The guns, for ever the guns! They are the only sign of life in all this land of Death.

The little cemetery at Hamel, which we passed on our road, was not likely to dissipate these gloomy thoughts. In what a condition the battle has left it! It lay, unfortunately for itself, just between the two lines, English and German. But, indeed, it is no more and no less sad a sight than all that surrounds it; no more, no less than Beaumont; no more, no less than Beaucourt, to which we have now come.

A little in front of Beaucourt is a small hill, a sort of spur, lying towards the South-west. On the morning of the 13th of November it faced precisely in the direction whence the British attack was about to be launched. Even in its present state one can, from the lie of the ground and from the dÉbris which is found scattered everywhere about, form some faint idea of what the Boches had made out of this natural fortress.

The British infantry, however, never hesitated a moment to storm the place, and their impetuosity was such that in 18 minutes it was in their hands.

If you do not know the price at which the English, like ourselves, bought this victory, go out upon this advanced work of Beaucourt. Take your courage in both hands and look about you. See there that group of fallen soldiers, the glorious victors of the Ancre, who lie still untouched, by the side of the Boches whom they have dragged down with them to death, after hand-to-hand struggles that no words may describe. Looking like pilgrims clothed in homespun, the English stretcher-bearers, now grave-diggers, "tidy up" the field of battle.

Poor and dear Tommies! They have fallen with their faces to the German trench. They fought with their heads, as do ours, for there is not a shell-hole of which they have not taken advantage during their advance against their enemy. They have fought, also, like lions, since they have gained the victory.

One of them, a great, athletic-looking fellow with black hair, has fallen head forwards into a shell-hole. His poor, shattered body is drained of blood, but his face is a fiery red, as if his rage had risen there as he died.

Another, of slighter, more fragile frame, lies on his back, his legs apart, with a ball through his forehead. Close beside him are the bomb which he was about to throw and a tiny French-English dictionary. May we not say that he has witnessed with his blood to the friendship of two great nations?

Beside another, who has been hideously wounded, the wind turns over the leaves of a soldier's Bible.

But enough! My eyes can bear no more. And I hasten away from this scene, over which, like the sound of mighty organs, the great guns chant their huge and terrible chorus.

To free ourselves from this nightmare we went to visit the gunners in their shelters. It was three in the afternoon, and we had only just discovered that we had not yet lunched. A big fellow, who chattered like a magpie and was built like a Hercules, lit two candles for us, stirred the fire which was crackling in an earthen stove, spread a newspaper for our table-cloth, and offered us a seat on a case of jam-jars. Our sandwiches seemed delicious; our tea, the best in the world; our hovel, a palace; our candles, an illumination.

A joy, hitherto unknown, in being merely alive gave a priceless quality to the smallest pleasures of existence. We listened with the most intense interest and an unaccustomed delight to the talkative soldier, while he instructed us about the price of sugar in England.

Meanwhile, his battery, just beside us, went on killing Germans.

The spirit of Dickens hovered over that wretched hut.

Suddenly I noticed that my companion had fallen into a brown study, and I fancied that he was back upon that hill by Beaucourt. "Come, come!" I said. "What are you thinking about now?"

"I am thinking," the Englishman replied, "that we are bound to avoid war if we can, but that when war comes we are bound to meet it like men."

4. A FRANCO BRITISH RELIEF.