Evening star., 1932-11-13
Continued From First paEe.l

in q network Of green, as shrinking
creatures of the forest might lie with
beating hearts, till suddenly, with
breath of flame, to bark out death.
| They sprawled there in their death
throes-wheels in air-their once smok-
| ing muzZles buried in the earth.
| The screens of rusheS that so long
had sheltered the passage of the troops
| we're torn and bleached by months OF
rain and sun. They swung back and
forth on the long stretching wires as
, clothes on a line. 1t was like coloS-
sal and diabolical workshop turning out
| toys for some atrocious game. Here at
| last the secrets were laid bare-the
make-believe, the trickery, the f1endish
success. These things were an amaze
ment and every moment in the front
of ones mind. This extraordinary race
! of beings bending OF a sudden all their
| talent and ingenuity into the distort-
ing and masquerading of nature into
game of death. A host of men who
but now had moved across that leprous
plain, who had travelled into regions
and experiences totally strange and in
| comprehensive and apart. Behind was
left their playground and their work
shop, the tools laid down. 1t was as if
Scmething paralyzing, some great ele-
mental force, had swept across that
blistered field, had caught and crystal
lized great game in full swing, had
petrif1ed its action
1t was an empty world for leagues
about-not birds note, not the whim-
per Of a beast. It was incomprehensi-
BILE. One looked afar over the undula-
tions of that vast plain-there was not
breath. And yet everywhere was the
evidence of intense action, of energy
and frenzied haste; all the marks of
human and recent habitation. Never
was an empty desert so teeming with
lifc-the passionate effort and the mad
, ness, the surging forward and the
shouting, and the intolerable pushing
| back with the rage and the stumblings
! and desperate sobbing, the coughing
Sighs, and death.
Ones eardrums were splitting with
the burstings and the tumult and the
roar, and the sibilant whistling past of
death. One walked unsteadily up and
down the gray craters, what with the
rocking and the roar. And always was
the mirage hanging hazy as a cloud
above the plain-the extraordinary IL
lusion Of the presence of millions of
men in the smoky blue fading off into
the skyline or slipping low upon the
earth in khaki color-like mud. There
were an uneasiness and bewi1der-
meEt-of not seeing, but feeling very
distinctly, the soft upheaval and move
mcnt of the earth, of the consciousness
Of men under ones feet terrifically dig
ging with smothered and imperceptible
noises, deceptive and to be confounded
with the mysterious and underground
stretchings Of nature.
1t had been thus for all those years
an empty plain for leagues about, with
far in the distance and hardly per-
ceptible the shadow of Verdun when
the sun shone down in the heat of the
Summer or when the snow fell white
and silently all day long. There was
always that motionless blank plain
lying in between the towns and the
belching horrors of the forts Of Vaux
| and Douaumont.
There was nothing to be seen but the
emptiness and the long, wide plains
stretching away to the horizon on every
side-an extraordinary panorama. There
was nothing at all for human eyes to
detect-keen eyes with the vision
strengthened by glasses of amazing
power. This fight was between in
visible foes. There was the element OF
something uncanny-of something to