I remember during the war, when a "frock" visited some fighting zone, he was always very well looked after and entertained by whatever H.Q. he visited, and I was amazed on this day to find Field-Marshal Lord (p. 120) Haig and General Sir John Davidson lunching alone at the "Majestic." Lord Allenby was also lunching at another table and General Robertson at another. To me it was ununderstandable. These representatives of the dead and the living of the British Army, on the day of its glory, being allowed to lunch alone, much as they might have wished it. As far as I remember, Lord Derby gave a dinner in their honour that evening, but I am certain the "frocks" did nothing. After all, why should they fuss themselves? The fighting was over. The Army was nothing--harmless! Why should they trouble about these men? Why upset themselves and their pleasures by remembering the little upturned hands on the duckboards, or the bodies lying in the water in the shell-holes, or the hell and bloody damnation of the four years and odd months of war, or the men and their commanders who pulled them through from a bloodier and worse damnation and set them up to dictate a peace for the world? The war was over, the Germans were a long, long way from the coast or Paris. The whole thing was finished. Why worry now to honour the representatives of the dead, or the maimed, or the blind, or the living that remained? _Why?_ In Heaven's name, _why not_? I remember one day, during the Peace Conference in the "Astoria," asking a great English General about the delegates and how things were getting on, and he said: "I wish the little 'frocks' would leave it to us--those who fight know best how to make peace. We would not talk so much, but we would get things settled more quickly and better." Surely that was the truth! [Illustration: LII. _End of a Hero and a Tank, Courcelette._] [Illustration: LIII. _General Birdwood Returning to his Headquarters--Grevillers._] [Illustration: LIV. _A Skeleton in a Trench._] [Illustration: LV. _Flight-Sergeant, R.F.C._] [Illustration: LVI. _N.C.O. Grenadier Guards._] [Illustration: LVII. _Stretcher-bearers._] [Illustration: LVIII. _Man Resting, near Arras._] [Illustration: LIX. _Going Home to be Married._] [Illustration: LX. _Household Brigade Passing to the Ypres Salient, Cassel._] [Illustration: LXI. _Ready to Start._] [Illustration: LXII. _German Prisoner with the Iron Cross._] [Illustration: LXIII. _A Big Gun and its Guardian._] [Illustration: LXIV. "_Good-bye-ee._"] [Illustration: LXV. _The Chateau, Thiepval._] [Illustration: LXVI. _German Wire, Thiepval._] [Illustration: LXVII. _Thiepval._] [Illustration: LXVIII. _Highlander Passing a Grave._] [Illustration: LXIX. _M. R. D. de Maratray._] [Illustration: LXX. _A Man Thinking, on the Butte de Warlencourt._] [Illustration: LXXI. _Major-General Sir Henry Burstall, K.C.B., etc._]