No trenches, no dug outs, no reserves. Ceaseless German attacks, rain, mud, death. And then, three or four days of icy coldness, with the bitter Arctic wind cutting the sodden, tired, breaking men like a knife. Fighting every hour, with rifles and bayonets and fists--sleepless, tired out, finished. Only a spirit which made possible the impossible supported them: only the glory of their traditions held the breaking line of Old Contemptibles to the end. And at the end--they died. . . . But their spirit lives on, undimmed, untarnished. It is the spirit of the New Armies--the Civilian Armies of Britain. They were training back in England when Clive Draycott went to the Land: they were learning the message of the old Regulars from New Zealand to Yukon. It is not learned in a day--that message: there is much watering and weeding to do before the seed can reach perfection, but the Land would not wait. . . . It was greedy then--as now; the only difference was the amount of grain available. And when Clive Draycott went to it there was very little. To God Almighty the praise. What there was, was very good. PART II THE LAND I. A DAY OF PEACE II. OVER THE TOP III. THE MAN-TRAP IV. A POINT OF DETAIL V. MY LADY OF THE JASMINE VI. MORPHIA VII. BENDIGO JONES--HIS TREE VIII. THE SONG OF THE BAYONET I A DAY OF PEACE "For the fourteenth morning in succession I rise to a point of order. Why is there no marmalade?" The Doctor glared round the breakfast table. "I perceive a pot of unhealthy-looking damson, and a tin of golden syrup, the greater part of which now adorns the infant's face. Why is there no marmalade?" "Could I remind you that there is a war on two miles up the road, my splay-footed bolus-booster?" With a grand rolling of his R's, the man who had driven a railway through the Rocky Mountains, and who now boasted the badges of a subaltern in His Majesty's Corps of Royal Engineers, let drive. "Ye come to live with us much against our will, because you're a poor homeless wanderer----" "All dressed up and nowhere to go," broke in the Doctor mournfully. "You come to live with us, I say," went on the Scotchman, "and then do nothing but criticise our food and our morals." "Heaven knows they both need it. Pass me what's left of the syrup, little one. Scrape the rest of it off your chin, my cherub, and wrap it up in a handkerchief and take it up to the trenches with you." "You're vewy wude." The junior subaltern adjusted the balance in the matter of the letter R with the Scotchman. Two months ago he had been at home--in peace time he would still have been at school. But of such mixtures is the present British Army made. "It's my face."