Yet it was only as I left the building that I found the key to the full understanding of this perfect expression of an idea. Round the chancel is a set of bas-reliefs depicting a saint labouring among his people. But what people! They live, they speak! The relief is so deep, that some of the figures are almost in the round, and several come outside the slabs altogether. They are the people of mediæval Amiens; they are the very people who were living in the town while their great cathedral rose stone by stone to be the wonder of their city, the pride of all Picardy. Almost grotesque in their vivid humanity, they are the same people who walk outside the cathedral to-day. The master-artist, greater in his dreams than his fellow men, was yet blessed with that divine sense of humour that made him love them for their quaint smallnesses! So in Amiens I felt a double inspiration: there was man’s offering of his noblest and most beautiful to his Creator, and there was also the reminder, in the saint among the Amiens populace, that God’s answer was not a proud bend of the head as He deigned to accept the offering of poor little man, but a coming down among them, a claiming of equality with them, even though they refuse still to realise their divinity, and choose to live in a self-made suffering and to degrade themselves in a fog of war. All too quickly the month went by. The enthusiasm and interest of everybody grew in a steady crescendo, and no one, I am sure, will ever forget the impression left by the Major-General who was deputed to come and “tell us one or two things” from the General Staff. In a quiet voice, with a quiet smile, he compared our position with that of a year ago; told us facts about our numbers compared with the enemy’s; our guns compared with his; the real position in the air, the temporary superiority of the Fokker that would vanish completely and finally in a month or so; in everything we were now superior except heavy trench-mortars, and in a month or so we should have a big supply of them too, and a d--d sight heavier! And we could afford to wait. One got the impression that all our grousings and doubtings were completely out of date, that up at the top now was a unity of command that had thought everything out and could afford to wait. Later on I forgot this impression, but I remember it so well now. Even through Verdun we could afford to wait. We had all the cards now. There was a sort of breathless silence throughout this quiet speech. And when it ended with a “Good luck to you, gentlemen,” there was applause; but one’s chief desire was to go outside and shout. It was a bonfire mood: best of all would have been a bonfire of _Daily Mails_!