So it was in Italy, in Austria, in Saloniki, and Bulgaria, Serbia, Mesopotamia, Egypt... In the silence of Amiens by night, under the stars, with a cool breath of the night air on our foreheads, with a glamour of light over the waters of the Somme, our spirit was stricken by the thought of this world-tragedy, and cried out in anguish against this bloody crime in which all humanity was involved. The senselessness of it! The futility! The waste! The mockery of men's faith in God!... Often Palmer and I--dear, grave old Palmer, with sphinx-like face and honest soul--used to trudge along silently, with just a sigh now and then, or a groan, or a sudden cry of “O God!... O Christ!” It was I, generally, who spoke those words, and Palmer would say: “Yes... and it's going to last a long time yet. A long time... It's a question who will hold out twenty-four hours longer than the other side. France is tired, more tired than any of us. Will she break first? Somehow I think not. They are wonderful! Their women have a gallant spirit... How good it is, the smell of the trees to-night!” Sometimes we would cross the river and look back at the cathedral, high and beautiful above the huddle of old, old houses on the quayside, with a faint light on its pinnacle and buttresses and immense blackness beyond them. “Those builders of France loved their work,” said Palmer. “There was always war about the walls of this cathedral, but they went on with it, stone by stone, without hurry.” We stood there in a long silence, not on one night only, but many times, and out of those little dark streets below the cathedral of Amiens came the spirit of history to teach our spirit with wonderment at the nobility and the brutality of men, and their incurable folly, and their patience with tyranny. “When is it all going to end, Palmer, old man?” “The war, or the folly of men?” “The war. This cursed war. This bloody war.” “Something will break one day, on our side or the other. Those who hold out longest and have the best reserves of man-power.”