From Albert to Bapaume, from Fricourt by Carnoy and Maricourt to Longueval and Ginchy and Le Transloy, a pleasant day's walk now. There is the incomparable Somme silence, a silence achieved by the tremendous thunderous contrast in history, a silence from the stilled hearts of the dead, a deafness and a muteness. Then when the mist disperses, and the sun lifts his awful radiance o'er the scene, there are audible the lowly orchestras of flies and bees. The rags of horses' skeletons lie on the roadway, and beside a ruined direction-post a clean-picked horse's skull has been placed on the stump of a tree. Lifting one's eyes to the view there rolls forth to the horizon vast moors empurpled here and there and with gashes of white on wan green wastes. An organised tour by car whirls past upon the road raising phantom hosts of white dust. It will do the whole Somme campaign in an hour and bring up safely at some French hotel where hot lunch and foaming beer persuade the living that life is still worth while. There was once a picture in _Simplicissimus_ of a Cook's guide showing a human skull to some tourists-- "This, sir," said he, "was a young man." It was meant for irony. But surely it is good for everyone who talks of war to go and get that thought--_this was a young man_. It does not matter that tourists whirl past without pause in a car. Let each and everyone come and dip a corner of a handkerchief in the blood of the war--for remembrance. Come to the sacrament of the young man's blood which was shed instead of yours. The road you traverse to the Somme altar is the road which hundreds of thousands of young men trod, marching to moments of destiny, moments of victory; the Manchesters to Montauban, South Africans to Delville, Royal Scots to Guillemont, the Guards to Les Boeufs, the Durham Light Infantry to the Butte of Warlencourt, the 47th Londons to Eaucourt l'Abbaye--and many others; they marched from the quiet places of the homeland and the empire, from Loos, from Laventie, from Flanders; defenders of Ypres and defenders of Arras, marching with their drums, marching with their bayonets, to Britain's quarrel and her mightiest enemy. Behind them were ranged the guns, and in front of them was Prussia. Now the desolation of Nature alone suggests what a desolation there was of men. The terrible woods are impressionist pictures of the ruined vitals of great regiments, and you can hold a forest in your mind as you would a skull in your hands and say--_This was a forest._ _This was an army._