THE history of the British Empire has been written over again, and written in blood, in the valleys of the Somme, the Ancre, and the Scarpe. Tens of thousands of our noblest and best lie buried in these valleys or on the tableland of Peronne, situated between the insignificant rivers that have within the past few months earned a world-wide notoriety. No one can visit a modern battlefield without realising something of the appalling waste of war. Towns and villages have been blotted out of existence, or are marked to-day by a few unrecognisable ruins. Thanks to the efficiency of British organisation, excellent roads were quickly established right through the stricken district, and it was impossible to traverse any of them without marvelling at the obstacles overcome and the successes gained. The road, for instance, from Albert to Bapaume, through Pozieres, Le Sars, and Warlincourt, passing close by Contalmaison and Martincourt, was contested almost yard by yard, and the same thing may be said of the road that leads along the bank of the Ancre from Albert past the Leipzig Redoubt, near Thiepval and Beaumont Hamel, through Achiet-le-Grand to Bapaume, or the one from Peronne through Le Transloy. [Illustration: 'GEORGE WILLIAMS HOUSE' IN THE FRONT TRENCHES] [Illustration: A HALF-WAY HOUSE TO THE TRENCHES] It was in December 1916 that I paid my first visit to the valley of the Somme. The scene was dreary beyond description. Many villages known to us by name as the scenes of desperate fighting were a name only. Hardly a vestige of a house or cottage remained where many had been before the war. Here and there one could see the entrance to a cellar; the charred stump of a strafed tree; the remains of a garden; or a bit of a cemetery. Everything else was churned up into the most appalling mud.