"One of the good God's aeroplanes," says the Englishman. CHAPTER IV. THROUGH THE MINE AREA. In Picardy, November. A nobleman, with blue eyes and the haughty carriage that tells of ancient blood, presented us to that diabolical young creature who is making such a stir in the world to-day, and will make a good deal more before she is done: Mademoiselle Crème de Menthe. Observe the "de." She is a noble of the 1916 creation. Nothing less than a Peer and a Staff Officer might fittingly act as Master of Ceremonies to a young person of such quality. We made our bow with a civility which bordered upon that terror which nightmare alone can inspire. Consider how it would be, some mild, foggy morning, to come plump upon a Diplodocus. The scene of this presentation was an old mansion, with courtyard and park, whose gates were made illustrious by the arms of the La Rochefoucaulds. This was our first experience as war correspondents with the British Army. Our account of to-day's adventures will be no less fantastic. Programme: A Journey to the Land of Mines. We have had rain. Moving in opposite directions, the two streams of the traffic plough up the road. Commissariat lorries, motor ambulances, artillery ammunition wagons, despatch riders, the motor-cars of the Staff, and then, in the middle of this mad torrent of traffic, some country gig, creeping along at a jog-trot. The roads are a river of mud. We wallow in it frantically; we drown in unsuspected lakes. We suffer the modern equivalent of the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah. At once we find ourselves being changed into clumsy statues of clay. It is not more cars that are needed to get forward, but those Venetian boats that glide along the canals before the strokes of a curved oar. One does get on, however. And here we are at Albert already. Ah! these little towns of Picardy! The German shells have no surprises left for them. Their houses gutted from roof to cellar, their churches that the guns have chiselled to new shapes, their farms that have neither roof nor wall, and seem, with their bare beams, like huge empty cages--these sorrows no longer count. Yesterday Albert was once again bombarded. What of it? The fronts of a few more houses have crumbled into dust. The great golden Virgin, who, 100 feet in the air, leans with crossed arms from her belfry over the ruined town, has fallen forwards at a rather dizzier angle! [Illustration: 12. A MINE CRATER.] As in London or Paris, the police direct the traffic at the cross-ways and the corners of the lanes. The streets have been re-christened of late. One reads: "Oxford Street," "Cannon Street." We are here in the heart of the war zone. And in this strange country our little old French towns rub their eyes in wonder to find themselves, heretofore so insignificant, now in the very moment of their utter destruction, wakened to share the dignity of _capitals_.