At Laventie no startling events had filled our absence. But after our return--Junction Post had not yet fallen, so that the outpost line was still in front of Rouge de Bout--developments began. On September 30 the enemy lost Junction Post to a spirited attack by the Gloucesters, the line that he had been holding for three weeks was broken, and his retreat became fast and general. After relieving the Gloucesters our companies were hard put to it to advance rapidly enough to keep touch. At last we stood upon the Aubers Ridge itself. Lille was almost in view; but at this point the Division was relieved by the 59th and sent southwards to join our armies before Cambrai, where the final issue between British and German arms was destined to be decided. Out of the closing phases of the war I feel there must be material from which historians will find that climax which so grand a conflict deserves as its termination. But I confess that I find scarcely any. After its dramatic and sinister opening the war seemed almost belittled by its tame conclusion. Years of nerve-racking experiences, the hardships, and the immutable association which towns like Ypres, Arras and Albert, and the trench-dwellings of Flanders and the Somme possessed, had indisposed the mind to receive new impressions from the last battle of the war. Patient from a hundred moves from trench to billet, from billet to trench, the British soldier accepted with characteristic resignation moves which were sweeping him to Victory. By gas, liquid fire, night-flying aeroplanes, and long-range artillery, the war had in four years demonstrated the incredible. The mere collapse, on one side, of the agencies military and political which lay behind, was in itself commonplace.