"It was one of those illnesses your Army doesn't recognize officially," he told me. "It began with a sort of tired, discouraged feeling, and I used to have queer dreams. The noise of 'Big-Bang' going off made me jump like a marionette. I'd sweat and grow dizzy and my knees trembled and my stomach rose. I fell down one day and they came and took me away to the field ambulance, and after a bit they sent me down to Boulogne. I don't quite know what happened there during the first weeks. But when I got better they gave me a pretty good time--made quite a fuss of me, in fact. The colonel wanted to send me to England, but I told him how great I am on seeing this war through, and he grunted and said he'd see what he could do. When I came out I found this staff job waiting for me. It's not what I'd like exactly, but I suppose I'm getting old now. Still, we're close to the guns and I have a pretty free hand here, and can make trips to the trenches to say 'How-do' to the boys and see how things are getting along. Oh, yes; it's not so bad. But I was sorry to leave old 'Big-Bang.' I made her and I worked her, and I guess she did her bit." For a space he meditated, puffing clouds of smoke from a ten-sou cigar. Then with a start he returned to life. "Will you have a _vin blanc_, old chap? Hi, papa, _deux vins blancs_!" As he pushed back his soft cap I saw that "Big-Bang" had set its mark upon him. The hair about his temples was white as snow. "WITH OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS"--FIGHTING WITH TOMMY ATKINS _Where Men Hold Rendezvous with Death_ _Told by G. Valentine Williams, with the British Army_ Written in the field and under the eye of the censor, G. Valentine Williams presents in "With Our Army in Flanders" (Edward Arnold, London) a series of vivid war chapters differing in many respects from the current conventional accounts from the battle fronts. Mr. Williams is the _London Daily Mail_ correspondent. He tells about the babel of tongues where men gather in khaki, strange meetings at the front of long separated friends and brothers, the hunger of the big guns. I--WHERE ALL DIALECTS MEET AT BATTLE One of the most fascinating things to me about our army in France are the variations of speech. I have sometimes closed my eyes when a battalion has been marching past me on the road and tried to guess, often with some measure of success, at the recruiting area of the regiment from the men's accents or from their tricks of speech. Take the Scottish regiments, for instance. I have little acquaintance with the dialects of Scotland, but my ear has told me that the speech of almost every Scottish regiment, save such regiments as the Gordons and the Black Watch, that attract men from all over the United Kingdom, differs.