The field-guns rumbled into line and each rider unslung his carbine. Putting spurs to the horses, the whole line rode past saluting our Stars and Stripes with a "_Vive L'Amerique_." Bringing up the rear two cassocked priests served to give this pageantry a touch of prophetic grimness. And yet as the cavalcade swept across the fields thrilling us with its color and its action, the nearby peasants went on spreading fertilizer quite as calm and unconcerned as we were exhilarated. "Stupid," "Clods," "Souls of oxen," we commented, yet a protagonist of the peasant might point out that it was perhaps as noble and certainly quite as useful to be held by a passion for the soil as to be caught by the glamor of men riding out to slaughter. And Zola puts this in the mind of his peasants. "Why should I lose a day? Soldiers must fight, but folks must live. It is for me to keep the corn growing." Deep down into the soil the peasant strikes his roots. Urban people can never comprehend when these roots are cut away how hopelessly lost and adrift this European peasant in particular becomes. Wicked as the Great War has seemed to us in its bearing down upon these innocent folks, yet we can never understand the cruelty that they have suffered in being uprooted from the land and sent forth to become beggars and wanderers upon the highroads of the world. FOOTNOTE: [7] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters from original sources. TALES OF THE FIRST BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE TO FRANCE _Impressions of a Subaltern_ _Told by "Casualty" (Name of Soldier Suppressed)_ This is another of the soldiers' tales of the Great War. This soldier tells thirty-six fascinating experiences in which death is defied. He describes: "The Advance to Mons"; "Sir John French"; "The Crossing of the Marne"; "The Crossing of the Aisne"; "The Jaws of Death," among his many adventures. The story here told gives his impressions on "Leaving England." It is reprinted from his volume "Contemptible," by permission of his publishers, _J. B. Lippincott Company_. [8] I--WHEN THE FIRST BATTALION SWUNG OUT No cheers, no handkerchiefs, no bands. Nothing that even suggested the time-honored scene of soldiers leaving home to fight the Empire's battles. Parade was at midnight. Except for the lighted windows of the barracks, and the rush of hurrying feet, all was dark and quiet. It was more like ordinary night operations than the dramatic departure of a Unit of the First British Expeditionary Force to France.