Since I came to France I have made it my business to visit the trenches in almost every part of the line. There are those who say: “When you have seen one trench, you have seen them all.” Of a truth, outwardly there is little enough difference between them all--the same swarm of dust-coloured figures, the same sandbags, the same timber-work, the same mud, the same strip of No Man’s Land ahead, the same devastation behind, the same noises echoing hollow all about. But to me each strip of trench is another corner of the great heart of Britain, where Britons of all stamps--the fair-haired Saxon, the darker Norman, the Scot, the Celt, from many climes, of many races--are playing the part in the work of Empire which is every Briton’s birthright to-day. The bond uniting them in the steel line which the German hordes have vainly tried to break is the companionship of the Table Round of the Empire, the bulwark of the world’s civilization against the most formidable menace ever launched by the powers of darkness. CHAPTER XI THE PRINCE OF WALES One evening, a few years ago, I stood on the platform of the _Gare du Nord_, and saw the arrival of the London train that was bringing the young Prince of Wales to Paris for a stay of a few months before going to Magdalen College, Oxford. The arrival was quite informal. There was no red carpet, no guard of honour, only a few old friends of King Edward, like the Marquis de Breteuil, with whom the Prince was going to live, and M. Louis Lépine, most Parisian of police prefects. “_Comme tout ça fait penser à son grand-père!_” one of those present said to me as the train steamed in. “_Il aimait Paris, celui-là!_” Because of his grandfather, Paris from the first opened her heart wide to the young Prince, a fair-haired slip of a boy, as I saw him that day at the _Gare du Nord_, acknowledging with just a trace of embarrassment the cordial welcome of the friends of that other “Prince de Galles.” The newspapers very chivalrously acceded to his wish that his movements should be ignored, and for a few brief months the Prince of Wales enjoyed that magic experience which everyone would give the best years of his life to be able to taste again, the first acquaintanceship with Paris. From the windows of the Breteuil mansion in the Avenue du Bois he saw spring creeping into the trees of the Bois de Boulogne, while in London winter still drearily held sway. Many a time I met him swinging along the paths of the Bois with his tutor, the tall Mr. Hansell, or caught a glimpse of him driving out with one of the young Breteuils.