I carried away the impression of a kind and distinguished gentleman, who, in the midst of the greatest crisis in history, could find time to dictate a message of thanks to those he knew were neutrals only in name. CHAPTER II THE MUD TRENCHES OF ARTOIS AMIENS, October, 1915. In England it is "business as usual"; in France it is "war as usual." The English tradesman can assure his customers that with such an "old-established" firm as his not even war can interfere; but France, with war actually on her soil, has gone further and has accepted war as part of her daily life. She has not merely swallowed, but digested it. It is like the line in Pinero's play, where one woman says she cannot go to the opera because of her neuralgia. Her friend replies: "You can have neuralgia in my box as well as anywhere else." In that spirit France has accepted the war. The neuralgia may hurt, but she does not take to her bed and groan. Instead, she smiles cheerfully and goes about her duties--even sits in her box at the opera. As we approached the front this was even more evident than in Paris, where signs of war are all but invisible. Outside of Amiens we met a regiment of Scots with the pipes playing and the cold rain splashing their bare legs. To watch them we leaned from the car window. That we should be interested seemed to surprise them; no one else was interested. A year ago when they passed it was "Roses, roses, all the way"--or at least cigarettes, chocolate, and red wine. Now, in spite of the skirling bagpipes, no one turned his head; to the French they had become a part of the landscape. A year ago the roads at every two hundred yards were barricaded. It was a continual hurdle-race. Now, except at distances of four or five miles, the barricades have disappeared. One side of the road is reserved for troops, the other for vehicles. The vehicles we met--for the most part two-wheeled hooded carts--no longer contained peasants flying from dismantled villages. Instead, they were on the way to market with garden-truck, pigs, and calves. On the drivers' seat the peasant whistled cheerily and cracked his whip. The long lines of London buses, that last year advertised soap, mustard, milk, and music-halls, and which now are a decorous gray; the ambulances; the great guns drawn by motor-trucks with caterpillar wheels, no longer surprise him. The English ally has ceased to be a stranger, and in the towns and villages of Artois is a "paying guest." It is for him the shop-windows are dressed. The names of the towns are Flemish; the names of the streets are Flemish; the names over the shops are Flemish; but the goods for sale are marmalade, tinned kippers, _The Daily Mail_, and the _Pink 'Un_. "Is it your people who are selling these things?" I asked an English officer. The question amused him. "Our people won't think of it until the war is over," he said, "but the French are different.