It was
staggering in its enormity, in its detail, and in its activity. Yet
beyond our sphere in the British section of the western front there
was the French front, larger than ours, stretching right through
France, and all their roads were crowded with the same traffic, and
all their towns and villages were stirred by the same activity and for
the same purpose of death, and all their hospitals were crammed with
the wreckage of youth. On the other side of the lines the Germans were
busy in the same way, as busy as soldier ants, and the roads behind
their front were cumbered by endless columns of transport and marching
men, and guns and ambulances laden with bashed, blinded, and bleeding
boys. So it was in Italy, in Austria, in Saloniki, and Bulgaria,
Serbia, Mesopotamia, Egypt. . . In the silence of Amiens by night,
under the stars, with a cool breath of the night air on our foreheads,
with a glamour of light over the waters of the Somme, our spirit was
stricken by the thought of this world-tragedy, and cried out in
anguish against this bloody crime in which all humanity was involved.
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