of the sea, which ebbed over the low-lying ground below its hill, but
now looking across a wide vista of richly cultivated fields where many
hamlets are scattered among clumps of trees. One came to G. H. Q. from
journeys over the wild desert of the battlefields, where men lived in
ditches and "pill-boxes," muddy, miserable in all things but spirit,
as to a place where the pageantry of war still maintained its old and
dead tradition. It was like one of those pageants which used to be
played in England before the war--picturesque, romantic, utterly
unreal. It was as though men were playing at war here, while others
sixty miles away were fighting and dying, in mud and gas-waves and
explosive barrages.

An "open sesame," by means of a special pass, was needed to enter this
City of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside,
sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up on
pulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in a
red cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to the
occupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers were going
in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to
understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God.
Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged
colonels and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands,
red tabs, and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went
with them on their way.

Often one saw the Commander-in-Chief starting for an afternoon ride, a
fine figure, nobly mounted, with two A. D. C.'s and an escort of
Lancers. A pretty sight, with fluttering pennons on all their lances,
and horses groomed to the last hair. It was prettier than the real
thing up in the salient or beyond the Somme, where dead bodies lay in