I followed. He
walked along the communication trench after his men, and I along the
line of my silent sentries. I spoke to one or two, and then stood on the
fire-step, looking out into the night. I had the Frenchman's words in my
head: "We give a little more of France into your keeping!" It was not
these trenches only, where I stood, but all that lay out there in the
darkness, which had been given into our keeping. Its dangers were ours
now. There were villages away there in the heart of the night, still
unknown to all but the experts at home, whose names--like Thiepval and
Bazentin--would soon be English names, familiar to every man in Britain
as the streets of his own town. All this France had entrusted to our
care this night.
Such were the scenes that were quietly going on, not much noticed by the
public at home during the weeks of February and March, and such were the
thoughts in men's minds. How plainly one catches through the words of
the last speaker an eager prescience of events to come!--the sweep of
General Gough on Warlencourt and Bapaume--the French reoccupation
of Peronne.
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