ROADS OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 16, 13 October 1917, Page 2

ROADS OF WAR

THE GREAT HIGHWAYS OF FRANCE LONG, LONG TRAILS A-WINDING (By Jt.H.,l, iu tho "Manchester Guardian.") Wo shall never forget them—those great highroads of France. To have seen them all through the year—white and blinding iu the summer, when tho heavy motor columns throw tho dust out in cleft billows before their rush; faint ami fragrant in the autumn; hewn and hacked, pitted and torn undor the grey skies of winter; running eternally on through the opening green of spring—this is to know something of tho ptrsiatence of human endeavour. By day there goes along the roads tho unending traffic of war; groat lorries laden with rations and ammunition; an occasional staff car—a little flash of red and blue and gold; long columns of men marching to or from a relief; a. sriuad of cavalry, looking as obsolete as Argonauts; the grey Red Cross cars with their woeful freights; a dispatch-rider, with bag and muffler streaming in the wind. By night the roads steal quietly by .billets and bivouacs, through little slumbering hamlets, and on to where night is as day. but with more watchful eyes. We think of tho roads as something peculiarly and intimately British. The going up thereon, for now hard on three years, of countless thousands, moving all towards tho same dim goal, has set a. consecrating seal upon them, as on the highways of British endeavour. Some we have seen go up and come back broken; some there are who have returned with the confidont foot of triumph; some who come not back at all. And as we watch the roads and see now thousands going forward every day, it is ,always somehow of these last we think; and in each road we see a via crucis on which devoted lives go up to form the ))asal sacrifice of a world]s salvation. ' In Franco one thinks in terms of roads. There is the hard but hallowed highway that must yet be beaten forward; that calls with stern urgoney of insistence every morning; there is the alluring, backward-glistening visits—tho road that leads to home. Tho first one tacitly accepts; one drives forward upon its bitter inches while singing of the second. At first the song, was'of tho "Long, long way to Tipperary"; now it is of a "Long, long trail a-winding." Always it is longlong. One remembers the roads in many moods and recalls many incidents upon them. For days the guns have roared, and then one morning it was "over the top." Soon the sad grey cars began to roll back along the roads. One stopped because of engine trouble, and we drow near to shout a word of cheer to those within. The flap was open, for tho day was hot, and ono man, half raising himself on his little shelf, asked for a cigarette. Ho inhaled tho smoke deeply, and slowly blew it out; again. Then, lying back, ha closed his eyes anp! one word came sighing from his lips—"Blighty." Wo.felt that the closed eyes were looking down the "long, long trail," and ono of us gave a half-questioning glance at tho medical n.c.o. Ho shook his head, and. answered, with tho callousness that covers multitudinous emotion, "Na poo. Pini."

Then ono will never forget how the mellow tranquillity of an autumn day on tho Sommo was rudely invaded. It was one of tho6e days and one of those places seeming as remote from war as Kcats's magic casements are remote from Cheapside. The road lay slumbering among the laden orchards of Picardy, stretching its lazy length through fields that wero white to harvest—fields in which the staunch utility of corn was jewelled with red poppies and a hiyriad little paTs blue flowers. So that ono thought of a line of Shelley quoted suddenly in a/sciitcntious speech.

Then thrusting quietly through a village and appearing round a.bond of the road came tho head of a colonial division, relieved after some of the hardest lighting of tho war, and marching back to rest billets. ......

Soon tho road, to tho farthest reach of vision, was a heaving, swaying line of men, who marched to no music. Ono horse and on foot, sonio marching steady and erect, some hanging feebly to tho tailboards of carts; some silent and reserved, somo exhorting others to courage and patienco; alt thick with tho mud of tho Sommo and white with tho dust of the road; almost all 6 ticking at pipes full or empty, they wound quietly along tho road. T;red horses and torn khaki, rumbling field kitchens, battered shrapnel helmets, faces where one might read as in a book thoughts dwelling with Ihoso who returned not—so tho road took back thoso whom, with song and music, it had sent forward as another wave in tho great sea that beats steadily against fortrcssed wrong. A command went flown the line, and tho nuiiulating column stopped suddenly. In an instant the road was clear again, and in tho corn on either side, sitting and lying, hastily removing putties and boots, the division camo to rest. ■ Soon tho field kitchens wore busy, and a hundred fires wero lightod along tho read. The men ate and drank and lay quietly down again on tho fringes of tho cornfields.'

It is told that tho natives of tho. Pacific island whero Stevenson lived built a roadway to the 6ea from tho !iouso of .tho man they loved, that in his weakness he might bo carried gently down. They called it tho Eoadway of tho Loving Hearts. A roadway ia being "built: to a vantage point whence, in times perhaps not far distant, wo shall look over a land fairer than any wo havo yet daTed to dream of. Let thoso who go up thereon go reverently, go humbly; for they will indeed be going forward upon tho given lives of those of whom it may be said that, saving others, themselves they could not save. R.H.S.