THE COUNTER-ATTACK

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 124, 12 February 1918, Page 7

THE COUNTER-ATTACK

■ . 4 AN AUTUMN SYMPHONY OF WAR (By H. Boardman, in tho "Manchester Guardian.") The eun had gone down in the full splendour of an autumn setting, investing with a halo of opulent colours the torn roofs and truncated towers of the martyred city of A . Men gazing back from bog and traverse in this, Nature's solemn ritual hour were seized by the beauty of it, though no one spoke. At such moments the Englishman, and particularly the English soldier, mounts a double guard over his emotions lest they betray him into foolish utterance, or seeks escape in trivialities. But there was that in the present situation which made silence preferable, and there was a consolatory to these worn men in this day's glorious

close. With the poppies, whose "flushed print" could he seen out there among tho ohscene litter of "No Man'e Land," it convoyed to these men in their danger a comforting sense of nature's eternal renewal and of the essential beauty of a world gone sorrowfully awry, hut only for a little while. What matter, then, in the uplift which such thoughts gave, if it should come? What though the worst happened? After them not the Deluge, but a world in which inevitably life must move to completer harmony with this divine order of Nature.

But would it come ? . The next hour muefc decide. Twilight; was deopening into dusk. Not a gun was to bo heard ; not even a rifle shot. This uncanny quiet, after all the thunders of the day, was a strain no less than the angry antiphony of the guns. It boded ill, oue eaid, this unusual quiet. There flashed back memories of those planes. Surely, not for nothing had they tried falls with death during tho' whole of this seemingly interminable summer day. Thero was ono had flown so low over our lines that you could see pilot and observer. Beautiful, sinister, menacing, it had returned again and again, and each time guns had registered on our trenohes. Was it a- portent? 'And. with the thought came the answer. Two shells shrieking overhead broke the alienee. To ears attuned through long usage to every sound of war there was fignificance in those two reports. A signal! In that very instant hell broke loose. There was the stunning crash of 5.9's bursting in tho rear, the Winding flash of the 77's as they broke like a sea over the French; thoro was tho acrid smell of cordite, the consciousness of rocketing starlights, and: above all the terrible rafale of the enemy guns. It liad come. Now was the supreme ordeal. What wo lad gained could we hold? Difficult to think at this moment save in personal terms. And yet what was happening here was happening a mile to tho left and probably a, mile to the right. The crisis for you was the crisis for hundreds of others along that ditch, and boys from Inverness, from the Fens, and from the Northern mining counties were calling up the -uttermost resources of will to withstand the shock. Not the shock of personal onset, for that were rather to be sought—hut this terrible impact of artillery. . Night had claimed tho scene for his own, as he does all devilish work. And this was of the Devil. Minds and bodies were gripped in a tension that at times became an excruciating agony. Eyes were seared by the explosions, temples throbbed as though they would burst from the concussion of the falling projectileu. And there was the moral shock of all thn unnameoble things that were happening to that human cordon—that human cordon which must hold through it all lest all be lost. Here, there, forward , in tho saps men wero going to their lasb "stand-to-arms" ; other wore falling out bleeding and broken. .... : How long could it he endured? Though one bo preserved, something must give under this affrighting strain. What was that near by? A voice; an officer's. With willed calmness it calls "5.0.5." There is a sputtering noise like live embers falling in water, a vivid glare of light, and the rocket soars with its instant appeal to bur artillery. And tho reply is terribly swift, coolly Euro and devastating in its Volume and effect. "Here we are," it seems to say. "The guns of Britain. The tried shield of our kith and kin who stagger thero in tho crumbling trench. You counted without us. Come if you, daTe."

, A man bawls to his comrade. That you can tell by his gesticulations; you cannot hear him. Hβ points to a rifle. It is tho moment to open fire. "Come, if you dare." And in tho frenzy of notion one mercifully forgets the typhoon of shell and bullet. Almost before you havo realised it, like the passing of a summor storm, this other .storm loosed on a shaken enemy has spent itself, giving place to the trnnquility of a perfect, starry night. The ordeal is over. He dared, and he tried to come; but, as the communique will announce to-morrow, "Enemy infantry' moving against our new position at B were caught in our artillery fire and failed to reach our trenches." A great silence- seizes this distorted landscape. So quiet is it that one can hear tho cry of an owl in a near wood. The only other sound is an occasional movement of feet and a voice which whiskers in a note of nnpeal: "Gangvnv! Stretcher-bearers." / Tbo moon rises, .and thonph_ at the full does not challongo the brilliance of the stars. ■ ■ Cigarette smoking in England dates back to 1544. The great invnetus to their increased use was caused by the Crimean War, w'um numbers Vif naval and military officers adopted their method ef smokintr from the inhabitants of Russia, Turkoy, Malta, the Levant, and other parts of Europe. Nearly 10 per cent, of European flowJ ers ara scent-giving.