Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/50



, in reading over what I have written concerning the commencement of Gerald Ainsworth’s pilgrimage in the smiling fields of Flanders, I feel that I too have merited the rebuke so quietly given him in those words, “They have failed.” He had lost his sense of proportion—about which another and a worthier pen than mine has written in connection with this same game of war—and I too have perhaps given those who may read these pages an unfair impression.

That bombardment of which I have told was not an ordinary one, it is true, but at the same time it was not anything very extraordinary. Considered by the men who occupied those trenches, it was the nearest approach to a complete cataclysm of the universe that can be conceived of; considered by the men who sit behind and move the pawns on the board, it was a furious bombardment of one five-hundredth of what they were responsible for. Moreover, it had failed. But it is not to be wondered at that when, some time later, Gerald was attempting