Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/159



HE English guns began it.

To the world the great battle started with the German onslaught of the morning of that Thursday, the twenty-first of March; but to Ruth, the beginning was with the English guns—the guns of the evening before, rolling and resounding over the Picardy plain.

The night seemed to have embarked upon stillness in its earlier hours. The "line"—that dim, neighboring bulwark descending from the far indefiniteness of the North Sea to approach close to the little hamlet of Mirevaux, to seem indeed to point into Mirevaux but for a twist which turned it away and deflected it, sweeping southward, and east, and south again toward the farther fastness of the Alps—the line had been absolutely quiet. A great many airplanes had been up during the afternoon, Ruth had observed as she gazed toward the line from Mirevaux; their wings had specked the sky of the twilight. When the afterglow was gone and the moon held the heavens, little colored lights flashed frequently before the stars of the east, marking where many night-flying pilots plied on their errands; but these signals seemed at first not to be for the guns. The moon illumined a drowsy Mirevaux, war-ravaged, but rewon, and dreaming itself secure again behind that barrier of earth, and men, and