Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/172

 infantry now was advancing—ground sloping so slightly hereabouts that, but for the shadows, it would have seemed flat. But the morning sun of March was still circling low, making all bright a strip where shells, in enormous number, erupted; just short of this strip, the sunlight ceased sharply in a shadow which did not move; the bright strip therefore was the eastern slope of a hill and the shadow was its western descent—a slope where, at this moment, the English must be attempting a stand.

Gerry gazed to the right to try to find and, with his eyes, follow the line which ran from this hill; but he could discover none; he glanced to the left and failed there also to discern support for the English soldiers on the hill. Surely there must have been support of some sort thereabouts; but the Germans had overwhelmed or swept it back. Germans—German infantry in mass, Germans deployed, German guns engaged and German guns moving forward followed by their trains—Germans possessed the ground before that sunlit slope and on its right and left.

He looked farther away to the south and to the north; and he could witness the truth which already he had been told. The "line," in the sense in which one had known the line for three years, was swept away—first, second, third, and all supporting systems of defense; attempts to form new lines behind the old had failed. Open field battle, swift and Napoleonic, was established; for this battle the Germans had gathered men by the hundred thousands, guns by the thousand while the English here had—well the remnants of brigades and divisions which here and there held to the slope of a hill.