turning to Aleppo in the autumn, I encountered Meissner Pasha- who had come up the Euphrates by arabanah from Bagdad - and had the pleasure of another evening in his company. Almost his first question, on hearing where I had been, was, 'What do you think of the Hedjaz Railway?' And in reply I took from my pocket the manuscript of an article I had just completed and was about to dispatch to the Railway Age Gazette of New York, on the railroads of Syria and Palestine, and indicated the following paragraph:

'Although it still bears evidencein solidly constructed culverts and bridges and well-run levels of the skill of the distinguished engineer who built it, the Hedjaz line, opened scarcely half a decade ago, has deteriorated to a point where it has no rival for the title of "The Worst Run, and the Worst Run-Down Railway in the World." Most of its engines - their boilers eaten out by the alkali water are on the scrap-heap, and the rest are on their way there. The trains, nominally run on the constantly varying Arab time, can rarely be depended upon to leave even their termini within an hour or two of the minute scheduled. All in all, the much vaunted "Pilgrim's Railway" rivals the remains of Baalbek for the completeness of its ruin, failing to come up to the latter only on the score of picturesqueness.'

"That about epitomizes my impression of the Hedjaz Railway as it is today, your Excellency,' I added, 'and I might say further that, if it has ever to be put in shape for that little operation against Egypt which we discussed in Mesopotamia, the cleaning-up job will be on a scale to make Hercules's labor with the Augean Stables look like a sideshow.'

It was a flippant, not to say a rude, speech, and I regretted it the moment it had passed my lips. Meissner's reply,

however, was 'more in sorrow than in anger.'

'I don't wonder that the Hedjaz Railway seems a joke to you, or to any foreigner, or to any but myself who have spent some of the best years of my life in the building of it. So perhaps you will find it hard to believe me when I say that its steady destruction - I can use no other word- under the laissezaller policy of the Turks has been to me the nearest approach to a tragedy I have ever known. Less than five years ago, I turned over to the Ottoman government one of the best built railways Asia had ever known, and they have made of it - yes, you have used the right word—a ruin. Do you wonder that I refused to undertake the construction of the Bagdad Railway until the Porte had agreed to operate it, after completion, under German management?

As for having to employ it for operations against Egypt (there would be no use in denying to you after what you have seen of where it runs, that strategic considerations were not lost sight of in keeping it so far from the coast and the dangers of a sea raid), if that contingency ever arises, why, we will simply have to make out the best we can with it. There is no other line of communications available - assuming of course that sea-control were in the hands of the enemy. But please believe me when I say that, from the bottom of my heart, I hope that contingency may never arise.'

I met Meissner Pasha more or less casually on several other occasions during my subsequent travels in Asiatic Turkey, but at no time did I hear him say, nor yet have I ever had authentic word of his doing, aught to indicate that personally at least he was not entirely sincere in the sentiments expressed that evening in Aleppo regarding a possible attack upon Egypt

from Turkey. I have of course always known that, like all the other Germans in the Near East, he was chained for life to the Kaiser's war chariot, and it is, therefore, with no surprise that I read in the late Berlin papers that he is directing the railway preparations for the long-heralded advance on Suez. There can be no doubt that he is doing the best he can with the facilities at his disposal, and it may be taken for granted that Meissner's best-because he is trusted by the Turks and Arabs and has the faculty of getting on with them will be a good deal more than any other German could accomplish under the circumstances. But deep in his heart he knows that, however good his best is, it will not be good enough, for the task ahead of him is far more nearly prohibitive than it was at the time he told me that an indispensable condition precedent to its success was a double-track railway between Sinai and the Bosporus. Not only is there no double track-except for considerable sidings

along any portion of this tenuous line, but even single-track communication is still unestablished through the Taurus and Amanus mountains. Practically all of the food, and every bit of the munitions, of an army operating against Suez will have to break bulk at least twice and be portaged over what are now snow-clogged passes of considerable altitude, and after that be worried along a zigzag route to Palestine over lines which, though connecting, are not of uniform gauge, and were, up to the outbreak of the war, under German, French, and Turkish management respectively. Then will come the trans-shipment to the light desert railways in the rear of the army. To tinker this sorry patchwork into an efficient

line of communications for a modern army is the task set for Meissner Pasha and his engineers, and there is no doubt that they will 'do the best they can' at it, however far that best would seem foredoomed to fall short of what would be necessary for anything approaching

success.

It might also be pointed out that the actual military problem of attacking Suez-according to the views outlined by Meissner Pasha as being those of the German strategists of three years ago has become an incomparably more difficult one. The 'diversions' in North Africa and the Middle East have failed utterly to materialize, while, on the other hand, the active coöperation of India and Australia with Great Britain has become a fait accompli. With undisputed sea-control, the ability of Britain to concentrate overwhelming numbers for the defense of Suez is greater than ever before, while more important still, perhaps - the vaunted superiority of Teutonic personnel and matériel has been proved a myth on every field of Europe. Even with the way clear between Germany and Constantinople, Suez is safer to-day than it was at the outbreak of the war.

For the resolute and energetic Meissner Pasha, the consolation obtained through being able to restore the ruin of the Hedjaz Railway will probably be a good deal more than offset by the realization that the words he spoke in 1912 regarding the consequences of a Turko-German-Egyptian adventure hold good with added force to-day; and, moreover, that the worst of the alternatives he conceded at that time-the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire seems in process of inevitable fulfillment.

I

We were wet and tired and cold and hungry, for we left the train miles back of the firing-line and had been marching through the rain since early morning. But as the sergeant said, 'A bloke standin' by the side of the road watchin' this 'ere column pass would think we was goin' to a Sunday-school picnic.' The roads were filled with endless processions of singing, shouting soldiers. Seen from a distance, the long columns gave the impression of imposing strength. One thought of them impersonally, as battalions, brigades, divisions, cohesive parts of a great fighting machine; but when our lines of march crossed when we halted to make way for each other-what an absorbing pageant of personality! Each rank was a series of intimate pictures. Everywhere was laughing, joking, singing, a merry minstrelsy of mouth organs. The jollity in my own part of the line was doubtless a picture in little of what was happening elsewhere. We were anticipating the exciting times just at hand. Gardner, who was blown to pieces by a shell three days later, was dancing in and out of the ranks singing,

'Oh! won't it be joyful!
Oh! won't it be joyful!'

Mac, who had less than a week to live, was throwing his rifle in the air and catching it again in sheer excess of animal spirits. Three rollicking lads, all of whom we buried during the week in the

same shell-hole, under the same wooden cross, stumbled along with an exaggerated show of utter exhaustion, singing,

'We never knew till now how muddy mud is, We never knew how muddy mud could be.' And little Sammy P., who had fibbed bravely about his age to the recruiting officers, trudged contentedly along, his rifle slung jauntily over his shoulder, munching army biscuit with the relish of an old campaigner. Several days later Sammy said good-bye to us, smiling bravely through his tears, and made the journey back along the same road

this time in a motor-ambulance. And as I write, he is hobbling about a London hospital ward, one trouser leg pathetically empty.

I remember that march in the light of our later experiences, in the light of the official report of the total British casualties at the battle of Loos. Sixty thousand British lads killed, wounded and missing! Marching four abreast, a column of casualties fifteen miles long! I see them plodding cheerily through the mud, their faces wet with the rain, ‘an' a bloke standin' by the side of the road would think they was goin' to a Sunday-school picnic.'

I was marching with the sergeant -a favorite with the boys. They respected him as a soldier and liked him as a man. He was in a talkative mood.

'Lissen to them guns barkin'! We're in for it this time, stryght!' Then turning to the boys behind, —

"Ave you got yer wills made out,

you lads? You're a-go'n' to see a scrap this time, an' it ain't a-go'n' to be no flea-bite, I give you my word!'

'Right you are, sergeant! I'm leavin' me razor to 'is Majesty. 'Ope 'e'll tyke the 'int. I don't like to see Royalty with 'air on their fyces.'

'Strike me pink, sergeant! You gettin' cold feet?'

"Less sing 'im "I want to go 'ome"! Get 'im to cryin' like a byby!'

'W'ere's yer mouth organ, Ginger?' 'Right-O! Myke it weepy now! Slow march!'

'I want to go 'ome! I want to go 'ome!

Jack Johnsons, coal-boxes and shrapnel, O Lor'!
I don't want to go in the trenches no more.
Send me across the sea

W'ere the Allemand carn't shoot me!
Oh my! I don't want to die!

I want to go 'ome!'

It is one of the most plaintive and yearning of soldiers' songs. 'Jack Johnsons' and 'coal-boxes' refer to two greatly dreaded types of high explosive shells. More than half of the boys who sang it to the sergeant on this occasion were killed within a fortnight.

'Wyte,' the sergeant said, smiling rather grimly; 'just wyte till we reach the end of this 'ere march! You'll be singin' that song out o' the other side o' yer fyces.'

We halted in the evening at a little mining village, and were billeted for the night in houses, stables, and even in the water-soaked fields, for there was not sufficient accommodation for all of us. With a dozen of my comrades I slept on the floor in the kitchen of a miner's cottage, and listened far into the night to the constant procession of motor-ambulances, the endless tramp of marching feet, the thunder of guns, the rattle of windows, and the sound of breaking glass.

The following day we spent in cleaning our rifles, which were badly caked

with rust, and in washing our clothes. We had to put these still wet into our packs, for at dusk we fell in, in column of route, along the village street, and our officers told us what was before us. I remember how vividly and honestly one of them described the situation.

'Listen carefully, men! We are moving off in a few minutes to take over captured German trenches in the neighborhood of Loos. No one knows yet just how the land lies there. The reports we've had are confused and rather conflicting. The boys you're to relieve have been having a hard time. The trenches are full of dead. Those who are left are worn out with the strain, and they need sleep. They won't want to stop long after you come in, so you must n't expect much information from them. You'll have to find out things for yourselves. But I know you well enough to feel certain that you will. From now on you'll not have it easy. You'll have to sit tight under a heavy fire from the German batteries. You'll have to repulse counter-attacks, for they'll make every effort to retake those trenches. But remember, you're British soldiers! Whatever happens, you've got to hang on!'

We marched off on a road nearly a foot deep in mud. It had been churned to a thick paste by thousands of feet and by all the heavy wheel-traffic incident to the business of war. The rain was still coming down steadily; it was pitch-dark, except for the reflected light on the low-hanging clouds of the flashes from the guns of our batteries and those from the bursting shells of the enemy. Every few moments we halted to make way for long files of motorambulances, which moved as rapidly as the darkness and the awful condition of the roads would permit. I counted twenty of them during one halt, and then stopped, thinking of the pain of the poor fellows inside, their wounds

wrenched and torn by the constant jolting and pitching. We had vivid glimpses of them by the light from flashing guns, and of the Red Cross attendants at the rear of the cars, steadying the upper tiers of stretchers on either side. The heavy garrison artillery was by this time far behind us; but batteries of field artillery were concealed in the fields and in the ruins of houses on every side. They were firing at a tremendous rate. The big shells from the larger guns to the rear went over us with a hollow roar like that of an express train heard at a distance. They exploded several miles away with a sound of jarring thunderclaps.

In addition to the motor-ambulances there was a constant stream of outgoing traffic of other kinds: dispatchriders on motor-cycles, feeling their way cautiously along the side of the road; ammunition-supply and battalion-transport wagons, the horses rearing and plunging in the darkness. We approached a crossroad and halted for some batteries of field pieces moving to pass to new positions. They clattered by on the slippery cobbled road, the horses at a dead gallop. In the red lightnings of gun-fire they looked like a series of splendid sculptured groups.

We moved on and halted, moved on again, stumbled into ditches to get out of the way of headquarters cars and motor-lorries, jumped up, and pushed on. Every step through the thick mud was taken with an effort. We frequently lost touch with the troops ahead of us and had to march at the double to catch up. I was fast getting into the despondent, despairing frame of mind that often follows physical weariness, when I remembered a bit of wisdom in a book by William James which I had read several years before. He had said, in effect, that men have layers of energy, reserves of nervous force which they are rarely called upon to use but

which are, nevertheless, assets of great value in times of strain. I had occasion to test the truth of this statement during that night march and at intervals later, when I felt that I had reached the end of my strength. And I found it to be practical wisdom which stood me in good stead on more than one occasion. How, I wonder, did Professor James learn it?

II

We halted to wait for our trench guides at the village of Vermelles, about three miles back of our lines. The men lay down thankfully in the mud, and many of them were soon asleep, despite the terrific noise. Our batteries, concealed in the ruins of the houses, were keeping up a steady fire, and the German guns were replying almost as hotly. The weird flashes lit up the shattered walls and revealed men asleep, with their heads thrown back over their pack sacks, their rifles leaning across their bodies; others standing in attitudes of suspended animation. The noise was deafening. One was thrown entirely upon his own resources for comfort and companionship, for it was impossible to converse. While we were waiting for the order to move, a homeless dog put his cold nose into my hand. I patted him and he crept up close beside me. Every muscle in his body was quivering. I wanted to console him in his own language, but I knew very little French, and I should have had to shout into his ear at the top of my voice to make myself heard. When we marched on I lost him, and I never saw him again.

There was a further march of two and a half miles over open country the scene of the great battle. The terrain was a maze of abandoned trenches, and was pitted with shell-holes. We crossed what had been the first line of British trenches which marked the