Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/255

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WHERE MEN ARE LIKE ANTS
217


Germans and British had taken the air to-day. Some one suggested that it mightn't be a bad plan to go home, but the spectacle fascinated. The rest of us begged for a few minutes more. We wanted, I think, to see one of these airmen show some sign of fear. As long as we watched they persisted in their scouting, contemptuous of the pretty white clouds that appeared as if from nothing all about them.

“It's a marvel they're not hit," the foreign office man cried.

"So it is," Williams answered. "It takes young men for that work, young men in whom recklessness is born."

For a long time we remained, glancing from the scouts to the trenches where black geysers spouted with an increasing frequency, forgetting for a time the possibility of a slight elevation of a single gun which might send a geyser spouting in the midst of our little group.

"Good God!" somebody burst out. "I can't believe there are men where those shells are falling. This thing makes men seem like ants."

We went at last, reluctant to leave this spectacle of death in which the victims remained always hidden.

Driving along the base of the hill we passed a large cemetery. Wooden crosses stretched in