'THE DA 918. A Tidy Battlefield ~ By H. F. Gadsby ARTICLE ----- nt 2 | | | NO. IV. < When the joyriders of the world visit the scenes of the war after this bloody Armageddon is over they will probably divide battlefields into two kinds--untidy, hideously pocked amd pitted ones, like Vimy, and tidy ones like Amiens or Arras. Our Canadian part in the battle of Amiens covered & plot of ground fif- teen miles long by five miles wide== seventy-five square miles of French territory relieved of the Hun oppres- sor,--and when I saw it two weeks after the event it had been neatly: brushed and combed and was in good shape to receive company. What 1 liked about it most was its acces- sible character--rolling land, gentle valleys, woods not too thick, no riv- ers to wade, few trench systems to cross, just enough shell holes to make it interesting, and that devil's week, barbed wire, rolled up and out of the way. It was such a terrain as Welling- ton might have enjoyed at Waterloo, firm foothold and smooth going, and at the same time such a terrain as made possible the modernest engin- ery-of war--tanks little and big, and the airplanes hovering low like hawks as they circled above the con- flict. The battlefield, which begins some five miles yonder side of Ami; ens, was in faet one big wheat field, studded with hamlets and villages, before war made it'a battlefield, and it still has that gentle aspect. It does not sear the eyes and cramp the heart like the murdered landscape of Vimy and Ypres, where every foot of ground has been killed and re-killed a dozen times. = It had not been No Man's Land very long before the Ger- mans were driven back. If it had been the good brown earth would have looked more like a series of con- fluent ulcers than it does new. Over our five o'clock, tea, General Macdonald, of the setond division, showed me his little contour map of the action. A very good map in- deed--and some day a vivid souve- nir for the general's den--but it did nothing more than emphasize the bird's eye view of the hattlefleld which was already fa my mind. An orderly battlefield, window- dresser, so to speak, for visitors who can tramp over it now without get- ting their feet wet, their boots mud- dy or their breeches torn. Inder that placid earth which would fain carry in its breast nothing redder than a poppy, lie the ensanguined bodies of many thousand brave men who died for freedom's sake. The Canadians alone overwhelmed four Hun divisions and "took on" sixteen, incurring eight thousand cabualties in one short week, so that it must have been a battle of proportions. But what of that? One battle = many hundreds of battles. 'each with its trumpet tale of 'courage Be- sides the dead men are decently out of sight. It was as little Peterkin's grandfather would say,'a glorious vietory--the kind of victory we have for breakrast every morning nowa- days--so let it go at that. Nature has forgotten it already---shé has given us a day all blue and gold and shimmering radiance for our pilgrim- age. Let us look about us. "Here," saldslideut. Robert Watt, A SLUGGISH LIVER cat SED Severe Headaches The duty of the liver is to pre- pare and secrete hile and serve as a filter to the blood, cleansing it of all impurities and poisons, > Healthy bile in sufficient quantity is Nature's provisibn to sectire regu- lar action of the bowels, and When the liver is sig h {tis not working properly, an not manufacture enough bile t oroughly act on the bowels amd carry off the waste pro- ducts from the systém, hence the bowels become clogged up, the bile gets Into the blood, constipation sets in, followed by sick and bilious head- aches, coated tongue, bad breath, heartburn, water brash, bad taste in the mouth in the morning, jaundice, floating specks hefore the eyes, etc. Miss Dian Clark, Myet's Cave, Ont., writes: --*1 take pleasure in writing you concerning the good I have ve- ceived by using Milbura's Laxa-Liver Pills for a sluggish liver. When my liver 'got bad I would have severe headaches, but I got better after I had used a couple of vials of your pills." : Milburn's JaanLiver Pills gently unlock the sé¢retion," clear away all waste and effete matter by acting di- rectly oh the liver, and make the bile pass through the. howels instead of allowing it to get the blood. Milburn's Lax Pills are 25c a vial at all des - or mailed direct of price by The T. Mil- 34 Toro! Ont. ; ' their slumber is more fitful still. A.D.C,, indicating two hundred grim, black mouths, muzzling skyward, "are the guns we took." The guns have been taken in many poses. Aeroplane photographs have made them familiar to the public, but no picture speaks like the sullen silence of these Hun monsters who will raven no more They are of all sizés from machine guns to super- howitzers. Two-thirds of "the bag" fell to the Canadians, but the biggest one of all was the prize of the Aus- tralians. I pointed it out to Lieut. Watt, whose local pride was nettled. "Sheer luck " he snorted. "It happened to be on their side of the railway track." All captured guns are now under the management of & Trophies Com- mission whose duties will be 'largely simplified by the cards that Tommy leaves behind. "The Forty-Second Ontarios took this," "Property of the 10th Royals," "This goes to Toron- to," and similar instructions erisp and to the point. The one thing that will not happen to captured guns is to be beaten into plough- shares or other warful objects. They will salt the earth with their mes- sages, Every littlest town In the whole white world that fought for democracy will claim one for an or- nament and a shrine, to tell the re- motest ages what was done in the Great War and who did it. Some- where about the middle of the battle- field we glimpsed a mired tank. "Good ground for tanks here," Lieut. Watt explained, "but that fellow struck a soft spot.' Soft spot! Well, rather! Pow, ow Behemots had simply wallowed into it, snout down, tail up,--Iike a plestosaurus burrowing! It had died a hard death too--all red, blistered, shell tern. The tank crews work for twelve hours at a stretch in a temperature of 120 degrees plus pet- rol fumes so overpowering that men pot fully trained could be rendered unconscious in two hours. As it is they are often lifted out uncon- goious at the end of their day's trick, with their skins as black as coal. They are real salamanders, the tank crew. but even a salamander can't stand up to a German battery, pump- ing salvoes SERS pi nine at point blank range . Poor old behembth has got hls. I judged from Lis remains that he re- ceived more than one direct hit fair in the bowels, and that the bean fel- lows inside have been burned to a crisp. Your tank may be a little better than the wooden horse of Trop, but it's no boudoir at that, "How about the whippets?" I ask- ed. "1s it true that a whippet can catch up with a German colonel, gal- loping hell for leather. and flatten him out like a pancake?" _ "Phat sounds wide," said Lieut. Watt, "but some of these German colonels haye damned good horses. I should say that the whippet story wasn't more than twelve miles be- hind the truth." There had been hard fighting at this spot, and a neat little graveyard of white crosses looked like the har- vest. "No," sald Lieut. Watt, "these were the German lines for a year, and nat- urally they developed a little grave- yard of their own. There's always a certain number. of sudden deaths fii. the trenches you know. Our own fellows are tacked in farther back. All the battle did to this graveyard was to unbury it. z "Of course," he added, "we cover- ed them up again. We didn't like to see the poor fellows staring defeat in the face. Besides, they smelt worse than they looked." And this is the story of every grave in every battlefield. There is no rest for the weary! The dead do not win peace. After life's fitful fever At Belcourt we came across our first ruified villago--a rubbled heap, brick stide, a grey and leprous chaos. Here and there a wall stood up--- the ribs of a once happy home. Hall the church was gone. but what was Jeft spoke vilely of 'what the Huns do to churches when they are in a playful mood. They have stabled thelr horses in it--they had polluted two high altars with unnameable fil- thiness. The Cure had once had an orchard and a garden, but the Cure's orchard and the Cure's garden Dad met the fate of all orchards and garden the wat zone. reed, blasted by The ¢ 'high explosives, i were the livid hae of dying faces, Their naked branches ---- to heaven. Convulsed with [Ba "they had given up the ghost. The tormeat of their wounds had beer more than human. Thi garden was a trodden mass of litter--old boots. old tins, oll old shells->those flowers of But over against the south was one little hush and that one bush fautitéd a challenge - a red rose--a Marechal Neil, roses. A French col- it sadly. : . Monsieur," he said, No flag of peace. little flower!" And rose as it were a gal- 'who Pad Just won the]. Lieut. Watt, who as far into heart as an bE 1 caid, "the fen and . "For your To-morrow (Inscribed on a And we who live in tranquillity amid all the comforts of peace and plenty, knowing little of satrifice, nothing at all of fear of death or violence--are we worthy of the sacrifices those crosses in Flanders mutely remind us of? Are we doing our duty to our noble dead--those gallant, high- souled boys who interposed their bodies against the assault upon civilization by brutalized might? Are we living, thinking and acting as people for whom great things are being done, tremendous sacrifices made? - Are we accepting In a proper spirit of humility the they gave their To-day" cross in Flanders) bloody sacrifices and the agonies of the battlefields; the sorrows and heart aches of Canadian mothers, wives and sisters whose loved ones lie. beneath the poppies in' Flanders? Do we realize that we, each one of us, as individuals have a personal share and interest in the issue for which our boys fight, bleed and die in France. : If we do realize this; then our duty is clear--a duty to ourselves, our country, our glorious fighters, and our heroic dead--to help by every means in our power to bring Victory for our boys in battle. Buy Victory Bonds ~and Help our Soldiers Win the Issued by Canada's Victory Loan Committee 1 in co-operation with eT War the Minister of Finance jon of Canad ig he in the | : line |v rim. H but that At all events it RT field, and by now, safe on ough visit. 't eat your dead { pie while it's Pa in a u shell : ths and that 50 on Fa Psat dN be