"Well, darling," murmurs my father, "it's high time we were off. Wouldn't do to be late today, you know." And he laughs proudly.
Can I describe the journey to the church? I can, but I will spare you. Enough to say that I carry myself with dignity. Whether I do so in the vast solemn atmosphere of the church I am unable to say, though I will confess to a feeling almost of awe.
In deep silence we move down the aisle. The service begins. Can I repeat it? I fear not. But one passage there is which stands out prominently from the rest. It is in the form of a demand made by the clergyman. Looking steadily at my father, he exclaims:--
I am roused to a fresh interest, and with fast-beating heart I await my father's answer. It comes as a bombshell to my sensitive ears:--
And I believed that only Germans could wage war on helpless babes.
[Illustration: SPRING-TIME IN THE OFFICE.]
_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
Books dealing with life at the Front have naturally somewhat slackened in volume of late. Perhaps this accounts for some part of my interest in _Pushed and the Return Push_ (BLACKWOOD). But more must be put down to the lure of the subject, and most of all to the admirable way in which the writer, who chooses to be known as "QUEX," has dealt with it. Briefly, the book is a record of the two great sensational movements of 1918, and of the writer's experiences as an officer of an Artillery Brigade in the retreat forced upon the Fifth Army by the break through of the Germans on March 21st, and subsequently in the return push which broke the Hindenburg Lino and ended the War. The publishers say that this is the only account yet written by a participator in these happenings; I hardly think that any will appear more vivid and moving. The amazing sequence of the events with which it deals gives to the book the thrill of arranged drama, in which disaster is balanced by the triumphant ending. However unskilfully told, such a history could hardly fail of its effect; by good fortune, however, it finds in "QUEX" a chronicler able to do it justice. Simply and without apparent effort he conveys the suspense of the days before the attack (a couple of chapters here are as breathlessly exciting as anything that I have yet read in the literature of the War), the long trial of the retreat, and finally the retaliation and the ever-quickening rush forward from victory to victory that makes last autumn seem like an age of miracles. It is essentially a soldier's story, at times technical, throughout filled with the unflurried all-in-the-day's-work philosophy that upheld our armies in every change of fortune. For many reasons a volume that should find its place in any collection of the smaller histories of the Great War.