January 13, 1916. 
I^AND AND WATER 
A SONG OF THE GUNS. 
By gilbert FRANKAU. 
3.-GUN - TEAMS. 
Their rugs are sodden, their heads are down, their tails are turned to the storm. 
(Would you know them, you that groomed them, in the sleek fat days of peace, 
^^■hen the tiles rang to their pawings in the lighted stalls and warm. 
Now the foul clay cakes on britching strap and clogs the quick-release ? ) 
The lilown rain stings, there is never a star, the tracks arc nvcrs of slime, 
(Vou must harness-up by guesswork with a failing torch for light, 
[nstcp-dcep in unmade standings ; for it's active-service time , 
And our resting weeks are over, and we move the guns to-night.) 
The iron tyres slither, the traces sag, their blind hooves stumble and slide ; 
They are war-worn, they are weary, soaked with sweat and sopped with rain. 
(You must hold them, you must help them, swing your lead and centre wide 
\\'hcre the greasy granite pave peters out to squelching drain.) 
There is shrapnel bursting a mile in front on the road that the gims must take : 
(You are nervous, you are thoughtful, you are shifting in your scat. 
As you watch the ragged feathers flicker orange, flame and break) 
But the teams are pulling steady down the battered village street. 
You have shod them cold, and their coats are long, and their bellies gray with the mud : 
They have done with gloss and polish, but the fighting heart's unbroke : 
We, who saw them hobbling after us down white roads flecked with blood, 
Tatient, wondering why we' left them, till we lost them in the smoke ; 
Who have felt them shiver between our knees, when the shells rain black from the skies 
When the bursting terrors find us and the lines stampede as one ; 
Who have watched the pierced hmbs quiver and the pain in stricken eyes — 
Know the worth of humble servants, foolish-faithful to their gun. 
N.B. — A Song of the Guns will be continued in our next issue. 
INTERNED IN HOLLAND. 
By a Prisoner of War. 
THESE notes are written from a forgotten 
backwater imtouciied by the hurricane of war 
that is rending the world. Hardly had we 
entered the fringe of the storm than we were 
swept as it were by an eddy into this quiet place. A 
backwater L have called it. Water still and placid lies 
all around us, with clustering reeds on the banks and in 
the summer great water lilies white and yellow lying 
lazily upon the surface. It is in a I^utch fortress that 
we are confined. A moated fortress, very old and so ill- 
designed that after one short campaign it was declared 
obsolete and since then has been used only a's a small 
depot for munitions. It was hastily ronstructed to form 
part of the defences against the invading army of Louis 
XIV., but it bore an inglorious part, being betrayed by its 
own commandant almost before a shot was lired. 
Now elm trees, seventy feet high, dark and slender, 
grow on the sunken earth ramparts. They are grouped in 
clusters on the rhomboid bastions which guarded the 
corners' of the fort. They line the banks which form a 
courtyard containing the barn-like -ijiagazines where the 
garrison is housed. Outside this courtyard, surrounded 
by a double fence of barbed wire, ^\c rough one-storied 
barracks which have been turned"'ihto our quarters. 
They arc comfortable enough 'how,' yet woefully inade- 
quate when first we arrived on' a wet day in mid-winter. 
It is not good for men to be shut off from- the world. 
The universe shrinks to the tiny island, with its barbed 
wire fences, its lights, its sentries, all ratlier, incongruous 
amid this peaceful fertile country, and eveain.the over- 
grown forsaken fortress. The mpadows with their 
clusters of puny trees, poplar, willow dhd elm,' which form 
an uneven fringe around the hdrizbri,^ sfeerA'fo us remote 
as the stars, though in measure of space only fifty yards 
of water divide them from us. 
It is a somnolent land where work proceeds method- 
ically and leisurely. It is strange to see a brown sail 
rise up apparently from the midst of the fields, for the 
canals have low banks which slope by an imperceptible 
gradient from the level of the pasture. Like the roads, 
the banks of the larger canals are often lined with trees 
whose foliage envelops all but the topmost rigging of 
the barges. The country is very flat, as though at some 
])eriod a smooth and mountainous glacier had passed 
over it, sweeping away in its course even the smallest 
hillocks. There are few hedges, but the meadows arc 
divided by waterways or large ditches. There is no 
land within view under plough. It is all pasture, and 
everywhere are herds of black and white cattle. In the 
evening it can become very still ; still as the depths of a 
great forest, and in certain lights the trees frown upon 
us like giants awakened and displeased. 
. The effects upon one are curiously paradoxical. 
They are both narrowing and broadening. Narrowing 
because a small community can be shaken to the founda- 
tions by incidents that would pass unnoticed in the 
world beyond. One is apt to fall into the smallness, the 
fiissiness, the exaggerated self-consciousness of dwellers 
in islands and small countries which hold hard to their 
peculiar characteristics. Yet it is broadening, for the 
mind becomes contemplative, as the mind of an Oriental 
to whom time is nothing, to whom it matters not whether 
a problem be solved in a year, a week or a day. Here 
one ponders over past experience and the jumbled, 
unorganised store of knowledge can be set straight. The 
vital can be separated from the trivial. One can learn 
I"? 
