October ir, 1917 
LAND & %ATER 
17 
Autumn Days in Flanders 
By an Officer 
r 
TVii's vi-.'id iJhcriplioH of Flanders during the glorious 
weather which Western Europe enjoyed this autumn under 
the waxing harvest moon was' written by an officer on active 
sen ice before the weather broke and the present cold and 
rainy spell began. It forms an excellent commentarv on 
Captain Handler- Reid's drawings of the British Firing 
Line, tieo of which are reproduced on page 20 of this issue. 
A UTUMK has come to Flanders and it has come 
/^k with a kindliness, a well-disposed friendliness, 
/—A not less agreeable to the Army than to those who 
JL .^L.direct our battles. It came in the night with a 
nip in the air, with a quick keenness and freshness in the 
small hours, with a sudden brightening of the stars which 
caused dwellers in tents to arise from their beds and to lay 
an extra coat over the sleeping-bags. Next day there was a 
clear blue atmosphere, a cool breeze morning and evening, 
mid-days aji almost perfect stillness. The swallows had 
gone. They disappeared in the first days of September, 
not gregariously, a little mysteriously, without a noticeable 
grouping along roof-tops or on- telegraph wires. They were 
just gone — gone from the land of dykes and ditches and an 
atmosphere curiously disturbed, gone to a world of perjietual 
sunshine, of exotic things, of azure skias. 
There comes to Flanders about this time a certain golden 
dreaminess of atmosphere which is the nearest to beauty 
that the tlat countries ever know. Fen-dwellers, those who 
live on flats and broads or beside far-stretching merest will 
know this — dwellers in tlie eastern English counties. No 
magnificence of flaming woods or of moimtainous purple 
lieath or of gorse-strewn commons, or of panoramic contrast. 
No bounteous spread of a late harvest or richness of the 
rolling plains. Instead, there comes a film of deepest blue 
and misty gold, a certain rich, lingering, yet fading quality 
of sunlight that blots out misery and horror, that discovers 
U'autv in squalor and desolation, that conveys the fancy of 
some ultimate land wherein humanity shall rest at last. 
And because the tracks and the roads are at their driest, 
and becau^ discomforts are least, and because the worst 
horrors of the year are probably over, the soldiers, too, like 
this time .the best. True, never far away, is the l)eck')ning 
spectre of winter — he of the grim, grey,- and mud-lirown 
habit, whose \isag'e is desolation, whose heart is colder than 
stone. But. the private soldier, never a man who looks 
too far ahead, lives in and for the present which is his safe- 
}^iar<l and saKation ; for the man who allowed himself to 
dread w<»uld perish early ; and if he lingers, p)cor fellow, in 
the self-deception that " the war will be over* l>efore Christ- 
mas," that " the Germans won't face another winter "- 
it is testimony to his magnificent incurable optimism, it is 
jjart of his curious simplicity and pathos. 
Looking out of a windo-.v, one glimpses a scene that would 
gladden the hearts of those to whom war is a tragedy un- 
relieved, whose nearest and dearest out here are as the lost 
and the damned for ever wrestling in a kind of Purgatorv. 
The October sunshine streams in through open windows, 
lighting up cheerfully this farmhouse room which might 
otherwise look a little ding\-. A fading flowery wallpaper, a 
ciiest of drawers of dull polished mahogany, a great dark 
clothes cupboard, three loeds with spotless sheets showing, 
Two of them tented [with the queer white cribs to l)e 
found in all these farmhouses ; a figure of the Virgin- in an 
elaborate (and hideous) white cardboard shrine beneath a 
glass case ; one or two faded oleographs of sacred subjects 
on the walls ; low beams supporting a very low ceiling — 
this is the interior.' It is exceptionally comfortable, ex- 
ceptionally clean, but in other resjx-cts precisely representative 
of every other French or Belgian farmhouse. 
Outside is the courtyard with farm buildings on three 
sides. Ducks and poultry make the place lively with their 
quacking and cackling ; "from the bvTc comes th^ lowing of 
cows, comes also the farmer who has been milking -a sonr- 
looking man, but polite withal, and good-humoured like 
most of his race. The wife is there too, a lougii kindly 
female, whose hands are never idle. They live hard, these 
people, to judge by appearances. Of a military aspect there 
is nothing but the sentry trampinij up and down jiis post. 
The billet-guard lounge outside the farm, which is their 
guard-room. A man, clad only in shirt and trousers, lies at 
lull lengtii dozing in the pleasant sunshine ; another is asleep 
in the same garli and attitude, and I think I have never seen 
such an expression of perfect content as rests upon his face ; 
others are playing football in the meadow opposite, their 
shouts and laughter float in on the sunbeams Hke those that 
came from plav-grounds of a half-forgotten boj'hood. Be- 
yond is a wide, flat vista of little fields poplar-lined, of hedge- 
rows studded with curiously-pollarded oak-trees, of small 
marshy streams vv'hose outline is discovered by a line of 
crooked willows, of thatched and brilliant red-roofed farm- 
houses peering from poplar-groves, and here and there an 
orchard and here and there a chinch spire. It is a monotonous 
landscape, but a restful after the world of shell-holes and 
desolation. • 
Here is no war. Aeroplanes go droning overhead on their 
missions to and from the line. \\'e have field days — a sort of 
Olympic game. By night you may see the anti-aircraft 
shrapnel bursting far away to the eastward. The other 
evening, many miles distant, a captive balloon could be seen 
slowly falling in flames like a sheet of burning paper. By 
night, too, criss-crossed and interlaced, countless searchlights 
throw white beams across a dim purple jewelled sky. 
But as you move off the roads toward' " the line," there 
comes a monotony far deeper, a wealth of activity far more 
same and unvarying than the landscape of Northern F^rancc. 
That landscape changes as soon as the frontier is crossed, 
the little grassy fields give place to a semi-suburban country, 
a succession of plots and lots, of cabbages, vetches, potatoes, 
hops, roots, clover, and close cultivation. The villages and 
, towns are not beautiful — no rest for the eye anywhere. And 
from the paved tree-bordered main roads comes the turgid 
grinding brawl of the motor traffic, a worrying medley of 
sounds which has not ceased since August, 1914, which will 
not cease until the great armies fade at last into the grey 
FTanders mist. , 
Day and night, night and day, winter, spring, summer, 
and autumn,.it g^s on, this hwit and hurry of the traffic to 
riMuind lonely Londoners of well-remembered lighted streets 
in the ciieerful early dusk. 
And as you move onward with the tide of lorries, the 
waggons, and the long lines of moving traffic, you come to a 
yet deeper monotony, to a monotony yet more changeless, 
after the endless camps, the endless horse and mule-lines, 
the endless swarming troops and khaki, the empty hu^s 
of houses and skeleton villages, you come to the vast crater- 
field — to use an apt (jerman expression — the old brown 
• battlefields. Thitherward we all go, and autumn brings no 
change, for no change is possible — it is perpetual winter 
there. But stay ! Is it winter when the bright October sun- 
shine rises over Houthulst, lighting splendidly the promised 
land beyond this grim, stern-named valley of Braen- 
beck, and tired outposts siiake the dew from their clothing, 
and German smoke rises from German fires beyond the 
stream, and night is past. 
Cajytain Persius, the well-known Naval writer in the Berliner 
Tagehlatt. expressed this view of submarines towards the end of last 
month : " In spite of all our enemies' boastful attempts to prove 
that the submarine menace Ls slight, and in spile of the enor- 
mous and increasing difficulties which beset our submarine 
crews, the belief of the C.erman people remains unshaken and 
unsliakable, and they know that in the end. when the requisite 
quantity- of submarine material and men have gone into action. 
Great Britain's wish to continue the war will be so paralysed 
that there will be a reasonable prospect of peace. The reports 
of our .\clnriralty Staff, wliich reach us almost daily, cau.se us to 
gaze with constant admiration on those heroic souls, who are 
lighting in home and foreign waters for the weal of the Father- 
land, sometimes on, and sometimes under the water, but always 
looking death in the face. We also remember with gratitude those 
who are producing the.se complicated instruments. Only bv 
the comlfination of personal and material forces of the most 
speciali-sed kind can we attain iiltimate success by means of these 
mast modern weapons, who.se destructive capacitv. so far as war 
and merchant shipping are concerned, is astonishing the world 
and opening a way to entirely new methods in naval warfare." 
|cocci.cs 
I WWO-SCfiCCNS 
aL* WINDOWS 
^^^ 
• THE ONLY 
SAFETY CLASS 
