They both circled low over the town for some time. Then the
German machine started east with Garros in pursuit. They have gone out
of sight.
* * * * *
War is not all grey and grim and hideous. It has its lighter moments.
The more terrible a situation the more keen is human nature to forget
it for a time. Men play between shells in the trenches. London,
suffering keenly, flocks to a comedy or a farce as a relief from
strain. Wounded men, past their first agony, chaff each other in the
hospitals. There are long hours behind the lines when people have tea
and try to forget for a little while what is happening just ahead.
Some seven miles behind the trenches, in that vague "Somewhere in
France," the British Army had established a naval air-station, where
one of its dirigible airships was kept. In good weather the airship
went out on reconnoissance. It was not a large airship, as such things
go, and was formerly a training ship. Now it was housed in an
extemporised hangar that was once a carwheel works, and made its
ascent from a plain surrounded by barbed wire.
The airship men were extremely hospitable, and I made several visits
to the station. On the day of which I am about to write I was taken
for an exhaustive tour of the premises, beginning with the hangar and
ending with tea.
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