back again. They took to banking it up on the sides, and what had once been a path became a nine-inch bath of slime into which one fell at night. And as fast as they removed it the mud welled up again in the center of the road. Tons and tons of road metal were laid down: the bottomless pit engulfed them all and asked for more. The surface grew no higher nor drier nor more level. To this day the problem of that road is still unsolved.

It was not the violence of the traffic which caused the trouble: it was the volume and the continuity. All day and most of the night the two streams flowed past one another, or more often stood stationary for an hour at a time, held up by a skidding lorry a mile away or some wagon Idriver who had halted in the middle of the stream. Every kind of man and vehicle could be seen. The bulk were heavy lorries, hard to handle, fighting desperately for a sure footing on the crown of the road. Sometimes an unusually bad hole would jerk the steering wheel out of control, and the whole affair would sink into the mud at the side. Then the back wheels would revolve madly; mud would fly and tempers would break. Sometimes non-skid chains or judiciously applied timber would save the wreck, and the stream would flow on, more congested than ever. More often it was a case of waiting for a "caterpillar" to come along and tow the lorry out. "caterpillar" will jerk a 12-inch howitzer gun-carriage as lightly as a man throws a ball from hand to hand, and a three-ton lorry is nothing to it. Mixed up with the lorries, and doing more to impede the column than anything else, were the wagons and limbers. Their specialty was tortuous driving: they were always seeing openings which did not exist and making a dash for them. Then, amid terrific cursings, wheels would

For a

lock and mules would kick, and when the drivers and the military police had thoroughly aired their respective views of each other the status quo would be recovered. For the transport horse or mule is the slowest thing that moves on the roads: a walking man, even a "marching" man, can easily overtake them: hence in a single column the whole has to move at the rate of the G.S. wagon. This weighs, so it is said, on the minds of the drivers, and they become very touchy and have to assert their position very firmly. This at least is the only plausible explanation yet put forward of their truculent and aggressive attitude.

These are the solid elements of the column. Once in single file, nothing except a miracle gives them a stretch of open road; their position is immutably fixed till they come, to their journey's end. But in between them, around and behind and in front, flit all the more mobile units. Staff motorcars, some with the flag flying that denotes the presence of a general, always get a clear road. Police salute them respectfully and hustle other traffic to the side; other units also salute, with a glance of envy at their easy passage, or something worse as the joyous A.S.C. driver scatters the mud at thirty miles an hour and men with nerves frayed by a long bombardment have been known to swear bitterly at a sudden and unexpected blast from a Klaxon horn. Then come the cars of the lesser stars, not so obsequiously received, but still making rapid progress; even the little two-seater wriggles through the press somehow. Occasionally a battery rumbles by, or the parts of a huge howitzer, each on its own carriage, making the whole road and the adjacent houses tremble, and cleaving great furrows in the sludge. Along with everything, acting as a kind of

filling to whatever gaps still remain, are chance pedestrians, dispatch riders running all sorts of risks, but getting through at all costs, and French civilians, with skirts kilted and tongues chattering; they are of an incredible cheerfulness as a rule, but sometimes you will see an old woman waiting to cross the road, with a solemn, wistful look, longing for the days when Méaulte was a quiet French village, with no noise but the pleasant voices of the guests in the café and the rumbling of the hay wagons in the streets.

Such is the pandemonium which "roads" mean to the infantry. They are used to marching with full pack for long distances: it is not that which wears them out: it is the constant checks-sudden starts. Like everyone else, they have their fixed place in the column, and it is impossible for each file to look ahead and see when the check is coming. The first they know of it is that they bump into the file in front of them, and the process goes on the length of the company, as railway trucks bump each other when they are being shunted. Of course, there is great variety. In nothing is the discipline and morale of a regiment so apparent as in its marching, and a platoon that keeps swinging and singing through the worst mud and the most complicated traffic is one that will give the Boche serious trouble a few miles farther on. it is on coming out of the trenches that the strain tells. Up in the line a man is keyed up to stand a bombardment, and there is a fierce joy in getting to close quarters with a bayonet. But when the relief is over, and the regiment is on its way for four or five miles to rest billets, the stimulus is lacking, the pack seems doubly heavy, and the road is very hard to feet softened by three or four days of wearing gumboots in the mud

But

of the trenches. In twenty-four hours, with a bath, a shave, and clean kit, these will be different men: for memory is mercifully short in this war, and the comforts or discomforts of the moment are the things that count. But in this case "c'est le dernier pas qui coûte," and it is not hard to tell from these men's faces what they have been through.

Farther on the roads get clearer, but worse. It depends, or depended, on the enemy's artillery. Names of places change according to the progress of the attack. "Suicide Corner" and "Death Valley" are now but memories: a child might walk along them; but once infantry went along them in small detachments only, wagons galloped there in defiance of routine orders, and lorries did not stop to consider the holes in the road or the chance of a broken spring. In a lorry you can never hear a shell coming: you keep one foot hard on the accelerator, if there is one, open the throttle as wide as possible, and trust to luck. The sternest task of all was to bring back a motor ambulance on this road. With stretcher cases inside there can be no thought of self, no wild dash for safety. A sudden jolt may kill a man as surely as a shell. There is nothing for it but courage and resignation and a careful skirting of shell holes. The A.S.C. have not got all the "cushy" jobs.

Nowadays the congestion is much relieved by light railways, which can be laid at great speed, and will carry trucks propelled by engine or by hand. The "Deca" track (short for Decauville) is dear to the hearts of all who have to transport shells, timber, or rations. They have funny little engines, looking as if they had escaped from the London Tube, each with its bearded French driver, a master of repartee in both languages, and a terror to argue. The "Deca" solves many problems:

it lightens

"fatigues" enormously. To pull a handcart full of bricks for two miles and walk back is a hardship. But to push the bricks on a "Deca" truck and then to ride back on the down grade, getting off to push by the side when speed slackens, is to get back to youth and the joys of the switchback railway at Blackpool or the White City. Decidedly the "Deca" is a success.

No romance in all this, you will say. I am not so sure. Not much now, perhaps, and certainly there is a danger of writing high falutin' nonsense about the joy with which men go up to the trenches or advance to the atThe Saturday Review.

tack. But romance is essentially retrospective, especially to the Briton who hates showing emotion on romantic or dramatic occasions. But retrospect softens the hard edges, falsifies the picture, if you will, but also brings out many high lights and pleasant colors that a realistic memory alone would have missed. The romance is there, though we cannot grasp the vision at the time, and only see "through a glass, darkly" in calmer years. But still we are bound to continue the search, for if only material benefits follow from this war we shall have fought in vain.

The declaration of the independence of Albania under the protection of Italy, which has just been made by the Italian General in command of the troops of occupation on the Epirote side of the country, will recall the extraordinary events that OCcurred in that unfortunate country shortly before the war, which many have doubtless forgotten in the greater events that have happened since. Albania, which had been joined to the Ottoman Empire rather as the result of a trick than as the outcome of conquest, since the son of the last of her kings, the famous Scanderbeg, was betrayed by the Venetian Republic to the Sultan of the day, though she was the most loyal of all the Balkan States to the suzerain Power, had never given up her dreams of independence. After centuries of misgovernment by the Ottomans, and seeing that, through the Tripolitan war and other fatal errors, Turkey was hastening to a long-impending doom, the Albanians thought it time to look after themselves and try to save their own independence from the

wreck. Their national aspirations had never gone into the Turkish melting pot, and in 1912 they declared their independence from the Empire, appointed a provisional Government, with the veteran statesman, Ismail Kemal Bey, at its head, and appealed to the Powers to send them a king worthy of their great history and of their origin as the oldest race in Oriental Europe. Ismail Kemal Bey, who had spent fifty agitated years in the service of the Ottoman Empire, gave himself with patriotic passion to the reorganization of the country of which his was one of the oldest and most distinguished families, and spent fourteen months as president of the National Government.

After several other candidates had been put forward more or less officially, and when it seemed as if the Powers had forgotten this little country which had asked them for a king, Prince William of Wied, a German princeling and a relative of the Queen of Roumania, was appointed "Mbret," or King of Albania. When he took up his duties Ismail Kemal Bey retired to Nice to rest

and watch from a distance the progress of the new kingdom born in such travail and suffering. The Conference of the Powers in London had docked the country of half its fairest portions to give them to Montenegro, Greece, and Serbia, in order as it was explained to save further trouble and bloodshed in the Balkans!

The Albanians nevertheless looked forward to the new era with hope, in the belief that happiness and prosperity were at last in store for them. Never were a people so deceived, never had the Powers made such a mistake as in appointing this German to rule over so proud-spirited a race. In less than two months William of Wied was at loggerheads with his "subjects," and was almost cut off from the rest of the kingdom in his capital of Durazzo, which he had chosen in defiance of the advice of those best qualified to judge. He had spent the ten million francs which Italy and Austria had advanced him in stupid extravagance, and these Powers when asked to give more turned a deaf ear. The climax came when the Prince bombarded his Minister of War, Essad Pasha, in his own house. Ismail Kemal Bey, again called from his retirement, hurried to Rome, where he had an interview with M. San Giuliano, and then went to see the Prince and advise him as to the measures he ought to take to get out of his difficulties. But the Prince seemed incapable of judging either of the gravity of the situation or of his own danger. As matters only became worse, a meeting of the inhabitants of Valona and of the refugees gathered there who had fled from the devastating Greek armies was held in the Grande Place of Valona, and it was decided to form a Committee of Public Safety, over which Ismail Kemal Bey was again appointed to preside. The Powers were appealed to to step in again and save Albania from

destruction and her people from

massacre.

But the great war nad broken out, and the vessels of the Powers left Albanian waters. Prince William and his suite followed them, shaking the dust of his kingdom, over which he had reigned barely three months, from his feet forever.

Ismail Kemal Bey, the septuagenarian ex-ruler of Albania, is now a refugee in Paris waiting until the moment when his counsel and aid will again be called on by his country, once more independent.

"The news is good-excellent," said His Excellency, when I called on him to find out what he thought of recent events, "because it shows that Albania is to take her rightful place when justice is done to the small nationalities. I have never doubted that Albania would benefit from this war if the Allied Great Powers are to be taken at their word, and if they winneither of which hypotheses is to be doubted. At the same time, many things may happen before we finally get our liberty and independence, but this is a step in the right direction."

"You approve, then, of Italy's act, Excellency?"

"Yes. Italy of course wants a friend and not an enemy on the other side of the Straits of Otranto."

I gathered however that the Albanians will not be too grateful to the Powers for the present of their independence if the territory torn from them to avoid bloodshed and trouble is not restored and full justice done to Albania.

Ismail Kemal Bey, who is employing his leisure in writing his memoirs, is a great friend and admirer of England and of British institutions. He looks to England as the great champion of the small nations. There is little about His Excellency to suggest the Oriental. As broad-minded a patriot

as one could wish to see, he followed the policy in the Ottoman Empire of his friend the great Liberal statesman, Midhat Pasha, and his whole public career consisted of a series of struggles with the forces of tyranny and reaction, especially as they were personified in Abdul-Hamid. Over and over again, Ismail Kemal declined high office because the Sultan refused The Outlook.

to allow him to apply the principles of the Constitution which he had himself granted to his people and then taken back. His great regret is that Great Britain did not step in with a more vigorous policy in the East, for if she had done so the history of the last twenty years, and especially the history of the Ottoman Empire, would have been very different.

Famous, as I think, above other insects, perhaps famous beyond all animals, other than man, that ever have inhabited this earth, should be a certain small wasp observed by those most industrious detectives of the ways of insects, the Peckhams, G. W. and E. G. Of course, we all know that one of the definitions by which it has been attempted to mark off man from his fellow-creatures on this planet is "a tool-using animal." Yet another suggested definition of him is "a tool-making animal," but evidently this latter is going a long step farther from the intelligence of any of the other animals. To design a tool implies conception of an end for which that tool shall be used, and this is an act of planning and of imagination which is quite foreign to the subhuman mental process. The use of a tool found ready-made, such as a stone or a club, is quite another story from the psychological point of view, and the degree in which, if at all, the other animals ever avail themselves of these natural instruments and weapons has been debated rather fiercely. Darwin seems to have felt no doubt of their doing so. He quotes from Brehm's "Tierleben" Homeric accounts of battles between baboon armies, in which the one contingent assaults the other with throwing of stones and sticks,

but in the third edition of the "Tierleben" this statement is stringently criticised by M. Pechuel-Loesche: "This belief"-i.e., in the missilethrowing of the apes "is probably due to inaccurate observation." He states that he has studied the apes in Southwestern Africa "precisely on this head to convince myself whether they actually throw. Assuredly they do not." What does happen is that when they live on rock sides where there are many loose big stones-a favorite habitat with them-the stones are rolled down as they scurry over the rocks, and have all the appearance, as well as doing some of the mischief, of stones thrown of malice prepense. So, too, when they break off and let fall from the trees the big spinous fruits of the Durian, they make matters unpleasant for those beneath the tree, but all the most recent and precise observations seem to show that this is done without consciousness of the effect that the action produces. Other instances of the apparent use of tools by monkeys are taken from tricks learned in captivity; which hardly are more convincing for the purposes of the argument than the performance of the learned canary which hauls up its seed in a bucket. Brehm cites a monkey weak in the jaw which broke nuts with a