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"What I'm worrying about now," said Archer, his spirits mounting as they made their way southward, "is how we're going to cross the frontierr when we get to it. They've got a big tangled fence of barrbed wirre all along, even across the mountains, to where the battleline cuts in. And it's got a good juicy electric current running through it all the time. If you just touch it good night!"
I finished, this time, but there was some discord in the closing bars, for the Germans were still at their shelling, sporadically. So I finished, and I said good-by to the men who were to stay in the trench, guarding that bit of Britain's far flung battleline.
"I can see the battleline!" cried Archer. Tom took the glass with unusual excitement. Far across the Alsatian country, north and south, ran a dim, gray line, seeming to have no more substance than a rainbow or the dust in a sun-ray. Far to the north it bent westward and he knew its course lay through the mountains. But short of those blue heights it seemed to peter out in a sort of gray mist.
The unemployed Japanese army was to man the front, substituting for the Russian. But there was one insuperable obstacle. Between Vladivostok and the eastern battleline there were five thousand miles of country, spanned by one broken down railway. Yet those five thousand miles would not stay in the minds of the enthusiasts.
A great singing of frogs filled the sonorous solitude. On the river-road Pallura's wagon blocked the way. It was empty, but still soiled, here and there, with blood. Angry curses broke suddenly from the mob. Giacobbe shouted: "Let us put the saint in it!" So the bust was placed in the wagon-bed and drawn by many arms into the ford. The battleline thus crossed the frontier.
Not in all the far-flung battleline was there a more pitiable sight than the bright sun beheld as he poured his stifling rays down upon the winding line of upturned earth which lay in fresh piles across the country of southern Alsace. Almost to the Swiss border it ran, but no one could get across the Swiss border here without running into Prussian bayonets.
In a German paper we read to-day, they are preparing their men for "slight defeats" by saying that, "The French army is no longer the army of 1870, but one worthy to combat with our own." That was very condescending and was doubtless inspired by the formidable battleline from the coast to Nancy, before their noses. September 16th, Wednesday.
As he told me afterward, it is doubtful whether the result would have been different in any event. In throwing forward his forces, General Wood used the three lines of railroad that cross Long Island from west to east; and on May 17 his battleline reached from Patchogue through Holtsville to Port Jefferson.
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