ABSTRACT
Whilst tortured humanity raved in the hospitals or agonised in the immense field of battle, the Kaiser, the enormous Ego who had called all this massacre into being, surveyed with feelings of pride and glory the immense amphitheatre of butchery spread out before him. He watched the irresistible march of his soldiers as they curved round like an enormous whip lashing the devoted British army to its place of doom. He could see light brown lines and patches crawling over hay-fields, ploughed fields, and corn-fields, slowly filtering through hop-fields and orchards, and moving behind hedges and other temporary shelter. Then there were darker masses and lines indicating where cavalry or artillery advanced. Sometimes the lines curled up or dissolved away and the Imperial Spectator could see hundreds of tiny shapes like ants twisting in fantastic contortions on the ground, uttering prayers with their last breath for Kaiser and Fatherland. Everywhere figures dropped out of the lines, singly and by dozens, and lay quite still, or writhed on the ground. The country seemed to be devastated as by a cloud of locusts by the march of these terrible armies. Farm buildings, private houses, and hay-ricks burned furiously whilst small battles raged around them. Smoke poured into the air from the conflagrations and hung over the combatants like an immense black funeral pall.
