The English guns began it.
To the world the great battle started with the German onslaught of the morning of that Thursday, the twenty-first of March; but to Ruth, the beginning was with the English guns—the guns of the evening before, rolling and resounding over the Picardy plain.
The night seemed to have embarked upon stillness in its earlier hours. The “line”—that dim, neighboring bulwark descending from the far indefiniteness of the North Sea to approach close to the little hamlet of Mirevaux, to seem indeed to point into Mirevaux but for a twist which turned it away and deflected it, sweeping southward, and east, and south again toward the farther fastness of the Alps—the line had been absolutely quiet. A great many airplanes had been up during the afternoon, Ruth had observed as sh
