We were taken to the Maginot Line. I had already
seen photographs and heard descriptions of that necklace of fort- resses. The actual details, the guns and the casemates, were more or less as I had imagined ; and in any case they were beyond my comprehension. What took me completely by surprise was the giant scale of these preparations. I had expected something resembling a flotilla of cement torpedo- boats ; I was confronted by a fleet of super-dreadnoughts. The magnitude of the enterprise left me thunderstruck. I had never supposed that the French possessed such a gift for dissimulation. We penetrated deep into that fantastic labyrinth. Great galleries stretched before us, clean and brilliant as the Mersey Tunnel. The sound of wireless reached us from the mess-rooms ; there came a clatter of dishes from the kitchens ; they were singing as we passed the canteen. The atmosphere was dry and warm, with some faint pulsation behind it as in the studios of the B.B.C. We signed the visitors' book in the reception-room. It seemed inconceivable that we were actually in the battle line.
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