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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: canvas walls converging into a funnel screened approaches to Southampton Dock, beyond which all was darkness and mystery. Down that funnel passed the flower of the youth of Britain, bound for the great adventure of war with Germany. Few of them were ever to return. Crowds in Southampton streets saw them vanish into darkness, heard their measured tramp die away on stone quays in the silence of night. And then when all was still great steamers pushed out into the darkness. Being a clear summer night, the long line of transports could be seen stretching from one MAHOMMEDANS ' CALCUTTA PRAYING FOR THE SUCCESS OP THE BRITISH horizon to another, guardian warships flanking them. Swift shadows that shot across the surface of the sea showed where torpedo-boats and scouts were nosing about in search of a possible enemy. Hundreds of miles to the north lay the real protection of the flotilla, where the waters of the Heligoland Bight were broken by the sudden rise and dip of the blockading fleet.1 1 Sir Conan Doyle's The British Campaign in France and Flanders in 1914.'' (George H. Doran Co.) General Sir John French on arrival in Boulogne was first seen as he stood on the quarter-deck of the scout steamer Sentinel, his war staff round him. All Boulogne had rushed to the quay and raised a cheer as the black, warlike boat, her decks cleared for action and crowded with sailors, slipped into the harbor. On the quay stood M. Daru, the Governor of Boulogne?by permission of whom in martial days all things happened in Boulogne?white-haired and white- mustached, the embodiment of French official courtesy and military precision. A crane swung a long gangway from the quay to the warship and Daru went on board. For two minutes General and Governor stood talking, each with his hand raised to...