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"Hour after hour, day and night, with increasing intensity as the time went on, the enemy rained heavy shell into the area. Now he would send them crashing in on a line south of the road--eight heavy shells at a time, minute after minute, followed by a burst of shrapnel. Now he would place a curtain straight across this valley or that till the sky and landscape were blotted out, except for fleeting glimpses seen as through a lift of fog.... Day and night the men worked through it, fighting the horrid machinery far over the horizon as if they were fighting Germans hand to hand; building up whatever it battered down; buried some of them, not once, but again and again and again. What is a barrage against such troops? They went through it as you would go through a summer shower, too proud to bend their heads, many of them, because their mates were looking. I am telling you of things I have seen. As one of the best of their officers said to me: 'I have to walk about as if I liked it; what else can you do when your own men teach you to?'"

SIR JULIAN BYNG was born on September 11th, 1862, the seventh son of the second Earl of Strafford. He joined the 10th Hussars in 1883, and served in the Soudan Expedition of 1884, being present at the actions of El Teb and Tamai. In South Africa he commanded a column with great distinction in the pursuit of De Wet, and finished the campaign with the rank of Colonel. One of his most successful actions was on the Vlei River, west of Reitz, where he surprised a Boer Commando and took a 15-pounder, two pom-poms, and many prisoners.

He landed in Belgium in October, 1914, in command of the 3rd Cavalry Division. He accompanied Rawlinson's 7th Division in its retreat from Antwerp to Ypres. The doings of the famous 3rd Cavalry Division are writ large in history, and in all the great drama of Ypres there was no finer incident than the charge of the Household Brigade at Klein Zillebeke on November 6th, 1914.

Since then he has been one of the most brilliant among Corps Commanders. During the Battle of the Somme the Canadians fought on the right of Sir Hubert Gough's 5th Army and did notable work, taking Courcelette, and fighting many desperate actions on the Thiepval Ridge. During the long stormy winter their raids on the enemy line were among the most remarkable on the British front. More especially, they made the section north of Arras an unquiet place for the enemy. Their culminating achievement came at the Battle of Arras on April 9th, 1917, when they stormed in one stride four positions on the Vimy Ridge, and wrested from the enemy the key of the plain of Douai.

In June Sir Julian Byng succeeded General Allenby in command of the Third Army.

Sir Julian Byng has the appearance and manner of the cavalier of tradition. No more soldierly figure has appeared in the campaign. He has had the good fortune always to have fine troops to lead, and he is a fit leader for the best troops. He has become to the Canadians what General Birdwood is to the Anzacs--at once a trusted Commander and a well-beloved friend.

SIR WALTER CONGREVE, born in 1862, of Chartley and Congreve, County Stafford, was educated at Harrow and entered the Rifle Brigade in 1885. He became a Captain in 1893, and Brevet Lieut.-Colonel in 1901. During the South African War he won the Victoria Cross for an heroic attempt to save the guns at Colenso--the occasion on which Lord Roberts' only son won the same honour and lost his life.

During the war he received a brevet Lieut.-Colonelcy. He was Private Secretary and Assistant Military Secretary to Lord Kitchener when the latter was Commander-in-Chief at Pretoria.

After his return to England he became Commandant of the School of Musketry at Hythe, and, on the outbreak of the European War, went out in command of the 18th Infantry Brigade. From this he proceeded to the command of the 6th Division, with which he was present at the fighting at Hooge and Ypres in August and September, 1915.

LIEUT.-GENERAL JAMES AYLMER LOWTHORPE HALDANE, C.B., D.S.O.

GENERAL HALDANE was born on November 17th, 1862, of a well-known Scottish family which has given many distinguished members to the learned professions. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Sandhurst, and, in 1882, joined the Gordon Highlanders. He served in the Waziristan Campaign of 1894; the Chitral Campaign of 1895; the Tirah Campaign of 1897; and from 1896-99 he was A.D.C. to Sir William Lockhart. He received the D.S.O. for his work on the Indian frontier.

During the South African War he fought with the 2nd Gordon Highlanders at Elandslaagte, where he was severely wounded. He was in command of the armoured train which was captured at Chieveley on November 15th, 1899. The story of his escape from Pretoria after some months' imprisonment is one of the romances of the South African Campaign. He rejoined his battalion and was present at some of the later actions of the war, receiving a brevet Lieut.-Colonelcy.

During the Russo-Japanese War he was Military Attach? with the Japanese Army, and was present at the Battles of Liao-yang, Sha-Ho, and Mukden.

At the Battle of the Somme General Haldane took part in the great advance of July 14th, when the 3rd Division was brilliantly successful, carrying Bazentin le Grand, and sharing afterwards in the desperate fighting around Longueval and Delville Wood. In August he was promoted to the command of the VI Corps, and, during the winter, held a portion of the Arras front. The opportunity of the Corps came in the Battle of Arras on April 9th, 1917, when, advancing due east of the city, its three divisions carried all their objectives, including such formidable fortresses as the Harp and Railway Triangle, and made record captures of prisoners and guns.

Few British soldiers have had a more varied experience of warfare. He is a scholar in his profession, but his book knowledge is borne lightly, and he has shown himself in every crisis a leader of shrewd judgment and ample resource. He is still a young man, and, fine as his record has been, he is universally regarded as only at the outset of his career.

LIEUT.-GENERAL H. E. WATTS, C.B., C.M.G.

GENERAL WATTS was born on February 14th, 1858, and entered the Army in 1880. He served in South Africa, where he received a brevet Lieut.-Colonelcy. He became Colonel of his regiment in 1908, and retired in 1914. On the outbreak of the European War he returned to service, and went with General Rawlinson to Flanders in October, 1914, in command of the 21st Brigade of the 7th Division.

With this Brigade, which has seen some of the most desperate fighting of the war, he fought at the first battle of Ypres. For three critical days the Brigade formed one of the three which checked the whole German advance; and then for nearly a fortnight it was in the centre of all the bitter fighting that was directed towards Ypres. When it was withdrawn it was but a shadow of the Brigade that had crossed Belgium before falling back on Ypres; but in the three weeks' battle it had won an imperishable name. General Watts fought with the Brigade on the left of the front at Neuve Chapelle and he also took part in the summer battles of 1915 at Festubert and Givenchy. With it he was engaged at Loos, where the Division saw some of the most severe fighting and where the Commander, General Capper, fell. General Watts succeeded to General Capper's command.

From the first day of the battle of the Somme the 7th Division, changed considerably in composition since the Autumn of 1914, played a notable part. It was they who took Mametz, and they fought through the whole of the first phase of the battle, crowning their achievement by the capture of Bazentin le Petit. The Division was present in most of the other great actions of the battle. In the spring of 1917 their General received the command of a corps.

General Watts has a fighting reputation second to no one in the Army. The Campaign for him has been one long Malplaquet--a hard-fought soldiers' battle, and no man has known better how to elicit the inherent steadfastness of British troops. To have led first a Brigade and then a Division through some of the fiercest fights of all history is no small record for a man on the verge of sixty years.

LIEUT.-GENERAL THE RT. HON. JAN CHRISTIAAN SMUTS, P.C., K.C., M.L.A.

COMPANION OF HONOUR

GENERAL SMUTS was born on May 24th, 1870, at Bovenplaats in the Malmesbury district of the Cape Colony, the residence of his father, Jacobus Abraham Smuts, who was for some time a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Cape. He was educated at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, and graduating with high honours in arts and science, passed as Ebden Scholar to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1891.

He secured a double first in the Law Tripos, was called to the Bar and, returning to South Africa in 1895, was duly admitted to the Supreme Court at Cape Town, where he began to practice his profession. He was admitted to the Transvaal Bar in the following year, soon after the Jameson Raid. About this time he married Miss Sibylla Krige, of Stellenbosch, and settled in Johannesburg. He had already been mentioned as Dr. Leyds' successor to the post of State Secretary, when in 1898 he was offered and accepted the post of State Attorney. President Kruger's choice of so young a man was amply and speedily justified, and his reforming zeal exercised a formidable influence in the State.

It was in his capacity as State Attorney that he accompanied President Kruger, when the latter met Lord Milner at Bloemfontein, and took part in the negotiation with Mr. Conyngham Greene, the British Agent at Pretoria. The young advocate and statesman suddenly found his country confronted with war, and shortly after the Boer Commandos had taken the field he was attached to General Joubert as a legal adviser and administrative officer for the territory in Natal occupied by the Republican forces.

Eventually, after the occupation of Pretoria by the British armies, he received a command in the western Transvaal as Vecht-General under General de la Rey. He proved himself a dashing and skilful commander, and by the boldness of his movements in the Cape Colony, in the later stages of the war, created a feeling of nervousness in Lord Kitchener's main communications. He was in supreme command in the Cape and was applying himself to the reduction of Ookiep when the news of the opening of peace negotiations brought him back to the Transvaal. His was one of the strongest voices at Vereeniging in favour of peace when terms would still be obtainable, and when the Treaty was signed he returned to the practice of his old profession.

In the interval between Vereeniging and the grant of responsible government, he took a leading part with General Botha in restoring the moral of the Boer people, which had suffered severely in the disastrous war, and also in preparing them for self-government.

When, in 1907, responsible government was granted to the Transvaal, General Smuts assumed the portfolio of Colonial Secretary in General Botha's Ministry, and continued the work of national reconstruction and reconciliation between the two races and was largely responsible for the holding of the conferences on closer union which eventually culminated in the National Convention at which the South Africa Act, the Constitution of the Union, was framed.

He held successively the portfolios of Defence, the Interior, Mines, and Finance in General Botha's First Union Cabinet, and amongst other legislative activities was responsible for the South African Defence Act, the machinery of which was severely tested in the Syndicalist strikes at Johannesburg of 1913 and 1914, and the unfortunate rebellion in the latter portion of that year and also the campaign in South West Africa.

In March, 1916, Lieut.-General Smuts arrived in British East Africa and assumed command of the East African Expeditionary Force upon the pressing request of the Imperial Government and in succession to General Smith-Dorrien, who had been compelled to relinquish the command owing to a severe illness. Within a year he had driven the German troops from British territory, reduced them by two-thirds, and penned them into the southern and south-western malarial area with its one healthy spot at Mahenge.

General Smuts is still a young man, though he has had exceptional experience. A scholar by taste, a lawyer by profession, and perforce a soldier, he represents a unique figure in the Empire. The boldness and energy of his leading as a General seem to suggest the born commander. As Statesman, his conceptions reveal an intuitive grasp of the fundamental ideals that must guide the present and inspire the future.

The Western Front

DRAWINGS BY MUIRHEAD BONE

"They illustrate admirably the daily life of the troops under my command."

--F.M. SIR DOUGLAS HAIG, K.T.

SOME RECENT PRESS NOTICES:

Mr. Muirhead Bone's drawings are reproduced in the following form, apart from "The Western Front" publication:--

WAR DRAWINGS

Size 20 by 15 inches. Ten plates in each part, 10/6 net.

MUNITION DRAWINGS

Size 31 1/2 by 22 inches. Six plates in portfolio, 20/- net.

WITH THE GRAND FLEET

Size 31 1/2 by 22 inches. Six plates in portfolio, 20/- net.

"TANKS"

Size 28 by 20 1/4 inches. Single plate, 5/- net.

Further particulars of these publications will be sent on application to "COUNTRY LIFE," LTD., 20, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C. 2.

Admirals of the British Navy

PORTRAITS BY FRANCIS DODD

Hudson & Kearns, Ltd., Printers, Hatfield Street, London, S.E. 1.

Contents of this Issue.

INTRODUCTION.

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