ent by the enemy's which you have tasted. After you
have been scared stiff, while pretending that you were not, by sharing
with Mr. Atkins an accurate bombardment of a trench and are
convinced that the next shell is bound to get you, you fall into the
attitude of the army. You want to pat the demon on the back and say,
"Nice old demon!" and watch him toss a shell three or four miles into
the German lines from the end of his fiery tongue. Indeed, nothing so
quickly develops interest in the British guns as having the German
gunners take too much personal interest in you.

You must have someone to show you the way or you would not find
any guns. A man with a dog trained to hunt guns might spend a week
on the gun-position area covering ten miles of the front and not locate
half the guns. He might miss "Grandmother" and "Sister" and "Betsy"
and "Mike" and even "Mister Archibald," who is the only one who
does not altogether try to avoid publicity.

When an attack or an artillery bombardment is on and you go to as
high ground as possible for a bird's-eye view of battle, all that you see
is the explosion of the shells; never anything of the guns which are
firing. In the distance over the German lines and in the foreground
over the British lines is a balloon, shaped like a caterpillar with folded
wings--a chrysalis of a caterpillar.

Tugging at its moorings, it turns this way and that with the breeze.
The speck directly beneath it through the glasses becomes an
ordinary balloon basket and other specks attached to a guy rope play
the part of the tail of a kite, helping to steady the type of balloon which
has taken the place of the old spherical type for observation. Anyone
who has been up in a captive spherical balloon knows how difficult it
is to keep his glasses focussed on any object, because of the jerking
and pitching and trembling due to the envelope's response to air-
movements. The new type partly overcomes this drawback. To
shrapnel their thin envelope is as vulnerable as a paper drum-head to
a knife; but I have seen them remain up defiantly when shells were
bursting within three or four hundred yards, which their commanders
seemed to understand was the limit of the German battery's reach.

Again, I have seen a shrapnel burst alongside within range; and five
minutes later the balloon was down and out of sight. No balloon
observer hopes to see the enemy's guns. He is watching for shell-
bursts, in order to inform the