oc of shells which had
cut the wires. His place was where he could be in touch with his
subordinates and his superiors.

True, we wanted to go to the trench that the Germans had lost and
his section was the short cut. Modesty was not the only reason for not
taking it. As we started along a road parallel to the front, the head of a
soldier popped out of the earth and told us that orders were to walk in
the ditch. I judged that he was less concerned with our fate than with
the likelihood of our drawing fire, which he and the others in a
concealed trench would suffer after we had passed on.

There were three of us, two correspondents, L------ and myself, and
R------, an officer, which is quite enough for an expedition of this kind.
Now we were finding our own way, with the help of the large scale
army map which had every house, every farm, and every group of
trees marked. The farms had been given such names as Joffre,
Kitchener, French, Botha, and others which the Germans would not
like. We cut across fields with the same confidence that, following a
diagram of city streets in a guidebook, a man turns to the left for the
public library and to the right for the museum.

Our own guns were speaking here and there from their hiding-places;
and overhead an occasional German shrapnel burst. This seemed a
waste of the Kaiser's munitions as there was no one in sight. Yet
there was purpose in the desultory scattering of bullets from on high.
They were policing the district; they were warning the hated British in
reserve not to play cricket in those fields or march along those
deserted roads.

The more bother in taking cover that the Germans can make the
British, the better they like it; and the British return the compliment in
kind. Anything that harasses your enemy is counted to the good. If
every shell fired had killed a man in this war, there would be no
soldiers left to fight on either side; yet never have shells been so
important in war as now. They can reach the burrowing human
beings in shelters which are bulletproof; they are the omnipresent
threat of death. The firing of shells from batteries securely hidden and
em-placed represents no cost of life to your side; only cost of
material, which ridicules the foolish conclusion that machinery and not
men count. It is because man is still the most precious machine--a
machine that money cannot reproduce--that gun-machinery is so
much in favour, and every commander wants to u