courtesy of those Belgian officers, their hospitality, their eagerness
to make an American woman comfortable and at home. And I was to have
still further proof of their kindly feeling, for when toward daylight
I came back from the trenches they were still up, the lamps were still
burning brightly, the stove was red hot and cheerful, and they had
provided food for us against the chill of the winter dawn. Out through
the mud and into the machine again. And now we were very near the
trenches. The car went without lights and slowly. A foot off the
centre of the road would have made an end to the excursion.

We began to pass men, long lines of them standing in the drenching
rain to let us by. They crowded close against the car to avoid the
seas of mud. Sometimes they grumbled a little, but mostly they were
entirely silent. That is the thing that impressed me always about the
lines of soldiers I saw going to and from the trenches--their silence.
Even their feet made no noise. They loomed up like black shadows which
the night swallowed immediately.

The car stopped again. We had made another leg of the journey. And
this time our destination was a church. We were close behind the
trenches now and our movements were made with extreme caution. Captain
F---- piloted me through the mud.

"We will go quietly," he said. "Many of them are doubtless sleeping;
they are but just out of the trenches and very tired."

Now and then one encounters in this war a picture that cannot be
painted. Such a picture is that little church just behind the Belgian
lines at L----. There are no pews, of course, in Continental churches.
The chairs had been piled up in a corner near the altar, and on the
stone floor thus left vacant had been spread quantities of straw.
Lying on the straw and covered by their overcoats were perhaps two
hundred Belgian soldiers. They lay huddled close together for warmth;
the mud of the trenches still clung to them. The air was heavy with
the odour of damp straw.

The high vaulted room was a cave of darkness. The only lights were
small flat candles here and there, stuck in saucers or on haversacks
just above the straw. These low lights, so close to the floor, fell on
the weary faces of sleeping men, accentuating the shadows, bringing
pinched nostrils into relief, showing lines of utter fatigue and
exhaustion.

But the picture was not all sombre. Here were four men playing cards
under an image of Our Lady, which was j