ttle group
had been augmented. It must break up; two might walk together, and
then two a safe distance behind. Four would certainly be fired on.

I wanted to go. It was not a matter of courage. I had simply,
parrot-fashion, mimicked the attitude of mind of the officers. One
after another I had seen men go into danger with a shrug of the
shoulders.

"If it comes it comes!" they said, and went on. So I, too, had become
a fatalist. If I was to be shot it would happen, if I had to buy a
rifle and try to clean it myself to fulfil my destiny.

So they let me go. I went farther than they expected, as it turned
out. There was a great deal of indignation and relief when it was
over. But that is later on.

A very tall Belgian officer took me in charge. It was necessary to
work through a barbed-wire barricade, twisting and turning through its
mazes. The moonlight helped. It was at once a comfort and an anxiety,
for it seemed to me that my khaki-coloured suit gleamed in it. The
Belgian officers in their dark blue were less conspicuous. I thought
they had an unfair advantage of me, and that it was idiotic of the
British to wear and advocate anything so absurd as khaki. My cape
ballooned like a sail in the wind. I felt at least double my ordinary
size, and that even a sniper with a squint could hardly miss me. And,
by way of comfort, I had one last instruction before I started:

"If a _fusee_ goes up, stand perfectly still. If you move they will
fire."

The entire safety of the excursion depended on a sort of tacit
agreement that, in part at least, obtains as to sentries.

This is a new warfare, one of artillery, supported by infantry in
trenches. And it has been necessary to make new laws for it. One of
the most curious is a sort of _modus vivendi_ by which each side
protects its own sentries by leaving the enemy's sentries unmolested
so long as there is no active fighting. They are always in plain view
before the trenches. In case of a charge they are the first to be
shot, of course. But long nights and days have gone by along certain
parts of the front where the hostile trenches are close together, and
the sentries, keeping their monotonous lookout, have been undisturbed.

No doubt by this time the situation has changed to a certain extent;
there has been more active fighting, larger bodies of men are
involved. The spring floods south of the inundation will have dried
up. No Man's Land will have ceased to be a swamp and