espite their wounds. I
heard dialects peculiar to every part of England, and fragmentary
accounts of hairbreadth escapes and desperate fighting.

"They was a big Dutchman comin' at me from the other side. Lucky fer me
that I 'ad a round in me breach. He'd 'a' got me if it 'adn't 'a' been
fer that ca'tridge. I let 'im 'ave it an' 'e crumpled up like a wet
blanket."

"Seeven of them, an' that dazed like, they wasna good for onything. Mon,
it would ha' been fair murder to kill 'em! They wasna wantin' to fight."

Boys scarcely out of their 'teens talked with the air of old veterans.
Many of them had been given their first taste of real fighting, and they
were experiencing a very common and natural reaction. Their courage had
been put to the most severe test and had not given way. It was not
difficult to understand their elation, and one could forgive their
boastful talk of bloody deeds. One highly strung lad was dangerously near
to nervous breakdown. He had bayoneted his first German and could not
forget the experience. He told of it over and over as the line moved
slowly along.

"I couldn't get me bayonet out," he said. "Wen 'e fell 'e pulled me over
on top of 'im. I 'ad to put me foot against 'im an' pull, an' then it
came out with a jerk."

We met small groups of prisoners under escort of proud and happy Tommies
who gave us conflicting reports of the success of the attack. Some of
them said that two more lines of German trenches had been taken; others
declared that we had broken completely through and that the enemy were in
full retreat. Upon arriving at our position, we were convinced that at
least one trench had been captured; but when we mounted our guns and
peered cautiously over the parapet, the lights which we saw in the
distance were the flashes of German rifles, not the street lamps of
Berlin.

III. CHRISTIAN PRACTICE

Meanwhile, the inhumanity of a war without truces was being revealed to
us on every hand. Hundreds of bodies were lying between the opposing
lines of trenches and there was no chance to bury them. Fatigue parties
were sent out at night to dispose of those which were lying close to the
parapets, but the work was constantly delayed and interrupted by
persistent sniping and heavy shell fire. Others farther out lay where
they had fallen day after day and week after week. Many an anxious mother
in England was seeking news of a son whose body had become a part of that
Flemish landscape.

Dur