l him--whether he will,
at any given date, be in a worse condition or a better one.

What the German is going through on his side of the muddy landscape is
described in another chapter. For our grand men--and though to be called
a hero is the last thing most Australians desire, the men are never
grander than at these times--the Australian Comforts Fund, the Y.M.C.A.
and the canteen groceries provide almost all the comfort that ever
enters that grim region. In the areas to which those tired men come for
a spell, the Comforts Fund is beginning to give them theatres for
concert troupes and cinemas. It provides some hundreds of pounds to be
spent locally on the most obtainable small luxuries at Christmas,
besides such gifts in kind as Christmas brings.

But, for those who are actually in the front or just behind it, one cup
of warm coffee in a jam-tin from a roadside stall has been, in certain
times and places, all that can be given; the Fund has given that, and it
has been the landmark in the day for many men. In those conditions there
was but one occasional solace. A friend of mine found an Australian in
the trenches in those days, standing in mud nearly to his waist,
shivering in his arms and every body muscle, leaning back against the
trench side, fast asleep.

CHAPTER XXIX

AS IN THE WORLD'S DAWN

_France, December 20th._

Yesterday morning we were looking across a bare, shallow valley at the
opposite knuckle of hill-side, around the foot of which the valley
doubled back out of sight. A solitary grey line of broken earth ran like
a mole burrow up the bare knuckle and vanished over the top. A line of
bare, dead willow stumps marked a few yards of the hollow below. On the
skyline, beyond the valley's end, stood out a distant line of ghostly
trees--so faint and blue as to be scarcely distinguishable from the sky.
There was nothing else in the landscape--absolutely nothing but the
bare, blank shape of the land; save for those old ghosts of departed
willows--no trees--no grass--no colour--no living or moving or singing
or sounding thing.

Only--that morning at dawn had found a number of men tumbling, jumping,
running, dodging in and out of the shell-holes across that slope,
making towards our lines. The peck of occasional rifles came from some
farther part of the grey, featureless hill-side--the report was the only
trace of the rifles or of the men firing them. But as the men who were
dodging back were Aust