they wanted to move they had to
hop up and move outside of it. If we were sniping by day they could not
move at all; and the track had probably been made by Germans moving at
night. It hugged the trench in case we started shooting or
shelling--when the Germans could at once jump back into the mud again.

The Germans in some parts of the Somme battlefield have been going down
with frostbite in great numbers, so great as to put at least one
battalion out of action. This is through getting feet wet and frozen in
muddy trenches. To reach their front line, last month, in these valleys
in front of Bapaume and Le Transloy, has been quite impossible to the
Germans unless they went up over the open, or used such trenches as a
self-respecting man could scarcely enter. They came up, as would any
other soldiers under the same circumstances, across the open land. Even
then there were places which a man could scarcely pass. I know a man
who, in that same sunken road at Le Barque, pulled two of his comrades
by force out of the mud--an everyday matter. They left their boots and
socks in the mud behind them.

If a man is wounded in some of those German trenches it takes eight men
to get him to the dressing station and five hours to arrive there, and
very much longer if there is any fighting in progress. One would not say
that any of these difficulties have been more acute amongst the Germans
than with the British and Australians--in some ways our men have faced
and overcome greater hardships than the Germans. But there is this chief
difference--the German is now getting back the shells which for two
years he rained upon the British. And he is talking--like a
German--about the unfairness of it.

The German Staff claims that German infantry is the best in the world.
Certainly it is tough, and thoroughly convinced that it is better than
any of its friends. "The Turk is a pretty good fighter," said a German
to me a few days ago, "and the Bulgars fight well. The Austrians are
worth little. Every time the Russians drive the Austrians back they have
to call us in to repulse the Russians again for them."

The German infantryman is tough, but not tougher than ours, and without
the dash; his outstanding virtue is his great power of work. But I do
not believe from what I have seen that he works one scrap harder than
the Australian. He might be supposed to have his heart more in the war
than the soldier of any other nation, but he certainly has