ee which one has not seen
approached in France. There may be some parts here where such trenches
are possible, and where they exist; but I have not seen them. It must be
remembered that in many places in France there are stretches of line
where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in winter, because you
meet water as soon as you scratch the surface; and therefore both our
line and the German are a breastwork built up instead of a trench dug
down. The curious thing is that in the trenches themselves you scarcely
realise the difference. Your outlook there is bounded in either case by
two muddy walls over which you cannot wisely put your head in the
daylight. The place may be a glorious green field, with flowers and
birds and little reedy pools, if you are two feet over the parapet.
But you see nothing from week-end to week-end except two muddy walls and
the damp, dark interior of a small dug-out. You see no more of the
country than you would in a city street. Trench life is always a city
life.

[Illustration: THE TRENCHES HERE HAVE TO BE BUILT ABOVE THE GROUND IN
BREASTWORK AND NOT DUG BELOW IT]

The trench routine is much the same as it was in Gallipoli, except that
in no part which I have seen is the tension anything like so great. At
Anzac you were hanging on to the edge of a valley by your finger-nails,
and had to steal every yard that you could in order to have room to
build up a second line, and if possible a third line beyond that. Here
both you and the enemy have scores of miles behind you, and two or three
hundred yards more or less makes no difference worth mentioning.

For this reason you would almost say that the German line in this
country was asleep compared with the line we used to know. A hundred and
fifty yards of green grass, with the skeleton that was once some old hay
wagon up-ended in the middle of it, and sky-blue water showing through
the grass blades in the depressions; a brown mud wall straggling along
the other side of the green--more or less parallel to your breastwork,
with white sandbags crowning it like an irregular coping; the
inevitable stumpy stakes and masses of rusted barbed wire in front. You
might watch it for an hour and the only sign of life you would see would
be a blue whiff of smoke from some black tin chimney stuck up behind it.
If you fire at the chimney probably it will be taken down. The other
day, chancing to look into a periscope, I happened for a moment to see
the top