t stakes, and
learned from the map that this was a wood. One looked for a railway,
where only a buried bar of twisted metal could be found. One road we
could not find at all, so battered was the countryside; and so after
five and a half hours' wandering, we returned to a dinner of soup,
steak, stewed fruit, and cocoa. Today I noticed for the first time the
wonderful variety of insect life in the trenches; flies and beetles of
gorgeous and varied color showing against the vivid white of the
fresh-cut chalk. Past a famous mining village which for two years has
been swept by shell fire, now British, now German, until nothing save
the village Crucifix remains unbattered; iron, brick, and concrete,
twisted by the awful destructive power of high explosives. Graves
dating back to October, 1915, and up to the present time, lie scattered
here and there, but each with the name of the fallen one well marked on
it, waiting to be claimed when Peace shall come. As I walked the old
lines flashed into my head--

"And though you be done to the death, what then,
If you battled the best you could?
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the critics will call it good!
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only, _how did you die?_"

Strange! but nowhere did I see a German grave other than those with the
inscription in English, "A German Soldier killed in action." Dead
Germans have I seen, but never a German grave.

There seems to be no bird life here, beyond a rare covey of partridges
well behind the line, or a solitary lark searching for summer. One
misses--oh, so much!--the cheeky chirp of the sparrow or the note of
the thrush. We found a stray terrier about yesterday and have adopted
it, but I don't think it will go into the front line: there's enough
human suffering, without adding innocent canine victims that cannot
understand. Here let me say a word for the horses and mules, exposed
to dangers and terror (for mules actually come into the trenches to
within 200 yards of the line), patiently doing their work, often
terrified, often mutilated and never understanding why they have been
taken from their peaceful life to the struggle and hardship of war.
Much has been written, much is being done, but how few realize it from
their point of view. The men are wonderful, their cheerfulness, their
abil