o walk into the arena at the Naval and Military Tournament.
Such scrupulous perfection on active service sounds perhaps unnecessary
or even extravagant. But the teams, remember, have been for weeks past
luxuriating in comfortable ease miles back in their 'wagon-line'
billets, where the horses have done nothing for days on end but feed
and grow fat, and the drivers nothing but clean up and look after their
teams and harness. If the guns up in the firing line had to shift
position it has meant no more to the teams than a break of the monotony
for a day or two, a night or two's marching, and a return to the rear.

It is afternoon now, and the regiment is drawing near to the trenches.
The slanting sun begins to throw long shadows from the poplars. The
open fields are covered with tall grass and hay that moves in long,
slow, undulating waves under the gentle breeze that is rising. The
sloping light falling on them gives the waves an extraordinary
resemblance to the lazy swell on a summer sea. Here and there the
fields are splashed with broad bands of vivid colour--the blazing
scarlet of poppies, the glowing cloth-of-gold of yellow mustard, the
rich, deep, splendid blue of corn-flowers.

For one or two miles past the track has been plainly marked by
sign-posts bearing directions to the various trenches and their
entrances. Now, at a parting of the main track, a group of
'guides'--men from the regiment being relieved from the trenches--wait
the incoming regiment. Company by company, platoon by platoon, the
regiment moves off to the appointed places, and by company and platoon
the outcoming regiment gathers up its belongings and moves out. In
most parts of the firing line these changes would only be made after
dark. But this section bears the reputation of being a 'peaceful' one,
the Germans opposite of being 'tame,' so the reliefs are made in
daytime, more or less in safety. There has been no serious fighting
here for months. Constant sniping and bickering between the forward
firing trenches has, of course, always gone on, but there has been no
attack one way or the other, little shell-fire, and few aeroplanes over.

The companies that 'take over' the support trenches get varied
instructions and advice about tending the plants and flowers round the
dugouts, and watering the mustard-and-cress box. They absorb the
advice, strip their accoutrements and tunics, roll up their
shirt-sleeves, and open the throats, fish