advanced, it
is true, a bare one or two hundred yards, but with lives poured out
like water over each foot of the advance, with every inch of the ground
gained marking a well-spring and fountain-head of a river of pain, of a
suffering beyond all words, of a glory above and beyond all suffering.

A CONVERT TO CONSCRIPTION

'_. . . have maintained and consolidated our position in the captured
trench._'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

Number nine-two-ought-three-six, Sapper Duffy, J., 'A' Section,
Southland Company, Royal Engineers, had been before the War plain Jem
Duffy, labourer, and as such had been an ardent anti-militarist,
anti-conscriptionist, and anti-everything else his labour leaders and
agitators told him. His anti-militarist beliefs were sunk soon after
the beginning of the War, and there is almost a complete story itself
in the tale of their sinking, weighted first by a girl, who looked
ahead no further than the pleasure of walking out with a khaki uniform,
and finally plunged into the deeps of the Army by the gibe of a
stauncher anti-militarist during a heated argument that, 'if he
believed now in fighting, why didn't he go'n fight himself?' But even
after his enlistment he remained true to his beliefs in voluntary
service, and the account of his conversion to the principles of
Conscription--no half-and-half measures of 'military training' or rifle
clubs or hybrid arrangements of that sort, but out-and-out
Conscription--may be more interesting, as it certainly is more typical,
of the conversion of more thousands of members of the Serving Forces
than will ever be known--until those same thousands return to their
civilian lives and the holding of their civilian votes.

* * * * *

By nightfall the captured trench--well, it was only a courtesy title to
call it a trench. Previous to the assault, the British guns had
knocked it about a good deal, bombs and grenades had helped further to
disrupt it in the attacks and counter-attacks during the day, and
finally, after it was captured and held, the enemy had shelled and
high-explosived it out of any likeness to a real trench. But the
infantry had clung throughout the day to the ruins, had beaten off
several strong counter-attacks, and in the intervals had done what they
could to dig themselves more securely in and re-pile some heaps of
sandbags from the shattered parapet on the trench's new front. The
casualties had been