with a consideration, amounting almost to indulgence,
which convinces us that we are being "fattened up"--to employ
the gruesome but expressive phraseology of the moment--for some
particularly strenuous enterprise in the near future.

Well, we are ready. It is nine months since Loos, and nearly six since
we scraped the nightmare mud of Ypres from our boots, _gum, thigh_,
for the last time. Our recent casualties have been light--our only
serious effort of late has been the recapture of the Kidney Bean--the
new drafts have settled down, and the young officers have been
blooded. And above all, victory is in the air. We are going into our
next fight with new-born confidence in the powers behind us. Loos was
an experimental affair; and though to the humble instruments with
which the experiment was made the proceedings were less hilarious than
we had anticipated, the results were enormously valuable to a greatly
expanded and entirely untried Staff.

"We shall do better this time," said Major Wagstaffe to Bobby Little,
as they stood watching the battalion assemble, in workmanlike fashion,
for a route-march. "There are just one or two little points which had
not occurred to us then. We have grasped them now, I think."

"Such as?"

"Well, you remember we all went into the Loos show without any very
lucid idea as to how far we were to go, and where to knock off for the
day, so to speak. The result was that the advance of each Division was
regulated by the extent to which the German wire in front of it
had been cut by our artillery. Ours was well and truly cut, so we
penetrated two or three miles. The people on our left never started at
all. Lord knows, they tried hard enough. But how could any troops get
through thirty feet of uncut wire, enfiladed by machine-guns? The
result was that after forty-eight hours' fighting, our whole attacking
front, instead of forming a nice straight line, had bagged out into a
series of bays and peninsulas."

"Our crowd wasn't even a peninsula," remarked Bobby with feeling. "For
an hour or so it was an island!"

"I think you will find that in the next show we shall go forward,
after intensive bombardment, quite a short distance; then consolidate;
then wait till the _whole_ line has come up to its appointed
objective; then bombard again; then go forward another piece; and so
on. That will make it impossible for gaps to be created. It will also
give our gunners a chance to cover our advance con