king their prey with them. Hans
is the sole survivor, and after hearing what his officer has to say to
him upon the subject, bitterly regrets the fact.

Meanwhile, in the British trenches a few yards away, the box-office
returns are being made up. These take the form, firstly, of some
twenty-five prisoners, including one indignant officer--he had been
pulled from his dug-out half asleep and frog-marched across the
British lines by two private soldiers well qualified to appreciate the
richness of his language--together with various souvenirs in the way
of arms and accoutrements; and secondly, of the knowledge that
at least as many more of the enemy had been left permanently
incapacitated for further warfare in the dug-outs. A grim and grisly
drama when you come to criticise it in cold blood, but not without a
certain humour of its own--and most educative for Brother Boche!

But he is a slow pupil. He regards the profession of arms and the
pursuit of war with such intense and solemn reverence that he _cannot_
conceive how any one calling himself a soldier can be so criminally
frivolous as to write a farce round the subject--much less present the
farce at a Flying Matinee. That possibly explains why the following
stately paragraph appeared a few days later in the periodical
communique which keeps the German nation in touch with its Army's
latest exploits:--

_During the night of Jan. 4th-5th attempts were made by strong
detachments of the enemy to penetrate our line near Sloozleschump,
S.E. of Ypres. The attack failed utterly_.

"And they don't even realise that it was only a leg-pull!" commented
the Company Commander who had stage-managed the affair. "These people
simply don't deserve to have entertainments arranged for them at all.
Well, we must pull the limb again, that's all!"

And it was so.

IV

THE PUSH THAT FAILED

I

"I wonder if they really mean business this time," surmised that
youthful Company Commander, Temporary Captain Bobby Little, to Major
Wagstaffe.

"It sounds like it," said Wagstaffe, as another salvo of "whizz-bangs"
broke like inflammatory surf upon the front-line trenches.
"Intermittent _strafes_ we are used to, but this all-day performance
seems to indicate that the Boche is really getting down to it for
once. The whole proceeding reminds me of nothing so much as our own
'artillery preparation' before the big push at Loos."

"Then you think the Boches are going t