offensive operations with
a tactful blend of constant firing and bad shooting, which, while it
satisfies the Prussians, causes no serious inconvenience to Thomas
Atkins.

At a quarter-past one a subdued order ran round the trenches; the men
fell in on the sheltered side of the plantation; picks and shovels
were checked; rifles and equipment were resumed; and the party stole
silently away to the cross-road, where the three shells were timed
to arrive at two-fifteen. When they did so, with true Teutonic
punctuality, an hour later, our friends were well on their way home to
billets and bed--with the dawn breaking behind them, the larks getting
to work overhead, and all the infected air of the German graveyard
swept out of their lungs by the dew of the morning.

As for that imperturbable philosopher, Box, he sat down with a
cigarette, and waited for Cox.

XVII

THE NEW WARFARE

The trench system has one thing to recommend it. It tidies things up a
bit.

For the first few months after the war broke out confusion reigned
supreme. Belgium and the north of France were one huge jumbled
battlefield, rather like a public park on a Saturday afternoon--one of
those parks where promiscuous football is permitted. Friend and
foe were inextricably mingled, and the direction of the goal was
uncertain. If you rode into a village, you might find it occupied by
a Highland regiment or a squadron of Uhlans. If you dimly discerned
troops marching side by side with you in the dawning, it was by no
means certain that they would prove to be your friends. On the other
hand, it was never safe to assume that a battalion which you saw
hastily entrenching itself against your approach was German. It
might belong to your own brigade. There was no front and no rear, so
direction counted for nothing. The country swarmed with troops which
had been left "in the air," owing to their own too rapid advance,
or the equally rapid retirement of their supporters; with scattered
details trying to rejoin their units; or with despatch riders hunting
for a peripatetic Divisional Headquarters. Snipers shot both sides
impartially. It was all most upsetting.

Well, as already indicated, the trench system has put all that right.
The trenches now run continuously--a long, irregular, but perfectly
definite line of cleavage--from the North Sea to the Vosges. Everybody
has been carefully sorted out--human beings on one side, Germans on
the other. ("Like th