e Zoo," observes Captain Wagstaffe.) Nothing could
be more suitable. _You're there, and I'm here, so what do we care?_ in
fact.

The result is an agreeable blend of war and peace. This week, for
instance, our battalion has been undergoing a sort of rest-cure a few
miles from the hottest part of the firing line. (We had a fairly heavy
spell of work last week.) In the morning we wash our clothes, and
perform a few mild martial exercises. In the afternoon we sleep, in
all degrees of _deshabille_, under the trees in an orchard. In the
evening we play football, or bathe in the canal, or lie on our backs
on the grass, watching our aeroplanes buzzing home to roost, attended
by German shrapnel. We could not have done this in the autumn. Now,
thanks to our trenches, a few miles away, we are as safe here as in
the wilds of Argyllshire or West Kensington.

But there are drawbacks to everything. The fact is, a trench is that
most uninteresting of human devices, a compromise. It is neither
satisfactory as a domicile nor efficient as a weapon of offence. The
most luxuriant dug-out; the most artistic window-box--these, in spite
of all biassed assertions to the contrary, compare unfavourably with a
flat in Knightsbridge. On the other hand, the knowledge that you are
keeping yourself tolerably immune from the assaults of your enemy is
heavily discounted by the fact that the enemy is equally immune from
yours. In other words, you "get no forrarder" with a trench; and the
one thing which we are all anxious to do out here is to bring this war
to a speedy and gory conclusion, and get home to hot baths and regular
meals.

So a few days ago we were not at all surprised to be informed,
officially, that trench life is to be definitely abandoned, and
Hun-hustling to begin in earnest.

(To be just, this decision was made months ago: the difficulty was to
put it into execution. The winter weather was dreadful. The enemy
were many and we were few. In Germany, the devil's forge at Essen
was roaring night and day: in Great Britain Trades Union bosses were
carefully adjusting the respective claims of patriotism and personal
dignity before taking their coats off. So we cannot lay our want of
progress to the charge of that dogged band of Greathearts which has
been holding on, and holding on, and holding on--while the people at
home were making up for lost time--ever since the barbarian was hurled
back from the Marne to the Aisne and confined behind