r side a Frenchman. Neither sees the other's head,
for both are hidden behind these walls of earth. If one starts
around the corner, it means a bayonet or a bullet for him.

To gain ground in a trench requires a superior supply of bombs. Any
small package that will contain a high explosive would serve the
purpose. Early in the war, bombs were made out of jam tins and bottles
or any other receptacle which could be filled with an explosive and
set off by a fuse. Later on, different varieties of manufactured bombs
in great quantities appeared. There have been instances of five
thousand being used in a single day over two hundred yards of trench.
After throwing a bomb from the traverse, the offensive follows up the
explosion by rushing along the traverse and catching the defender with
a bayonet while he is _hors de combat_ from the effect of the
explosion. While this orgy--characteristic of cave dwellers battling
on a precipice in its ferocity--is proceeding, all is precision at the
rear. As the caissons bring up the supplies of ammunition, the
green-curtained motor ambulances speed on to the hospital with the
wounded and the military police direct the congested traffic and keep
watch for spies.

VITAL LESSONS

War is force, violence, killing. Whoever tries to disguise its character
is a poor soldier and a poorer citizen. If you would avoid it, and if
you would prepare for it, you must look at it as a fact, squarely in
the face. Never has war been so savage as it is in this most progressive
age in history. We had popular education, aseptic surgery, the wireless,
and antitoxin, but war came nevertheless, and in the wake of Hague
conferences and much preaching of internationalism. It came when the
nations were supposed on account of the press and the telegraph to have
been farther removed from parochialism than ever before, when more
people in every nation in Europe knew the language of their neighbors
than ever in history.

In the cave dweller's time, combatants used a stone hatchet which
was the best weapon that science could produce. To-day by land and
sea they have used all the powers of destruction known to modern
man; all the scientific brains of Europe have been at the disposal
of commanders. Yet no single revolutionary invention has appeared in
the course of the war. The idea of the gas was old. Man already had
learned to fly. Guns have been larger and shells more powerful, but
the principle is the same. Weapon