rcling line of death grew more intolerably real. It is not in
the mud and jokes and every-day activities of the trenches that one
most feels the damnable insanity of war; it is where it lurks like a
mythical monster in scenes to which the mind has always turned for
rest.

We had not yet made the whole tour of the mountain-top; and after
luncheon we rode over to a point where a long narrow yoke connects
it with a spur projecting directly above the German lines. We left
our mules in hiding and walked along the yoke, a mere knife-edge of
rock rimmed with dwarf vegetation. Suddenly we heard an explosion
behind us: one of the batteries we had passed on the way up was
giving tongue. The German lines roared back and for twenty minutes
the exchange of invective thundered on. The firing was almost
incessant; it seemed as if a great arch of steel were being built up
above us in the crystal air. And we could follow each curve of sound
from its incipience to its final crash in the trenches. There were
four distinct phases: the sharp bang from the cannon, the long
furious howl overhead, the dispersed and spreading noise of the
shell's explosion, and then the roll of its reverberation from cliff
to cliff. This is what we heard as we crouched in the lee of the
firs: what we saw when we looked out between them was only an
occasional burst of white smoke and red flame from one hillside, and
on the opposite one, a minute later, a brown geyser of dust.

Presently a deluge of rain descended on us, driving us back to our
mules, and down the nearest mountain-trail through rivers of mud. It
rained all the way: rained in such floods and cataracts that the
very rocks of the mountain seemed to dissolve and turn into mud. As
we slid down through it we met strings of Chasseurs Alpins coming
up, splashed to the waist with wet red clay, and leading pack-mules
so coated with it that they looked like studio models from which the
sculptor has just pulled off the dripping sheet. Lower down we came
on more "trapper" settlements, so saturated and reeking with wet
that they gave us a glimpse of what the winter months on the front
must be. No more cheerful polishing of fire-arms, hauling of
faggots, chatting and smoking in sociable groups: everybody had
crept under the doubtful shelter of branches and tarpaulins; the
whole army was back in its burrows.

August 17th.

Sunshine again for our arrival at Belfort. The invincible city lies
unpretentiously