d that this did not make him like it any better.

Scattered with British wounded taking cover in new and old shell-craters
was No Man's Land as the living passed. A Briton and his prisoner would
take cover together. An explosion and the prisoner might be blown to
bits, or if the captor were, another Briton took charge of the prisoner.
Persistently stubborn were the captors in holding on to prisoners who
were trophies out of that inferno, and when a Briton was back in the
first-line trench with his German his delight was greater in delivering
his man alive than in his own safety. Out in No Man's Land the wounded
hugged their shell-craters until the fire slackened or night fell, when
they crawled back.

Where early in the morning it had appeared as if the attack were
succeeding reserve battalions were sent in to the support of those in
front, and as unhesitatingly and steadily as at drill they entered the
blanket of shell-smoke with its vivid flashes and hissing of shrapnel
bullets and shell-fragments. Commanders, I found, stood in awe of the
steadfast courage of their troops. Whether officers or men, those who
came out of hell were still true to their heritage of English phlegm.

Covered with chalk dust from crawling, their bandages blood-soaked,
bespattered with the blood of comrades as they lay on litters or hobbled
down a communication trench, they looked blank when they mentioned the
scenes that they had witnessed; but they gave no impression of despair.
It did not occur to them that they had been beaten; they had been
roughly handled in one round of a many-round fight. Had a German
counter-attack developed they would have settled down, rifle in hand, to
stall through the next round. And that young officer barely twenty,
smiling though weak from loss of blood from two wounds, refusing
assistance as he pulled himself along among the "walking wounded,"
showed a bravery in his stoicism equal to any on the field when he said,
"It did not go well this time," in a way that indicated that, of course,
it would in the end.

It was over one of those large scale, raised maps showing in facsimile
all the elevations that a certain corps commander told the story of the
whole attack with a simplicity and frankness which was a victory of
character even if he had not won a victory in battle. He rehearsed the
details of preparation, which were the same in their elaborate care as
those of corps which had succeeded; and he did not sa