cupied the position, while the prisoners brought in
yielded valuable information.

The German, more adaptive than creative, more organizing than
pioneering, was not above learning from the British, and soon they, too,
were undertaking surprise parties in the night. Although they tightened
the discipline for the defensive of both sides, trench raids were of far
more service to the British than to the Germans; for the British staff
found in them an invaluable method of preparation for the offensive. Not
only had the artillery practice in supporting actual rather than
theoretical attacks, but when the men went over the parapet it was in
face of the enemy, who might turn on his machine guns if not silenced by
accurate gunfire. They learned how to cooerdinate their efforts, whether
individually or as units, both in the charge and in cleaning out the
German dugouts. Their sense of observation, adaptability and team play
was quickened in the life-and-death contact with the foe.

Through the spring months the trench raids continued in their process
of "blooding" the new army for the "big push." Meanwhile, the
correspondents, who were there to report the operations of the army,
were having as quiet a time as a country gentleman on his estate without
any of the cares of his superintendent.

Our homing place from our peregrinations about the army was not too far
away from headquarters town to be in touch with it or too near to feel
the awe of proximity to the directing authority of hundreds of thousands
of men. Trench raids had lost their novelty for the public which the
correspondents served. A description of a visit to a trench was as
commonplace to readers as the experience itself to one of our seasoned
group of six men. We had seen all the schools of war and the
Conscientious Objectors' battalion, too--those extreme pacifists who
refuse to kill their fellow man. Their opinions being respected by
English freedom and individualism, they were set to repairing roads and
like tasks.

The war had become completely static. Unless some new way of killing
developed, even the English public did not care to read about its own
army. When my English comrades saw that a petty scandal received more
space in the London papers than their accounts of a gallant air raid,
they had moments of cynical depression.

Between journeys we took long walks, went birds'-nesting and chatted
with the peasants. What had we to do with war? Yet we never we