of the German
trenches at some places lay a haze of shimmering flame from the rapid
fire of the trench mortars.

The most resourceful of descriptive writers is warranted in saying that
the scene was indescribable. Correspondents did their best, and after
they had squeezed the rhetorical sponge of its last drop of ink
distilled to frenzy of adjectives in inadequate effort, they gaspingly
laid their copy on the table of the censor, who minded not "word
pictures" which contained no military secrets.

Vision exalted and numbed by the display, one's mind sought the meaning
and the purpose of this unprecedented bombardment, with its precision
of the devil's own particular brand of "kultur," which was to cut the
Germans' barbed wire, smash in their trenches, penetrate their dugouts,
close up their communication trenches, do unto their second line the
same as to their first line, bury their machine guns in debris, crush
each rallying strong point in that maze of warrens, burst in the roofs
of village billets over their heads, lay a barrier of death across all
roads and, in the midst of the process of killing and wounding, imprison
the men of the front line beyond relief by fresh troops and shut them
off from food and munitions. Theatric, horrible and more than
that--matter-of-fact, systematic war! There was relatively little
response from the German batteries, whose silence had a sinister
suggestion. They waited on the attack as the target of their revenge for
the losses which they were suffering.

By now they knew from the bombardment, if not from other sources, that a
British attack was coming at some point of the line. Their flares were
playing steadily over No Man's Land to reveal any movement by the
British or the French. From their trenches rose signal rockets--the only
real fireworks, leisurely and innocent, without any sting of death in
their sparks--which seemed to be saying "No movement yet" to commanders
who could not be reached by any other means through the curtains of fire
and to artillerists who wanted to turn on their own curtains of fire
instantly the charge started. Then there were other little flashes and
darts of light and flame which insisted on adding their moiety to the
garish whole. And under the German trenches at several points were vast
charges of explosives which had been patiently borne under ground
through arduously made tunnels.

So much for the machinery of material. Thus far we have mention