he
trenches.

This is the kind of warfare which is going to be waged in this seemingly
inevitable battle between the two rivers. It may last as long as the
battle of the Yser or the Aisne, and we may wait day after day again for
the verdict. If the Allies can press forward just three or four miles
before the year is out they will have done extraordinarily well.
Hereabout the German artillery is in greater strength than anywhere else
along the whole line of battle.

Progress will undoubtedly be slow because the Germans have taken such
tremendous pains to pave (in a literal sense) with concrete trenches the
way of retreat. British airmen report line upon line of intrenchments
where the Germans have defensively furrowed the land behind them for
miles. As the Allies advance--and they indubitably will advance--these
trenches will in turn be stubbornly defended. It is going to be, I am
afraid, a long, weary, and bloody business. Those in England who
sometimes complain at the absence of decisive victories may have to wait
a long time yet before it can be said that the Germans are in full
retreat; for full retreat is the very thing they have guarded against
most carefully.

In the semi-circle of slaughter around Ypres the trenches of the Allies
and the Germans are at nearly all points extraordinarily close together.
This means an immense strain on the men. They remain for hours together
in cramped, unnatural positions, knowing from experience that an unwise
move will bring a bullet from crack marksmen told off to snipe them.

This close proximity of the rival forces confounds all the theories of
the military writers of the past. According to the army textbooks this
war is being conducted in a grossly unprofessional manner. For bringing
his men so close to the enemy many a young company commander has
received a severe dressing down on manoeuvres.

Of course under such circumstances abuse and badinage is continually
being bandied across the intervening spaces between the trenches, and
the quick-witted Frenchmen generally get the better of it in the war of
words.

One of them, who came back from the Ypres neighborhood a few days ago,
told me a delightful story of a practical joke played upon the Germans,
who were entrenched only about thirty or forty yards away from his
platoon. One bright spirit was lecturing the enemy and making
dialectical rings round them.

"Hola, bosches," he cried, "your Kaiser is very brave, isn't