mfortable as possible," said
the general, who received us at the doorway of the little hole which,
with delightful irony, he called his "palace." He is an elderly man, this
general who has held in check some of the most violent assaults of
the German army, but there was a boyish smile in his eyes and none
of the harshness of old age in the sweetness of his voice. He lived in
a hole in the earth with just a peep-hole out of which he could see the
German lines on the opposite hills and his won trenches down below.
As he spread out his maps and explained the positions of his
batteries and lines, I glanced round his room--at the truckle-bed which
filled the length of it, and the deal table over which he was bending,
and the wooden chair in which he sat to think out the problems of his
task. There was only one touch of colour in this hole in the hillside,
and it belonged to a bunch of carnations placed in a German shell
and giving out a rich odour so that some of the beauty of spring had
come into this hiding-place where an old man directed the operations
of death. "Look," said the general, pointing to the opposite lines, "here
is Crest 196, about which you gentlemen have written so much in
newspapers."

It was just a rise in the ground above the ravine which divided us
from the German ridges, but I gazed at it with a thrill, remembering
what waves of blood have washed around this hillock, and how many
heroes of France have given their lives to gain that crest. Faintly I
could see the lines of German trenches with their earthworks thrown
up along the hillsides and along the barren fields on each side of the
ravine, where French and German soldiers are very close to each
other's tunnels. From where we stood subterranean passages led to
the advanced trenches down there, and to a famous "trapeze" on the
right of the German position, forming an angle behind the enemy's
lines, so that now and again their soldiers might be seen.

"It is not often in this war that we can see our enemy unless we visit
them in their trenches, or they come to us," said the general, "but a
few days ago, when I was in the trapeze, I saw one of them stooping
down as though gathering something in his hands or tying up
his boot-laces." Those words were spoken by a man who had
commanded French troops for nine months of incessant fighting
which reveal the character of this amazing war. He was delighted
because he had seen a German soldier in the open and f