ledge that he was beaten.

Very many of our people never lived to know the result of even the
first day's fighting. For then the old front line was the battlefield,
and the No Man's Land the prize of the battle. They never heard the
cheer of victory nor looked into an enemy trench. Some among them
never even saw the No Man's Land, but died in the summer morning from
some shell in the trench in the old front line here described.

* * * * *

It is a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so
little. It is like describing the course of the Thames from Oxford to
Reading, or of the Severn from Deerhurst to Lydney, or of the Hudson
from New York to Tarrytown. Whatever country the rivers pass they
remain water, bordered by shore. So our front-line trenches, wherever
they lie, are only gashes in the earth, fenced by wire, beside a
greenish strip of ground, pitted with shell-holes, which is fenced
with thicker, blacker, but more tumbled wire on the other side. Behind
this further wire is the parapet of the enemy front-line trench, which
swerves to take in a hillock or to flank a dip, or to crown a slope,
but remains roughly parallel with ours, from seventy to five hundred
yards from it, for miles and miles, up hill and down dale. All the
advantages of position and observation were in the enemy's hands, not
in ours. They took up their lines when they were strong and our side
weak, and in no place in all the old Somme position is our line better
sited than theirs, though in one or two places the sites are nearly
equal. Almost in every part of this old front our men had to go up
hill to attack.

If the description of this old line be dull to read, it should be
remembered that it was dull to hold. The enemy had the lookout posts,
with the fine views over France, and the sense of domination. Our men
were down below with no view of anything but of stronghold after
stronghold, just up above, being made stronger daily. And if the
enemy had strength of position he had also strength of equipment, of
men, of guns, and explosives of all kinds. He had all the advantages
for nearly two years of war, and in all that time our old front line,
whether held by the French or by ourselves, was nothing but a post to
be endured, day in day out, in all weathers and under all fires, in
doubt, difficulty, and danger, with bluff and makeshift and
improvisation, till the tide could be turned. If it be