the Germans, having given no armistice in other times
when British dead lay before the trenches, asked for none here. The
dead were nearer to the British than to the Germans. The discomfort
would be in British and not German nostrils. And the dead cannot
fight; they can help no more to win victory for the Fatherland; and the
time is A.D. 1915. Two or three thousand German dead altogether,
perhaps--not many out of the Kaiser's millions. Yet they seemed a
great many to one who saw them lying there.

We stopped to read by the light of a brazier some German soldiers'
diaries that the Irishmen had. They were cheap little books, bought for
a few cents, each one telling the dead man's story and revealing the
monotony of a soldier's existence in Europe to-day. These pawns of
war had been marched here and there, they never knew why. The
last notes were when orders came entraining them. They did not
know that they were to be sent out of those woods yonder to recover
Neuve Chapelle out of those woods in the test of all their drill and
waiting. A Bavarian officer--for these were Bavarians--actually rode in
that charge. He must have worked himself up to a strangely exalted
optimism and contempt of British fire. Or was it that he, too, did not
know what he was going against? that only the German general
knew? Neither he nor his horse lasted long; not more than a dozen
seconds. The thing was so splendidly foolhardy that in some little war
it might have become the saga of a regiment, the subject of ballads
and paintings. In this war it was an incident heralded for a day in one
command and forgotten the next.

"Good-night!" called the Irish.

"Good-night and good luck!"

"Tell them in America that the Irish are still fighting!"

"Good luck, and may your travelling be aisy; but if ye trip, may ye fall
into a gold mine!"

We were back with the British regulars; and here, also, many of the
men remained up around the braziers.

The hours of duty of the few on watch do not take many of the
twenty-four hours. One may sleep when he chooses in the little
houses behind the breastworks. Night melts into day and day into
night in the monotony of mud and sniping rifle-fire. By-and-by it is your
turn to go into reserve; your turn to get out of your clothes--for there
are no pyjamas for officers or men in these "crawls," as they are
sometimes called. Boots off is the only undressing; boots off and
puttees unloosed, which saves the feet. Yes