an in his
understanding of the object to be accomplished; and it is quite clear
that the system is the same with the Germans.

One side no sooner develops an idea than the other adopts it. By
effect of the enemy's shells you judge what the effect of yours must
be. Months of experience have done away with all theories and
practice has become much the same by either adversary. For
example, let a German or a British airman be winged by anti-aircraft
gun-fire and the guns instantly loosen up on the point over his own
lines, if he regains them, where he is seen to fall. All the soldiers in
the neighbourhood are expected to run to his assistance; and, at any
rate, you may get a trained aviator, whose life is a valuable asset on
one side of the ledger and whose death an asset on the other. There
is no sentiment left in war, you see. It is all killing and avoiding being
killed.

By the scream of a shell the practised ear of the artilleryman can tell
whether it comes from a gun with a low trajectory or from a howitzer,
whose projectile rises higher and falls at a sharper angle which
enables it to enter the trenches; and he can even tell approximately
the calibre.

A scream sweeping past from our rear, and we knew that this was for
the redoubt, as that was to have the first turn. A volume of dust and
smoke breaking from the earth short of the redoubt, and after the
second's delay of hearing the engine whistle after the burst of steam
in the distance on a winter day, came the sound of the burst. The
next was over. With the third the "heavy stuff" ought to be right on.

But don't forget that there was also an order for some "Right stuff,"
identified as shrapnel by its soft, nimbus-like puff which was
scattering bullets as if giving chase to that working-party as it
hastened to cover. There you had the ugly method of this modern
artillery fire: death shot downward from the air and leaping up out of
the earth. Unhappily, the third was not on, nor the fourth--not exactly
on. Exactly on is the way that British gunners like to fill an order
f.o.b., express charges prepaid, for the Germans.

Ten years ago it would have seemed good shooting. It was not very
good in the twelfth month of the war; for war beats the target range in
developing accuracy. At five or six or seven or eight thousand yards'
range the shells were bursting thirty or forty yards away from where
they should.

No, not very good; the general murmured as much. He d