kins will say, "Yes, sir," and "Very well,
sir," as becomes all polite regular soldier men; and you get to know
him about as well as you know the members of a club if you are
shown the library and dine at a corner table with a friend.

Spend the night in the trenches and you are taken into the family, into
that very human family of soldier-dom in a quiet corner; and the old,
care-free spirit of war, which some people thought had passed, is
found to be no less alive in siege warfare than on a march of regulars
on the Indian frontier or in the Philippines. Gaiety and laughter and
comradeship and "joshing" are here among men to whom wounds
and death are a part of the game. One may challenge high
explosives with a smile, no less than ancient round shot. Settle down
behind the parapet, and the little incongruities of a trench, paltry
without the intimacy of men and locality, make for humour no less
than in a shop or a factory.

Under the parapet runs the tangle of barbed wire--barbed wire from
Switzerland to Belgium--to welcome visitors from that direction, which,
to say the least, would be an impolitic direction of approach for any
stranger.

"All sightseers should come into the trenches from the rear," says Mr.
Atkins. "Put it down in the guidebooks."

Beyond the barbed wire in the open field the wheat which some
farmer sowed before positions were established in this area is now in
head, rippling with the breeze, making a golden sea up to the wall of
sandbags which is the enemy's line. It was late June at its loveliest;
no signs of war except the sound of our guns some distance away
and an occasional sniper's bullet. One cracked past as I was looking
through my glasses to see if there were any evidence of life in the
German trenches.

"Your hat, sir!"

Another moved a sandbag slightly, but not until after the hat had
come down and the head under it, most expeditiously. Up to eight
hundred yards a bullet cracks; beyond that range it whistles, sighs,
even wheezes. An elevation gives snipers, who are always trained
shots, an angle of advantage. In winter they had to rely for cover on
buildings, which often came tumbling down with them when hit by a
shell. The foliage of summer is a boon to their craft.

"Does it look to you like an opening in the branches of that tree--the
big one at the right?"

In the mass of leaves a dark spot was visible. It might be natural, or it
might be a space cut away for the swing of a r