headquarters in the front trenches the battalion surgeon
had just amputated an arm which had been mauled by a shell.

"Without any anaesthetic," he explained. "No chance if we sent him
back to the hospital. He would die on the way. Stood it very well.
Already chirking up."

A family practitioner at home, the doctor, when the war began, had
left his practice to go with his Territorial battalion. He retains the
family practitioner's cheery, assuring manner. He is the kind of man
who makes you feel better immediately he comes into the sick-room;
who has already made you forget yourself when he puts his finger
on your pulse.

"The same thing that we might have done in the Crimea," he
continued, "only we have antiseptics now. It's wonderful how little you
can work with and how excellent the results. Strong, healthy men,
these, with great recuperative power and discipline and resolution--
very different patients from those we usually operate on."

Tea was served inside the battalion commander's dugout. Tea is as
essential every afternoon to the British as ice to the average
American in summer. They do not think of getting on without it if they
can possibly have it, and it is part of the rations. As well take
cigarettes away from those who smoke as tea from the British soldier.

It was very much like tea outside the trenches, so far as any signs of
perturbation about shells and casualties were concerned. In that the
battalion commander had to answer telegrams, it had the aspect of a
busy man's sandwich at his desk for luncheon. Good news to cheer
the function had just come over the network of wires which connects
up the whole army, from trenches to headquarters--good news in the
midst of the shells.

German West Africa had fallen. Botha, who was fighting against the
British fifteen years ago, had taken it fighting for the British. A
suggestive thought that. It is British character that brings enemies like
Botha into the fold; the old, good-natured, sportsmanlike live-and-let-
live idea, which has something to do with keeping the United States
intact. A board with the news on it in German was put up over the
British trenches. Naturally, the board was shot full of holes; for it is
clear that the Germans are not yet ready to come into the British
Empire.

"Hans and Jacob we have named them," said the colonel, referring to
two Germans who were buried back of his dug-out. "It's dull up here
when the Boches are not shelling