much chance for grief and care.

"One night, Dad," he said, "we had a battalion of the Black Watch on
our right, and they made a pretty big raid on the German trenches. It
developed into a sizable action for any other war, but one trifling
enough and unimportant in this one. The Germans had been readier than
the Black Watch had supposed, and had reinforcements ready, and sixty
of the Highlanders were captured. The Germans took them back into
their trenches, and stripped them to the skin. Not a stitch or a rag
of clothing did they leave them, and, though it was April, it was a
bitter night, with a wind to cut even a man warmly clad to the bone.

"All night they kept them there, standing at attention, stark naked,
so that they were half-frozen when the gray, cold light of the dawn
began to show behind them in the east. And then the Germans laughed,
and told their prisoners to go.

"'Go on--go back to your own trenches, as you are!' they said.

"The laddies of the Black Watch could scarcely believe their ears.
There was about seventy-five yards between the two trench lines at
that point, and the No Man's Land was rough going--all shell-pitted
as it was. By that time, too, of course, German repair parties had
mended all the wire before their trenches. So they faced a rough
journey, all naked as they were. But they started.

"They got through the wire, with the Germans laughing fit to kill
themselves at the sight of the streaks of blood showing on their
white skins as the wire got in its work. They laughed at them, Dad!
And then, when they were halfway across the No Man's Land they
understood, at last, why the Germans had let them go. For fire was
opened on them with machine guns. Everyone was mowed down--everyone
of those poor, naked, bleeding lads was killed--murdered by that
treacherous fire from behind!

"We heard all the details of that dirty bit of treachery later. We
captured some German prisoners from that very trench. Fritz is a
decent enough sort, sometimes, and there were men there whose
stomachs were turned by that sight, so that they were glad to creep
over, later, and surrender. They told us, with tears in their eyes.
But we had known, before that. We had needed no witnesses except the
bodies of the boys. It had been too dark for the men in our trenches
to see what was going on--and a burst of machine gun-fire, along the
trenches, is nothing to get curious or excited about. But those naked
bodies, lying