knows that the ray comes through a peep-hole, and
that behind the peep-hole men with field-glasses are watching him. And
with his shells he hammers the post of observation into a shambles.
Accordingly, when you enter one, it is etiquette not to keep the door
open any longer than is necessary to squeeze past it. As a rule, the
door is a curtain of sacking, but hands and bodies coated with clay, by
brushing against it, have made it quite opaque.

The post was as small as a chart-room, and the light came only through
the peep-holes. You got a glimpse of a rack of rifles, of shadowy
figures that made way for you, and of your captain speaking in a
whisper. When you put your eyes to the peep-hole it was like looking at
a photograph through a stereoscope. But, instead of seeing the lake of
Geneva, the Houses of Parliament, or Niagara Falls, you looked across a
rain-driven valley of mud, on the opposite side of which was a hill.

Here the reader kindly will imagine a page of printed matter devoted to
that hill. It was an extremely interesting hill, but my captain, who
also is my censor, decides that what I wrote was too interesting,
especially to Germans. So the hill is "strafed." He says I can begin
again vaguely with "Over there."

"Over there," said his voice in the darkness, "is St. Mihiel."

For more than a year you had read of St. Mihiel. Communiques, maps,
illustrations had made it famous and familiar. It was the town that gave
a name to the German salient, to the point thrust in advance of what
should be his front. You expected to see an isolated hill, a promontory,
some position of such strategic value as would explain why for St.
Mihiel the lives of thousands of Germans had been thrown upon the board.
But except for the obstinacy of the German mind, or, upon the part of
the Crown Prince the lack of it, I could find no explanation. Why the
German wants to hold St. Mihiel, why he ever tried to hold it, why if
it so pleases him he should not continue to hold it until his whole line
is driven across the border, is difficult to understand. For him it is
certainly an expensive position. It lengthens his lines of communication
and increases his need of transport. It eats up men, eats up rations,
eats up priceless ammunition, and it leads to nowhere, enfilades no
position, threatens no one. It is like an ill-mannered boy sticking out
his tongue. And as ineffective.

The physical aspect of St. Mihiel is a broad sweep of me