e world is topsy-turvy; for we
are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly
desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the
contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not
fly, at one another's throats.

But there is no romance in trench fighting; it is sickening,
demoralizing. Ask any soldier who has been at it for a time. He will
pour a few plain truths into your shocked ear. Down at the railroad
terminal today I met some of them--a queer mixture. There was a batch
of German prisoners; there was a squad of wounded Belgians, and there
were four lost, stolen, or strayed British soldiers from the Seventh
Division--a Sergeant and three men. They were all so plastered over
with dirt that it was difficult to sort out their nationality.

What struck me most was their absolute and undisguised cheerfulness. I
have lively recollection of the first German prisoners I saw in the
early days of the war. They were in a gray funk, which is several
degrees more sheer than a blue funk. They absolutely believed that the
next moment or two would be their last on this woeful earth and that
they would be shot out of hand.

The young Prussians I met today said that they had been having a very
thin time recently; that their food was bad, and getting worse and
more scanty every day; that pneumonia and rheumatism were rife in
their trenches, to say nothing of the dreaded typhoid, and that they
were tremendously glad to be out of it all. They understood that they
were going to England. Anyway, they hoped so fervently.

The Belgian soldiers were all slightly wounded, mostly in the legs and
arms. The mud and slime of the trenches north of Furnes had not yet
dried upon their sodden clothes. They were cold and benumbed and
desperately hungry, for their train had been held up for hours while
certain private and confidential military scene changing was going on.
In spite of the pain their hurriedly dressed wounds were giving them
they, too, were cheerful.

"We are in great heart," said one of them, "for we are moving on
surely and certainly. This week something new has come to us. The
knell of retreat no longer sounds in our hearts; the tocsin rings
there instead. We are marching on; we are driving the barbarians back.
Every inch of our motherland regained is sweet and precious to us.
Three days ago I saw our King. He was as muddy and stained, Monsieur,
as I am now. An officer who was