y extraordinary, and the placid way life
goes on under the risk of being sniped or shelled any moment is, until
one gets used to seeing it, quite past belief. I must say the officers
set the men a magnificent example.

_A young officer attached to the Yorkshire Light Infantry writes on
Dec. 6:_

One wonders when one sees a German face to face, is this really one of
those devils who wrought such devastation--for devastation they have
surely wrought. You can hardly believe it, for he seems much the same
as other soldiers. I can assure you that there is none of that
insensate hatred that one hears about, out here. We are out to kill,
and kill we do, at any and every opportunity. But, when all is done
and the battle is over, the splendid universal "soldier spirit" comes
over all the men, and we cannot help thinking that Kipling must have
been in the firing line when he wrote that "East is East and West is
West" thing. Just to give you some idea of what I mean, the other
night four German snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our
men went out and brought one in who was near and getatable and buried
him. They did it with just the same reverence and sadness as they do
to our own dear fellows. I went to look at the grave the next morning,
and one of the most uncouth-looking men in my company had placed a
cross at the head of the grave, and had written on it:

Here lies a German,
We don't know his name,
He died bravely fighting
For his Fatherland.

And under that, "got mit uns," (sic,) that being the highest effort of
all the men at German. Not bad for a bloodthirsty Briton, eh? Really,
that shows the spirit.

I don't believe there is a man living who, when first interviewing an
11-inch howitzer shell, is not pink with funk. After the first ten,
one gets quite used to them, but really, they are terrible! They hit a
house. You can see the great shell--a black streak--just before it
strikes, then, before you hear the explosion, the whole house simply
lifts up into the air, apparently quite silently; then you hear the
roar, and the whole earth shakes. In the place where the house was
there is a huge fountain-spout of what looks like pink fluff. It is
the pulverized bricks. Then a monstrous shoot of black smoke towering
up a hundred feet or more, and, finally, there is a curious
willow-like formation, and then--you duck, as huge pieces of shell,
and house, and earth, and haystack tumble over you