tle 'oiler is a bit of all
right," he remarks. "When you've done strarfin' that bully-beef, 'and
it over, ole man!"

He leans his head back upon the lip of the shell-hole, and gazes
pensively at the notice-board six feet away. It says:--

VERY DANGEROUS.
DO NOT
LOITER
HERE.

III

Here is another cross-roads, a good mile farther forward--and less
than a hundred yards behind the fire-trench. It is dawn.

The roads themselves are not so distinct as they were. They are
becoming grass-grown: for more than a year--in daylight at least--no
human foot has trodden them. The place is like hundreds of others that
you may see scattered up and down this countryside--two straight,
flat, metalled country roads, running north and south and east and
west, crossing one another at a faultless right angle.

Of the four corners thus created, one is--or was--occupied by an
estaminet: you can still see the sign, _Estaminet au Commerce_, over
the door. Two others contain cottages,--the remains of cottages. At
the fourth, facing south and east, stands what is locally known as a
"Calvaire,"--bank of stone, a lofty cross, and a life-size figure of
Christ, facing east, towards the German lines.

This spot is shelled every day--has been shelled every day for months.
Possibly the enemy suspects a machine-gun or an observation post amid
the tumble-down buildings. Hardly one brick remains upon another.
And yet--the sorrowful Figure is unbroken. The Body is riddled
with bullets--in the glowing dawn you may Count not five but fifty
wounds--but the Face is untouched. It is the standing miracle of this
most materialistic war. Throughout the length of France you will see
the same thing.

Agnostics ought to come out here, for a "cure."

IV

With spring comes also the thought of the Next Push.

But we do not talk quite so glibly of pushes as we did. Neither, for
that matter, does Brother Boche. He has just completed six weeks'
pushing at Verdun, and is beginning to be a little uncertain as to
which direction the pushing is coming from.

No; once more the military textbooks are being rewritten. We started
this war under one or two rather fallacious premises. One was that
Artillery was more noisy than dangerous. When Antwerp fell, we
rescinded that theory. Then the Boche set out to demonstrate that an
Attack, provided your Artillery preparation is sufficiently thorough,
and you are prepared to set _no_ limit to your expenditure o