. Nearly every man at the
front has a mascot of some sort--a rosary, a black cat, a German button,
or a weird sign--which is supposed to keep him safe.

Their superstitions, too, are many in number. One man is convinced that
he will be killed on a Friday; another man would rather waste a dry--and
therefore valuable--match than light three cigarettes with it; another
will think himself lucky if he can see a cow on his way up to the
trenches; a fourth will face any danger, volunteer for any patrol, go
through the worst attack without a qualm, simply because he "has got a
feeling he will come through unhurt." And he generally does, too.

I once had a servant who used to wear a shoe button on a piece of string
round his neck. At some village billet in France a tiny girl had given
it him as a present, and he treasured it as carefully as a diamond
merchant would treasure the great Koh-i-noor stone--in fact, I am
convinced that he often went without washing just to avoid the risk of
loss in taking it off and putting it on again. To you in England it
seems ridiculous that a man should hope to preserve his life by wearing
a shoe button on a piece of string. But then, you have not seen the
strange tricks that Fate will play with lives. You have not watched how
often a shell will burst in a group of men, kill one outright, and leave
the others untouched; you have not joked with a friend one moment and
knelt by him to catch his dying words the next; you have not stood at
night by a hastily dug grave and wondered, as you mumbled a few
half-remembered prayers, why the comrade who is lying there on a
waterproof sheet should have been killed while you are left unhurt.

Besides, there are so many things which tend to make a man superstitious
and to confirm him in his trust in mascots and charms. Many a man has
had a premonition of his death, many a man has come through long months
of war, and then has been killed on the day on which he lost his mascot.

The thought of superstition recalls to me Joe Williams, the
ex-policeman. Joe Williams was a fatalist, and believed every word he
read in his little book of prophecies, so that the dawn of September 4th
found him glum and depressed.

"It ain't no bloomin' good," he grumbled. "It says in my book as 'ow
September 4th is a disastrous day for England, so it will be. There
ain't no way of stopping Fate." And when his section laughed at him for
his fears he merely shrugged his shoulders, a