e canals on Mars.

The Huns have been "hating" the road one quarter of a mile away all the
morning. That doesn't worry us a bit as long as they don't come any
closer. I'm willing always to share up on the shelling.

This order has just been issued. It speaks for itself:--

All ranks are warned that bombs and grenades must not be used for
fishing and killing game.

I went over another farm to-day. It is one of the well-ventilated kind,
punched full of holes. In the kitchen, stables and outhouses there was a
most wonderful collection of junk: ammunition, British and French
bandoliers, old sheepskin coats abandoned by the British troops from last
winter, smashed rifles, bayonets, meat tins, parts of broken equipment,
sandbags, stacks of rotten potatoes and three dead cows. The fruit trees
are laden with fruit, and vines are growing up the houses with their
bunches of green grapes.

In the garden several lonely graves are piled high with old boots, straw,
American agricultural implements, rotting sacks and rubbish of every
description, pieces of shells, barrels, and in one room the rusty remains
of a perambulator and sewing machine; rats are the only inhabitants now.
In the garret (the staircase leading up to it gone long ago) I found a
British rifle, bayonet fixed, ten rounds in the magazine, and the bolt
partly drawn out. Evidently the owner was in the act of reloading his
chamber when something happened. The graves were dated second and third
months of this year. The poor wooden crosses were made of pieces of ration
cases and the names written with an indelible pencil. The wretchedness of
this farm, which was flourishing only a short time ago, is very pathetic.

We have adopted an old Belgian mother cat with her family of three kittens
in the dugout. Now we find that three more little wild kittens are living
in the bricks which we have piled around the windows to protect us against
shells. They are all encouraged to live with us in the cellars. I like
cats, and they will help to keep the rats down. Although some of the rats
are nearly the size of cats.

It has been raining again and the trenches are filling up with slush. We
carry a big trench stick, a thick sapling about four feet long with a
ferrule made from a cartridge of a "very-light" (star shell), to help
ourselves in walking; our feet are beginning to get wet and cold as a
regular thing now, and we are revetting our trenches firm and solid for