leaving the mining village behind. We are not
very far at this point from that portion of the line which I saw last
year under General X's guidance. But everything looks very quiet and
rural, and when we emerged on the high ground of the school we had come
to see, I might have imagined myself on a Surrey or Hertfordshire
common. The officer in charge, a "mighty hunter" in civil life, showed
us his work with a quiet but most contagious enthusiasm. The problem
that he, and his colleagues engaged in similar work in other sections of
the front, had to solve, was--how to beat the Germans at their own game
of "sniping," which cost us so many lives in the first year and a half
of war; in other words, how to train a certain number of men to an art
of rifle-shooting, combining the instincts and devices of a "Pathfinder"
with the subtleties of modern optical and mechanical science. "Don't
think of this as meant primarily to kill," says the Chief of the School,
as he walks beside me--"it is meant primarily to _protect_. We lost our
best men--young and promising officers in particular--by the score
before we learnt the tricks of the German 'sniper' and how to meet
them." German "sniping," as our guide explains, is by no means all
tricks. For the most part, it means just first-rate shooting, combined
with the trained instinct and _flair_ of the sportsman. Is there
anything that England--and Scotland--should provide more abundantly?
Still, there are tricks, and our men have learnt them.

Of the many surprises of the school I may not now speak. Above all, it
is a school of _observation_. Nothing escapes the eye or the ear. Every
point, for instance, connected with our two unfamiliar figures will have
been elaborately noted by those men on the edge of the hill; the officer
in charge will presently get a careful report on us.

"We teach our men the old great game of war--wit against wit--courage
against courage--life against life. We try many men here, and reject a
good few. But the men who have gone through our training here are
valuable, both for attack and defence--above all, let me repeat it, they
are valuable for _protection_."

And what is meant by this, I have since learnt in greater detail. Before
these schools were started, _every day_ saw a heavy toll--especially of
officers' lives--taken by German snipers. Compare with this one of the
latest records: that out of fifteen battalions there were only nine men
killed by snipers