stood had been well within the German lines.

In the thoroughness with which the engineers were making fast their
gains, a military observer would have read that not only would the
Allied army draw the sting from this "empire of death," but that never
again would this part of France be yielded to alien hands. As far as the
eye could reach roads were being improved, others made; the buried
railways were being excavated, metals straightened, or replaced if too
far bent; shell-proof dug-outs were having their finishing touches, some
to be used as dressing-stations for the wounded whom to-morrow might
bring in, others for storing ammunition. In a nearby wood, where trees
had been reduced to little more than gaunt trunks barren of leaf and
twig, observation posts were built with many tons of branches hauled
from the rear, and so artfully wired in place that the stricken giants
seemed almost ready to live again. This work in itself constituted
reason enough for the Allied airmen to sweep the sky of German
observers, since only by "putting out the enemy's eye" could such
secrets of camouflage be preserved. Wells were being bored by gas engine
power and pipes laid, as spider webs, to bring untainted water to man
and beast. Then, of course, shallow trenches had to be dug for
telephone wires which otherwise would perish in the first onslaught of
artillery fire.

Among the trenches of greater magnitude, recently pounded to the point
of obliteration, activities were being pressed at highest tension, for
here the destruction had been particularly severe. The Germans had held
them well, but no human agency could have prevailed against the
unfaltering valor of the Allies. Now they were in Allied hands, and
being prepared for Allied shelter. From sunken approaches to the
assembly trenches, and from there forward through an intricate maze of
communicating passages to the firing trench, tens of thousands of men
were busy with pick and shovel--not, however, constructing the narrow,
steep-sided affairs which proved so disastrous to the Germans on the
Somme, but a shallower type of trench having more flare and a wider
sole. Just behind them worked the plumbers and pipemen, the carpenters
and timber placers, the electricians with their coils of wire and
telephones; everything perfected with the greatest nicety today, which
tomorrow--or the next, or next, tomorrow--would be buried for future
plowshares. War could not be war unless it were th