f voices, the rush of single cars
through the night, the passage of battalions, and behind it
all, the echo of the deep voices calling one to the other,
along the line that never sleeps.

. . . . . . .

The ridge with the scattered pines might have hidden children
at play. Certainly a horse would have been quite visible, but
there was no hint of guns, except a semaphore which announced
it was forbidden to pass that way, as the battery was firing.
The Boches must have looked for that battery, too. The ground
was pitted with shell holes of all calibres--some of them as
fresh as mole-casts in the misty damp morning; others where
the poppies had grown from seed to flower all through the
summer.

"And where are the guns?" I demanded at last.

They were almost under one's hand, their ammunition in cellars
and dug-outs beside them. As far as one can make out, the 75
gun has no pet name. The bayonet is Rosalie the virgin of
Bayonne, but the 75, the watchful nurse of the trenches and
little sister of the Line, seems to be always "soixante-
quinze." Even those who love her best do not insist that she
is beautiful. Her merits are French--logic, directness,
simplicity, and the supreme gift of "occasionality." She is
equal to everything on the spur of the moment. One sees and
studies the few appliances which make her do what she does,
and one feels that any one could have invented her.

FAMOUS FRENCH 75's

"As a matter of fact," says a commandant, "anybody--or,
rather, everybody did. The general idea is after such-and-such
system, the patent of which had expired, and we improved
it; the breech action, with slight modification, is somebody
else's; the sighting is perhaps a little special; and so is
the traversing, but, at bottom, it is only an assembly of
variations and arrangements."

That, of course, is all that Shakespeare ever got out of the
alphabet. The French Artillery make their own guns as he made
his plays. It is just as simple as that.

"There is nothing going on for the moment; it's too misty,"
said the Commandant. (I fancy that the Boche, being, as a
rule methodical, amateurs are introduced to batteries in the
Boche's intervals. At least, there are hours healthy and
unhealthy which vary with each position.) "But," the
Commandant reflected a moment, "there is a place--and a
distance. Let us say . . . " He gave a range.

The gun-servers stood back with the bored contemp