t you stop the War? We want
to get home to our wives these beautiful days, and so do you, so why do
you go on fighting?" The sudden beauty of the spring and the sun has
made it all glaringly incongruous, and every one feels it.

One badly wounded officer got it going out of his dug-out to attend to a
man of his company who was hit by a sniper in an exposed place, one of
his subalterns told me. His own account, of course, was a rambling story
leaving that part entirely out.

This next shows how the Germans had left nothing to chance. They have
about twelve machine-guns to every battalion, and are said to have had
12,000 when the War began. Passing through villages they pack ten of
them into an innocent-looking cart with a false bottom. We captured some
of these empty carts, and some time afterwards found them full of
machine-guns!

Gold hats and red hats have been dropping in all day. They do on Sundays
especially after Church Parade.

_Saturday, April 24th._--We were watching hundreds of men pass by
to-day, whistling and singing, on their way to the trenches.

News came to us this morning of the Germans having broken through the
trench lines north of Ypres and shelled Poperinghe, which was out of
range up to now, but it is not official.

The guns are very loud to-night; I hope they're keeping the Germans
busy; something is sure to be done to draw them off the Ypres line.

_Sunday, April 25th._--The plum-pudding was "something to write home
about!" and the Quartermaster sent us a tin of honey to-day, the first
I've seen for nine months.

A General came round this morning. He said the Canadians and another
regiment had given the Germans what for for this gas-fumes business
north of Ypres, got the ground back and recovered the four guns. The
beasts of Germans laid out a whole trench full of Zouaves with chlorine
gas (which besides being poisonous is one of the most loathsome smells).
Of course every one is busy finding out how we can go one better now.
But this afternoon the medical staffs of both these divisions have been
trying experiments in a barn with chlorine gas, with and without
different kinds of masks soaked with some antidote, such as lime. All
were busy coughing and choking when they found the A.D.M.S. of the
---- Division getting blue and suffocated; he'd had too much chlorine,
and was brought here, looking very bad, and for an hour we had to give
him fumes of ammonia till he could breathe properl