lure, Verdun was a failure, and the drive on the
Somme has only bent the lines. The Germans may shorten their lines
because of a lack of men, but I firmly believe that neither their line
nor the Allies' line will ever be broken. What will be the end if the
Allies cannot wrest from Germany, Belgium and that part of northern
France she is holding for ransom--to obtain good terms at the peace
congress? Is Germany slowly, very slowly going under, or are we going to
witness complete European exhaustion? Whatever happens, poor, mourning,
desolated France will hold to the end.

In localities where no great offensive is contemplated, and the business
of violence has become a routine, the object of the commander is to keep
the enemy on the qui-vive, demoralize him by killing and wounding his
soldiers, and prevent him from strengthening his first lines. Relations
take on the character of an exchange; one day the French throw a
thousand mines (high-explosive trench shells) into the German lines, and
the next day the Germans throw a thousand back. The French smash up a
village where German troops are en repos; while it is being done, the
Germans begin to blow a French village to pieces. In the trenches the
individual soldiers throw grenades at each other, and wish that the
whole tiresome business was done with. They have two weeks in the
trenches and two weeks out of them in a cantonment behind the lines. The
period in the trenches is divided between the first lines and the rear
lines of the first position. Often on my way to the trenches at night I
would pass a regiment coming to repos. Silent, vaguely seen, in broken
step the regiment passed. Sometimes a shell would come whistling in.

There was one part of the Bois-le-Pretre region upon which nothing
depended, and the war had there settled into the casual exchange of
powder and old iron that obtains upon two thirds of the front. At the
entrance to this position, in the shadow of a beautiful clump of ash
trees, stood the rustic shelters of the regimental cooks. From behind
the wall of trees came a terrifying crash. The war-gray, iron field
kitchen, which the army slang calls a contre-torpilleur (torpedo-boat
destroyer), stood in a little clearing of the wood; there was nothing
beautiful to the machine, which was simply an iron box, two feet high
and four feet square, mounted on big wheels, and fitted with a high oval
chimney. A halo of kitcheny smell floated about it, and the ope