ral, and extended without limits over the whole of our provinces
violated by the enemy: over Champagne, Lorraine, and Picardy,
resounding from the North Sea to the Rhine.

The Territorial trench was full of noiseless animation. The men came
up out of their little dug-outs without a word, and the whole company
was soon perched upon the ledge. There was a silence among our men, as
if each man felt uneasy or perhaps jealous of what was going on over
there. Then, as if to order, along the line of the German trenches
other hymns rang out, and one choir seemed to answer the other. The
singing became general. Quite close to us, in the trenches themselves,
in the distance, round their brightly lighted trees, to the right, to
the left, it resounded, softened by the distance. What a stirring,
nay, grandiose, impression those hymns made, floating over the vast
field of death! I felt intuitively that all this had been arranged
long before, that they might celebrate their Christmas with religious
calm and peace.

At any other time, no doubt, many a clumsy joke would have been made,
and no little abuse hurled at the singers. But all that has been
changed. I divined some regret among our brave fellows that we were
not taking part in a similar festival. Was it not Christmas Eve? Had
we not been obliged by our duty to give up the delightful family
gathering which reunites us yearly around the symbolic Yule-log? This
year our mothers, our sisters, and our children were keeping up the
time-honoured and pious custom alone. Why did not our larger family of
to-day join in singing together around lighted fir-trees? Our
Territorials did not speak; but their thoughts flew away from the
trenches, and the regrets of all were fused in a common feeling of
melancholy.

Little by little the singing died away, and absolute silence fell once
more upon the country.

* * * * *

I went with G. as far as his watch-post. He had to resume his duty as
officer of the watch from eleven o'clock in the evening to two o'clock
in the morning. The post consisted of a kind of small blockhouse,
strongly built and protected by two casemates with machine-guns placed
so as to command the enemy's trenches. A machine-gunner was always on
guard, and could call the others, at the slightest alarm, to work the
gun. These men were quartered in a kind of tunnel hollowed out close
by, and at the first signal would have been ready to open fire