n" and they had come far and to-morrow might go
back to France for the last time.

My first view of them in the trenches after they came from Gallipoli was
in the flat country near Ypres whose mushiness is so detested by all
soldiers. They had been used to digging trenches in dry hillsides,
where they might excavate caves with solid walls. Here they had to fill
sandbags with mud and make breastworks, which were frequently breached
by shell fire. At first, they had been poor diggers; but when democracy
learns its lesson by individual experience it is incorporated in every
man and no longer is a question of orders. Now they were deepening
communication trenches and thickening parapet walls and were
mud-plastered by their labor.

Having risen at General Birdwood's hour of five to go with him on
inspection I might watch his methods, and it means something to men to
have their corps commander thus early among them when a drizzly rain is
softening the morass under foot. He stopped and asked the privates how
they were in a friendly way and they answered with straight-away
candor. Then he gave some directions about improvements with a
we-are-all-working-together suggestiveness, but all the time he was the
general. These privates were not without their Australian sense of
humor, which is dry; and in answer to the inquiry about how he was one
said:

"All right, except we'd like a little rum, sir."

In cold weather the distribution of a rum ration was at the disposition
of a commander, who in most instances did not give it. This stalwart
Australian evidently had not been a teetotaler.

"We'll give you some rum when you have made a trench raid and taken some
prisoners," the general replied.

"It might be an incentive, sir!" said the soldier very respectfully.

"No Australian should need such an incentive!" answered the general, and
passed on.

"Yes, sir!" was the answer of another soldier to the question if he had
been in Gallipoli.

"Wounded?"

"Yes, sir."

"How?"

"I was examining a bomb, sir, to find out how it was made and it went
off to my surprise, sir!"

There was not even a twinkle of the eye accompanying the response, yet I
was not certain that this big fellow from the bush had been wounded in
that way. I suspected him of a quiet joke.

"Throw them at the Germans next time," said the general.

"Yes, sir. It's safer!"

Returning after that long morning of characteristic routine, as we
passed through a