car, with our own,
followed along the battle-line, his purpose being to scout for
possible wounded in order better to direct the afternoon operations of
his train.

* * * * *

Not far from Colincamps we stood upon the crest of a hill beside a
group of nine French field guns. They were cleverly concealed in an
artificial fence line carefully constructed in all its details along
the hilltop. Fence posts had been erected and the artillerymen had
also set up the trees, vines, and underbrush which normally follow and
accentuate the boundaries between fields. The day was so windy and
rainy that we had no fear of being observed by German aeroplanes, and
therefore stood tranquilly behind the guns and talked with the
commanding officer.

A mile below us in the valley we could through our field-glasses
define the position of the French trenches and beyond them locate the
German trenches. Between the two stretched that No Man's Land, called
"between the lines," which runs from Ostend through Bethune, Albert,
and Lassigny to Soissons and Rheims and from thence to the Swiss
frontier. Following its twistings and turnings this strip of land is
four hundred and fifty miles in length. It lies wrapt in uncanny
solitude for in all its length there moves no living creature. It
changes from beet-fields to plowed land, to pastures and back to the
eternal beet-fields again. It runs across farms and over hills,
through cities and under forest trees. It varies in width, here
narrowing to a few feet, there widening to several hundred yards. Five
minutes would be ample time to walk across it anywhere, and yet it is
the most impassable frontier ever marked out by man anywhere on the
surface of mother earth. No person may cross it, no matter how exalted
his position nor how mighty his influence, for throughout its length
hosts of trained men lie ever ready to let loose upon any intruder a
thousand shells and a million bullets.

What sights one might behold if one could, himself invisible, follow
this ribbon of scarred earth as it winds its way across Europe from
the North Sea to the Alps! Its length is mazed with barbed wire and
electric death, and menaced by pits and mines. Heaps of dead men lie
in the sun or rain, and the wounded cry faintly and more faintly until
they too are dead. The plants and trees are blasted and even the earth
has been torn and tortured by explosions.

At some point along this line a