We were veritably at the front. There was, however, not a whisper of
war, nor anything visible except the thin, pale line like a striation on
the distant hills. Then a far-off sound of thunder is heard. It is a gun.
A faint puff of smoke is pointed out to us. Neither the rumble nor the
transient cloudlet makes any apparent impression on the placid and
wide dignity of the scene. Nevertheless, this is war. And war seems
a very vague, casual, and negligible thing. We are led about fifty
feet to the left, where in a previous phase a shell has indented a
huge hole in the earth. The sight of this hole renders war rather less
vague and rather less negligible.

"There are eighty thousand men in front of us," says an officer,
indicating the benign shimmering, empty landscape.

"But where?"

"Interred--in the trenches."

It is incredible.

"And the other interred--the dead?"

I ask.

"We never speak of them. But we think of them a good deal."

Still a little closer to war. The parc du genie--engineers park. BEHIND
We inspected hills of coils, formidable barbed wire, far surpassing
that of farmers, well contrived to tear to pieces any human being