some of it sleeping in deep, obscure retreats, but most of it acutely
alive and interested in everything. A Captain with a shabby uniform
and a strong Southern accent told us how on March 9th he and his
men defended their trench in water up to the waist and lumps of ice
in it knocking against their bodies.

"I was summoned to surrender," he laughed. "I did not surrender.
We had twenty killed and twenty-four with frostbitten feet as a result
of that affair. Yes--March 9th."

March 9th, 1915, obviously divided that officer's life into two parts,
and not unnaturally!

A little further on we might hear an officer speaking somewhat
ardently into a telephone:

"What are they doing with that gun? They are shooting all over the
shop. Tell them exactly------"

Still a little further on, and another officer would lead us to a spot
where we could get glimpses of the plain. What a plain! Pit-heads,
superb vegetation, and ruined villages--tragic villages illustrating the
glories and the transcendent common-sense of war and invasion.
That place over there is Souchez--familiar in all mouths from
Arkansas to Moscow for six months past. What an object! Look at
St. Eloi! Look at Angres! Look at Neuville St. Vaast! And look at
Ablain St. Nazaire, the nearest of all! The village of Ablain St.
Nazaire seems to consist now chiefly of exposed and blackened
rafters; what is left of the church sticks up precisely like a little
bleached bone. A vision horrible and incredible in the immense