“It is a curious thing to walk over enemy trenches that I have watched like a tiger for weeks and weeks.  But what of the boys who took those trenches, with their eleven rows of barbed wire in front of them?  I don’t think I ever before to-day rated the British soldier at his proper value.  His sufferings in this weather are indescribable.  When he is not in the trenches his discomforts are enough to kill any ordinary mortal.  When he is in the trenches it is a mixture between the North Pole and Hell.  And yet when the moment comes he jumps up and charges at the impossible—­and conquers it! ...  Some of the poor fellows who lay there as they fell looked to me absolutely noble, and I thought of their families who were aching for news of them and hoping against hope that they would not be left unburied in their misery.

“All the loving and tender thoughts that are lavished on them are not enough.  There are no words to describe the large hearts of these men.  God bless ’em!  And what of the French on whose soil they lie?  Can they ever forget the blood that is mingled with their own?  I hope not.  I don’t think England has ever had as much cause to be proud as she has to-day.”

Ah! such thoughts and feelings cut deep.  They would be unbearable but for the saving salt of humour in which this whole great gathering of men, so to speak, moves suspended, as though in an atmosphere.  It is everywhere.  Coarse or refined, it is the universal protection, whether from the minor discomforts or the more frightful risks of war.  Volumes could be filled, have already been filled, with it—­volumes to which your American soldier when he gets to France in his thousands will add considerably—­pages all his own!  I take this touch in passing from a recent letter: 

“A sergeant in my company [writes a young officer] was the other day buried by a shell.  He was dug out with difficulty.  As he lay, not seriously injured, but sputtering and choking, against the wall of the trench, his C.O. came by.  ’Well, So-and-so, awfully sorry!  Can I do anything for you?’ ‘Sir,’ said the sergeant with dignity, still struggling out of the mud, ‘I want a separate peace!’”

And here is another incident that has just come across me.  Whether it is Humour or Pathos I do not know.  In this scene they are pretty close together—­the great Sisters!

A young flying officer, in a night attack, was hit by a shrapnel bullet from below.  He thought it had struck his leg, but was so absorbed in dropping his bombs and bringing down his machine safely that, although he was aware of a feeling of faintness, he thought no more of it till he had landed in the aerodrome.  Then it was discovered that his leg had been shot away, was literally hanging by a shred of skin, and how he had escaped bleeding to death nobody could quite understand.  As it was, he had dropped his bombs, and he insisted on making his report in hospital.