miles of trenches were provided with stockade walls, leaving ample room inside for the rapid movement of troops.  The British built trenches with lateral individual dugouts at right angles to the main trench, protecting the men against flank fire—­and these aroused the admiration even of their enemies.  In the French trenches the ingenuity of a French engineer provided a system of hot shower baths on the firing line, and from all points along the deadlocked battle front came stories of the remarkable manner in which the troops of all the armies speedily accommodated themselves to unprecedented conditions and maintained a spirit of cheerfulness truly marvelous under the circumstances, especially as there was no cessation of the constant endeavor to gain ground from the enemy and no end to the daily slaughter.

IN THE GERMAN TRENCHES

A correspondent with the German army who visited the firing line in the Argonne forest late in November, by special permission of the German crown prince, described the conditions in the trenches as follows:  “Here in the now famous Argonne forest—­the scene of some of the war’s most desperate fighting—­the Germans are trenching and mining their way forward, literally yard by yard.  This afternoon I reached the foremost trench, south of Grandpre.  About 160 feet ahead of me is the French trench.  Picture to yourself a canebrake-like woods of fishpoles ranging in size from half an inch to saplings of two and three inches thick and so dense that you can hardly see forty yards even now when the leaves have fallen.  Among these is a scattering of big trees, the trunks of which are veritable mines of bullets.

“Irregular lines of deep yellow clay trenches zigzag for miles.  Other trenches run back from these to what looks like a huge Kansas ’prairie-dog town’—­human burrows, where thousands of soldiers are literally living underground.  From the lines of trenches running parallel to one another comes a constant, spitting, sputtering, popping of rifles, making the woods resound like a Chinese New Year in San Francisco or an old-time Fourth of July.  Field guns and hand grenades furnish the ‘cannon-cracker’ effect.  Through the woods the high-noted ‘zing zing’ of bullets sounds like a swarm of angry bees, while high overhead shrapnel and shell go shrieking on their way.  Here and there you may see spades full of earth being thrown up as if by invisible hands, marking the onward work of the German gopher-like pioneers in their subterranean warfare.  That is the Argonne forest.

“As the trench I am in was still in the hands of the French three days ago and as the crown prince is advancing steadily, the trenches are temporary and contain little in the way of comforts.  In deep niches cut in the side the soldiers rest, play cards or even sleep on damp ledges between fights.

“The trenches also serve as a cemetery.  When the enemy’s fire is so hot that it is impossible to stick your head out or to take the dead out to bury them, the grave is made in a niche or a ledge cut into the side of the trench.”