The ammunition-train in process of being unloaded is a fearsome affair.  You may see all conceivable ammunition, from rifle cartridges to a shell whose weight is liable to break through the floors of lorries, all on one train.  And not merely ammunition, but a thousand pyrotechnical and other devices; and varied bombs.  An officer unscrews a cap on a metal contraption, and throws it down, and it begins to fizz away in the most disconcerting manner.  And you feel that all these shells, all these other devices, are simply straining to go off.  They are like things secretly and terribly alive, waiting the tiny gesture which will set them free.  Officers, handling destruction with the nonchalance of a woman handling a hat, may say what they like—­the ammunition train is to my mind an unsafe neighbour.  And the thought of all the sheer brain-power which has gone to the invention and perfecting of those propulsive and explosive machines causes you to wonder whether you yourself possess a brain at all.

You can find everything in the British lines except the British Army.  The same is to be said of the French lines; but the in discoverability of the British Army is relatively much more striking, by reason of the greater richness and complexity of the British auxiliary services.  You see soldiers—­you see soldiers everywhere; but the immense majority of them are obviously engaged in attending to the material needs of other soldiers, which other soldiers, the fighters, you do not see—­or see only in tiny detachments or in single units.

Thus I went for a very long walk, up such hills and down such dales as the country can show, tramping with a General through exhausting communication-trenches, in order to discover two soldiers, an officer and his man; and even they were not actual fighters.  The officer lived in a dug-out with a very fine telescope for sole companion.  I was told that none but the General commanding had the right to take me to that dug-out.  It contained the officer’s bed, the day’s newspapers, the telescope, a few oddments hung on pegs pushed into the earthen walls, and, of equal importance with the telescope, a telephone.  Occasionally the telephone faintly buzzed, and a very faint, indistinguishable murmur came out of it.  But the orderly ignored this symptom, explaining that it only meant that somebody else was talking to somebody else.  I had the impression of a mysterious underground life going on all around me.  The officer’s telescopic business was to keep an eye on a particular section of the German front, and report everything.  The section of front comprised sundry features extremely well known by reputation to British newspaper readers.  I must say that the reality of them was disappointing.  The inevitable thought was:  “Is it possible that so much killing has been done for such trifling specks of earth?”