One hundred and fifty yards away across a dead field was another wall of sandbags.  The distance is important.  It is always stated in all descriptions.  One hundred and fifty yards is not much.  Only when you get within forty or fifty yards have you something to brag about.  Yet three hundred yards may be more dangerous than fifteen, if an artillery “hate” is on.

Look for an hour, and all you see is the wall of sandbags.  Not even a rabbit runs across that dead space.  The situation gets its power of suggestion from the fact that there are Germans behind the other wall—­real, live Germans.  They are trying to kill the British on our side and we are trying to kill them; and they are as coyly unaccommodating about putting up their heads as we are.  The emotion of the situation is in the fact that a sharpshooter might send a shot at your cap; he might smash a periscope; a shell might come.  A rifle cracks—­that is all.  Nearly everyone has heard the sound, which is no different at the front than elsewhere.  And the sound is the only information you get.  It is not so interesting as shooting at a deer, for you can tell whether you hit him or not.  The man who fires from a trench is not even certain whether he saw a German or not.  He shot at some shadow or object along the crest which might have been a German head.

Thus, one must take the word of those present that there is any more life behind than in front of the sandbags.  However, if you are sceptical you may have conviction by starting to crawl over the top of the British parapet.  After dark the soldiers will slip over and bring back your body.  It is this something you do not see, this something visualized by the imagination, which convinces you that you ought to be considerate enough of posterity to write the real description of a trench.  Look for an hour at that wall of sandbags and your imagination sees more and more, while your eye sees only sandbags.  What does this war mean to you?  There it is:  only you can describe what this war means to you.

Many a soldier who has spent months in trenches has not seen a German.  I boast that I have seen real Germans through my glasses.  They were walking along a road back of their trenches.  It was most fascinating.  All the Germans I had ever seen in Germany were not half so interesting.  I strained my eyes watching those wonderful beings as I might strain them at the first visiting party from Mars to earth.  There must have been at least ten out of the Kaiser’s millions.

In summer that wood had become a sylvan bower, or a pastoral paradise, or a leafy nook, as you please.  The sun played through the branches in a patchwork; flowers bloomed on the dirt roofs of the shanties, and a swallow had a nest—­famous swallow!—­on one of the parapets.  True, it was not on the front parapet; it was on the reserve.  The swallow knew what he was about.  He was taking a reasonable amount of risk and playing reasonably secure to get a front seat, according to the ethics of the war correspondent.  The two walls of sandbags were in the same place that they had been six months previously.  A little patching had been done after some shells had hit the mark, though not many had come.