Of course, no two units of communication are dependent on one wire.  There is always a duplicate.  If one is broken it is immediately repaired.  The factories spin out wire to talk over and barbed wire for entanglements in front of trenches and weave millions of bags to be filled with sand for breastworks to protect men from bullets.  If Sir John French wished, he could talk with Lord Kitchener in London and this battalion headquarters at Neuve Chapelle within the same space of time that a railroad president may speak over the Long Distance from Chicago to New York and order dinner out in the suburbs.

These two men at the table, their faces tanned by exposure, men in the thirties, had the British regular of long service stamped all over them.  War was an old story to them; and an old story, too, laying signal wires under fire.

“We’re very comfortable,” said one.  “No danger from stray bullets or from shrapnel; but if one of the Jack Johnsons come in, why, there’s no more cottage and no more argument between you and me.  We’re dead and maybe buried, or maybe scattered over the landscape, along with the broken pieces of the roof.”

A soldier was on guard with bayonet fixed inside that little room, which had passageway to the cellar past the table, among straw beds.  This seemed rather peculiar.  The reason lay on one of the beds in a private’s khaki.  He had come into the battalion’s trenches from our front and said that he belonged to the D------regiment and had been out on patrol and lost his way.

It was two miles to that regiment and two miles is a long distance to stray between two lines of trenches so close together, when at any point in your own line you will find friends.  It was possible that this fellow’s real name was Hans Schmidt, who had learned cockney English in childhood in London, and in a dead British private’s uniform had come into the British trenches to get information to which he was anything but welcome.

He was to be sent under guard to the D------regiment
for identification; and if he were found to be a Hans and not a
Tommy—­well, though he had tried a very stupid dodge he must have
known what to expect when he was found out, if his officers had
properly trained him in German rules of war.

I had a glimpse of him in the candlelight before stooping to feel my way down three or four narrow steps to the cellar, where the farmer ordinarily kept potatoes and vegetables.  There were straw beds around the walls here, too.  The major commanding the battalion rose from his seat at a table on which were some cutlery, a jam pot, tobacco, pipes, a newspaper or two, and army telegraph forms and maps.

If the hosts of mansions could only make their hospitality as simple as the major’s, there would be less affectation in the world.  He introduced me to an officer sitting on the other side of the table and to one lying in his blankets against the wall, who lifted his head and blinked and said that he was very glad to see me.