Now we alighted from the motor-car and went forward on foot.  We passed some eight lines of trenches before we came to the one where we were to stop.  A practised military eye had gone over all that ground; a practised military hand had laid out each trench.  After the work was done the civilian’s eye could grasp the principle.  If one trench were taken, the men knew exactly how to fall back on the next, which commanded the ground they had left.  The trenches were not continuous.  There were open spaces left purposely.  All that front was literally locked, and double and triple locked, with trenches.  Break through one barred door and there is another and another confronting you.  Considering the millions of burrowing and digging and watching soldiers, it occurred to one that if a marmite (saucepan) came along and buried our little party, our loss would not be as much noticed as if a piece of coping from a high building had fallen and extinguished us on Broadway, which would be a relatively novel way of dying.  Being killed in war had long ceased to be a novelty on the continent of Europe.

We seemed in a dead world, except for the leisurely, hoarse, muffled reports of a French gun in the woods on either side of the open space where we stood.  Through our glasses we could see quite clearly the line of the German front trench, which was in the outskirts of a village on higher ground than the French.  Not a human being was visible.  Both sides were watching for any move of the other, meanwhile lying tight under cover.  By day they were marooned.  All supplies and all reliefs of men who are to take their turn in front go out by night.

There were no men in the trench where we stood; those who would man it in case of danger were in the adjoining woods, where they had only to cut down saplings and make shelters to be as comfortable as in a winter resort camp in the Adirondacks.  Any minute they might receive a call—­which meant death for many.  But they were used to that, and their card games went on none the less merrily.

“No farther?” we asked our major.

“No farther!” he said.  “This is risk enough for you.  It looks very peaceful, but the enemy could toss in some marmites if it pleased him.”  Perhaps he was exaggerating the risk for the sake of a realistic effect on the sightseers.  No matter!  In time one was to have risks enough in trenches.  It was on such an occasion as this, on another part of the French line, that two correspondents slipped away from the officers conducting them, though their word of honour was given not to do so—­which adds another reason for military suspicion of the Press.  The officers rang up the nearest telephone which connected with the front trenches, the batteries, and regimental and brigade headquarters, to apprehend two men of such-and-such description.  They were taken as easily as a one-eyed, one-eared man, with a wooden leg and red hair would be in trying to get out of police headquarters when the doormen had his Bertillon photograph and measurements to go by.