So you see us once more in harness, falling into the collar with energy, if not fervour.  We no longer regard War with the least enthusiasm:  we have seen It, face to face.  Our sole purpose now is to screw our sturdy followers up to the requisite pitch of efficiency, and keep them remorselessly at that standard until the dawn of triumphant and abiding peace.

We have one thing upon our side—­youth.

“Most of our regular senior officers are gone, sir,” remarked Colonel Kemp one day to the Brigadier—­“dead, or wounded, or promoted to other commands; and I have something like twenty new subalterns.  When you subtract a centenarian like myself, the average age of our Battalion Mess, including Company Commanders, works out at something under twenty-three.  But I am not exchanging any of them, thanks!”

III

Trench-life in Belgium is an entirely different proposition from trench-life in France.  The undulating country in which we now find ourselves offers an infinite choice of unpleasant surroundings.

Down south, Vermelles way, the trenches stretch in a comparatively straight line for miles, facing one another squarely, and giving little opportunity for tactical enterprise.  The infantry blaze and sputter at one another in front; the guns roar behind; and that is all there is to be said about it.  But here, the line follows the curve of each little hill.  At one place you are in a salient, in a trench which runs round the face of a bulging “knowe”—­a tempting target for shells of every kind.  A few hundred yards farther north, or south, the ground is much lower, and the trench-line runs back into a re-entrant, seeking for a position which shall not be commanded from higher ground in front.

The line is pierced at intervals by railway-cuttings, which have to be barricaded, and canals, which require special defences.  Almost every spot in either line is overlooked by some adjacent ridge, or enfiladed from some adjacent trench.  It is disconcerting for a methodical young officer, after cautiously scrutinising the trench upon his front through a periscope, to find that the entire performance has been visible (and his entire person exposed) to the view of a Boche trench situated on a hill-slope upon his immediate left.

And our trench-line, with its infinity of salients and re-entrants, is itself only part of the great salient of “Wipers.”  You may imagine with what methodical solemnity the Boche “crumps” the interior of that constricted area.  Looking round at night, when the star-shells float up over the skyline, one could almost imagine one’s self inside a complete circle, instead of a horseshoe.