If you enter into a cafe or estaminet, a total stranger sidles to your table, and, having sat down beside you, produces from the recesses of his person a fragment of shrapnel.  This he lays before you, and explains that if he had been standing at the spot where the shell burst, it would have killed him.  You express polite regret, and pass on elsewhere, seeking peace and finding none.  The whole thing is a public scandal.

Seriously, though, it is astonishing what contempt familiarity can breed, even in the case of high-explosive shells.  This little town lies close behind the trenches.  All day long the big guns boom.  By night the rifles and machine-guns take up the tale.  One is frequently aroused from slumber, especially towards dawn, by a perfect tornado of firing.  The machine-guns make a noise like a giant tearing calico.  Periodically, too, as already stated, we are subjected to an hour’s intimidation in the shape of bombardment.  Shrapnel bursts over our heads; shells explode in the streets, especially in open spaces, or where two important streets cross. (With modern artillery you can shell a town quite methodically by map and compass.)

Brother Bosche’s motto appears to be:  “It is a fine morning.  There is nothing in the trenches doing.  We abundant ammunition have.  Let us a little frightfulness into the town pump!” So he pumps.

But nobody seems to mind.  Of course there is a casualty now and then.  Occasionally a hole is blown in a road, or the side of a house is knocked in.  Yet the general attitude of the population is one of rather interested expectancy.  There is always the cellar to retire to if things get really serious.  The gratings are sandbagged to that end.  At other times—­well, there is always the pleasing possibility of witnessing the sudden removal of your neighbour’s landmark.

Officers breakfasting in their billets look up from their porridge, and say,—­

“That’s a dud! That’s a better one!  Stick to it, Bill!”

It really is most discouraging, to a sensitive and conscientious Hun.

The same unconcern reigns in the trenches.  Let us imagine that we are members of a distinguished party from Headquarters, about to make a tour of inspection.

We leave the town, and after a short walk along the inevitable poplar-lined road turn into a field.  The country all round us is flat—­flat as Cheshire; and, like Cheshire, has a pond in every field.  But in the hazy distance stands a low ridge.

“Better keep close to the hedge,” suggests the officer in charge.  “There are eighty guns on that ridge.  It’s a misty morning; but they’ve got all the ranges about here to a yard; so they might—­”

We keep close to the hedge.

Presently we find ourselves entering upon a wide but sticky path cut in the clay.  At the entrance stands a neat notice-board, which announces, somewhat unexpectedly:—­

OLD KENT ROAD