With the noise and the fatigue, the men say it is impossible to sleep naturally, but they become so used to the firing and so weary that they become oblivious of everything even when shells are falling within a dozen yards of them.  They stay in the trenches five days and then get five days’ rest.  In talking to the men one feels the influence on them of a curious sort of fatalism—­they have been lucky so far and will come through all right.  One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great game.  The strain of football a thousand times magnified.  The joy of winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side by side with the stronger passions of hatred and anger and the sight of agony and death.

We talked to some of the little groups of men along the road who were going back to their five days in the trenches.  Of course all large units are split up so as not to attract attention.  They were all the same, all sure of winning, and all bearded, muddy, and determined.  I could not help thinking of American football players at the end of the first half.  These men seemed all the same.  I have no recollection of a single individual.  The “system” and its work has made a type not only of clothes but of face.  Their answers to the usual questions were all the same, and one felt in talking to them that their opinions were machine-made.  Three points stood out—­Germany is right and will win; England is wrong and will knuckle under; we hate England because we are alike in religion, custom, and opinion, and it is the war of kindred races.  Everywhere one met the arguments and stories of unfairness and cruelty in fighting that have appeared in the English papers, but with the names reversed.  English soldiers had surrendered and then fired; had shot from beneath a Red Cross flag or had killed prisoners.  The stories were simple and as hackneyed as most of those current in England.

The concrete rest houses were interesting.  Most of them have furniture made from trees “to amuse us and pass the time.”  Both officers and men use the same type of house, though discipline forbids that the same house be used by both officers and men.  The light in these houses is bad and the ventilation not all that it should be, but they are extremely careful about sanitation, and everywhere one smells disinfectants and sees evidence of scrupulous guarding against disease.  Oil and candles are scarce and the “pocket electric” that all the men and officers carry does not last long enough for much reading.  There are always telephone connections, but in most cases visits are impossible save by way of the underground passages and the trenches.

One officer described the life as entirely normal; another said, in speaking of a Louis XV. couch which had been borrowed from a near-by chateau and was the pride of a regiment, “Oh! we are cave-dwellers, but we have some of the luxuries of at least the nineteenth century.”