We had thrilled instinctively.  Suddenly there arose, all over the wide plain, solemn and melodious singing.  We still remembered singing of a similar kind we had recently heard at Bixschoote on a tragic occasion; and here were the same tuneful voices again, singing a hymn of the same kind as those they sang further to the north before shouting their hurrahs for the attack.  But we did not fear anything of that kind now.  We had the impression that this singing was not a special prayer in front of our little sector of trenches, but that it was general, and extended without limits over the whole of our provinces violated by the enemy:  over Champagne, Lorraine, and Picardy, resounding from the North Sea to the Rhine.

The Territorial trench was full of noiseless animation.  The men came up out of their little dug-outs without a word, and the whole company was soon perched upon the ledge.  There was a silence among our men, as if each man felt uneasy or perhaps jealous of what was going on over there.  Then, as if to order, along the line of the German trenches other hymns rang out, and one choir seemed to answer the other.  The singing became general.  Quite close to us, in the trenches themselves, in the distance, round their brightly lighted trees, to the right, to the left, it resounded, softened by the distance.  What a stirring, nay, grandiose, impression those hymns made, floating over the vast field of death!  I felt intuitively that all this had been arranged long before, that they might celebrate their Christmas with religious calm and peace.

At any other time, no doubt, many a clumsy joke would have been made, and no little abuse hurled at the singers.  But all that has been changed.  I divined some regret among our brave fellows that we were not taking part in a similar festival.  Was it not Christmas Eve?  Had we not been obliged by our duty to give up the delightful family gathering which reunites us yearly around the symbolic Yule-log?  This year our mothers, our sisters, and our children were keeping up the time-honoured and pious custom alone.  Why did not our larger family of to-day join in singing together around lighted fir-trees?  Our Territorials did not speak; but their thoughts flew away from the trenches, and the regrets of all were fused in a common feeling of melancholy.

Little by little the singing died away, and absolute silence fell once more upon the country.

* * * * *

I went with G. as far as his watch-post.  He had to resume his duty as officer of the watch from eleven o’clock in the evening to two o’clock in the morning.  The post consisted of a kind of small blockhouse, strongly built and protected by two casemates with machine-guns placed so as to command the enemy’s trenches.  A machine-gunner was always on guard, and could call the others, at the slightest alarm, to work the gun.  These men were quartered in a kind of tunnel hollowed out close by,