[Continued overleaf.

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The illustrated war news, Nov. 18, 1914—­3

[Illustration:  SYBARITISM in the trenches!  A hot shower-bath establishment installed by an ingenious French engineer.]

Much has been said of the elaborate character of the German entrenchments, and of the British genius for comfort developed in our own lines, but it is doubtful whether anything done by either side in that direction has surpassed the chef-d’oeuvre of an ingenious French engineer shown in our illustration.  At one point in the French trenches not seven hundred yards from those of the enemy, and within two miles of the German artillery, he constructed an up-to-date bathing establishment, with a heating apparatus and a shower-bath!  The apartment was fitted with a stove, benches, clothes-pegs, and curtains; and adjoining the salle de douches, or shower-bath room, was fitted up a salle de coiffure.  There was even talk of enlivening the bathing hour with music and a topical revue.

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4—­The illustrated war news, Nov. 18, 1914.

[Illustration:  Similar to the Kaiser’s Aerial bodyguard:  A zeppelin with A gun on Top firing at hostile aeroplanes—­A German picture.]

It was stated recently that two Zeppelins, armed with machine-guns, circle continually on guard above the Kaiser’s private apartments in his headquarters at Coblentz.

It must be remembered, too, that the casualties referred to—­being confined to “the western area of the war”—­do not include our losses at sea, which comprise few “wounded” and no “missing.”  At sea it is either neck or nothing, sink or swim:  a modern battle-ship, if holed and exploded, like the Good Hope and the Monmouth off the coast of Chile, going to the bottom, and most of her crew with her, like Kempenfelt’s oaken Royal George—­

  Brave Kempenfelt is gone,
    His victories are o’er;
  And he and his eight hundred
    Will plough the waves no more.

Thus if our casualties at sea, which are mainly of one kind only, be added up, they will probably be found to exceed our deaths on land, which are always much less numerous than other kinds of losses; yet the mortality of our battlefields has been mournful enough, especially among officers—­where the death percentage has been higher than in any other war we ever waged.