[Illustration:  “What part of the States do you Canadians come from?”]

We:  “Now, boys, does that always happen?  How often do you fellows polish Fritzie off and clean up the trench?”

They (after the short one had nodded to the tall one):  “Well, mister, I’ll tell you.  It’s got so it’s mighty damn risky for any Prussian to surrender to any Canadian!”

When the line out there in the training camp has gone to its objective, which usually is the third or fourth enemy trench, the men begin digging in.  Then they go back to the sergeant major for more instructions.  The digging in is usually done under a curtain of fire to protect them.  It is a great picture.

In another part of the field we saw the engineers learning to make tunnels under the enemy; saw the engineers blowing up enemy trenches—­a pleasant and exciting spectacle; saw the engineers making camouflage, and it may interest the gentle reader to know that one of the niftiest bits of camouflage we saw was over a French seventy-five gun.  It was set in the field.  A rail-road siding ran to it.  On a canvas over the gun two rails and the usual number of ties were painted, and the track ran on beyond.  Fifty feet in the air one could not tell that the gun was there.

The liveliest part of this martial cloister was the section devoted to the bayonet practice.  And as we watched the men trying to rip the vest buttons off a dummy and expose its gastric arrangements with a bayonet, while loping along at full speed, we recalled a Civil War story which may well be revived here.  A Down-easter from Vermont and a Southerner were going around and around one day at Shiloh, each trying to get the other with the bayonet, but both were good dodgers.  Finally as the Yankee was getting winded he cried between puffs: 

“Watch aout—!  Mind what yer dewin’!  Ye dern smart aleck!  Haint yew got no sense!  You’ll stick the pint of thet thing in my boawels, if you ain’t keerful!”

We heard a lot of shivery stories around that training camp.  They told us that the French chasseurs, the famous blue devils, were more or less careless about the way they forgot to take prisoners.  They are a proud people, from the French Alps, and exceedingly democratic.  A German brigadier, caught under their barrage, came up to a troop of chasseurs and when they demanded his surrender asked curtly, “Where’s your superior officer?” They pointed down the hill, and he started down.  At a safe distance they threw a hand grenade into him and obliterated him, remarking, “Well, the world is that much safer for democracy.”  It is told of a Canadian who came across a squad of Germans with their hands up that he asked:  “How many are you?” Eleven, they said.  He reached in his pocket; found his hand grenade, and threw it at them, remarking, “I’m sorry I have but the one; but divide it between you!” There is also the story of the Indian Sikhs, who begged