On another occasion, when we were tramping through interminable communication-trenches on a slope, a single rash exposure of two of our figures above the parapet of the trench drew down upon us a bombardment of high-explosive.  For myself, I was completely exhausted by the excursion, which was nearing its end, and also I was faint from hunger.  But immediately the horrible sizzling sound overhead and an explosion just in front made it plain to me that we were to suffer for a moment’s indiscretion, I felt neither fatigue nor hunger.  The searching shells fell nearer to us.  We ran in couples, with a fair distance between each couple, according to instructions, along the rough, sinuous inequalities of the deep trench.  After each visitation we had to lie still and count five till all the fragments of shell had come to rest.  At last a shell seemed to drop right upon me.  The earth shook under me.  My eyes and nose were affected by the fumes of the explosion.  But the shell had not dropped right upon me.  It had dropped a few yards to the left.  A trench is a wonderful contrivance.  Immediately afterwards, a friend picked up in the trench one of the warm shots of the charge.  It was a many-facetted ball, beautifully made, and calculated to produce the maximum wound.  This was the last shell to fall.  We were safe.  But we realised once again, and more profoundly, that there is nothing casual in the conduct of war.

At no place was the continuously intense character of the struggle—­ like that of two leviathan wrestlers ever straining their hardest at grips—­more effectually brought home to me than in the region known now familiarly to the whole world as Notre Dame de Lorette, from the little chapel that stood on one part of it.  An exceedingly ugly little chapel it was, according to the picture postcards.  There are thousands of widows and orphans wearing black and regretting the past and trembling about the future to-day simply because the invaders had to be made to give up that religious edifice which they had turned to other uses.

The high, thickly wooded land behind the front was very elaborately organised for living either above ground or underground, according to the circumstances of the day.  To describe the organisation would be impolitic.  But it included every dodge.  And the stores, entombed in safety, comprised all things.  I remember, for example, stacks of hundreds of lamp-chimneys.  Naught lacked to the completeness of the scene of war.  There were even prisoners.  I saw two young Germans under guard in a cabin.  They said that they had got lost in the labyrinth of trenches, and taken a wrong turning.  And I believe they had.  One was a Red Cross man—­probably a medical student before, with wine and song and boastings, he joined his Gott, his Kaiser, and his comrades in the great mission of civilisation across Belgium.  He was dusty and tired, and he looked gloomily at the earthen floor of the cabin.  Nevertheless, he had a good carriage and a passably intelligent face, and he was rather handsome.  I sympathised with this youth, and I do not think that he was glad to be a prisoner.  Some people can go and stare at prisoners, and wreak an idle curiosity upon them.  I cannot.  A glance, rather surreptitious, and I must walk away.  Their humiliation humiliates me, even be they Prussians of the most offensive variety.