damage as possible in ten minutes, we hasten to the finale.  As in most finales, one’s actions now become less restrained—­but, from a brutal point of view, more effective.  A couple of hand-grenades are thrown into any dug-out which has not yet surrendered. (The Canadians, who make quite a speciality of flying matinees, are accustomed, we understand, as an artistic variant to this practice, to fasten an electric torch along the barrel of a rifle, and so illuminate their lurking targets while they shoot.) A sharp order passes along the line; every one scrambles out of the trench; and the troupe makes its way back, before the enemy in the adjacent trenches have really wakened up, to the place from which it came.  The matinee, so far as the actors are concerned, is over.

Not so the audience.  The avenging host is just getting busy.  The bombing-parties are now marshalled and proceed with awful solemnity and Teutonic thoroughness to clear the violated trench.  The procedure of a bombing-party is stereotyped.  They begin by lobbing hand-grenades over the first traverse into the first bay.  After the ensuing explosion, they trot round the traverse in single file and occupy the bay.  This manoeuvre is then repeated until the entire trench is cleared.  The whole operation requires good discipline, considerable courage, and carefully timed co-operation with the other bombing-party.  In all these attributes the Boche excels.  But one thing is essential to the complete success of his efforts, and that is the presence of the enemy.  When, after methodically desolating each bay in turn (and incidentally killing their own wounded in the process), the two parties meet midway—­practically on top of the unfortunate Hans Dumpkopf, who is still giving an imitation of a tortoise in a corrugated shell—­it is discovered that the beautifully executed counter-attack has achieved nothing but the recapture of an entirely empty trench.  The birds have flown, taking their prey with them.  Hans is the sole survivor, and after hearing what his officer has to say to him upon the subject, bitterly regrets the fact.

Meanwhile, in the British trenches a few yards away, the box-office returns are being made up.  These take the form, firstly, of some twenty-five prisoners, including one indignant officer—­he had been pulled from his dug-out half asleep and frog-marched across the British lines by two private soldiers well qualified to appreciate the richness of his language—­together with various souvenirs in the way of arms and accoutrements; and secondly, of the knowledge that at least as many more of the enemy had been left permanently incapacitated for further warfare in the dug-outs.  A grim and grisly drama when you come to criticise it in cold blood, but not without a certain humour of its own—­and most educative for Brother Boche!

But he is a slow pupil.  He regards the profession of arms and the pursuit of war with such intense and solemn reverence that he cannot conceive how any one calling himself a soldier can be so criminally frivolous as to write a farce round the subject—­much less present the farce at a Flying Matinee.  That possibly explains why the following stately paragraph appeared a few days later in the periodical communique which keeps the German nation in touch with its Army’s latest exploits:—­