Well, as already indicated, the trench system has put all that right.  The trenches now run continuously—­a long, irregular, but perfectly definite line of cleavage—­from the North Sea to the Vosges.  Everybody has been carefully sorted out—­human beings on one side, Germans on the other. ("Like the Zoo,” observes Captain Wagstaffe.) Nothing could be more suitable. You’re there, and I’m here, so what do we care? in fact.

The result is an agreeable blend of war and peace.  This week, for instance, our battalion has been undergoing a sort of rest-cure a few miles from the hottest part of the firing line. (We had a fairly heavy spell of work last week.) In the morning we wash our clothes, and perform a few mild martial exercises.  In the afternoon we sleep, in all degrees of deshabille, under the trees in an orchard.  In the evening we play football, or bathe in the canal, or lie on our backs on the grass, watching our aeroplanes buzzing home to roost, attended by German shrapnel.  We could not have done this in the autumn.  Now, thanks to our trenches, a few miles away, we are as safe here as in the wilds of Argyllshire or West Kensington.

But there are drawbacks to everything.  The fact is, a trench is that most uninteresting of human devices, a compromise.  It is neither satisfactory as a domicile nor efficient as a weapon of offence.  The most luxuriant dug-out; the most artistic window-box—­these, in spite of all biassed assertions to the contrary, compare unfavourably with a flat in Knightsbridge.  On the other hand, the knowledge that you are keeping yourself tolerably immune from the assaults of your enemy is heavily discounted by the fact that the enemy is equally immune from yours.  In other words, you “get no forrarder” with a trench; and the one thing which we are all anxious to do out here is to bring this war to a speedy and gory conclusion, and get home to hot baths and regular meals.

So a few days ago we were not at all surprised to be informed, officially, that trench life is to be definitely abandoned, and Hun-hustling to begin in earnest.

(To be just, this decision was made months ago:  the difficulty was to put it into execution.  The winter weather was dreadful.  The enemy were many and we were few.  In Germany, the devil’s forge at Essen was roaring night and day:  in Great Britain Trades Union bosses were carefully adjusting the respective claims of patriotism and personal dignity before taking their coats off.  So we cannot lay our want of progress to the charge of that dogged band of Greathearts which has been holding on, and holding on, and holding on—­while the people at home were making up for lost time—­ever since the barbarian was hurled back from the Marne to the Aisne and confined behind his earthen barrier.  We shall win this war one day, and most of the credit will go, as usual, to those who are in at the finish.  But—­when we assign the glory and the praise, let us not forget those who stood up to the first rush.  The new armies which are pouring across the Channel this month will bring us victory in the end.  Let us bare our heads, then, in all reverence, to the memory of those battered, decimated, indomitable legions which saved us from utter extinction at the beginning.)