At twelve o'clock we leave for Montigny to relieve car No. 3, supplied with our "ordre de mouvement," some cold meat, a bottle of Pinard, blankets and a bloody brancard to sleep upon.

It is interesting to note as one travels along these roads that lead to the front lines how elaborately the country back of them has been prepared; everywhere there is barbed wire, fields that once grew sugar beets are now sown with rusty spikes and five prong wire. They reap their harvest still, these fields, a harvest of dead. The roads when visible from the German lines are screened for miles. Every little wood has its concealed battery, every little ridge machine guns, trenches and dug-outs everywhere and more barbed wire. The nearer the lines, of course the more defences there are, also tunnels and mines that could blow whole regiments of Boches to Hell.

One realises more and more why we have arrived at a sort of checkmate where both sides find it equally difficult to advance, and more and more am I convinced that the war will not end under the present conditions of fighting.

At the "poste de secours" outside of Montigny we find car No. 3 waiting for us to relieve him. No. 3 starts back with his load, making the "tournée de ramassage" on his way in and we remain on service for 24 hours.

Montigny was once a little village on a hill overlooking a peaceful stream and green meadows with other little hills and villages in the distance. Montigny had a few hundred contented inhabitants; Montigny had a fine little church. Now there is nothing left; no church, a few demolished houses without windows or roofs; that, however, makes but little difference, one is so often obliged to sleep in the cellars. Where are those who once lived here in peace? Little crosses on the hillside account for the men; are the women any better off?

At present the 37th regiment is quartered here; the officers and men spend sixteen days in the trenches and eight days in between "en repos." Once during every "période de repos" the gas-masks are tested, and as to-day was the day appointed to test them we were able to try ours for the first time. Thirty of us at a time, after adjusting our masks, were closed in a small room where the Major exploded a gas cartridge. We remained for five minutes and, at the end of that time, if "ça ne pique pas" you conclude that your mask is quite all right. Nothing could be more uncomfortable to wear than a gas-mask; it must be worn very tight in order that no gas shall enter; breathing is difficult and your poor head soon aches. A new device that I also tried is a great improvement but unfortunately too expensive for general use. Air is inhaled through a reservoir carried on the back which makes the gases harmless, and then exhaled through a valve that makes respiration quite natural. This mask is good for one hundred hours instead of only two or three. As the gases are developed and improved, so also must the masks be. There is a new gas called "moutarde" that is affected by moisture so that masks will not suffice and the pores of the skin as well have to be protected. They are also experimenting with cyanide and others equally deadly, so that soon nothing other than a diver's outfit or a hermetically sealed coffin will save you.

There are no orders, nothing to do but drink beer with a hospitable officer who invited us to his humble mess to smoke and chat with several other good fellows. Over the glasses with tales of adventures and women we forget there is war, and are only reminded from time to time that the Boches are but a mile away by an occasional gun and the whistle of a shell overhead on its way to or from the German lines.

In the crépuscule I strolled up the hill along the road that leads to the first line trenches; beautiful poplars line the road on both sides standing straighter than the sentries. An innocent little wood where men have slit each other's throats and stuck bayonets into each other's bellies now belongs to us; beyond "no man's land," and beyond that what we are fighting for.

We have been invited to dinner so I return on time. There is a saying "the nearer the front the higher the life." The fare may not be so good as at the Café de la Paix but the bread is whiter in this Café de la Guerre. A bare little room with a stone floor in a half blown up house, by the light of a dim and smelly lamp we linger over our coffee and poilu rum, the "world forgetting, by the world forgot." Outside the rain beats against the closed shutters, it is perfectly still and black except for the star shells and rockets that reassure you; they do not sleep, those who watch out there. What have we not talked about; there is nothing left; the lamp is burning low, the bottle is empty---, so we go to bed in a room with crumpled walls and only a dilapidated iron bedstead and a lousy, bloodstained mattress, by the light of a solitary candle. Poor little candle! A great blanket is hung over the window to hide the flickering light that might shine through the shell torn shutters. Outside it rains in a dismal way on a dismal world and the wind moans in a dismal way for a dismal reason.

"Le vent qui vient à travers les montagnes."

We slept in our boots ready for a call, but none came, so we slept until the sunshine crawled through the shrapnel holes in the shutters. After a washup in the cool little stream that comes down from the Vosges, we had our coffee and started out accompanied by our good friend the Lieutenant, to inspect the trenches. The same road of yesterday leads toward them and we can drive part of the way, as far as a little "poste de secours" in a little clearing, where we leave the ambulance.

A few hundred yards further on the road is barred by barbed wire entanglements and as the shell holes prove it is not always neglected by the Boche, we enter the communicating trenches that zigzag through the wood. What a maze of trenches with a "cachabis" every hundred yards or so! queer little dug-outs where men live like moles.

They are fairly dry in spite of the rain of yesterday, but the water will be above the corduroy flooring and up to the middle before long, not so pleasant for the men and the rats!

There have been no attacks latterly; the enemy has been too busy in Flanders where, thank Heaven, he has been getting Hell. As we get nearer we become more cautious, one must not look over the parapet, one must make no noise, it brings the little lead bullets that sting like wasps. At the furthest point we peered over the top; we are on the slope of a hill, beyond us nothing but devastation. This is "no man's land" where nothing but barbed wire grows and nothing but crows live. At night patrols venture forth, crawling on their stomachs towards each other's trenches to feel for foot-prints or to listen. Sometimes a star-shell reveals them and they do not return; sometimes they meet out there in the dark. A prayer or an oath, a groan or a gurgle, one stays and the other comes back. Quite plainly you can see the rows of German trenches and it is strange to think that only a little way off they are watching us through their periscopes just as we are watching them. On the left is the village of Donevre: with the naked eye we can see the crooked streets and the holes in the roofs of the houses, but one sees no Germans. They live in the cellars and like bats only come forth at night. In the first line running parallel along the ridge are the observation posts, little armoured turrets where one sits in rare comfort peering through a little slit, rows of rifles and mitrailleuses ever ready to spit lead. Very few men are kept in these front trenches; they remain in the rear, ready to come up at the first sign of an attack. Shelling the trenches is consequently not sufficiently profitable, an occasional hit would not warrant the waste of powder. The uncertain wind in this hilly terrain makes the use of gas equally dangerous to both, the bleaching bones in "no man's land" shows the result of attempting to take them by storm, so nothing happens and we return as we came, zigzagging through a labyrinth of traverses while the guns boom and the shells shriek as they fly over our heads. Latterly there have been several accidents at Montigny,---only last week two blacks were killed by a "marmite,"---so the dressing station has been moved to an old barn down the road where we report to the Major and while awaiting orders we lunch, sharing our meal with some poilus, who in return give us soup and mashed potatoes.

They are always so friendly, these simple soldiers whom you learn to love, with a stripe or more on their arm that means a ride or more in one of our ambulances at some time or other, and their tales are vastly interesting, but they are tired of it all. Five sous a day and a grave in the end with a little white cross, "Ici repose"---one of a million whose lot it was to work and suffer and die.

At one o'clock another car comes to relieve us and with a couple of "assis" we proceed upon our tour of "ramassage."

We visit in turn the villages of Migneville, Vaxainville, Reherrey and Merville; there is but little left of these villages except the cellars, the most useful part of these frontier houses, however. In each village there is an "infirmerie" with a pile of straw for sick beds and a "brancard" for an operating table. The men to be evacuated are taken and left at one of the several large hospitals at Baccarat where they are fortunately better off. The day's work is over to begin again to-morrow.

My room seems very luxurious tonight, the little cot very inviting. Lying snugly tucked away under a mountain of blankets one thinks of those out there with only the stars above and the mud beneath.

After "soupe," which means dinner, we received an unexpected visit from our chief, accompanied by the head of the Red Cross and some staff officers. They have been making a tour of the sections bringing official word that what we had read in the papers was true; the government has decided to take over the service; our chief and his associates have resigned. For me this means the end very shortly for I shall do as they have seen fit to do. To the silent little group that gathered about him in the growing darkness he said a few words, words that come straight from a man's heart and go to others, and then he was gone, this fellow we all love, who will no longer be our chief.

The service continues very light, less than half the cars go out every day and the idle moments are many; tant mieux, it means less wounded and France has had enough already.

This afternoon I visited the great glass manufactory. Before the war they employed 5,000 men, now there are about 500, old, very old men and young, very young boys engaged chiefly in making bottles, bottles for medicines instead of the exquisite bottles for ladies' dressing tables or gentlemen's sideboards. Quite the most extraordinary sight was the champion glass blower, pointed out to us with pride and envy by his fellow blowers. A cross, surly individual, unlike the others, who laugh at being laughed at. He is old and insignificant until he gives a little puff, when his jowls swell like soap-bubbles; then he becomes a thing of curiosity and splendour, and when after a couple of preliminary swings he holds the long tube in his mouth and lets himself out he is indeed a thing to marvel at. The skin that dangles loosely from his cheeks bellies out like a child's toy balloon; there seems to be no limit, for they only stop swelling when he has accomplished his purpose and the molten glass becomes a lamp chimney or a giant electric light bulb.

It is strange what people do to live and what importance they attach to living; would he were near when next I puncture a tire!

After dinner, this being a night off, I went to the movies, all that Baccarat offers in the way of entertainment. In the usual hall the usual audience of poilus and the usual sickening pictures of cheap sentimentality. On the way home the "club," a back room in the Hotel Dupont where there is a piano and some beer and smoke and tales of the day's work, work that is done and means bed and rest.

No. 6 is "en alerte," which means that No. 6 must be ready to go out in case of a call for any special service, but no call comes, so after a day spent waiting we turn in, half dressed, still "en alerte."

At 5.40 a. m. an urgent call came for an ambulance, so we opened her up and raced off to Azerailles, a little town four kilometres away, where we collected a badly wounded fellow; fortunately he was unconscious and the bumps that break your heart when you have a groaning load of them meant nothing to him. We got him back to the hospital still alive but the knowing orderly shook his head and the good sister murmured a prayer, so I fear it was all for nothing.

This afternoon the Boches came; they come quite often and rarely miss a Sunday. It is not easy to pot them but we drove them off with no damage here although they raised the devil with a little town over which they passed on their way back. It is wonderful how they fly, these birdmen; one of our own appeared as I was standing on the bridge after vespers. From a tremendous height he swooped down upon us, circling the church steeple and off again, but our cheers and the extra glass of Pinard or Poilu that he must have had with his Sunday dinner brought him back. Flying upside down seemed to be his special delight with a nose dive now and then and a loop the loop here and there.

There is a little café opposite the cristallerie, a dingy little place frequented by soldiers. Passing by on the way home I heard the strains of a violin; some one was playing, playing divinely. In a dimly lighted room thick with smoke, dozens of poilus were crowded about the bare tables with half empty beer glasses and saucers piled high. Silently they sat with their hairy chins buried in their hairy paws listening to a poilu play. His music had put them in a serious mood, but just as music has the power to create moods within us so it changes them at will, and when a moment later he started some gay French song, his body swaying from side to side, the glasses began to clink once more and they roared the words of a refrain that must be censored.

So it went, one moment we were a gay, laughing crowd, the next silent and sad with far-away thoughts. Romano, for that is his name, has a great soul. For years he played at Monte Carlo; now he is here like all of us playing for higher stakes with the ever booming guns to accompany the fiddle he caresses more fondly than a mistress.

Long after hours we remained, but happy hours come to an end just as do the unhappy ones, I hope, so out into the night still singing "Madelon," and home through streets dark and deserted except for the sentinels who stand guard with one eye open and one eye closed.

No. 6 required a bit of attention as No. 6 often does, otherwise a lazy day "en repos." While working over the car a grey haired fellow who begged a bit of essence for his briquet told me how he got his "croix de guerre" in 1914.

"It was tough in Lorraine when we drove them from Lunéville but worse, nom de Dieu, up north. Eight of us were in a stable shooting through the windows when a marmite came through the roof. I carried the sergeant to a poste a kilometre away. No, he wasn't so heavy with only one leg, and he fit very snugly in the hole in my shoulder. The others-you could have picked them up in a bag. C'est tout."

To-night our good friends, the French officers from Montigny, messed with us and we spent a jolly evening at the "Club."

Work when you have to, play when you can,
Shoot them and stick them, care not a damn,
Hug them and kiss them, there is no ban,
"C'est la guerre, Madame."

There is very little activity these days; they are too busy up north. To-night we gave a concert to some of the French officers and my poilu artist played for us. Life is a dreary march towards a tomb, "en passant il faut être gai," especially soldiers who often march quickly.

Cars Nos. 5 and 6 go to Badonviller for twenty-four hours. At 12 we leave, arriving at 12.45. "S'il y a des coups de main" we shall have work but this afternoon all is quiet. Now and again our batteries salute the Germans, now and again the Germans return the compliment.

There is but little left of Badonviller; it was completely shot up the first weeks of the war when it was taken and retaken several times by both sides. The houses are without roofs, the walls that remain standing rent by great shell holes and pierced by shrapnel. The streets are still littered with the hastily constructed barricades of timber and barbed wire that were thrown up during the first attacks when they fought all over the place, and here are also the permanent ones built later by the Germans of cement and Krupp's steel. Those must have been hot times when the French held one street and the Germans another, when the "mitrailleuse" in the darkness killed their own. After days of desperate fighting the Germans succeeded in taking the cemetery, over the graves and in and out of the tombs they fought. The dead must have had a day of it with fellows overhead sticking bayonets into each other and bashing in skulls. For several days the French were able to keep the church, with their machine guns mounted upon the altars vomiting lead through holes knocked in the walls, but the Germans had heavy artillery and when they brought it up and got the range there was no more church, no more Frenchmen. A few little flowers have sprung up out of their blood; their bones are buried amongst the stones and mortar but their spirit remains and their souls are immortal.

Countless wooden crosses within the tumbled down walls of the cemetery mark the graves of many other heroic Frenchmen. Your noble sacrifice was not in vain; the lives you gave to check the first onslaught of the Huns saved France and France saved the world. The few civilians who returned when it was all over and when the Germans were finally driven out live in cellars and go about their business with gas-masks ever ready, for Badonviller is scarcely a kilometre from the first lines.

The old woman in whose house we are quartered owes her life to her "métier de sage femme," and the fact that when the Germans occupied the town her services were required by a German woman. We have come to help her country so she cannot do enough for us, the good soul. She cooks the food we bring and lets us sleep in her dining-room.

After calling upon the "Major du cantonment" for orders and finding none, I visited the trenches. Back of the cemetery on the hill they begin and for a mile one winds in and out of the "boyaux" that lead to the first lines. Overhead the shells whistle in an everlasting game of battledore and shuttlecock "et on s'en f---." The trenches are splendidly constructed with directions everywhere, a corduroy flooring that keeps them fairly dry and every few hundred metres entrances to elaborate dug-outs where deep down vast quantities of supplies, munitions and men are stored. The advanced machine gun positions are arranged so that each gun will sweep a certain terrain, leaving not a square foot uncovered. They are in communication by telephone with the listening-posts still closer up and the batteries that would protect them by barrage fire in case of massed attack. At night they have a system of signals: one green light means to fire, two green lights fire continuously, red light to ask for artillery support, white light all well. The most advanced post is known as a listening-post and was located in a little thicket only occupied in the daytime. Here thirty yards from the Boche were a handful of soldiers with a rifle in one hand and a hand grenade in the other, ever on the alert. One peers through a little periscope and fancies that an equally vigilant German eye is peering back; it is a queer sensation and you are ready to duck if you see a grenade coming your way.

They tell you strange tales, these chaps, and you do not wonder when they ask in a whisper when it will finish.

The days are getting short, soon it will be winter; it is almost dark and time to return, back as we came, to our soup.

Our versatile midwife is a rare "cuisto." Somehow or other she managed to get a few eggs for an omelet, and with fried potatoes, some "singe" and a bottle of "Pinard" one cannot grumble. Madame likes her "verre," too, so she sat down with us and told us many tales of German atrocities; how the Mayor's wife had been shot for looking out of a window, how a little boy who had been sent by a brute of an officer to fetch some water was shot upon his return and while still alive thrown into the fire. In the Mairie there is a roll of honour with the names of all those who were murdered and how they met their fate. It is useless to recite this litany of crimes, murder, rape, arson, nothing did they omit. The room above was used as an operating room and ward. A French boy of ten, who day and night had been made to work for them, was badly wounded by a shell fragment. While lying upon one of the cots he was observed by an officer, who calmly threw him through the window to squash what was left of his poor mangled little body in the street below.

God damn the Germans! "God damn" is a prayer.

There are no lights when night comes. The village is a village of dead. We climbed the hill that leads past the cemetery and out beyond where no man lives and all is still, still because every now and again a white rocket flares up, but a red or green one would change it all.

The guns are asleep, to-night it is perfectly dark and quiet until a star-shell goes up, as they do every few moments, lighting up "no man's land" where none must venture. As far as one can see they are bursting, these beautiful star-shells, making day of the night from here to the North Sea.

On our return we found the Major who came to share a bottle of beer, and we heard further tales of German atrocities and the Kultur of Von Bernhardi.

May the day of reckoning soon come! This is our prayer as we roll ourselves up in our blankets upon the brancards that less fortunate ones have found less comfortable.

We are relieved at the expiration of our 24 hours and return to Baccarat passing through Péronne and Vacqueville for any sick or wounded on the way.

To-day there is bad news from the outside world; the Germans have taken Riga and the situation is very gloomy.

Russia and the Russians! they have failed us and it is for them that France is at war!

"Après le travail le plaisir, après la pluie le beau temps." The sun was warm this afternoon and we had a glorious bathe in the Meuthe where I left a few "cooties," and then a peaceful siesta on the shady banks where I collected a few insects.

It must be quite easy to kill when the day is grim and stormy; to-day it would be hard, but guns of steel have no hearts and men's hearts have become of steel; so the guns are never still, but they are far away and the occasional boom has a pleasant sound, a mellow soothing rumble that lulls one to sleep,---to sleep and dream of the years that are gone and of those that may never come.

If it ever ends how I shall live! The hours I have squandered, the pleasures I have ignored, no longer will they escape me; my cup will be full and I shall drink to the dregs. I shall taste for the first time the happiness of things and hours that meant nothing before. For the first time I shall know the "joie de vivre." "To breathe in the sunshine of a happy day, to drink in the moonlight of a happy night." Wild fancies, these, when tomorrow a shapeless carcass may be all that is left to rot by the wayside.

Awake with a start; the sun is setting in the west, and the guns are grumbling in the east.

To-day we go to Herberviller; it is not our most advanced post, but it is the most disagreeable, as here the Germans have left nothing. The population has gone forever, there is not even a dog or a stray cat. Ruins everywhere, among which live a few soldiers and ourselves. Our garage is what is left of a house next to the "infirmerie," where there is a telephone that summons us wherever we may be needed.

As there seems to be no need of us at present I walked over to St. Martin along a well shelled road. The Germans are on their good behaviour to-day, not that the swine know how to behave but they have been saving their ammunition latterly. St. Martin is like most of the towns in this region; a demolished church surrounded by demolished houses, occupied only by soldiers "en repos" but always working. In the village repairing "abris," in the fields digging trenches, in the graveyards digging fresh graves for comrades who might just as well be digging theirs. It may be luck, it may be destiny, or maybe but the caprice of a shrapnel shell.

The surgeon in charge of the "infirmerie" was on his way out to visit the Captain in one of the advanced posts; a short walk over the hills brought us to the entrance of the "boyaux" through which we made our way, finally emerging in a little wood about a kilometre from the German lines. Here we found the Captain peacefully smoking in the door of his luxurious dug-out. It was the hour to make the rounds so we set out through more complicated trenches and traverses that led us, unperceived by the enemy, through fields of barbed wire and shell holes to No. 1 "poste de résistance," located in a clump of trees with a stretch of "no man's land" separating us from the Boches whose positions were a few hundred yards away.

These P. R., or posts of resistance, take the place of trenches; they are thrust out as far as possible and command the terrain between themselves and similar ones on their right and left. This particular one is occupied by about 50 men, mostly "Annamites" who, because of their alertness, make excellent sentinels under the command of French sous officiers. If attacked they resist as best they can until relieved or killed. "En attendant" they live in their dug-outs ever on the watch, on the watch for the German patrols that come at night to cut their wire and get behind them. Only last week a captain and his orderly were set upon and killed by some Germans who in the night had managed to get through and were hiding in the thicket. So every morning the wood is beaten and when a twig snaps or a tree stirs in the lazy afternoon breeze a dozen rifles are pointed in that direction.

For days they have been trying to catch a dog who comes over from the German lines, a mysterious fellow on his way no one knows where, but they think he once lived in the "pays," and is being used by some Boche to carry messages back and forth. Several times he has been seen, usually about dusk, but each time he got away, as orders had been given not to shoot him, so as to find out where he went. Poor brute, keep away, the orders have been changed and you are to be shot the next time you appear, like any other Boche.

After a careful inspection, orders were given for a patrol to go out that night. The sergeant takes his orders, salutes, and walks away as if he had been ordered to clean a pair of boots.

C'est la guerre!

By a series of underground traverses we reached Post No. 2 where everything was equally quiet although the night before they were obliged to drive off some Germans.

Brave fellows, these, who sit around calmly smoking until they are killed; some day an attack comes and they need no orders to remain. A cloud of gas or a rain of shells will keep them but they will die hard in their little dug-outs covered by sandbags and closed in by barbed wire, die as they lived,---for France. This is the spirit that saved us, this is what all the diabolical German inventions cannot overcome. And just as this undaunted spirit born of a just cause makes men fight all the harder in bad moments, so the lack of it will make the Boche give up quicker when his bad moments come, as they surely will.

Back as we came with enemy avions amongst the little white puffs of shrapnel in a cloudless sky and the shells that whistle everlastingly back and forth.

Dinner over a little fire in the cool of the evening, and sleep rolled up in a dirty blanket on a filthy stretcher, sleep and dreams of a world left behind.

In the middle of the night a call came from St. Martin, where we arrived to find our friend the sergeant shot through the foot and a little yellow Chinaman with a bad leg. The patrol that went out to reconnoitre was discovered, a heavenly star-shell and a hellish mitrailleuse did the trick.

So we return our friend's hospitality with a long ride to Ogerviller and Baccarat, trying hard to avoid the bumps on a very black night.

After a night of it one is glad to be relieved and return to Baccarat for a bath and a rest. In the evening we gather at the Hotel Dupont which has become our club, to drink beer and swap stories, stories of shells that nearly blew a wheel off and shells that really blew a leg off.

I heard of a fellow whose hands were blown off by a hand grenade. They did what they could to make him comfortable. Between bumps and moans he said very simply, "Ça va bien, I gave my life to France; she has only taken my hands."

Bedtime comes and then to-morrow when it begins again, this endless round of "Postes de secours" giving up their endless quota of wounded.

More bad news from Russia; I fear we can no longer count upon them.

One grows very fond of the Poilus; great indeed are their qualities and great the debt we owe them. The general does not share the soldier's hardships and misery, the soldier does not share the general's glory and recognition.

I called at the hospital to see my friend the sergeant; his foot is doing famously and he will be back in a fortnight with another stripe on his arm and another foot to be shot.

"Bonne chance mon vieux"---"Merci Monsieur"---
And be up with his kit and away
With a stripe on his arm for the blood he'd shed
And a patched up side where he'd bloody well bled
                                     For France.

He's done his bit but there's more to do
It will not be through for the "brave poilu"
'Til his life is spent or the battle won,
'Til he's smashed the Boche and finished the Hun
                                     For France.

This is the spirit of legions in blue
The every thought of every poilu
Who gives life gladly that France may live
----So long live France!

Sometimes you see them with four and five stripes; it means that four or five times they have been wounded, shot full of lead from a machine gun, hit by a hand grenade that rips you open or a piece of shell that tears a jagged hole in a belly to empty its entrails, to fall in a Hell-swept shell crater wondering if the end has come, praying that it has.

To bleed and curse and thirst for hours, sometimes days; the agony of being moved with a mangled leg or a shattered arm, to be carried on a back or a stretcher to a dressing station, to be dumped on a pile of straw to wait your turn; the torture of being patched up, then a hellish ride in an ambulance that jolts your heart out. Bloody, muddy, sticking bandages to be torn off and at last sleep, the brief merciful sleep of chloroform while they cut and burn and sew. Nights of fever and thirst, days of dressings and anguish, finally well. A few days of rest and back-back for another stripe.

Montigny. The officers of the 37th have left and Montigny is more desolate than ever. The Boches shelled our garage so we have been obliged to change. Our present one is between two walls, which seem like the tower of Pisa, always about to fall, the floor black mud, the roof blue sky.

All the afternoon we were busy but after "la soupe" there was nothing to do, so I strolled up the hill and sat in the graveyard watching the rockets "out there."

In the presence of anything vast, a mountain or the expanse of the sea, we realise our own insignificance, how futile life is.

"On entre, on crie, c'est la vie;
On crie, on sort, c'est la mort."

What difference does it all make? If one believes in a hereafter what does it matter if one arrives a little sooner or later, this fleeting existence is not even a drop in the bucket of eternity; if one believes in nothing hereafter, then again what difference does it make? So you whose bones lie bleaching out there console yourselves.

In the stillness in the distance you can hear horses' hoofs and the creaking of heavy wagons; the Germans bringing up their supplies. Slowly the moon comes out from behind a cloud.

Sometimes it is good to be alive; not always, but the moon goes back behind his great black cloud, and "le clair de lune bleu qui baignait l'horizon" ends, ends like life, like love, like everything.

"J'ai le cafard," a vague longing to be somewhere, a vague yearning for something; maybe sleep that brings forgetfulness will drive you away. Good-night, squelettes beneath your heavy tombstones. They must have put them there for me to stumble over. Surely they were not needed to keep you in your peaceful graves, surely the dead would not want to come back-to be killed.

We planned a night of comfort and luxuriousness; we put up our cots beside an ambulance and turned in, but one by one the stars disappear, just as one by one they appeared, and it begins to rain; so we pack them into a shed across the road amongst the horses and the manure. War makes strange bed-fellows.

Oh! for a fire I know---
The storm and the night outside,
The embers that smoulder and glow
And a friend by the fireside!

Baccarat again and more bad news from the outside world, further disturbances in Russia! Has Russia not been sufficiently disturbed? More revolutions! Has Russia not been sufficiently revolutionised with the abolition of vodka and the abdication of the Czar? The majority of Russians are too barbaric and backward to be modernised, the minority too modern and advanced to fit into the present scheme of life. If at the outset the Allies had taken hold of their country and resources, built them a few thousand versts of railroad, equipped and officered their vast armies as Germany did for Turkey, the war might now be over. Now if Germany succeeds in overcoming and utilising Russia as she did Belgium, will the war ever end?

Sometimes I fancy the world reverting to feudal times, one half fighting the other half; intrenched within their fortresses, living on forever within themselves, just as the old barons in medieval times fortified themselves against their neighbours, making of their domain their world.

One car is now permanently stationed at Badonviller and one at Ogerviller where they remain one week in service, consequently two cars less go out each day and this brings us an additional day off duty.

More casualties in our ranks, more brandy and castor oil.

Sometimes in the midst of it all you get a strange emotion. I passed to-day, coming in from the front, a great motor lorry piled high with knapsacks, helmets, boots, and dirty torn tunics with dark red stains.

"Man wants but little here below
Nor wants that little long."
It takes not long, it takes but little
To forget him when he's gone.

Terrible news! not of the war or anything so trivial. The Hotel Dupont has been placed "en consigne" for ten days for serving officers between the hours. The Marquise is terribly upset and so are we; surely we cannot be without our club! Off I go to see the General Staff and things are arranged.

When I came for my coffee after dinner the Marquise and Hélène gave me a hug and presented me to two charming Parisiennes. "C'est drôle, la vie." Their brother, a brave little chasseur, was killed two years ago, so on the anniversary they come to say a prayer and put a few poor little flowers on his grave. Done this afternoon, to-morrow they go, to night we dance.

It's a strange life where nothing counts, not even death.

"She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them." How often have we sneered at these lines in "Othello," not so to-day when I had a narrow escape. This careless life makes one very callous; who will ever go to Africa again to shoot a lion or to the Rockies for a bear? Precious little excitement it would afford after this hunt for bigger game!

The French have always been an excitable people. I wonder at the lack of emotion in the soldier no matter what is going on.

"It's quite simple," as one of them explained, "si on se f----- pas mal de sa peau on deviendrait fou."

A lad in his twenties with long, wavy hair an long, slender fingers, who, were it not for the war, might be playing the violin at the Cabaret Rouge in the Latin Quarter or dreaming and writing verse in a garret in Montmartre. It is strange how they take to the grim business of war, these mere boys; over night they become men, hardened to it all, a night of such horrors as I have heard described; they learn to kill with the best of them who, the day before, would have shuddered at the thought.

A look of amusement came over his boyish face as he told me how he had "zigouillé" a Boche:

"It went in like butter but I stuck it in too hard and it would not come out. I had to put my foot on him and pull. Oof! it was terrible to feel him wriggle."

Gone the look of amusement and a look of horror comes over a man's face.

This afternoon I visited the hospital to see a friend. 'What a hellish and heavenly place, a hospital ward, with its atmosphere of carbolic and suffering, rows of cots and glass tables, perambulators with bottles of disinfectants and remedies. Angels in white that quietly come and go and smile and care; sick and wounded getting better or dying, clean and comfortable, as comfortable as they can be made, for beneath the white sheets legs and arms are gone---or worse. How much suffering and resignation there is expressed on these pale countenances that smile so bravely to conceal it all.

My friend is no longer here. I brought him in two days ago, shot through the chest, thanking me for going slowly, begging me for water, dripping blood all the way. That is why my friend is no longer here. "Mort pour la France,"---it has already been painted on a million white crosses upon which the sun is setting. How many more upon which the sun will rise? As it goes down over the hills to rise somewhere else it leaves me with the "cafard"---"le cafard" for that somewhere.

We took some Boche prisoners at Montigny, or rather they came over during the night as they sometimes do. They tell the usual tale of hunger and hardship to excite pity, but they do not look it. Starvation exists in Germany but only the useless starve. With their brutal efficiency the Germans feed their armies; the old, the decrepit, the unnecessary, starve.

The lines occupied by the 8th Army extend as far as the Rendez-vous des Chasseurs, where I went this morning with some officers.

"Ah! le beau jardin," exclaimed Louis XIV when he saw these beautiful Vosges mountains in Alsace, and a beautiful garden it is, indeed. Wonderful hills covered with pines, cool streams that murmur and trickle slowly down into the valley below where the meadows are red with poppies---and blood. Way up amongst the hills close to the sky is the Rendez-vous des Chasseurs, too heavenly a spot for hellish doings, but the picturesque dugouts that look like chalets in Switzerland are covered with sand-bags, for the shells do not always whistle harmlessly by. The commandant's house is a miniature castle built of granite with turrets and a moat and a proud device over the little gateway, "Ils ne passeront pas," sublime words that recall Verdun, "They shall not pass," nor did they. History will record glorious names, glorious deeds, la Marne, la Somme, l'Aisne, but none more glorious than Verdun where German Kultur shattered itself against French valour.

Half a mile away are the Boches who will never be nearer paradise,---let us hope they will soon be farther.

On the way in we stopped at the Village Nègre, so called because it was built by the black troops who occupied it in 1914. For months the Germans never ceased shelling them, so they dug themselves in little by little and to-day there is an underground village on the side of the hill, with quarters for thousands, hospitals, storehouses, everything underground. One sees nothing but little entrances that lead to the elaborate dwellings. Here and there smoke curls lazily out of the ground where far below they cook and eat and live like ants.

I dined to-night with some French officers; one of them is known as "Le Mort." He was in command of a battery that was hit fairly. When the smoke blew away there was no battery. Days after when they came to clean up the débris they found him half buried and half dead. But "Le Mort" is still very much alive and has another battery if the Germans need proof.

Together we stroll home through the night, "Le Mort"---Death---and myself, through streets deserted but for the ever-vigilant sentries wrapped in their great coats tramping wearily up and down or huddled up in their little coffin-like boxes.

In the cafés there is light and warmth and wine---and more soldiers clinking glasses singing Madelon---"pour le repos du militaire"---out there where the rain falls softly and the mud is everlasting, more soldiers watching and waiting for death---"le seul repos du militaire," but amongst all these weary soldiers not one who will not go on living, or if needs be, die for France.

For three long years and a half they have borne the brunt of it; their courage has been sublime---there have been bad moments, but in the midst of them they have never faltered.

The savage finds a delight in fighting ---even the English find an enjoyment in a life of excitement and adventure. The German does it in his stolid way, as a child goes to bed, because he is told to. The Russian revels in things reckless and mad, but the French love life too well---they love their food, their wine, their women. To gladly give all is the heroism of France, in whose heart there is sorrow but upon whose soul is graven the stern Roman motto, "Væ Victis"---so the Huns shall be brought to account and made drink to the dregs from the cup of skulls they fashioned, the tears they caused to flow.

Two letters have come, one from the chief informing me that my liberation had been asked for. I have been offered a commission and am to proceed to Paris immediately.

The other from General -----, asking me if my views had not changed. No! my convictions are stronger than ever, all this will not bring a military decision.

Germany must be beaten by other means, but Germany will be beaten for France will never stop until the peace they long for is theirs---the peace they owe their dead, real peace, that only a real victory will bring.

France has given much, has much to give; France will give her all. Her sacrifice will not have been in vain if war in the future be but a thing of the past.

How cold it is when the day breaks; often have I lain awake in the night in this little room haunted by "le cafard" for far-away places.

I leave for Paris at eight. How often shall I lay awake in far-away places haunted by "le cafard" for this little room---for the good friends of Section 59 ---and "No. 6."