The day on which I was to go across the great swathe of the front to the
first-line trenches dawned cool and sunny. I use the word "swathe"
purposely, for only by that image can the real meaning of the phrase
"the front" be understood. The thick, black line which figures on the
war-maps is a great swathe of country running, with a thousand little
turns and twists that do not interfere with its general regularity, from
the summits of the Vosges to the yellow dunes of the North Sea. The
relation of the border of this swathe to the world beyond is the
relation of sea to land along an irregular and indented coast. Here an
isolated, strategic point, fiercely defended by the Germans, has
extended the border of the swathe beyond the usual limits, and villages
thirteen and fourteen miles from the actual lines have been pounded to
pieces by long-range artillery in the hope of destroying the enemy's
communications; there the trenches cross an obscure, level moor upon
whose possession nothing particular depends, and the swathe narrows to
the villages close by the lines. This swathe, which begins with the
French communications, passes the French trenches, leaps "No Man's
Land," and continues beyond the German trenches to the German
communications, averages about twenty-two miles in width. The territory
within this swathe is inhabited by soldiers, ruled by soldiers, worked
by soldiers, and organized for war.

Sometimes the transition between civilian life and the life of the
swathe is abrupt, as, for instance, at Verdun, where the villages beyond
the lines have been emptied of civilian inhabitants to make room for the
soldiery; but at other times the change is gradual and the peasants
continue to work fields almost in the shadow of the trenches. Since the
line of trenches was organized by the Germans only after a series of
engagements along the front, during which the battle-line oscillated