do hurt.

Then they talked about the lives of guns; what number of
rounds some will stand and others will not; how soon one can
make two good guns out of three spoilt ones, and what crazy
luck sometimes goes with a single shot or a blind salvo.

LESSON FROM THE "BOCHE"

A shell must fall somewhere, and by the law of averages
occasionally lights straight as a homing pigeon on the one
spot where it can wreck most. Then earth opens for yards
around, and men must be dug out,--some merely breathless, who
shake their ears, swear, and carry on, and others whose souls
have gone loose among terrors. These have to be dealt with as
their psychology demands, and the French officer is a good
psychologist. One of them said: "Our national psychology has
changed. I do not recognize it myself."

"What made the change?"

"The Boche. If he had been quiet for another twenty years the
world must have been his--rotten, but all his. Now he is
saving the world."

"How?"

"Because he has shown us what Evil is. We--you and I, England
and the rest--had begun to doubt the existence of Evil. The
Boche is saving us."