it not long before.

"We're on the top of the hill now, and the Boches are below
us," said he. "We gave them a very fair sickener lately."

"This," said the Colonel, "is the front line."

There were overhead guards against hand-bombs which disposed
me to believe him, but what convinced me most was a corporal
urging us in whispers not to talk so loud. The men were at
dinner, and a good smell of food filled the trench. This was
the first smell I had encountered in my long travels uphill--a
mixed, entirely wholesome flavour of stew, leather, earth, and
rifle-oil.

FRONT LINE PROFESSIONALS

A proportion of men were standing to arms while others ate;
but dinner-time is slack time, even among animals, and it was
close on noon.

"The Boches got _their_ soup a few days ago," some one
whispered. I thought of the pulverized hillside, and hoped it
had been hot enough.

We edged along the still trench, where the soldiers stared,
with justified contempt, I thought, upon the civilian who
scuttled through their life for a few emotional minutes in
order to make words out of their blood. Somehow it reminded
me of coming in late to a play and incommoding a long line of