on to the north, but peace and war alike have deserted the village.
Grass has begun to return over torn earth on edges of trenches.
Abundant wire rusts away by its twisted stakes of steel. Not a path
of old, not a lane nor a doorway there, but is barred and cut off by
wire; and the wire in its turn has been cut by shells and lies in
ungathered swathes. A pair of wheels moulders amongst weeds, and may
be of peace or of war, it is too broken down for anyone to say. A
great bar of iron lies cracked across as though one of the elder
giants had handled it carelessly. Another mound near by, with an old
green beam sticking out of it, was also once a house. A trench runs
by it. A German bomb with its wooden handle, some bottles, a bucket,
a petrol tin and some bricks and stones, lie in the trench. A young
elder tree grows amongst them. And over all the ruin and rubbish
Nature, with all her wealth and luxury, comes back to her old
inheritance, holding again the land that she held so long, before the
houses came.

A garden gate of iron has been flung across a wall. Then a deep
cellar into which a whole house seems to have slanted down. In the
midst of all this is an orchard. A huge shell has uprooted, but not
killed, an apple-tree; another apple-tree stands stone dead on the
edge of a crater: most of the trees are dead. British aeroplanes
drone over continually. A great gun goes by towards Bapaume, dragged
by a slow engine with caterpillar wheels. The gun is all blotched
green and yellow. Four or five men are seated on the huge barrel
alone.

Dark old steps near the orchard run down into a dug-out, with a
cartridge-case tied to a piece of wood beside it to beat when the gas
came. A telephone wire lies listlessly by the opening. A patch of