great troops of men are going through some of the last refinements of
drill before they start for the front. Here are trenches of all kinds and
patterns, in which the men may practise, planned according to the latest
experience brought from the front. "The instructors are all men returned
from the front, and the new recruits, trained up to this last point, would
not be patient of any other teachers."

Having thus seen all that one day could afford them at the very base of
the great army, our visitors make their way in closed motors through the
snow, passing scores of motor lorries, and other wagons, stuck in the
snow-drifts. They stop for the night at a pleasant hotel full of
officers, mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communication, and a
few of the mothers and sisters of the poor wounded in the neighboring
hospitals, who have come over to nurse them.

Every gun, every particle of munition, clothing, and equipment, and
whatever else is necessary, including the food of the armies, every horse,
every vehicle, has to be brought across the British channel, to maintain
and reinforce the ever-growing British army, and the ever-daily increasing
congestion at all the ports makes it more and more difficult every day to
receive, disembark, accommodate, and forward the multitude of men and the
masses of material, and all the time there are thousands of troops passing
through, thousands in the hospitals, and thousands at work on the docks
and storehouses. Everything tending to Tommy Atkins's comfort is supplied,
including again palatial cinemas and concerts, all of which results in
excellent behavior and the best of relations between the British soldier
and the French inhabitants. At the docks armies of laborers and lines of
ships discharging men, horses, timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke,
petrol, and the same at the storehouses and depots.