are, however, sometimes disappointing from the German point of view, as
in the case of the soldier who, being spattered with dirt but otherwise
untouched, picked himself up, and remarked with profound contempt, "The
dirty swine!"

The immediate approach to the trenches is usually marked by what sailors
call a "dodger," which is to say, a series of canvas screens. These do
not conceal your legs, and if you are exceptionally tall, they may not
conceal your head. Your feet don't matter, but if you are wise you duck
your head. Nine out of ten soldiers take an obstinate pride in walking
upright, and will laugh at you most unfeelingly for your pains. Once in
the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of
course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I
visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to
admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up
ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as
wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the
approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible,
the latter object being effected by frequent "traversing." To reach the
fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of
them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it
with innumerable junctions and small depôts in the shape of dug-outs,
and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering
as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is
complicated by frequent traverses--something after the pattern of a
Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to
prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these
things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb
and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part
of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a