Comforts Fund. "Certainly not," was the reply. "The men have every
comfort in the trenches."

That is the sort of dense-skinned ignorance which makes one unspeakably
angry--the ignorance which, because it has heard of or read a letter
from some brave-hearted youngster, making light of hardships for his
mother's sake, therefore flies to the conclusion that everything written
and spoken about the horrors of this war is humbug, and what the Army
calls "eyewash"--a big conspiracy to deceive the people who are not
there.

As a matter of fact, the early winter of 1916 which these men have just
been going through will have a chapter to itself in history as long as
history lasts. It is to some extent past history now--to what extent I
do not suppose anyone on the German side or ours can tell.

I, personally, do not know how the men and their officers can live
through that sort of time. Remember that a fair proportion of them were
a few months ago adding up figures in the office of an insurance company
or a shipping firm--gulping down their midday coffee and roll in a
teashop in King or Collins Streets. But take even a Central District
farmer or a Newcastle miner--yes, or a Scottish shepherd or an English
poacher--take the hardest man you know, and put him to the same test,
and it is a question whether the ordeal would not break even his spirit.
Put him out of doors into the thick of a dirty European winter; march
him ten miles through a bitter cold wind and driving rain, with--on his
back--all the clothing, household furniture, utensils and even the only
cover which he is allowed to take with him; dribble him in through mud
up to his knees--sometimes up to his waist--along miles and miles of
country that is nothing but broken tree stumps and endless shell