Life is hard enough in winter in the old-established trenches along more
settled parts of the front--there is plenty for the Comforts Fund to do
there. Dropping into the best of quiet front trenches straight from his
home life the ordinary man would consider himself as undergoing
hardships undreamt of. Visiting those trenches straight from the Somme
the other day, with their duck-boards and sandbags, and the occasional
ping of a sniper's bullet, and the momentary spasm of field guns and
trench mortars which appeared in the official summary next day as
"artillery and trench mortar activity"--after the Somme, I say, one
found oneself looking on it, in the terms of the friend who went with
me, as "war de luxe."

It is unwise to take what one man writes of one place as true of all
places or all times, or indeed of anything except what he personally
sees and knows at the moment. These conditions which I have described
are what I have seen, and are fortunately past history, or I should not
be describing them. I personally know that English troops, Scottish
troops and Australian troops went through them, and have, in some cases,
issued from such trenches and taken similar German trenches in front of
them. Our troops are more comfortable than they were, but it is in the
nature of war to find yourself plunged into extremes of exertion and
hardship without warning; and no man knows when he writes to-day--and I
doubt whether anyone of his superiors could tell him--whether he will,
at any given date, be in a worse condition or a better one.

What the German is going through on his side of the muddy landscape is
described in another chapter. For our grand men--and though to be called
a hero is the last thing most Australians desire, the men are never
grander than at these times--the Australian Comforts Fund, the Y.M.C.A.
and the canteen groceries provide almost all the comfort that ever