differences, by far the greatest is that our troops here have a
beautiful country and a civilised, enlightened population at the back of
them, which they are defending against the invading enemy whom they have
always hoped to meet. They are amongst a people like their own, living
in villages and cottages and paddocks not so different from those of
their own childhood. Right up into the very zone of the trenches there
are houses still inhabited by their owners. As we were entering a
communication trench a few days ago we noticed four or five British
soldiers walking across the open from a cottage. The officer with me
asked them what they were doing. "We've just been to the inn there,"
they said.

The people of that house were still living in it, with our trenches
wandering through their orchard.

In Gallipoli there were brigade headquarters in the actual fire
trenches. From the headquarters of the division or the corps you could
reach the line by ten minutes' hard walking, any time. It is a Sabbath
day's journey here--indeed, the only possible way of covering the longer
distances regularly is by motor-car or motor-cycle, and no one dreams of
using any other means. Nearly the whole army, except the troops in the
actual firing-line, lives in a country which is populated by its normal
inhabitants.

And--wherein lies the greatest change of all--the troops in the trenches
themselves can be brought back every few days into more or less normal
country, and have always the prospect before them at the end of a few
months of a stay in surroundings that are completely free from shell or
rifle fire, and within reach of village shops and the normal comforts
of civilisation. And throwing the weather and wet trenches and the rest