From personal bickerings we passed on to a discussion of the Germans and German methods of making war. We talked on the finer points of hand-grenades, poison gas, flame-projectors, vitriol bombs, and explosive bullets. Everybody seemed to take particular pleasure in describing the horrible wounds caused by the different weapons. Each man embroidered upon the tales the others told. We were marching into hell. If you judged them by their conversation, these men must have been brutes at heart, worse than any "Apache"; and yet of those around me several were university graduates; one was a lawyer; two were clerks; one a poet of standing; one an actor; and there were several men of leisure, Americans almost all of them. The talk finally settled upon the Germans. Many and ingenious were the forms of torture invented upon the spur of the moment for the benefit of the "Boches." "Hanging is too good for them," said Scanlon. After a long discussion, scalping alive seemed the most satisfactory to the crowd. It had come to be 11 P.M. We were at the mouth of the communicating trench and entering it, one by one. Every so often, short transverse trenches opened up to right and left, each one crammed full of soldiers. Talking and laughing stopped. We continued marching along the trench, kilometre after kilometre, in utter silence. As we moved forward, the lateral trenches became more numerous. Every fifteen to eighteen feet we came to one running from right to left, and each was filled with troops, their arms grounded. As we filed slowly by, they looked at us enviously. It was amusing to see how curious they looked, and to watch their whispering as we passed. Why should we precede them in attack? "Who are you?" several men asked. "La Légion." "A-a-ah, la Légion! That explains it." Our right to the front rank seemed to be acknowledged. It did every man of us good. We debouched from the trench into the street of a village. It was Souain. Houses, or ghosts of houses, walled us in on each side. Through the windows and the irregular shell-holes in the walls, the stars twinkled; while through a huge gap in the upper story of one of the houses I caught a glimpse of the moon, over my right shoulder. Lucky omen! "I'll come through all right," I repeated to myself, and rapped with my knuckle upon the rifle-stock, lest the luck break. Not one house in the village was left standing--only bare walls. Near the end of the street, in the midst of chaos, we passed a windmill. The gaunt steel frame still stood. I could see the black rents in the mill and the great arms where the shrapnel had done its work; but still the wheel turned, slowly, creaking round and round, with its shrill metal scream.