At two o'clock there wasn't a break anywhere in the new line. It was a connected trench throughout, and nowhere less than six feet deep, with two communicating trenches leading back to our original front line. At three o'clock the word came along that the working party had been withdrawn, and that I was to take my men in. As before, we left a few sentry groups, to be relieved at dawn by fresh sentries, since the new line was now to be guarded by day and manned by night. And that was the end of it. I got my men safely in. Half an hour later the Boche sent over another ten or dozen shells on the new line, and once again before dawn he did the same, with the usual periodical bursts of M.G. fire and dropping rifle fire during the rest of the time. And nothing more. Wasn't it extraordinary, when he had had a whole day to think about it, and must have known we should be at work there that night? Possibly, however, in his crafty way, he assumed we should not go near the new line that second night for fear of strafing, and held his hand for that reason. And, possibly, our General assumed he'd think that, and acted accordingly. But there it is. We got our work done at next to no cost. I was going to tell you about the rumours as to our push to straighten out the line, but my time's up. That will have to wait for my next letter. We are having an easy time now, but there were no free minutes last week. You'll hear again soon, from your "_Temporary Gentleman_." THE COMING PUSH You are quite right in saying that I don't feel much interest in political affairs at home these days. The fact is, we do not often see the newspapers, and when we see them there isn't much time for really reading them or giving much consideration to what they say. The war news is interesting, of course; but all this endless talky-talky business, why, I can hardly tell you how queerly it strikes us out here. You see, we are very close to concrete realities all the time, and to us it seems the talky-talky people are most amazingly remote from realities of any kind. They seem to us to be very much interested in shadows, notions, fads, fancies, and considerations of interests which we think were washed out of existence at the very beginning of the war. They even seem able to strive mightily and quarrel virulently over the discussion of the principles and abstractions involved in things they propose to do when the war is over!