That evening, after a successful dinner, Herrmann took the edge off our pleasure by announcing that we must get up at five o'clock next morning. "You will be taken to the trenches with Captain Kliewer's party (another group of correspondents had come to Lille). We will all meet in Commines for luncheon and in the afternoon you may see a field battery in action. Of course, it is expected that you will not want to go, and it is understood that those who wish to remain in Lille may do so with the full approval of the staff." Rotkohl was approved; so was the Dutch general. Rotkohl said something about his grandmother, who lived on the Christiania Fjord, and the general--well, he said there were more pretty girls to be seen in Lille than along those muddy roads; besides it might rain, and suppose his patent umbrella did not work. In three motors, one for Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann and I, and the others for Captain Kliewer's party, we raced through Lille long before dawn, to get into the trenches before daylight would reveal our approach to the French. We lunched with the Second Bavarian Army Corps at Commines as the guests of General von Stettin and we told every officer in the room that we wanted to see the trenches by night, and, being Bavarians, they thought it a tremendous joke, and roared with laughter. Bidding the Bavarian staff good-by, we went out to our motors. With Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann and the photographers, I was supposed to go to a battery already in action. Hauptmann Kliewer's party were going to see their battery later. Telling myself that this early start--the heavy artillery firing never begins around Commines until four in the afternoon--was being made so that the photographers could photograph the battery, and that at this time of day there would be little doing there, I explained the situation to Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann. With the utmost good nature--I knew from his smile that I had guessed right--he spoke to Hauptmann Kliewer, who courteously granted my request. So, with Poole, Reed and Dunn, I rode away from Commines, Hauptmann Kliewer following with an officer in another car. Poole was telling us that the Major who sat beside him at luncheon said that last night the English had dropped four shells into Commines, evidently taking a long chance on hitting headquarters; and Reed came back with another officer's story of how the enemy's observers had seen a motor leaving Commines and had put three _grenaten_ in the field beside the road not forty yards away. And as the gray-green army auto car soughed down the heavy roads and you saw the puddled fields beginning to mirror a suddenly sunlit sky, you wondered if the enemy's observers could see your car too, and you caught yourself, every now and then, watching the sky, as though to spy the shell they had picked out for you. Nothing happened in that ride, but from the moment of leaving Commines we thrilled to innumerable