An advanced C.C.S. behind the line sees a constant ebb and flow. Jaded Sisters will hear with a sense of relief the order to evacuate, glimpsing a respite, however brief. But before the evacuation is completed a causal connection is evident between the order and an attack at dawn on the --st instant, and all its ghastly fruits. And whilst the last of the old maimed are being put gently aboard, the new-comers, stained with mud and blood, are being laid in the still warm beds. There is no time for orderliness here. Life for the Sisters is one fevered and sporadic attempt at alleviation--more than an attempt: the relief is accomplished, but at a cost to the workers which leaves its index on feature and figure. All this is in piteous contrast with the healing peacefulness of the country-side. If you climb the low ridge behind the town any evening you can see the flap-flap of the gun-flashes like a disorganised Aurora. And if you stay till midnight you'll see it intensify into a glowing wall. So gentle is the landscape immediately about you that you can conceive what it would be without that murderous wall of fire and that portentous heart-shaking thunder. This is war, relentless and insatiable. The days open dewy and crisp with the first touch of winter's severity, before his tooth is keen. The first breath of a French September morning is elating. The harvest is just reaped and cocked, and stands in its brown and yellow stubble. The head of a slope will give you the landscape gently undulating under its succession of woods and streams and gathered harvest, with frequent villages scattered down the valleys and straggling up the slopes. Over all this you look away to the captive balloons depending over the line spotting for the belching guns; and the song of the little birds that the distant guns cannot quench is swallowed in the buzz of the aircraft engines of a flight of scouters setting off on patrol; to-morrow it will be the whirr of a squadron of battle-'planes tearing through the upper distance on a raid. And any morning the air above you is flecked with the puffs of missiles sent hurtling after a Fokker out of its proper territory. As the peaceful evening settles down you will see a whole school of our craft coming home to roost at ----: eighteen to twenty, like a flock of rooks settling at the end of the day. The _Angelus_ ringing in the belfry of the village _Église_ is drowned in the hum.