The scene of battle has changed during these last few days because spring has come at last, and warm sunshine. It has made a tremendous difference to the look of things, and to the sense of things. A week ago our men were marching through rain and sleet, through wild quagmire of old battlefields which stretch away behind our new front lines, through miles of shell-craters and dead woods and destroyed villages. They fought wet and fought cold, and their craving was for hot drink. Yesterday, after a few days of warmth, our troops on the march were powdered white with dust, and they fought hot and fought thirsty, and the wounded cried for water to cool their burning throats. Men going up to the lines in lorries stared out through masks of dust which made then look like pierrots. Their steel helmets, upon which rain pattered a week ago, were like millers' hats. More frightful now, even than in the worst days of winter, is the way up to the Front. In all that broad stretch of desolation we have left behind us the shell-craters which were full of water, red water and green water, are now dried up, and are hard, deep pits, scooped out of powdered earth, from which all vitality has gone, so that spring brings no life to it. I thought perhaps some of these shell-slashed woods would put out new shoots when spring came, and watched them curiously for any sign of rebirth, but there is no sign, and their poor, mutilated limbs, their broken and tattered trunks, stand naked under the blue sky. Everything is dead with a white, ghastly look in the brilliant sunshine except where here and there in the litter of timber and brickwork which marks the site of a French village, a little bush is in bud, or flowers blossom in a scrap-heap which was once a garden. All this is the background of our present battle, and through this vast stretch of barren country our battalions move slowly forward to take their part in the battle when their turn comes, resting a night or two among the ruins where other men who work always behind the lines, road-mending, wiring, on supply columns, at ammunition dumps, in casualty clearing-stations and rail-heads, have made their billets on the lee side of broken walls or in holes dug deep by the enemy and reported safe for use. Dead horses lie on the roadsides or in shell-craters. I passed a row of these poor beasts as though all had fallen down and died together in a last comradeship. Dead Germans, or bits of dead Germans, lie in old trenches, and these fields are the graveyards of Youth.