Meantime can any man be fool enough honestly to believe that “mates in the trenches” want anything more urgently than to win the war and get out of it? If there are any such fools let them try to imagine the feelings of the “mate” cowering and shivering over a scanty handful of wet wood or black-smoky dust “coal ration” who hears that coal miners at home threaten a strike; of the man crouched in a battered trench that is being blasted to bits by German steel shells from steel guns, who learns that our steel-makers are “out” and if their demands were not satisfied would continue to strike indefinitely and hold up the making of the guns and shells which alone can protect us; of the man who is being bombed from the air night after night in his billets and reads that 50,000 aircraft workers are on strike, and that the Front will be poorer as a result by hundreds of the aircraft which might bomb the enemy ’dromes out of action and stop their raiding; the dismay of the man about to go on a long deferred and eagerly waited leave when he is told that all leaves may have to be stopped because a threatened strike of “foot-plate” workers may strand him at his debarkation port. Will it soothe or satisfy a man in any of these cases to be told the strikes are really fights for his rights, especially when you remember he knows that as a result of the strike he may be too dead to have any rights to be fought for? The best I can wish for this book is that it may do even one little bit to make plain with what cheerfulness—cheerfulness and even at times almost incredible humour—the Front is sticking it out, with what complete confidence in final victory this year’s fight is being begun; and may make yet more plain the need for every man and woman at home to give their last ounce of energy to help win the war speedily and conclusively. BOYD CABLE. ON THE WESTERN FRONT, _January 7th, 1918._ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. TRENCH-MADE ART 1 II. THE SUICIDE CLUB 21 III. IN THE WOOD 44 IV. THE DIVING TANK 62 V. IN THE MIST 74 VI. SEEING RED 99 VII. AN AIR BARRAGE 117 VIII. NIGHTMARE 137 IX. THE GILDED STAFF 156 X. A RAID 172 XI. A ROARING TRADE 183 XII. HOME 205 XIII. BRING UP THE GUNS 227 XIV. OUR BATTERY’S PRISONER 246 XV. OUR TURN 262 XVI. ACCORDING TO PLAN 277 XVII. DOWN IN HUNLAND 297 XVIII. THE FINAL OBJECTIVE 318 XIX. ARTILLERY PREPARATION 327 XX. STRETCHER-BEARERS 336 XXI. THE CONQUERORS 345 FRONT LINES I TRENCH-MADE ART