But Marshal Joffre paused at that, and after a moment's reflection said: "Yes, I suppose Napoleon could do something." Finally the "something" came in the shape of the "Tank." When Field Marshal Earl Haig took over the chief command he adopted the system of frequent "raids" to give to the Trench War some of the character of moving war, and that proved a highly useful step. Still, this Trench War was not of the genius of our people; and it was very dull. If I were seeking the fit adjective which could be applied to it in its superlative it would certainly not be "exciting" nor yet "dangerous." The life was exciting and it was dangerous--a little. It was, however, neither very exciting nor very dangerous. But it was very, very curious. Trench war had its moments, its hours of high emotion, of intense excitement, of crowding dangers. Its routine--on the Western front--was laborious, almost to the point of tediousness, demanding a sober and constant carefulness in detail, and--provided you watched the minutes and the winds, the twigs and the sky, had eyes, ears, and nerves always on the alert--it was reasonably safe. Trench War exciting? No; you could not allow it to be. The moments were rare (to the majority of officers they never came) when the call was for a gallant shout and a forward rush in which leadership took its most obvious and its easiest form. The hours were always when, with cool, suspicious, deducting mind, you were watching a sector, awaiting the enemy's raiding attack or directing your own. Stalking and being stalked, it was interesting, absorbing, but you could not allow it to be exciting, or you would not do your work properly. War was robbed, in that phase of the struggle, of most of its fascinations by the spectacled Germans who had spent the previous half-century in the counting house, the laboratory, and the cellar, preparing to destroy the humanities of civilisation. Trench War was a grubbing kind of business. Dangerous? Naturally, to an extent. But not nearly so dangerous as one might judge from the lurid accounts of imaginative writers. It had its hours of peril, of horror. But it was not all the time dangerous. For six days out of seven, on an average, a soldier, if he observed the strictest caution, was "following a dangerous trade," nothing more. On the seventh day--I speak in averages--he had his risk about doubled. On very rare occasions he had to take the risk of a fireman who goes into a blazing house to rescue a child, or a policeman who stops a madly bolting horse. Ordinarily one had to be careful "to watch the traffic;" that was all. If you wished to take a long lingering look at the enemy's trench you used a periscope. For a brief glance (to get a wide field of view) you looked over the parapet. There were differing estimates of the length of time it was safe to show your head over the parapet. Some said five seconds, others twenty-five.