Liquid fire--yet one more invention of "Kultur"; gas; the moat at Ypres poisoned with arsenic; crucifixion; burning death squirted from the black night--suddenly, without warning: truly a great array of Kultured triumphs.... And with it all--failure. To fight as a sportsman fights and lose has many compensations; to fight as the German fights and lose must be to taste of the dregs of hell. But that is how they _do_ fight, whatever interesting surmises one may make of their motives and feelings. And that is how it goes on over the water--the funny mixture of the commonplace of everyday with the great crude, cruel realities of life and death. * * * * * But as I said, for the next few weeks the grey screen cloaked those crude realities as far as Jim was concerned. Rumour for once had proved true; the division was pulled out, and his battalion found itself near Poperinghe. "Months of boredom punctuated by moments of intense fright" is a definition of war which undoubtedly Noah would have regarded as a chestnut. And I should think it doubtful if there has ever been a war in which this definition was more correct. Jim route marched: he trained bombers: he dined in Poperinghe and went to the Follies. Also, he allowed other men to talk to him of their plans for leave: than which no more beautiful form of unselfishness is laid down anywhere in the Law or the Prophets. On the whole the time did not drag. There is much of interest for those who have eyes to see in that country which fringes the Cock Pit of Europe. Hacking round quietly most afternoons on a horse borrowed from someone, the spirit of the land got into him, that blood-soaked, quiet, uncomplaining country, whose soul rises unconquerable from the battered ruins. Horses exercising, lorries crashing and lurching over the pave roads. G.S. wagons at the walk, staff motors--all the necessary wherewithal to preserve the safety of the mud holes up in front--came and went in a ceaseless procession; while every now and then a local cart with mattresses and bedsteads, tables and crockery, tied on perilously with bits of string, would come creaking past--going into the unknown, leaving the home of years. Ypres, that tragic charnel house, with the great jagged holes torn out of the pave; with the few remaining walls of the Cathedral and Cloth Hall cracked and leaning outwards; with the strange symbolical touch of the black hearse which stood untouched in one of the arches. Rats everywhere, in the sewers and broken walls; in the crumbling belfry above birds, cawing discordantly. The statue of the old gentleman which used to stand serene and calm amidst the wreckage, now lay broken on its face. But the stench was gone--the dreadful stench of death which had clothed it during the second battle; it was just a dead town--dead and decently buried in great heaps of broken brick....