The Germans were as busy as beavers dam building. They had a lot of work to do before they had their new defences right. We heard them driving stakes and spading; we heard their voices with snatches of sentences intelligible and occasionally the energetic, shouted, guttural commands of their officers. All through that night I never heard a British officer speak above a conversational tone. The orders were definite enough, but given with a certain companionable kindliness. I have spoken of the genuine affection which his men showed for Captain P----, and I was beginning to appreciate that it was not a particular instance. “What if you should shout at Tommy in the German fashion?” I asked. “He wouldn’t have it; he’d get rebellious,” was the reply. “No, you mustn’t yell at Tommy. He’s a little temperamental about some things and he will not be treated as if he were just a human machine.” Yet no one will question the discipline of the British soldier. Discipline means that the officer knows his men, and British discipline, which bears a retreat like that from Mons, requires that the man likes to follow his officers, believes in his officers, loves his officers. Each army and each people to its own ways. Sixty yards! And the dead between the trenches and death lurking ready at a trigger’s pull should life show itself! When daylight comes the British sing out their “Good morning, Germans!” and the Germans answer, “Good morning, British!” without adding, “We hope to kill some of you to-day!” Ragging banter and jest and worse than jest and grim defiance are exchanged between the trenches when they are within such easy hearing distance of each other; but always from a safe position behind the parapet which the adversaries squint across through their periscopes. The thing was ridiculous. At the gibe business the German is, perhaps, better than the Briton. Early in the evening a regiment on our right broke into a busy fusillade at some fancied movement of the enemy. In trench talk, that is getting “jumpy.” The Germans in front roared out their contempt in a chorus of guying laughter. Toward morning, these same Germans also became “jumpy” and began tearing the air with bullets, firing against nothing but the blackness of night. Tommy Atkins only made some characteristic comments; for he is a quiet fellow, except when he is played on the music hall stage. Possibly he feels the inconsistency of laughter when you are killing human beings; for, as his officers say, he is temperamental and never goes to the trouble of analysing his emotions. A very real person and a good deal of a philosopher is Mr. Atkins, Britain’s professional fighting man, who was the only kind of fighting man she had ready for the war.