Riding along the roads at the front, one may know that there is a battery a stone’s throw away only when a blast from a hidden gun-muzzle warns him of its presence. It was wonderful to me that the artillery general who took me gun-seeing knew where his own guns were, let alone the enemy’s. I imagine that he could return to a field and locate a four-leafed clover that he had seen on a previous stroll. His dogs of war had become foxes of war, burrowing in places which wise, old father foxes knew were safest from detection. Hereafter, I shall not be surprised to see a muzzle poking its head out of an oven, or from under grandfather’s chair or a farm wagon, or up a tree, or in a garret. Think of the last place in the world for emplacing a gun and one may be there; think of the most likely place and one may be there. You might be walking across the fields and minded to go through a hedge and bump into a black ring of steel with a gun’s crew grinning behind it. They would grin because you had given proof of how well their gun was concealed. But they wouldn’t grin as much as they would if they saw the enemy plunking shells into another hedge two hundred yards distant, where the German aeroplane observer thought he had seen a battery and had not. “I’ll show you a big one, first!” said the general. We left the car at a cottage and walked along a lane. I looked all about the premises and could see only some artillerymen. An officer led me up to a gun-breech; at least, I know a gun-breech when it is one foot from my nose and a soldier has removed its covering. But I shall not tell how that gun was concealed; the method was so audacious that it was entirely successful. The Germans would like to know and we don’t want them to know. A pencil-point on their map for identification, and they would send a whirlwind of shells at that gun. And then? Would the gun try to fire back? No. Its gunners probably would not know the location of any of the German batteries which had concentrated on their treasure. They would desert the gun. If they did not, they ought to be court-martialed for needlessly risking the precious lives of trained men. They would make for the “funk pits,” just as the gunners of any other power would. The chances are that the gun itself would not be hit bodily by a shell. Fragments might strike it without causing more than an abrasion; for big guns have pretty thick cuticle. When the storm was over, the gunners would move the gun to another hiding-place; which would mean a good deal of work on account of its size.