It was a pleasure to throw this crowning achievement of experiments. It fitted your hand nicely; it threw easily; it did the business; it was fool-proof against a man in love or a war-poet. “We saw as soon as this style came out,” said the sergeant, “that it was bound to be popular. Everybody asks for it--except the _Boches_, sir.” XXII MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT Planning at headquarters--Trench maps--A “hot corner” north of Ypres--The English in possession--Preparation for a gas attack--Farming behind the lines--Reaching the tornado belt-- “Policing the district”--Man the most precious machine--A general’s dugout headquarters--First aid to the wounded--Cave men at home--The scream of a great shell--A close call-- Galleries to the front--The philosophy of shell-fire--The flitting planes--An arc of shell fire--Lace work of puffs from shrapnel bursts--“Artillery preparation for an infantry attack”--Under a tornado of steel hail. It was the best day because one ran the gamut of the mechanics and emotions of modern war within a single experience--and oh, the twinkle in that staff officer’s eye! It was on a Monday that I first met him in the ballroom of a large château. Here another officer was talking over a telephone in an explicit, businesslike fashion about “sending up more bombs,” while we looked at maps spread out on narrow, improvised tables, such as are used for a buffet at a reception. Those maps showed all the British trenches and all the German trenches--spider-web like lines that cunning human spiders had spun with spades--in that region; and where our batteries were and where some of the German batteries were, if our aeroplane observations were correct. To the layman they were simply blue prints, such as he sees in the office of an engineer or an architect, or elaborate printed maps with many blue and red pencillings. To the general in command they were alive with rifle-power and gun-power and other powers mysterious to us; the sword with which he thrust and feinted and guarded in the ceaseless fencing of trench warfare, while higher authorities than he kept their secrets as he kept his and bided their day. That morning one of the battalions which had its pencilled place on the map had taken a section of trench from the Germans about the length of two city blocks. It got into the official bulletins of both sides several times, this two hundred yards at Pilken in the everlastingly “hot corner” north of Ypres. So it was of some importance, though not on account of its length. To take two hundred yards of trench because it is two hundred yards of trench is not good war, tacticians agree. Good war is to have millions of shells and vast reserves ready and to go in over a broad area and keep on going night and day, with a Niagara of artillery, as fresh battalions are fed into the conflict.