Thus, one must take the word of those present that there is any more life behind than in front of the sandbags. However, if you are sceptical you may have conviction by starting to crawl over the top of the British parapet. After dark the soldiers will slip over and bring back your body. It is this something you do not see, this something visualized by the imagination, which convinces you that you ought to be considerate enough of posterity to write the real description of a trench. Look for an hour at that wall of sandbags and your imagination sees more and more, while your eye sees only sandbags. What does this war mean to you? There it is: only you can describe what this war means to you. Many a soldier who has spent months in trenches has not seen a German. I boast that I have seen real Germans through my glasses. They were walking along a road back of their trenches. It was most fascinating. All the Germans I had ever seen in Germany were not half so interesting. I strained my eyes watching those wonderful beings as I might strain them at the first visiting party from Mars to earth. There must have been at least ten out of the Kaiser's millions. In summer that wood had become a sylvan bower, or a pastoral paradise, or a leafy nook, as you please. The sun played through the branches in a patchwork; flowers bloomed on the dirt roofs of the shanties, and a swallow had a nest--famous swallow!--on one of the parapets. True, it was not on the front parapet; it was on the reserve. The swallow knew what he was about. He was taking a reasonable amount of risk and playing reasonably secure to get a front seat, according to the ethics of the war correspondent. The two walls of sandbags were in the same place that they had been six months previously. A little patching had been done after some shells had hit the mark, though not many had come. For this was a quiet corner. Neither side was interested in stirring up the hornets' nest. If a member of Parliament wished to see what trench life was like he was brought here, because it was one of the safest places for a few minutes' look at the sandbags which Mr. Atkins stared at week in and week out. Some Conservatives, however, in the case of Radical members, would have chosen a different kind of trench to show; for example, that one which was suggested to me by the staff officer with the twinkle in his eye on my best day at the front.