Though in March, 1914, one would hardly have given Neuve Chapelle, intact and peaceful, a passing glance from a motor-car, in March, 1915, Neuve Chapelle in ruins was the one town in Europe which I most wanted to see. Correspondents had not then established themselves. The staff officer whom I asked if I might spend a night in the new British line was a cautious man. He bade me sign a paper freeing the British army from any responsibility. Judging by the general attitude of the Staff, one could hardly take the request seriously. One correspondent less ought to please any Staff; but he said that he had an affection for the regulars and knew that there were always plenty of recruits to take their places without resorting to conscription. The real responsibility was with the Germans. He suggested that I might go out to the German trenches and see if I could obtain a paper from them. He thought if I were quick about it I might get at least a yard in front of the British parapet in daylight. His sense of humour I had recognized when we had met in Bulgaria. Any traveller is bound to meet men whom he has met before in the travelled British army. At the brigade headquarters town, which, as one of the officers said, proved that bricks and mortar can float in mud, the face of the brigadier seemed familiar to me. I found that I had met him in Shanghai in the Boxer campaign, when he had come across a riotous China from India on one of those journeys in remote Asia which British officers are fond of making. He was "all there," whether dealing with a mob of Orientals or with Germans in the trenches. I made myself at home in the parlour of the private house occupied by himself and staff, while he went on with his work. No flag outside the house; no sign that it was headquarters. Motor-cars stopped only long enough for an officer to enter or alight. Brigade headquarters is precisely the target that German aeroplanes or spies like to locate for their guns. "Are you ready? Have you your rubber boots?" the brigadier asked a few minutes later, as he put his head in at the parlour door. It would not do to approach the trenches until after dark. Of course, I had rubber boots. One might as well try to go to sea without a boat as to trenches without rubber boots in winter. "I'll take my constitutional," he added; "the trouble with this kind of war is that you get no exercise." He was a small man, but how he could walk! I began to understand why the Boxers could not catch him. He turned back after we had gone a mile or more and one of his staff went on with me to a point where, just at dusk, I was turned over to another pilot, an aide from battalion headquarters, and we set out across sodden fields that had yielded beetroot in the last harvest, taking care not to step in shell- holes. Dusk settled into darkness. No human being was in sight except ourselves.