In this section the earth is many-mouthed with caves and cut with passages running from cave to cave, so that the inhabitants may go and come hidden from sight. Jawbone and Hairyman and Lowbrow, of the Stone Age, would be at home there, squatting on their hunkers and tearing at their raw kill with their long incisors. It does not seem a place for men who walk erect, wear woven fabrics, enjoy a written language, and use soap and safety razors. One would not be surprised to see some figure swing down by a long, hairy arm from a branch of a tree and leap on all fours into one of the caves, where he would receive a gibbering welcome to the bosom of his family. Not so! Huddled in these holes in the earth are free-born men of an old civilization, who read the daily papers and eat jam on their bread. They do not want to be there, but they would not consider themselves worthy of the inheritance of free-born men if they were not. Only civilized man is capable of such stoicism as theirs. They have reverted to the cave-dweller's protection because their civilization is so highly developed that they can throw a piece of steel weighing from eighteen to two thousand pounds anywhere from five to twenty miles with merciless accuracy, and because the flesh of man is even more tender than in the cave-dweller's time, not to mention that his brain-case is a larger target. An officer calls attention to a shell-proof shelter with the civic pride of a member of a chamber of commerce pointing out the new Union Station. "Not even a high explosive"--the kind that bursts on impact after penetration--"could get into that!" he says. "We make them for generals and colonels and others who have precious heads on their shoulders." With material and labour, the same might have been constructed for the soldiers, which brings us back to the question of munitions in the economic balance against a human life. It was the first shelter of this kind which I had seen. You never go up to the trenches without seeing something new. The defensive is tireless in its ingenuity in saving lives and the offensive in taking them. Safeguards and salvage compete with destruction. And what labour all that excavation and construction represented--the cumulative labour of months and day-by-day repairs of the damage done by shells! After a bombardment, dig out the filled trenches and renew the smashed dug-outs to be ready for another go! The walls of that communication trench were two feet above our heads. We noticed that all the men were in their dug-outs; none were walking about in the open. One knew the meaning of this barometer-- stormy. The German gunners were "strafing" in a very lively way this afternoon.