I was approaching our trenches, walking musingly through the clearing, watching the splashes of sunlight playing over the moss, when a strange sound impelled me to halt transfixed. The sound took the form of light, aerial music, as silvery and as transparent as the sky which carried its waves to me. That welcome music had wings; it went high, higher even than the great trees, higher than the trilling of the lark. There were instants when it seemed to draw far away, being heard then only with difficulty; then it recovered force and sounded clear and distinct though limpid and immaterial. A breath of wind shook the leaves and brought a flood of the melody down to me, before it was dispersed far and wide. It was the voice of bells in some village church. I stood there, unmoving, listening to this chant of the bells wafting through the woods, where night and day men faced one another, seeking to kill each other. Their message was not sad. From the heights of the heavens wherein it resounds it spreads widely over earth and men alike. The Germans in their trenches hear it, as we hear it, but the bells speak not to them as they speak to us. To us they say: "Hope, sons of France! I am near you, the voice of all the firesides you have left behind. To each one of you I bring a vision of that corner of the earth where the heart remains. Confidence be with you for ever, sons of France, confidence and strength for ever. I sing the life immortal of the Fatherland." To them they say: "Madmen who believed that France could die! Hear me! Above the little church, whose stained-glass windows lie in fragments on the pavements, the belfry still stands. It is the belfry that sends me to you, laughing and mocking. Through me it is the village that defies you. I see.... I see ... whatever you have done, I see. Whatever you may do, I shall see. I am not afraid of you. Because I know that the day will come when the cock on the steeple, staring unflinchingly towards the far horizon, will see you in desperate flight, while the innumerable bodies of your slain shall lie thick over the land!" Night. Letters have been brought to me. One of the envelopes contains sorrow for me. I have learnt that a friend is dead. And I welcome the darkness. Its blackness cannot be too black for me; I have even hidden myself at the bottom of the trench, because a diffused light wanders amid the boles of the age-old trees before it; and welcome also is the silence of night. Near me an occasional furtive movement reveals the presence of men who are watching. Nothing else. Not even firing in the far distance. I open my eyes in the blackness and see again the living face of my friend, frank, eyes clear and loyal, mouth slightly disdainful, beneath a closely-clipped moustache.