In the quiet days they brought their offering of flowers to this shrine. To-day we bring our howitzers drawn by huge traction engines, our field-guns, our mortars, our machine-guns, our rifles, and these are our offerings. More: from distant lands many thousands of miles across the ocean _men_ have come. Nay, they have been _sent_. They have been given up by their women, for they are husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers. These men, greater than they know themselves to be, are the living offerings at this shrine, given to the cause of Notre Dame de Délivrance. III NEWS FROM NO MAN'S LAND There's a zone, Wild and lone, None claim, none own, That goes by the name of No Man's Land; Its frontiers are bastioned, and wired, and mined, The rank grass shudders and shakes in the wind, And never a roof nor a tree you find In No Man's Land. They that gave Lives so brave Have found a grave In the haggard fields of No Man's Land. By the foeman's reddened parapet They lie with never a head-stone set, But their dauntless souls march forward yet In No Man's Land. H. D'A. B., Major, 55th Division, B.E.F., France. III NEWS FROM NO MAN'S LAND 'No Man's Land' is that bit of ground six hundred yards, and sometimes only thirty yards, between our trenches and those of the enemy. Over this disputed area we 'strafe' each other night and day. There are often water-holes, even swamps, in No Man's Land, and both sides have a habit of draining trenches into it. Wild flowers and even garden flowers grow in this area, for it contains ruined farm-houses and orchards. Poppies red as blood, lilies white as snow, roses, and blue cornflowers are often seen there waving in the breeze, sometimes swaying before the hail of bullets from machine-guns. The birds sing oblivious of war here, but sometimes you see pigeons trying to fly across. I say trying, because our men always endeavour and sometimes succeed in shooting them. Why? Because probably they are carrying spies' messages to the Huns which may mean death to us. We do not want the enemy to know how we are distributing our batteries in the rear, so we try to stop enemy aeroplanes or pigeons crossing either way.