“So?... You are lucky fellows. We are up to our belts in it.” It was so bad in parts of the line during November storms that whole sections of trench collapsed into a chaos of slime and ooze. It was the frost as well as the rain which caused this ruin, making the earthworks sink under their weight of sand-bags. German and English soldiers were exposed to one another like ants upturned from their nests by a minor landslide. They ignored one another. They pretended that the other fellows were not there. They had not been properly introduced. In another place, reckless because of their discomfort, the Germans crawled upon their slimy parapets and sat on top to dry their legs, and shouted: “Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Our men did not shoot. They, too, sat on the parapets drying their legs, and grinning at the gray ants yonder, until these incidents were reported back to G. H. Q.--where good fires were burning under dry roofs--and stringent orders came against “fraternization.” Every German who showed himself was to be shot. Of course any Englishman who showed himself--owing to a parapet falling in--would be shot, too. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, as always, in this trench warfare, but the dignity of G. H. Q. would not be outraged by the thought of such indecent spectacles as British and Germans refusing to kill each other on sight. Some of the men obeyed orders, and when a German sat up and said, “Don't shoot!” plugged him through the head. Others were extremely short-sighted... Now and again Germans crawled over to our trenches and asked meekly to be taken prisoner. I met a few of these men and spoke with them. “There is no sense in this war,” said one of them. “It is misery on both sides. There is no use in it.” That thought of war's futility inspired an episode which was narrated throughout the army in that winter of '15, and led to curious conversations in dugouts and billets. Above a German front-line trench appeared a plank on which, in big letters, was scrawled these words “The English are fools.” “Not such bloody fools as all that!” said a sergeant, and in a few minutes the plank was smashed to splinters by rifle-fire. Another plank appeared, with other words: “The French are fools.” Loyalty to our allies caused the destruction of that board. A third plank was put up: “We're all fools. Let's all go home.” That board was also shot to pieces, but the message caused some laughter, and men repeating it said: “There's a deal of truth in those words. Why should this go on? What's it all about? Let the old men who made this war come and fight it out among themselves, at Hooge. The fighting-men have no real quarrel with one another. We all want to go home to our wives and our work.”