“Well, in the hurry of building these trenches, in the night, under fire, a few dead bodies--only a few--were rolled into the escarpment. We very much regretted it----.” The officer apologized profusely, but they had been under fire ever since and the trenches could not be torn down. So they stood--human walls. “But I can assure you there is no smell now. The first week, in the hot sun--Ah! then I should not have liked to bring you here.” As I leaned against the wall something crushed, like the snap of a pencil, under my back. I leaped, in alarm, to my feet. As I turned around a blue coat, which I had pushed back in my fatigue, fell over the skeleton of a hand, and at my feet dropped the joint of a forefinger. Villiers pulled me to my knees. “Look over there,” he said and pointed beyond the trench. I saw fresh earth heaped up. “It is the brow of the Russian works,” he said, “but look in between--that pit of uniforms.” A mound of soiled, tattered clothes, higher than a man could stand, and longer than a company street, lay before us, not fifty feet away. At the base, facing me, detached from the rest, a hideous skull leered. “Unburied dead,” Villiers said, “hugging the ground, sent back into the earth from whence they came.” Then the officer apologized. Yes, there was no chance to bury the dead. Under constant fire for six weeks, between hostile lines, they slowly rotted away until only bones and rags remained--Russian and Japanese inextricably together on the scene of the last desperate Russian stand, where was concentrated all the machine gun fire of both sides. Wounded and dying had been mixed with dead. No succor was possible. A general must count his men as fighting units and he could not afford to pay a dozen good lives for one injured. We turned to go--stomach and heart sick, but the boys in khaki smiled. They were used to it. Just then the postman passed. He had a handful of cards, scrawled over with loving messages. As we saw how complete the service was--mail delivered under the shadow of guns, and as a man goes on to the firing line to offer up his life--we suddenly came to the telephone which made us think how near we were to all we held dear. That line was connected with headquarters, headquarters with Tokyo, Tokyo with New York and London. I suddenly saw myself ringing up the editor to catch an edition. “Hello! just arrived at the Eternal Dragon. Quiet this morning. Russian sortie last night. Repulsed. One Japanese, eighteen Russians lost--three wounded between the lines calling for water----” “Hold on, what’s that?” “Wait a minute till I stop this infernal racket.” Down with the receiver. To the Colonel: “Can’t you stop that battery a minute? I’m at the ’phone.” “All right, editor. Wounded man says--Hold on a minute. It’s that blasted volley firing. All right. I was saying, a wounded--Hell, here comes a shell!”