Meantime the Germans had not been idle. With that vigour and thoroughness so characteristic of the nation, they prepared for "The Day"—another of the _THE’S_, of course. Victory was certain, for the Kaiser had invoked the aid of his God. In a general proclamation sprinkled with oaths, imbecile pleas, and biblical embellishments, he called on his generals and army to charge for the Fatherland. He would be with them—miles to the rear, of course—and he would stand waiting with thousands of iron crosses to plaster round his soldiers’ chests. God was to be on the side of his big battalions. The plan on this occasion was the old one—dense masses of men. Line after line of conscripts to be thrown to death and destruction. But the preliminary bombardment was a thing which they also relied on. This commenced at the dawn of a cold and drizzling day. The boom of the first shell roused "Sunny Jim" and the Staff of the Mixed Division. A tinkle of a telephone bell stirred the British gunners to action. Observers cunningly concealed in some haystacks in the forward part of the line immediately ’phoned back the range of the German batteries. The crash of our shells ’midst the guns of the enemy was a fitting reply. The range was accurate and the toll a deadly one. However, these German gunners have a wonderful pluck and persistency. Their observers saw many guns, new trenches, and here and there fields dotted with turbans, caps, and badly concealed guns in the Allied lines. Eagerly they worked out their range tables, and crash went their guns again. One great line of trenches with Indian turbans and Tommies’ caps peeping over was bombarded with three hundred powerful shells. The parapets were wrecked, trenches burst, and great craters made in the surrounding fields. Deadly gunnery and deadly havoc. No wonder Krupp’s hirelings gained the iron cross. The exposed guns were crushed to smithereens, and the gunners near knocked down like dollies in a fair. This made the German observers glad. To them the battle promised well. But one of the German observers, stationed in an old windmill, received sudden marching orders through the agency of a powerful British shell.