We have had German cavalry thrown at us six times in the last four hours, and each time it has been a different body, so that they must have plenty to spare. There is no eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play with us, whatever the Germans may do. The strain is beginning to tell on them more than on us, and you can see by the weary faces and trembling hands that they are beginning to break down. One prisoner taken by the French near Courtrai sobbed for an hour as though his heart were broken, his nerves were so much shaken by what he had been through. The French are fighting hard all round us with a grit and go that will carry them through. Have you ever seen a little man fighting a great, big, hulking giant who keeps on forcing the little chap about the place until the giant tires himself out, and then the little one, who has kept his wind, knocks him over? That's how the fighting here strikes me. We are dancing about round the big German Army, but our turn will come. Our commanders know their business, and we shall come out on top all right. Sergt. Major McDermott does not write under ideal literary conditions, but his style is none the worse for the inspiration furnished by the shrieking shell. I am writing to you with the enemy's shells bursting and screaming overhead; but God knows when it will be posted, if at all. We are waiting for something to turn up to be shot at, but up to now, though their artillery has been making a fiendish row all along our front, we haven't seen as much as a mosquito's eyelash to shoot at. That's why I am able to write, and some of us are able to take a bit of rest while the others keep "dick." There is a fine German airship hanging around like a great blue bottle up in the sky, and now and then our gunners are trying to bring it down, but they haven't done it yet. It's the quantity, not the quality of the German shells that is having effect on us, and it's not so much the actual damage to life as the nerve-racking row that counts for so much. Townsmen who are used to the noise and roar of streets can stand it better than the countrymen, and I think you will find that by far the fittest men are those of regiments mainly recruited in the big cities. A London lad near me says it's no worse than the roar of motor 'buses and other traffic in the city on a busy day. GAELIC SPIRIT IRREPRESSIBLE. The Gaelic spirit has not deserted Sergt. T. Cahill under fire. He writes: The Red Cross girleens with their purty faces and their sweet ways are as good men as most of us, and better than some of us. They are not supposed to venture into the firing line at all, but they get there all the same, and devil a one of us durst turn them away. Mike Clancy is that droll with his larking and bamboozling the Germans that he makes us nearly split our sides laughing at him and his ways.