The Eighth Division was composed as follows:-- DIVISIONAL GENERAL--General DAVIES. 23_rd Infantry Brigade--General Penny._ 2nd Scots Rifles. 2nd Middlesex. 2nd West Yorkshires. 2nd Devons. 24_th Infantry Brigade--General Carter._ 1st Worcesters. 2nd East Lancashires. 1st Notts and Derby. 2nd Northamptons. 25_th Infantry Brigade--General Lowry Cole._ 2nd Lincolns. 2nd Berkshires. 1st Irish Rifles. 2nd Rifle Brigade. 13th London (Kensingtons). _Artillery._ 5th Brigade R.H.A., G.O.Z. 45th Brigade R.F.A. 33rd Brigade R.F.A. Heavy Batteries 118, 119. 2, 5, F. Cos. R.E. 8 Signal Co. Divisional Cavalry. Northampton Yeomanry. 8th Cyclists. We have now arrived at what may be called the great winter lull, when the continuation of active operations was made impossible by the weather conditions, which were of the most atrocious description. It was the season which in a more classic age of warfare was spent in comfortable winter quarters. There was no such surcease of hardship for the contending lines, who were left in their trenches face to face, often not more than fifty yards apart, and each always keenly alert for any devilry upon the part of the other. The ashes of war were always redly smouldering, and sometimes, as will be seen, burst up into sudden furious flame. It was a period of rain-storms and of frost-bites, of trench mortars and of {310} hand grenades, of weary, muddy, goat-skinned men shivering in narrow trenches, and of depleted brigades resting and recruiting in the rearward towns. Such was the position at the Front. But hundreds of miles to the westward the real future of the war was being fought out in the rifle factories of Birmingham, the great gun works of Woolwich, Coventry, Newcastle, and Sheffield, the cloth looms of Yorkshire, and the boot centres of Northampton. In these and many other places oversea the tools for victory were forged night and day through one of the blackest and most strenuous winters that Britain has ever known. And always on green and waste and common, from Cromarty to Brighton, wherever soldiers could find billets or a village of log huts could be put together, the soldier citizens who were to take up the burden of the war, the men of the Territorials and the men of the new armies, endured every hardship and discomfort without a murmur, whilst they prepared themselves for that great and glorious task which the future would bring. Even those who were too old or too young for service formed themselves into volunteer bands, who armed and clothed themselves at their own expense. This movement, which sprang first from the small Sussex village of Crowborough, was co-ordinated and controlled by a central body of which Lord Desborough was the head. In spite of discouragement, or at the best cold neutrality from