The British victories at Arras and the French victories above Verdun were of happy augury. But no victory is a victory unless followed by a victory, and Time itself wilts laurels. Haig's dream of striking the enemy hard and often, leaving no time to recover from a blow at one point before calamity fell upon him at another, proved only a dream. The German invention of mustard gas and the appearance of many hostile tanks upon the scene were examples of the unforeseen. Very efficient tank-guns and studied methods of attack upon tanks reduced the usefulness of our new war-engine to comparatively low terms. In the late summer we embarked on a new campaign in Flanders, and our best weapon was a still boundless belief in our ability to "beat the Hun" whom, mentally, in every possible way, the army under-rated. The Hun, so-called, suffered nothing like so much as our fellows. He would not have stood so much. And of all war-struggles, that which sank at last to rest in the wilderness of Poelcapelle and Passchendaele in the November of the year seemed the most hopeless. Much of the main interest of humanity was transferred from the strife at the front to other scenes of action. 1917 was an air and water year, a submarine year, a Gotha year. London was terrified by day by wonderful almost invisible planes which ravaged East-end schools and caused the exodus from Whitechapel to Brighton. Daylight raids were followed by starlight raids, and although the papers of the time laughed at such affairs and said we liked them, there is no need to keep up that deception now. London suffered in mind excruciatingly. With the persistent bombing of London came a more systematic bombing of the lines at night. It is more unpleasant, though really safer, to await bombs in open fields than it is in London, but the soldier loathed the bomb from air far more than he did the shell. The transverse movement of the shell no doubt gives the mind more scope for judgment and calm than does the missile falling vertically. The Germans were so impressed by this fear of bombs that they endeavoured to give shelter underground to each and every one of their soldiers when threatened from above. There must have been a regular routine like fire-drill when our bombing planes went over, and Fritz was marched into his enormous subterranean shelters. British and French troops had no such organised way of escape, and they had to find what cover they could where they were. It was always surprising what a number of miscellaneous casualties were caused by the night-bombers. Expectation of the German planes' approach was intense, and men could distinguish readily the sound of the engines of our own planes and those of the enemy. There seemed to be something peculiarly sinister in the sound of a "Jerry" and men were fond of imitating it in screeds of words in the style of "Hush hush hush, here comes the bogey man!"