“You don’t imagine these trenches are going to stop the Germans, do you?” He nodded slowly. “Perhaps.” “But we had trenches like these at Trenton and you know what happened,” I objected. “I know, but--” again that mysterious smile, “those Trenton trenches were not exactly like these trenches. Hello! They’re signalling to us. They want to know who we are.” In reply to orders wig-wagged up to us from headquarters in a white farmhouse, we flung forth our identification streamers, blue, white and red arranged in code to form an aerial passport, and received a wave of approval in reply. As we swung to the northwest, moving parallel to the river and about four miles back of it, I studied with my binoculars the trenches that stretched along beneath us in straight lines and zigzags as far as the eye could see. I was familiar with such constructions, having studied them on various fields; here was the firing trench, here the shelter trench and there the communicating galleries that joined them, but what were those groups of men working so busily farther down the line? And those other groups swarming at many points in the wide area? They were not digging or bracing side-wall timbers. What were they doing? I had the wheel at this moment and, in my curiosity, I turned the machine to the east, forgetting Mr. Astor’s admonition that we were not allowed to pass the rear line of trenches. “Hold on! This is forbidden!” he cried. “We’ll get in trouble.” Before I could act upon his warning, there came a puff of white smoke from one of the batteries and a moment later a shell, bursting about two hundred yards in front of us, made its message clear. We turned at once and, after some further manoeuvring, sailed back to Baltimore. We dined together that night and I tried to get from Mr. Astor a key to the mystery that evidently lay behind this situation at the Susquehanna. At first he was unwilling to speak, but, finally, in view of our friendship and his confidence in my discretion, he gave me a forecast of events to come. “You mustn’t breathe this to a soul,” he said, “and, of course, you mustn’t write a word of it, but the fact is, dear boy, the wonderful fact is we’re going to win the battle of the Susquehanna.” I shook my head. “I’d give all I’ve got in the world to have that true, Mr. Astor, but von Hindenburg is marching against us with 150,000 men, first-class fighting men.” “I know, and we have only 60,000 men, most of them raw recruits. Just the same, von Hindenburg hasn’t a chance on earth.” He paused and added quickly: “Except one.” “One?” “If the enemy suspected the trap we have set for them, they could avoid it, but they won’t suspect it. It’s absolutely new.” “How about their aeroplane scouts? Won’t they see the trap?”