These torpedoes play a great part in war nowadays. They are cheap to manufacture, carry an enormous bursting charge, and--shot out of small mortar-like guns, into which the steel or wooden "stem" of the torpedo is inserted--have a range of six or seven hundred yards. On days of attack you can see them, like huge black birds, soar slowly up from behind the trenches, hang poised for an instant, and dart down to make their formidable explosion, which sends clouds of débris, timber, and dirt, high into the air. Their fragments are very bad--long, thin, jagged things that come whizzing by and inflict terrible wounds. Many of them are equipped with "trailers," which outline their course in a shower of crimson sparks; and on nights of attack the sky is scored with their fiery trails. A night attack is a wonderful thing to see: the steady solemn thunder of the guns, the sky glaring with star-shells and trails, the trenches flaming and roaring with bursting shell. It is like a vast natural phenomenon,--Krakatoa or Mont Pelée,--too vast and cataclysmic to be man's handiwork; and yet, into the maelstrom of spouting flames, hissing steel, shattering explosions, insignificant little creatures like you and me will presently run--offering, with sublime courage, their tender bodies to be burned and pierced and mangled. To me that is war's one redeeming feature--it brings out in men a courage that is of the spirit alone--above all earthly things. _April 23, 1917_ I am sitting again in the little post I told you about in my last letter. The old lady is tidying up the café, the early morning sun is shining in gayly through the many-paned windows, and outside, along the picket-line, the mules are squealing and kicking while they have their morning bath. Pretty soon I shall go out foraging for a brace of eggs, and with these, a piece of cheese, and some coffee shall make my déjeuner. The local barrack is the only one I have found where one simply cannot eat, as the cook and his kitchen are unspeakable. Unless he has been caught out in a shower, he has certainly gone without a bath since the war started. After a glance at him and at his kitchen even the most callous poilu rebels.