of their trenches and do likewise. On another occasion, in the broad daylight, unarmed parties of men on both sides, by a tacit agreement, set about repairing their respective barbed-wire entanglements. They were no more than fifteen or twenty yards apart. The wiring-party on the British side belonged to the Munster Fusiliers. Being short of mallets, one of the Munsters coolly walked across to the enemy and said, "Good-morrow, Gerrys. Would any of ye be so kind as to lend me the loan of a hammer?" The Germans received him with smiles, but as they did not know English they were unable to understand what he wanted until he made it clear by pantomimic action, when he was given the hammer "with a heart and a half," as he put it himself. Having repaired the defences of his own trench, he brought back the hammer to the Germans, and thought he might give them "a bit of his mind," without offence, as they did not know what he was saying. "Here's your hammer, and thanks," said he. "High hanging to the man that caused this war--ye know who I mean--and may we be all soon busily at work hammering nails into his coffin." Many touching stories might be told of the sympathy which unites the combatants when they find themselves lying side by side, wounded and helpless, in shell holes and copses, or on the open plain after an engagement. The ruling spirit which animates the soldier in the fury of the fight is, as it seems to me, that of self-preservation. He kills or disables so that he may not be killed or disabled himself. Besides that, each side are convinced they are waging a purely defensive war. So it is that hostility subsides, once the sense of danger is removed, and each side sees in its captives not devils or barbarians, but fellow-men. Especially among the wounded, British and German, do these sentiments prevail, as they lie together on the field of battle. In a dim way they pitifully regard each other as hapless victims caught in the vortex of the greatest of human tragedies, or set against each other by the ambitions of rulers and statesmen in which they have no part. They try to help each other, to ease each other's sufferings, to stanch each other's wounds, to give each other comfort in their sore distress.