Students of music are familiar with the rival motifs that run through operas. In an earlier paragraph I have indicated one such motif, and if in this opera of war a curtain be lifted to shew the future act which this motif dominates, you would see the German staff busy with maps over its retreat, planning the time-table of explosion and burning, and designating the several duties of fouling wells and laying booby-traps. Another scene, in which the rival motif is heard, shews a strong body of ugly-looking Germans at practice over some shallow trenches some distance behind their line. By a quaint coincidence these trenches are a facsimile of those just taken over by the Battalion. The ugly Germans are members of a 'travelling circus.' For long past they have lived in the best billets and been receiving extra rations. They play no part in the retreat--house-wrecking, the flooding of cellars, the hacking through of young fruit trees and throwing over of sundials and garden ornaments, much as they might enjoy it, is not their function. They are a professional raiding party, with two successful raids at Loos, one at Ypres and one near Hebuterne to their credit. Wherever the English have just relieved the French they are sent for to perform. They are accompanied by two 8-inch howitzers and several batteries of 5.9s and 4.2s belonging to the 'circus' and by a Minen-Werfer Abteilung. Their raid upon the Oxfords is fixed for February 28, when the moon will be a third full. The last aeroplane photograph admirably shews the Sucrerie, communication trenches leading forward and the whereabouts of all dug-outs. The pioneer detachment--whose thoughts are turned only to the retreat, of which rumours have been plentiful--must move from its comfortable dug-outs in the railway embankment to make room for H.Q. of the raiding party. * * * * *