To men put on this short allowance of natural sights and sounds it is an extraordinary pleasure to find in the rear of their trench a clean rivulet, such as often occurs in chalk land, where the surface water filters rapidly in and comes out at the bases of slopes like so many crystal springs. But the greatest of all trench delights is the re-discovery, every year, of the sun. Some day in March it is suddenly found to have a miraculous warmth, and everybody off duty comes out like the bees and stands about in the trench, sunning his head and shoulders in the tepid rays and adoring--quite inarticulately--and feeling that all’s well with the world. A winter in trenches revives, in us children of civilisation, a pre-Promethean rapture of love for the sun; and the dark nights, in which not a match must be struck, makes us, at any rate, think more highly than ever we did of the moon, which halves the strain of the soldier on guard, and of the stars which guide him back overland to his billet, at a relief, to sleep in Elysium. So, for a man who has all his senses alive and unjaded, the hard and bare life has its compensations. It makes him do without many things; but it also quickens delight in the things which are at the base of all the rest, and without which there could not have been the incomparable adventure and spectacle of life on the earth. G. H. Q., France. _February, 1917._ XLI CASSEL Cassel has no great part in this war. But it has endured ancient sieges; three notable battles have taken its name since 1070; the last of them led to the annexation of Cassel to France in 1678 and gave her a town finely set on a hill amidst lowlands, and equally good to look at and look from. The many windmills about it give Cassel an air of liveliness as you approach, and this cheerful effect is maintained on reaching the main square, drawn by Mr. Bone, with its lightsome spaciousness and comfortable, well-proportioned houses. The eyes of passing Scottish soldiers find a familiar look in the “step” gables of many of Cassel’s roofs. One is seen on the right. [Illustration] XLII A LINE OF TANKS Thanks to the imaginative power of the artist, the “Tank” is here seen not as the British soldier sees it--a friendly giant with lovably droll tricks of gait and gesture--but as it must look to a threatened enemy, the very embodiment of momentum irresistibly grinding its way towards its prey. In the presence of “tanks” as here drawn--though there is no trace of exaggeration in the drawing--the spectator is as a crushed worm and, in fact, finds there is more force in that phrase than he knew. [Illustration] XLIII A KITCHEN IN THE FIELD