"You must go up at once," he whispered in his ear in a voice hoarse with excitement, "it is very important. Lose no time." The sapper had gone to his dug-out worn out after several sleepless nights, and was very loath to sally forth into the cold and frosty air. "It is a mine, a German mine," said the subaltern fresh out from home; "you can see them working through the glasses." The sapper was out in a brace of shakes, and hurriedly followed the subaltern along the interminable windings of the trenches. In great excitement the subaltern led him to where a telescope rested on the parapet. "Look!" he said dramatically. The sapper applied his eye to the glass. There was a bright moon, and by its rays he saw, sure enough, figures working feverishly about a shaft. There was something familiar about it, though; then he realized that he was looking down his own mine. The wretched youth who had dragged him from his slumbers had forgotten the windings of the trench. V--INVENTIVE GENIUS OF THE SOLDIERS "Bombing" is one form of trench warfare particularly annoying to the enemy. The revival of bombing began when a British soldier, to while away an idle moment, put some high explosive and a lighted fuse in a discarded bully-beef tin, and pitched it into the German trench opposite him. In his way the British soldier is as handy as the bluejacket, and the long days of the winter monotony produced all kinds of inventions in the way of mortars and bombs, which led to the scientific development of this mode of warfare. A Territorial officer was discovered making all manner of ingenious bombs and trench appliances in his spare time. He was taken out of the trenches and installed in an empty school, and when last I heard of him had a regular factory turning out bombs for the firing line. Bombing is very tricky work. Your bomb must be safe as long as it is in your possession. Nor must it be liable to explosion if dropped after the safety-catch has been removed. That is why bombs are provided with time fuses. Some nicety of judgment is required to hurl them so that they will explode on impact or immediately afterward. If the time fuse has still a second or so to burn when the bomb falls in the enemy trench, a resolute man will pick it up and fling it back, with disastrous consequences to the bomber. Therefore bombers must be trained. The training is extremely simple, but it is essential, and I look forward to the time when every soldier who comes out to France from home will have gone through a course of bombing just as he has gone through a course of musketry.