“A trench is taken and lost again, and that is all. Nothing important in the west. And the siege goes on. The rifles crack in the trenches, the revealing Bengal lights soar up into the thick night, the search-lights explore the darkness. The sentinels are crouching in the saps and look-outs. The aeroplanes fly and the batteries destroy each other. The pioneers work underground and the mines explode. “The German soldier will stay at his post in spite of it all, faithful and magnificent. He will stay there as long as his country has need of him, or till he falls for her. Never, at any hour of the day or night, must we forget our valiant and wonderful soldiers.” I think we most of us have an idea by now of what trench-life is like, even though we may not have seen it. Even if we have seen it we should find it difficult to better that description of the sameness and the horrors of it. There are points in it which are naturally coloured by the imagination and predisposition of the writer. Joffre and French have not retired, despairing and worn out, from the theatre of the war. Nor is France besieged. That is the grand mistake that he makes. By rights it should be, since Germany was the attacking party. But with the one exception of the abortive attempt to attack Calais, which was foiled by French’s contemptible little army, ever since the Germans were driven back to their trenches from the Marne to the Aisne, and from Nancy to the Seille, it is the Allies who have been the assailants. They have been met by a marvellous defence. There have been countless desperate sallies. But gradually, steadily, little by little, line upon line, trench by trench, they are sapping their way up to the earthen walls defended by the beleaguered garrison.