To-day especially, being a day of a great thaw, a distance of two miles here in this region where so many of our poor soldiers are doomed to exist, is equal to a distance of at least ten miles elsewhere--it is such heavy going. You sink up to your ankles in mud, and you cannot draw your foot out, for the mud sticks tight like glue. The wind still remains cold and icy, but in the midst of a sky too deeply blue shines a sun, beating down upon my head, and under the steel helmet, which grows heavier and heavier, beads of sweat stand upon my forehead. The snow has made up its mind to melt, and that suddenly. All the summits of those melancholy-looking hills, bared of their covering, resume again their brown colour and resemble hindquarters of animals couching on these plains which still remain white. This is the first time that I find myself absolutely, infinitely alone, in the midst of this scene of intense desolation, which, though to-day it happens to glitter with light, is none the less dismal. Until I reach the little wood whither I am bound on duty there is nothing to think about, nothing with which I need concern myself. I need not trouble to get out of the way of shells, for they would not give me time, nor even to select places where to put my feet, since I sink in equally wherever I step. And so, gradually, I find myself relapsing into a state of mind characteristic of former days before the war, and I look at all these things to which I had grown accustomed and view them impartially, as if they were new. Twenty short months ago, who would have imagined such scenes? For instance, these countless spoil-heaps, white in colour, because the soil of this province is white, spoil-heaps which are thrown up everywhere in long lines, tracing on the desert so many zebra-like stripes; is it possible that these indicate the only tracks by which to-day our soldiers of France can move about with some measure of safety? They are little hollow tracks, some undulating, some straight, communication trenches which the French nickname "intestines." These have been multiplied again and again, until the ground is furrowed with them unendingly. What prodigious work, moreover, they represent, these mole-like paths, spreading like a network over hundreds of leagues. If to their sum be added trenches, shelter caves, and all those catacombs that penetrate right into the heart of the hills, the mind is amazed at excavations so extensive, which would seem the work of centuries.