As far as sniping is concerned, I believe that the British soldier holds the mastery. In our Regular army, the private cannot reach the maximum of pay until he has passed as a first-class shot, with the result that almost all our Regulars are fair marksmen, and some are very fine shots indeed. Of the Territorials, probably the London battalions contain the best riflemen. There are some very good snipers among the Indians and also the Canadians, as both possess in their ranks a good percentage of hunters. [Illustration: IN A GERMAN TRENCH. One soldier watches the periscope and the other attends to the telephone.] I have been in several German trenches, and they were all well constructed. The Germans are the beavers of trench warfare. They were quick to recognize the rôle that heavy artillery was destined to play in deciding the fortunes of the war of positions. Their aim has therefore been to construct dug-outs, proof, if possible, even against hits with high-explosive shells, in which their men can take shelter during an artillery bombardment, and emerge, when the guns lift and the infantry assault, to defend the trench with machine-guns, many of which are made to sink at will into specially constructed cement shelters. The Germans work with antlike industry. Thus, in the eight days that elapsed between the loss of the trenches round and about the château of Hooge, on the Ypres-Menin road, on July 30, and their recapture by our infantry on August 9, they constructed an amazing network of trenches and dug-outs. The vast mine-crater (caused by the mine we exploded here on July 19 when we reoccupied it) resembled an amphitheatre with its tiers of bomb proof shelters scooped out of the crumbling sides of the chasm, and shored up with tree-trunks. The dug-outs in the trenches took a diagonal plunge downwards, were most solidly constructed, and afforded accommodation for four or five men at a time. They were, like all German dug-outs, quite comfortably furnished with beds and furniture from the abandoned cottages in the vicinity. There are known to be trenches in the German lines which are lit by electric light from Lille, but I have not seen any of these. Apropos of the Lille electric-light supply, it is a fact that for many weeks after the Germans had occupied Lille, Armentières, the important industrial centre which is in our lines and which received its electric current from Lille, only five miles or so away, continued to draw its electric power as before. The joke was too good to last, and one day without warning the current was cut off. It is believed that a spy revealed to the Germans the fact that they were lighting the operations of the Allies.