There will be tears and hysterics and black stuff and crape in the house; black-bordered announcements, headed by the Iron Cross, in newspapers beginning, “_Den Tod für Kaiser und Reich_ ...”; visits of condolence from _Onkel Fritz and Tante Frieda_ in the _Gutes Zimmer_ (the parlour); lonely widows and fatherless orphans, bereft sweethearts and heartbroken mothers.... “No. 1 gun, fire!” The scream of the shell cleaving the air strikes upon the ear still reverberating from the crash of the explosion. As the breech is opened a thin vapour of smoke blows out of the gun, and vanishes in an instant, as though rejoicing to be free. The men are busied about the gun. In quick succession the other guns of the battery discharge their shots. The officer turns on his heel. “You’d better stay to tea!” he says. “My people have sent me a birthday cake.” Give and take!--that is the philosophy of war. These gunners in their placid batteries hear death coming at them in the wind--day after day, night after night. They are matched against worthy foes--from the gunners’ standpoint--fine artillery, well supplied, that shoots well. The guns are the rooks and bishops of this great game of chess. They sweep off the board any piece that comes into their field. The gun which I saw firing to-day may be discovered to-morrow before there is time to shift its position. Then a rain of shells will fall all about it, smashing in the dug-outs, slaying and maiming the devoted men whose place is by their gun. In this trench warfare the battery is a placid place. So well concealed are the guns, so cunningly hidden, so skilfully blended in their surroundings, that one is often not aware that guns or howitzers are thrusting their noses into the air within twenty yards of where you enter. There is an air of permanency about the large solid dug-outs, a touch of homeliness about the curls of blue smoke that drift lazily aloft from the fires where the cooks are making the tea in tin “dixies.” The gunners show a certain facetiousness in naming their underground homes. “Rowton House,” “Ritz Hotel,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Ocean View,” are some of the names burnt in fretwork on the neat boards fixed at the entrances to the dug-outs. Within, pictures cut from the illustrated papers are hung, those of pretty ladies and the guns of other armies being more especially favoured. You are sure to find one or two men here engaged in fashioning knick-knacks, such as ash-trays or lamp-stands, out of parts of German shell sent over at the battery. I saw some of these souvenirs, one a sugar-sifter, made by one of our gunners out of the case of a shell--a very well-finished piece of work.