Its mechanism is extremely simple. It can be carried at a good pace over a distance of several hundred yards by a single man, and it is not distinguishable from the ordinary rifle except at fairly close range. It is my conviction that the automatic rifle is the key to the machine-gun problem, which has hitherto proved of such insurmountable difficulty to the Allies in the different theatres of war. It has been said that we hold our trenches with infantry, the French with their 75-centimetre guns--“the black butchers,” as my friend, Mr. George Adam, calls them in his admirable book “Behind the Scenes at the War”--but the Germans with machine-guns. The more machine-guns we have--and this view is fully upheld by the new Ministry of Munitions at home--the thinner we can make our front line in the trenches, and the more men we shall accordingly have at our disposal for an offensive at one or more points. CHAPTER III THE FIGHT FOR THE SALIENT I. THE CAPTURE AND LOSS OF HILL 60. The grass has grown up thick and long about the little graves strung out in a great semicircle about Ypres, marking the line of the famous salient, in the defence of which so many thousands of Britons and Frenchmen cheerfully laid down their lives. Spring and summer have smiled on the wooded and undulating plain about the ruined towers of Ypres, and the profusion of wild flowers, the wealth of green foliage, which their gentle caress has brought forth, has so transformed the land that the awful battle-pictures these green pastures have seen now seem like a far-off dream. With wise strategy we drew in the horns of the Yser salient on May 3, and fell back to the position we now hold, at the beginning of August, from the Yser Canal, north of Ypres, through Wieltje, Verlorenhoek, and Hooge, back to the foot of Hill 60, and thence down to St. Eloi. Thus a great part of the battlefield, which was the scene of the tremendous struggle lasting from April 17 until May 13, is now in German hands--St. Julien, sacred for ever in the Empire’s history in memory of Canadian gallantry there; St. Jean, where the gallant Geddes died; Zonnebeke, where, by the light of candles stuck in beer-bottles, those gallant doctors, Ferguson and Waggett--Waggett, the throat specialist of Harley Street, now Major Waggett, R.A.M.C.--in the cellars of the ruined houses worked for hours over the wounded, and brought them safely away.