The post was as small as a chart-room, and the light came only through the peep-holes. You got a glimpse of a rack of rifles, of shadowy figures that made way for you, and of your captain speaking in a whisper. When you put your eyes to the peep-hole it was like looking at a photograph through a stereoscope. But, instead of seeing the lake of Geneva, the Houses of Parliament, or Niagara Falls, you looked across a rain-driven valley of mud, on the opposite side of which was a hill. Here the reader kindly will imagine a page of printed matter devoted to that hill. It was an extremely interesting hill, but my captain, who also is my censor, decides that what I wrote was too interesting, especially to Germans. So the hill is "strafed." He says I can begin again vaguely with "Over there." "Over there," said his voice in the darkness, "is St. Mihiel." For more than a year you had read of St. Mihiel. Communiques, maps, illustrations had made it famous and familiar. It was the town that gave a name to the German salient, to the point thrust in advance of what should be his front. You expected to see an isolated hill, a promontory, some position of such strategic value as would explain why for St. Mihiel the lives of thousands of Germans had been thrown upon the board. But except for the obstinacy of the German mind, or, upon the part of the Crown Prince the lack of it, I could find no explanation. Why the German wants to hold St. Mihiel, why he ever tried to hold it, why if it so pleases him he should not continue to hold it until his whole line is driven across the border, is difficult to understand. For him it is certainly an expensive position. It lengthens his lines of communication and increases his need of transport. It eats up men, eats up rations, eats up priceless ammunition, and it leads to nowhere, enfilades no position, threatens no one. It is like an ill-mannered boy sticking out his tongue. And as ineffective. The physical aspect of St. Mihiel is a broad sweep of meadow-land cut in half by the Meuse flooding her banks; and the shattered houses of the Ferme Mont Meuse, which now form the point of the salient. At this place the opposing trenches are only a hundred yards apart, and all of this low ground is commanded by the French guns on the heights of Les Paroches. On the day of our visit they were being heavily bombarded. On each side of the salient are the French. Across the battle-ground of St. Mihiel I could see their trenches facing those in which we stood. For, at St. Mihiel, instead of having the line of the enemy only in front, the lines face the German, and surround him on both flanks. Speaking not as a military strategist but merely as a partisan, if any German commander wants that kind of a position I would certainly make him a present of it. [Illustration: _From a photograph, copyright by Underwood and Underwood._ A first-line trench outside of Verdun.