the performances of these men, never forget the debt that it owes to that little band whose pay it loved to curtail and whose ambitions to discourage in the old forgotten years of peace! But this is a digression, typical of the observation officer, whose thoughts stray into strange channels during the course of the long days of watching. How keenly he longs sometimes for "something to happen," especially during his first experiences of the work, before he realizes that something is always happening under his eyes, if he can only detect it. My own pet longing was to see my first real live Hun in his natural surroundings, a longing conceived in much the same sort of inquiring spirit that inspires the naturalist. I saw him at last, he sprang from a trench in which a shell had just fallen, ran literally as if his life depended on it, which, in grim earnest, it did, and dived like a rabbit into a support trench a few yards away, followed by cheers and bullets from our own lines. My observation post was at that time not more than a hundred yards behind our front line, but, owing to the intricate nature of the country, no signs of immediate war could be seen except from the little slit in the wall from which I observed. One day I was stretching my legs in the road outside, when a staff officer, somewhat of a _rara avis_ in so advanced a spot, came by, having evidently lost his way. Now a staff officer was once defined to me by a very distinguished regimental officer as "a being whose natural common sense was buried for ever beneath the vast mountain of his own ignorance." This magnificent gentleman--he had probably been a distinguished grocer, the pride of the local volunteers, before the war--informed me that observation was impossible from where I then was, and, indicating a ruin, the remains of whose roof could just be seen above the hedges, expressed his intention of surveying the country from its more favourable eminence. Bowing before his superior wisdom, I saluted and we parted, he to pursue the even tenor of his way, I to my seat behind the window to watch the fun, knowing that his objective was about half a mile behind the German lines. With an unholy delight, I saw him blunder into our trenches, exchange a hurried word with an officer who came forward to meet him, and then beat a precipitate retreat pursued by a most audible titter that ran swiftly along the line. He took care to avoid on his return the Bath Club, as we called that O.P., from the number of flooded cellars it contained.