Finally, let me try to convey an impression of the gunner's performances from various points of view. The infantryman is the gunner's keenest critic, and here let me say once and for all that the infantryman is at the same time the hero and the decisive factor of every war. Artillery but exists to smooth his path to victory, on him falls every brunt and every hardship, the gunner is a mere accessory to his accomplishments. No battle and no war can ever be won except by infantry, superiority in any other arm is useless if the enemy's infantry gain the upper hand by greater numbers or efficiency. He therefore has a right to weigh us in the balance, and it is the Allies' brightest star that their infantry, after endless weary months of suffering under vastly superior gun-fire, know at last that behind them are men and weapons that daily exhibit their newly-won preponderance. It is the prerogative of all good soldiers to grumble when they are satisfied and contented, presumably as a reaction from the cheerful and unmurmuring endurance of hardship. The infantryman of to-day, although reposing every confidence in the artillery behind him, still believes the gunner to be a man of bad habits and occasional lapses. It is no use explaining to him that the round that fell so short as to burst in his trench instead of the enemy's was merely an evidence of senile decay on the part of the gun, and it would be mere waste of time to attempt to convey to the clay-plastered working-party who are busy shovelling up the parapet that it knocked down that accidents will happen even in the best regulated batteries. I have heard higher praise bestowed on our efforts than that of a group of senior officers, who whilst walking down a communication trench at night, contrived so firmly to entangle themselves in the telephone wire to my observing station that it took a whole platoon armed with wire-cutters to unbind them--they irresistibly reminded me of the Laocoon when I arrived upon the scene. Further, it is easy to understand that men who wade along a muddy ditch to the prospect of five long days and nights in a morass are apt to speak slightingly of others sleeping the sleep of the just in warm dry dug-outs a mile or so back.