As regards the Flanders battle, the last sentence of this letter may be taken literally, but the rest of it is open to question. The dogged resistance on the Aisne, and the tremendous attacks up by Ypres and along the coast, were not made by men starving and utterly miserable--the work has been too fierce for that to be possible. The reserve troops of the German Army have no liking for their work, and, newly taken from comfort to the rigid discipline and severe conditions of the firing line, are naturally inclined to complain at what the first-line troops regard as mere everyday inconveniences; and doubtless it was some of these that were referred to in this letter. But, to revert to the position on the Aisne, there is yet another Borderer's story that is worthy of reproduction. The narrator states that during the battle two German women, masquerading as nurses, went about the British lines by motor, accompanied by a chauffeur. Among the British soldiers on outpost duty they freely distributed cigarettes, which were afterwards found to be inoculated by poison. Before any fatal results had accrued, the nature of the cigarettes was discovered, and the pseudo-nurses were rounded up and shot. The story may be true, but it seems a little improbable that _no_ ill results should have attended the distribution of these cigarettes before discovery of the trick. The man who tells this story adds that two Scottish pipers held up and captured eight Germans in a wood near Crecy. The pipers had become detached from their division, and carried no arms, but on coming on the Germans they assumed a firing position and pointed the long drones of their pipes at the enemy, calling on them to surrender. The Germans at once threw down their rifles, and were taken prisoners. Let it be remembered that both of these stories are told by the same man, and that both are on the face of them improbable--and then the reader must form his own conclusion. The next missive takes us on to the work in the trenches around Béthune, after the opposing lines had crept up to the north-west of France. "There were few breathing-spaces," says the writer. "Ground would be gained, and our troops then had to resort to the expedient of digging themselves in: at parts of the line about a hundred yards divided our trenches from those of the enemy." The man who tells of this fighting exposed himself to get a shot at precisely the same moment that a German out in the opposite trenches took aim, and both pulled their triggers almost simultaneously. The German bullet passed right across the Borderer's scalp, but in the firing line it was impossible to get immediate medical attention, and the wounded man had to be in the trench for hours before nightfall gave him the chance to get back to the field hospital under cover of darkness.