The following are expanded pages of the diary that I kept from five o'clock in the evening of January 10th, 1915, to seven o'clock the next morning.

5 P. M.: The motor has stopped, but I wonder why. In Houthem the Bavarian captain told us that we were going to Brigade Headquarters. I can see though only a dirty brick farmhouse; its door is open and the light of a lamp falling on the yard seems to float in a yellow watery pool. But the other gray-green army car has stopped too, and Hauptmann Kliewer is getting out.

So we pile out on the muddy road just as Hauptmann Kliewer beckons us to come on. Behind us the ruined walls of Houthem are hiding in the thickening dusk, but the grayish steeple where the Germans have—and the French used to have—their observers, persistently shows itself.

Hauptmann Kliewer and the Bavarian captain have left the road and are wading through the mud of the farmhouse yard. I thought we were going to Brigade Headquarters. We splash on after them. Hours before at the battery we sank in mud to the tops of our puttees; now the novelty has worn off. Through an open barn door I see a motor and think of it as being hidden there, an impression which grows, upon noticing that all the windows in the rear of the house are covered with boards, so that no light is visible. But the front door is visible. Yes, but that faces Houthem where the Germans are, and these rear windows face Ypres and the English and the French. About that silent house broods mystery. Hauptmann Kliewer is knocking and the door opens just enough for us to pass in one at a time, and is hurriedly closed. I wonder if a French observer could have seen that narrow bar of light. Probably not, for in the room only candles are burning—three stubby candles on a long kitchen table, around which soldiers are sitting. And something buzzes, and picking up one of the many telephones, a soldier says into it, "Brigade Hauptquartier." A moment, and it buzzes again. And once more the monotonous "Brigade Hauptquartier." And it dawns upon me that this dirty farmhouse must be the Brigade Headquarters that they told us we would visit. The kitchen now has a new interest.

Bidding us wait, Hauptmann Kliewer and the Bavarian captain have gone with an orderly into another room. The man at the table with the ragged beard and the boyish face has clamped a telephone to his head and is writing rapidly, pausing now and then to assure the man at the other end of the wire that he is getting every word. I wonder where that other man is? Down in a trench, perhaps, or possibly in the regimental headquarters. What is he saying? Have the French attacked? The other man at the table, puffing stolidly at the briar pipe, is clasping a telephone as though ready should the buzzer call. I wonder how he can be fresh and clean shaven, when all the other faces seen in the flickering candle light look weary and unkempt.

"Come!" Hauptmann Kliewer is calling us, so we leave the men around the kitchen table, who, unlike most of the German soldiers we have met, seem too exhausted to talk, and file through a latched door into a room that might have been in a farmhouse somewhere near Monroe, New York. The little black, pillow-seated chairs, the old-fashioned piano with its rack of torn music, the red-cushioned stool with the stuffing coming out, a hideous colored print of Antwerp on the wall, the oil lamp with the buff china shade, it all seems so utterly un-European. And then the door to an adjoining room opens and a slender, nervous-looking man in the fifties, whose impressive shoulder straps indicate an officer of high rank, begins to bow to us all. "General Major Clauss," Hauptmann Kliewer is introducing us, and at once the General Major dominates the room. It is for him to say whether we must go back to Lille, or spend the night at one of his regimental headquarters.

He begins a long conversation with the Hauptmann. General Major Clauss is shaking his head. I guess it's back to Lille.

"Ask him," I beg the Hauptmann, as he begins to give us the substance of what had been said, "if they cannot let us go to the firing line, if they'll let us stay here until morning."

With a smile, Hauptmann Kliewer is telling the General Major our wishes, but he too smiles, and spreads out his hands—the right one is wounded—as though it were out of the question.

The little parlor is filling with officers. They are all bowing and smiling in a friendly way. I appeal to one of them, a young chap, handsome in spite of the dueling scar across his chin. "We can do nothing," he says regretfully, in English. The General Major, apparently, is reluctant even to ask one of his regimental commanders to assume the responsibility for us. As if to bid us good-by, the staff is standing at attention. We urge the Hauptmann to telephone. "I shall try," he says, with rare good nature. General Major Clauss has closed the door behind him in his bedroom, and the Hauptmann buttonholes a Major. The Staff officers look at each other in surprise. They believed they were well rid of us. Briefly the Hauptmann is making the point for us. The young officer with the scarred chin puts in a word. The Major seems undecided. A lieutenant says something that I imagine would translate into, "Telephone,—anything to be rid of them," but he regards us with the amazing polite smile.

The Major darts into the kitchen where the telephones are and then, smiling broadly, Hauptmann Kliewer comes in followed by the Major.

"Permission has been granted," he says, "for you to go to the headquarters of the Seventeenth Regiment. You will spend the night there, and be here at seven in the morning, where I shall meet you with the motor."

"Aren't you coming with us, Captain?" somebody asks.

"I'm going to spend the evening in the headquarters of my own regiment in Commines," the Hauptmann explains. "One of the officers here will take you to the Seventeenth's headquarters."

Thanking everybody, we leave the parlor, and the officers smile sententiously. We pass through the dimly lit kitchen where the tired soldiers sit around the table, and cautiously opening that betraying light filled door, we file, one at a time, into the stable yard. It is still dusk, and as we follow our officer towards the narrow road, that meets the one we had taken from Houthem, Kliewer bids us good-by. "Be careful," he calls. His motor drives away, and to my surprise our car follows. "Call back that driver," I say to our officer, "he's made a mistake."

"No, he is right," smiles the officer. "No automobile ever goes up this road. The French would see it. It's an easy walk, only a mile."

We follow him through the mud, finally setting foot on the road, less muddy I notice, than the road from Houthem. We are on our way to the headquarters of the Seventeenth Regiment, The dream of every correspondent in this war is about to be realized. We are on our way to spend the night on the firing line.

5:30. We have been walking ten minutes. We have passed a mounted patrol and an unarmed private, walking fast. The long twilight has grayed, but even far up the road I can still distinguish the posts of the wire fence. We have just passed a lonely, brown frame cottage, the last house between the open fields and a fringe of wood, when the Lieutenant stops short and faces us.

"From now on," says the Lieutenant, with that easy way of authority, "we shall walk at intervals of thirty paces."

I know what that means. Only a few hours before, when approaching a battery, Hauptmann Kliewer told us the same thing. I remember his words: "Altogether we make too plain a mark. We must separate."... How uneasy you feel, walking along this way. Not only are you gauging your own interval of thirty paces, but you are careful to keep an eye on the others, ready to warn them if they draw too close; and they are keeping an eye on you. You expect something to happen. Uneasy, you watch the sky, but no shrapnel is bursting nearby. Ahead somewhere the artillery is booming, but here everything is quiet. This walking along, pacing your distance, restlessly glancing to right and left, and listening, is getting on my nerves. No wonder I can't hear anything. The flaps of that aviator's cap are tight around my ears. Expectantly I unloosen them. And then I hear it, above us, a sound that makes me stop short; a sound as though a giant had sucked in his breath.

Above us a shell is screaming on its way to the French trenches. From beyond the woods the cannonading sounds heavier. Through the trees, where the road bends to the right, a row of roofless houses seems ghostly gray in the dusk. "That's what's left of Hollenbeck," I am saying to Poole; "I heard the Major say we'd pass through it." And then it seems as though the air is being sucked in all around us; it shrills to a multitude of strange whistlings. The fence wire rings; a twig rattles along the dried limbs of a tree and floats down; something spats against a stone and goes ricocheting away. I'm positive we're going to be hit; the air is wild with bullets. The trees are closer. There we'll be safe. Why don't the others hurry, so that we can move faster, too?

And then, right on the road, almost where my heel has just lifted, a bullet strikes. The dirt flies high. Instinctively I lurch forward and fall on one knee. Forgetting his blanket, Poole bends over me. "Did you get it?" he asks. I wonder if I didn't, and look at my foot. "It was close," he says, relieved; "I heard the thing hit right behind you."

"I don't think we're seen," I unconcernedly try to say. "They wouldn't have let us come up here if we were. These must be wild bullets flying above the trenches. They're just beyond the wood, you know."

"Too wild," is Poole's comment, with which I agree. We are climbing a slight hill now, the road turning to the right into Hollenbeck, a silent place of unroofed, shell-battered houses. Here you feel safe for the walls protect you, but over our head the loud whining of the German shells keeps up the sound of war. Passing the last house we come upon two squads of soldiers waiting in its shelter, and as we go on out into the open road, they grin. The dusk is turning to black, and ahead it is hard to tell where the tops of that clump of trees leave off, and the sky begins. I am certain that those trees are our destination, and although the bullets are whistling again, one feels safe.

A few minutes' walking and we have turned into what seems to be a wooded lawn. A hundred feet away the vague shape of a low roofed house marks itself by a thin bar of light, evidently from a closed door. The lawn is muddy, and as, walking in single file, we cross on planks, the liquid ground sloshes beneath our feet. As we approach what seems to be the stable of a farm, those in front walk slower, and even slower descend into the earth. Poole and I follow them down a flight of rough stone steps, and seeing two uprights of stout logs standing as a doorway and, level with my head as I descend, a roof of tree trunks and dirt, I whisper, "Bombproof."

The opening of what seems to be an old kitchen door. A warning to keep your head down, and we go stooping into a room dug in the ground, at the other end of which a genial, gray-haired man, whom you instantly decide is Colonel Meyer of the Seventeenth Infantry, is rising from beside a homemade table spread with military maps, a hospitable smile on his ruddy face.

"Welcome," he is saying in German. "So you got up the road all right?"

A sudden suspicion possesses me, and after introductions are over, I ask: "Colonel, there were too many bullets on that road. Where did they come from? Wild?"

"Wild?" he chuckled. "Why, sir, that road is our line of communication. It is watched and is covered by French sharpshooters. We lose half a dozen men on it every day."

And the officers at Brigade Headquarters smiled.

5:57 P. M. The broad wooden benches against the walls seem to us as comfortable as a cushioned lounge, and repeating, with many a "glaube mir"—which the Colonel and his Adjutant are quick to catch on to as the "believe me" of American slang—that wild horses couldn't drag us out on that road again, we take in the details of the room. It is about ten feet from where I sit to the strip of burlap covering the earthen wall behind the opposite bench. I should say that from the shelf, where the Colonel has his personal belongings, down to the other end of the room, which the glow from our big oil table lamp only lights faintly, is about twenty-five feet, enough for men to sleep on the benches along either wall. In the middle squats a red bellied stove, its pipe going up through the roof. The door looks as if it came from a farmhouse kitchen; it is paneled with four little squares of glass, one of them cracked, probably from the concussion of a bursting shell.

Yes, the timbers overhead look strong, intensely safe unless a grenat should burst squarely on top of them. And only by one chance in a thousand could a shrapnel ball fly down through the door. Yes, it seems safe in here; slowly we began to forget about the road. The Colonel excuses himself to study a map that seems to have been done by a stencil, and I cannot help but notice that it has been executed to the most minute detail, even individual trees and bushes being marked. I wonder what the scale is. I have to compel myself to glance elsewhere, for the fascination of the map is strong.

Above the shelf that runs across the end of the room, just so high that the Colonel who is sitting beside me, can reach up and take from it what he wants, stands a large square mirror. It seems also to be doing service as a visiting card tray, for stuck in the frame are five or six cards bearing the names of officers and their regiments. Somebody is taking good care of the Colonel—I imagine he's married—for the shelf is filled with luxuries, boxes of cigars and cigarettes, bottles of liquor, and there's a quart of sparkling Moselle! Strewn in a long row are all varieties of those wonderful food pastes that Germany began to put up so extensively in tubes, since the war—Strassburg gooselivers, anchovies, rum chocolate. Colonel, you're living well down here!

It's queer how you can, in a few minutes, learn the tastes and habits of a man in a place like this. The Colonel is religious. There is a crucifix fastened to the burlap over my head. The Colonel must sleep on this bench. At the ends of his shelf, I see two other crucifixes, and there, standing on the top of a box of cigars, is a colored print, a Station of the Cross. I begin to know the Colonel better than if I had observed him for months in his Bavarian home. As I gaze at him now, bending over the map, that in his preoccupation he has pushed farther across the table, the lamp's yellow glow shows me his face in relief against the shadowed walls. It is a strong face, and kind; the chin is grim and square, but the eyes are big and gentle, grayish though, the color of a fighter. The gray mustache almost hides it, but reveals enough of the full mouth of one who is not ascetic. As for the crucifixes and the picture; they belong to the eyes. A seasoned man, the Colonel.

With a nervous start, that seems incongruous with his broad shoulders, the Colonel looks up. Then, appearing suddenly to remember something, he pushes the map towards me. I see it is a map of his position.

"There," he says, running his finger the length of a broken line in the upper right hand corner, "are the French trenches." "There," and he points to lines paralleling them, "is our position. Here," and his finger travels down the map, to rest on a group of oblongs and squares, "is where we are now. This unterstand," and he makes a mark beside the smallest square, "was dug next to the shed where the farmer kept his wagons. This place is known as...." Were I to name this place, it would, upon publication, be cabled to France, and telephoned out to the French artillery positions. "Now," and the Colonel smiles and runs his finger along a thick blue line that makes an angle and then disappears at the lower end of the map, "that is the road by which you came from Houthem, and at this point you were fired upon. Notice the curve that the French trenches make. From the extremity of that trench," and the Colonel indicates an imaginary line sweeping a section of the road, "it is not a thousand meters, easy for a sharpshooter."

"And that," I laugh, and I'm trying to make this gaiety real, "is the point that we don't care about crossing when we return."

"Can we not go back by some other road," Poole suggests, "a longer way, making a detour?"

The Colonel shakes his head with a reluctant smile.

I hear then the same buzzing that I heard in the kitchen at Brigade headquarters. And from the top of a varnished box, on the floor where I had not seen it, the Adjutant picks up a telephone. "Hier ist Siebzehn Bayrischer Regiment," he calls, and hands the instrument across the table to the Colonel. "Hier ist Oberst Meyer," says the Colonel, "Ja ... Jawohl ... Adieu." With a chuckle, he turns to us. "That was Hauptmann Kliewer," he explains, "telephoning from Houthem. Somebody must have told him there about the road. He was rather concerned for you, but I assured him that you were about to take dinner."

Feebly we try to protest. But the Colonel insists that we'll have to eat with him, and we all feel guilty and self-conscious. It's just like these Germans to share their black bread and army wurst with us. But this is the firing line; this bombproof is only eight hundred meters from the French trenches, and every scrap of food must count. An electric torch flashes on the wall outside the door; some one is coming down. A black mustached, young Bavarian comes in, and picking up the varnished box, which I now see sprouts with vine-like wires that climb up the wall and out under the roof, he carries the telephone away. The door opens again and another private comes in. Clicking his heels in a salute, he bows low from the waist, and then announces dinner. In bewilderment we look at each other and follow the Colonel up the earthen stairs.

"I always dine," Colonel Meyer seems to be apologizing, "in the farmhouse."

Overhead a stray bullet whistles, and I hear it rattling through the dried tops of the trees.

7:05 P. M. It seems safe, until leaving the shelter of the bar, we see that we have to cross an open space before reaching the farmhouse. I can see, standing outside the door there, the vague form of a soldier. He passes the shaded window, a faint orange square in the shadowy wall, and his bayonet flashes. As we cross this open space the Adjutant is asking us to turn off our electric lamps, for their reflection might attract French observers. So we trust to luck in the darkness and, slipping in mud, dart behind the shelter of the farmhouse. I hear a bullet thudding against the stone wall of the barn.

The door creaks open and we go in. As I gape around, the fragrance of good cooking comes from a coal stove, crammed with tall cylindrical army pots. The room is evidently the kitchen—a typical farmhouse kitchen with a wide fireplace of red bricks and a long mixing table along the wall by the shade-drawn window. Tacked to a slate-colored pantry door is a calendar with the month of October not yet torn off, and on top of the fireplace an old wooden clock that has run down at half past four—was it on the day the Germans came? "Sit down, gentlemen," the Colonel is saying, indicating a round kitchen table, around which six chairs are crowded. On a snow white cloth our places have been set. There are not enough forks to go round so some have soup spoons. I see only three knives, so some of us will have to use our pocket knives. A comfortable yellow light falls from the yellow lamp in the center of the table. We begin to feel as snug as a fireside cat. "Our knives and forks are rather limited," apologizes the Adjutant, who introduces himself as Hauptmann Koller, a tall handsome Bavarian with a scraggy black growth on his chin. "However, there are dishes enough to go around." I begin to have a suspicion that our sympathy has been absurd. Black bread and army wurst never gave out the odors that are coming from those pots on the stoves, and then our surprise is complete when the Colonel offers us a cocktail. Cocktails, and the French trenches eight hundred meters away!

"A German cocktail," smiles the Colonel, as he pours out the white schnapps, "not like the kind you have in America. One of my friends had a bottle of them in MÜnchen—Bronx cocktails," and the Colonel makes a grimace. There are only two cordial glasses, but by passing them around, we succeed in drinking the Colonel's health. As we take our seats at the table I notice that while four of the chairs seem to belong to the kitchen, the other two are richly tapestried. There must be a chÂteau near here. The Colonel is sitting in one of them and Dunn in the other. Leave it to Dunn to be lounging in the other tapestried chair. Hauptmann Koller, who is opposite, is hacking off chunks of bread from a round rye loaf. On my other side Reed is looking at the bottle of schnapps and wearing his unextinguishable smile.

A soldier brings a pot from the stove and the Colonel serves us. It is an oxtail stew, canned of course, but smells appetizing. "The Colonel hasn't any left for himself," exclaims Poole; but the Colonel is holding up his hand. "There is plenty," he says, and the soldier brings another steaming pot. Magically, tall, dark liter bottles make their appearance and on the labels I see "Hacker-Brau."

"MÜnchener Beer," cries Reed. "Isn't this amazing?" The Colonel looks at Hauptmann Koller and grins. I think that from their viewpoint they are enjoying it as much as we. Canned boiled beef follows the stew; more of the tall, dark bottles appear. I see a soldier open a green door in the wall at my left and, reaching into what is evidently another room, straighten up with his arms full of beer bottles. "That is our Bierkeller in there," explains Koller. Dunn decides that it is the very place for him to sleep.

"Colonel," says Poole, pointing at the wall behind me, "what did you do, have those windows boarded up so that the light wouldn't be seen?"

Hauptmann Koller is laughing and rubbing his frowsy chin in delight.

"Those are not windows," the Colonel says, with a laugh. "They are shell holes." We press Koller to give us the story: "The Colonel was dictating a report in here one morning. That orderly was writing it," and Koller nods towards the smiling, good-looking private with the Iron Cross, who is writing at the mixing table. "Without warning, for our battery was not in action and there was nothing to draw the French fire, two shrapnels tore through the wall and burst in the room. You can see the holes their balls made in the other walls and the floor—and the Colonel wasn't hit!"

With a wave of his hand the Colonel indicates the last of three cots against the wall. "I was sitting on the edge of that bed," he says, "and the shells passed over the other two beds."

Almost incredulously we gaze at him as if to make sure that he is wounded but doesn't know it.

I am staring now at the walls and ceiling, trying to count the little shrapnel holes. Above the Colonel's head there is an Empire mirror that never hung in any farmhouse, and perched upon it a brass-black, hair-plumed helmet of a French Cuirassier.

"Out in the yard," remarks the Colonel, "there is an unexploded shell, one of the French 'twenty-eights.' It fell there one day and didn't burst. We had one of our ordnance experts up to examine it, but he says it won't explode now. If it did, it would blow up the house."

So we sit here thinking of the silent guest in the yard outside. I forget that there is something more to eat. With the cheese and coffee, the evening concert begins. A German field piece in the woods close by has opened fire. Suddenly the night is roaring with the bursting of shells, and down in the trenches the rifles begin their incessant harsh croaking. The Colonel is looking at the tiny watch dial on his wrist. "The same as last night," he remarks to Hauptmann Koller, adding to us, "The French always open heavy fire at eight."

That's the third German officer I've heard make that statement in as many days. The French always shelled Mouchy at three; they put grenaten in Houthem every evening at six; they concentrated their fire here at eight. Frenchmen, the last people in the world you would suspect of systemization!

"They'll keep it up," continues the Colonel, "until two, and then they'll stop and begin again at five for two hours. We know exactly what to expect from them. They're hammering on us, for we hold the furthest front on this part of the line. I dare not advance any further until my supports come up."

We ask him to tell us something about the fighting here.

"The French attacked on December second," says Colonel Meyer, "more than a month ago. They came in columns of fours, and you can see them now, lying out there between the trenches in columns of fours. They were mowed down, and for a month the fighting has been so heavy that they can't get out to bury their dead. You can see them afterwards when the rockets go up. They make it quite bright."

"How many rockets, Colonel, do you send up in a night?"

"About a hundred generally."

"And how many men on an average are in the trenches?"

The Colonel considers long. "That varies greatly," he says finally. "At some points only 400 men of a regiment are in the trenches, at a time; at others, 800. I have used as high as 1200 for repelling a hard attack."

"Strange things happen, fighting the French," he muses. "The night after they were cut up so, they were ordered to attack again. As soon as it came dark, one of our soldiers heard a Frenchman calling across to him in German. The Frenchman had crawled across from his own trench on his belly. 'Don't shoot,' he told my man. 'Two hundred soldiers and an officer want to surrender.' The soldier kept him covered, and sent for an under officer. They telephoned me from the trenches and I told them to let the Frenchmen come over if they threw down their arms. And two hundred Frenchmen with their officers, did come over. I asked their officer why they had surrendered, and he told me that the order had come to storm our trenches again that night, and that all day his men had been looking out and seeing their comrades lying in the mud in columns of fours, and that they nearly went mad." And the Colonel slowly shakes his head. "I saw them lying there, too. I can understand how it affected them."

As Hauptmann Koller pushes back his chair and goes to the fireplace, I notice that his shoulder straps are covered with meaningless cloth; no sharpshooter will pick him for choice game. And from beside the old wooden clock Koller takes down a box of cigars, piling on it a tin of cigarettes, while with the other hand he picks up a bottle of Anisette. "They're Austrian cigars," he says, "but they're all right." While we are lighting up, he pours out the Anisette. This time we drink Koller's health and then the officers insist upon drinking ours; we return with a toast to Bavaria. Colonel comes back with a standing health to the United States.

"Tell them," he begs, "that we are not barbarians. I have a sister who lives in Wyckoff, New York, and I'm afraid that by reading your newspapers, she thinks that I've become a terrible ogre." Again the Colonel is the easy smiling host.

The door opens; a private comes in and sits by the telephone. He moves it down the mixing table quite close to us. "Is it time for the concert?" asks the Colonel.

Hauptmann Koller nods. "At eight thirty. It's that now."

"Gut!" and the Colonel indicates us with a wave of his hand, "Gentlemen, be my guests at our regular evening concert."

We look at each other blankly. The Colonel seems to have a huge joke up his sleeve. He is bustling about the telephone like a man dressing a Christmas tree. He takes up the instrument and holds it to his ear. "Come," he says, beckoning me. I pick up the receiver and almost drop it in my amazement. Somewhere an excellent pianist is playing the Valkerie. In a spell, I listen to the music, each note retaining its sweetness over the wire. The music stops; I hear a flutter of handclapping.

"Where is it?" I gasp, coming over to the table.

"That comes from the headquarters in Houthem," explains Koller, while the Colonel nods, smiling, as with a surprise well planned. "That was General Major Clauss at the piano. He was playing under great difficulties."

"The man with the wounded hand!" I exclaim. Poole takes up the 'phone.

"He is playing Tristam," whispers Poole, and outside I hear the growing fury of the shells and the crash of the German field piece close by. The Colonel is telling me how on Christmas Eve they played "Heilige Nacht" for them, down in Houthem, and that while he was listening to the music a heavy shell burst down in the trenches, killing eight of his men. But I am not following half of what he says. Everything seems to be in a daze. It is all too incredible. We have finished what seemed to be one of the best savory dinners I have ever eaten. The supply of golden-brown MÜnchener beer seems to be limitless. We are finishing with coffee, cigarettes, cigars, and a cordial; and now a concert. And outside the sky is hideous with war, and eight hundred meters away are the French. And this is war.

Koller is at the 'phone now. "When General Clauss is through," I tell him, "ask him to play something from Chopin." In a moment Koller nods for me to come over. And I am listening to the opening bars—perhaps my nerves are overstrained—but I hear a noise that sounds like a bullet hitting a wire fence, and the music is still. Snatching up the 'phone the orderly tries in vain for a connection and finally transfers it to another wire. Perhaps, after all, I heard only a normal snapping of the wire. Imagination plays strange tricks in this world of uncanny and violent impressions.

The door opens and an orderly comes in with the mail. There are two letters for the Colonel, and while he is reading them Koller opens a bottle of cognac. The Colonel is stuffing one of the letters inside his coat. His eyes are wet and, not to embarrass him, I watch Hauptmann Koller measuring out the cognac. Probably a letter from the Colonel's wife. The door opens again; the room fills with officers, who click their heels and bow to us. "The relief," whispers Koller.

A thin, gray-mustached man, whose precise speech makes you think of a university professor, comes forward; the Colonel remains on his feet. The room seems to stiffen with military etiquette. The Major is making his report to the Colonel. I catch the words: "They put heavy shells on us, beginning with eleven o'clock last night and lasting until one." What time is it now? Ten thirty-three. Soon the shelling starts. It is a very detailed report and, unfolding his map, the Colonel spreads it on the table and indicates a position. The Major studies it and offers some thoughtful comment. How like those Civil War plays played in New York years ago, in fact identical in situation. The Colonel gives some orders, asks if there are any questions, and to the clicking of heels and polite adieus, the relief officers file out. They are going to the trenches.

The good looking private with the Iron Cross salutes. "Sir, the concert is ready."

What! do they keep it up all night? But the Colonel is getting up, leading us out of the room. We follow him out into the night—and the sky seems faintly luminous with weird light—going along the farmhouse wall until we come to a short flight of steps into the ground. Descending, we are seated in an extremely low-roofed bombproof, in which five soldiers, half in uniform, are sitting around a wooden table. They look like the comic band of the music halls. One has a harmonica, another a flute, another sits before an inverted glass bowl, which he is ready to tap with a bayonet tip and beside him is the guitar man—a wonderfully made guitar, its wires, telephone strings, its box, a case for canned goods, planed thin; and there is a serious-faced drummer. But facing them, blasÉ and autocratic, is a man with sensitive features and pince nez. He has discarded his uniform for an old black coat, and with a dirty hat pulled down over his eyes, he suggests the Jewish comedian of burlesque. Evidently he is the leader for, raising a bayonet scabbard, counting, "Ein, zwei, drei," he brings it down and the concert begins.

You recognize Puppchen. Leisurely beating time, sipping a glass of coffee that our orderly with the Iron Cross has filled for him from a pot that simmers on the squat coal stove, the leader is having the time of his life. They play some old German Folk songs, and once the harmonica man is late in starting and receives a boisterous reprimand from the leader. They are singing now, "RÖslein auf der Heide ... Morgen Rot," and you think how sinister the words are, "leads me to an early death." Red morning! Will it ever be for them? Even here under the earth I can hear the hungry growling of the shells.

Modestly the leader is telling us that the Bavarian musicians are the best in Germany, "therefore our band is the best in the trenches," and the Colonel is beaming on them all. The orderly with the Iron Cross, who, unable to speak a word of English, has been smiling at me all night, urges us to take some more coffee; and it's "Good-by, boys! Good Luck," and we're out into the battle-shaken night.

"Want to have a look at it?" Hauptmann Koller asks me. I nod, yes. Hugging the wall, Koller and I turn the corner of the barn and slowly go down the open space between the buildings, that we had rushed past earlier in the evening, plastering ourselves against the walls. As if that would do us any good! We can hear the French bullets whistling by, and the air is shaking with heavy guns.

"After eleven," remarks Koller, "I fancy the French are at it with big grenaten," and as he speaks I see a flash in the trees not two hundred meters away and a field piece discharges with a crash. "Our seven answering them," Koller is pointing towards where a greenish light seems to flash in the sky. "Over there about a mile," he says, "is the Ypres Canal. The Thirty-sixth Division is on the other bank, and as soon as they push back the French, we'll go ahead again," he speaks with a quiet confidence that makes you feel that the advance of his regiment is a matter of course.

"Come down here," he suggests, "and you can see the battle. Don't scorn the shelter of those trees. Keep them between you and the trenches. Go from one tree to the other."

I hear him splash through the mud; he is waving from behind a tree. I plow after him, going so fast that I almost slip and fall. The whistle of a bullet will make you move faster than you ever thought possible. Out of breath we come to the edge of the little grove and look out on the battlefield.

It is all color and noise—unearthly colors, unearthly noises. I stand at the edge of an Inferno. The heavens streak with a sulphurous green, and the earth is scarred with flame. I see the rockets swishing up from the trenches, breaking with the weird light that would reveal any enemy creeping up, and falling in a shower of sparks, like shooting stars. It gives a strange confirmation of an old saying that when a star falls some one dies.

I see the steady, streaming, reddish line of rifle fire and the yellow flash of shells. I hear their fierce, harsh croaking and their deafening boom. I see, in the burst of a rocket, the wet fields glistening with mud; and the night crashes and rolls with awful clamor.

Koller is handing me his binoculars. Through them I can see the Ypres Canal, a monstrous glistening water snake, sleepily drinking the blood of men. It is a green night, a green land, a universe gone mad, for the sky was never meant to shine with those hideous lights. And the rockets spread their fiery trail and spill their hideous glare; and the line of fire brightens and grows dim and brightens again; perhaps as men are falling and others are springing to their places, and I turn my glasses on the glistening fields, and think I can see the columns of fours, the mounds of the dirt, the color of the mud, and I can hear the bullets panging in the mud at our feet. How they must be riddling the bodies of the dead!

"I've had enough," I tell Hauptmann Koller.

We say good night and cross the farmyard. The din of the battle seems to have died down, although the bullets still whistle and rattle among the dried trees. We lie down on the benches in the bombproof, with our clothes on, with the dirty blankets over us. Our night of nights is done.

12 P. M. to 6 A. M. Bits of dirt from the ceiling fall on my face. Hauptmann Koller is snoring.... The guns are rumbling again. Koller snores blissfully on. The cannonading is terrific. Those poor devils down in the trenches.... The cannonading sounds fainter and fainter.... The handsome orderly with the Iron Cross is flashing a lamp on Koller's blanket. "All right," calls Koller, but in a moment he's snoring. Only stray rifles are crackling now. The glowing phosphorescent face of the watch on my wrist shows six o'clock. Morning! Hauptmann Koller is already out of bed.

"Good morning," he says, with a yawn. "The orderly was in a minute ago. Breakfast will be served at six-thirty."

In the trenches it's the hour when they pick up the dead.