you pick up a dust covered prayer-book lying in melancholy neglect.

You climb the church tower by a staircase and then by iron ladder, held steadily by soldiers as you mount, until you sit upon the beams from which the church bell swings. Then, through the great slats, you look upon the French and German trenches, startlingly near, and behold the region where the contending artillery are planted, though you can not detect a single battery, so perfectly are they hidden.

"Be careful! Don't show yourself, or we may get a shot!" comes a warning voice behind you.

And now for the trenches themselves. The cannon's continuous booming no longer greatly impresses you; but the Schutzengraben hold for you a tingle of expectation. Down the village street you walk on to a broad road bordered by woods; the crack and rattle of rifle firing smites your ear as if coming from just around the corner.

Between two groups of buildings there is a short open space. The officers stoop low as they cross this exposed point and bid you do the like; for standing erect means being seen by the enemy and an invitation to the French marksmen to try their skill on you. You feel ridiculous as you assume this absurd posture; it seems so unnecessary.

Then another unobstructed space which you pass, up to your knees in mud and water, by means of a trench, which conceals you, and so down to a tiny cup in the hills, where a brick house stands, one room for trench reserves waiting their turn and another for the company's officers-the captain a good-looking young lawyer. For, as you are to find, men of all

professions, of every calling, are in Germany's battle line-writers and shoemakers, poets and bricklayers, masters of great business concerns and their employees, university professors and tailors, blacksmiths and opera singers, many of them volunteers-a very democracy of war.

Wet and muddy overcoats hang on trees or are spread on bushes, for, unusual circumstance, the overworked clouds have not poured out their Niagaras for three hours or more, and once, for a moment, the sun actually has shown his tardy and shame faced visage.

The garrulous and multitudinous voices of the rifles are very close at hand, just over the crest of the hill which you even now are climbing. You can detect plainly the different sides of this leaden debate, and know that a far heavier fire is coming from one set of trenches than from the other. It is the French who are burning this extra powder, you are told,they are shooting at least five shots to every one fired by their German foe. You would have the reason.

"It is nervousness," remarks a German major, who, by the way, speaks English without accent, and whose relationship is American. "Nerves and an oversensitive imagination. Our French friends can not hold themselves in, it appears. I do not say this in unkindness, for they are brave men, but perhaps more emotional and less steady than our men."

What was this? "French friends!” And this from a German officer wearing the iron cross won by gallantry in action! "French friends" and a compliment, with only the gentlest criticism, from one of those Bavarians whose traditional ferocity when in

battle has elicited anew the attention of the world! These chance remarks switch your thought from plunging bullet and rifle pit even as you mount toward them. "French friends!" And spoken in unmistakable tones of friendliness amid such scenes!

And so at last to the trenches, the real fighting trenches. You zigzag to them through similar approaching channels. Five feet deep, at least, they are, with an additional foot and a half of earth dug from them and ridged above them on the side facing the enemy, serving as an added protection for the riflemen.

Just before entering the fighting ditches you see an underground room hollowed from the earth. You are told to go in if you like, and as you cross this warrior threshold you read these words written on a board nailed to the wooden lintel:

"Villa Ruheort-The Hearthstone Is More Precious than Gold."

It is the quarters of noncommissioned officers in charge of this particular firing squad. Clean dry straw carpets the earthen floor. A large cracked mirror stands on a crude stool-like table, on which are lying two or three books. One of them is on Wagner, another a play by Hauptmann. Two of these military earth dwellers are within and greet you pleasantly.

Through the trenches themselves you flounder, with mud or water or their slimy combination slushing far up about your legs. You stoop, under orders, every now and again when, walking over a caved-in lump of earth, your head if unbent is brought above the surface and in sight of the keen-eyed French sharpshooters-you will get a shot if they see your cap.

You pass the men who are doing the fighting. Here and there they have made benches or footholds, on which they stand, an inch or two above the trench's slush. Apertures, perhaps six inches wide by two deep, made by pieces of wood, appear in the loose earth piled above the trench, looking toward the

enemy.

Through these the soldiers scan the opposing line, and they fire when an unwary or curious head comes into view, although most of the shooting is done with rifle resting on the top of the earth ridge of the trench. You look yourself and see the French trenches quite plainly with the naked eye; indeed, they are not a hundred yards away. A little farther on the hostile lines are only forty or fifty yards apart. A clump of trees crests a gentle elevation a short distance behind the French rifle line, and here French machine guns are in watchful hiding.

The rifle firing, sometimes only a p-f-l-o-t! p-f-l-o-t! and again so frequent that it is like scores of giant firecrackers exploded by a single fuse, seems only a few feet away from where you stand. Yet the soldiers by your side do no firing; no bullets whistle over you; no one near you is wounded or killed, and a curious feeling of unreality and play-acting steals over you.

You have a most unworthy and brutal feeling that you are being cheated. You fervently hope that no one will be hit, no one wounded or killed. And yet. "Well, if somebody is sure to be shot in the trenches to-day, if this be fate's unchangeable decree, let it be now, when I can see, and not half an hour

German fighting trench near Arras, France, January 8, 1915. The French trenches are from forty to an hundred yards away. The good-humored faces and excellent physical condition of the German soldiers are notable. Heavy ride firing a few feet beyond; "sometimes only a p-f-l-o-t! p-f-l-o-t! and again so frequent that it is like scores of giant firecrackers exploded by a single fuse."