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CHAPTER 7
Deductions: Categorical Logic
Exercise 1
1. All Rolls Royce cars are things that are expensive. (A)
2. Answer in text.
3. No people who are parents of young children are people who have a lot of time to
themselves. (E)
4. All wars are events that kill the innocent. (A) Or, on another interpretation, Some wars
are events that kill the innocent. (I) This issue of interpretation is discussed later.
5. Answer in text.
6. Answer in text.
7. No rolling stone is a thing that gathers moss. (E)
8. Some things that are new drugs are things that have proved harmful to the patients. (I)
9. No sports that are extreme are sports that are safe for diabetics. (E)
10. Answer in text.
11. Some foods that are vegetables are not foods that are low in carbohydrate content. (O)
12. Answer in text.
13. Some persons who are consumers are not persons who are concerned to save money.
(O)
14. (a) All things are things that have places. (A) (b) All things are things that should be
in their places. (A) (Hard.)
15. Answer in text.
16. Answer in text.
17. All things that are life are things that have just one damned event (thing) after
another. (A)
18. Some things that are reading are ingenious devices for avoiding thought. (I)
19. Answer in text.
20. Answer in text. Exercise 2: Part A
1.Answer in text.
2. C = computers; H = things that can cheat. No C are H. (E statement.) Obverse: All C
are non-H.
3. Answer in text.
34
4.B = bureaucracies; N = things that are needed to accomplish their task. Some B are N.
(I statement) Obverse: Some B are not non-N.
5.Answer in text.
6.D = Dogs; C = creatures that need exercise. All D are C. (A statement) Obverse: No D
are non-C.
7.Answer in text.
8.Answer in text.
9. All persons who are radicals are persons who have both feet planted firmly in the air.
R: persons who are radicals; P: persons who have both feet planted firmly in the air. All
R are P. (A statement) Obverse: No R are non-P.
10. Answer in text.
11. There are two statements here. (1) All is in flux. Let T = things that exist and F =
things that are in flux. All T are F. (A statement) The obverse is No T are non-F. (2)

Nothing stays still. Let T = things that exist and S = things that stay still. No E are S. (E
statement) The obverse is All E are non-S. Heraclitus' statement is a conjunction of (1)
and (2); that is to say, it is a conjunction of an A statement and an E statement.
12. D = direct democracy; W = practices that work only in a small society. All D are W.
(A statement). Obverse: No D are non-W.
13.B = times when businesses can expand; H = times when interest rates are high. No B
are H. (E statement). Obverse: All B are non-H.
14. All things that have Kellogg's in the box are things that say Kellogg's on the box. Let
I = things that have Kellogg's in the box; S = things that say Kellogg's on the box. All I
are S. (A statement) The obverse is No I are non-S.
Exercise 2: Part B
1. Answer in text.
2. M = medications; N = things that need to be tested on human subjects. The statement
is All M are N which is an A statement. The converse is All N are M. The contrapositive
is No non-N are non-M. The statement is not equivalent to its converse. The statement is
equivalent to its contrapositive.
3. C = cancers; T = terminal illnesses. Some C are not T. This is an O statement. The
converse is: Some T are not C. (not equivalent) The contrapositive is Some non-T are not
non-C. (equivalent)
4.Answer in text.
5. S = places in sub-Saharan Africa; T = places where HIV-AIDS is a serious threat to
economic development. All S are T, which is an A statement. Converse: All T are S. (not
equivalent). Contrapositive: All non-T are non-S. (equivalent)
6. Answer in text.
7. Answer in text.
8. Answer in text.
35
9.D = dog; C = creature that has its day. All D are C. (A statement). Converse: All C are
D (not equivalent). Contrapositive: All non-C are non-D (equivalent).
10.E = Intelligence reports; R = reports that are unreliable. Some E are R. (I statement).
Converse: Some R are E. (equivalent) Contrapositive: Some non-R are non-E. (not
equivalent)
Exercise 2: Part C
1.Answer in text.
2.L = legal educations; T = things that are cheap. No L are T. Contradictory: Some L are
T.
3.Answer in text.
4.T = teachers; W = persons who are well-paid. Some T are W. Contradictory: No T are
W.
5.Answer in text.
6.B = nations that are identical to Britain; N = nations that experienced many problems
while attempting to govern Iraq in the early twentieth century. All B are N.
Contradictory: Some B are not N.
7.P = philosophers; Eppersons who explore questions of meaning. All P are E.
Contradictory: Some Pare not E.
Exercise 3

A recommendation for labeling circles in Venn diagrams for categorical syllogisms:
Once students have put a syllogism into categorical statement form, ask them to label the
top two circles of their Venn diagram with the subject and predicate letters from the
conclusion, subject on the left, predicate on the right. The bottom circle is then always
labeled with the letter of the middle term. This convention benefits the students in two
ways: first, they have a straightforward procedure to follow that gets them started on the
diagram; second, when they come to read the diagram for validity, they are always
looking at the same circles, namely, the top two. The procedure also makes grading exam
diagrams easier because all correct diagrams will look the same.
1. C = things that are the common cold; E = illnesses that have economic costs; S =
things that should be taken seriously. The argument is All C are E; All E are S; therefore
All C are S.
c s
E
Valid.
36
2. Answer in text.
3. B = businesses; H = businesses that succeed by cutting labor costs; U = businesses that
exploit their workers. The argument is, Some B are H; All H are U; therefore, some B are
U. The Venn Diagram is:
B U
Valid. H
4. F = foods that can be kept on the shelf for several weeks without rotting; D = foods
that contain additives; H = foods that are hazardous to the health of allergy sufferers. The
argument is: All F are D; some D are H; therefore some F are H.
Invalid.
F H
5. F = fishermen; L = loggers; H = hunters. The argument is No F are L; Some L are not
H; therefore some F are H. Invalid.
37
F

H
x
Valid.
6. M = mammals; O = lions; G = creatures that give birth to their young alive. The
argument is, as written but with the sentence rearranged: Only mammals give birth to
their young alive; all lions give birth to their young alive; therefore, some lions are
mammals. This turns into: All G are M; All O are G; therefore some O are M.
Not valid according to the Hypothetical Interpretation; valid according to the existential
interpretation.
O M O M
Hypothetical. Existential.
38
7. Answer in text.
8. Z = zoos; K = places in which animals may be bred; H = places in which animals
should be kept in cramped conditions. The argument is All Z are K; No K are H;
therefore No Z are H.
Z H
K
Valid.
9. S= All things that are sunbathing; R = All things that carry with them a risk of cancer;
D = All things that are dangerous. The argument is All S are R; All R are D; therefore All
S are D. Valid.
S D
R
39
10. S = Shoes without traction; F = Shoes safe for mountain climbing; B = Shoes that are
sturdily built. The argument is: No S are F; All F are B; therefore some S are not B. Not
valid.
S B
11. C = those who can manage the trip from Calgary to Banff; F = those who are fast
cyclists; P = those who are Pedro. All C are F; All P are F; therefore all P are C.
Not valid.
12.Answer in text.

40
13.P = persons eligible for the internship program; B = persons under the age of thirty; J
= persons identical with Malema. The argument is: All P are B; No J are B; therefore, No
J are P.
B
Valid.
14. A key to making sense of this syllogism is appreciating that the conclusion is in the
first sentence. S = skeptics; F = people who know that full (complete) knowledge is
impossible; A = people who can admit to their own ignorance without shame. All S are F;
All F are A; therefore, All S are A.
41
Valid.
15. This passage does not contain an argument; therefore, it does not contain a categorical
syllogism.
16. Answer in text.
17. Answer in text.
18. P = photographers; W = writers; E = editors. The argument is: All photographers are
writers; some editors are not writers; therefore, some editors are not photographers. All P
are W; Some E are not W; therefore some E are not P. Valid.
E P
x
W
Exercise 4
1. Answer in text.
2. Answer in text.
3. C = completely unprejudiced observations; G = observations that are made with no
goal in mind; O: observations. The argument is: All C are G; No O are G; therefore, No O
are C.
o
Valid.
4. P = politicians; D = persons who are dishonest; B = persons who take bribes. The
argument is: all B are D; some P are B; therefore some P are D. Passes all rules. Valid.
5. G = things that contain all the genetic information necessary to form a complete human
being; P = things that are mere property; E = fertilized eggs growing into embryos. No G
are P; All E are G; therefore, No E are P.

E
Valid.
6. Answer in text.
7. Answer in text.
8. The conclusion is that the much-praised dam was
financed at least in part by taxes. The premises are
that if the much-praised dam (D) was worth building
(W) someone would have been able to build it for a
profit (P) and that no one was able to build it for a profit.
From these premises we can infer by a valid syllogism
that the dam was not worth building. D = all things
identical with the much- praised dam; W = all
things that are worth building; P = all things that make a
profit. No D are P; All W are P; therefore, No D are W.
This syllogism is valid. But this does not get us to the
conclusion, which is that the dam was funded by taxes. Could we use the conclusion we
have derived so far (No D are W) to get to the main conclusion which (assuming that T =
things funded by taxes) would be All D are T? No ~ not even if we add that All non-W
are T as an unstated premise. We would, even in that event, get a syllogism with one
negative premise, and when one premise is negative, the conclusion must be negative
also, for the argument to be valid.
9. F = organized life forms; E = life forms that evolved through a random process; H =
human beings. The argument as stated is: No F are E; therefore No H are E. This
argument is enthymematic. The unstated premise is All H are F. With this premise added,
the argument is: No F are E; All H are F; therefore, No H are E. This argument is valid,
because it does not violate any rules of the syllogism.
10. W = well-founded inferences to an infinite cause; O = inferences based upon the
observation of an infinite effect; G = inferences to God's existence from the design in
nature. On the reasonable assumption that "well- founded inferences to an infinite cause,"
and "well-founded inferences" are intended to name the same category, we can construct
the following: All W are O; No G are O; therefore, No G are W.
43
G W
I
Valid.
o
11. N = nonprofit organizations; E = organizations exempt from paying income taxes;
C = organizations identical with the church choir. The conclusion is indicated by the
rhetorical question at the end of the passage, which is a way of saying that the church
choir does not have to pay any taxes. The argument is: All N are E; all C are N; therefore,
All C are E. Valid; passes all rules.
12.Answer in text.
13.Answer in text.
14.R = people who respect human life; T = people who are terrorists; H = people who
hijack airplanes. The question in the first sentence referring to 'these people' has to be
understood with reference to the second sentence, which makes it clear that 'these people'

are people who hijack airplanes. It is a rhetorical question, and a way of saying that no
person who hijacks an airplane is a person who respects human life. That is the
conclusion. The argument is: All H are T; No T are R; therefore, no H are R. Valid;
passes on all rules.
15.G = persons who are truly good; L = liars; W = persons worthy to be believed.
Assume that a person who is credible and believable is a person worthy to be believed;
thus what appear to be four categories can be reduced to three. The argument is then: No
L are W; all G are W, therefore, No G are L. Valid; passes on all rules.
16. Some things that are taught to us are things that feel natural. No things that are taught
to us are things that are natural. Therefore, some things that feel natural are not things
that are natural. T = things that are taught to us; F = things that feel natural; N = things
that are natural. Some T are F; No T are N; therefore some F are not N. Valid. No rules
are broken.
44

CHAPTER 7, EXERCISE 3
1.
VALID
3.
VALID
5.
INVALID

CHAPTERR 7, EXERCISE 3 (CONT’D)
6.
INVALID VALID
HYPOTHETICAL INTERPRETATION EXISTENTIAL INTERPRETATION
15.
VALID
19.
VALID

CHAPTER 7, EXERCISE 4
3.
VALID
4.
VALID

Other documents randomly have
different content

and Stripes. It is ably conducted and full of meat; but at the best it
is only an official publication, mainly about the War. And it was not
printed in America. What we crave for is home news—home gossip—
home advertisements. A single copy of an American Sunday
newspaper, with comic supplement complete, would fetch its weight
in dollar bills over here. Our spirits yearn to participate once more in
the Bringing up of Father, or the fratricidal rivalries of Mutt and Jeff;
or to witness the perennial discomfitures of those two intensely
human impostors, Percy and Ferdy. Even those nasty little Boche
abortions, the Katzenjammer Kids, would be something.
The happiest man is he who receives once in a while a copy of his
local newspaper from home. These come rarely enough, for second-
class mail matter is incurring mysterious casualties these days.
However, one of these priceless packages arrived not long ago for
Eddie Gillette, all the way from a little town in the Northwest. Eddie
tore off the wrapper, and almost set his teeth into the paper.
Everything was there for which his soul hungered—news about
America, about his own town, about people whom he knew
personally—conveyed by means of the arresting headline, the
pointed phrase, and the intellectual pemmican of the heavily leaded
summary. The War news, of course, was weeks old, but Ed devoured
it rapturously. He knew now how the War was really going.
“This guy Allenby must be some dandy fighter,” he observed to Al
Thompson, looking up.
“Sure, Ed!” replied Al pleasantly. “Why?”
“He’s been doing fine in the Holy Land. See what it says here.”
Ed held up the newspaper for Al to see, and pointed to the head
of a column:
BRITISH CRUSADERS IN NAZARETH
ALLENBY WINS JESUS CHRIST’S HOME TOWN FROM TURKS
“That’s the goods!” remarked Ed approvingly, as he folded the
paper with reverent care and tucked it inside his shirt. “The feller

that writes that stuff has gotten the real idea for a story. The others
over here”—designating apparently the editors of the London Times
and Paris Matin—“ain’t got nothing to them. No, sir! They don’t write
nothing but small-town stuff!”
“You said it, Ed!” agreed Al.
“All the same,” observed the critic, rising and stretching his giant
limbs, “this yer reading the papers from home may give a feller a
grand and glorious feeling, but it makes him feel mighty lonesome
and homesick too.” He raised a pair of great fists heavenward. “Oh,
Boy! when I get back home after this War, if the Statue of Liberty
ever wants to see Ed Gillette again, she’ll have to turn around to do
it!”

CHAPTER TEN
S.O.S. TO DILLPICKLE
To most of us hitherto the letters S.O.S. have signified calamity of
some kind—appeals for succour from sinking liners, and the like. Our
British liaison officers, too, tell us that S.O.S. is the epithet applied to
the rockets which are always kept in position in British front-line
trenches, to be discharged as an urgent intimation to the gunners
behind that the enemy are attacking in mass.
But in the American Army S.O.S. means “Service of Supply.” It
denotes, not panic, but order, and control, and abundance. It covers
the whole chainwork of activity known in most armies as the “Lines
of Communication.” The town where we find ourselves to-day is a
great S.O.S. centre. On its outskirts lie mushroom cities of huts and
sheds. Here is a great cold-storage depot: there are eight thousand
tons of frozen beef in this single building. Here is a big station for
assembling aeroplanes, where de Haviland planes of British design
are being fitted with Liberty engines. Through the town itself there
flows by night and by day a never-failing stream of food and
munitions and replacement troops. Needless to say the town lies
upon one of the main roads along which the Race to Berlin is being
run.
Back along that road, alas! streams another current—a counter-
current—of wastage, material and human. Upon its surface is borne
all the dreadful litter of the battlefield—rusty rifles, damaged
equipment, blood-soaked uniforms. Here is a mighty depot, which
handles and repairs such wreckage. These buildings have all been
constructed within the past few months. It would take you half a day
to walk through them. In at one end of the establishment goes a
squalid torrent of torn clothing, unmated shoes, leaky rubber trench
boots, odds and ends of equipment. In due course, after a drastic

series of laundering, sorting, patching, stitching, or vulcanizing
experiences—mainly at the hands of a twittering army corps of
Frenchwomen—each item in this melancholy jumble finds itself
reincarnated in various storehouses in the form of properly assorted
pairs of boots and shoes, neat second-hand uniforms, and complete
sets of equipment. Nothing is wasted. Stetson hats damaged beyond
repair are cut up into soles for hospital slippers. Uniforms too badly
ripped for decent renovation are patched, dyed grass-green, and
issued to German prisoners.
There are some thousands of these prisoners, with more coming.
When they arrive, their prevailing tint is grey. Their uniforms are
grey, by nature; their knee-high boots are grey, with dust; their
faces are grey, with exhaustion and grime. These human derelicts
are submitted to very much the same process of restoration as the
damaged uniforms and equipment. They are paraded, stripped, and
marched into the first of a series of renovation chambers. They pass
under hot showers; they spend a salutary period in what is delicately
described as the “delousing chamber”; they are then provided, first
with underwear, then with shoes, then with one of the grass-green
uniforms aforesaid, and finally with a cooking and toilet outfit. They
are shaved and their hair is cut; they are medically examined; they
are card-indexed; a register is made of their trades; they are housed
in comfortable wooden huts within a great barbed-wire enclosure;
and within a few days they are at work upon whatever tasks they
happen to be best qualified for, earning twenty centimes a day. They
are fed upon the rations of American and British soldiers, including
white bread—the only white bread in Europe.
Perhaps some of them, before they came here, saw the Allied
prisoners in Germany—starved, robbed, beaten, and forced to work
in salt-mines or shell-areas until death made an end of their
afflictions. These languishing grass-green captives must bless the
Geneva Convention, and marvel at the uncultured folk who still stand
by its provisions.

A camp of German prisoners practically runs itself. Fritz knows
when he is well off. There is no insubordination. Men come rigidly to
attention when an officer passes. The routine work is supervised by
German sergeants. In this particular camp you may enter one large
hut and behold some fifty German prisoners engaged upon clerical
work connected with camp administration—ration indents, card-
indexes, and the like. It is a task after the German heart. Each
prisoner is absorbed in his occupation. He can hardly bring himself
to rise to his feet when the door is thrown open for the Officer of the
Day, and Achtung! is called. His pig’s eyes gleam contentedly behind
his spectacles. And well they may! A German delivered from the
German Army and permitted to sit all day and make a card index of
himself may be excused for imagining that he has got as near
Heaven as a German is ever likely to get.
“When this War is over,” observes Mr. Joe McCarthy, gazing
meditatively through the barbed wire, “I guess someb’dy will have to
chase these ducks back to Germany with a gun!”
Frenchwomen are not the only representatives of their sex in the
American Expeditionary Force. There are hundreds of American
women too, from every walk of American life. There are the hospital
nurses, the stenographers, the telephone operators, the motor-
drivers—all duly enrolled members of the Regular Service. Then
there are the women of the Auxiliary Forces—the Red Cross, and its
sister organizations—all doing a man’s share, and something over.
Their work is not supposed, of course, to take them up into the
battle zone. They serve at the Base, or on Lines of Communication.
But in these days of Big Berthas and promiscuous bombing raids, no
one is safe. The battle zone is the extent of ground which an
aeroplane can cover, as the inhabitants of London know to their cost.
Some of the worst devastation in France may be witnessed at
certain British hospital bases on the French coast, miles from any
battle-line.

Still, women have been known to find their way into the Line. As
some student of nature has told us, “It is hard to keep a squirrel off
the ground.”
One summer morning an old acquaintance of ours, Miss Frances
Lane, and her crony, or accomplice, Miss Helen Ryker, came off night
duty at their hospital and sniffed the fresh air luxuriously. They had
twelve hours of complete freedom from responsibility before them—
a circumstance not in itself calculated to correct Miss Lane’s natural
lightness of ballast.
In most hospitals nurses coming off night duty are not
unreasonably expected to spend at least some portion of the
following day in bed. But youthful vitality, abetted by summer
sunshine and a martial atmosphere, make a formidable combination
against the forces of common sense. This particular hospital was
only thirty miles from the Line. On still days the turmoil of the guns
could be heard quite plainly.
After breakfasting, Miss Lane took her friend by the elbow and led
her to the great military map on the wall, with the position of the
battle-line clearly defined upon it by an irregular frontier of red
worsted, and said:
“Helen, listen! Just where are we on this little old map?”
Miss Ryker, who possessed the unusual feminine accomplishment
of being able to read maps and railroad time-tables, laid a slender
finger-tip upon the blue chalk-mark which designated the
geographical position of the hospital.
“There,” she said.
“And,” pursued Miss Lane, in a low voice, “where do we go from
here?”
Miss Ryker, who was a girl of few words, began to measure out
distances with her finger and thumb.
“The nearest point to us,” she announced at last, “is a place called
Delficelles.”

“Delficelles? Our boys captured it not long ago,” said Frances in
confirmation. “I guess the trenches must lie just beyond.”
On one point she was right: Delficelles had been captured by an
American Division a fortnight previously. On the other she was
wrong, for a reason which will presently appear.
“We are going to visit them,” continued Miss Lane.
“How do we get there?” enquired her practical friend.
Miss Lane looked stealthily round, as a precaution against
eavesdroppers. Then she smiled seraphically.
“I guess we can do it on our faces,” she remarked.
To get up into the Line—that tortured strip of territory, some five
miles wide, which winds from the North Sea to the Alps, and within
which two solid walls of men have faced one another for nearly four
years—there are two recognized courses of procedure. One is to be
a member of an armed party—an Infantry Battalion, say, going up to
take over a sector of trenches. There is no doubting the bona fides
of such an excursion.
The other course is incumbent upon solitary individuals like
despatch-riders and unchaperoned civilians. These must have a
much-signed and countersigned pass. Even Staff Officers are not
exempt from this law. That lesson was learned as far back as
nineteen fourteen, when German officers, arrayed in the uniform of
the British General Staff, kindly accompanied the British Army during
the retreat from Mons and added to the already considerable
difficulties of a hectic situation by directing troops down wrong roads
and issuing orders of a demoralizing nature.
So now it is almost as difficult for an unauthorized person to get
into the fighting area as into the Royal Yacht Squadron, or the New
York Subway at 6 p.m. Mesdames Lane and Ryker were obviously
neither an armed party nor chaperoned civilians. But young and
attractive females have means of attaining their ends which are

denied to the rest of creation. Ask not how the feat was achieved.
Enquire not the names of the susceptible lorry-drivers who
succumbed, nor of the tall young military policeman at Dead Dog
Corner who melted incontinently beneath the appeal of Miss Lane’s
blue eyes. Let it suffice that by early afternoon our two runagates
found themselves safely deposited in what was left of the village of
Delficelles. (By the way, the local soldiery pronounced it “Dillpickle,”
so we will let it go at that.)
Having reached the haven of their desire, they found, to their
extreme satisfaction and relief, that it seemed to be no part of any
one’s duty to turn them out. Indeed, such officers as they
encountered punctiliously saluted their uniform, while the rank and
file addressed friendly and appreciative greetings to them. One
enthusiast produced a pocket camera, and insisted upon performing
a ceremony which he described as “spoiling a film” upon the
precious pair.
The village itself lay in a hollow behind a low ridge, and was in
what may be described as moderate ruins. One learns to make these
distinctions in the shell-area. Roughly, there are three grades.
Villages whose roofs are riddled by shrapnel and whose windows
have ceased to exist, but whose walls are still standing, may be
regarded as practically intact, and are much sought after as places
of residence. At the other end of the scale come the villages which
were deliberately obliterated by Brother Boche during one of his
great retreats. There are many such in the neighbourhood of
Bapaume and Péronne. To-day not one stone of these remains upon
another. Not a tree is to be seen. It is only by accepting the evidence
of the map that you are able to realize that you are in a village at all.
The main street runs between high banks, overgrown by weeds and
nettles. If you part these and look underneath, you will find a subsoil
of brick rubble.
At the cross-roads in the centre, where once the church stood,
you will find a military sign-board giving the map-reference of the
village, followed perhaps by a postscript, thus:

Z.17.c.25.
THIS WAS
VILLERS CARBONNEL
Fuit!
The village of Dillpickle occupied an intermediate position between
these two extremes. Some of the houses were standing; others were
merely a pile of disintegrated bricks and mortar. Where one of these
ruins had overflowed into the street and obstructed the fairway, the
débris had been cleared away and built up into a neat wall, guarding
the sidewalk from further irruption. Such houses as still stood were
inhabited, chiefly in the lower regions, by American artillerymen and
the Infantry Brigade in reserve. The village was rich in German
notice-boards—black stencilling on plain wood—announcing that
here was the residence of the Kommandant, or here a shelter from
bombardment for so many Männer, or that here it was Verboten for
the common herd to go. Most of these were now pasted over with
notices and orders in a different, and healthier, language.
Our friends collected a German notice-board apiece as a souvenir,
and proceeded to ransack the village for further booty. Miss Ryker,
who was domestically minded, gleaned two forks, a spoon, and
some cups and saucers. Miss Lane, caring for none of these things,
appropriated a small mirror. Presently she announced:
“I guess we’ll go up to the trenches now, Helen. They must be
just over the hill, beyond that wood on the sky-line.”
But Miss Lane, as already noted, was wrong. The trenches did not
lie just over the hill, for the very good reason that there were no
trenches. We have grown so accustomed during this War to
employing “trenches” as a synonym for “battle-line” that we are apt
to overlook the fact that it is possible to fight upon the surface of the
earth. For a long time both the Allies and the Hun suffered from a
disease called “Trenchitis,” induced by an intensive experience of

high explosive and machine-gun bullets. If a force wished to defend
itself, it produced picks and shovels and dug itself in. If it wished to
attack, it dug an advanced “jumping-off” trench in the dead of night,
approached by saps and tunnels, and so made the open space to be
covered in the assault as narrow as possible. This is a useful and
economical way of fighting, especially when your troops are not
sufficiently numerous to warrant prodigality. But it wastes much
valuable time; and since the day when the entire American Nation
was placed at the disposal of the Allies as a reinforcement, it has
been found possible to employ other methods. Down South, on the
Alsace-Lorraine front, where a lightly held outpost line runs for more
than a hundred miles toward Belfort, trench warfare is still
fashionable. But in the Argonne, where most of the fighting takes
place in closely wooded country, we remain more or less above
ground, maintaining touch with one another as best we can by
means of an irregular chain of grass-pits or fortified shell-craters.
So when our pair of truants reached the wood on the sky-line, and
penetrated cautiously to the other side, they beheld no trenches.
At their feet the road dropped steeply into a little valley, filled with
woods which ran right up the slope beyond and disappeared into a
smoky mist on the opposite crest. The sun had not fulfilled its early
promise, and had disappeared by noon. A small drizzling rain was
beginning to fall.
Helen Ryker, who loved her personal comforts, drew her blue cloak
more closely round her, and shivered.
“They don’t have any trenches here,” she announced, in aggrieved
tones.
“They are in the woods down in the valley,” Miss Lane assured her.
“You can hear the firing.”
You certainly could. Up to their ears from the undergrowth on
every side rose the mutterings of warfare—solitary rifle-shots, and
the intermittent pup-pupping of machine guns. Down in the valley,
at the foot of the road, they could see a stream. The road had once

crossed it by a bridge; but the bridge was now a ruin, and the road
had been diverted so as to cross higher up, by some sort of
pontoon.
Not a human being was in sight. One of the strangest
characteristics of modern warfare—warfare in which millions of men
are employed where formerly hundreds sufficed—is the entire
invisibility of the combatants. In these days of aeroplanes and
magnifying periscopes no man ever makes himself more conspicuous
than need be. A hundred years ago soldiers went into action in
brightly coloured coats and flashing accoutrements. Now their
uniforms imitate the colours of nature—the colours of grass and
earth. Guns are painted to look like logs of wood. If a sniper wishes
to do a little business from a tree-top or a thicket, he not
infrequently paints himself green as a preliminary.
“It’s lonesome here!” continued Miss Ryker.
“I expect we shall find the boys presently,” replied the undefeated
Frances. “My gracious, Helen, what was that?”
Over their heads—quite close, it seemed—sailed something
invisible, with a weary sigh. It was a howitzer shell fired from an
American battery five miles behind them. The sound of its passage
ceased, but almost directly afterward a column of greenish-grey
smoke spouted up from the wooded hillside opposite, followed a few
seconds later by a heavy detonation.
Helen and Frances found themselves unaffectedly gripping hands.
“What is it?” asked Helen tremulously.
One of Miss Lane’s most compelling characteristics was that she
was never at a loss for an answer.
“That? That’s artillery fire, I guess. That over there is the smoke of
a big gun.”
As usual, she was partially correct. What they saw and heard was,
indeed, artillery fire, but it was not the smoke of the gun, but the
smoke of the shell bursting among the German machine-gun nests.

“German or American?” asked Helen.
“American, sure. Let’s go on down this road, and see some more.
It’s a nice quiet road. There can’t be any danger.”
In the shell-area on the Western Front the fact that a road is quiet
does not by any means guarantee that it is “nice.” But the people
who really enjoy war are those who have not been there before. The
pair of adventurers set boldly off down the hill. As they started, a
second contribution from the howitzer battery passed over their
heads, with the lazy rustle which characterizes the descent of high-
angle shells, and burst in the woods opposite, fifty yards to the right
of the first.
“There’s another gun firing!” exclaimed Miss Lane, clasping her
hands rapturously. “My, but I’m excited! C’m along, Helen!”
They hurried down the road, observing with a pleasant thrill that
the surface thereof was pitted with shell-holes. More experienced
fire-eaters would have noted that some of these holes were of
extremely recent origin—a few hours old, in fact. Once or twice they
paused to collect more souvenirs—shell-fuses and empty cartridge-
cases.
Distances viewed across a valley are deceptive, and their stroll
down the road took longer than they expected. The rain was coming
down harder than ever.
“We ought to hit those trenches soon,” said Miss Lane.
“What are trenches like, anyway?” enquired Miss Ryker, a little
peevishly. She was beginning to make heavy weather of the
expedition under her cargo of crockery and expended ammunition.
Miss Lane, whose acquaintance with trench warfare had been
derived mainly from the Movies, made no reply. She had stopped by
the roadside to read a notice-board, nailed to what was left of a
tree. It said:
This road must not be used by troops during daylight.

She nodded her head sagely.
“That’s why there is no one around,” she remarked. “What were
you saying just now, Helen?”
Miss Ryker had discovered a fresh grievance.
“It seems to me that some of the firing has gotten behind us!” she
said.
The girls stood still, and listened. A third American shell swung
over their heads and burst in the woods opposite. Simultaneously
came a sharp outburst of machine-gun fire from the right—the right
rear, in fact.
“Maybe we have walked into a sort of bend in the line,” suggested
Frances. “They call it a salient,” she added professionally. “Why, if
there aren’t some of our boys at last! There … crossing that bridge!”
She was right. As she spoke, two khaki-clad figures emerged from
the woods upon the opposite side of the stream below them and
trotted briskly across the pontoon bridge, in single file a few yards
apart. Once across, they joined forces, and began to climb the hill in
a more leisurely fashion. But it was noticeable that instead of coming
up the road they kept a course roughly parallel to its direction—
perhaps a hundred yards away.
“Why should they go hiking through that mushy long grass,
wetting themselves, when there is a good road right here? Aren’t
men just children?” observed Miss Ryker.
“Perhaps they don’t know about the road,” said Miss Lane
charitably, “We’ll call them. Oh—Boys!”
Her syren call had the desired effect—as well it might. The
gentlemen addressed, both of whom were labouring up the slippery
slope with bent heads, stopped suddenly, and looked about them.
Next moment they were doubling heavily through the long grass in
the direction of the road, making signals as they ran. They appeared
agitated about something.

“Come off that road!” shouted one of them, who was leading by
ten yards, to the two female figures in the mist. “Quittez le chemin!
C’est dangereux! Beat it for here! Dépêchez-vous! As hard as you—
well—I’ll—be—” he swallowed something—“Frances Lane?”
With a final bound, Boone Cruttenden, with a steel helmet on his
head, a gas apparatus slung on his chest, and acute fear in his eyes,
landed squarely in the ditch; then scrambled out upon the road.
“Why—Boone?” began Frances affably. But, a grasp of iron
fastened on her arm just above the elbow, and a badly frightened
young man proceeded to propel her, without ceremony, across the
ditch and away from the road.
“You fetch the other one, Major!” he called over his shoulder.
“I shall be charmed,” replied an unmistakable English drawl.
“Boone, listen!” protested Miss Lane breathlessly, as she was
towed sideways across the hillside. “What are you—?”
But her escort merely muttered to himself, as they ran:
“Can you beat it? Can you beat it?”
Presently, having placed a distance of more than a hundred yards
between itself and the road, the panting convoy was permitted to
halt.
“We will now continue our excursion up the hill,” announced the
English Major. “But we will keep off the road, if you ladies don’t
object. It is registered from top to bottom, you know.”
“Just what does that mean?” enquired Miss Lane, whose natural
curiosity was coming back with her breath.
“It means,” replied the Major, removing a shining monocle from his
right eye and wiping it with a khaki handkerchief, “that the Boche
has the range to every yard of it. As he usually searches it with H.E.
and shrapnel every few hours, it is healthier to keep on the grass
when going up and down this hill. Are we far enough away now, do
you think, Cruttenden?”

“Ye-es. But it would be better to split into two parties, I should
say. Less conspicuous—eh?”
The Major readjusted his monocle, and replied solemnly:
“By all means. This young lady and I will extend another hundred
yards to the left. Cruttenden, considering your tender years, you
display a promising acquaintance with tactics. Also diplomacy. So
long!”
So by force of tactical exigency, Frances Lane and Boone
Cruttenden walked up the hillside in the rain together. Major Floyd
and Miss Ryker were discernible in the failing daylight, keeping
station on the left flank.
“Now, tell me!” Boone and Frances began together. Then they
stopped. Boone smiled.
“Ladies first!” he said.
But for once Frances preferred to be a listener.
“No, Boone Cruttenden—you!” she said. “Tell me what you are
doing here, anyway.”
“I got a chance,” explained Boone, “to come here with Major Floyd
—he’s our liaison officer with the British Mission back of the line—
and have a look at this sector. The regiment may take it over next
month. The Major knows the ground, and he took me down there”—
he pointed backwards over his shoulder—“to see our advanced
posts.”
“Where are the trenches?”
“Trenches? There are none. This is open warfare. The Yanks and
the Huns are mixed up together in those woods, watching one
another like cat and dog. We hold the stream, and some of the
ground beyond. That pontoon bridge is covered by a concealed
machine-gun post of ours, in case the Hun tries to rush it. It’s
probable he had direct observation on it: that is why the Major and I
did not linger much as we came across. We’re in a sort of pocket

here. The German line bends around us. Some of their posts up in
the woods have a clear view of the road, all the way up. Luckily
visibility is bad to-day, or you might have been spotted. Now tell me
what you are doing here!”
Frances told him—as much as she thought he need know.
“And where is your hospital located?” demanded Boone.
Miss Lane informed him.
“That is more than thirty miles back!” cried Boone.
“About that,” agreed Miss Lane meekly.
“Does any one know you are here?”
“I hope not! I mean, no one—except you, Boone,” replied Frances
softly.
The conscientious Boone made a last effort to maintain a judicial
attitude.
“Do you know you have committed a serious military offence?” he
demanded fiercely. “Trying to get past sentries, and traffic police!
Did you know that no women are allowed anywhere in the battle
zone?”
“Yes,” said Miss Lane demurely. “That was why we came—to break
a record!”
“And do you know that all this valley is liable to be searched with
gas, and you have no gas-mask?”
“I didn’t know that,” confessed the delinquent, “but I might have
guessed it, I suppose. But I was dead tired of that old hospital,
Boone, and I was just crazy to see the fighting!”
“Crazy? That’s just the word. You crazy, crazy child!” said Boone
affectionately. “Didn’t you know the chances you were taking?”
“Yes,” said Frances Lane. “But”—her eyes were raised to his for
one devastating moment—“I knew I was safe the moment I saw
you, Boone!”

“Oh, Francie!” murmured that utterly demoralized youth.
“And where are your headquarters located, Major?” enquired Miss
Ryker brightly. The conversation had harped so far upon her own
misdemeanours, and she was anxious to introduce a fresh topic.
“I live chiefly with the Division holding this sector,” replied Major
Floyd. “I am liaison officer.”
“Don’t drop those cups. Just what does a liaison officer do?”
“I act as bell-hop between the local British Mission and the
Americans. I go around paging Generals and Staff Officers—and
everything,” replied the Major.
“There are no Generals here,” Miss Ryker pointed out.
“No. To-day I am having a vacation. Boone Cruttenden’s Division
are in Corps Reserve near by, so I undertook to bring him up here
and give him his first view of the Line.”
“How did you get here?” enquired Miss Ryker, who had not
initiated the present conversation for nothing.
“On a Staff car.”
“An automobile?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Behind that wood at the top of the hill.”
“Then,” announced Miss Ryker, coming to the point, “you will be
able to give us two poor girls a ride home.”
“It’s—it’s twenty-five miles out of our way,” said Floyd feebly.
“Besides, Boone and I have our reputations to consider. He is young,
and might live it down, but think of me! People would say I was old
enough to know better.”

“Think of us!” countered Miss Ryker; “if we can’t get back, and the
Matron finds that Frances and I have been playing hookey!” She
followed up her appeal by a faint sob.
Major Floyd dropped the teacups and raised his hands above his
head.
“Kamerad!” he groaned.
Whoo-oo-oo-oo-UMP!
A long overdue shell from a German field battery came shrieking
over the tree-tops behind them and landed squarely in the road, two
hundred yards to their right.
“You’re quite safe,” announced the Major, patting four fingers
which he had suddenly discovered on the sleeve of his Burberry.
“That one is too far away to hurt us. There will probably be more,
but Fritz won’t shell away from the road. His imagination is not
elastic.”
“What about Frances and Captain Cruttenden?” said Helen. “They
are nearer the road than we are. Would that shell be able—?”
Major Floyd rubbed his misty monocle and examined the two
figures to his right.
“They don’t appear to have heard it,” he announced, and shook
his head mournfully.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE LINE
Most of us in our extreme youth, before we leave home and
adventure upon the Great Unknown of school life—the most
formidable ordeal, by the way, that the majority of us ever have to
face—endeavour to prepare ourselves for what we imagine lies
before us by a course of study.
We devour stories about schools and schoolboys, with an
application most unusual in the young. We have all the tenderfoot’s
fear of being considered a tenderfoot, so we take pains to acquire
the schoolboy tone; schoolboy atmosphere; schoolboy slang. The
exploits of the hero after he becomes “Cock of the School”—
whatever that may be—and leads the football team to victory, are
dismissed by us as too lofty and distant for our achievement. We are
much more interested—more painfully interested—in his experiences
as a freshman or fag. We endeavour to pick up tips as to what a boy
entering school for the first time should do, and more particularly
what he should not do, in order to avoid being tossed in a blanket or
sent to Coventry, or labelled “sissy,” or “cry-baby”—and all the other
vague terrors which have kept prospective Cocks of the School
awake at night since the dawn of Education.
This intensive course of self-preparation has one drawback. None
of the things described in the books ever happen at the school to
which we are ultimately sent. We have plenty of surprises, plenty of
rough experiences; but none quite of the kind anticipated.
American soldiers, arriving on the Western Front in the fourth year
of the War, feel themselves in very much the same position as the
self-conscious adventurer described above.

Ever since—in some cases, before—our country came in, we have
been schooling ourselves for the day when we should find ourselves
Over Here, among veteran soldiers. Methods have varied, of course.
Some of us have followed every turn of the operations in official
summaries and technical articles. To such, the War has been a
glorified game, we will say, of scientific football. Others—Miss Sissy
Smithers, for instance—have educated themselves upon more
popular lines—from the Sunday newspapers, or illustrated magazines
of the domestic variety, in which healthy patriotism and “heart
interest” are not fettered by any petty considerations of technical
possibility.
Over here, Disillusionment awaits both these enthusiasts. The
student of tactics soon realizes the difference between fighting a
battle in imagination and in reality. Imagination cannot bring home
to any human brain the extent to which the chess-board dispositions
of modern strategy are tempered by the actualities of modern
fighting—in other words, by the strain upon the human machine. All
the five senses are affected—hearing, by the appalling din; seeing,
by the spectacle of a whole group of human beings blown to shreds;
smelling, by the reek of gas and explosives; touching, by the feel of
dead men’s faces everywhere under your hand in the darkness; and
tasting, by the unforgettable flavour of meat in the mouth after
forty-eight hours’ continuous fighting in an atmosphere of human
blood. The War is going to be won, not by the strategists, but by the
man who can endure these things most steadfastly.
Miss Sissy Smithers need not be taken so seriously. He may be
disappointed at first to find that Red Cross nurses follow their calling
in Base Hospitals and not in No Man’s Land; and that performing
dogs, loaded with secret despatches and medical comforts, are not
such a prominent feature of modern warfare as the lady novelist
would have us believe. But no enterprise, however grim, was ever
the worse for a touch of glamour. Sissy will soon settle down.
Still, we have come to school knowing more than most new boys
—far more, indeed, than our seasoned French and British

companions knew when they embarked upon their martial
education. The American soldier takes the field to-day, thanks to the
recorded experiences of others, with a serviceable knowledge of the
routine of trench warfare. Gas is no surprise to him, and he is
familiar with the tactical handling of bombs, machine guns, and
trench-mortars.
Up to date, however, we have not by any means drunk deep of
warlike experience, for the good reason that the authorities are
breaking us in by degrees. We are now in trenches, holding what is
described as a quiet sector of the Line, recently taken over from the
French, and hitherto very lightly held.
For the past two years, the Intelligence people tell us, the
trenches opposite have been manned by only one German to every
four yards of front. Eddie Gillette has already announced that when
he has finished doing what he came out here to do the number of
Germans opposite may be the same, but the method of distribution
will be different. “Not one Dutchman to four yards,” he explains, “but
a quarter of a Dutchman to every one yard. Yes, sir!”
Every Army has its own system of conducting trench warfare,
founded largely upon national characteristics. The Germans, it used
to be said, hold their trenches with machine guns, the British with
men, the French with artillery. Certainly in nineteen-fifteen, when
stationary warfare was the order of the day upon the Western Front,
the Germans kept few men in the front trenches—except perhaps at
night—leaving the line very much to the protection of barbed wire
and machine guns, the latter laid and trained in such a fashion as to
create if need be a continuous and impenetrable horizontal lattice-
work of bullets in front of every section of the line. The British,
having at that time more men than munitions—a battalion was lucky
if it possessed four Vickers guns and a single trench-mortar—filled
their trenches with as many defenders as they would hold, and
trusted, not altogether vainly, to the old British tradition of rapid rifle
fire and close work with the bayonet to keep the line intact.

The French temperament called for more elasticity than this. The
one thing a Frenchman hates to do in warfare is keep still. He
prefers active counter-measures to dogged resistance. So in
nineteen-fifteen, whenever a sector of the French trenches was
heavily bombarded, the garrison was promptly withdrawn to a
position of comparative safety—where, the story goes, they seized
the opportunity to cook an extra-elaborate dinner. If the Germans
followed up their bombardment with an infantry attack, that attack
was met mainly with an intensive barrage from that amazingly rapid
and accurate piece of scrap-iron, the soixante-quinze field gun.
When the German attack fizzled out, as it usually did, the incident
ended, and the French infantry returned to their place in the line.
But if it penetrated the barrage and occupied the French trenches,
the Frenchman finished his coffee, adjusted Rosalie, his bayonet,
and prized Brother Boche out of his new quarters.
But all that was in nineteen-fifteen. In warfare your best teacher is
your opponent. Nowadays we have, on each side of No Man’s Land,
assimilated one another’s methods. Moreover, trench warfare of to-
day has developed into a fluid affair. For one thing, trench-mortars,
tanks, and intensive artillery bombardments can make hay of the
most elaborate defensive works. You can no longer surround
yourself with barbed wire and go comfortably to bed, secure in the
knowledge that your opponent cannot possibly get at you without a
long and laborious artillery preparation. In nineteen-sixteen, before
the First Battle of the Somme, British and French guns pounded the
German trenches night and day for three weeks. It was a great
pounding, but it cannot be said that the subsequent attack came as
a surprise to the enemy. Under such prolonged and pointed
attentions even a German is apt to suspect that something is in the
wind. But to-day we have other methods. Three minutes of
pandemonium from massed trench-mortars—a rush of tanks—and
your defences are gone and the Philistine is upon you.
So in nineteen-eighteen we live perpetually upon the qui vive, and
our methods have been elaborated and standardized to the common
measure of our joint experience. Our artillery has the whole front

registered. At a given signal it can let down a barrage—a Niagara of
shrapnel and high-explosive—upon the strip of earth that separates
the enemy’s front line from our own. This can be stationary, to
annihilate an enemy attack, or “creeping,” to form a protective
screen for an attack of our own. We have machine guns too, set, à
la Boche, at fixed angles to maintain a continuous band of fire along
each line of our trenches—more especially along the second line; for
it is a waste of life and energy to-day to treat the front trench as
anything more than a close chain of outposts, screening the real
dispositions behind.
And the rifle and bayonet have come back to their own. Two years
ago they were in danger of being discarded as obsolete. Every one
was bomb mad. It was claimed that a rifle and bayonet are useless
against an experienced opponent feeling his way along a zigzag
trench in your direction. True; but a bomb is equally useless—or
rather, equally dangerous—in the presence of an opponent rushing
upon you in the open. So now we have adjusted our perspectives,
and each device of war is put to its proper use.
So much for what the author of that little classic, “Dere Mable,”
would describe as “Tecknickle stuff.”
Needless to say, we are burning to play with all these new toys
simultaneously, like a small boy on Christmas morning. But we have
had little opportunity so far. To vary the metaphor, we must eat up
our bread and butter before we are allowed cake. We are busy at
present learning trench routine. Taking over trenches from another
unit, for instance. This is a complicated and exasperating pastime. It
usually has to be performed in the dark; otherwise enemy
aeroplanes might observe unusual activity behind our line, and
advise their artillery to that effect. This involves much night-
marching along roads pitted with shell-holes; and the trouble about
a shell-hole three feet deep is that in wet weather it looks like a
perfectly innocent puddle. Frequently, to avoid congested wheel
traffic, we have to march across country in single file, under the
leadership of a faltering guide. Not a light must be shown, not a

word spoken. Each man, loaded with rifle, equipment, gas
apparatus, and a few extra and unauthorized comforts, has to follow
the ghostly form of the man immediately in front of him. It is
discouraging work, for the simple reason that if you set one hundred
men to march in single file in the dark, though the leader may be
groping his way forward at the rate of one mile per hour, the last
man in the queue is always running, and has to run if he is not to be
left behind. No one knows why this should be so, but the uncanny
fact remains.
Once you have descended into the communication trenches it is
less easy to lose yourself—unless the guide sets the example—but
your progress becomes slower than ever. Possibly—probably—you
meet a procession going in the opposite direction—a ration-party,
maybe, or stretcher-bearers with their patient, cheery freight. The
fact that they have no right to be there at all—practically all
communication-trenches here are supposed to be one-way
thoroughfares—makes matters no easier, though it affords relief in
the form of argumentative profanity as you struggle together in the
constricted fairway like stout matrons loaded with market-produce in
a street-car.
Arrived in the actual trenches, the congestion is even greater, for
now there are just twice as many men in the trench as it was
constructed to hold, and the outgoing party must never budge until
the incoming party have arrived and “taken over.” Taking over is no
mere formality either. Officers, machine-gunners, bombers, chemical
experts, and other specialists must seek out their “opposite
numbers” in the gross darkness and take receipt in due form of
ammunition, observation-posts, gas-alarms, and situation reports,
amid the crackling of rifle-fire and the sputtering of the illuminating
flares.
At last the relief is complete. The word is passed along. The
outgoing unit, after communicating sundry items of information as to
the habits and customs—mostly unpleasant—of the local Boche,
coupled with sundry warnings as to his favourite targets and own

tender spots, fades away down the communication-trenches, with
whispered expressions of good-will—and you are left alone,
wondering what would happen if the enemy were to make a surprise
attack now.
Trench life is never comfortable at any time, but the first night in a
strange trench is the most uncomfortable of all. For one thing, the
trench feels unnaturally crowded. Moreover, we are young troops—
the youngest troops in the world to-day—and that means much. We
have no Mulvaneys or Learoyds among us. If we had, we should be
taught a number of things—how to boil a canteen over a couple of
glowing chips; how to hollow out a bed in hard soil; where to find
water in an apparently dry trench—trifles small in themselves, but
making all the difference between misery and comfort.
But that by the way. With daylight comes a new spirit—or rather,
the old spirit—of confidence. Eager persons peer over the parapet,
to observe where the enemy is, and what he is like. They see little
enough. Two hundred yards away an irregular ripple of sandbags—
some white, some black—looking like a dirty wave-crest on a brown
sea, marks the position of the German fire-trenches. This mixture of
colours is thoughtful. If the sandbags were all of one tint, like our
own, loopholes would be hard to conceal: under the German system,
you never know at a distance whether you are looking at a loophole
or merely a black sandbag. The intervening space is a wilderness of
shell-holes, splintered tree-stumps, and rusty barbed wire. Further
observation is cut short by a sniper’s bullet, which travels past
enquiring heads with a vicious crack. We have learned our first
lesson. In trench warfare, by daylight at least, curiosity must be
satisfied through peepholes or periscopes.
In the trench itself there is plenty to occupy us. There are watches
to be kept and manual work to be done. A trench system is eternally
throwing out annexes and undergoing repairs, for the artillery on the
other side is always busy. There are supplies to be brought up.
There is cooking to be done: that occupies much time, for firing-
trenches to-day are equipped, like the fashionable lady’s vanity-bag,

with everything except the kitchen stove. And no bad thing either.
Trench life has been described by competent authorities as “Weeks
of Monotony tempered by Half-Hours of Hell.” Nothing dispels
monotony like the necessity of practising the primitive domestic
virtues. At home we hire expensive menials—or expect our wives—to
light our fires and cook our dinners, because we are too busy or too
civilized to do it ourselves. Over here we like doing it, because it is
our actual instinct to do so, and also passes the time.
As for the Half-Hours of Hell, these mainly take the form of short,
furious bombardments and midnight raids. But the German artillery
is not very busy in this sector. Guns, and more guns, are urgently
required farther north, where the Allied line, after stretching back
and back during those anxious days in the spring of the year, has
now reacted like a released bowstring and has shot the Boche back
to the Meuse.
So far as we can gather from the sources at our disposal—official
bulletins, intermittent newspapers, and trench gossip (personified in
the American Expeditionary Force by a supposititious individual of
great erudition but small reliability, whose Christian name is “Joe”)—
our cause is prospering from the North Sea to the Alps. Germany
shot her bolt with her third great offensive on the twenty-seventh of
May, when German arms once more crossed the Marne and
penetrated to within twenty-eight miles of Paris. There they were
stayed, in a battle where at least one third of the Allied troops were
American, and where the young American Army got its first real
chance, and took it. In this operation the Second and Third American
Divisions were sent to stiffen the French line. Of these, the Third
successfully held a vital bridge-head opposite Château Thierry: the
Second captured Bouresches, Belleau Wood, and Vaux.
So much we know for certain, for these things happened before
we left England, and official information was available. The work of
the Marines, in the Second Division, has already passed into
American history. But for news of subsequent happenings we have
had to depend too much upon our friend Joe. All we know for

certain is that on the fifteenth of July the enemy launched just one
more offensive—his fourth and as it proved, his very last. This time,
so far as we can gather, the Allies, instead of contenting themselves
with defensive tactics, took the business into their own hands and
bit suddenly and deeply into the side of the huge, distended,
pocketful of Germans which hung down from Soissons over Paris.
The pocket promptly contracted itself: the enemy disgorged himself
from its mouth, and began to retreat. From all accounts he has been
retreating ever since.
French, British, and American troops were all engaged in this, the
final and triumphant redressing of the balance. And each were
represented by their best. One of our liaison officers tells us of a
memorial set up by French soldiers in honour of the dead of the
famous Fifty-first Division of the British Army—the Highland
Territorials—and of an inscription carved thereon which proclaimed
that hereafter the Thistle of Scotland would forever flourish beside
the Lilies of France. In that great fight not merely unity of command,
but unity of sentiment, seem to have come to their own at last.
The Allied counter-attack struck deep along the whole line.
Soissons and Montdidier, we hear, are once more in our hands; while
farther north, in Flanders, the British Third and Fourth Armies are
sweeping forward for the last time in the blood-soaked valley of the
Lys.
As for the American share, we have not heard too much, but what
we have heard is enough to make us tingle. We hear of great work
by the Regulars of the First, Second, and Third Divisions; by the
Twenty-sixth—the Yankees of New England—and by the Forty-
second Rainbow Division, from Yaphank. It is also reported that
other American Divisions made no small impression upon Brother
Boche—the Fourth, the Twenty-eighth; the Thirty-second, and the
Seventy-seventh.
The Twenty-seventh and Thirtieth, we understand, are somewhere
with the British opposite the Hindenburg Line near Cambrai.
Doubtless we shall hear something of them too, in due course. Great

days, great days! But to what a fever of exasperation are we
aroused, who are not there ourselves!

CHAPTER TWELVE
CHASING MONOTONY
At present the authorities are engaged in impressing upon us the
truth of the maxim which says that you must not run before you can
walk. Our immediate duty is to show that we can stand the test of
ordinary trench warfare.
First, such every-day nuisances as the German sniper. And here
we have a pleasant little success to record.
When we took over these trenches, snipers were numerous and
vigilant. If you raised your head above the parapet, one of two
things happened. Either you heard a sound like the crack of a whip-
lash close to your ear; or you did not. If you did, you were lucky. If
you did not, you were buried at dusk.
There is one piece of slightly rising ground in the enemy’s line
which commands an oblique view of a stretch of our front trenches.
For a week we have been pestered by a sniper concealed
somewhere along this eminence, about three hundred yards away,
on our right front. We have scrutinized its whole expanse with
periscopes and through loopholes, but there is no sign of trench or
emplacement where the sniper might be concealed.
Yesterday that untutored but resourceful fire-eater, Eddie Gillette,
turned his attention to the matter, the urgency of which had been
impressed upon him by the fact that a sniper’s bullet, travelling
sidewise down the trench, had chipped a groove in Eddie’s own “tin
derby” that very morning, Eddie’s head being inside at the time.
“We got to locate that lobster,” he observed. And he did.
In a field behind the support line there grows, or rather, rots, a
crop of derelict and much-bombarded turnips. Last night Eddie, after

a conference with his officer, Boone Cruttenden, and the top
machine-gun sergeant, disappeared for an hour into the hinterland,
and brought back with him an armful of selected esculents. The
largest of these he proceeded this morning to spear upon a flat lath
of wood. Upon the top of this eminence he perched his own steel
helmet, at a jaunty angle. Attended by a respectfully interested
cohort of disciples, or rubbernecks, he next selected a suitable spot
in the front-line trench, and with the help of a length of rope and a
little ingenuity succeeded in lashing the turnip-laden lath to the
revetment of the parapet in such a fashion as to make it possible to
slide the lath up and down.
It was a still, sunny, September morning, and the whole line was
quiet, except for an occasional rifle-shot, and the intermittent boom
of artillery beyond the next hill-crest to the south. Eddie’s
preliminary adjustments were barely completed when Boone
Cruttenden arrived, carrying a periscope and attended by the
machine-gun sergeant.
“Got everything fixed, Gillette?” enquired Boone.
“Yes, sir,” replied Eddie, ignoring the cynical smiles of Joe
McCarthy, who was present in the capacity of dramatic critic.
“Right,” said Boone. “Go to it!”
The inventor cautiously slid the lath up in its groove, until the
helmet-crowned turnip stood some six inches above the parapet,
offering a goodly mark against the sky. Then crouching down, he
waited. The spectators, with remarkable unanimity, followed his
example.
Crack!
A bullet shaved the top sandbag and buried itself with a vicious
thud in the back wall of the trench.
“Missed!” announced Gillette calmly. “We better let him try again.”
“Lower the turnip a couple of minutes first,” advised Boone. “A
real man wouldn’t keep his head up there all the time—unless it was

a bone one!”
Gillette complied, and waited.
“What’s the big idea, Ed?” enquired Al Thompson respectfully.
“The big idea,” replied Eddie, “is first of all to let that Dutchman
over there drill a hole in this turnip. Then, if we peek through the
hole, we shall be looking along the track of the bullet—at this range
it would travel on a pretty-nigh flat line—and we shall see the exact
place the bullet started from, which is what we are after. In case we
don’t get the exact location, we will put up another turnip some
other place in the trench, and get a cross-bearing from that. That’s
the big idea, boys!”
“And who,” enquired the grating voice of Mr. Joe McCarthy, “is the
poor fish who’s gonna put his bean up above the parapet and peek
through the hole?”
Eddie Gillette forbore to reply, but resumed his operations with
added dignity, sliding his turnip-head once more into the enemy’s
view. There was another crack, and the steel helmet oscillated
sharply.
“Right through the nose!” announced Eddie, with ghoulish
satisfaction. “Now, Captain—quick!”
Already Boone Cruttenden, crouching low, was applying his
periscope to the hole in the back of the turnip. The machine-gun
sergeant, stationed at a tiny observation loophole in a steel plate
close by, waited eagerly for instructions.
Boone, with his magnifying periscope, took a rapid observation of
the constricted field of view afforded by the narrow tunnel through
the turnip; then another, over the open parapet this time; then
another, through the turnip again. He spoke rapidly.
“Sergeant, do you see two stunted willows on the sky-line, half-
right?”
“Yes, sir.”

“Below them, a single small bush?”
“Yes, sir. I got it.”
“Well, lay a machine gun to cover the ground about five yards to
the right of that. Call the range three-fifty. I guess he is somewhere
around there. I can’t see any loophole or anything, but maybe he is
lying right out in the open, covered in grass, or—”
Crack! The conscientious artist over the way was growing restive
at his own want of success. This time he chipped the top of the steel
helmet.
“That will do,” said Boone. “Lower away that turnip, Gillette, and
we’ll take a second bearing farther along.”
Mr. Gillette collected his paraphernalia with the solemn dignity of
an acolyte taking part in a mystery. But he unbent to human level for
a moment.
“You see,” he observed caustically, “we don’t require no poor fish
here, Joe McCarthy!”
In due course a second turnip was hoisted and perforated, a
second bearing taken, and another machine gun laid. The machine-
gun teams took station; the first cartridges were fed into the
chambers.
“Let ’em go the moment he snipes again,” was Boone’s order.
A third spot was selected, and a third turnip exposed. This time it
wagged itself provokingly, and the sniper responded at once. It was
a beautiful shot, but it was his last. Next moment two converging
streams of machine-gun bullets were spattering his lair. What
happened we shall never know, but we were never again troubled
from that particular locality.
“We certainly got to hand it to you, Ed,” announced Joe McCarthy,
in an unusual fit of self-abasement.
Next, artillery fire. The Boche bombards our trenches twice a day,
and searches the back areas with shrapnel at night. He is not very

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