its tongue ever since we dropped it in the trench, will start talking and we shall have a merry time, taking pot-shots over open sights, till the enemy Is beaten back or we are all dead.     

       How many days, weeks, months have I sat here gazing on this same stretch of country? I know it all by heart—every blasted tree, every torn roadway, every ruined house. We have names for everything—Dick House, Telephone House, Lone Tree; all the names are set down on our maps. Through summer, winter and spring, ever since we first stormed the ridge, we have watched the same scene till our eyes ache with the monotony—and now again it is summer. Every now and then they have withdrawn us to put on an attack in a new part of the line, but always they have had to bring us back. This ridge is the Gibraltar of the entire Front from Yprhs to Amiens; if the British were thrown back from here it would mean a huge retreat to the north and south. The Hun knows that. Directly we march out and another corps takes over from us, he begins to make his plans for an offensive. In the spring, when we were away, he put on an attack and gained a dangerously large amount of ground. As soon as we re-appeared he fell back. He has learnt the cost of provoking the Canadians—the white Gurkhas as he has called us—and prefers to express his high spirits elsewhere. So here we sit guarding our fortress, with orders to hold it at any price The most we can do is to annoy the Hun when we’re itching to crush him.     

       Each day we hope that our turn has come. The line is being pressed back to the south of us. Amiens and Rheims are threatened. Big Bertha is shelling Paris. Our nurses near the coast are being murdered by airmen. We hear of whole divisions being wiped out—of both the attacking and the attacked being so spent with fighting that they cannot raise their rifles, and crawl towards each other only to find that they have no strength in their hands to strangle.... And here we sit watching, always watching. It is because we are so fed up that we send out raiding parties. The damage they do doesn’t count for much when compared with the total damage that the enemy is doing to us; but it’s consoling. It’s our way of saying, “You think you’re top-dog; but the Canadians are here with their tails up. You haven’t finished with the British yet—not by a damned sight.”     

       The enemy settled his account with some of our boys last night. It appears    

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