A shell must fall somewhere, and by the law of averages
occasionally lights straight as a homing pigeon on the one
spot where it can wreck most. Then earth opens for yards
around, and men must be dug out,--some merely breathless, who
shake their ears, swear, and carry on, and others whose souls
have gone loose among terrors. These have to be dealt with as
their psychology demands, and the French officer is a good
psychologist. One of them said: "Our national psychology has
changed. I do not recognize it myself."
"What made the change?"
"The Boche. If he had been quiet for another twenty years the
world must have been his--rotten, but all his. Now he is
saving the world."
"How?"
"Because he has shown us what Evil is. We--you and I, England
and the rest--had begun to doubt the existence of Evil. The
Boche is saving us."
Then we had another look at the animal in its trench--a little
nearer this time than before, and quieter on account of the
mist. Pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find
the same observation-post, table, map, observer, and
telephonist; the same always-hidden, always-ready guns; and
same vexed foreshore of trenches, smoking and shaking from
Switzerland to the sea. The handling of the war varies with
the nature of the country, but the tools are unaltered. One
looks upon them at last with the same weariness of wonder as
the eye receives from endless repetitions of Egyptian
hieroglyphics. A long, low profile, with a lump to one side,
means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a
circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a
bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the
great guns of position, coming and going on their motors,
repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue
smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or
watching and running among all these terrific symbols.