Suddenly I heard an exclamation from one of the soldiers. Looking where he pointed, I saw, just beyond the Belgian front trench, a huge column of muddy water standing bolt upright against the horizon. It stood there motionless until I began to think it would remain a permanent fixture in the landscape. Then it suddenly collapsed. A Belgian shell falling short had soused down into the Y---- Canal and exploded, sending up this five-story waterspout.
It seemed a shame not to go forward into the front trench, but with the Germans lobbing six-inch bombs in there with their "mine throwers" and the artillery getting busier all the time, the Commandant thought it would be taking too great risks. So we turned and crouched along back. As we did so, it is worthy of comment, three German shells struck not far to our left at not more than half-a-minute intervals and not one of the three exploded. It was a striking example of faulty explosives.
We returned by a different trench, so that we did not have to repeat the acrobatic feat over the telephone wire. But we had a little excitement to make up for it, for, as I splashed along with a most intense crick in my bent back, one of the German projectiles, which was apparently running on perfect schedule along its overhead rails on its way toward the Belgian artillery, suddenly jumped the track and came hissing down toward us.
Simultaneously with the crash of the explosion I saw the men ahead of me passionately hugging the bottom of the trench, and I found myself on my knees and elbows, not a whit behind them in my devotion.
"That was a close one," said Captain L----.
"Seventy-five nothing," he replied; "that was a 150 millimetre, and it exploded within thirty metres of your head. There--see for yourself. If we had not been in the trench that would have caught us nicely!"
I peeped over the edge of the trench and there, sure enough, was a big cloud of sooty black smoke wallowing up from behind some broken masonry not more than thirty yards off.
"Filons!" ("Let us beat it!") said the Commandant tersely, and we did.
The great lesson that a visit to England, France and what remains of Belgium to-day will teach any one who is willing to be taught by hard facts and not by wistful visions is that peace in the near future is quite impossible. For the only peace, in the conviction of the Allies, that will end this war is a peace neither of conciliation nor of compromise, but a peace whose terms are arbitrarily imposed by one side and of necessity submitted to by the other.