when every citizen of it can and is prepared to take up arms at any moment in its defense. It is a shortsighted policy that England has pursued so far in depending entirely on a few of the citizens of the Empire and in denying to the rest of the Empire the privilege of fighting her battles. If at a critical juncture like this when not only the whole of her available fighting material is engaged in war, but more is demanded, Egypt, Canada or this country is in the throes of a menacing invasion and is crying aloud for troops, would England be able to supply the threatened country with the required force and would the English public opinion reconcile itself to a diversion of the fighting units, however much they are wanted elsewhere? In such a crisis it is but common to say that any country so threatened must shift for itself and look to its defense. It is all right with the self-governing and therefore selfcontained colonies who have organized, trained and maintained their own armies for their defense-and now they are enabled to help the Allies while keeping the strength necessary for home defense. But what about India whose sons are not only disabled to take up the sword for the paramount power along with their citizens in other parts of the Empire but were refused the facilities for discharging their elementary duty of fitting themselves for defending their hearths and homes against the invader? If such a contingency were to happen, would not England repent having pursued such a short-sighted and suicidal policy towards this country, "the brightest jewel in the Imperial Crown?" Would repentance save the situation or alter it one jot or tittle? How would the Anglo-Indian custodians of India console her in that hour? But then what a misfortune it would be to ourselves that we should cease to be

members of the British Empire! But whether England will it or not, such a contingency is to be reckoned with by all practical-minded

men.

We may be told that India was allowed to contribute two lakhs of men, but what is the needed strength, we ask, what is the extent of India's military resources and what fraction does the contribution so graciously accepted form? Mr. Asquith in his speech to his constituents at Ladybank on the 14th June, 1916, confessed to what has all along been known or intelligently anticipated that "the shortage of men actual and prospective became a serious problem." Possessing as England does vast resources in India, it was like crying for a stone standing by the side of a mountain. But India's resources are ignored not certainly because their quality is in any way inferior to that of those in the Island or the colonies. How poor was India's contribution to the common effort of defense, in the estimation of even English ministers, would be seen by the studious omission of the mention of India by so responsible a minister and statesman as Mr. Asquith when he acknowledged the help of the colonies in the same speech referred to above. But India need not be ashamed of the smallness of her contribution, for it is none of her fault-though she has a right to resent the scant regard shown to her in ignoring her claim on the prime minister's recognition of her willing and, under the circumstances necessarily, humble help. It is none of her fault that the resources of British India to the extent they are available were not availed of. The lion's share of the contribution to the fighting service was deservedly claimed by the Punjab; that of Madras and Southern India is very little and of Bengal and Burma less.

The lesson therefore which this war

has for England is that in the absence of a world-federation wars are inevitable and come unawares, that they should be prepared against by having a sound system of defense, i. c., having an adequate number and adequate training of men and not a makeshift of defense which will fail her in time of war. A sound system of defense can be secured only by organizing the resources of all parts of the Empire in anticipation of an attack actual or threatened or for Hindustan Review.

enforcing peace. The resources of India alone, we may remind, are so vast that, if utilized, will serve not only for the defense of the Empire but for securing world peace. Will England whose stake in the world is large, larger perhaps than any other power, without waiting for a repetition of its present situation or the actual happening of the contingency indicated above, take heed of the warning which this war holds forth or will she wait for another?

When the Lieutenant turned out of his dug-out in the very small hours, he found with satisfaction that a thin mist was hanging over the ground.

"Can't see much," he said half an hour later peering out from the front trench. "But so much the better. Means they won't be so likely to see us. So long, old man. Come along, Studd."

The other officer watched the two crawl out and vanish into the misty darkness. At intervals a flare light leaped upward from one side or the other, but it revealed nothing of the ground, showed only a dim white radiance in the mist and vanished. Rifles crackled spasmodically up and down the unseen line, and very occasionally a gun boomed a smothered report and a shell swooshed over. But, on the whole, the night was quiet, or might be called so by comparison with other nights, and the quietness lent color to the belief that the Hun was quietly evacuating his badly battered front line. It was to discover what truth was in the report that the Lieutenant had crawled out with one man to get as near as possible to the enemy trench-or still better, into or over it.

Fifty yards out the two ran into one of their own listening posts, and the Lieutenant halted a moment and held a whispered talk with the N. C. O. there. It was all quiet in front, he was told, no sound of movement and only a rifle shot or a light thrown at long intervals.

"Might mean anything, or nothing," thought the Lieutenant. "Either a trench full of Boche taking a chance to sleep, or a trench empty except for a caretaker to shoot or chuck up an odd light."

He whispered as much to his companion and both moved carefully on. The ground was riddled with shellholes and was soaking wet, and very soon the two were saturated and caked with sticky mud. Skirting the holes and twisting about between them was confusing to any sense of direction, but the two had been well picked for this special work and held fairly straight on their way. No light

had shown for a good many minutes, and the Lieutenant fancied that the mist was thickening. He halted and waited a minute, straining his eyes into the mist and his ears to catch any sound. There was nothing apparently to see or hear, and he rose

to his knees and moved carefully forward again. As he did so a flare leaped upward with a long hiss and a burst of light glowed out. It faintly illumined the ground and the black shadows of shell-holes about them, and the Lieutenant with a jump at his heart stilled and stiffenednot six feet away and straight in front, the figure of a man in a long gray coat, his head craned forward and resting on his arms crossed in front of him and twisted in an attitude of listening. Studd, crawling at the Lieutenant's heels, saw at the same moment, as was told by his hand gripped and pressing a warning on the Lieutenant's leg. The light died out, and with infinite caution the Lieutenant slid back level with Studd and, motioning him to follow, lay flat and hitched himself a foot at a time towards the right to circle round the recumbent German. The man had not been facing full on to them, but lay stretched and looking toward their left, and by a careful circling right the Lieutenant calculated he would clear and creep behind him. A big shellcrater lay in their path, and after a moment's hesitation the Lieutenant slid very quietly down into it. Some morsels of loose earth crumbled under him, rolled down and fell with tiny splashings into the pool at the bottom. To the Lieutenant the noise was most disconcertingly loud and alarming, and cursing himself for a fool not to have thought of the water and the certainty of his loosening earth to fall into it, he crouched motionless, listening for any sound that would tell of the listening German's alarm. Another light rose, filling the mist with soft white radiance and outlining the edge of the crater above him. outlined also the dark shape of a figure halted apparently in the very act of crawling down into the crater from the opposite side. The Lieu

It

tenant's first flashing thought was that the German watcher had heard him and was moving to investigate, his second and quick-following was of another German holding still until the light fell. But a third idea came so instantly on the other two that, before the soaring flare dropped, he had time to move sharply, bringing the man's outline more clearly against the light. That look and the shape, beside but clear of the body, of a bent leg, crooked knee upward, confirmed his last suspicion. Studd slid over soundless as a diving otter and down beside him, and the Lieutenant whispered "See those two on the edge?"

"Both dead, sir," said Studd, and the Lieutenant nodded and heaved a little sigh of relief. "And I think that first was a dead 'un too."

"Yes," whispered the Lieutenant. "Looked natural and listening hard. Remember now, though, he was bareheaded. Dead all right. Come on." They crept out past the two dead men and, abating no fraction of their caution, moved noiselessly forward again. They passed many more dead in the next score of yards, dead twisted and contorted to every possible and impossible attitude of unmistakable death and uncannily lifelike postures, and came at last to scattered fragments and loose hanging strands of barbed-wire entanglements. Here, according to previous arrangement, Studd-ex-poacher of civilian days and expert scout of the battalion -moved ahead and led the way. Broken strands of wire he lifted, with gingerly delicate touch, and laid aside. Fixed ones he raised, rolled silently under and held up for the Lieutenant to pass. Taut ones he grasped in one hand, slid the jaws of his wire-nippers over and cut silently between his left-hand fingers, so that the fingers still gripped the severed

ends, released the ends carefully, one hand to each, and squirmed through the gap.

There was very little uncut wire, but the stealthy movements took time, and half an hour had passed from first wire to last and to the moment when the Lieutenant, in imitation of the figure before him, flattened his body close to the muddy ground and lay still and listening. For five long minutes they lay, and then Studd twisted his head and shoulders back. "Nobody," he whispered. "Just wait here a minute, sir." He slipped back past the Lieutenant and almost immediately returned to his side. "I've cut the loose wires away," he said. "Mark this spot and try'n hit it if we have to bolt quick. See-look for this," and he lifted а bayoneted rifle lying beside them, and stabbed the bayonet down into the ground with the rifle butt standing up above the edge of the broken parapet.

"Cross the trench," whispered the Lieutenant, "and along behind it. Safer there. Any sentry looking out forward?"

Studd vanished over the parapet and the Lieutenant squirmed after him. The trench was wide and broken-walled back and front, and both clambered up the other side and began to move along the far edge. In some places the trench narrowed and deepened, in others it widened and shallowed in tumbled shell-craters, in others again was almost obliterated in heaped and broken earth. The mist had closed down and thickened to a whity-gray blanket and the two moved more freely, standing on their feet and moving stooped and ready to drop at a sound. They moved for a considerable distance without seeing a single German.

Studd halted suddenly on the edge of a trench which ran into the one they were following.

"Communication trench," said the Lieutenant softly. "Doesn't seem to be a soul in their front line."

"No, sir," said Studd, but there was a puzzled note in his voice.

"Is this their front line we've been moving along?" said the Lieutenant with sudden suspicion. "Those lights look farther off than they ought."

The dim lights certainly seemed to be far out on their left and a little behind them. A couple of rifles cracked faintly, and they heard a bullet sigh and whimper overhead. Closer and with sharper reports half a dozen rifles rap-rapped in answer— but the reports were still well out to their left and behind them.

"Those are German rifles behind us. We've left the front line," said the Lieutenant with sudden conviction. "Struck slanting back. Been following a communication trench. Damn!"

Studd without answering dropped suddenly to earth and without hesitation the Lieutenant dropped beside him and flattened down. A long silence and the question trembling on his lips was broken by a hasty movement from Studd. "Quick, sir-back," he said, and hurriedly wriggled back and into a shallow hole, the Lieutenant close after him.

There was no need of the question now. Plainly both could hear the squelch of feet, the rustle of clothes, the squeak and click of leather and equipment. Slowly, one by one, a line of men filed past their hidingplace, looming gray and shadowy through the mist, stumbling and slipping so close by that to the Lieutenant it seemed that only one downward glance from one passing figure was needed to discover them. Tumultuous thoughts raced. What should he do if they were discovered? Pass one quick word to Studd to lie still, and jump and run, trusting to draw pursuit after himself and give Studd

a chance to escape and report? Or call Studd to run with him, and both chance a bolt back the way they came? The thick mist might help them, but the alarm would spread quickly to the front trench. .. . Or should he snatch his revolver-he wished he hadn't put it back in his holster-blaze off all his rounds, yell and make a row, rousing the German trench to fire and disclose the strength holding it? Could he risk movement enough to get his revolver clear? And all the time he was counting the figures that stumbled past-five . . . six

seven .

eight Thirty-four he counted and then, just as he was going to move, another lagging two. After that and a long pause he held hurried consultation with Studd.

"They're moving up the way we came down," he said. "We're right off the front line. Must get back. Daren't keep too close to this trench though. D'you think we can strike across and find the front line about where we crossed?"

"Think so, sir," answered Studd. "Must work a bit left-handed."

"Come on then. Keep close together," and they moved off.

In three minutes the Lieutenant stopped with a smothered curse at the jar of wire caught against his shins.

66

"'Ware wire," he said, and both stopped and felt at it. "Nippers," he said. "We must cut through." He pulled his own nippers out and they started to cut a path. "Tang," his nippers swinging free of a cut wire struck against another, and on the sound came a sharp word out of the mist ahead of them and apparently at their very feet a guttural question in unmistakable German. Horrified, the Lieutenant stood stiff frozen for a moment, turned sharp and fumbled a way back, his heart thumping and his nerves tingling in anticipation of another challenge or a sudden shot.

But there was no further sound, and presently he and Studd were clear of the wire and hurrying as silently as they could away from the danger.

They stopped presently, and the Lieutenant crouched and peered about him. "Now where are we?" he said, and then, as he caught the sound of suppressed chuckling from Studd crouched beside him, "What's the joke? I don't see anything specially funny about this job."

"I was thinkin' of that Germ back there, sir," said Studd, and giggled again. "About another two steps an' we'd have fell fair on top of 'im. Bit of a surprise like for 'im, sir."

The Lieutenant grinned a little himself. "Yes," he said, "but no more surprise than I got when he sang out. Now what d'you think is our direction?"

Studd looked round him, and pointed promptly. The Lieutenant disagreed and thought the course lay nearly at right angles to Studd's selection. He had his compass with him and examined it carefully. "This bit of their front line ran roughly north and south," he said. "If we move west it must fetch us back on it. We must have twisted a bit coming out of that wire-but there's west," and he pointed again.

"I can't figure it by compass, sir," said Studd, "but here's the way I reckon we came." He scratched lines on the ground between them with the point of his wire nippers. "Here's our line, and here's theirs-running this way."

"Yes, north," said the Lieutenant. "But then it bends in towards ours -like this-an' ours bends back." "Jove, so it does," admitted the Lieutenant, thinking back to the trench map he had studied so carefully before leaving. "And we moved north behind their trench, so might be round the corner; and a line west