would just carry us along behind their front line."

Studd was still busy with his scratchings. "Here's where we came along and turned off the communication trench. That would bring them lights where we saw them-about here. Then we met them Germs and struck off this way, an' ran into that wire, an' ran back-here. So I figure we got to go that way," and he pointed again.

"That's about it," agreed the Lieutenant. "But as that's toward the wire and our friend who sang out, we'll hold left a bit to try and dodge him."

He stood and looked about him. The mist was wreathing and eddying slowly about them and shut out everything except a tiny patch of wet ground about their feet. There was a distinct whiteness now about the mist, and a faint glow in the whiteness that told of daylight coming, and the Lieutenant moved hurriedly. "If it comes day and the mist lifts we're done in," he said, and moved in the chosen direction. They reached wire again, but watching for it this time avoided striking into it and turned, skirting it towards their left. But the wire bent back and was forcing them left again, or circling back, and the Lieutenant halted in despair. "We'll have to cut through again and chance it," he said. "We can't risk hanging about any longer."

"I'll just search along a few yards, sir, and see if there's an opening," said Studd.

"Both go," said the Lieutenant. "Better keep together."

Within a dozen yards both stopped abruptly and again sank to the ground, the Lieutenant cursing angrily under his breath. Both had caught the sound of voices, and from their lower position could see against the light a line of standing men, apparently

right across their path. A spatter of rifle fire sounded from somewhere out in the mist, and a few bullets whispered high overhead. Then came the distant thud, thud, thud of half a dozen guns firing. One shell wailed distantly over, another passed closer with a savage rush, a third burst twenty yards away with a glaring flash that penetrated even the thick fog. The two had a quick glimpse of a line of Germans in long coats ducking their "coal-scuttle" helmets and throwing themselves to ground. They were not more than thirty feet away, and there were at least a score of them. When their eyes recovered from the flash of the shell, the two could see not more than half a dozen figures standing, could hear talking and laughing remarks, and presently heard scuffling sounds and saw figure after figure emerge from the ground.

"Trench there," whispered Studd leaning in to the Lieutenant's ear. "They jumped down."

"Yes," breathed the Lieutenant. He was fingering cautiously at the wire beside him. It was staked out, and as far as he could discover there was something like two foot clearance between the ground and the bottom stand. It was a chance, and the position was growing so desperate that any chance was worth taking. He touched Studd's elbow and began to wriggle under the wires. Six feet in they found another line stretched too low to crawl under and could see and feel that the patch of low wire extended some feet. "More coming," whispered Studd, and the Lieutenant heard again that sound of squelching steps and moving men. They could still see the gray shadowy figures of the first lot standing in the same place, and now out of the mist emerged another shadowy group moving down the line and past it. There was a good deal of low-toned calling and talking

between the two lots, and the Lieutenant, seizing the chance to work under cover of the noise, began rapidly to nip his way through the wire. It was only because of their low position they could see the Germans against the lighter mist, and he was confident, or at least hoped, that from the reversed position it was unlikely they would be seen. The second party passed out of sight, and now the two could see a stir amongst the first lot, saw them hoist and heave bags and parcels to their shoulders and backs, and begin to move slowly in the opposite direction to that taken by the party passing them.

"Ration party or ammunition carriers," said Studd softly.

"And moving to the front line," said the Lieutenant quickly. In an instant he had a plan made. "We must follow them. They'll guide us to the line. We keep close as we can

not lose touch and not be seen. Quick, get through here." He started to nip rapidly through the wires. The party had moved and the outline of the last man was blurring and fading into the mist. The Lieutenant rose and began to stride over the low wires. A last barrier rose waist high. With an exclamation of anger he fell to work with the nippers again, Studd assisting him. The men had vanished. The Lieutenant thrust through the wires. His coat caught and he wrenched it free, pushed again and caught again. This time the stout fabric of the trench coat held. There was no second to waste. The Lieutenant flung loose the waist-belt, tore himself out of the sleeves and broke clear, leaving the coat hung in the wires. "Freer for running if we have to bolt at the end," he said, and hurried after the vanished line, with Studd at his heels. They caught up with it quickly-almost too quickly, because the Lieutenant almost overran one

laggard who had halted and was stooped or kneeling doing something to his bundle on the ground. The Lieutenant just in time saw him rise and swing the bundle to his shoulder and hurry after the others. Behind him came the two, close enough to keep his dim outline in sight, stooping low and ready to drop flat if need be, moving as silently as possible, checking and waiting crouched down if they found themselves coming too close on their leader. So they kept him in sight until he caught the others up, followed them again so long that a horrible doubt began to fill the Lieutenant's mind, a fear that they were being led back instead of forward. He would have looked at his compass but at that moment the dim gray figures before him vanished abruptly one by one.

He halted, listening, and Studd at his elbow whispered "Down into a trench, sir." Both sank to their knees and crawled carefully forward, and in a minute came to the trench and the spot where the man had vanished. "Coming near the front line, I expect," said the Lieutenant, and on the word came the crack of a rifle from the mist ahead. The Lieutenant heaved a sigh of relief. "Keep down," he said. "Work along this trench edge. Sure to lead to the front line."

A new hope flooded him. There was still the front trench to cross, but the ease with which they had first come over it made him now, turning the prospect over in his mind as he crawled, consider that difficulty with a light heart. His own trench and his friends began to seem very near. Crossing the neutral ground, which at other times would have loomed as a dangerous adventure, was nothing after this hair-raising performance of blundering about inside the German lines. He moved with certainty and

confidence, although yet with the greatest caution. Twice they came to a belt of wire running down to the edges of the trench they followed. The Lieutenant, after a brief pause to look and listen, slid down into the trench, passed the wire, climbed out again, always with Studd close behind him. Once they lay flat on the very edge of the trench and watched a German pass along beneath them so close they could have put a hand on his helmet. Once more they crouched in a shell-hole while a dozen men floundered along the trench. And so they came at last to the front line. Foot by foot they wriggled close up to it. The Lieutenant at first saw no sign of a German, but Studd beside him gripped his arm with a warning pressure, and the Lieutenant lay motionless. Suddenly, what he had taken to be part of the outline of the parapet beyond the trench moved and raised, and he saw the outline of a steel-helmeted head and a pair of broad shoulders. The man turned his head and spoke, and with a shock the Lieutenant heard a murmur of voices in the trench, saw figures stir and move in the mist. Studd wriggled noiselessly closer and, with his lips touching the Lieutenant's ear, whispered "I know where we are. Remember this bit We crossed to the left of

we're on. here."

They backed away from the trench a little and worked carefully along it to their left, and presently Studd whispered "About here, I think." They edged closer in, staring across for sight of the silhouette of the rifle butt above the parapet. The mist had grown thicker again and the parapet showed no more than a faint gray bulk against the lighter gray. The trench appeared to be full of men"standing to" the Lieutenant supposed they were-and they moved at the

most appalling risk, their lives hanging on their silence and stealth, perhaps on the chance of some man climbing back out of the trench. The Lieutenant was shivering with excitement, his nerves jumping at every movement or sound of a voice from the trench beside them.

A

Studd grasped his elbow again and pointed to the broken edge of trench where they lay, and the Lieutenant, thinking he recognized the spot they had climbed out on their first crossing, stared hard across to the parapet in search of the rifle butt. He saw it at last. But what lay between it and them? Were there Germans crouching in the trench bottom? But they must risk that, risk everything in a dash across and over the parapet. puff of wind stirred and set the mist eddying and lifting a moment. They dare wait no longer. If the wind came the mist would go, and with it would go their chance of crossing the No Man's Land. He whispered a moment to Studd, sat up, twisted his legs round to the edge of the trench, slid his trench dagger from its sheath and settled his fingers to a firm grip on the handle, took a deep breath, and slid over feet foremost into the trench. In two quick strides he was across it and scrambling up the parapet. The trench here was badly broken down and a muddy pool lay in the bottom. Studd caught a foot in something and splashed heavily, and a voice from a yard or two on their left called sharply. The Lieutenant slithering over the parapet heard and cringed from the shot he felt must come. But a voice to their right answered; the Lieutenant slid down, saw Studd scramble over after, heard the voices calling and answering and men splashing in the trench behind them. He rose to his feet and ran, Studd following close. From the parapet behind came the spitting bang of a rifle and

He

the bullet whipped past most uncomfortably close. It would have been safer perhaps to have dropped to shelter in a shell-hole and crawled on after a reasonable wait, but the Lieutenant had had enough of crawling and shell-holes for one night, and was in a most single-minded hurry to get away as far and as fast as he could from Germans' neighborhood. and Studd ran on, and no more shots followed them. The mist was thinning rapidly, and they found their own outposts in the act of withdrawal to the trench. The Lieutenant hurried past them, zigzagged through their own wire, and with a gasp of relief jumped down into the trench. He sat there a few minutes to recover his breath and then started along the line to find Headquarters and make his report.

On his way he met the officer who had watched them leave the trench and was greeted with a laugh. "Hullo, The Cornhill Magazine.

old cock. Some mud! You look as if you'd been crawling a bit. See any Boche?"

"Crawling!" said the Lieutenant. "Any Boche! I've been doing nothing but crawl for a hundred years-except when I was squirming on my face. And I've been falling over Boche, treading on Boche, bumping into Boche, listening to Boche remarksoh, ever since I can remember," and he laughed, just a trifle hysterically.

"Did you get over their line then? If so, you're just back in time. Mist has clean gone in the last few minutes." A sudden thought struck the Lieutenant. He peered long and carefully over the parapet. The last wisps of mist were shredding away and the jumble of torn ground and trenches and wire in the German lines was plainly visible. "Look," said the Lieutenant. "Three or four hundred yards behind their line-hanging on some wire. That's my coat. . . .”

Boyd Cable.

At the time of America's first entry into the war we hazarded the forecast that the conditions of blockade would become progressively effective. All American traditions are associated with the recognition of a belligerent's right to use every available means of reducing the enemy to submission by cutting off his supplies, and the strongest precedents for the employment of sea-power to this end are still drawn from the incidents of the Civil War. In the first two years of the war we systematically ignored those precedents in our dealings with neutrals. Whilst we made a profession of preventing exports reaching German ports, we left many doors open for evasion in the loose supervision of cargoes consigned to Holland and Scandinavia.

These small neutrals were reaping a fabulous harvest by their trade with the enemy, and the fact was known to our Government. The fault did not lie with the Navy, but with the Foreign Office, which, under the Grey régime, changed its policy from month to month and displayed a solicitude for neutral interests which must have been a source of joy and merriment to the Wilhelmstrasse. The vigilance of our seamen was "strangled in a network of juridical niceties," and but for the persistence of the remnant of opposition left to the House of Commons, there is every probability that we should today be bound by the terms of the Declaration of London. Only by a miracle of good luck did we escape from a binding acceptance of that

complete abrogation of our maritime rights which had been so artfully imposed upon our Radical politicians by the very Powers who have refused themselves to observe any international rules of the sea. And there is little doubt that once having agreed to the limitations of the Declaration of London, the Asquith-Grey Administration would have felt pledged to the covenant however flagrantly Germany might have violated her own undertakings.

An attitude founded

on ignorance of sea warfare and the flabby sentiment which poses as progressive thinking would have remained unshaken by the accumulation of evidence that the enemy was determined to acknowledge no law that was not to his own advantage.

to

No encouragement was given this Utopian folly by our Allies. They spared no effort, within the limits of their capacity, to get a strangle-grip upon the Central Empires, but the last word in the application of sea-power rested with our Foreign Office. Even when we reasserted, in theory, our old-time rights at sea, the spirit of the old policy of compromise brooded over our efforts to control neutral imports. Our "Blockade Ministry" was far more careful to give the benefit of the doubt to any suspected cargo than to run the risk of inflicting possible hardship upon a neutral merchant. This punctiliousness would have been praiseworthy in normal times, and would have reflected credit upon the business transactions of private individuals, but it was crass stupidity in prosecuting a policy designed to reduce a foe who had declared a piratical war upon all civilian shipping which was not engaged in bringing him the sinews of war. American opinion at that time carried great weight with our Foreign Office, and no offense can be given now in recalling the many inconsistencies

We

which characterized American protests at the interference of our warships with the free passage of Transatlantic supplies to enemy destinations. were solemnly warned that we had not established an effective blockade when we had made no such pretension. An effective blockade in the text-book meaning of the term is not possible under the conditions of modern warfare. The days are past when a blockading fleet could watch at the mouth of an enemy port or patrol an enemy's coast. With fast cruisers and battleships almost as fast, it matters little whether the fleet is a hundred or more miles away, provided it is ready and able to prevent vessels getting through to the enemy. Then, on other occasions, we were urged to observe rules of international law which we had never ratified, or perhaps to stand by another code which our critics themselves had declined to ratify. These protests were all understandable as coming from a people who were resolved to remain outside the European upheaval and were merely desirous of selling their goods to all parties in the quarrel. The error lay in the gravity with which our Diplomatic Service argued debatable points of law, relaxing our blockade operations in the meanwhile. We could so easily have justified the right of general capture of goods affected with an enemy taint by reference to that unimpeachable authority, the late Admiral Mahan.

But we have changed all that. America is now determined to fix as short a duration on the war as is compatible with a decisive finish, and to that end is putting the moral backbone into the Allies' blockade pressure which had hitherto been lacking. President Wilson's proclamation prohibits the shipment of any goods to Europe for neutrals except under