Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/86

74 damned dangerous." It is dull, because you stand in a gash in the earth behind some barbed wire and look through a thing called periscope at some more barbed wire two hundred yards away, beyond which, somewhere, is the enemy, whom you hardly ever see. Then when you have stood in the trench for a time, you are put to do some digging, and when you have done the digging you are put to dig something else, and when you have done that digging you are put to dig something else. And when you have finished digging for the time, you are put to carrying something heavy and awkward, and when you have carried that, you are given something else to carry, and when you have carried that, you are given something else to carry, and the next morning there will be plenty of other things to carry. The work of soldiers today is not so much fighting, as digging trenches and roads and railways and wells. When they have finished digging, they have to carry up the heavy and awkward things needed at the front lines. Marshal Joffre said that this war is a war of carriers. The Battle of the Marne was won by us because the enemy carriers failed, and Verdun was saved to us because the French carriers did not fail. All the