"On the forty-mile semicircular firing-line around the French fortress, from the River Meuse above St. Mihiel to Avocourt, the Germans probably have several thousand guns, at least 2,500, in action or reserve.

He had left the firing-line, crawled away in the dark, and found a quiet spot to die in.

It should be mentioned, perhaps, that he not only doctored and operated on the sick and wounded, but he kept the stores, and when any fighting was to be done, took a rifle and filled any place which might be vacant in the firing-line.

Across the table, a big French dragoon, just in from the firing-line, his horsetail helmet on the chair beside him, was also dining.

In the same editorial was a letter from a father whose two sons, on the firing-line, had received none of the family letters since the beginning of the war and wrote pathetically asking if their parents and little sister were ill, or how they had offended.

" The memory of that phrase came back to Private Everton, tramping down the dark road to the firing-line.

And yet, as the same two officers marched with their battalion through the town towards the firing-line that evening, they found the streets quite normally bustling and astir, and there seemed to be no lack of light in the shops and houses and about the streets.

Now you must bear in mind that although one could get into Antwerp with comparative ease, it by no means followed that one could get out to the firing-line.

They simply donned privates' uniforms, and went into the firing-line.

We had not been on the firing-line half an hour, however, before two gendarmes came tearing up in a motor-car and informed us that we were under arrest and must return with them to Boom.

" They were not ashamed to confess the terror that still shook them, and wondered, like children, at the luckthe miracle of luckwhich had summoned them from their place in the firing-line to be the escort of an officer to Paris, with safe seats in his motor-car.

There were embusqués in Paris-perhaps hundreds, or even thousands of young men who searched for soft jobs which would never take them to the firing-line, or who pleaded ill-health with the successful influence of a family or political "pull."

One English major, before he reached his own firing-line, was hit by a bursting shell in three places.

When after hundreds of delays we did reach the firing-line, we always announced we were on our way back to Paris and would convey there postal cards and letters.

Yet at the word that company of cavalry might be in the thick of it, at the point where they were wanted; the infantry rushing to the support of the firing-line; the motor transport facing around for withdrawal, if need be.

They were kept back out of range of the German shells, making the town a dead space between them and the firing-line, which was beyond.

Our statesman said that we had better give up trying to locate the battery; and one of the officers called a halt to trying to go up to the firing-line on the part of a personally-conducted party, after we stopped a private hurrying back from the front on some errand.

I saw some in trenches occupied by Bavarian reserves not far back of where their firing-line had been.

They talk of war aboard the Pullman, after officers have waved their hands out of the windows to their wives, quite as if they were going to Scotland for a weekend instead of back to the firing-line.

Later, under cover of night, they had made their way in the direction of the firing-line, arriving just in time to make a dash before daylight discovered them.

By midnight several hundred yards of the firing-line know for a fact that there has been a naval disaster of the first magnitude off the coast of a place which every one calls Gally Polly, and that the whole of our Division are to be transferred forthwith to the Near East to stem the tide of calamity.

At any moment they may be called upon to halt, and crowd into the roadside, while a transport-train passes carrying rations, and coke, and what is called "R.E. material"this may be anything from a bag of nails to steel girders nine feet longup to the firing-line.

Next day we found ourselves many miles behind the firing-line, once more in France, with a whole month's holiday in prospect, comfortably conscious that one could walk round a corner or look over a wall without preliminary reconnaissance or subsequent extirpation.

We have only to walk up the communication-trench which leads from the reserve line to the firing-line.

The ghost of Webster hovered in the battle-smoke, and it was his call more than any other that rallied and kept us at the firing-line.