and of the thick and centre of it; for no men have ever been through a heavier fight than Pozieres.) We can force some mitigation of all this by one means and one alone--if we can give the Germans worse. The chief anxiety in the mind of the soldier is--have we got the guns and the shells--can we keep ahead of them with guns and our ammunition? That means everything. These men have the nerve to go through these infernos, provided their friends at home do not desert them. If the munition worker could see what I have seen, he would toil as though he were racing against time to save the life of a man. I saw yesterday a letter picked up on the battlefield--it was from an Australian private. "Dear Mother, sisters, brothers and Auntie Lill," it said. "As we are about to go into work that must be done, I want to ask you, if anything should happen to me, not to worry. You must think of all the mothers that have lost ones as dear to them. One thing you can say--that you lost one doing his little bit for a good cause. "I know you shall feel it if anything does happen to me, but I am willing and prepared to give my life for the cause." Such lives hang from hour to hour on the work that is done in the British factories. CHAPTER XX THE NEW FIGHTING _France, August 20th._ It is a month this morning since Australians plunged into the heart of the most modern of battles. They had been in many sorts of battle before; but they had never been in the brunt of the whole war where the science and ingenuity of war had reached for the moment their highest pitch. One month ago they plunged into the very brunt and apex of it. And they are still fighting there. People have spoken of this war as the war of trenches. But the latest battles have reached a stage beyond that. The war of trenches is a comfortable out-of-date phase, to be looked upon with regret and perhaps even some longing. The war of to-day is a war of craters and potholes--a war of crannies and nicks and crevices torn out of the earth yesterday, and to be shattered into new shapes to-morrow. It may not seem easy to believe, but we have seen the Germans under heavy bombardment leaving the shelter of their trenches for safety in the open--jumping out and running forward into shell holes--anywhere so long as they got away from the cover which they had built for themselves. The trench which they left is by next day non-existent--even the airmen looking down on it