Connecticut western news., 1915-12-02

KipIinq, under the general titIe oT
 "France at War on the Frontier of
 Civilization" describing the irn-
 pressions of a visit to the fighting line in France.
 By RUDYARD KiPLING. 1Copvrieht 1915 by the Sun Printing and
 Publishing association.1
 hn1 Sn6y B9ssR 'o @sn 'as "'iaHs na5 9sasa %s'
 v bullet scrape across the bridge
 of his nose and an Alpine cap over one ear. His people few hun dred years ago had been Scotch. lie bore a Scotch name and still rccognlZ- ed the head of his clan, but his French occasionally ran into German words, for he was Alsatian on one side.
 This he explained, lis the very best country ill the world to fight ill. 1t is picturesque and full of cover. I'm gunner. I've been here for months It's lovely"
 It might have been the hills under Mussoorie, and what our ears expect ed to do ill it I could not understand, but our demon driver, who had been
 
 CT Mercedes and threaded the narrow valleys as well as occasional half Swiss villages full of Alpine troops at re strained thirty miles an hour. He shot up a new made road more like Mus soorie than ever and did not fall down the hillside even once. An ammun1- tion mule of a mountain battery met him at tight corner and began to climb tree.
 'There isn't another place ill France where that could happen" said Alan. ''I tell you this is a magnificent coun- try"
 The mule was hauled down by his tail after he had reached the lower branches and went on through the woods, his ammunition boxes jinking on his back for all the world as if he were rejoining his battery at JutoTh. One expected to meet the little hill people bent under their loads under the forest gloom. The light, the color, the smell of wood smoke, pine needles, wet earth and warm mule were all Himalayas. Only the Mercedes was violently and loudly stranger.
 Near the German Positions.
 ."Halt!" said Alan at last, when she had done everything except initiate the mule.
 "The road continues" said the demon driver seductively.
 'Yes, but they will hear you if you go on. Stop and wait. We've a noun tain battery to look at
 They were not at work for Il mo- ment, and the commander, a grim, forceful man, showed me some details of their construction. When we left them in their bower it looked like q | hill priests wayside shrine. We heard them singing through the steep, de scending pines. They too, like the ''75'' men, seem to have no pet name l in service
 | 1t was a pOisonously blind country. l The woods blocked all sense of direc- ton. Above and around the ground was at any angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by the tree trunks, which acted as si- | lencers. High above us the respecta- ble, all concealing forest had turned into sparse, ghastly blue sticks of tim ber-an assembly of leper trees around a bald mountain top.
 That's where we're going" said Alan. "Isn't it an adorable country?"
 Shots Are Exchanged.
 A machine gun loosed few shots in the fumbling style of her kind when they feel for an opening. A couple of rifle shots answered. They might have been half a mile away or a hundred yards below.
 An adorable country! We climbed up till we found once again complete tea garden; little sunk houses almost invisible ill the brown pink recesses of the thick forest. Here the trenches began, and with them for the next few hours life in two dimensions-length and breadth.
 You could have eaten your dinner almost anywhere off the swept dry ground, for steep slopes favored drain ing There was no lack of timber, and there was unlimited labor. It had made neat, double length dugouts, where the wounded could be laid during their passage down the mountainside; we'll tended occasional latrines, properly lined dugouts for sleeping and eating, overhead projections and tool sheds where needed and, as one came nearer the. working face, very clever cellars to protect against trench sWeepers.
 Men passed on their business-a squad with a captured machine gun, which they tested in a sheltered dip; armorers at their benches busy with sick rifles, fatigue parties for straw Ia tions and ammunition, long processions of single blue figures turned sideways between brown, sunless walls. One understood after awhile the nightmare that lays hold of trench stale men un- til the dreamer, watching seemingly forever in those blind maZes, finds him. self after agonizing centuries out again in the white blaze and horror of the