Forts seem to have a far greater influence on men's
minds than trench-lines. Spend a million on bricks and mortar, concrete arcades, and steel cupolas, and give the whole a sonorous name; then when it is blown to smithereens and occupied by the enemy—as such conglomerations of metal and stone always are— the world shivers. Make an untidy, muddy, disreputable- looking ditch either by delving in the earth or piling up sandbag parapets at a cost which is too small to ho worth thinking about, and you will probably be able to hold it against all comers. Again, if you are driven out of it, nobody attaches any very special importance to the matter, and ten to one the event will never be dignified by such a title as " Fall of a Fortress," but merely by some trite phrase such as " temporary abandonment of a sector of trench-line." The thorough disillusionment of the military world in regard to forts should prove a consolation to the economists. Consider the millions upon millions which have been spent by our Allies and our enemies on fortifications, and which would have continued to be spent had the course of this war as regards fortifications been different. The Exchequers will have good cause to bless the triumph of the pickaxe and the spade.
