paid him twenty francs for it. It would very likely have sold for a hundred marks in Berlin.
Two days later I went to La Harazee again. I had gone about half way when a poilu stopped me and asked for a ride. We are not supposed to carry any persons except wounded, but sometimes we take pity on a poor fellow and give him a lift. This particular man was returning to the front from his leave of absence; he had been walking all day and I thought it wouldn't hurt to carry him a few miles. He was a very interesting fellow and turned out to be connected with a still more interesting service. He was one of the operators of a new device for receiving the enemy's telephone messages by means of sound waves through the earth. They have a sort of wireless outfit stationed half a mile behind the first lines, and to this are connected several long copper wires which extend to the German "fil de fer" (barbed-wire) out in No Man's Land, which is about as close as they can get to the German telephone system without being detected. With this apparatus they are able to hear the Boche messages very distinctly. But he told me that both sides now send all of their important news by courier, for the Germans have recently discovered a similar device and they blockade each other's moves very successfully. However, it was used for several months by
