fortresses have long ago gone either to swell the death-roll of Germany, or to add to the number of German prisoners who are working behind our lines.
The extraordinary features of the defensive scheme on our immediate front and on our left flank were undoubtedly the Bellenglise and Bellicourt Tunnels. The latter was simply a cunningly-adapted tunnel of civilian origin, where the Canal for some three miles passes through a subterranean cutting. The only local interest this tunnel held was due to the reported discovery within it of a series of cauldrons, one of which contained a dead German, and which were said to be the outward and visible sign of the presence of a plant for rendering down the bodies of German soldiers—a “Kadaververwendungsanstalt” in fact. A close examination of the cauldrons, however, shows nothing to uphold this view, and it is much more likely—indeed practically certain—that the cauldrons were used for disinfecting soldiers' clothes or some equally legitimate purpose.
Far more interesting from a military point of view is the Bellenglise Tunnel, which is probably the best existing monument of that painstaking thoroughness which is the chief racial characteristic of the “Boche.” This huge artificial dug-out, the spoil-heap of which has half buried the village of Bellenglise, and which must have taken many months of effort and endless labour to complete, is an excellent example of the futility of a great part of the human effort the sum of which goes to make up modern war. The pride of the German Engineers' hearts, it was destined to serve merely as a shelter for several hundred demoralized soldiers, who remained safely ensconced within it until, on the arrival of a small party of our men, they delivered themselves up, glad to be finished with the war.
