“In fact,” said Colonel Kemp, “this war will end when the Boche has lost so many men as to be unable to man his present trench-line, and not before.”

“You don’t think, sir, that we shall make another Push?” suggested Angus M’Lachlan eagerly.  The others were silent:  they had experienced a Push already.

“Not so long as the Boche continues to play our game for us, by attacking.  If he tumbles to the error he is making, and digs himself in again—­well, it may become necessary to draw him.  In that case, M’Lachlan, you shall have first chop at the Victoria Crosses.  Afraid I can’t recommend you for your last exploit, though I admit it must have required some nerve!”

There was unseemly laughter at this allusion.  Four nights previously Angus had been sent out in charge of a wiring-party.  He had duly crawled forth with his satellites, under cover of darkness, on to No Man’s Land; and, there selecting a row of “knife-rests” which struck him as being badly in need of repair, had well and truly reinforced the same with many strands of the most barbarous brand of barbed wire.  This, despite more than usually fractious behaviour upon the part of the Boche.

Next morning, through a sniper’s loophole, he exhibited the result of his labours to Major Wagstaffe.  The Major gazed long and silently upon his subordinate’s handiwork.  There was no mistaking it.  It stood out bright and gleaming in the rays of the rising sun, amid its dingy surroundings of rusty ironmongery.  Angus M’Lachlan waited anxiously for a little praise.

“Jolly good piece of work,” said Major Wagstaffe at last.  “But tell me, why have you repaired the Boche wire instead of your own?”

“The only enemy we have to fear,” continued Colonel Kemp, rubbing his spectacles savagely, “is the free and independent British voter—­I mean, the variety of the species that we have left at home.  Like the gentleman in Jack Point’s song, ‘He likes to get value for money’; and he is quite capable of asking us, about June or July, ’if we know that we are paid to be funny?’—­before we are ready.  What’s your view of the situation at home, Wagstaffe?  You’re the last off leave.”

Wagstaffe shook his head.

“The British Nation,” he said, “is quite mad.  That fact, of course, has been common property on the Continent of Europe ever since Cook’s Tours were invented.  But what irritates the orderly Boche is that there is no method in its madness.  Nothing you can go upon, or take hold of, or wring any advantage from.”

“As how?”

“Well, take compulsory service.  For generations the electorate of our country has been trained by a certain breed of politician—­the Bandar-log of the British Constitution—­to howl down such a low and degrading business as National Defence.  A nasty Continental custom, they called it.  Then came the War, and the glorious Voluntary System got to work.”

“Aided,” the Colonel interpolated, “by a campaign of mural advertisement which a cinema star’s press agent would have boggled at!”