But we are not always on parade; and then more subtle problems arise.  Some of those were discussed one day by four junior officers, who sat upon a damp and slippery bank by a muddy roadside during a “fall-out” in a route-march.  The four ("reading from left to right,” as they say in high journalistic society) were Second Lieutenant Little, Second Lieutenant Waddell, Second Lieutenant Cockerell, and Lieutenant Struthers, surnamed “Highbrow.”  Bobby we know.  Waddell was a slow-moving but pertinacious student of the science of war from the kingdom of Fife.  Cockerell came straight from a crack public-school corps, where he had been a cadet officer; so nothing in the heaven above or the earth beneath was hid from him.  Struthers owed his superior rank to the fact that in the far back ages, before the days of the O.T.C., he had held a commission in a University Corps.  He was a scholar of his College, and was an expert in the art of accumulating masses of knowledge in quick time for examination purposes.  He knew all the little red manuals by heart, was an infallible authority on buttons and badges, and would dip into the King’s Regulations or the Field Service Pocket-book as another man might dip into the “Sporting Times.”  Strange to say, he was not very good at drilling a platoon.  We all know him.

“What do you do when you are leading a party along a road and meet a Staff Officer?” asked Bobby Little.

“Make a point,” replied Cockerell patronisingly, “of saluting all persons wearing red bands round their hats.  They may not be entitled to it, but it tickles their ribs and gets you the reputation, of being an intelligent young officer.”

“But I say,” announced Waddell plaintively, “I saluted a man with a red hat the other day, and he turned out to be a Military Policeman!”

“As a matter of fact,” announced the pundit Struthers, after the laughter had subsided, “you need not salute anybody.  No compliments are paid on active service, and we are on active service now.”

“Yes, but suppose some one salutes you?” objected the conscientious Bobby Little.  “You must salute back again, and sometimes you don’t know how to do it.  The other day I was bringing the company back from the ranges and we met a company from another battalion—­the Mid Mudshires, I think.  Before I knew where I was the fellow in charge called them to attention and then gave ‘Eyes right!’”

“What did you do?” asked Struthers anxiously.

“I hadn’t time to do anything except grin, and say, ‘Good morning!’” confessed Bobby Little.

“You were perfectly right,” announced Struthers, and Cockerell murmured assent.

“Are you sure?” persisted Bobby Little.  “As I passed the tail of their company one of their subs turned to another and said quite loud, ’My God, what swine!’”

“Showed his rotten ignorance,” commented Cockerell.

At this moment Mr. Waddell, whose thoughts were never disturbed by conversation around him, broke in with a question.