then likely to be personally removed at any moment by it saw nothing in the progress of it to be depressed about.  As the evening wore on and they all came to find that they knew much more about the subject than they supposed, they were prepared to increase the allowance of casualties in pressing the merits of their own pet schemes.  No gloom arose from the possibility that this generous offer might well include their own health and limbs.  There was no gloom; there was even no desire to change the subject.  Indeed, the better to continue it they called for something to drink.  There was nothing to drink, announced the Mess Orderly.  Why was there nothing to drink? asked the Mess President, advocate of enormous offensives on a wide front for an indefinite period of years, if need be.  The Mess Orderly explained that more drink was on order, it had not arrived because of difficulties of carriage.  Why were there difficulties of carriage?  Because of the War.  “Confound the War,” said the Mess President.  “It really is the most infernal nuisance.”

I know a Captain Jones, resident a cottage on the road to the trenches (he calls this cottage his “Battle Box"), whose mind was very violently moved from the impersonal to the personal point of view by a quite trifling incident.  He has one upstairs room for office, bedroom, sitting, reception and dining room.  His meals are brought over to him by his servant from an estaminet across the road over which his window looks.  The other morning he was standing at this window waiting for his breakfast to arrive.  It was a fine frosty day, made all the brighter by the sound of approaching bagpipes.  Troops were about to march past, suggesting great national thoughts to Jones and reminding him of the familiar details of his own more active days.  Jones prepared to enjoy himself.

Colonels on horses, thought Jones as he contemplated, are much of a muchness—­always the look of the sahib about them, the slightly proud, the slightly stuffy, the slightly weather-beaten, the slightly affluent sahib.  Company Commanders, also on horses, but somehow or other not quite so much on horses as the Colonels, are the same all the army through—­very confident of themselves, but hoping against hope that there is nothing about their companies to catch the Adjutant’s eye.  The Subaltern walks as he has always done, lighthearted if purposeful, trusting that all is as it should be, but feeling that if it isn’t that is some one else’s trouble.  Sergeants, Corporals, Lance-corporals and men have not altered.  The Sergeants relax on the march into something almost bordering on friendliness towards their victims; the Corporals thank Heaven that for the moment they are but men; the Lance-corporals thank Heaven that always they are something more than men, and the men have the look of having decided that this is the last kilometre they’ll ever footslog for anybody, but while they are doing it they might as well be cheerful about it.  The regimental transport makes a change from the regularity of column of route, and the comic relief is provided, as it has always been and always will be provided whatever the disciplinary martinets may say or do, by the company cooks.