* * * * *

THE WATCH DOGS.

LX.

My dear CHARLES,—­Those who insist that between the Higher Commands on either side there is a tacit understanding not to disregard each other’s personal comfort and welfare must now modify their views.  Recent movements show that there is no such bargain, or else that the lawless Hun has broken it.  He has attained little else by his destructiveness save the discomfort of H.Q.  Otherwise the War progresses as merrily as ever; more merrily, perhaps, owing to the difficulties to be overcome.  Soldiers love difficulties to overcome.  That is their business in life.

It was open to the Camp Commandant, when it became likely that H.Q. would move, to go sick, to retire from business, or else, locking, his front-door, shutting his shutters, disconnecting his telephone and confining to their billets all potential bearers of urgent messages, to isolate himself from the throbbing world around him.  Being a soldier himself, however, he was undone by his own innate lust for overcoming difficulties.  He was seen hovering about, as good as asking for the instructions he most dreaded.  And he got them, short and sharp, as all good military instructions should be.

If I was called upon to move a busy community from one village to another, and if the other village was discovered, upon inquiry, not to be there, I should ask for ten to twelve months’ time to do it in.  The C.C. asked for a fortnight, hoping to get ten days; he got a week.  “It is now the 31st.  We should move to the new place about the 7th,” said the Highest Authority.  “Let it be April 7th.”  Thus April 7th became permanently and irrevocably fixed.  For everybody except the C.C. and his accomplices the thing was as good as done.

The ultimatum went forth at 10 A.M. at noon on the same day; the period of unrest for the C.C. was well set in.  Every department, learning by instinct what was forward, forthwith discovered what it had long suspected, its own immediate and paramount importance.  Every department appointed a representative to go round and see the C.C. about it, another representative to write to him about it, and a third to ring him up on the telephone, and go on ringing him up on the telephone, about it.  The only departments that kept modestly in the background were those upon which the execution of the move fell.  The C.C., noting the queue of representatives at his front-door and the agitation of his telephone, slipped out by the back-door, and went to look for the workers, and, when he’d found them, he lived with them, night and day, here, there and everywhere.

Humanity is not constituted for such close friendships.  As time passed the C.C. and his accomplices found relations becoming strained.  They said things to each other which afterwards they regretted.  Meanwhile also the departments with the paramount and immediate needs grew bitter and restless.  Only the Highest Authorities remained tranquil.