MY DEAR CHARLES,—­I’ve become so artful these days in disguising identities under assumed names that I’m hanged if I can remember myself which of my people is which.  Still I daresay your own memory isn’t too good, so we’ll call him Ross this time, and trust to luck that that is what we called him last time.  He is that one of my friends and fellow sinners who was plugging along nicely at the Bar in 1914, and was just about to take silk, when he changed his mind, came to France and got mixed up in what he calls “this vulgar brawl on the Continent.”  After nearly three years of systematic warfare in the second line he has at last achieved the rank of full lieutenant, which is not so bad for a growing lad of forty-five; and is running one of those complicated but fascinating side-shows which, to oblige Their Exigencies, we have to label Queer Trades, and leave at that.

Whether his department is or is not making history it is certainly one which calls for a vast amount of special knowledge in its personnel.  Ross, having been at the Bar, knows nothing and knows that he knows nothing, but is able to pretend to know just enough to keep his end up with Thos.  J. Brown, who, disguised as a corporal, really runs the business.  “Our Mr. Brown,” as Ross calls him, is one of those nice old gentlemen who wear large spectacles and cultivate specialist knowledge on the intensive system.  Owing to his infallibility in all details and upon all occasions he was much sought after in peace time by the larger commercial houses.  When War broke out our Mr. Brown disdained peace.  He made at once for the Front; but his aged legs, though encased in quite the most remarkable puttees in France, were found to be less reliable than his head, and he was held up on his way to the trenches and diverted to the stool of Ross’s office.

He began by putting some searching and dreadfully intelligent questions to Ross; dissatisfied with Ross’s answers, he concentrated his mind on the business for twenty-four consecutive hours, at the end of which period he was the master of it in more senses than one.  Since that time Ross has ensured the efficient running of his office by keeping out of it when it is busy.  When for appearance sake he has to be there he does as his Mr. Brown tells him, and never wastes the latter’s time by arguing.

In the Army, all fleas have bigger fleas upon their backs to bite ’em.  Were this not so somebody would have to act upon his own responsibility, and that, as you will admit, would make war an impossibility.  Accordingly in every department there is a series of authorities, starting with “other ranks” at the bottom, proceeding in an ascending scale of dignity and worth, and disappearing through a cloud of Generals into an infinite of which no man knoweth the nature.  Thus, with Ross’s business (to take the tail end of it) the letter which the Corporal writes the Lieutenant signs on behalf of the Major.  It is when the Major wants to do something more active that trouble arises.  Let us take an incidental matter of administrative detail for example, setting it forth, as all military matters should be set forth, in paragraphs, separately numbered:—­