at that period, a monopoly of the minor trade of our camp, vended a substance (in penny tins) called Soldier’s Friend.  This was a solidified plate-polish of a pink hue.  Having—­as per the instructions—­“moistened” it, in other words, spat upon it, you worked up a modicum of the resulting pink mud with an old toothbrush, then applied same to each button.  When you had rubbed a pink film on to the button you proceeded to rub it off again, and lo! the tarnish had departed like an evil dream and the metal glistened as if fresh from the mint.  If you were very particular you finished the performance with chamois leather.  Thereafter you lost the last precious five minutes before parade in efforts, with knife-blade or clothesbrush, to remove from your tunic the smears of pink paste which had failed to repose on the buttons and had stuck to the surrounding cloth instead.  Luckily, Soldier’s Friend dries and cakes and powders off fairly quickly.  It is a lovable substance, in its simple behaviour, its lack of complications.  I surmise that somebody has made a fortune out of manufacturing millions of those penny tins.  There is at least one imitation of Soldier’s Friend on the market, and, like most imitations, it is neither better nor worse than the original.  Except for the name on the outside of the tin, the two commodities cannot be told apart.  No doubt the imitator has likewise made a fortune.  If so, both fortunes have been amassed from a foible to whose blatant uselessness and wastefulness even a Bond Street jeweller or a de-luxe hotel chef would be ashamed to give countenance.

One member of the hut’s company, more fastidious than his fellows, objected to expectorating on to his Soldier’s Friend.  Rather than do so he would tramp the fifty yards to our wash-place and obtain a couple of drops of water from the tap. (The same man thought nothing of keeping a half-consumed ham, some decaying fruit, and an opened pot of Bovril all wrapped in his spare clothes in his box under his bed.  That is by the way.  I am here concerned not with human nature, but with buttons.) Plain water, however, was voted less effective than the more popular liquid.  The scientifically minded had a notion that human spittle contained some acid which Nature had evolved specially to assist the action of Soldier’s Friend.  I am bound to say that I was of the anti-plain-water party myself.  For a space I became an adherent of the experimentalists who moistened their Soldier’s Friend with methylated spirit, alleging that the ensuing polish was more permanent.  I lapsed.  My small bottle of methylated spirit came to an end, and on reflection I was not sure that its superiority over spittle had been proved.  Nothing, in the English climate, can make the sheen of metal buttons endure, at the outside, more than one day.  “Bluebell,” “Silvo,” and the other chemico-frictional preparations in favour of which I ultimately abandoned Soldier’s Friend, are alike in this—­that their virtue lies in frequent application, diligence