than I am myself. He had a different mentality, outlook,
preoccupation. He was a man in business. He received orders--I
use the word in the business sense--from the Brigades of the
Division; and those orders, ever varying, had to be executed and
delivered within thirty-six hours. Quite probably he had never seen a
trench; I should be neither surprised nor pained to learn that he
could only hit a haystack with a revolver by throwing the revolver at
the haystack. His subordinates resembled him. Strategy, artillery-
mathematics, the dash of infantry charges--these matters were not
a bit in their line. Nevertheless, when you read in a despatch that
during a prolonged action supplies went regularly up to the Front
under heavy fire, you may guess that fortitude and courage are
considerably in their line. These officers think about their arriving
trains, and about emptying them in the shortest space of time; and
they think about their motor-lorries and the condition thereof; and
they pass their lives in checking lists and in giving receipts for things
and taking receipts for things. Their honour may be in a receipt. And
all this is the very basis of war.

My Major handled everything required for his division except water
and ammunition. He would have a train full of multifarious
provender, and another train full of miscellanies--from field-guns to
field-kitchens--with letters from wives and sweethearts in between.
And all these things came to him up the line of railway out of the sea
simply because he asked for them and was ready to give a receipt
for them. He was not concerned with the magic underlying their
appearance at his little rail-head; he only cared about the train being
on time, and the lorries being in first-class running order. He
sprayed out in beneficent streams from his rail-head tons of stuff
every day. Every day he sent out two hundred and eighty bags of
postal matter to the men beyond. The polish on the metallic portions
of his numerous motor-lorries was uncanny. You might lift a bonnet
and see the bright parts of the engine glittering like the brass of a
yacht. Dandyism of the Army Service Corps!

An important part of the organism of the rail-head is the Railway
Construction Section Train. Lines may have to be doubled. The
Railway Construction Section Train doubles them; it will make new
railways at the rate of several miles a day; it is self-contained, being
simultaneously a depot, a workshop, and a bar