e, and in the trenches.

That veteran regular--let us separate him from the crowd--is a type I
have often seen, a type that has become as familiar as one's
neighbours in one's own town. We will call him the tenth man. That is,
of every ten men who went to the front a year ago in his battalion,
nine are gone. All of the hardships and all of the terrors of war he has
witnessed: men dropped neatly by a bullet; men mangled by shells.

His khaki is spotless, thanks to his wife, who has dressed in her best
for the occasion. Terrible as war itself, but new, that hat of hers, which
probably represented a good deal of looking into windows and
pricing; and her gown of the cheapest material, drooping from her
round shoulders, is the product of the poor dress-making skill of
hands which show only too well who does all the housework at home.
The children, a boy of four and a girl of seven, are in their best, too,
with faces scrubbed till they shine.

You will see like scenes in stations at home when the father has
found work in a distant city and is going on ahead to get established
before the family follow him. Such incidents are common in civil life;
they became common at Victoria Station. What is common has no
significance, editors say.

When the time came to go through the gate, the veteran picked the
boy up in his arms and pressed him very close and the little girl
looked on wonderingly, while the mother was not going to make it any
harder for the father by tears. "Good-bye, Tom!" she said. So his
name was Tom, this tenth man.

I spoke with him. His battalion was full with recruits. It had been kept
full. But, considering the law of chance, what about the surviving one
out of an original ten?

"Yes, I've had my luck with me," he said. "Probably my turn will come.
Maybe I'll never see the wife and kids again."

The morning roar of London had begun. That station was a small
spot in the city. There were not enough officers and men taking the
train to make up a day's casualty list; for ours was only a small party
returning from leave. The transports, unseen, carried the multitudes.
Wherever one had gone in England he had seen soldiers and
wherever he went in France he was to see still more soldiers.
England had become an armed camp; and England plodded on,
"muddled" on, preparing, ever preparing, to forge in time of war the
thunderbolt for war which was undreamed of in time of peace when
other nations were forging their th