preciate what a fortunate lot they are to have not a
ribbon of saltwater but a broad sea full of it, and the British navy, too,
between them and the thing on the other side of the zone of death.

G.H.Q. means General Headquarters and B.E.F., which shows the
way for your letters from England, means British Expeditionary Force.
The high leading, the brains of the army, are theoretically at G.H.Q.
That word theoretically is used advisedly in view of opinion at other
points. An officer sent from G.H.Q. to command a brigade had not
been long out before he began to talk about those confounded one-
thing-and-another fellows at G.H.Q. When he was at G.H.Q. he used
to talk about those confounded one-thing-and-another fellows who
commanded corps, divisions, and brigades at the front. The
philosophers of G.H.Q. smiled and the philosophers of the army
smiled--it was the old story of the staff and the line; of the main office
and the branches. But the line did the most smiling to see the new
brigadier getting a taste of his own medicine.

G.H.Q. directs the whole; here every department of all that vast
concern which supplies the hundreds of thousands of men and
prepares for the other hundreds of thousands is focussed. The
symbol of its authority is a red band round the cap, which means that
you are a staff officer. No war at G.H.Q., only the driving force of war.
It seems as far removed from the front as the New York office of a
string of manufacturing plants.

If one follows a red-banded cap into a door he sees other officers and
clerks and typewriters, and a sign which says that a department chief
has his desk in the drawing-room of a private house--where he has
had it for months. Go to one mess and you will hear talk about
garbage pails and how to kill flies; to another, about hospitals and
clearing stations for the wounded; to another, about barbed wire,
sandbags, spades, timber, and galvanized iron--the engineers; to
another, about guns, shells, rifles, bullets, mortars, bombs, bayonets,
and high explosives--the ordnance; to another, about jam, bread,
bacon, uniforms, iron rations, socks, underclothes, tinned goods,
fresh beef, and motor-trucks--the Army Service Corps; to another,
about attacks, counter-attacks, and salients, and about what the
others are doing and will have to do--the operations.

The Chief of Staff drives the eight-horse team. He works sixteen
hours a day. So do most of the others. This is how you prove t