y, that is the way to get a good impression. There would
be plenty of time to sleep when I returned to London.

So Captain P------ and I lay there talking. I felt the dampness of the
earth under my body and the walls exuded moisture. The average
cellar was dry by comparison. "You will get your death of cold!" any
mother would cry in alarm if her boy were found even sitting on such
cold, wet ground. For it was a clammy night of early spring. Yet,
peculiarly enough, few men get colds from this exposure. One gets
colds from draughts in overheated rooms much oftener. Luckily, it
was not raining; it had been raining most of the winter in the flat
country of Northern France and Flanders.

"It is very horrible, this kind of warfare," said the captain. He was
thinking of the method of it, rather than of the discomforts. "All war is
very horrible, of course." Regular soldiers rarely take any other view.
They know war.

"With your wounded arm you might be back in England on leave," I
suggested.

"Oh, that arm is all right!" he replied. "This is what I am paid for"--
which I had heard regulars say before. "And it is for England!" he
added, in his quiet way. "Sometimes I think we should fight better if
we officers could hate the Germans," he went on. "The German idea
is that you must hate if you are going to fight well. But we can't hate."

Sound views he had about the war; sounder than I have heard from
the lips of Cabinet ministers. For these regular officers are specialists
in war.

"Do you think that we shall starve the Germans out?"

"No. We must win by fighting," he replied. This was in March, 1915.
"You know," he went on, taking another tack, "when one gets back to
England out of this muck he wants good linen and everything very
nice."

"Yes. I've found the same after roughing it," I agreed. "One is most
particular that he has every comfort to which civilization entitles him."

We chatted on. Much of our talk was soldier shop talk, which you will
not care to hear. Twice we were interrupted by an outburst of firing,
and the captain hurried out to ascertain the reason. Some false alarm
had started the rifles speaking from both sides. A fusillade for two or
three minutes and the firing died down to silence.

Dawn broke and it was time for me to go; and with daylight, when
danger of a night surprise was over, the captain would have his
sleep. I was leaving him to his mud house and his bed on the wet
ground without a