. and his A.P.M.'s are the _Censores Morum_
of the occupied towns, just as the Camp Commandants are the _Aediles_.
It is the duty of an A.P.M. to round up stragglers, visit _estaminets_,
keep a cold eye on brothels, look after prisoners, execute the sentences
of courts-martial, and control street traffic. Which means that he is
more feared than loved. He is never obtrusive but he is always there. I
remarked once when lunching with a certain A.P.M. that although I had
already been three weeks at G.H.Q., and had driven through his
particular district daily, I had never once been stopped or questioned
by his police. "No," he said quietly, "they reported you the first day
two minutes after you arrived in your car, and asked for instructions;
we telephoned to G.H.Q. and found you were attached to the A.G.'s staff,
and they received orders accordingly. Otherwise you might have had quite
a lively time at X----," which was the next stage of my journey. G.H.Q.
itself is patrolled by a number of Scotland Yard men, remarkable for
their self-effacing habits and their modest preference for dark
doorways. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than to get into that town--or out of it. As for the "Society
ladies," of whom one hears so much, I never saw one of them. If they
were there they must have been remarkably disguised, and none of us knew
anything of them. A conversational lesson in French or English may be
had gratuitously by any Englishman or Frenchman who tries to get into
G.H.Q.; as he approaches the town he will find a French sentry on the
left and an English sentry on the right, the one with a bayonet like a
needle, the other with a bayonet like a table-knife, and each of them
takes an immense personal interest in you and is most anxious to assist
you in perfecting your idiom. They are students of phonetics, too, in
their way, and study your gutturals with almost pedantic affection for
traces of Teutonisms. If the sentry thinks you are not getting on with
your education he takes you aside like Joab, and smites you under the
fifth rib--at least I suppose he does. If he is satisfied he brings his
right hand smartly across the butt of his rifle, and by that masonic
sign you know that you will do. But it is a mistake to continue the
conversation.

Still, holders of authorised passes sometimes lose them, and
unauthorised persons sometimes get hold of them and "convert" them to
their own unlawful uses.