rk course
at Boulogne, commencing to-morrow. A car will be at the dump for you
to-night. A month's leave on completion, of course."

But all courses are not like this; all you can say is that some are less
unlike it than others. I was sitting in a warm billet about twelve noon
having breakfast on the first day out of trenches when the blow fell on
me. I was to report about two days ago at a School of Instruction some
two hundred yards away. I gathered that the course had started without
me. I set some leisurely inquiries in train, in the hope that it might
be over before I joined up. I also asked the Adjutant whether I couldn't
have it put off till next time in trenches, or have it debited to me as
half a machine-gun course payable on demand, or exchange it for a
guinea-pig or a canary, or do anything consistent with the honour of an
officer to stave it off. For to tell the truth, like all people who know
nothing and have known it for a long time, I cherish a deeply-rooted
objection to being instructed.

Unfortunately the Adjutant is one of those weak fellows who always tell
you that they are mere machines in the grip of the powers that change
great nations. So on the third day I bought a nice new slate and satchel
and joined up.

Even now, after some days of intense instruction, I find my condition is
a little confused and foggy. Of course it covers practically the whole
field of military interests, and I ought to be able to win the War in
about three-quarters of an hour, given a reasonable modicum of men,
guns, indents, physical training and bayonet exercise, knowledge of
military law, and acquaintance with the approved methods of conducting a
casualty clearing station, a mechanical transport column, and a field
kitchen. The confusion of mind evident in this last sentence is a high
testimonial to the comprehensive nature of our course.

Physical training made the strongest appeal to me. I remember some of
the best words, not perhaps as they are, but as I caught them from an
almost over-glib expert. Did you know you had a strabismal vertebra? or,
given a strabismal vertebra, that it could be developed to almost any
extent by simply 'eaving from the 'ips? Take my tip and try it next time
you're under shell-fire.

To-morrow we break up, and I join the army. The army has gone away
somewhere while I wasn't looking, and I shall have to make inquiries
about it. You never can tell what these things will do when not kept