field judges. We rushed
boldly to the charge, shouting lustily, each man striving to be first at
the enemy's position, only to be intercepted by a staff officer on
horseback, staying the tide of battle with uplifted hand.

"March your men back, officer! You're out of action! My word! You've made
a beastly mess of it! You're not on church parade, you know! You advanced
across the open for three quarters of a mile in close column of platoons!
Three batteries of field artillery and four machine guns have blown you
to blazes! You haven't a man left!"

Sometimes we reached our objective with less fearful slaughter, but at
the moment when there should have been the sharp clash and clang of steel
on steel, the cries and groans of men fighting for their lives, we heard
the bugles from far and near, sounding the "stand by," and friend and
enemy dropped wearily to the ground for a rest while our officers
assembled in conference around the motor of the divisional general.

All this was playing at war, and Tommy was "fed up" with play. As we
marched back to barracks after a long day of monotonous field maneuvers,
he eased his mind by making sarcastic comments upon this inconclusive
kind of warfare. He began to doubt the good faith of the War Office in
calling ours a "service" battalion. As likely as not we were for home
defense and would never be sent abroad.

"Left! Right! Left! Right!
Why did I join the army?
Oh! Why did I ever join Kitchener's Mob?
Lor lummy! I must 'ave been balmy!"--

became the favorite, homeward-bound marching song. And so he "groused"
and grumbled after the manner of Tommies the world over. And in the mean
time he was daily approaching more nearly the standard of efficiency set
by England's inexorable War Lord.

* * * * * *

It was interesting to note the physical improvement in the men wrought by
a life of healthy, well-ordered routine. My battalion was recruited
largely from what is known in England as "the lower middle classes."
There were shop assistants, clerks, railway and city employees, tradesmen,
and a generous sprinkling of common laborers. Many of them had been used
to indoor life, practically all of them to city life, and needed months
of the hardest kind of training before they could be made physically fit,
before they could be seasoned and toughened to withstand the hardships of
active service.

Plenty of hard wo