f tinned food flavoured with grit and plaster dust.

The signallers were established with their telephones at the foot of
the stone stair outside the cellar door, and into this cramped
'exchange' ran the telephone wires from the companies in the trenches
and from the Brigade Headquarters a mile or two back. Every word that
the signallers spoke was plainly heard in the cellar, and every time
the Colonel heard 'Hello! Yes, this is H.Q.,' he sat motionless
waiting to hear what message was coming through. When his meal was
finished he resisted an impulse to 'phone' all the forward trenches,
asking how things were, unlaced his boots, paused, and laced them up
again, lay down on a very gritty mattress in a corner of the cellar,
and tried to sleep. For the first hour every rattle of rifle fire,
every thud of a gun, every call on the telephone brought him up on his
pillow, his ears straining to catch any further sound. After about the
tenth alarm he reasoned the matter out with himself something after
this fashion:--

'The battalion is occupying a position that has not been attacked for
weeks, and it is disposed as other Regular battalions have been, and no
more and no less effectually than they. There isn't an officer or man
in the forward trenches who cannot be fully trusted to keep a look-out
and to resist an attack to the last breath. There is no need to worry
or keep awake, and to do so is practically admitting a distrust of the
7th K.O.A. I trust them fully, and therefore I ought to go to sleep.'

Whereupon the Colonel sat up, took off his wet boots, lay down again,
resolutely closed his eyes--and remained wide awake for the rest of the
night.

But if there be any who feel inclined to smile at the nervousness of an
elderly, stoutish, and constitutionally easy-going Colonel of
Territorials, I would remind them of a few facts. The Colonel had
implicit faith in the stout-heartedness, the spirit, the fighting
quality of his battalion. He had had the handling and the training of
them ever since mobilisation, and he knew every single man of them as
well as they knew themselves. They had done everything asked of them
and borne light-heartedly rough quarters, bad weather, hard duties.
But--and one must admit it a big and serious 'but'--to-night might be
their real and their first testing in the flame and fire of War.

Even as no man knows how he will feel and behave under fire, until he
has been under fire, so no