cticable--the bold project of a
petition to the King and Lord Kitchener was never proceeded with--two
questions alone interested us: (1) which was the best polish, and (2)
which was the quickest and easiest system of polishing. The shabby
peddler-cum-boot-maker who had somehow established, at that period, a
monopoly of the minor trade of our camp, vended a substance (in penny
tins) called Soldier's Friend. This was a solidified plate-polish of a
pink hue. Having--as per the instructions--"moistened" it, in other
words, spat upon it, you worked up a modicum of the resulting pink mud
with an old toothbrush, then applied same to each button. When you had
rubbed a pink film on to the button you proceeded to rub it off again,
and lo! the tarnish had departed like an evil dream and the metal
glistened as if fresh from the mint. If you were very particular you
finished the performance with chamois leather. Thereafter you lost the
last precious five minutes before parade in efforts, with knife-blade or
clothesbrush, to remove from your tunic the smears of pink paste which
had failed to repose on the buttons and had stuck to the surrounding
cloth instead. Luckily, Soldier's Friend dries and cakes and powders off
fairly quickly. It is a lovable substance, in its simple behaviour, its
lack of complications. I surmise that somebody has made a fortune out of
manufacturing millions of those penny tins. There is at least one
imitation of Soldier's Friend on the market, and, like most imitations,
it is neither better nor worse than the original. Except for the name on
the outside of the tin, the two commodities cannot be told apart. No
doubt the imitator has likewise made a fortune. If so, both fortunes
have been amassed from a foible to whose blatant uselessness and
wastefulness even a Bond Street jeweller or a de-luxe hotel chef would
be ashamed to give countenance.

One member of the hut's company, more fastidious than his fellows,
objected to expectorating on to his Soldier's Friend. Rather than do so
he would tramp the fifty yards to our wash-place and obtain a couple of
drops of water from the tap. (The same man thought nothing of keeping a
half-consumed ham, some decaying fruit, and an opened pot of Bovril all
wrapped in his spare clothes in his box under his bed. That is by the
way. I am here concerned not with human nature, but with buttons.) Plain
water, however, was voted less effective than the more popular liquid.
The scie