ntifically minded had a notion that human spittle contained some
acid which Nature had evolved specially to assist the action of
Soldier's Friend. I am bound to say that I was of the anti-plain-water
party myself. For a space I became an adherent of the experimentalists
who moistened their Soldier's Friend with methylated spirit, alleging
that the ensuing polish was more permanent. I lapsed. My small bottle of
methylated spirit came to an end, and on reflection I was not sure that
its superiority over spittle had been proved. Nothing, in the English
climate, can make the sheen of metal buttons endure, at the
outside, more than one day. "Bluebell," "Silvo," and the other
chemico-frictional preparations in favour of which I ultimately
abandoned Soldier's Friend, are alike in this--that their virtue lies in
frequent application, diligence and elbow-grease. They are, every one,
excellent. Their inventors deserve our gratitude. But our gratitude to
their inventors must be nothing compared with their inventors' gratitude
to the person who decreed that the hard-pressed T. Atkins of the Great
War should wear (at least in part) the same needless finery as the
relatively otiose T. Atkins of Peace. May that despot, whoever he be,
depart to a realm of bliss--I suppose it would be bliss to him--where he
has to do hospital orderlies' chores in an attire completely composed of
tarnishing buttons, every separate one of which must hourly be brought
up to the parade standard of specklessness.

X

A WORD ABOUT "SLACKERS IN KHAKI"

When the ambulances containing a new batch of wounded begin to roll up
to the entrance of the hospital they are received by a squad of
orderlies. To a spectator who happened to pass at that moment it might
appear that these orderlies had nothing else to do but lift stretchers
out of ambulances and carry them indoors. The squad of orderlies have an
air of always being ready on duty waiting to pounce out on any patient
who may arrive at any hour of the day or night and promptly transfer him
to his bed. I have known of a visitor, witnessing this incident, who
commented on it in a manner which showed that he imagined he had seen
our unit performing its sole function; he pictured us existing purely
and simply for one end--the carrying of stretchers up the front steps
into the building. He was kind enough to praise the rapidity with which
the job was done--but he held it to be a job which hardly justified th