eased to call "militarism," I
do not know. All that I do know is that they did not. Let us leave it
at that.

I have digressed; our Reginald is calling. For weeks his battalion was
destined to remain in peace trenches, to live that dreary life of
monotony which tests the capabilities of the leader as no big push can
do. The excitement is absent, there is plenty of time--too much
time--for thought. And boredom is of all things one of the hardest to
combat. It calls for leadership of the highest type. There is many a
man capable of supreme devotion in a crisis who is incapable of the
steady, unseen strain, day in, day out, of keeping up his men's
spirits--in fact, of appreciating human nature in one of its many
phases.

The men feel that dull routine on which the lime-light does not shine,
and only the leader can help them. It claims its victims, just as do
the big offensive, that trench life, when the flares lob up ceaselessly
and the bursts of machine-gun fire come swishing over the ground. Here
men are wiring; there is a party digging a new bit of trench; and out
beyond--in No Man's Land--an officer and three scouts are creeping
about examining the enemy's wire. So it goes on throughout the night,
until as the first streaks of dawn show faintly in the east it ceases.
The men come in, back to the dreary mud holes; and next night there is
the same damned thing to be done all over again somewhere else. . . .

Only, Ginger won't be there any more; he has put up his last bit of
wire. He started on the last journey unnoticed save by the man
standing next him; and--Gawd above!--what's the use? They'd been
together for two years, share and share alike; and now the end.
Putting up a bit of rusty wire round a sap. . . .

"Easy, boy, easy. 'Ere, cut them ruddy braces away. 'Orl rite, old
son, you've copped a Blighty. Thro' yer stummik--Gor luv yer--no. Get
that dressing on, Bill; turn over, mate--we'll give yer a drink in a
minute; but one thing at a time, old pal, that's my motto. Always
merry and bright, as the perisher said in the play." Back in the
trench, pulled in from the wire where the work goes on, an officer's
electric torch shines on the stretcher bearers working with clumsy
gentleness on the quivering body. "Now, then, mate, we can't get the
blinking stretcher along this 'ere trench, so we'll 'ave to carry you."

"Copped it?" asks an N.C.O. in a whisper.

"Gawd! a fair crumpler," mutters th