nd
appreciated. What a visitor, however intelligent, or an inspector,
though very able, would not have discovered was the spirit which
inspired the discipline of the camp.

Ours was a medical camp. We flew the Red Cross flag and our C.O. was
an officer in the R.A.M.C. Doctors, though they belong to a
profession which exists for the purpose of alleviating human
suffering, are not always and at all times humane men. Like other men
they sometimes fall into the mistake of regarding discipline not as a
means but as an end in itself. In civil life the particular kind of
discipline which seduces them is called professional etiquette. In
the army they become, occasionally, the most bigoted worshippers of
red-tape. When that happens a doctor becomes a fanatic more ruthless
than an inquisitor of old days.

In the Con. Camp the discipline was good, as good as possible; but
our C.O. was a wise man. He never forgot that the camp existed for
the purpose of restoring men's bodies to health and not as an example
of the way to make rules work. The spirit of the camp was most
excellent. Regulations were never pressed beyond the point at which
they were practically of use. Sympathy, the sympathy which man
naturally feels for a suffering fellow-man, was not strangled by
parasitic growths of red-tape. We had to thank the C.O. and after him
the adjutant for this. I met no officers more humane than these two,
or more patient with all kinds of weakness and folly in the men with
whom they had to deal.

They were well supported by their staff and by the voluntary workers
in the two recreation huts run by the Y.M.C.A. and the Catholic
Women's League. The work of the C.W.L. ladies differed a little from
that of any recreation hut I had seen before. They made little
attempt to cater for the amusement of the men. They discouraged
personal friendships between the workers and the men. They aimed at a
certain refinement in the equipment and decoration of their hut. They
provided food of a superior kind, very nicely served. I think their
efforts were appreciated by many men.

On the other hand the workers in the Y.M.C.A. hut there as everywhere
made constant efforts to provide entertainments of some kind. Three
or four days at least out of every week there was "something on."
Sometimes it was a concert, sometimes a billiard tournament, or a
ping-pong tournament, or a competition in draughts or chess.
Occasionally, under the management of a lady wh