is
the refuge of incompetents. Padres, perhaps, express themselves more
freely than the others. They are less subject to the penalties which
threaten those who criticise their superiors. But their opinions are
no stronger than those of other people.

Even without that bond of common feeling I think I should have made
friends with M. No franker, more straightforward, less selfish man
has crossed the sea to France wearing the obscured Maltese Cross
which decorates the cap of the padre. It was my first real stroke of
luck that I met M. on the deck of that steamer. As it turned out he
knew no more than I did about what lay before us. His previous
service had been in England and he was going to France for the first
time. An M.L.O. was a mystery to him.

But he was cheerful and self-confident. His view was that an
exaggerated importance might easily be attached to military orders.
If an M.L.O. turned out to be an accessible person, easily
recognised, we should report to him and set our consciences at ease.
If, on the other hand, the authorities chose to conceal their M.L.O.
in some place difficult to find, we should not report to him. Nothing
particular would happen either way. So M. thought, and he paced the
deck with so springy a step that I began to hope he might be right.

Our passage was abominably rough. M., who dislikes being seasick in
public, disappeared. I think what finished him was the sight of an
officer in a kilt crawling on his hands and knees across the wet and
heaving deck, desperately anxious to get to the side of the ship
before his malady reached its crisis. M.'s chair was taken by a
pathetic-looking V.A.D. girl, whose condition soon drove me away.

It is one of the mitigations of the horrors of this war that whoever
takes part in it is sure to meet friends whom he has lost sight of
for years, whom he would probably lose sight of altogether if the
chances of war did not bring unexpected meetings. That very first day
of my service was rich in its yield of old friends.

When I fled from the sight of the V.A.D.'s pale face, I took to
wandering about the decks and came suddenly on a man whom I had last
seen at the tiller of a small boat in Clew Bay. I was beating
windward across the steep waves of a tideway. His boat was running
free with her mainsail boomed out; and he waved a hand to me as he
passed. Once again we met at sea; but we were much less cheerful. He
was returning to France after leave, to sp