ugh B. is as likely a way
as any. Will you take a letter for us? It's most important and the
post takes ages. You've only got to hand it to any of our people you
see on the platform or drop it in at any of our canteens. It will be
delivered all right."

Who "our people" or what "our canteens" might be I did not at that
time know. It was our fellow-traveller who offered to take the
letter.

"I'm not exactly going to B.," he said; "but I expect I'll fetch up
there sooner or later."

The letter was given to him. The young women, profuse in their
thanks, sprang from the train just as it was starting. Our
fellow-traveller told me that our visitors belonged to the Y.M.C.A. I
was not, even then, much surprised to find a Young Men's Christian
Association run chiefly by young women, but I did wonder at this way
of transmitting letters. Afterwards I came to realise that the
Y.M.C.A. has cast a net over the whole war area behind the lines, and
that its organisation is remarkably good. I imagine that the letter
would have reached its destination in the end wherever our
fellow-traveller happened to drop it. I suppose he took the same
view. His responsibility as a special messenger sat lightly on him.

"I may spend the night at B.," he said, "or I may get into the Paris
express by mistake. It is very easy to get into a wrong train by
mistake, and if I once get to Paris it will take me a couple of days
to get away again. I'm not in any kind of hurry, and I deserve a
little holiday."

He did. He had been in the trenches for months and was on his way to
somewhere for a course of instruction in bombing, or the use of
trench mortars, or map-reading. In those days, early in 1916, the
plan was to instruct young officers in the arts of war after they had
practised them, successfully, for some time. Things are much better
organised now. Trains are no longer boarded by young women with
letters which they wish to smuggle through uncensored. It is
difficult to get into the Paris express by accident. But courses of
instruction are still, I imagine, regarded by every one, except the
instructors, as a way of restoring officers who are beginning to
suffer under the strain of life in a fighting battalion. A holiday
frankly so-called, in Paris or elsewhere, would be better; but a
course of instruction is more likely to meet with the approval of a
general.

That journey of ours would have taken eight or ten hours in peace
time. We spent thirt