l degrees worse to have to rely on imbeciles. However, the
French did not see us playing House any more than they saw us boxing
or attending concerts. They were not allowed into our camps.

For the men who did succeed in getting passes out of camp, the
prospect was dreary enough, dreary or undesirable. Going into town in
a crowded tram is an amusement which quickly palls. Various
ill-defined portions of the town, when you got there, were out of
bounds, and a man had need to walk warily if he did not want trouble
with the military police.

And there were worse things than military police. On the roadway
which led to the camp entrance there might be seen, any fine Sunday
afternoon, a crowd of French girls waiting for the men who came out.
They were, plainly, not the best girls, though no doubt some of them
were more silly than vicious. There were eating-shops, or
drinking-shops, of which ugly tales were told. Coffee, an innocent
drink, was sometimes doped with brandy, and men found themselves
half intoxicated without knowing that they had touched drink.

There were, of course, places where men could go safely. There was,
for instance, the Central Y.M.C.A. hall, where excellent food was to
be had, and where there were books, papers, games, and a kindly
welcome. But one Y.M.C.A. recreation hut is very like another, and it
seems rather waste of a hardly-won pass out of camp to spend the
afternoon very much as it might be spent without leaving camp at all.
What the men craved for was variety, interest, and--what was of
course almost unobtainable--the society of decent women.

I cannot help feeling that in condemning ourselves to desperate
dullness we paid too high a price for the good opinion of our French
friends. If they were really shocked at our levity in playing games
during the war, it would have been better to lacerate their feelings
a little. They would very soon have got accustomed to our ways and
come to regard our excitement over a League match as nothing worse
than a curious form of eccentricity.

The officers were rather better off than the men. They could stay in
town long enough to dine at a restaurant, and there is something
rather exciting, for a short time, in dining at a French restaurant.
There was a special officers' tram which brought us back to camp just
in time to pass the sentries before 10.30 p.m. It was invariably
over-crowded and we often had to stand, crowded together on the
platforms of the