nly
been possible to us because of (1) the comparatively high rates
of pay in the British Army; (2) the command of the sea, making
transport from England simple and easy; (3) the inexhaustible
reservoirs of supply and manufacture that exist within the
British Empire. There can be no doubt about it that the path of
the British soldier in this war has been made as easy as it is
possible to make it--an incalculable advantage to a nation that
has had to create a great voluntary Army in a comparatively short
space of time. Whatever faults the military authorities may have
committed in other directions, they have kept steadily in view
the Napoleonic maxim, "An army moves on its stomach."

The Boche prisoners round about here work energetically. They
must, I fancy, be amazed themselves at the manner in which they
are treated--the abundance of food, the entire absence of rancour
on our part, and the general conditions under which they work and
live. Actually, they get their Sunday afternoons off. Some of
them have been given a little plot of land close to the
internment camp, where they are busy gardening in their leisure
time. In the camp they have all sorts of work-tables and tools,
and you often see some of them doing carpentering after their
day's work is done. The prisoners stroll about the camp and its
environs at will, and the men on guard are continually chatting
and joking with them. The ration of the prisoners includes fresh
meat and bread every day, and a supply of tobacco and cigarettes
once a week. It is much to the credit of Britain that her
captives in war should be treated with so much generosity. Don't
let the Government abandon this policy of broad magnanimity
because of the noisy clamour of armchair reprisalists at home. By
the way, these Boche prisoners observe the rules of discipline
even in their captivity, and when British or French officers pass
by they stand respectfully to attention. Most of the prisoners
are big chaps.

If you have not read it, let me recommend to you a book by John
Buchan called "The Thirty-nine Steps." To my mind it is the
cleverest detective story I have read since the exploits of
Sherlock Holmes. It is in a way a sort of enlarged version of an
earlier story by Buchan that appeared in _Blackwood's