d all the better for it.

The jam, at that time, and in that particular sector of the line, was
good and, moreover, varied. The Subaltern does not ever remember
suffering from the now notorious "plum and apple." There was even
marmalade.

He openly delighted in the biscuits, and would go about his work all day
munching them. The bacon, too, as some one said, was "better than what
we have in the Mess, sometimes." None of them posed as connoisseurs of
rum, but a Sergeant, who looked as if he knew what he was talking about,
praised it heartily; and, taken in hot tea, it banished all sorts of
cares....

Tea (without rum) and bacon, to be followed by ration bread and
marmalade (if possible) was the staple fare at breakfast. They would sit
around the fire and smoke--there was a tobacco allowance included in the
rations. The Subaltern, however, had lost his pipe, and attempts at
cigarette rolling were not particularly successful.

Every other day there used to be a mail, and with it, generally, papers
from home. This was the first definite news they had had from "home"
since leaving in mid-August. There was an enthralling interest in seeing
how the people at home "were taking things."

To be perfectly candid, before the war, the Army had placed very little
reliance upon the patriotism or integrity of the country. The Army was a
thing apart--detached from the swirl of conflicting ideas, and the
eddies of political strife. The Army was, so to speak, on the bank, and
it looked with stern disapproval at the river sweeping so swiftly by. It
neither understood the forces that were hurrying the waters along, nor
did it realise the goal that they were striving to reach. Perhaps it did
not take the trouble, perhaps it could not.

Then, when the war clouds began to blacken the horizon, the Army, having
so little sympathy with the vast and complex civilisation which it was
to defend, felt convinced that the national feelings and political sense
of the nation would be slumbering so soundly that no call of honour
could awaken it to the realisation of either its duty or its danger. But
the horse which all the expert trainers had dismissed as a
"non-starter" for the next great race, suddenly gathered his haunches
under him, and shot out on the long track to victory. The Army, with the
rest of the world, realised that, after all, the heart of the nation was
in the right place. Nevertheless, the tremendous wave of patriotism that
had sw