wer
beyond our gate.

"To-morrow," said the colonel--our first chief--before driving in for
a late visit to G. H. Q., "we will go to Armentieres and see how the
'Kitchener' boys are shaping in the line up there. It ought to be
interesting."

The colonel was profoundly interested in the technic of war, in its
organization of supplies and transport, and methods of command. He was
a Regular of the Indian Army, a soldier by blood and caste and training,
and the noblest type of the old school of Imperial officer, with
obedience to command as a religious instinct; of stainless honor, I
think, in small things as well as great, with a deep love of England,
and a belief and pride in her Imperial destiny to govern many peoples
for their own good, and with the narrowness of such belief. His
imagination was limited to the boundaries of his professional interests,
though now and then his humanity made him realize in a perplexed way
greater issues at stake in this war than the challenge to British
Empiry.

One day, when we were walking through the desolation of a battlefield,
with the smell of human corruption about us, and men crouched in chalky
ditches below their breastworks of sand-bags, he turned to a colleague
of mine and said in a startled way:

"This must never happen again! Never!"

It will never happen again for him, as for many others. He was too tall
for the trenches, and one day a German sniper saw the red glint of his
hat-band--he was on the staff of the 11th Corps--and thought, "a gay
bird"! So he fell; and in our mess, when the news came, we were sad at
his going, and one of our orderlies, who had been his body-servant, wept
as he waited on us.

Late at night the colonel--that first chief of ours--used to come home
from G. H. Q., as all men called General Headquarters with a sense of
mystery, power, and inexplicable industry accomplishing--what?--in those
initials. He came back with a cheery shout of, "Fine weather to-morrow!"
or, "A starry night and all's well!" looking fine and soldierly as the
glare of his headlights shone on his tall figure with red tabs and a
colored armlet. But that cheeriness covered secret worries. Night after
night, in those early weeks of our service, he sat in his little office,
talking earnestly with the press officers--our censors. They seemed
to be arguing, debating, protesting, about secret influences and
hostilities surrounding us and them. I could only guess what it was all
a