of war still maintained its old and dead
tradition. It was like one of those pageants which used to be played in
England before the war--picturesque, romantic, utterly unreal. It was as
though men were playing at war here, while others sixty miles away were
fighting and dying, in mud and gas-waves and explosive barrages.

An "open sesame," by means of a special pass, was needed to enter this
City of Beautiful Nonsense. Below the gateway, up the steep hillside,
sentries stood at a white post across the road, which lifted up on
pulleys when the pass had been examined by a military policeman in a
red cap. Then the sentries slapped their hands on their rifles to the
occupants of any motor-car, sure that more staff-officers were going
in to perform those duties which no private soldier could attempt to
understand, believing they belonged to such mysteries as those of God.
Through the narrow streets walked elderly generals, middle-aged colonels
and majors, youthful subalterns all wearing red hat-bands, red tabs,
and the blue-and-red armlet of G. H. Q., so that color went with them on
their way.

Often one saw the Commander-in-Chief starting for an afternoon ride,
a fine figure, nobly mounted, with two A. D. C.'s and an escort of
Lancers. A pretty sight, with fluttering pennons on all their lances,
and horses groomed to the last hair. It was prettier than the real thing
up in the salient or beyond the Somme, where dead bodies lay in upheaved
earth among ruins and slaughtered trees. War at Montreuil was quite a
pleasant occupation for elderly generals who liked their little stroll
after lunch, and for young Regular officers, released from the painful
necessity of dying for their country, who were glad to get a game of
tennis, down below the walls there, after strenuous office-work in which
they had written "Passed to you" on many "minutes," or had drawn the
most comical caricatures of their immediate chief, and of his immediate
chief, on blotting-pads and writing-blocks.

It seemed, at a mere glance, that all these military inhabitants of G.
H. Q. were great and glorious soldiers. Some of the youngest of them had
a row of decorations from Montenegro, Serbia, Italy, Rumania, and other
states, as recognition of gallant service in translating German letters
(found in dugouts by the fighting-men), or arranging for visits
of political personages to the back areas of war, or initialing
requisitions for pink, blue, green, and yello