moking a briar
pipe--it was astoundingly difficult to keep it alight--and indulged in the
habit of five o'clock tea (with boiled eggs, ye gods!), and braved all
the horrors of indigestion, because they are not used to these things,
with heroic fortitude. At any cost they were determined to do honour
to le khaki, in spite of the arrogance of certain British officers who
treated them de haut en bas.

The Base Commandant's office was the sorting-house of the
Expeditionary Force. The relays of officers who had just come off the
boats came here to report themselves. They had sailed as it were
under sealed orders and did not know their destination until they were
enlightened by the Commandant, who received instructions from the
headquarters in the field. They waited about in groups outside his
door, slapping their riding-boots or twisting neat little moustaches,
which were the envy of subalterns just out of Sandhurst.

Through another door was the registry office through which all the
Army's letters passed inwards and outwards. The military censors
were there reading the letters of Private Atkins to his best girl, and to
his second best. They shook their heads over military strategy written
in the trenches, and laughed quietly at the humour of men who
looked on the best side of things, even if they were German shells or
French fleas. It was astonishing what a lot of humour passed through
this central registry from men who were having a tragic time for
England's sake; but sometimes the military Censor had to blow his
nose with violence because Private Atkins lapsed into pathos, and
wrote of tragedy with a too poignant truth.

The Base Commandant was here at all hours. Even two hours after
midnight he sat in the inner room with tired secretaries who marvelled
at the physical and mental strength of a man who at that hour could
still dictate letters full of important detail without missing a point or a
comma; though he came down early in the morning. But he was
responsible for the guarding of the Army's store-cupboard--that great
hangar, half a mile long--and for the discipline of a town full of soldiers
who, without discipline, would make a merry hell of it, and for the
orderly disposition of all the supplies at the base upon which the army
in the field depends for its welfare. It was not what men call a soft job.

Through the hotel where I stayed there was a continual flow of
officers who came for one night only. Their kit-