bags and sleeping-
bags were dumped into the hall, and these young gentlemen, some
of whom had been gazetted only a few months ago, crowded into the
little drawing-room to write their letters home before going to the front,
and to inquire of each other what on earth there was to do in a town
where lights are out at ten o'clock, where the theatres were all closed,
and where rain was beating down on the pavements outside.

"How about a bath?" said one of them. "It is about the last chance, I
reckon."

They took turns to the bathroom, thinking of the mud and vermin of
the trenches which would soon be their home. Among those who
stayed in the sitting-room until the patron turned out the lights were
several officers who had been on forty-eight hours' leave from the
front. They had made a dash to London and back, they had seen the
lights of Piccadilly again, and the crowds in the streets of a city which
seemed to know nothing of war, they had dined with women in
evening-dress who had asked innocent questions about the way of a
modern battlefield, and they had said good-bye again to those who
clung to them a little too long outside a carriage window.

"Worth it, do you think?" asked one of them.

"Enormously so. But it's a bit of a pull--going back to that--
beastliness. After one knows the meaning of it."

"It's because I know that I want to go back," said another man who
had sat very quietly looking at the toe of one of his riding-boots. "I had
a good time in town--it seemed too good to be true--but, after all, one
has to finish one's job before one can sit around with an easy mind.
We've got to finish our job out there in the stinking trenches."

8

I suppose even now after all that has been written it is difficult for the
imagination of "the man who stayed at home" to realize the life and
conditions of the soldiers abroad. So many phrases which appeared
day by day in the newspapers conveyed no more than a vague,
uncertain meaning.

"The Front"--how did it look, that place which was drawn in a jagged
black line across the map on the wall? "General Headquarters"--what
sort of a place was that in which the Commander-in-Chief lived with
his staff, directing the operations in the fighting lines? "An attack was
made yesterday upon the enemy's position at-----. A line of trenches
was carried by assault." So ran the officiai bulletin, but the wife of a
soldier abroad could not fill in the picture, the father of a you