in France. No need of a
call to attention. The effect was like an electric shock, which sent
every man to his place and made his backbone a steel rod. Those
crossed batons represented a dizzy altitude to that battery which had
just come out from England. Sir John walked up and down, looking
over men and guns after their nine months' drill at home, and said,
"Very good!" and was away to other inspections where he might not
necessarily say, "Very good!"

Frequently his inspections are formal. A battalion or a brigade is
drawn up in a field, or they march past. Then he usually makes a
short speech. On one occasion the officers had arranged a platform
for the speech-making. Sir John gave it a glance and that was
enough. It was the last of such platforms erected for him.

"Inspections! They are second nature to us!" said a new army man.
"We were inspected and inspected at home and we are inspected
and inspected out here. If there is anything wrong with us it is the
general's own fault if it isn't found out. When a general is not
inspecting, some man from the medical corps is disinfecting."

Battalions of the new army are frequently billeted for two or three
days in our village. The barn up the road I know is capable of housing
twenty men and one officer, for this is chalked on .the door. Before
they turn in for the night the men frequently sing, and the sound of
their voices is pleasant.

A typical inspection was one that I saw in the main street. The
battalion was drawn up in full marching equipment on the road. Of
those officers with packs on their backs one was only nineteen. This
is the limit of youth to acquire a chocolate drop on the sleeve. The
sergeant-major was an old regular, the knowing back-bone of the
battalion, who had taken the men of clay and taught them their letters
and then how to spell and to add and subtract and divide. One of
those impressive red caps arrived in a car, and the general who wore
it went slowly up and down the line, front and rear, examining rifles
and equipment, while the young officers and the old sergeant were
hoping that Jones or Smith hadn't got some dust in his rifle-barrel at
the last moment.

Brokers and carpenters, bankers and mechanics, clerks and
labourers, the new army is like the army of France, composed of all
classes. One evening I had a chat with two young fellows in a
battalion quartered in the village, who were seated beside the road.
Both came from Buckinghamshir