," and he had emptied
his magazine and was savagely pointing with his bayonet, withdrawing,
parrying, using the butt, his knees, his feet. He suddenly felt very
faint....

That is all that John Stokes remembers of the first battle of Ypres. For
the next thing he knew was that a voice coming from an immense
distance--just as he had once heard the voice of the dentist when he was
coming to after a spell of gas--was saying something to him as he seemed
to be rising, rising, rising ever more rapidly out of unfathomable
depths, and then out of a mist of darkness a window, first opaque and
then translucent, framed itself before his eyes, and he was staring at
the sun. The voice, which was low and sweet--an excellent thing in
woman--was saying, "Take this, sonny," and the air around him was
impregnated with a faint odour of iodoform. Then he knew--he was in
hospital.

III

"Yes, a curious case," said one officer to the other as he sat in a
certain room at Headquarters, staring abstractedly at the list of Field
Ambulances and of their Chaplains attached to the wall. "A very curious
case. It reminds me of something Smith said to me about bad law making
hard cases. It was jolly lucky the findings of the Court were held up
all that time. If the C.-in-C. had confirmed them and the sentence had
been promulgated, Stokes would now be doing five years at Woking.
Whereas, there he is back with his old battalion, holding a D.C.M., and
not reduced by one stripe."

"Not so curious as you think, my friend," replied the other. "Why, I saw
forty men under arrest marching through H.Q. the other day
singing--singing, mind you. There's hope for a man who sings. Of
course, field punishment doesn't matter much; it is only a matter of a
few days and a spell of fatigue duty. Though, mind you, I don't say that
cleaning out latrines isn't pretty hard labour. But when it comes to
breaking a man with a clean record because he has fallen asleep out of
sheer weariness--well, what's the good of throwing men like that on the
scrap-heap? Of course, you must try them, and you must sentence them,
but you can give them another chance. You know Stokes's case fairly made
us sit up, and we haven't let the grass grow under our feet. Look at
that."

The Judge-Advocate read the blue document that was pushed across the
table: "An Act to suspend the operation of sentences of Courts-martial."
He studied the sections and sub-sections with the critical eye of a