he Field
Ambulances, can lay hands--but not in the apostolic sense--upon every
chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and
can admonish, deprive, and suspend.

The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction. "I think we've fixed it
up with those Red Cross drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s
department had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented
by these birds of passage on the lines of communication. "We've decided
that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the
Army Act, and that you 'follow' the British Army from the moment you
accept a pass to H.Q. My chief called some of them together yesterday,
and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under
military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days'
field-punishment to the punishment of death. This was _pour encourager
les autres_. They looked quite thoughtful."

"That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby pensively. "Should an Army
follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot? I put it to you," he
added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I want counsel's opinion."

"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the man of law. "But the
safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards."

"Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put
you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because
Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously
untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts--that's a legal
expression for fraud, isn't it?--his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie.
What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?"
Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as _Aquila
vulgaris_, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of
them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by
an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode.
Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as "missing," and go to
some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return. Ponsonby
glances suspiciously at Slingsby's portly figure.

But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of
"proceedings," and his departure was the signal for a general
dispersion. "Come and have a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I" man.
"Can't, you slacker," was the reply. "I've got to go and make up an 'I'
summary. 'Notes of an Air Rec