last time in my eighteen years of service resting in a dusty
gorge near Shallufa. Knit together by common ideals and experiences,
they were, in Nelson's phrase, "a band of brothers."

We crossed France from Marseilles to Boulogne in an atmosphere of war.
We had glimpses of Lyons and Paris, talked with _poilus_ on leave, heard
from a French officer (who professed to know) that the War would be over
in March, 1917, and bought from vivacious street hawkers pretty metal
souvenirs of Verdun. We saw our own wounded coming back in Red Cross
trains from the first days of the great push on the Somme. Then, after
exactly a year's absence, I was once more at home.

Within the ensuing month all but three of the original combatant
officers still on the strength of the Battalion were seconded for
service elsewhere. "The old order changeth, giving place to new." ...

A Regiment in war rises like the phoenix from its own ashes and renews
its immortal youth. The vicissitudes here recorded fill but a few
shining chapters in what will no doubt prove a long history. They by no
means necessarily contain its most distinguished pages. The close of the
second year of the Battalion's active service is, however, a fitting
point to end this volume. It marked the stage at which the distinctively
"1st line" unit, composed of officers and men enlisted and trained
voluntarily in time of peace, had passed into the normal type of British
Battalion of 1916--a unit born of the War, with its personnel mainly
recruited and trained after its outbreak.

It is to the memory of the original volunteers of August, 1914, that
this book is dedicated.

CHAPTER XII

THE TERRITORIAL IDEA

The experiences of a typical unit of the Territorial Force must throw
light on the vexed questions that have gathered round it.

Three criticisms of the Territorial system have been made ever since its
adoption in 1907. First, its establishment of 310,000 men has been
regarded as totally inadequate, and before the War the country even
failed to recruit numbers within sixty thousand of this modest standard.
Secondly, its yearly training, which provided but a fortnight's life in
camp, has been deemed so paltry as to be almost negligible. Thirdly, the
Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 provided a legal loophole by
which the less patriotic could evade service overseas in however great
an emergency. Section 13 specifically lays down that, apart from purely
spontaneo