few blankets, no braziers, and the cheap black shoes of civil
life were soon in tatters. Everybody became abominably verminous, and
though the food was good enough in its way the cooks were overwhelmed,
and it was often uneatable. Nobody was to blame, and in an astonishingly
short time order began to emerge, but in those early days one enormous
'grouse' went up continually from the new army that was not yet an army,
and those conditions were partly responsible for the fact that when the
standard was lowered again the flow of recruits was so much less than
before. This, the faculty for hearty grousing, in the army whimsical,
humorous, shrewd, sometimes biting, never down-hearted, is evidently an
old national custom, for Chaucer uses the word half a dozen times. But
the aggravated discomfort of men soft from indoor life was really
pitiful.

Before long all recruits except those for the Royal Field Artillery were
sent elsewhere, and the barracks became a great depot for this arm of
the service, with Colonel Forde in command. What marvels were done in
those early days, and how hard pushed the country was, will be realised
when it is understood that for months a body of men numbering never less
than two thousand, and sometimes as many as three times that number,
had only two field guns for training purposes, and that officers had to
be sent out to the Expeditionary Force who had worn a uniform only for
three, four, or five weeks.

II

_Why the First Hundred Thousand Enlisted_

The first hundred thousand had some characteristics of their own
compared with their successors. They contained a large number of men who
do things on the spur of the moment, the born seekers after adventure,
men to whom war had its attractions. Many a man who had never found his
place in life, because his was the restless, roving spirit which could
not settle, or that chafed against ordered conventional ways, found his
happiness at last in August 1914. Alongside those were the men who were
passionately patriotic and saw very clearly and quickly the long issues
involved to the country they loved. The fate of Belgium had a far more
moving influence with the ranks of the new army than the officer class,
I think, quite realised. Indeed, with the later recruits I gathered the
impression that indignation at the German atrocities in Belgium was the
prevailing motive in their enlistment. There can be no question in the
mind of any one who worked intima