n range of the forts, that they had established ready
prepared for action should they be required. Anybody with an asphalt
lawn-tennis court then became suspect. A very bad case was reported
from the Chilterns, just the very sort of locality where Boches
contemplating invasion of the United Kingdom would naturally propose
to set up guns of big calibre. A building with a concrete base--many
buildings do have concrete bases nowadays--near Hampstead was the
cause of much excitement. When the unemotional official, sent to view
the place, suggested that the extremely solid structure overhead would
be rather in the way supposing that one proposed to emplace a gun, or
guns, on the concrete base, it was urged that there was a flat roof
and that ordnance mounted on it would dominate the metropolis. There
was a flat roof all right, but it turned out to be of glass.

A number of most worthy people were much concerned over the subject of
certain disused coal-mines in Kent, where, they had persuaded
themselves, the enemy had stored quantities of war material. What
precisely was the nature of the war material they did not
know--aircraft as like as not, the aviator finds the bottom of a
mine-shaft an ideal place to keep his machine. These catacombs were
duly inspected by an expert, but he could find nothing. The worthy
people thereupon declared that the penetralia had not been properly
examined and desired permission to carry out a searching inspection
themselves. They were, if I remember aright, told they might go down
the mines or might go to the devil (or words to that effect) for all
we cared. Had one not been so busy one could have got a good deal of
fun out of the Self-Appointed Spy-Catcher.

The Military Operations Directorate had nothing to do with the
formation and organization of the New Armies, but one heard a good
deal about their birth and infancy. Apart from the question of their
personal equipment, in regard to which the Quartermaster-General's
Department (with Lord Kitchener at its back and urging it forward)
performed such wonders, the most troublesome question in connection
with their creation in the early stages was the provision of officers;
the men were procured almost too fast. This became the business of the
Military Secretary's Department. The M.S. Department holds tenaciously
to the dogma that maladministration is the child of precipitancy and
that deliberation stamps official procedure with the hall-mark of