," and should regard itself as the
champion, not of the Treasury but of the Department of State of which
it itself forms a part. The Treasury, it should be mentioned, is
treated entirely differently as a matter of routine from other outside
institutions. Letters to it have to emanate from the Finance Branch,
while letters to other Departments of State--the Colonial Office, say,
or the Board of Trade--can be drafted and, after signature by the
Secretary, despatched by any branch of the War Office concerned. This
rule might perhaps be modified. A regulation should also exist that
the Finance Branch must not despatch a letter to the Treasury
concerning some matter in which another branch is interested, without
that branch having been given an opportunity of concurring in the
terms of the draft.

But no officials in any State Department probably were set a harder
and a more thankless task during the war than were the staff of the
Finance Branch of the War Office, and in spite of this its members
were always approachable and ready to meet one half-way in an amicable
discussion. They are also entitled to sympathy, in that the close of
hostilities in their case has probably brought them little or no
relief in respect to length of office hours and to weight of work. To
revert to normal conditions in their case will probably take years.
The grievance of the military side is that under existing conditions
the financial experts are too much in the position of autocrats, when
they happen to be recalcitrant on any point.

Who can that caitiff have been who abolished the plan of the soldier
saluting with the hand away from the individual saluted? Travelling on
the Continent before the war one was struck with one point in which
our methods were superior to those abroad--in many foreign countries
private soldiers had to salute non-commissioned officers in the
streets, which must have been an intolerable nuisance to all
concerned, and in all of them the soldier always saluted with the
right hand instead of adopting the obvious and convenient procedure of
saluting with the outer hand. There at least we showed common sense.
The Army Council were, no doubt, responsible in their corporate
capacity for abolishing the left-hand salute, but there must have been
some busybody who put them up to it. Whoever he was, I wish that he
had had to walk daily along the Strand for months (as I had)
constantly expecting to be hit in the face or to have