articles without which an
officer might not respectably enter the British Army, the chief lesson
was the same, namely, that the tradesmen were bearing the brunt of the
war. Those who had enrolled and made spectacular sacrifices of homes and
careers and limbs and lives were enjoying a glorious game amid the
laudations of an ecstatic populace, but the real work was being done in
the shops and in the workrooms. The mere aspect of tradesmen was enough
to restore the lost modesty of officers. Useless to argue with the
tradesmen, to expostulate, to vituperate. The facts were in their
favour; the sublime law of supply and demand was in their favour. If the
suddenly unloosed military ardour had not been kept down it might have
submerged the Island. The tradesmen kept it down, and the Island was
saved by them from militarization. Majors and colonels and even generals
had to flatter and cajole tradesmen. As for lieutenants, they cringed.
And all officers were obliged to be grateful for the opportunity to
acquire goods at prices fifty per cent higher than would have been
charged to civilians. Within a few days George, who had need of every
obtainable sovereign for family purposes, had disbursed some forty
pounds out of his own pocket in order to exercise the privilege of
defending, at the risk of ruin and death, the ideals of his country.

At the end of the week what, as a civilian, he would have described as
his first 'suit' had not been delivered, and he spent Saturday afternoon
and Sunday in most uncomfortable apprehension of the telegraph-boy and
in studying an artillery manual now known to hundreds of thousands as
'F.A.T.' On the Monday morning he collected such portions of his kit as
had to be worn with the 'suit' (leggings, boots, spurs, cap, shirt,
collar, etc.), and took them in a taxi to the tailor's, intending to
change there and emerge a soldier. The clothes were not ready, but the
tailor, intimidated by real violence, promised them for three o'clock.
At three o'clock they were still not ready, for buttons had to be
altered on the breeches; another hour was needed.

George went to call at Lucas & Enwright's. That office seemed to
function as usual, for Everard Lucas alone had left it for the
profession of arms. The factotum in the cubicle was a young man of the
finest military age, and there were two other good ones in the clerks'
room, including a clerk just transferred from George's own office. And
George thought o