arty of
hospital orderlies, remark--it sounds incredible, but there _are_ people
who make the remark--"These fellows should be out at the front," may
further be reminded that "these fellows" now have no say in the choice
of their own whereabouts. Not a soldier in the land can decide where or
how he shall serve. That small matter is not for him, but for the
authorities. He may be thirsting for the gore of Brother Boche, and an
inexorable fate condemns him to scrub the gore of Brother Briton off the
tiles of the operating theatre. He may (but I never met one who did)
elect to sit snugly on a stool at a desk filling-in army forms or
conducting a card index; and lo, at a whisper from some unseen Nabob in
the War Office, he finds himself hooked willy-nilly off his stool and
dumped into the Rifle Brigade. This is what it means to be in khaki, and
it is hardly the place of persons not in khaki to bandy sneers about the
comfortableness of the Linseed Lancers whose initials, when not standing
for Rob All My Comrades, can be interpreted to mean Run Away, Matron's
Coming. The squad of orderlies unloading that procession of ambulances
at the hospital door may not envy the wounded sufferers whom they
transmit to their wards; but the observer is mistaken if he assumes that
the orderlies have, by some questionable manoeuvre, dodged the fiery
ordeal of which this string of slow-moving stretchers is the harvest.

XI

THE RECREATION ROOMS

We rather pride ourselves, at the 3rd London, on the fame of our
hospital not merely as a place in which the wounded get well, but as a
place in which they also "have a good time." The two things, truth to
tell, are interlinked--a truism which might seem to need no labouring,
were it not for the evidence brought from more rigid and red-tape-ridden
establishments. A couple of our most valued departments are the "Old
Rec." and the "New Rec."--the old and new recreation rooms. The new
recreation room, a spacious and well-built "hut," contains three
billiard tables, a library, and current newspapers, British and
Colonial. This room is the scene of whist-drives, billiard and pool
tournaments, and other sociable ongoings. Sometimes there is an
exhibition match on the best billiard table: the local champion of
Wandsworth shows us his skill--and a very pretty touch he has: once the
lady billiard champion of England came, and defeated the best opponent
we could enlist against her--an event which prov