as not ready: it would be murder to send the new
army out, unprepared, to such an ordeal.

This authority, who has interviewed many thousands of convalescents,
further remarked: "The wounded man who has been under shell fire and who
professes to be eager to go back, whether ordered or no, is a liar. On
the other hand, the scrim-shankers who try to get out of going back,
when they should go back, are an amazingly small minority."

VIII

LAUNDRY PROBLEMS

A number of oddly unmasculine duties fell to the lot of the R.A.M.C.
orderly prior to the time when "V.A.D.'s" were allowed to take his place
(at least to some extent) throughout our English war-hospitals. One of
my first tasks in the morning was the collecting and classification of
my ward's dirty linen. The work cannot be called difficult. It would be
an exaggeration to say that it demands a supreme intellectual effort.
But to the male mind it is, at least, rather novel. The average bachelor
has perhaps been accustomed to scrutinise his collars, handkerchiefs and
underclothes before and after their trips to the laundry. He has seldom,
I think, had intimate trafficking with pillow-cases, sheets,
counterpanes and tablecloths. In the reckoning of these he is apt to
make mistakes and to lapse into a casualness which, in a woman familiar
with household routine, would be improbable. "Sister's" sharpest
reproofs were called forth by errors made in connection with this daily
exchange of clean for dirty linen.

A form, of course, had to be filled in. (The army provides a form
for everything.) This form presents a catalogue of eighty-one
separate items, from "Blankets" ("Child's," "Infant's"--I do not
know what is the difference between them, and I never had to deal with
either--"G.S."--whatever that may be--and "White") to "Waist-coats,
Strait." It distinguishes between ten kinds of "Cases"--pillow-cases,
paillasse-cases, and the like: for example, there are "barrack"
bolster-cases and "hospital" bolster-cases; and you must not confound
"hospital" mattress-cases with "officers'" mattress-cases. You are
misled if you imagine that the heading "Cases" has exhausted the
possibilities which appeared to be latent in that noun; for, in addition
to the ten unqualified "Cases" there are seven more, defined as "Cases,
slip." Can you wonder that the orderly, presented with a bin-full of
confused and crumpled objects ready for the wash, and told to count them
and enter their