ives was at
home. They, even those professional soldiers, were men of peace
rather than war. The soldiers' trade was no delight to them.

I dare say the Germans, who took pains to learn so much about us
beforehand, knew this, and drew, as Germans so often do, a wrong
inference from facts patiently gathered. They thought that men who do
not like fighting fight badly. It may be so sometimes. It was
certainly not so with our old army. We know now that it is not so
with the men of our new army either.

After a while the stretcher-bearers and I began to know each other.
The first sign of friendliness was a request that I should umpire at
a cricket match on a Sunday afternoon. I am not sure that the
invitation was not also a test. Some parsons, the "----" kind, who
are not wanted, object to cricket on Sundays. My own conscience is
more accommodating. I would gladly have umpired at Monte Carlo on
Good Friday, Easter, Advent Sunday, and Christmas, all rolled into
one, if those men had asked me.

Later on, after many cricket matches, we agreed that it was
desirable to get up entertainments in the camp. There was no local
talent, or none available at first, but I had the good luck to meet
one day a very amiable lady who undertook to run a whole
entertainment herself. She also promised not to turn round and walk
away when she saw the piano.

We stirred ourselves, determined to rise to the occasion. We made a
platform at the end of the dining-room. I took care not to ask, and I
do not know, where the wood for that platform came from. We
discovered among us a man who said he had been a theatrical scene
painter before he joined the R.E. He can never, I fancy, have had
much chance of rising to the top of his old profession, but he
painted a back scene for our stage. It represented a country cottage
standing in a field, and approached by an immensely long, winding,
brown path. The perspective of that path was wonderful. He also
painted and set up two wings on the stage which were easily
recognisable as leafy trees. For many Sundays afterwards I stood in
front of that cottage with a green tree on each side of me during
morning service.

Another artist volunteered to do our programmes. His work lay in the
orderly-room and he had at command various coloured inks, black,
violet, blue, and red. He produced a programme like a rainbow on
which he described our lady visitor as the "Famous Favourite of the
Music Hall Stage." She had, in