aff officer. I was impressed afresh with the way the war throws
old acquaintances together. I had taken that staff officer out
trout-fishing, when he was a small boy, and he remembered it. He said
that Irish trout gave better sport than those in the French rivers,
from which I gathered that it was sometimes possible to get a little
fishing, in between battles and other serious things. He had also
been a college friend of M.'s at Cambridge. He asked us to luncheon
and treated us most hospitably. Indeed, I formed an impression that
officers, at all events staff officers at G.H.Q., are not badly fed.
I have in my time "sat at rich men's feasts." That staff officers'
luncheon did not suffer by comparison. M. is, as I said, indifferent
to food, but even he was moved to admiration.

"If this," he said afterwards, "is war, the sooner it comes to
England the better."

It is pleasant to be treated as an honoured guest, and the
friendliness of that officer was reassuring. But I had not yet
done with the new-boy feeling. It came on me with full force
when I was led into an inner office for an interview with the
Deputy-Chaplain-General. He was both a bishop and a general. I have
met so many bishops, officially and otherwise, that I am not in the
least afraid of them. Nor do generals make me nervous when I am not
myself in uniform. But a combination of bishop and general was new to
me. I felt exactly as I did in 1875, when Mr. Waterfield of Temple
Grove tested my knowledge of Latin to see what class I was fit for.

There was no real cause for nervousness. The Deputy-Chaplain-General,
in spite of his double dose of exalted rank, is kind and friendly:
but I fear I did not make any better impression on him than I did on
my first head master. Mr. Waterfield put me in his lowest class. The
Deputy-Chaplain-General sent me to the remotest base, the town
farthest of any town in British occupation from the actual seat of
war. M., whose interview came after mine, might perhaps have done
better for himself if he had not been loyal to our newly formed
friendship. As Ruth to Naomi so he said to me, "Where thou goest I
will go," and expressed his wish to the Deputy-Chaplain-General.
This, I am sure, was an act of self-denial on his part, for M. has an
adventurous spirit. The Deputy-Chaplain-General is too kind and
courteous a man to refuse such a request. It was settled that M. and
I should start work together.

We set forth on our journey a