retending to enjoy
themselves. They valued the properties of romantic drama, though they
must have recognised soon enough that the piece in which they played
was the sordidest of tragedies.

We are realists. Not for us the scarlet coats, the tossing plumes,
the shining helmets or tall busbies. War is muddy, monotonous, dull,
infinitely toilsome. We have staged it with a just appreciation of
its nature. We have banished colour. As far as possible we have
banished music.

I suppose we are right. If it is really true that a soldier is more
likely to be killed when wearing a scarlet coat, it is plain common
sense to dress him in mud colour. If music attracts the enemy's fire,
then bands should be left at home to play for nursemaids in parks and
on piers. Yet there is something to be said for the practice of our
ancestors. The soldier's business is to kill the enemy as well as to
avoid being killed himself. Indeed killing is his first duty, and he
only tries to avoid being killed for the sake of being efficient.

A cheerful soldier is a much more effective fighter than a depressed
soldier. Our ancestors knew this and designed uniforms with a view to
keeping up men's spirits. We have ignored their wisdom and decked
ourselves in khaki. I can imagine nothing better calculated to
depress the spirits, to induce despondency, and to lower vitality
than khaki. The British soldier remains cheerful--indeed it is
largely his unfailing cheerfulness which makes him the splendid
fighting man he is--but he has had to keep up his spirits without
help from the authorities who have coloured his whole life khaki and
deprived him of music.

I was placed in a camp which was one of a series of camps stretching
along a winding valley. To right and left of us were steep hills, and
off the side of one of them, that on which M. lived, the grass had
been scraped and hacked. There remained mud which harmonised
tonelessly with our uniforms. Under our feet as we walked along the
roads and paths which led from end to end of the valley there was
mud. The parade grounds--each camp had one--were mud. The tents were
mud-coloured or dirty grey. The orderly-rooms, mess-rooms, recreation
huts and all the rest were mud coloured and had soiled grey roofs.
Men mud-coloured from head to foot paraded in lines, marched, or
strolled about or sat on mud banks smoking.

Even the women who served in the canteens and recreation huts refused
to wear bright frocks, su