I have heard nothing since about that Union Jack. I
suppose it failed in some way. If it had succeeded, some one would
have told me about it. A fellow-countryman of mine designed a
shamrock in blue lobelia. The medical Red Cross looked well in
geraniums imported from England at great expense.

Generally our efforts were along more conventional lines. I remember
a rose-garden with a sundial in the middle of it. The roses, to
preserve them from frost, were carefully wrapped in sacking during
severe weather, and an irreverent soldier, fresh from the trenches,
commented on the fact that "These blighters at the base are growing
sandbags."

We were short of implements, but we dug. I have seen table forks and
broken dinner knives used effectively. I have seen grass, when there
was grass, clipped with a pair of scissors. Kindly people in England
sent us out packets of seeds, but we were very often beaten by the
names on them. We sowed in faith and hope, not knowing what manner of
thing an antirrhinum might be.

I do not believe that it was any form of nostalgia, any longing for
home surroundings, which made gardeners of the most unlikely of us.
Heaven knows the results we achieved were unlike anything we had ever
seen at home. It was not love of gardening which set us digging and
planting. Men gardened in those camps who never gardened before, and
perhaps never will again. At the bottom of it all was an instinctive,
unrealised longing for colour. We knew that flowers, if we could only
grow them, would not have khaki petals, that, war or no war, we
should feast our eyes on red and blue.

Newspapers and politicians used to talk about this as "the war to end
war," the last war. Perhaps they were right. We may at least fairly
hope that this is the world's last khaki war. It is not indeed likely
that when men next fight they will revert to scarlet coats and
shining breastplates. We have grown out of these crude attempts at
romanticism.

But it is very interesting to note the increase of attention given to
camouflage. It occurred to some one--the wonder is that it did not
occur to him sooner--that a mud-coloured tiger, a tiger with a khaki
skin, would be more visible, not less visible, than a tiger with its
natural bright stripes. It was our seamen who first grasped the
importance of this truth and began to paint ships blue, yellow, and
red, with a view to making it difficult for submarine commanders to
see them. There are, I