mood of a "chiel takin'
notes." It was the notes that took him. Before the war, some time a
regular soldier, some time an engineer, he had little other idea than to
sketch for mischief, on walls and shirt cuffs, and tablecloths. Without
the war he might never have put pencil to paper for publication. But the
war insisted.

It is not for his mere editor to forecast his vogue in posterity.
Naturally I hope it will be a lasting one, but I am prejudiced. Let me,
however, quote a letter which reached Captain Bairnsfather from
somewhere in France:

"Twenty years after peace has been declared there
will be no more potent stimulus to the
recollections of an old soldier than your
admirable sketches of trench life. May I, with all
deference, congratulate you on your humour, your
fidelity, your something-else not easily
defined--I mean your power of expressing in black
and white a condition of mind."

I hope that this forecast is a true one. If this sketch book is worthy
to outlast the days of the war, and to be kept for remembrance on the
shelves of those who have lived through it, it will have done its bit.
For will it not be a standing reminder of the _ingloriousness_ of war,
its preposterous absurdity, and of its futility as a means of settling
the affairs of nations?

When the ardent Jingo of the day after to-morrow rattles the sabre, let
there be somewhere handy a copy of "Fragments from France" that can be
opened in front of him, at any page, just to remind him of what war is
really like as it is fought in "civilised" times.

Captain Bairnsfather has become a household word--or perhaps one should
say a trench-hold word. Who is ever the worse for a laugh? Certainly not
the soldier in trench or dug-out or shell-swept billet. Rather may it be
said that the Bairnsfather laughter has acted in thousands of cases as
an antidote to the bane of depression. It is the good fortune of the
British Army to possess such an antidote, and the ill-fortune of the
other belligerents that they do not possess its equivalent.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER

This picture was taken at the Front, less than a quarter of a mile from
the German trenches. Captain Bairnsfather has come "straight off the
mud," and is wearing a fur coat, a Balaclava helmet, and gum boots.
Immediately behind him is a hole made by a "Jack Johnson" shell.]

A Scots officer,