e young men in tailor-made tunics and well-creased
trousers, wearing swords and wrist-watches, and full of a healthy
belief in their own importance. My mates are apt to consider them
as being somewhat vain, and no Tommy dares fail to salute the young
commissioned officers when he meets them out with their young ladies
on the public streets. For myself, I have a great respect for them and
their work; day and night they are at their toil; when parade comes to
an end, and the battalion is dismissed for the day, the officers, who
have done ten or twelve hours' of field exercise, turn to their desks
and company accounts, and time and again the Last Post sees them busy
over ledgers, pamphlets, and plans.

Accurate and precise in every detail, they know the outs and ins of
platoon and company drill, and can handle scores and hundreds of men
with the ease and despatch of artists born to their work. Where
have these officers, fresh youngsters with budding moustaches and
white, delicate hands, learned all about frontage, file, flank,
and formation, alignment, echelon, incline, and interval? Words of
direction and command come so readily from their lips that I was
almost tempted to believe that they had learned as easily as they
taught, that their skill in giving orders could only be equalled by
the ease with which I supposed they had mastered the details of their
work. Later I came to know of the difficulty that confronts the young
men, raw from the Officers' Training Corps, when they take up their
preliminary duties as commanders of trained soldiers. No "rooky" fresh
to the ranks is the butt of so many jokes and such biting sarcasm as
the young officer is subjected to when he takes his place as a leader
of men.

Soon after my arrival in our town a score of young lieutenants came
to our parade ground, accompanied by two commanders, a keen-eyed
adjutant, brisk as a bell, and a white-haired colonel with very thin
legs, and putties which seemed to have been glued on to his shins. The
young gentlemen were destined for various regiments, and most of them
were fresh and spotless in their new uniforms. Some wore Glengarry
bonnets, kilts, and sporrans, some the black ribbons of Wales; one,
whose hat-badge proclaimed the Dublin Fusilier, was conspicuous by the
eyeglass he wore, and others were still arrayed in civilian garb, the
uniform of city and office life. Several units of my battalion were
taken off to drill in company with the st