ited to the War Office to talk over the
matter. The defects, either in wet and cold or in hot weather, of
woolen khaki cloth are obvious, and when subsequently I visited the
naval authorities in Washington about the same subject, I was
delighted to be assured that on all small naval craft our patterns
were being exclusively used. Who introduced them did not matter.

I had also advocated a removable insert of sheet steel in a pocket on
the breast of the tunic, this plate to be kept in the trenches and
inserted on advancing; and a lobster-tail steel knee-piece in the
knickers. Of this latter Sir Robert Jones, the British orthopedic
chief, appreciated the value, knowing how many splendid men are put
_hors de combat_ by tiny pieces of shell splinters infecting that
joint. But the "Journal" censored all these references to armour. A
wounded Frenchman at Berck presented me with a helmet heavily dented
by shrapnel, and told me that he owed his life to it. Later at General
Headquarters, General Sir Arthur Sloggett showed me a collection of a
dozen experimental helmets, each of which stood for a saved life.

One of the soldiers who came under my care had a bullet wound through
the palm of his hand. I happened to ask him where his hand had been
when hit. He said, "On my hip. We were mending a break in our barbed
wire at night, and a fixed rifle got me, exactly where it got my chum
just afterwards, but it went through him."

"Where did your bullet go?"

"I don't know," he answered.

An examination of his trousers showed the bullet in his pocket. It
was embedded in three pennies and two francs which he happened to be
carrying there, and which his wounded hand had prevented his feeling
for afterwards.

Pathos and humour, like genius and madness, are close akin. One of the
boys told me of a chum who was very "churchy," and always carried an
Episcopal Prayer Book in his pocket--for which he was not a little
chaffed. For a joke one day he was presented with a second that a
messmate had received, but for which he had no use. His scruples about
"wasting it" made him put it in his pocket with the other. Soon after
this, in an advance, he was shot in the chest. The bullet passed right
through the first Prayer Book and lodged in the second, where it was
found on his arrival at hospital for another slight wound. He at least
will long continue to swear by the Book of Common Prayer.

One day, walking with other officers in the country,