ht with optimism. They made a little work go a long way.
They were haughty and arrogant with subordinate officers, or at the best
affable and condescending, and to superior officers they said, "Yes,
sir," "No, sir," "Quite so, sir," to any statement, however absurd in
its ignorance and dogmatism. If a major-general said, "Wagner was a
mountebank in music," G.S.O. III, who had once studied at Munich, said,
"Yes, sir," or, "You think so, sir? Of course you're right."

If a lieutenant-colonel said, "Browning was not a poet," a staff
captain, who had read Browning at Cambridge with passionate admiration,
said: "I quite agree with you, sir. And who do you think was a poet,
sir?"

It was the army system. The opinion of a superior officer was correct,
always. It did not admit of contradiction. It was not to be criticized.
Its ignorance was wisdom.

G. H. Q. lived, said our guest, in a world of its own, rose-colored,
remote from the ugly things of war. They had heard of the trenches, yes,
but as the West End hears of the East End--a nasty place where common
people lived. Occasionally they visited the trenches as society folk
go slumming, and came back proud of having seen a shell burst, having
braved the lice and the dirt.

"The trenches are the slums," said our guest. "We are the Great
Unwashed. We are the Mud-larks."

There was a trench in the salient called J. 3. It was away out in
advance of our lines. It was not connected with our own trench system.
It had been left derelict by both sides and was a ditch in No Man's
Land. But our men were ordered to hold it--"to save sniping." A
battalion commander protested to the Headquarters Staff. There was no
object in holding J. 3. It was a target for German guns and a temptation
to German miners.

"J. 3," came the staff command, "must be held until further orders."

We lost five hundred men in holding it. The trench and all in it were
thrown up by mines. Among those killed was the Hon. Lyndhurst Bruce, the
husband of Camille Clifford, with other husbands of women unknown.

Our guest told the story of the massacre in Neuve Chapelle. "This is a
death sentence," said the officers who were ordered to attack. But they
attacked, and died, with great gallantry, as usual.

"In the slums," said our guest, "we are expected to die if G. H. Q.
tells us so, or if the corps arranges our funeral. And generally we do."

That night, when the snow lay on the ground, I listened to the rumbl