w forms, which in due
course would find their way to battalion adjutants for immediate
filling-up in the middle of an action. The oldest of them, those
white-haired, bronze-faced, gray-eyed generals in the administrative
side of war, had started their third row of ribbons well before the end
of the Somme battles, and had flower-borders on their breasts by the
time the massacres had been accomplished in the fields of Flanders. I
know an officer who was awarded the D. S. O. because he had hindered the
work of war correspondents with the zeal of a hedge-sparrow in search of
worms, and another who was the best-decorated man in the army because he
had presided over a visitors' chateau and entertained Royalties,
Members of Parliament, Mrs. Humphry Ward, miners, Japanese, Russian
revolutionaries, Portuguese ministers, Harry Lauder, Swedes, Danes,
Norwegians, clergymen, Montenegrins, and the Editor of John Bull, at the
government's expense--and I am bound to say he deserved them all, being
a man of infinite tact, many languages, and a devastating sense of
humor. There was always a Charlie Chaplin film between moving pictures
of the battles of the Somme. He brought the actualities of war to the
visitors' chateau by sentry-boxes outside the door, a toy "tank" in the
front garden, and a collection of war trophies in the hall. He spoke to
High Personages with less deference than he showed to miners from Durham
and Wales, and was master of them always, ordering them sternly to bed
at ten o'clock (when he sat down to bridge with his junior officers),
and with strict military discipline insisting upon their inspection of
the bakeries at Boulogne, and boot-mending factories at Calais, as part
of the glory of war which they had come out for to see.

So it was that there were brilliant colors in the streets of Montreuil,
and at every doorway a sentry slapped his hand to his rifle, with smart
and untiring iteration, as the "brains" of the army, under "brass hats"
and red bands, went hither and thither in the town, looking stern, as
soldiers of grave responsibility, answering salutes absent--mindedly,
staring haughtily at young battalion officers who passed through
Montreuil and looked meekly for a chance of a lorry-ride to Boulogne, on
seven days' leave from the lines.

The smart society of G. H. Q. was best seen at the Officers' Club in
Montreuil, at dinner-time. It was as much like musical comedy as any
stage setting of war at the Gaie