r a pebble from the next brook!)

We were at last called back by a whistle, and the distant cry, "Assemble
on the left!" Once more we marched south, and presently were resting
again at West Sciota. As we lolled there, buying apples from native
buzzards, who take to the extortion of the professional without any
coaching, some trucks came to the crossroads, and men began to climb into
them. Watching one group, I was surprised to recognize a man of A
company, at the same time that Corder exclaimed, "Those men are from the
first battalion!" whose firing, you remember, we had already heard at
least a couple of miles away. We did not get the explanation until
battalion conference, some hours later. It seems that the umpires, during
our northward march, had reinforced the cavalry with an imaginary
battalion of infantry, before which we had been obliged to retreat. By
motorcycle messenger a call for help was sent to the first battalion
commander, who was now four miles away on the road to Altona. Having
sixteen empty motor-trucks, in four minutes he had filled them with two
companies, and seventeen minutes later they were behind our lines,
forming for our support. As we saw or guessed none of this, it only
illustrates the remark with which I began, that the private soldier knows
but a little of what is going on.

I would not write this to you in such detail, except that I think it will
interest you to see that the hike is more than a mere march, and that it
is making every one of us advance in his department of the war game. We
squads, I hope, are learning to do as we are told, though you see how
blind everything is to us. The intricate problems of the officers come
out in conference. There the men sit on the ground in a great
three-quarter-circle, grouping themselves whenever possible around the
men with maps. The major likewise has hisn, and the officers theirn. The
major makes a general statement of the work of the day, and the captains
then report on their particular operations. When you see what exact notes
they have taken of every operation: the precise moment of sending out
parties and of receiving reports, the minuteness with which they locate
every action, the science with which they carry out the work that falls
to them, and the team-play that animates them, you see that this is no
old-style cut-and-dried "sham battle," but an actual study, of course on
a small scale, of fighting seriously carried out by well-trained