Mr. ---- is here. But you wouldn't know him. I have just been introduced to him without knowing him. Before the War he was a Quaker,[19] a teetotaller, and a pacifist at any price. And I suppose he wore clothes that conformed more or less to his principles. Now he is wearing the uniform of a British naval officer. He is drinking long whiskies-and-sodas in the restaurant, in the society of Major R. And the Major's khaki doesn't give a point to the Quaker's uniform. As for the Quaker, they say he could give points to any able seaman when it comes to swear words (but this may be sheer affectionate exaggeration). His face and his high, hatchet nose, whatever colour they used to be, are now the colour of copper--not an ordinary, Dutch kettle and coal-scuttle, pacifist, arts-and-crafts copper, but a fine old, truculent, damn-disarmament, Krupp-&-Co., bloody, ammunition copper, and battered by the wars of all the world. He is the commander and the owner of an armoured car, one of the unit of five volunteer armoured cars. I do not know whether he was happy or unhappy when there wasn't a war. No man, and certainly no Quaker, could possibly be happier than this Quaker is now. He and the Major have been out potting Germans all the afternoon. (They have accounted for nine.) A schoolboy who has hit the mark nine times running with his first toy rifle is not merrier than, if as merry as, these more than mature men with their armoured car. They do not say much, but you gather that it is more fun being a volunteer than a regular; it is to enjoy delight with liberty, the maximum of risk with the minimum of responsibility. And their armoured car--if it is the one I saw standing to-day in the Place d'Armes--it is, as far as you can make out through its disguises, an ordinary open touring car, with a wooden hoarding (mere matchboard) stuck all round it, the whole painted grey to simulate, armoured painting. Through four holes, fore and aft and on either side of her, their machine-guns rake the horizon. The Major and Mr. ---- sit inside, hidden behind the matchboard plating. They scour the country. When they see any Germans they fire and bring them down. It is quite simple. When you inquire how they can regard that old wooden rabbit-hutch as an armoured cover, they reply that their car isn't for defence, it's for attack. The Germans have only to see their guns and they're off. And really it looks like it, since the two are actually here before your eyes, drinking whiskies-and-sodas, and the rest of the armoured car corps are alive somewhere in Ghent.