I remember very well the first time that the truism began to assert itself as a truth to me. I was in a soldiers' club, one of those excellent places of refreshment and recreation run by societies and individuals for the benefit of our men. It was an abominable evening. Snow, that was half sleet, was driven across the camp by a strong wind. Melting snow lay an inch deep on the ground. The club, naturally under the circumstances, was crammed. Men sat at every table, reading papers, writing letters, playing draughts and dominoes. They stood about with cups of tea and cocoa in their hands. They crowded round the fires. The steam of wet clothes and thick clouds of tobacco smoke filled the air and dimmed the light from lamps, feeble at best, which hung from ceiling and wall. In one corner a man sat on a rickety chair. His back was turned to the room. He faced the two walls of his corner. The position struck me as odd until I noticed that he sat that way in order to get a little light on the pages of the book he read. It was Oscar Wilde's _De Profundis_. It was, I suppose, part of my business to make friends of the men round me. I managed with some difficulty to get into conversation with that man. He turned his chair half round and, starting from Oscar Wilde, gave me his views on prison life. The private soldier, coming under military discipline, is a prisoner, so this man thought. He did not deny that it may be worth while to go to prison for a good cause. But prison life is as galling and abominable for a martyr as for a criminal. There is a stir among the men. A lady, heavily cloaked and waterproofed, made a slow progress through the room, staring round her with curious eyes. She was a stranger, evidently a distinguished stranger, for she was escorted by a colonel and two other officers. My friend nodded towards her. "Do you know her?" he asked. I shook my head. He named a very eminent novelist. "Doing a tour of the Expeditionary Force, I expect," he said. "I used to review her books before the war. I'd rather like to review the one she'll write about this. Once"--he added this reminiscence after a pause--"I dined in her company in London." He was a journalist before he enlisted. If he survives he will no doubt write a book, a new _De Profundis_, and it ought to be worth reading. I went one afternoon to a railway station to say good-bye to some friends of mine who were off to the firing-line. Troops usually left the base where I was then stationed at 10 or 11 o'clock at night and we did not go to see them off. This party--they were Canadians--started in the afternoon and from an unusual station. The scene was familiar enough. There was a long train, for the most part goods waggons. There were hundreds of laughing men, and a buffet where ladies--those ladies who somehow never fail--gave tea and cocoa to waiting crowds. Sergeants served out rations for the journey. Officers struggled to get their kit into compartments already overfull.