In spite of our want of games and amusements, life in those camps was pleasant and cheerful. We all had work to do, and not too many hours of idleness. For me there were long walks with M., best and cheeriest of comrades, whose spirits and energy never failed or flagged. We saw a great deal of each other in those days until the time came at the end of April, when he moved off to a cavalry brigade; a post into which he was thrust because good horsemen are rare among chaplains. There was always excellent company in my own mess and others. Nowhere else have I met so many different kinds of men. The regular soldiers, some of them old men, held themselves as a separate caste a little aloof from the rest of us. It is not to be wondered at. They were professionals, with a great tradition behind them. We were amateurs, and, at times, inclined to be critical of old customs and old ways. We came from every conceivable profession, and before the war had been engaged in a hundred different activities. Among us were men of real ability, who had made good in their own way. I think the regular soldiers were a little bewildered sometimes. They, almost as completely as we, were plunged into a new world. The wonder is that they stood us as patiently as they did. We had our mild jokes, and it was wonderful how long the mildest jokes will last in circumstances like ours. There was a story of an unfortunate private who was dragged before his colonel for failing to salute a general, a general who should have been unmistakable. In defence he said that he did not know it was a general. "But," said the colonel, "you must have seen the red band round his hat." "Yes, sir," said the man, "but I thought that was to show he was a Salvation Army captain." The whole camp chuckled over that story for a week. Whether any one ever told it to the general I do not know. Another private, an Irishman, arrived in the camp one day from the firing-line. Ours was the remotest base; two days' journey from the nearest trench. Between us and the fighting men was what seemed an impassable entanglement of regulations, guarded at every angle by R.T.O.'s and military police. It was, any one would agree about this, a flat impossibility for an unauthorised person to travel through the zone of the army's occupation. Yet this man did it, and did it without in the least intending to. Up to a certain point his account of himself was clear. He had been sent off, one of a party under charge of an officer. He did not know--few people in the army ever do know--where he was going. He became detached from his party and found himself, a solitary unit, at what seems to have been a railhead. The colonel who dealt with him questioned: "Why didn't you ask the R.T.O. where you were to go?" "I did ask him, sir. The first thing ever I did was to ask him." "And what did he say?" "What he said, sir, was 'Go to the devil out of this.'"