I do not know any one who has a more consistently disagreeable job than a draft-conducting officer. He crosses and recrosses the Channel under the most uncomfortable conditions possible. He has a lot of responsibility. He gets no praise and little credit. He is generally an elderly man. He has, most likely, been accustomed for years to an easy life. He is often an incurable victim to seasickness. There is no interest and no excitement about his work. He lives for the most part in trains and steamers. He snatches meals in strange messes, railway refreshment rooms, and quayside restaurants. He may have to conduct his draft all the way from Cork or Wick. He may be kept waiting hour after hour for a train. He may be embarked and disembarked again three or four times before his steamer actually starts. The men of his draft are strangers to him. He does not know whether his sergeants are trustworthy or not. Yet there is no epidemic of suicide among draft-conducting officers, though there very well might be. Great and unconquerable is the spirit of the British dug-out officer. The draft itself may have had a bad time too, especially in the matter of cleaning up the ship; but then the draft does not have it once a week. And the draft has not got to turn round and go straight back again. And for the draft the business has the advantage of novelty. It is exciting to land for the first time in France, to be pursued by little boys who say "Souvenir!" and "Good night!" early in the morning. And there is something about getting there at last, after months of weary training, which must stir the most sluggish imagination. The draft is examined by the doctors. One way and another a doctor in a base camp has a busy time of it. He begins at 6 a.m., diagnosing the cases of the men who report sick. The hour at which it is possible to report sick is fixed inconveniently early in order, it is hoped, to discourage disease. Men who are not very bad may actually prefer the usual parades and fatigues to reporting sick at 6 a.m. For sickness is not even a sure way of escape. Doctors have a nasty trick of awarding "medicine and duty" in doubtful cases, which is distinctly more unpleasant than duty without medicine. From that on the doctor is kept busy, till he drops off to sleep for half an hour before dinner in the mess-room.